Muslim students’ belonging is shaped by faith provision, religious literacy and peer care

By Student Voice AI

Updated Apr 11, 2026

At Student Voice AI, we see belonging problems surface in the details students write down: whether there is somewhere to pray, whether staff understand religious practice, whether it feels safe to speak openly, and whether support is dependable when something goes wrong. Hanan Fara’s recent Studies in Higher Education paper, "Navigating sacred and secular: the dynamic evolution of Muslim students’ sense of belonging in UK higher education", shows why those details should not be treated as peripheral inclusion issues. For UK universities using student voice to improve inclusion, the paper lands a clear message: belonging for British Muslim undergraduates is not fixed. It is built, unsettled, and rebuilt through everyday institutional conditions.

Context and research question

Belonging has become a standard term in higher education strategy, but it is often treated as if it can be measured once and summarised neatly. For Muslim students, that simplification can miss the practical conditions that shape whether university feels welcoming, risky, or exhausting to navigate.

Fara asks how British Muslim undergraduates in the UK negotiate belonging over time, and which institutional arrangements make that process easier or harder. The study draws on qualitative interviews with 30 students across two universities in the West Midlands and uses reflexive thematic analysis to trace how belonging changes through the interaction of identity, agency, institutional structures, and wider policy atmospheres. That makes the paper useful for institutions because it explains not just whether belonging varies, but why.

Key findings

The central finding is that belonging is a temporal and relational process, not a settled outcome. Students did not describe belonging as something they either had or lacked once and for all. Instead, it shifted across teaching spaces, peer relationships, support services, and faith-related provision. That matters for UK teams because a single survey item on belonging can hide how unstable the experience really is, a point echoed in how ethnic-minority students build belonging over time.

Fara identifies three overlapping patterns in the data. The first is disruption and extended liminality, where students feel unsure of their place and have to navigate ambiguity or exclusion. In those conditions, belonging is fragile, and students may spend more energy reading the environment than participating fully in it. The practical takeaway is simple: students can look present while still feeling unconvinced that they belong.

The second pattern is strategic adaptation and everyday placemaking. Students responded to risk by calibrating how visible they were, managing self-presentation, and building their own routines and peer infrastructures to make university workable. This is a crucial student voice insight: a cohort can appear to be coping while still doing a large amount of hidden labour to create safety and continuity for themselves. If institutions only look for overt complaints, they can miss that quieter form of strain.

The third pattern is confident integration and legacy-building. Where institutions offered reliable faith provision, staff with stronger religious literacy, meaningful peer density, and predictable governance routines, students were better able to move beyond self-protection and contribute more confidently to university life. In other words, belonging was strongest when students could trust the environment, not only their own resilience. That is the payoff for institutions: better participation, more honest feedback, and a stronger foundation for inclusion work.

"Belonging remained contingent and reversible where securitised policy climates heightened perceived risk and constrained voice."

This final point is especially important for UK higher education. Belonging was shaped not only by local campus relationships, but also by the wider policy climate. When students perceived a securitised atmosphere around Muslim identity, their sense of risk increased and their willingness to speak openly narrowed. For institutions relying on student voice, that means silence, restrained comments, or low complaint volumes should not automatically be read as absence of concern, a warning that also appears in work on conditional belonging for minority ethnic STEM students.

Practical implications

For UK universities, the first implication is to make belonging more diagnostic. Instead of relying only on general questions such as "Do you feel you belong here?", add open-text prompts that ask where belonging feels strongest or weakest, what makes religious expression easier or harder, and which institutional routines create confidence or friction. That gives teams evidence they can act on, rather than a headline score with no clear route to improvement, and it helps avoid some of the measurement blind spots described in what ethnic-minority students mean by belonging.

Second, treat faith provision and religious literacy as part of the core student experience infrastructure. Prayer space availability, timetabling around religious observance, staff understanding of Muslim students' needs, and predictable processes for support are not peripheral issues. They shape whether students experience the institution as dependable and whether they feel safe enough to participate fully. Getting those basics right makes belonging less conditional and reduces the hidden work students do to protect themselves.

Third, use student voice data to spot contingent belonging before it turns into disengagement. Comments about self-censorship, isolation, uncertainty, or "not wanting to make a fuss" are often early warning signs. Student Voice Analytics is useful here because it can categorise and benchmark belonging-related free text at scale, helping teams see whether issues cluster around specific campuses, programmes, or student groups, and whether changes are improving confidence and participation over time.

FAQ

Q: How can a university act on this research if it does not currently ask about religion or belief in its surveys?

A: Start with experience rather than identity labels alone. Add one or two open-text prompts about where students feel able to be themselves, what makes participation feel safe or risky, and whether institutional routines support religious practice in reality, not only on paper. You can then review the themes alongside existing equality, retention, and support data to identify where more specific questions or follow-up work are needed.

Q: What should we keep in mind methodologically when using this paper?

A: This is a qualitative interview study with 30 students in two West Midlands universities, so its strength is explanatory depth rather than statistical generalisation. It shows the mechanisms through which belonging is negotiated and why it can remain unstable. UK institutions should use it as a strong guide for what to look for locally, then test those patterns in their own surveys, free-text comments, interviews, and focus groups.

Q: What does this change about how universities should interpret student voice on belonging?

A: It suggests that belonging should be read as a lived process rather than a headline score. If students are managing visibility, building their own support networks, or withholding parts of themselves to stay safe, a positive average can still mask significant strain. Open comments are often where that strain becomes visible, which is why careful analysis of student voice matters so much for inclusion work.

References

[Paper Source]: Hanan Fara "Navigating sacred and secular: the dynamic evolution of Muslim students’ sense of belonging in UK higher education" DOI: 10.1080/03075079.2026.2641136

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