Review of "Muslims on the Map: A National Survey of Social Trends in Britain" by Serena Hussain

The author of this book, Serena Hussain, is an academic geographer now based at the School of Geography and the Environment at Oxford University. In 200 concise pages she provides a fascinating overview of the ethnic diversity of the Muslim community, its household composition, its educational attainment or rather lack of it, and its economic disadvantages.

Everyone who is concerned about the cohesion and success of Britain should read this book, both government policy makers and those leading community groups, Muslim and otherwise.

If a second edition is produced, some careful proofreading is warranted as the frequency of typographical errors is much higher than one expects in a quality publication. There is also one absolute howler. On page 3 the long-suffering John Prescott has his constituency relocated to Blackburn and is blamed for preferring Muslim women not to wear the full face veil in his presence. This is repeated in note 3 to chapter 1 which reminds us that he was the Deputy Prime Minister of Britain. The actual culprit who made the remarks was of course Jack Straw; I cannot begin to imagine how the author managed to perpetrate this mistake!