It's paranoia, not Islamophobia

It's paranoia, not Islamophobia: Britain has done much to help integrate
Muslims. Now they must rise above their grievance culture

David Goodhart, Friday July 15, 2005, The Guardian, London

Britain can take pride in how it has been trying to make a reality of
political and legal equality for its 1.6 million Muslim citizens over
recent years. Some Muslims still face forms of discrimination not faced
by most other Britons, but many doors have swung open, especially since
1997.

Under Labour the first Muslims were elected to the House of Commons and
appointed to the Lords. Muslim organisations lobbied for and won state
funds for Muslim schools, a question in the census on religious faith,
and criminalisation of religious hate crimes. The huge rise in public
spending and focus on improving delivery in the poorest areas will have
particularly benefited Muslims alongside other disadvantaged groups. And
since 9/11 the government has sought out bright young Muslims for senior
civil-service jobs and introduced innovations such as the hajj
information unit for those making the pilgrimage to Mecca.

Privately, Muslim leaders will acknowledge this progress. But the
overwhelming theme of public comment, even after the recent bombings, is
one of Muslim grievance. Britain's Muslims are among the richest and
freest in the world and most of them are groping successfully towards a
hybrid British Muslim identity, but when did you last hear a Muslim
leader say so? Iqbal Sacranie is a capable leader who has helped to turn
the Muslim Council of Britain into an effective lobbying body, but his
organisation's default position remains grievance. Here he is in the
introduction to a recent booklet for British Muslims: "The unleashing of
a virulent strain of Islamophobia, inflammatory media reporting and the
misconceived wars against Afghanistan and Iraq have all contributed to
the undoubted increase in prejudice we face."

There will, regrettably, be some backlash after the London bombs. But to
glorify this with the term Islamophobia is silly. The respected science
writer Kenan Malik has elsewhere (see Prospect, February 2005) examined
the claims made in the name of Islamophobia (over stop and search, racist
attacks and so on) and found them wanting. As for inflammatory media
reporting - after 9/11 and even more so after 7/7 - all politicians and
mainstream media voices have stressed the unrepresentativeness of the
terrorists, and increasingly it is Muslim voices making this point, such
as the hijab-wearing Sun columnist Anila Baig.

An undifferentiated rhetoric of grievance contributes to alienation, lack
of integration and even indirectly to extremism. If you are constantly
being told by even moderate Muslim leaders that Britain is a cesspit of
Islamophobia and is running a colonial anti-Muslim foreign policy, you
might well conclude, like one young Muslim quoted after the bombs: "I
would like to give blood but they probably won't want mine."

According to an ICM poll in the Guardian last year, 13% of British Muslims
thought the 9/11 attacks were justified, and according to other polls as
many as 25% do not identify with Britain in any way. It is part of the
job of moderate Muslim leaders to help to reduce those numbers as much as
possible. To do that requires a change in rhetoric in at least three
areas.

First, the relatively poor socioeconomic position of most British Muslims
has little to do with Islamophobia or racism and a great deal to do with
the fact that nearly two-thirds of British Muslims come from Pakistan and
Bangladesh, often from these countries' poor, rural areas. (Indian and
Arab Muslims do better.) The starting point in terms of education, skills
and traditional cultural attitudes is worse for most Muslims than it is
for, say, the Hindu or Chinese minorities, both of which outperform white
Britons. To expect Muslims to rise to the average level in terms of
education and jobs within a generation or two is not realistic, although
progress is being made.

Second, the economic and political failure of many Muslim states - and
subsequent western interventions - poses a challenge to all Muslims
living in the west. But the crude "war against Islam" rhetoric of many
British Muslims is just a feelgood rallying cry. How often do Muslim
leaders point out that Tony Blair favoured ground-troop intervention on
behalf of European Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo? And as the Muslim peer
Kishwer Falkner points out: "When Muslims are pressed to say what should
have been done with a Taliban-run, al-Qaida-embracing Afghanistan, one is
met with silence." Finally, how often is it pointed out that many of
Britain's Shia Muslims welcomed the overthrow of Saddam, which has
replaced secular dictatorship with Islamic democracy.

Third, the terrorist threat that Britain faces comes overwhelmingly from
British or foreign Muslims; it does not come from Welsh hill farmers or
US investment bankers. So it follows that most terror-related
investigations will focus on Muslim communities. This isn't picking on
Muslims; it is simply a fact of life.

A more open acknowledgment of these three points could help to move Muslim
debate beyond the paranoia that often seems to characterise it and send an
important signal to the rest of Britain that Muslims have risen above
their grievance culture.

David Goodhart is the editor of Prospect magazine

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