According to today’s Guardian, a poll taken for Channel 4 in the UK reveals that while Muslims feel at home in England, they aren’t psychologically integrated into the Englightenment values undergirding British society. While this is no surprise to those who have watched documentaries about British Muslims, or have seen earlier and similar polls, the Muslim failure to internalize Western “values” is still worrying, and should give pause to those who continue to claim that, in their sociopolitical views, Muslims are basically the same as non-Muslims who share their land.
Here are the data; quotes are taken directly from the Guardian story. The survey was conducted between April and May of last year; there were 1008 individuals in the Muslim group and 1000 in the “general population” group. Oddly, the Muslims were interviewed in person and the others by phone. That’s bad polling technique, but also means it’s likely that the figures for Muslims espousing non-“British” views are likely to be underestimates.
The results:
- “The research suggests that 86% of British Muslims feel a strong sense of belonging in Britain, which is higher than the national average of 83%. A large majority (91%) of the British Muslims who took part in the survey said they felt a strong sense of belonging in their local area, which is higher than the national average of 76%.”
- “Of those questioned, 88% said Britain was a good place for Muslims to live in, and 78% said they would like to integrate into British life on most things apart from Islamic schooling and some laws.”
But then things get worrisome. Note the disparity between figures for British Muslims and that of the population as a whole:
- “. . . when asked to what extent they agreed or disagreed that homosexuality should be legal in Britain, 18% said they agreed and 52% said they disagreed, compared with 5% among the public at large who disagreed.”
Get that? 52% of British Muslims want homosexuality to be made illegal in Britain—more than ten times the figure for the general population.
- “Almost half (47%) said they did not agree that it was acceptable for a gay person to become a teacher, compared with 14% of the general population.”
- “Nearly a quarter (23%) supported the introduction of sharia law in some areas of Britain, and 39% agreed that “wives should always obey their husbands”, compared with 5% of the country as a whole.”
That comports with the Pew data from other countries, and explains why Muslim student societies try to segregate women from men.
- “Two-thirds (66%) said they completely condemned people who took part in stoning adulterers, and a further 13% condemned them to some extent.”
How can you condemn this “to some extent”? And seriously, 34% of British Muslims refuse to completely condemn those who stone adulterers (or perhaps have no opinion)? If you’ve ever watched a stoning, you’ll know that even 34% is a barbarically high figure.
- “Nearly a third (31%) thought it was acceptable for a British Muslim man to have more than one wife, compared with 8% of the wider population.”
The Guardian notes that pollsters also asked people about “their attitudes toward the Jews,” but, curiously, those data aren’t given in the article. But you can find them in the Jewish Chronicle:
- “Extensive research by polling group ICM for Channel 4 found that the Muslim community is more likely to believe that Jewish people have too much power in Britain and too much power over government, media, the business world, international financial markets, and global affairs. Jews were also said to be responsible for most of the world’s wars.”=
- “Asked whether they thought antisemitism was a problem in Britain today, only 26 per cent of 1,081 British Muslims who took part in the poll said they would describe it as ‘a problem’ – compared to 46 per cent of the 1,008 people in the poll’s control group, representative of the average UK citizen.”
- Thirty one per cent agreed that Jews have too much power in government compared to seven per cent in the national average; 39 per cent of Muslims felt Jewish people have too much power over the media, compared to 10 per cent nationally; while 44 per cent of British Muslims said Jews have too much power in business compared to 18 per cent.
- More than 40 per cent of British Muslims said Jews were more loyal to Israel than the UK, while 34 per cent said Jewish people talk “too much about what happened to them in the Holocaust”.
- It found that 26 per cent of British Muslims believe that Jews are responsible for most of the world’s wars, compared to six per cent nationally; while 27 per cent said that people hate Jews because of the way Jews behave.
This is the one bright spot, assuming that everyone’s telling the truth:
- “In a series of questions on the terror threat in Britain, 4% said they sympathised with people who took part in suicide bombings (1% said they completely sympathised and 3% said they sympathised to some extent), and 4% said they sympathised with people who committed terrorist actions as a form of political protest generally.”
These findings will be given in a documentary, “What British Muslims Really Think” which will be broadcast this Wednesday on Channel 4. You can see the program guide here.
The Guardian piece goes on to quote Trevor Philips, the program’s presenter and former head of Britain’s Equality and Human Rights Commission:
“We are more nervous about Muslims because we feel people will be offended. But my view is that looking at the results of this survey, which have surprised me, that we have gone beyond the situation where we can say: ‘OK, don’t worry; they will come round in time,’ because that is not going to happen we have to make things change now.'”
But then the article quotes some British Muslims who find these figures encouraging, saying that things are changing, and implying that all will be well. They, in turn, are countered by Khalid Mahmood, Labour MP, who worries that things are not changing—that integration of Muslims into British society isn’t working well.
