Drop everything. Prospect editor David Goodhart has written the best post-7/7 commentary I've seen so far. Definitely a must-read. Kudos to the Guardian for running it. Apologies for the long quotations, but there's a hugely important message here:
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.
As for so-called "root causes" of terrorism. Goodhart singles out one that rarely gets much coverage:
If you are constantly being told by even 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."
The simplistic deprivation = racism argument comes in for a battering too. From my own experience, I'd say that quite a number of activists would accept Goodhart's point. But not many would dare say so in public:
[T]he 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.
All in all, a superb piece. If we can get a debate going along these lines, free of condescension and groupthink, then there's still a good chance of keeping the fanatics at bay.
