What do British Muslims really think?
Should homosexuality be illegal? Should wives always obey their husbands? And can a man have more than one wife? The most comprehensive survey of British Muslims ever conducted reveals controversial attitudes. Trevor Phillips argues that the time has come for a more muscular approach to integration.
As a doctrine of religious belief, Islam has never held any terrors for me. I was born in London but grew up in a developing country, now called Guyana, where one in 10 people worshipped Allah — roughly twice the proportion in Britain today. To me, the Muslims were just boys with names like Mohammed and Ishmael; in most things that mattered — could they play cricket or do calculus, for example — they seemed no different from the rest of us.
Liberal opinion in Britain has, for more than two decades, maintained that most Muslims are just like everyone else, but with more modest dress sense and more luxuriant facial hair; any differences would fade with time and contact. Britain desperately wants to think of its Muslims as versions of the Great British Bake Off winner Nadiya Hussain, or the cheeky-chappie athlete Mo Farah. But thanks to the most detailed and comprehensive survey of British Muslim opinion yet conducted, we now know that just isn’t how it is. [The Times (£)] Read more
One in four British Muslims back Sharia law
NEARLY one in four British Muslims would support Sharia law replacing UK law in some areas of the country, according to a new poll.
British Muslims disagree with the rest of the country on a range of key issues such as sexuality, freedom of speech and polygamy, according to new research.
A poll carried out by ICM discovered that more than half of Muslims disagree with homosexuality being legal in Britain, while a quarter support Sharia law being introduced into parts of the country instead of British law.
…. Among the most startling findings by the research was the attitude of Muslim men and women to the treatment of wives.
A third of those polled said it was acceptable for a British Muslim to keep more than one wife, while 39 per cent said wives should always obey their husbands.
Nearly half of those questioned said it was unacceptable for a gay or lesbian person to teach their child, with the majority also opposing gay marriage. [Herald Scotland] Read more
C4 survey and documentary reveals What British Muslims Really Think
Channel 4 has commissioned an extensive and rigorous survey to get a better understanding of British Muslims’ attitudes to living in Britain and British institutions, social issues including gender equality, homosexuality and issues relating to freedom of expression and the degree of sympathy for the use of violence and terrorist acts.
…. Europe is on heightened terror alert following the attacks in Paris and Brussels and the security services raising the threat posed by hundreds of home-grown jihadists. Politicians and Muslim leaders claim that the values of these extremists are shared only by a tiny minority in the UK.
Channel 4 commissioned the survey to get the views from British Muslims themselves rather than those who claim to speak on their behalf; and, in particular to try to understand why some young Muslims are being drawn to violence.
Unlike many other surveys of Muslim opinion, which have predominantly been done by phone or online, ICM used face-to-face, in-home research to question a representative sample of 1,000 Muslims across Great Britain. ICM also used a “control sample” to compare what British Muslims thought with the rest of the British population.
At the top-line level, the survey suggests that a mainstream British Muslim majority have similar values and attitudes to the wider British public on issues such as support for British institutions and a feeling of belonging to Britain.
But looking deeper into the results, a chasm develops between those Muslims surveyed and the wider population on attitudes to liberal values on issues such as gender equality, homosexuality and issues relating to freedom of expression. And it also reveals significant differences on attitudes to violence and terrorism. [Channel 4] Read more
Trevor Phillips – what do Muslims really think?
Trevor Phillips’ report (it’s behind a paywall but there’s some commentary here) on a new survey of British Muslim opinion may prompt the response ‘I told you so’ from Islam’s fiercest critics and Islamists alike.
It suggests that Islam is qualitatively different from other religions, and Muslims correspondingly different from other immigrant/minority communities. Phillips cautions that wishful thinking has led people to assume that Muslims are – or soon will be – indistinguishable, a few details aside, from the non-Muslim majority. The reality, he argues, is that this isn’t going to happen.