Regardless, this is one disparity you cannot blame on colonialism. Regardless of how much Muslim disaffection you think has been caused by the West’s intervention in the Middle East, these attitudes about gays, about sharia law, and about women reflect cultural differences heavily conditioned by religious differences.
I wonder how people like Glenn Greenwald, Reza Aslan, and C. J. W*rl*m*n will explain these data. My own view is that the difference won’t disappear simply after the Muslims have lived longer in the UK. Rather, they have to give up some of the tenets of their faith.
Agree completely with your finding on this. Until they lose some of the religion they simply will not get better as we say. It is no different for the evangelical folks right here in middle America. They continue in lock-step against progress and secular ideas and will not change until their religious positions change.
I live in the same small town rural community with many of these heavily religious believers and if anything, they have become more committed and pronounced in their extreme views while the progressive parts of society move on.
In the UK (correct me if I’m wrong) there seem to be a lot of faith schools. If Muslims send their children to such schools, then it’s no wonder attitudes aren’t evolving. People have to be exposed to different ideas to at least not be scared of them, let alone be accepting of them or adopting them.
It’s the same problem in parts of the US where whole towns are evangelical Christian, and I believe there’s a town where everyone is a traditional Jew too.
In places where the population is more homogeneous, people are more socially liberal whatever their political views.
Sadly, you’re not wrong about faith schools. We have seen – through exposés by the BHA and the NSS, as well as Dawkins’s documentary a few years back – that this can have a deliterious effect on education as well as social integration, with the most recent scandal being about an orthodox Jewish school (iirc).
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I also remember a Godless Spellchecker interview with a woman who was expelled from a Muslim school as a teenager because she took a photo of a friend who wasn’t wearing a hijab, and she might’ve shown that photo to men at some point.
Faith Schools are a scandal but, at the moment, not many are muslim. According to the Guardian there are:- “6,844 state faith schools 4,601 are Church of England, 1,986 Roman Catholic, 26 Methodist, 152 of other Christian faiths, 48 Jewish, 18 Muslim, 8 Sikh”.
These schools are wholly state funded. The CofE schools are popular because they offer a means of selecting within the state system. i.e. better off parents pretend to be christian and send there children to a school not blighted by the lower social classes.
We have faith schools, but they’re only partly state-funded, and they still have to follow the national curriculum. There’s a bit of protest about them getting any government money, but the government’s rationale is that it’s cheaper than building the new schools they’ve need to to accommodate the students themselves. I’ve got nieces at a C of E school and it costs more for each per week than I pay in rent. They have to be christened to go to the school, and attend a Sunday church service as a family at least once a term, and a few other things. I suspect a lot of the parents have just got their kids there because it’s a good school though.
oops.. just read that in addition to the 18 muslim state funded schools there are another 700 unregulated madrassas.
Wikipedia:
“Although not state schools, there are around 700 unregulated madrassas in Britain, attended by approximately 100,000 children of Muslim parents. Doctor Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, the leader of the Muslim Parliament of Great Britain, has called for them to be subject to government inspection following publication of a 2006 report that highlighted widespread physical and sexual abuse”
You’ll find that there a LOT of non-Muslim members of British society that haven’t “integrated into the Enlightenment values” described here. One of my gay friends has just had (another) major nervous breakdown because of the discrimination and trouble he receives from the more conservative inhabitants of his building. The various neo-Nazis of anti-foreigner prejudice are still out in force (as a non-Scot, I still get enough of this, though I haven’t had a knife put to my throat for years ; I’m beefier now, and can spot the trouble coming). Extreme right-wing politics remain in the field.
No, the “Enlightenment” is a thin skin of civilization on the surface of the body politic.
Oh, yes – Enlightenment values are, alas, a thin skin on the body politic: everywhere. I recommend reading Hanif Kureishi’s horrifying account of a trip to Bradford twenty or thirty years ago, and what he found there. There are of course those who like to blame the excesses of the Right on the behaviour of the Left or on ‘Muslims’, but if the Left and Muslims are to be held accountable for their crimes, then why shouldn’t the Right be held accountable for theirs?
They seem to be making some progress: a few years ago it was 100% who thought homosexuality should be illegal.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/may/07/muslims-britain-france-germany-homosexuality
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The quickest way to fix this would be to close all the faith schools immediately and let children be children and mix freely with each other. But of course the churches wouldn’t stand for that anymore than would Muslim groups.
Wouldn’t have any effect, if (as aljones909 quotes from the Guardian) there are only 18 muslim faith schools.
(Not that I think faith schools are a good idea, I think they’re crap, but just 18 can’t account for the observed data).
