Integrating Muslims

What social policies might reduce Muslims' religious extremism? Exactly the opposite ones to what you might think, according to this new paper.
The authors find that Muslims' attitudes to religion and ethnic identity differs systematically from that of other ethnic minorites in the UK.
Among Muslims, people with high incomes, in managerial occupations and who live in areas of low unemployment are more likely to have a strong sense of religious identity and are more likely to be hostile to family members marrying white people.
Economic success, it seems, breeds more intense religious feelings. Kafeel Ahmed and Shehzad Tanweer, both rich and successful and terrorists, conformed to type.
These results are based upon  a survey of ethnic minorities taken in 1993-94, which predates the salience of Islamism.
This implies that there's a nasty trade-off. Policies that reduce economic inequalities between Muslims and white non-Muslims might not help reduce  religious extremism.
There's also a more general point. The idea that economic success leads people to converge towards liberal humanist values might be wrong.

Comments

[Peter Richmond]

I would be somewhat skeptical about the conclusions in this paper that uses only a relatively small sample of UK data over a short time period. An analysis using much more data not only from the UK but also other European together with the United States and Canada would be needed to convince me.

[Chris Williams]

Hmm . . . I remain to be convinced about this, until someone does the survey now. Given the relatively short history of mass 'Muslim' (which Muslims?) migration and conversion in the UK, 93-94 is a long time ago.

OTOH, things might be worse than they were.

[Bob B]

Granted very proper caveats about the small sample but among the many challenging factors in this context, I was increasingly astonished to read down the names of the listed defendants in this BBC report of an ongoing trial in Birmingham concerning a series of offences all connected with staging dog fighting with Pit-bull Terriers:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/west_midlands/6976556.stm

As the trial is still continuing extended comments are inappropriate but I did notice that there seemed to be nothing remotely multicultural or multi-ethnic about the listed defendants.

Chris - Please delete this message if you think it could constitute contempt of court proceedings.

[Marcin Tustin]

It doesn't follow that people who want to be really muslim, and want their families want to be really muslim, do not want a liberal society (in the strict sense) which allows them to have business dealings, and peaceful relations in public areas, in a way which provides secure property rights, and allows them to comply with the imperatives of their own commercial morality in dealing with outsiders.

[Mark Wadsworth]

Hey, I've got a better theory:

Islam is a totally evil religion that by hook* or by crook wants to exert power for the sake of it, be it 'honour killings', 9/11 attacks, 7/7 attacks, female genital mutilation, making their sons grow twatty beards and wear bizarre pyjamas to school, and so on.

They'll use racial discrimination as an excuse, they'll use economic advancement as a method, I hate them all. Fuck, if they don't like it here, they can fuck off back to Syria or somewhere.

*Yeah, Captain Hook.

[Bob B]

"Islam is a totally evil religion that by hook or by crook wants to exert power for the sake of it, be it 'honour killings', 9/11 attacks, 7/7 attacks, female genital mutilation, making their sons grow twatty beards and wear bizarre pyjamas to school, and so on."

Try European history from c. 1500 onwards:

"It was on this date, August 24, 1572, that the bloodiest massacre of Christians by Christians began in France — the Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre . . "
http://www.ronaldbrucemeyer.com/rants/0824almanac.htm

The final toll of victims isn't known with any reliability as the massacre entended from Paris into provincial France and probably went on in periodic bursts for weeks, if not several months. Some estimates put the final total of slaughtered victims at somewhere near a 100,000.

Our own Queen Mary Tudor, who mercifuly reigned only five years (1553-58) and was popularly known as Bloody Mary in her lifetime, attempted to restore Catholicism to her realm. As a consequence, at least 280 protestant heretics were burned at the stake in public executions, presumably intended to disseminate the message. In 1588, that was followed by the attempted invasion of England by an armada from Spain equipped with a Papal Commission to restore the Catholic religion to the realm and in 1605, Guy Fawkes and fellow conspirators attempted to blow up Parliament at the state opening. So much explosives had been stashed under the House of Lords that had it gone off, it would have taken out the lower part of Whitehall as well as Westminister Abbey:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3240135.stm

During the Thirty Years War (1618-48), conducted mostly within the territory of what we now call Germany, local sovereigns mounted a succession of invasions of neighbouring states to install the "correct" faith in order to save the immortal souls of residents who would otherwise be condemned to eternal damnation. The succession of wars was finally brought to an end by the Peace of Westphalia (1648), which secured multilateral support at the time and since for an enduring principle in international relations that the internal affairs of an independent sovereign state are the sole responsibility of its own sovereign government. This is the precise principle which was violated by the invasion of Iraq in 2003 without UN sanction.
http://www.pipeline.com/~cwa/TYWHome.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years'_War

The perhaps understandable outcome of all this in England, Scotland and Wales was a pervasive sense of paranoia about Catholicism, the downstream of which still exercises an influence over current politics in the island of Ireland. A Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829 finally extended full civic rights in Britain to Catholics.

"Historically, non-Anglicans were prevented from holding public office (including that of Member of Parliament) by the Test Act of 1672, which provided that all office-holders should take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, declare against transubstantiation, and receive the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper (duly certified by Minister and Churchwarden) according to the usage of the Church of England.1 Within this framework, Roman Catholics were specifically prevented from sitting in either House of Parliament by the terms of the Second Test Act of 1678. While this Act did not specifically prevent the candidature of Catholics, nor actually prevent their sitting in Parliament, their exclusion was its clearly declared purpose, as stated in its preamble. It achieved its purpose by requiring that all Peers and Members of the House of Commons should, as often as the House required, not only take the oaths of supremacy and allegiance, but also make a declaration abjuring transubstantiation, worship of the Virgin Mary and the celebration of mass. Obviously, no Catholic would take such an oath. Members who refused to take it would automatically lose their seats. . . "
http://www.parliament.uk/commons/lib/research/notes/snpc-01493.pdf

As for cults, try the People's Temple Sect which migrated from America to establish a settlement at Jonestown, Guyana. Relatives of cult members became concerned and made representations to the US government which led to a US Congressman going there with aides on an investigative mission in November 1978. The scale of the resulting calamity is perhaps best left to graphic reports on websites:
http://www.infoplease.com/spot/jonestown1.html

[youngman]

The 7/7 bommbers were hardly successful men. One was a student and the other a chip shop worker.

Tanweer may have lefta large estae but the likelyhood was the money was ill gotten and maybe even terrorist related.

[Derek Arbuthnot]

Bob B,

Do you know what ad hominem tu quoque means?