Does Islam pose a challenge to British democracy? Recent events-from Muslim opposition to the disputed war in Iraq to the revelation about two British Muslim suicide bombers in Israel-have wrongly suggested that it might.
Let us start with some basic facts. According to the census of 2001, Britain has around 1.6m Muslims in a population of just under 58.8m-just under 3 per cent of its population. Around three quarters of British Muslims come from the Indian subcontinent, mainly from rural areas of Pakistan and Bangladesh. This is important because some of their difficulties in settlement arise not from their religion but their unfamiliarity with the western way of life. They began coming in the early 1960s and by the early 1990s the migration was largely complete. The Muslim population is young. Under 4 per cent are over 65, and over 50 per cent are under 25, compared to 16 and 31 per cent in the population at large.
There have been four Muslim riots so far, compared to about eight race-related riots by Afro-Caribbeans. One of them concerned Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses; others police insensitivity and racist marches. Apart from the first, all riots were local and relatively minor.
What other challenges have Muslims presented to British democracy? For convenience, I shall divide them into three: practices, values, and the nature and demands of citizenship.
Practices. Halal meat in schools for Muslim children (granted); Muslim method of slaughtering animals (allowed, although an animal welfare advisory body recently called for it to be banned); Muslim dress at work (granted after some resistance); time off for prayer from work (allowed subject to certain constraints); female circumcision, mainly involving a small group of north African Muslims (banned with little Muslim resistance); polygyny (banned since the 1980s with some but not much continuing Muslim unease); arranged marriages (allowed provided that they are not entered into under duress); publicly funded religious schools (Christian and Jewish schools have long been publicly funded; funding was extended to Muslim schools in 1998. There are five such schools. Another 75 Muslim schools are independent and fee-paying); withdrawal of children from schools for long visits to homeland (strongly discouraged and most Muslims are happy to comply); girls wearing hijab in schools (allowed).
Values. Equality before the law, freedom of expression, tolerance, peaceful resolution of differences, and respect for majority decision are some of the basic democratic values. By and large Muslims have shown respect for them.
Racial equality is an important Muslim value. Equality of the sexes poses greater difficulty. Muslim women are not discouraged from voting in elections, though the percentage is lower than for men. Muslim girls outperform boys at school. A fairly large percentage of them go to university, although fewer than Muslim boys. Some careers are discouraged, but that is changing. Girls enjoy less freedom, and are rebelling against this, often citing the Koran against patriarchal practice. Young girls demanding greater freedom are sometimes subjected to domestic and communal violence.
Muslims value freedom of speech, but do not privilege it as much as liberals do, and would like it restricted when religion is involved. The Rushdie affair in 1989 was an example of this. Muslims wanted the paperback edition of the book banned. When the government proved uncompromising, Muslims acquiesced, but continued to complain. (It would be interesting to see what their reaction would be if a similar book were to appear today.)
Muslims are sometimes subjected to discrimination on religious grounds. They want such discrimination banned along the same lines as race and sex discrimination. Many British liberals are sympathetic; others are not. The proposal has now been conceded in response to an EU directive.
Citizenship. After some theological debate about Muslim obligations to a non-Muslim state, Muslims have widely accepted that they owe loyalty to the British state. However, there is some ambiguity about what to do when the claims of the state clash with those of the umma (the global Muslim community). Muslims strongly opposed both Gulf wars-and in the case of the latest one demonstrated peacefully in their thousands alongside non-Muslims. A tiny number of young Muslims fought with the Taleban in Afghanistan. They were condemned by most of their fellow Muslims, who insisted that loyalty to Britain came first. The imam of Finsbury Park mosque, who preached hatred of the west and support for Muslim terrorists, was long tolerated. But when the mosque was suspected of becoming a terrorist cell, it was raided and the weapons were confiscated by the police with broad Muslim support.
Muslims willingly participate in public affairs. The percentage of those voting in local and national elections is not much different from that in the society at large. There are over 150 local councillors and eight mayors, slightly smaller than other minorities but not alarmingly so. There are four Muslims in the House of Lords and two in the Commons, which is larger than for some other minorities. A few years ago, a Muslim parliament was set up to discuss issues of common concern to Muslims. It provoked some criticisms from the wider society but it soon became defunct, thanks to a mix of indifference and factionalism.
