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Britain’s restive Muslims
Fear of terrorism and sharp cultural differences have created a yawning rift between Britain’s 1.8 million Muslims and the rest of the population. Are British Muslims becoming dangerously alienated?
Most are, working alongside non-Muslims, raising their families, and sending their children to local, state-run schools. But after recent waves of immigration, especially from Pakistan and Afghanistan, a growing number of British Muslims are crowded into slums in fading industrial towns, with few prospects for advancement. The unemployment rate among young Muslim men in Britain is 22 percent, compared to about 10 percent for all young men and 5.5 percent overall. Such miserable conditions have provided fertile ground for Muslim extremism; in one recent survey, 37 percent of young Muslims in Great Britain said they would prefer to live under strict Islamic law.
Is there open hostility between Muslims and non-Muslims?
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Yes. Those tensions were highlighted recently in the northern English town of Clitheroe, when Muslims won the town council's permission to convert a former Methodist church into a mosque. Locals for years had been resisting attempts to establish a mosque there, warning that it would attract 'œoutsiders''”code for Muslims from surrounding towns. 'œBut it is really a deeper anxiety about what is happening in society,' says Alan Billings, a local Anglican vicar. 'œIt is the fear of what will happen to the culture and feel of Britain.'
Are Muslims really changing British culture?
Yes, and many Britons would say for the worse. The Muslim presence in some towns in Britain's fading industrial heartland is so pervasive that locals have taken to adding the suffix 'œstan' to towns' names. The London suburb of Walthamstow is commonly known as Walthamstan; the industrial city of Bradford has been nicknamed Bradistan. Many immigrants have imported much of their culture with them, including their views about the traditional roles of women, who often wear a head scarf (hijab) or a full-face veil (niqab). In fact, Muslim garb has become the main flash point of the cultural and political clash between Muslims and mainstream British society.
What do Britons think of the religious garb?
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Many say it gives them the willies. House of Commons Leader Jack Straw gave voice to that sentiment last year, when he said he would start asking veiled women meeting with him to remove the niqab, because it made him 'œuncomfortable.' Prime Minister Tony Blair called the veils 'œa mark of separation,' and urged Muslims to make a greater effort to assimilate. Some Muslims said such comments give ordinary Britons license to discriminate. Not long after Straw's remarks, Mumtaz Patel, a doctoral student in London, tried to buy a candy bar in a London shop while wearing a niqab. 'œI'm not going to sell it to you unless I can see you,' the shopkeeper reportedly said. Other forms of hostility are common. One in six Londoners recently polled admitted to changing seats on public transportation to avoid sitting next to somebody who appears to be Muslim.
What's behind the anti-Muslim sentiment?
Fear of terrorism clearly plays a major role. Anti-Muslim feelings in the general population rose sharply after the London subway bombings of July 2005, in which four homegrown Islamic suicide bombers blew themselves up, leaving 52 commuters dead and 700 injured. Since then, British Muslims have been linked to a series of other terror plots. Twenty-three British Muslims were arrested last year for plotting to blow up a dozen airliners over the Atlantic. And in January, nine British Muslims were arrested for planning to kidnap and behead a Muslim member of the British army.
Why has England become a terrorist breeding ground?
Many analysts point to the historic connection between Britain and Pakistan, a former British colony that has become a hotbed of radical Islam. About 750,000 of Britain's 1.8 million Muslims are from Pakistan, and every year, about 400,000 Britons travel to and from Pakistan. The Kashmir region of Pakistan, where many British Muslims trace their roots, is a center of Wahhabism, a puritanical strain of Sunni Islam. Another fanatical Sunni sect, known as the Deobandi, also has a large Pakistani following. Eight of the 23 people arrested in the 2006 airline-bombing plot were Britons of Pakistani descent; they all frequented a Deobandi mosque in Walthamstow.
Where are the voices of moderate Islam?
They exist, but often are drowned out by the radicals. The Muslim Council of Britain, which bills itself as the voice of mainstream Islam, publicly condemns terrorism. The council's secretary general, Sir Iqbal Sacranie, is one of Prime Minister Tony Blair's closest advisors. But such establishment figures get little respect from young, disaffected Muslims such as Khalid Kelly, an Irishman who converted to Islam while in prison. Kelly is a follower of Abu Osama, a maverick Muslim preacher based in England who touts his brand of Islam as a way out of poverty, drug abuse, idleness, and crime. Abu Osama's Islam also glorifies violence as the answer to the perceived depravity of the West. 'œThe London bombings were about striking terror into the heart of the Enemy,' Abu Osama declared. Such pronouncements make sense to Kelly. 'œYou cannot possibly say Islam is a religion of peace. Jihad is not an internal struggle,' Kelly says. 'œYou're either a servant of Tony Blair or Islam.'
The feeling is mutual.
The British hostility toward Muslim culture is reciprocated by many Muslims in Britain. When they're told that their veils imply a refusal to share British values, some wonder why anyone would want to share those values in the first place. 'œYour politicians tell us women should not wear the hijab,' says 27-year-old delivery driver Ismail Ali, 'œbut you have naked women on the front of newspapers.' Some harbor dark suspicions that the controversy over veils, which reached full boil when a teacher was barred from wearing hers in class, is simply an excuse to deny employment to Muslim women. But even those who see no hidden agenda in the campaign against veils say discrimination against Muslims has increased since the subway bombings of 2005. 'œNobody trusts us anymore,' says lighting engineer Mohamaad Ibrahim, 31. 'œPeople feel that some Muslim with a jacket full of bombs is going to walk into a business and blow himself up.'