“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.” [Harry’s Place] Read more
More than half of Muslims want gay sex to be outlawed and nearly a quarter support areas of UK being run under sharia law
British Muslims disagree with the rest of the country on a range of key issues such as sexuality, freedom of speech and polygamy, according to new research.
A poll carried out by ICM discovered that more than half of Muslims disagree with homosexuality being legal in Britain, while a quarter support Sharia law being introduced into parts of the country instead of British law.
The full findings will feature in a Channel 4 documentary presented by Trevor Phillips, former head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, on Wednesday.
Entitled What British Muslims Really Think, the programme will investigate the ‘split’ between Britons who follow Islam and the rest of the population.
I thought Europe’s Muslims would gradually blend into the landscape. I should have known better.
Among the most startling findings by the research was the attitude of Muslim men and women to the treatment of wives.
A third of those polled said it was acceptable for a British Muslim to keep more than one wife, while 39 per cent said wives should always obey their husbands. [Daily Mail] Read more
One in four British Muslims back Sharia law
NEARLY one in four British Muslims would support Sharia law replacing UK law in some areas of the country, according to a new poll.
British Muslims disagree with the rest of the country on a range of key issues such as sexuality, freedom of speech and polygamy, according to new research.
A poll carried out by ICM discovered that more than half of Muslims disagree with homosexuality being legal in Britain, while a quarter support Sharia law being introduced into parts of the country instead of British law.
The full findings will feature in a Channel 4 documentary presented by Trevor Phillips, former head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, on Wednesday.
Entitled What British Muslims Really Think, the programme will investigate the ‘split’ between Britons who follow Islam and the rest of the population.
Among the most startling findings by the research was the attitude of Muslim men and women to the treatment of wives.
A third of those polled said it was acceptable for a British Muslim to keep more than one wife, while 39 per cent said wives should always obey their husbands. [Herald Scotland] Read more
Repressive Islamic beliefs on women, gays and freedom create social ‘chasm’ in Britain
A study carried out by ICM for Channel 4 revealed shocking findings which included:
• Four in 10 Muslims believe a wife should ALWAYS obey her husband;
• More than half UK Muslims believe homosexuality should be illegal
• One in four British Muslims wants Islamic sharia law to replace British law
• Only a third of Muslims would inform police if they knew someone who was getting involved with people who support terrorism in Syria
• One in three Muslims refuse to completely condemn STONING to death in adultery cases
• One in three Muslims refuse to condemn acts of violence against people who mock Mohammed
The revelations form the basis of a Channel 4 documentary, presented by Trevor Phillips, called What British Muslims Really Think. [Daily Express] Read more
This life and death struggle: In a stark analysis, former equalities chief reveals how extremist ideas have been allowed to flourish
…. a significant minority of Britain’s three million Muslims consider us a nation of such low morals that they would rather live more separately from their non-Muslim countrymen, preferably under sharia law. This sobering conclusion comes from the most comprehensive survey of British Muslims ever conducted, commissioned by Channel 4.
Having been asked to examine its results, I believe it holds a grim message for all of us. There is a life-and-death struggle for the soul of British Islam – and this is not a battle that the rest of us can afford to sit out. We need to take sides.
For the most part, Britain’s Muslims share most people’s preoccupations – jobs, homes, a future for their families. Nearly nine out of ten say they feel British. One of the reasons they like Britain is freedom to practise their religion as they see fit.
But below the surface, the pollsters told us that a ‘chasm’ was developing between the attitudes of many British Muslims and their compatriots, driven by their adherence to their faith. [Mail on Sunday] Read more
Muslim ghettos and the “muscular” approach to integration
When, a decade ago, the Bishop of Rochester Michael Nazir-Ali was warning of Muslim ‘no-go areas‘, where sharia police stalk the streets and the real police fear to tread (and where Christians were threatened with arrest for handing out gospel tracts), he was vilified by politicians and rebuked by the Church of England.
