Allah has told us everything: An interpretative phenomenological analysis exploring the lived experiences of British Muslims

Abstract

There is a need to better understand how individuals in different religious groups construct and maintain their worldviews. This study explores how religious practices, beliefs, and relationships create and sustain the worldviews of five British Muslims. Semi-structured interviews were inductively analyzed using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) to idiographically explore the participants’ lived experiences. This analysis developed multiple subordinate themes that formed two superordinate themes: “Submitting to Allah” and “Being a British Muslim.” The participants’ experiences of being raised in Muslim families strongly shaped their beliefs and they each strongly identify themselves as both Muslim and British. These important relationships taught them to follow the teachings of the Qur’an and to live their lives in submission to God. The analysis suggests the belief that the Qur’an is the authoritative and enduring revelation of God to mankind provided the core of their worldview and that this belief had far-reaching implications for every aspect of their lives. Their social relationships and religious practices both continually affirmed this fundamental belief in their sacred text and created a social reality in which the participants experienced God and submitted to the will of Allah. The combination of many different religious practices, social relationships, and personal experiences imbued the Qur’an with the power and authority to shape the participants’ lives and sustained their religious community. The participants’ intratextually fundamentalist approach to the Qur’an helped them create coherent worldviews that were filled with meaning and purpose.