Britain: The Radical Stronghold of European Muslims

▪ 2007

by Tom Gallagher Though Great Britain's 1.6 million Muslims make up a smaller part of the national population than their counterparts in France, Germany, and the Benelux countries, they have captured and remained in the international spotlight owing to the July 7, 2005, suicide bombings in London. The perpetrators of the attacks were three British-born Muslims and a Jamaican-born Muslim living in Aylesbury. This news came as a total surprise to the security services, which anticipated such violence from Middle Eastern elements opposed to the West's military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as its perceived sympathy for Israel but not from radicalized locals. The 2006 Pew global attitudes survey found, however, that British Muslims have more negative views of the West than Islamic minorities elsewhere in Europe. A significant majority viewed Western populations as selfish, arrogant, and immoral, and attitudes among British Muslims were more similar to public opinion in Islamic countries than elsewhere in Europe.

      Britain's Muslims have a number of distinctive features that place them apart from their West European counterparts. Though French Muslims come predominately from North Africa and German Muslims originate in southeastern Europe and Turkey, most British arrivals come from tight-knit communities in northern Pakistan, with smaller percentages originating from Bangladesh and India. They maintain strong links with their former homelands, a factor that can have a radicalizing effect. In Pakistan, where radical brands of Islam are in the ascendant position, strong feelings exist about the dispute with India over the partitioned territory of Kashmir, from which a large number of British Muslims come. After decades of conflict in Afghanistan, hundreds of young British Muslims joined al-Qaeda training camps before the fall of the Taliban regime there in 2001.

      In addition, South Asian political quarrels over Bangladesh's separation from Pakistan in 1971 and religious tensions in India have been displaced by simmering resentment about the West and its role not just in Afghanistan but also in flashpoints in the Middle East. This development is a relatively recent one, which perhaps has stronger domestic than international origins.

      Cohesive Muslim communities emerged in Britain in the 1950s owing to labour shortages in many of its industrial centres. Integration was less easy for them than for previous waves of immigrants, who had been required to conform to a majoritarian culture based on a Christian heritage and the distinctive evolution of the island state over a long historical period. The onset of mass immigration mainly from Third World countries, however, coincided with the decline of a strong sense of British national identity. Some detected a loss of cultural confidence as national institutions decayed and elites failed to contain decades of conflict in Northern Ireland or come to terms with the rising power of the European Union. State efforts to combat racism extended to an acceptance of immigrants' rights to preserve a distinctive identity, usually based around the practice of their religion. The rise of the fashionable doctrine of multiculturalism contributed to a more fragmented society in which separate communities developed—often in isolation from each other. Familiarity with the national language was not yet a requirement for citizenship, and Muslims huddled in closed communities marked by high levels of unemployment and educational underachievement.

      The difficulty with coming to terms with living in one of the most secular societies in the Western world was demonstrated in 1988 when angry British Muslims protested against the publication of Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses and the way that the Prophet Muhammad had been depicted by Rushdie, who is of Indian Muslim descent. This was the forerunner of the much larger controversy that erupted in February 2006 over the depiction of the Prophet in cartoons that appeared in a Danish cultural magazine. Many Muslims preferred restrictions on freedom of speech to permissiveness toward blasphemous treatment of their faith. To conciliate them, a law meant to outlaw incitement to religious hatred was drawn up by the government of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, but it narrowly failed to obtain a parliamentary majority in 2006.

      Some 70% of British Muslims are under 40 years of age, and although most of them have come to terms with the main aspects of British society, a significant minority of them are repelled by its hedonism and what appears to them to be a lack of any spiritual dimension. Their idealism and piety are frequently blocked by the parochial nature of British Islam. Imams may speak little or no English. Mosque committees are often dominated by factions pursuing sectarian rivalries that have South Asian origins. In the wider community, clans known as biraderi try to preserve a rural tribal outlook and prevent talented younger people from obtaining positions of responsibility. Not surprisingly, radical voices that insist that loyalty to a global Islamic faith takes precedence over allegiance to the British state enjoy growing appeal. They depict the Anglo-American confrontation with Iraq over its invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and the persecution of Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina as a Western assault on the Islamic world.

      In the spring and summer of 2001, young Muslims were prominently involved in some of the worst riots seen in Britain in many years. The uprisings, which flared up in a string of cities and towns in the north of England, were triggered by local rather than international factors, including the police mishandling of a march by far-right radicals and the rise of an aggressive street culture that resulted in hostility toward white people and forces of authority, notably the police. Government inquiries emphasized the economic marginality of Muslim communities, while other South Asian groups, such as Hindus and Sikhs, have enjoyed striking upward mobility. Though these latter groups also possess religious militants, the attention remained focused on Muslims following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States.

      The Blair government's handling of Muslim issues came under careful scrutiny after the 2005 London bombings. In particular, there was deep concern about the policy of granting refuge to radical Islamic clergymen and agitators from the Middle East, many of whom in the 1980s had acquired a following among young people attracted by their revolutionary message; some of the youths went to Afghanistan and Kashmir to take up arms. Abu Hamza, the best known of the clerics extolling a violent jihad, was sentenced to seven years in prison in 2006 for inciting murder and racial hatred, but he had reportedly been told by a police officer some years earlier that “you have freedom of speech; we don't have to worry as long as we don't see blood on the streets.” Perceived British leniency toward radical Islamists horrified French security officials, who dubbed Britain's capital “Londonistan.”

      There was also sharp criticism of the Foreign Office's courtship of reactionary figures among British-based Muslims linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, which, though radical in its objectives, usually operates through political means. These reactionaries were given funding, political honours, and official platforms in the hope that they could prevent further acts of terrorism. In return, they demanded a range of privileges, including a right of oversight of foreign policy issues that were sensitive to British Muslims. Many were close to the dogmatic Wahhabi strand of Islam dominant in Saudi Arabia. The Wahhabi strand invested huge resources in order to influence the development of new Islamic communities in Western Europe. Some feared that the South Asian forms of Islam prevalent in Britain might succumb to a form of Arabization. Moderates representing the contemplative Sufi tradition, who claim the adherence of a majority of British Muslims, complained in 2006 about being overlooked by British officials who believed that it was only through cooperation with radicals that further violence could be prevented. A reassessment of the benefits of multiculturalism also got under way, with Rushdie arguing that “an overdiverse society may become an unsustainable one.” Amartya Sen, the Nobel economics laureate, argued that a strong emphasis on group rights for ethnoreligious communities often resulted in power's passing to elements that discouraged internal pluralism and enforced isolation from the rest of society. He concluded that there had to be more emphasis on Britishness than tolerance of wide differences.

      Islamic radicals have been able to build on a sense of victimhood that sprang from a state-promoted rights-based culture in which personal entitlements are emphasized but the nature of citizenship and the duties associated with it are often left unclear. Fearing fresh violence, the government is trying to reach out beyond clerical figures who have hitherto been the main beneficiaries of its patronage. Progress depends on the emergence of articulate leaders among young Muslims who care about bridging the wide generational and gender gaps in Muslim communities, as well as promoting economic and educational achievement in a minority where both have been conspicuously lacking. A struggle is afoot to ensure that an emerging British Islamic identity is not shaped around the separatist agenda of radicals but has characteristics that preserve religious integrity while allowing successful engagement with a secular society. Such a struggle is noticeable elsewhere in Western Europe, but more is at stake in Britain, given the strength of radical feeling and the hitherto uncertain response of a government with controversial international commitments that extend to different parts of the Muslim world.

Tom Gallagher is Professor of Ethnic Peace and Conflict at the University of Bradford, Eng.

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