You couldn’t easily hurl ‘Islamophobe’ at him, not least because of his ethnicity and cultural heritage. His learning never seemed to count for much, but brown skin and Muslim forebears qualified him to pitch a tent in the national debate on multiculturalism, which, then, was no kind of debate at all, for its precepts were absolute and its prophets infallible.
Scroll forward a decade, and now no less a personage than Trevor Phillips, former head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, is sounding the very trumpet that Michael Nazir-Ali had been blasting till he was blue in the face. Apparently, many British Muslims are creating a nation within a nation.
The solution, he avers, is a “muscular approach to integration“, which will demand, for example, such policies as “schools limiting the presence of any ethnic minority group to no more than 50 per cent.. It will mean strict monitoring of the ethnic composition of housing estates to prevent them becoming ‘ghetto villages’..” And you can’t easily hurl ‘Islamophobe’ at him, either: his ethnicity and EHRC dignity nullify such disgrace. [Archbishop Cranmer] Read more
Why the ICM poll of British Muslims shows we need to defend our values more than ever
…. The task is urgent because ICM found a direct correlation between Muslims who don’t want to integrate and sympathy for extremism and violence. Trevor Phillips advocates a much more muscular approach to “active integration”.
The Prime Minister is on the right track, insisting that Muslim women learn English so they’re not prisoners of their men. School segregation must end with state schools prohibited from admitting more than 50% of one ethnicity.
To Phillips’s list, I would add closing down Islamic schools which teach contempt for women and non-Muslims. Ban all Sharia courts immediately and insist on British law for everyone.
As for Muslims who think that white girls are fair game or who don’t want to fit in, I can recommend a really good airport.
This is serious. Unless we succeed, the live-and-let-live attitude which makes Britain such a great place could end up being its death warrant. [The Telegraph] Read more
Multiculturalism remains a force in our society whether we like it or not
…. A final major complaint about multiculturalism is the change that has been imposed on the white working class by a liberal elite without asking for their consent about changing the nature of their local communities. Immigration has been a boon to the middle class who benefit from cheap builders, cleaners and nannies but it has been harder for the white working class who have had their wages undermined and are at the sharp end of the competition for scarce state resources in housing, healthcare, education and transport.
Migration Watch pointed out that the New Labour government admitted 3.6 million immigrants to the UK but at no stage did it highlight this policy to the electorate or ask consent for it. Critics of the policy were routinely denounced as racist – ‘Oh, some bigoted woman,’ as Gordon Brown memorably described the lifelong Labour supporter Gillian Duffy.
So multiculturalism has been a contentious ideology but it will continue to shape the future of modern British society and of the world in this globalised age – no matter how many documentaries Channel 4 makes about it. [ConservativeHome] Read more
What do British Muslims Really Think? Now we know. And it’s terrifying
I sat down to watch ‘What British Muslims Really think’ with my best multicultural head on.
I cleared my mind of all preconceptions; grubby Rochdale cabbies passing white girls round for sex like a fried chicken bargain bucket, Imams beating kids into devotion, and the truly indoctrinated, blowing up Brussels to get 72 virgins in paradise.
Putting my feet up on the recycling bin, channelling my inner Polly Toynbee, I waited to sit corrected – prepared to accept the most dangerous Muslim in Britain is Bake Off’s Nadiya Hussain armed with a Victoria Sponge.
But, much as it pains me to say it, I have been right all along. British Muslims are not part of some rich tapestry of urban life. It’s a myth, dreamed up by the BBC, and perpetuated by the Islington elite.
It is them and us. And THEY have no wish to be anything like US.
The reason Muslims enjoy our country is because it is tolerant. Not the bits where we are tolerant of each other, you understand. Not the fact we respect your right to be Jewish or utterly ungodly. Or our warm embrace of those who identify as straight, gay, lesbian or as gender-fluid as a snail. [Daily Mail] Read more
Trevor Phillips’s documentary on Muslims was shocking – but not surprising
‘Our findings will shock many people,’ promised Trevor Phillips at the beginning of What British Muslims Really Think (Channel 4, Wednesday).
