As Kambiz Ghaneabassiri points out in his paper Writing Histories of Western Muslims, it was not until the 1980s that the enormously diverse groups in Western Europe, US, Canada and other countries came to be ‘characterized by their religion rather than their races, ethnicities and status as immigrants’ (p.169). With this development, and the rise of various movements and Islamist ideologies, following the success of the Iranian Revolution, in 1979 brought into question the ‘incompatibility of Islam’ with Western ideas of democratic participation and citizenship.