Values mean more to Muslims, than Economics
By Kasim Javed
On the 13th February 2015, a Telegraph journalist, James Kirkup, wrote a piece titled “Worried about Muslims in Britain? Here’s the Answer” presenting an argument that Muslim integration can be better approached by taking an economic perspective rather than a “British Values” one.
The data he presented showed that;
- Muslim’s are less likely to have degrees now than they were from the previous census compared to the overall population. James argued this is partly down to gender, since in the population as a whole young women are more likely to go to university than young men, whilst amongst British Muslims the pattern is reversed.
- Other religious groups also outperform British Muslims: 30.1 per cent of Sikhs have degrees, and 44.6 per cent of Hindus whilst 27.2% of Muslims have degrees.
- Whilst Muslims are only slightly under-represented in the higher managerial groups, there are major gaps in the lower managerial, administrative jobs.
- Some 21.3% of British Muslims have never worked (a figure that excludes full-time students), the figure for the UK as a whole is 4.3%
- The 10% of council wards that count as the most deprived parts of the country are now home to 1.2 million Muslims, around 46% of the total. In 2001, this was only 33% of Muslims lived in Britain’s poorest places.
He then connected this data to a conclusion made by BSA surveys that concluded “much of the difference on socio-moral opinions was due to socio-economic disadvantage and high religiosity, both factors which predict social conservatism among all Britons and not just Muslims.” He then summarised by presenting a new way to look at solving the integration problem though the lens of economics i.e focus on the economics and the values will “take care of themselves.[1]”
Having read and thought about his article, I found his proposal to be indicative of the typical capitalist approach towards viewing human problems through the lens of cash. In a way it’s also quite insulting to imply that throwing money at Muslims will equate to the adoption of secular liberal values as though our Islam is only worth a few extra sterling. Moreover, the data he presented was selective and ignores some key statistics that can also be found in the same MCB report.
Firstly, he chose to use the “Never-worked” statistic to insinuate that Muslims are economically deprived. Whilst the figure excluded full-time students, he forgets to mention that over half of the British Muslim population are under 25 which include all types of students and that one in ten babies born are Muslim even though Muslims count for 4.8% of the total population. In other words, the Muslim population is very young hence the disproportionate statistics compared to the overall population. The actual unemployment rate is 7.2% compared to 4.0% which is a much more accurate figure to describe their economic activity/inactivity[2]. This can be explained due to racial discrimination, Islamaphobia and employment inequality.
Secondly, the reversed pattern in male/female degrees compared to the rest of the society is due to Muslim women prioritising children and family than working due to the Islamic viewpoint on gender roles in society (Of Muslim women in the 16-74 age band, 18% are ‘looking after home or family’ compared to 6% in the overall population). However, this does not imply that they are less educated than men, for example 43% of the 329,694 Muslim full-time students are female and there are a number of local authority districts where the population of Muslim women in full-time education exceeds men. The discrepancy in degrees is due to the pursuance of different priorities to Non-Muslim women who prioritise careers over children.
Thirdly, patterns of Muslim migration differ to Hindus and Sikhs. Muslims migrated from villages following the construction of the Mangla Dam in the early 60s that submerged 250 villages and displaced 100,000 people, half of which moved to Britain and were relatively poorer, lacking education from their home country compared to Hindus who migrated from African cities mostly from Kenya and Uganda as certain African regimes encouraged a policy of Africanisation. They were better educated than the earlier immigrants, many of them were professionals or from skilled trades and already had experience of thriving in a minority community.
Moreover, the more affluent, the more British theory doesn’t explain why second generation Muslim professionals such as teachers feel the need to strongly hold on to and teach conservative Islamic values in schools, or why Muslims have invested millions of pounds into Mosques and private Islamic schools self-funded through donations by the affluent section of the community or why millions of Muslim professionals have expressed deep affinity to their brethren in the Muslim world by criticising British foreign policy and why the government’s assimilation strategy has utterly failed leading them to implement draconian policies such as the CTS bill that aims to root out conservative Islamic values from the mainstream Muslim community of Britain.
To me, it makes complete sense why the media and politicians focus on values rather than economics, for ultimately the Muslims can engage in economic activity and can be economically prosperous without compromising on their Islamic values.
[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/11409181/Worried-about-Muslims-in-Britain-Heres-the-answer.html
[2] http://www.mcb.org.uk/muslimstatistics/