But the depressing thing is that I doubt they will, actually. I think the general British public have known for some time what Phillips’s documentary professed to find surprising: that large numbers of Muslims don’t want to integrate, that their views aren’t remotely enlightened, and that more than a few of them sympathise with terrorism. It’s only the establishment elite that has ever pretended otherwise.
As former head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, Phillips was very much part of that elite. He commissioned the 1997 Runnymede report that popularised the word ‘Islamophobia’. The fact that so impeccably liberal a figure is now issuing a mea culpa like this speaks volumes about how dire the situation has grown. ‘Everyone who has pinned their hopes on the rise of reforming and liberal British Muslim voices are in for a disappointment,’ said Phillips. [883 comments]
[TOP RATED COMMENT 65 votes] Nothing will change In 10-15 years another TV programme will be made about the same subject. The only difference will be a larger proportion of Muslims supporting terrorism/covering women/banning gay men and women. And every year more will come and more will be born in Britain. No one has any backbone to stop it and the law/government all support it due to white guilt and fear of looking racist. When the English are a minority in England don’t expect the non-English to have any guilt or fear, of treating us the way ISIS treats its nonmuslims in Iraq or Syria
[2ND 44] ANOTHER COMMENT SAID: “Well if the white majority choose not to have babies, they cannot be surprised when they become a minority, the answer to your problem is for white women to have more babies.”
A stunningly ignorant comment.
Particularly in light of the future population problems of the world, the destruction of marriage and the family unit, abortions on request and the fact that most modern western family units cannot afford to have one spouse stay at home all the time. Filling the country with cheap labour will only drive down wages thus requiring both spouses to work.
In a nutshell, liberal ideology has enabled the very things I have just mentioned above.
And now you b tch and whine because western women are ‘not having enough babies’… the planet has a population problem for god sake!
“the answer to your problem is for white women to have more babies.”
And overpopulate us? No Mary the answer is clearly to stop importing 3rd worlders on mass and maintain our population at a level where we can self provide if required. All you want to do is load this country with people, turning it into a socialist overcrowded broken hellhole and then later you’ll be whining about the fact cat rich. You work for them, you support their policies and you don’t even realise because you are so utterly blinded by race guilt liberal BS.
[3RD 35] What I have always found amazing is how the Left and the BBC worked tirelessly to destroy Apartheid in South Africa whilst enthusiastically promoting the same ideology in the UK.
Separate Development is a euphemism for Apartheid. Multiculturalism is a euphemism for Separate Development
It is all about segregation – we are well on our way to being Balkanised with all the problems that is going to bring.
[4TH 28] I live in the heart of the Muslim stronghold of West Yorkshire and have mixed with a lot of Muslim people socially and politically. It’s getting worse for liberals as they come under increasing pressure to conform to third world practises. I’ve worked with young people who have been just like everyone else until Grandma decides they are too western ; then they’re off on Hadj and never come out after work any more. As for a couple of guys we all knew were gay being forced into arranged marriages! There is now a purity race on; who is most religious? Who behaves in the most Muslim way? Etc etc.
I worked with a guy who was high up in the accounts department in my company who went to prayers every Friday, where he was routinely mocked for wearing a suit. He left the company after a couple of years of it. But before he went he cajoled a young Muslim colleague into accompanying him to Friday prayers when he had previously joined in with the Friday pizza run and played Half Life at lunch time instead of praying.
