Beyond Contact: Police–Muslim Relations, Engagement and Legitimacy in Scotland

Abstract

Research on police–Muslim relations has often been shaped by the counter-terrorism frame, by survey-based methods, and by studies of majority populations in England and Wales. Scotland has received limited attention in this literature, despite having its own legal system, a single national police service and a distinctive politics of national inclusion. This thesis examines police–Muslim relations in Scotland as an everyday policing relationship beyond the counter-terrorism frame and asks under what conditions everyday police contact supports institutional trust and legitimacy. The thesis draws on fifty-four qualitative interviews across several Scottish settings: thirty-one with Muslim community members, eighteen with Islamic organisations and community leaders, and five with police participants, including two Muslim former officers. By bringing these three perspectives into a single analysis, the study examines how police–Muslim relations are experienced, interpreted and negotiated. The analysis uses reflexive thematic analysis, framed by procedural justice theory and the dialogic approach to police legitimacy. The central finding is that contact becomes a basis for institutional trust where it is followed by recognition, response and follow-up. Respectful and procedurally fair encounters are significant, but they do not generate institutional trust. The thesis develops the concept of the contact–recognition gap to describe the distance between visible police contact and the recognition needed for that contact to become trustworthy. Four interrelated processes produce and sustain that gap: conditional trust, mediated engagement, symbolic contact and differential access. The empirical contribution is to examine community members, Islamic organisations and police participants together in the Scottish context, and to treat Muslim communities as internally varied rather than as a single population. The conceptual contribution is the contact–recognition gap itself, which explains why contact-based engagement may fail to build trust.