In the anguished weeks of debate and foreboding that followed the London bombings last July, dire predictions were made. British Muslims would become the targets of widespread intimidation and hate campaigns as the backlash against extremism took hold. Young British Muslims, it was said, would become further alienated from mainstream society, retreating into a paranoid world of conspiracy theories and religious fanaticism. The community would run into growing hostility and discrimination as perceptions of them as a Fifth Column closed opportunities and people’s minds. They would become isolated and embittered.
The predictions were wrong. British society, and London in particular, rose above crude revenge. Politicians, faith groups and ordinary citizens reached out to the Muslim mainstream in support, sharing their bewilderment and supporting them in the painful selfexamination of why their faith had bred such violence. There were some isolated hate crimes, but no general spiral into communal violence and entrenched hostility.
A year on, many of the questions remain, however. How great a pull does religious extremism exercise on Britain’s 1.8 million Muslims? How integrated or alienated do young Muslim men feel in Bradford, Dewsbury or Leeds? What help can the police and the public expect from Muslim leaders in identifying extremists and encouraging integration and moderation?
In the largest survey yet undertaken of Muslim attitudes, the Times/Populus poll has revealed myriad views, some alarming, others profoundly reassuring, that point to a Muslim community in Britain that is as varied as it is vibrant. Indeed, in many respects the phrase “Muslim community” is itself misleading. Some of those questioned feel fully part of the British mainstream. Others see only hardship and discrimination around them. On key questions relating to integration, Western values, public morality, education and opportunity, Muslims often hold views very similar to those of their non-Muslim compatriots. But like the British mainstream, those views can differ greatly according to the age, social position and earnings of the respondents. In other words, British Muslims are, in many respects, as much British as they are Muslims. Generalisations about “the community” therefore risk being trite.
It is, nevertheless, worth underlining some of the more striking results from this survey. The first is that nine out of ten respondents believe that Muslims make a valuable contribution to British society, and two thirds say that their community needs to do more to integrate with it. That is heartening. A high estimation of self-worth is a prerequisite for the moral underpinning necessary to become a good citizen. To respect the society in which one lives — and to wish more fully to be part of it — is the best defence against the kind of marginalised revulsion in which extremism flourishes.
Just as heartening is the finding that almost nine out of ten British Muslims have close personal friends who are not Muslims. That is the human face of race relations, the warmth behind abstract statistics. The reverse figure — only one in three of the general population has Muslims friends — is, of course, explicable by their higher numbers and the geographic concentration of Muslims. And Muslims who do feel part of the British mainstream clearly understand the dangers to themselves and to society posed by religious extremism.
More than half say the Government is not doing enough to combat extremism, a higher proportion than among the general population. And half the respondents say that it is acceptable for the authorities to monitor closely what is preached in mosques — though, understandably, far many more object to the police viewing Muslims with greater suspicion because of the 7/7 bombings.
Yet there are some findings that are alarming and underline the danger of jihad thinking. However much the Government insists that foreign policy cannot be skewed to cater simply for one group, the Muslim insistence on the “umma”, the global community of Islam, has led more than half to see the War on Terror as a war on Islam. And though only 16 per cent believe the bombers’ cause was just, some 13 per cent consider them to be martyrs. That is not a statistically insignificant figure. It translates as 234,000 people, almost the population of Bradford.
Britain’s many Muslim associations, bodies, societies and mosques that claim to speak, often cacophonously, for their religion, must do more to get this figure down. The majority of Muslims must be prepared to show leadership and not allow themselves to be intimidated by a raucous minority. British Islam has its own need to win the “hearts and minds” of adherents, and to ponder its place in a largely tolerant society. The less Muslims retreat, the more they will advance.