Unless this pressure can be reversed every Muslim will at least pay lip service to the wilder strictures of the ROP. We have pandered for so long they think they are untouchable and the refuseniks have no one to turn to. For decades the contraception advisors at Dewsbury maternity hospital have been banned from advising Muslim women ‘because their GPs don’t like it’. I don’t know about Muslim men having a paternal and infantilising attitude to women, the left leaning establishment are no better. [The Spectator] Read more
Muslim support for theocracy, not terrorism, is the real threat to confront
…. Trevor Phillips offered some partial suggestions about breaking up ethnic segregation in schools, but why would any non-Muslim want to send their child to an Islamic faith school? Diversity cannot exist in schools designed around one religious ethos to the exclusion of all others. We cannot continue with a faith-segregated education system.
Politicians must stop paying lip-service to integration and actually start doing the things necessary to promote it.
We can’t afford to be naive or unduly optimistic about the strength or influence of reforming voices within Islam: The torrent of abuse, death threats and murders faced by ‘heretics’ within British Islam keeps many would-be allies of this project silenced. They need the support of wider society, however it can be offered. And ex-Muslims must finally be listened to by those on the left who have ignored and silenced them.
If there is to be an ‘us’ versus ‘them’, it must not be between Muslims and non-Muslims, but the secularists of all religions and none against those who would impose Islam by violence or political means on others.
Society needs to set a much higher standard than simply ‘feeling British’ and being ‘peaceful’. Almost all British Muslims meet this standard; yet many more live in fear of expressing more liberal views than this. This, not the battle against terrorism, is the real generational struggle. [National Secular Society] Read more
Trevor Phillips: some more responses and reflections
Since I last posted on this topic the full poll results have been published, Trevor Phillips’ documentary has been broadcast and a great deal of ink and airtime have been devoted to dissecting the results.
I had quibbles with the programme – but still more quibbles with many of its detractors. So here are a few reflections, with links to just some of the many comment pieces – good and bad – generated by both poll and programme. [Harry’s Place] Read more
Poll reveals more than a third of British Muslims believe ‘Jews have too much power in UK’
British Muslims are more likely to support antisemitic conspiracy theories than other British citizens, a wide-reaching poll has found.
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.
…. The poll also examined reaction to antisemitic conspiracy theories. It found that 35 per cent of British Muslims “agreed” with the suggestion that Jewish people have too much power in Britain – compared to just nine per cent in the national average.
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. [TheJC.com] Read more
Poll of British Muslims Reveals Startling Views, but Some Question Methodology
A new poll of British Muslims revealed attitudes on homosexuality and terrorism sharply out of step with broader public opinion, but also set off a debate about the reliability of such surveys.
The survey was conducted by the polling company ICM Unlimited and commissioned by the British network Channel 4, which showcased its results in a documentary broadcast on Wednesday. The network said that the findings showed that the mainstream Muslim majority shared many values with non-Muslim Britons but warned that more extreme views lurked beneath the surface.
“Looking deeper into the results, a chasm develops between those Muslims surveyed and the wider population on attitudes to liberal values on issues such as gender equality, homosexuality and issues relating to freedom of expression,” the network said in a statement. “And it also reveals significant differences on attitudes to violence and terrorism.” [The New York Times] Read more
Why British Muslims are opting for segregation
…. We have been arguing for baning sharia courts for some years. It is high time that the government realised that sharia law is inherently discriminatory and incompatible with British law. Christian Concern has supported Baroness Cox’s Arbitration and Mediation Services (Equality) Bill which has now passed through the House of Lords.
This Bill will help to regulate sharia councils and prevent the growing emergence of a parallel legal system in the UK. We urge the government to support this important Bill and make time for it to progress through the House of Commons.
The government should also take action to halt the foreign funding of mosques in the UK and to ensure that Christian values are taught in our schools. The government should not be promoting sharia finance but restricting it as it legitimises the influence of sharia law in our culture. The government needs to discourage the creation of a ‘nation-within-a-nation’ before it is too late and our nation becomes irreversibly divided.
This survey is a wakeup call to the nation. For too long we have been “sleepwalking”, as Trevor Phillips says. This may be “the hardest challenge we have ever faced” but it needs facing now. [Christian Concern] Read more
Islam Surveyed 