Sarfraz Manzoor, a regular contributor to the Guardian and Observer on the so-called Muslim values which gives our community its supposed strength:
Muslim parents also tend to be less interested in child-centred parenting and more into parent-centred parenting. For example, when I was growing up there was no possibility of answering back to my parents, and this was accompanied by an all-pervasive fear of letting them down. This was a model of parenting that put great faith in deference and, while at the time it felt regressive, it was also what kept my generation in check.
My father often used the threat of "what might the community say?" as a weapon to control my rebellious teenage desires. I resented the power that this community had over me, but it is only now that I can appreciate its value. The knowledge of the hardship our parents had endured, alongside their old-fashioned attitudes towards parenting, meant most second-generation Muslims simply did not have the opportunity or desire to cause trouble. Instead we were conditioned not to get mad at whites but to get even, by making something of our lives.
He concludes that it's the third generation which is "so integrated into white society that they are emulating its worst characteristics". A respondent said that these characteristics are nothing to do with Islam and are found among other tight-knit immigrant groups, such as Italians in the USA. They may actually be holding some people back, because while Sarfraz Manzoor seems to have made a nice little career for himself at the Guardian and has in the past said he'd not send his children to an Islamic school, preferring one where there were mostly white children, how much of his generation are mired in ethnic ghettoes rather than integrating with - never mind non-Muslims - other Muslims? How many of his generation have refused to let their daughter marry a white convert to Islam, or their son take up a career other than in medicine or some other "traditional" occupation, for fear of their neighbours' gossip?
I think Sarfraz makes some interesting points, though I think your comparison with tight-knit European cultures and that of the Indian sub-continent are mistaken. The tight-knit nature of say Sicilians is sincere, in our culture it's more an instrument of control. Speaking to other Bangladeshi men of my generation, some are in denial about the miserable lives that arranged marriages, upholding family status etc. has brought them but a few have been willing to admit to it. Interestingly, the ones who have underachieved have not blamed racism or Islamaphobia for their failures, but the bullying expectations of family which held them back.
And there you have a quandry: even a conservative Muslim such as myself recognises the benefits of recognising that the freedom of the individual does bring greater happiness to that individual. Yet Islam puts a great emphasis on pleasing one's parents and our elders weild this as a weapon. I have yet to hear a satisfactory address to this problem by the ulema. In fact, one can almost agree that this control phenomenon leads to some Muslim youths to find an attraction in organisationslike al-Qaeda. Could it be that the only rebellion against parents that they find is one which has been given a veneer of greater piety before Allah?
Sarfraz Manzoor really writes the most ridiculous nonsense. The best one was the claim people avoided sitting next to him on the bus/tube because he was 'a Muslim'. What makes Sarfraz look Muslim? No beard or robes, are there? Colour racism might have been a more credible explanation, but his hair style (an electrocuted Heathcote Williams) might have just as plausibly accounted for his experience.
Wasalaam
May Allah protect the Muslim community from child-centered parenting and the rest of the failed psycho-babble based theories of parenting coming out of the 1960's that has created a generation of lost souls and sought to degrade natural gender roles and adult-child authority. Kids need parents and not friends.
"The tight-knit nature of say Sicilians is sincere, in our culture it's more an instrument of control."
You've never heard of the mafia, Raashid?
ALooking back inretrospect, Mr Manzoor probably sees virtues that aren't uniquely muslim and misses faults common to such upbringings, inckuding some that are specifically muslim. He alsio doesn't notice some virtues of seeing things from the child's perspective and behaving accordingly. There is no such thing as absolutely child-centred, adult-centred or family-centred upbringing and every system of child-rearing- like every way of living- is an attempt to adjust between rival virtues.