According to conventional wisdom, Islam is a religion of peace and compassion. But even if it is not – such is the woolliness of received ideas – only a tiny minority of Muslims in this country hold extreme fundamentalist opinions. Actually, like most conventional wisdom, it is not really true. Muslims themselves disagree violently about what Islam truly is and have done for centuries. Meanwhile, a startlingly large proportion of young British Muslims hold what to most of us are outrageous and unacceptable views – views that they consider to be Muslim truths.
Four out of 10 Muslim students in Britain support the introduction of sharia into UK law for Muslims, according to a YouGov poll. Almost a third of them said that killing in the name of religion was justified; 40% said they felt it was unacceptable for Muslim men and women to associate freely; and nearly a quarter do not think that men and women are equal in the eyes of Allah.
A quarter of Muslim students said they had little or no respect for homosexuals. As for whether British Muslim servicemen should be allowed to opt out of hostilities with Muslim countries, 57% said they should and a further 25% said they were not sure.
More than half of the Muslim students were in favour of an Islamic political party to support their views in parliament. A third don’t think or don’t know whether Islam is compatible with the western notion of democracy, and a third said they were in favour of a worldwide Islamic caliphate based on sharia.
Admittedly, these are (with one exception) minority views. More than half of Muslim students either don’t think such things or say they don’t know what to think about them. None the less, these are large minorities indeed of Muslim students holding opinions that are against this country’s laws and its traditions of liberal democracy. And these are students from a sample of some of the best universities and higher education colleges.
If the brightest and best think like this, what of the rest? It is frightening to imagine the views of their less well educated contemporaries. All this seems to undermine yet another piece of conventional wisdom: that education is the solution to Muslim alienation in Britain.
This YouGov poll was commissioned by the Centre for Social Cohesion (CSC) for a broader study called Islam on Campus, to be published tomorrow. The authors make it clear that the majority of Muslim students support secularism and democratic values and are broadly tolerant of others. However, the CSC points out that the incidence of conservative and separatist Muslim beliefs has been growing and is more prevalent in young Muslims than in their parents’ generation. British Muslims used to be much more moderate.
No doubt views such as that will be denounced as Islamophobic bigotry. No doubt some will decry the CSC as neoconservative. It is true that in these sensitive matters it is both important and difficult to know who is who and why they might say what they do. But one can hardly doubt the findings of the YouGov survey, and the CSC report gives every appearance of carefully documented respectability. Everyone, particularly those Muslims of the moderate, tolerant majority, must be alarmed by this.
University campuses provide excellent recruiting grounds for Islamist extremists, particularly at the very well organised ISOCs (Islamic Societies on Campus). That is precisely what happened to several convicted British Islamist terrorists at universities including the LSE, Brunel, Humberside, King’s College London, the University of North London and Leicester. Only a tiny number of Muslim students have actually been drawn into terrorism. Yet how can young Muslims fit into a liberal western democracy if they believe things that are intolerant, illegal and, in plain English, unBritish?
One of the most alarming things about the survey is how many young student Muslims say they are unsure of some central questions. When asked how supportive, if at all, they would be of the introduction of a worldwide caliphate based on sharia, fully 42% said they weren’t sure. That’s quite some uncertainty. One in five wasn’t sure whether Islam is compatible with the western notion of democracy.
Insecure young people can be swayed by extremists. The question is how to stand up to the extremists.
First, I think, we should abandon all discussions of what Islam truly is. No one will ever agree how many infidels can dance on a pin’s head; questions of true doctrine are insoluble, as Anglicans are proving all too comically at this very moment. For example, one in six of the nonSunni Muslim students polled thinks Sunnis are not true believers in Islam, while three in 10 non-Shi’ite respondents think the same about Shi’ites.
Religion is as long as a piece of string; true faith lies in the heart of the believer and is rarely susceptible to argument. Clearly, for lots of Muslims Islam is not a doctrine of gentleness, tolerance, sexual equality, forgiveness, democracy and all the rest. For countless others it clearly is.
What follows inescapably from this is that religious people and their views should not be officially recognised in groups. Religion should not be allowed a public space or public representation. This is hard for those of us who used to love the muddled Anglican compromise; it means the disestablishment of our national church – if it doesn’t self-destruct first.
The challenge of other, fiercer and more divisive convictions has forced the issue; multiculturalism has been subversive. There must be no more religious schools – personally I would leave those that exist alone. There must be no public recognition of religious associations as representatives of anything or anybody: not on campuses, not in student unions, not in government consultations or in parliament.
So-called religious community leaders, or umbrella groups of religious bodies, must of course be free to associate as they like in private, in a free country, but publicly they must be ignored. Publicly they must not teach or promote illegal prejudices. Forced into the private sphere, denied the oxygen of publicity, power and influence, highly politicised religious groups will wither on the vine. Perhaps, in that wonderful phrase of Yeats, they might even wither into truth.