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This study explored honour and shame for South Asian British Muslim men and women. It aimed to offer plausible answers to the definition, concept, impact and gender differences of honour and shame for this sociocultural and faith group of people. This qualitative piece of research encompassed triangulation of individual interviews, focus groups and photo elicitation. Thirty participants who were of South Asian British Muslim identities were recruited via a purposive sampling strategy. This included men and women of diverse demographics and locations with an age range of nineteen - sixty-four. The majority of interviews were conducted in English, with some participant's sporadic dialogue in Arabic, Bangla, Punjabi and Urdu. The methodology was thematic analysis. Seven main themes were identified via thematic analysis of the data. A humanistic stance underpinned the conduct of the study alongside a hermeneutic researcher stance. A social constructivist and interpretive epistemological position in conjunction with a critical realism perspective infused the research process. A predominantly insider researcher position was established which was a major influence in eliciting the rich, deep and meaningful data which emerged regarding the honour and shame phenomena. Researcher reflexivity was a key factor in how the research was approached, conducted, interpreted and understood. This study identified a threefold patriarchal construct; Western, South Asian and Muslim underpinned the honour and shame phenomena. The research illustrated honour appeared to be relational and the nexus which held the family relationships together. Shame seemed to be the substance which fractured this complicated structure. There were narratives of some South Asian British Muslim women being sectioned and admitted into psychiatric institutions due to them being at risk to themselves/and or other persons. The deterioration in their mental health appeared to be closely associated with their experiences of being subjected to abusive honour and shame stipulations. The study also found cultural and traditional mores were very influential components in deleterious honour and shame practices, which at times replaced Islamic principles. One of the more significant findings to emerge from this study was that some British Muslim Bangladeshi communities practised a bride price system. These findings cannot be extrapolated to all South Asian British Muslims as they derived from a small sample size.

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This thesis presents an argument for the use of dialogic halaqah to develop the personal autonomy of young Muslims in twenty-first century Britain. It begins by developing a theoretical grounding for Islamic conceptualisations of personal autonomy and dialogic pedagogy. In doing so, it aims to generate dialogue between Islamic and ‘western’ educational traditions, and to clarify the theoretical foundation of halaqah, a traditional Islamic oral pedagogy, that has been adapted to meet the educational needs of Muslim children in contemporary Britain. Dialogic halaqah is daily practice in two independent British Muslim faith-schools, providing a safe space for young Muslims to cumulatively explore challenging issues, in order to facilitate the development of selfhood, hybrid identity and personal autonomy, theorised as shakhsiyah Islamiyah. This thesis examines the relationship between thought, language, and the development of personal autonomy in neo-Ghazalian, Vygotskian and Bakhtinian traditions, and suggests the possibility of understanding shakhsiyah Islamiyah as a dialogical Muslim-self. This theoretical work underpins an empirical study of data generated through dialogic halaqah held with groups of schoolchildren and young people. Using established analytic schemes, data from these sessions are subjected to both thematic and dialogue analyses. Emergent themes relating to autonomy and choice, independent and critical thinking, navigating authority, peer pressure, and choosing to be Muslim are explored. Themes related to halaqah as dialogic pedagogy, whether and how it supports the development of agency, resilience and independent thinking, and teacher and learner roles in halaqah, are examined. Moreover, findings from dialogue analysis, which evaluates the quality of educational dialogue generated within halaqah, that is, participants’ capacity to engage in dialogue with each other, as well as with an imagined secular other, are presented. The quality of the dialogic interactions is evaluated, as is evidence of individual participant’s autonomy in their communicative actions.