Diverse Britain’s moral agenda

No great surprises in today's Sunday Times What do British Muslims really think? (£) poll, though Trevor Phillips is keen to pretend otherwise:

I thought this latest exercise would be intriguing. In fact, it has turned out to be astonishing. The data collected by the respected research firm ICM shows what the polling experts call “a chasm” opening between Muslims and non-Muslims on such fundamentals as marriage, relations between men and women, schooling, freedom of expression and even the validity of violence in defence of religion. And the chasm isn’t going to disappear any time soon; indeed, the gaps between Muslim and non-Muslim youngsters are nearly as large as those between their elders....

Its findings are striking. And they provide the sternest test yet for diverse Britain’s moral agenda: do we still believe in diversity — even when it collides head-on with our national commitment to equality, between men and women, gay and straight, believers and non-believers? For many years we’ve dodged the tough questions, so this research makes for troubling reading. What it reveals is the unacknowledged creation of a nation within the nation, with its own geography, its own values and its own very separate future.

Some of the findings:

It is acceptable for a British Muslim to keep more than one wife — 31% agree (strongly agree 14%, tend to agree 16%)

Would you support or oppose there being areas of Britain in which Sharia law is introduced instead of British law? — 23% support (strongly support 7%, tend to support 17%)

Homosexuality should be legal in Britain — 18% agree (strongly agree 8%, tend to agree 10%) and 52% disagree (strongly disagree 38%, tend to disagree 14%)

Tell me whether you sympathise with or condemn people who take part in stoning those who commit adultery — 79% condemn (completely condemn 66%, condemn to some extent 13%) and 5% sympathise (completely sympathise 2%, tend to sympathise 3%).

I don't think anyone who's been paying attention can see anything to be shocked about there.

Phillips thinks we need to get tough - or, at least, tougher:

While many of us are comfortable condemning less numerous and less powerful minorities, we are reluctant to speak clearly when it comes to Muslims. I know that the muscular integration I want to see will be difficult to implement.

It will mean halting the growth of sharia courts and placing them under regulation, even perhaps insisting that they sit in public. It will mean ensuring that, whatever the composition of a school, its governance never falls into the hands of a single-minority group, as in the “Trojan horse” episode in Birmingham.

It will also mean ensuring mosques that receive a steady flow of funds from foreign governments such as Saudi Arabia, however disguised, are forced to reduce their dependency on Wahhabi patronage. And it will mean an end to the silence-for-votes understanding between local politicians and Muslim leaders — the sort of Pontius Pilate deal that had such catastrophic outcomes in Rotherham and Rochdale.

If we really want to create a society in which Muslims and non-Muslims share the burdens and benefits of our democracy, we have a lot of work to do. And that work has to begin by listening to, and hearing, what British Muslims really think, working out how to support them where possible — and deciding how to confront their thinking where it collides with our fundamental values.

Fair enough. Though we might wonder why it's us who have to do the work, as opposed to them.

It should be said, I suppose, that the main problem we're confronted with here is precisely that "us...as opposed to them" thinking - the way that British Muslims are so readily picked out as a group to be commented on and worried over. It clearly just reinforces the degree of separation. We'll know that we're getting somewhere when we don't need to talk any more about "British Muslims", or the "Muslim community", but just individuals who happen to be of the Muslim faith. So in a way this kind of effort just exacerbates the problem,  understandable though it may be.

What I'd like to see is more robust criticism of Islam itself. Given the role Islam now plays globally in ISIS, Boko Haram, al-Qaeda; its insistence that the Koran is the immutable word of Allah; its general refusal to accommodate to the modern liberal scientific world; its misogyny; its violence, this shouldn't prove to be that difficult. What stands in the way - apart from lack of courage - is that this comes at a particular post-colonial moment in history when we in the West seem to have lost confidence in our own liberal secular tradition.

There is also, perhaps more importantly, a general confusion about a belief and the people who hold that belief, which is perfectly exemplified in the term "Islamophobia".

It's a key part of our secular culture that we distinguish between the person and their opinions and beliefs. I think we inherit this to some extent from our Christian tradition - freedom of conscience, "love the sinner, hate the sin", and all that - but however it was arrived at, it's a key enlightenment concept that underpins our sense of justice and our sense of democracy. So we should be quite comfortable criticising Islam while maintaining a proper respect for individual Muslims. It's what we did with Christianity, after all - and continue to do with all manner of ideologies and creeds. 

We aren't comfortable, though: not at all. Partly it's a kind of politeness: they're our guests, so we shouldn't be rude about their beliefs. Partly, as I say, it's post-colonial guilt. But mostly it's because we're confused. 

In Islamic thought, you're born a Muslim and you die a Muslim. The notion that you might change your mind is so alien that the punishment for apostasy - in theory, if not necessarily in practice - is death. The charge of "Islamophobia" deliberately obscures that separation between a person and their beliefs. It accepts the Islamic vision of an immutable union of person and religion. And we've allowed ourselves to be confused by this, because the overwhelming majority of Muslims in the UK are, ethnically, from Pakistan or Bangladesh.

It's not their ethnicity which is the problem, though; it's their religion. They might say that they can't distinguish between the two: that their religion is their culture is their ethnicity. We should refuse to accept the debate on those terms. If we wish to criticise, say, the misogyny which led to the child-grooming in Rotherham and Rochdale and elsewhere, we can and should be able to do so without fear of being labelled racist or "Islamophobic". 

Unfortunately it's the Left, where a robust tradition of criticising religion and misogyny and all the rest once flourished, which has been worse affected by this confusion. The compulsion to ensure your anti-racist credentials are beyond dispute and permanently on display means that people with a darker skin colour aren't held to the same moral standards, and can only be victims. When the Left wakes up - when feminists, for instance, confront women wearing face-covering niqabs on the street and demand to know why they're so complicit in their own subjugation - then we'll be getting somewhere. But seeing as some feminists can't even bring themselves to condemn FGM, while others simper about how empowered they feel in a burqa, I guess we're in for a long long wait.

Comments

[RY]

"When the Left wakes up..."

When is that likely to happen?
I can't see it happening. Perhaps it won't happen.
And, apart from anything else, how could it happen when the electoral future of the Labour party will rely more and more on the Muslim vote.

I think people like Trevor Phillips are too late. Trying to implement the changes he is talking about is probably impossible now. It would create hostility - understandably - and the Left would not back those changes.

[LibertyPhile]

"What I'd like to see is more robust criticism of Islam itself."

Exactly!

I have read the Quran, and find it difficult to understand how any modern, intelligent person can be a Muslim.

It seemed to me about a fifth of the Quran, if not more, is devoted to the threat that anyone who doesn't believe in God, that Muhammad was his messenger, resurrection and the day of judgement, will burn in hell for eternity. And, if they ask for water they will be given molten lead to drink.

You can be as saintly as Mother Teresa but it won't do you any good. What kind of God is that!

And, we have all the questions concerning the true origins of Islam. E.g. Holland, Hoyland, Donner, Spencer, Luxenberg, Luling, Spencer, Puin, Crone, Wansbrough, Nevo, Rippin, Warraq, etc., etc., etc. Some of this material should be compulsory school reading!