There is evidence, based on opinion surveys, that most Muslims are proud to belong to Britain and are committed to its wellbeing. They appreciate the liberties and rights it gives them as well as its commitment to equality and justice. Despite some hostility to and suspicion of Muslims, most Britons accept them as rightful fellow citizens.
In formal and informal ways, Islam is being increasingly interpreted in a manner that brings it closer to the central values and demands of British democracy. Indeed, a distinctively British brand of Islam is beginning to emerge. It clashes with some aspects of the Islam that the immigrants brought with them. Muslim media and mosques wrestle with these conflicts.
On the negative side there are signs that a sizeable body of Muslim youth is increasingly turning into a kind of underclass. They do badly in schools and face poor job prospects. They are alienated from both their parental and the wider British culture and nurture a strong sense of victimhood.
Radical Islam of the millenarian Salafist kind, propagated by groups like Hitz ut-Tahrir and Al-Muhajiroun, is also gaining in popularity among Muslim students. It is nonviolent, but it is also escapist and hopelessly utopian and makes it harder for people to come to terms with modernity. Quietist so far, it could turn more activist.
I have argued that most Muslims have adjusted well to British democracy. Some people find this puzzling since the vast majority of Muslim societies are undemocratic. They argue that there must be a deeper incompatibility between Islam and democracy and that the Muslim presence in the west must therefore pose a threat to its democratic institutions. But the fact that most Muslim societies are undemocratic does not imply that the blame lies with their religion. It might be one factor, but there are also others such as feudal societies, corrupt rulers, colonialism, a long history of external interference, the failure to find an adequate place for religion in public life, and so on. Religion does not operate in a vacuum and its influence is mediated by many other factors. Hindus, who were long told that their hierarchical religion ruled out democracy, have sustained it for over half a century in India. And the Christians who now claim to be the friends of democracy believed, until quite recently, that it was incompatible with their central religious beliefs. There are signs of democratic interpretations of Islam beginning to appear in Muslim countries.
The fact that Muslim societies have not themselves developed stable democracies does not mean that Muslims cannot live under them; indeed, they have good reasons to adjust to them. Political survival is one; opportunities offered by a democracy to pursue their legitimate interests and even to protest is another. Many developing countries have failed to create the modern capitalist economy, but that has not prevented their diasporic members from flourishing in the capitalist west.
Although Muslims do not have much of a problem living in a democracy, they do have some difficulty coping with one that is multicultural. Far more than the followers of any other religion, Muslims are convinced of the absolute superiority of Islam. The Koran is believed to be the literal, direct and unmediated word of God. It claims to represent the final and definitive revelation of God, superseding all other religions, including Judaism and Christianity-which are at best early versions of Islam. Hinduism is dismissed as idolatrous, and not really a religion at all. The military success of early Islam gave it a triumphalist side, confirming its absolute superiority in the eyes of its adherents.
This spirit of Islamic superiority is reflected in many of its beliefs and practices. The constant invocation of its past glory and the desperate desire to revive it is one example. Muslims are supposed to have a positive duty to convert the followers of other religions, but they are not themselves free to give up their religion in favour of another. Most Muslims are anxious that others should learn about their religion and appreciate its insights, but they have themselves little interest in other religions. Muslim men may marry non-Muslim women, but they do not allow others to marry "their" women, and expect those marrying within Islam to convert to it. Some of this can be attributed to the current Muslim feeling of siege or fear of loss of identity. But even in the self-confident Ottoman empire where Jews and Christians enjoyed considerable tolerance, they were treated as second-class citizens. And while they were free to convert to Islam, they were strictly forbidden to convert Muslims or to covet their women.
Thanks to this history, the Muslim attitude to multicultural society is often one-sided. They welcome it for the freedom it gives them to retain their religious identity and familiarise others with their beliefs, practices and history. However some Muslims also resent it because it puts them on the same level with other religions and cultures, and exposes their children to other religions and secular cultures.
British Islam is no doubt becoming more open to a genuine inter-religious and intercultural dialogue. But it still has a long way to go before it can enthusiastically participate in the creative tensions and controversies of a multicultural society in a spirit of humility and open-mindedness. Over time western Muslims should come to feel fully at home in multicultural societies. As this happens, it will most certainly have a profound impact on the rest of the Muslim world, and may even help to trigger a movement for multicultural democracies there.
