Abstract

This paper reports findings from an ethnographic study of the adjustment experience of a group of postgraduate international students at a university in the South of England. Friendship emerged as a major category of research, an aspect of which was the formation of a friendship group unified by a shared faith, namely Islam. Muslim students were drawn to create this network of friends by a desire to share the re-enactment of ritual associated with home, to reassert and to celebrate religious identity and to provide a bolster against a climate of Islamophobia. Acts of Islamophobic abuse are on the increase throughout the West and in the UK; this paper argues that international students become entangled in unresolved tension between the Muslim and non-Muslim sections of the British population, shedding light on the vulnerability of British Muslims and on the reception offered by the host community to international visitors to the UK.