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Oops, aljones has just corrected that, in addition to the 18 state-funded, there are 700 unregulated madrassas. (I thought Madras was in India? Sorry….)
Makes a difference.
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“I wonder how people like Glenn Greenwald, Reza Aslan, and C. J. W*rl*m*n will explain these data.”
My bet is they won’t say anything unless Sam Harris does.
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I’m curious how they asked these questions. Asking a Muslim if they “sympathised with people who took part in suicide bombings”, is rather like asking a white person living in Harlem if they are a racist, they are unlikely to say yes. I mean how concerned are they going to be as to whether their anonymity will be protected if the express sympathy?
I’m also wondering, but for the opposite reason. Depending on what, exactly, you mean by sympathize, I could be said to sympathize with child molesters. How many Muslims said they’d sympathize, but would also say they condemn the actions?
Given the wording of the question http://www.icmunlimited.com/data/media/pdf/Mulims-full-suite-data-plus-topline.pdf Pg 243
I think there is little doubt that the 4% represents people who support the act, and not just feel sympathy for the actors.
It is like the “Do you advocate the violent overthrow of the United States government” question on US visa applications. Does anyone really answer yes to that?
These data, as reported by the Guardian, lump the beliefs of those born outside the UK, with those born in the UK. If you look at the full data set (here:http://www.icmunlimited.com/data/media/pdf/Mulims-full-suite-data-plus-topline.pdf), it’s clear that those born in the UK hold views that are less extreme than those born outside the UK on many measures. For example,on the legality of homosexuality, 38% disagree if born in the UK, 62% if born outside. This movement of belief towards the dominant position is exactly what you’d expect to see. It’s a shame the media didn’t report the data in this more positive light.
“I wonder how people like Glenn Greenwald, Reza Aslan, and C. J. W*rl*m*n will explain these data.”
Certainly not like this —
http://www.memri.org/clip/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/5436.htm
Saudi TV Host Nadine Al-Budair Takes to Task Apologists Who Claim Terrorists Have Nothing to Do with Islam and the Muslims: They Emerged from Our Schools and Universities
Nor would they be as succinct as this. (Link to a great twitter post about “How the US has screwed up the ME over the last 80 years.”)
(Apologies for multiple posts.)
Thank you for the posts, Yakaru: both links are excellent, and combined give a fair view of things.
Is there not (to phrase it unoriginally) an elephant in the room in the lack there of the following question:
‘Do you believe that an apostate should be killed?’
Earlier Pew surveys, with extrapolation to countries where it would have been dangerous to survey and with simple arithmetic, would indicate that something over 500 million Muslims in the world would answer yes to that. It would be interesting to know the numbers now from Britain.
I am as horrified as anyone to hear about terrible attitudes towards women, towards homosexuality, etc. But surely there is no comparison in the seriousness of the above question to, say, asking whether one approves of Muslim men marrying more than one woman.
Yes, I thought that marriage question was trivial. I couldn’t care less how many wives or husbands someone has, that’s their private business IMO. So long as they’re consenting adults of course.
Where it all stops being someone’s private business is when they start bothering what others do with their private business.
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That was in response to phoffman56, of course
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There’s an interesting criticism of the poll here: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/12/what-do-muslims-think-skewed-poll-wont-tell-us?CMP=fb_gu
Thanks for that link. It’s good to get another view, a reminder to remain skeptical and careful about such polling data.
The author cherry picks the issues where there’s least divergence between Muslim and general attitudes, however.
No mention of death-for-apostasy.
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I don’t expect immigrants to be fully integrated, nor their children.
But if the child generation has increased support for terrorism (one recent UK poll says so, much trumpeted on racist sites), as well as if the 3d generation isn’t integrated, I would worry.
The problem is what it has always been, ISLAM ! did they ask, where those who perpetrated a Suicide attack are ? or their position re Apostasy and the Punishment for it?I think you will find some disturbing figures if they had done so. They are brainwashed as Children in their Madrassas which teach only the Q’uran, they are taught to disavow Evolution and that Women are Property, I agree with Trevor Philips , there is a lot more to be done, for a start we should close the Religious Schools, of all Faiths.
Has anyone seen a study or analysis of the validity of the Pew polls. It is hard for me to see how you could do a valid poll in a society where you could get killed for providing the wrong answer. How could anyone be convinced that the poll is really anonymous?
To be assimilated into British mainstream life they could ask this:
If you had knowledge of a terrorist plot within the UK would you report it to the police.
Pin the interviewee down and make them think about what this means, it perhaps has the added bonus of said, questioning themselves and wedging open a crack.
Of course this discounts fanatics.
On the whole it does show how exposure to western values if I can put it that way, over time, can have a pacifying effect.
Reason to hold steady and as they say in Dad’s Army, Don’t panic Mr Mainwaring.