New Study on Attitudes of British Muslims

A new study just released from the British think tank,Policy Exchange comes up with a number of conclusions regarding the attitudes of Muslims living in the UK. The Study, entitled, "Living Apart Together: British Muslims and the Paradox of multicultural" finds that:

-62% of 16-24 year olds feel they have as much in common with non-Muslims as Muslims, compared to 71%of 55+ year olds.

-60% of Muslims would prefer to send their children to a mixed state school, compared to 35% who would prefer to send their child to an Islamic school. There is a clear age difference. 37% of 16-24 year olds preferred to send their children to Islamic state schools, compared to 25% of 45-54 year olds and 19% of 55+ year olds.

-59% of Muslims would prefer to live under British law, compared to 28% who would prefer to live under sharia law. 37% of 16-24 year olds prefer sharia compared to 17% of 55+ year olds.

-31% of 16-24 year olds believe if a Muslim converts to another religion they should be punished by death, compared to 19% of 55+ year olds.

-7% admire organizationss like Al-Qaeda that are prepared to fight the West. 13% of 16-24 year olds agreed with this statement compared to 3% of 55+ year olds.

-74% of 16-24 year olds would prefer Muslim women to choose to wear the veil or hijab compared to only 28% of 55+ year olds.

There is clearly a more pronounced religiosity and sense of alienation and radicalization among the youth. This may be due to the increase in Arab satellite stations and the changing identity of many Pakistani youths from the South-Asian identities of their parents to a more pan-Islamic and even philo-Arab identity of their children. Despite the increasing awareness of pan-Islamic political issues such as Kashmir, Palestine, and Iraq, the study found that many Muslims lacked certain basic political knowledge of these issues. For example, while 58% believe that many of the problems in the world today are a result of arrogant western attitudes, only 18% of Muslims could name the President of the Palestinian National Authority and only 14% could name the Prime Minister of Israel."

Also, 84% of Muslims believe they have been treated fairly in British society. The sense of alienation and radicalism may have much more to do with the increased access to pan-Islamic political groups and issues and less to do with discrimination. This would help explain why the committee appointed by Blair to reduce extremism after the London bombings came up with recommendations such as replacing Holocaust remembrance day with a genocide remembrance day that would recognize the killing of Muslims in Kashmir, Chechnya, and Palestine, and a reversal of the decision to ban the pan-Islamic caliphate party, Hizb ut-Tahrir.