You can be religious and British

The newspapers have been full of alarm today at the findings of a report by the right-wing think tank Policy Exchange. The press release can be read here and the full report here

Headed by Munira Mirza, Living Apart Together: British Muslims and the paradox of multiculturalism found there was a growing religiosity amongst the Muslim community. Evidence of this is that:

1. 86% thought Islam was the most important thing in their life
2. 62% of them thought they had as much in common with Muslims as non-Muslims
3. many would like to send their children to Islamic schools
4. a number would like to live in a shariah state
5. a majority would like women to choose to wear a hijab

Mirza's response to this is:

The emergence of a strong Muslim identity in Britain is, in part, a result of multicultural policies implemented since the 1980s which have emphasised difference at the expense of shared national identity and divided people along ethnic, religious and cultural lines.

She clearly feels Muslims being religious is a bad thing. Today's media have agreed. All this was dressed up in the usual buzzwords of "radicalisation", "fundamentalism" and "extremism".

What Mirza found above does not surprise me. That the generation of Muslims brought up in this country are more religious than their parents just needs one to look around. Cultural baggage was ditched, and people seeing that they were not in Pakistan or elsewhere adopted the essential tenets of their faith. Therefore we saw an increase in hijab wearing during the 1990s for example.

What Mirza's report fails to outline is why any of this is a big deal. Studies by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation last year and a previous one by Glasgow University also found that young Muslims were defining themselves more by their religious identity - but at the same time were absolutely loyal to Scotland.

The same policy of multiculturalism has been in operation here as in the rest of Britain. Multiculturalism is not at fault. You can respect someone's right to live their life as they see fit, and still have a society. The numbers are said to be less down south. There are clearly other factors in England that make Muslims there feel less British or English. Even so, the Daily Telegraph found last year that 91% of Muslims were loyal to Britain.

What's needed according to Mirza is for the government to recognise those less practising Muslims. The report tells us that 21% of Muslims have supped alcohol, 65% have paid interest on a mortgage, 19% have gambled and 9% taken drugs. According to Mirza:

We should be wary of treating the entire Muslim population as a monolith with special needs that are different to the rest of the population. There is considerable diversity amongst Muslims, with many adopting a more secular approach to their religion and a majority feeling they have as much, if not more, in common with non-Muslims in Britain as with Muslims abroad. There is clearly a conflict within British Islam between a moderate majority that accepts the norms of Western democracy and a growing minority that does not. [Policy Exchange emphasis]

So, we shouldn't recognise the needs of those Muslims who are practising (why concessions to Islamic finance when so many pay interest?) because there are Muslims who don't bother with that stuff. The really offensive aspect of this though is that those who are considered practising Muslims (or radical extremist fundamentalist Muslims according to others) is that they don't accept "the norms of Western democracy". This "rise in Islamism" is seen as a "security problem".

Going back to the five points listed above, I can't help but think this report is a contrived exercise with pre-ordained conclusions. So some Muslims think they have more in common with other Muslims than non-Muslims. That would be obvious to some, but doesn't mean they don't care deeply for non-Muslims in their life. On Islamic schools, one-third of Christians attend their own faith schools, and 39% of Jews do too. They have done for years and the state has not crumbled from it. Regarding shariah law, I've written about this before. Here, it's a stated preference but there is no suggestion of forcing it down people's throats or an unwillingness to live under the current arrangements. They see it an a utopian ideal, others disagree, let's have a mature debate. Lastly, a majority would like women to choose to wear the hijab. Lock them up.

Mirza doesn't believe that people can be more religious because they believe in it and there's merit to it. It's because the proletariat haven't been organising themselves under the flag:

There has also been a weakening of older collective identities, notably the undermining of Britishness and the decline of working-class politics which has led to a feeling of disengagement amongst young people more generally. Some Muslims are therefore turning to religion as part of a search for meaning and community. They increasingly look to the abstract and global ummah.

Mirza believes that the government should stop engaging with Muslims as a community. I wasn't actually aware that they did. Decades have passed without any distinction being made by officialdom between ethnic minorities. We were all just black. Recently, due to the war on terror, Muslims have been engaged, but only on that basis.

And to conclude, some positive action - we need to end the attacks by secularists on Christmas, in order for more secularism in the Muslim community take hold:

Islamism is only one expression of a wider cultural problem of self-loathing and confusion in the West. One way to tackle this is to bring to an end the institutional attacks on national identity - the counterproductive cancellation of Christmas festivities, the neurotic bans on displays of national symbols, and the sometimes crude anti-Western bias of history lessons - which can create feelings of defensiveness and resentment. We should allow people to express their identity freely and in a climate of genuine tolerance.

Irony doesn't begin to cover it.

UPDATE: 1990 Trust say the report is a "sham"

Comments

[Ahmed]

Good job dismantling the ramblings of this buffoon. Having heard and seen her in the media before it's pretty clear to see why Muslims have rejected the type of secularism propagated by Muneer Mirza et al. The number of sisters round our neck of the woods who have started wearing hijab is simply amazing. Most of these are highly educated including dentists and doctors and would run rings round Muneer and co. any day of the week.

[fugstar]

Salam

i was leafing through the pdf today and the sadest thing were the interviews and the parts of speech that lace the 100 page document. muslim pride is on the rise, but im not sure whther this means that we are getting better. there are a lot of blonde/ditzy quotes from our people in there.

oh well.

yeah its not academic, uses notorious dispatches programmes as reference points and has some spelling booboos, but theres a lot of work thats gone into that document. do you think it voices what camerons britain would look like?

[Infidel & Kafir Watch]

The Muslim community and especially the educated younger generation have seen, tasted and witnessed the western non-religious way of life and have started to return back to the actual Islam and not to the Pakistani Islam, Indian Islam Asia Islam which their elders brought with them into the western world.

The Muslims are waking up to the drug culture, night life culture, intoxication culture and a life which is only life if money is involved. This type of life style is being rejected by younger generation of Muslims. The worry aspect to the British non-Muslim population is that this Muslim generation will outclass them in all aspects of life. The fact is that this is true and this is what Islam brings to you if you follow it full and proper.

[Vlad the Muslim Impaler]

This post has been deleted.

[George Carty]

The Muslims are waking up to the drug culture, night life culture, intoxication culture and a life which is only life if money is involved.

Yes, the increasing degeneracy of contemporary Western society only heightens the appeal of Islamic extremism. I remember reading an article which claimed that modern Western degeneracy is the result of a Marxist fifth column who set out to destroy Western civilization from within, in order to pave the way for a Communist takeover.

Little did they figure that they may have been aiding not Communism (which imploded as an ideology in 1991), but rather political Islam.

[johnmellor77]

Is this a spoof website now?

[Mustafa Arif]

"There are clearly other factors in England that make Muslims there feel less British or English."

Such as?