Following last Sunday's report (PDF) by the "Centre for Social Cohesion" (in reality, a right-wing think tank largely geared towards raising suspicion about Muslims) alleging that a large proportion of Muslim students support killing in the name of Islam, a number of organisations have put out a joint statement, which is reproduced over at Islamophobia Watch:
The latest report on British Muslim students by the Centre for Social Cohesion serves only to strengthen bigots and demagogues keen to sow discord amongst British people. The authors of the report cannot hide behind a purportedly scientific survey to justify their own agenda of creating anything but cohesion in society. We refer to more concrete polling data that illustrate the commitment British Muslims have to British society and the people around them. The authors cite their unsatisfactory sampling to extrapolate ideological and biased conclusions to serve their own divisive ends.
We are a cross-section of British people who believe in the importance of meaningful social cohesion, where British people from all backgrounds and persuasions can live together without maligning each other. The Centre for Social Cohesion is opposed to this, and we reject their conclusions utterly.
We do not deny that the terror threat is serious, nor do we object to the notion that separatism and bigotry should be challenged, including from within the Muslim community. However the report incorrectly ascribes guilt by tenuous association with those national Muslim organisations who have been firm and innovative on both counts. Moreover, these organisations are theologically diverse, and yet the study insinuates that they favour one Islamic tradition over another.
The report reserves a lot of its fire for the Islamic student societies that operate from campus up and down the country. We find it curious, therefore, that the report sought qualitative opinions from only twelve Islamic student societies, yet there are scores of Muslim student bodies in the UK - hardly a representative sample.
The emphasised statement is key - the survey of Muslim students for attitudes such as supporting "killing" took in only 600 students. An organisation like YouGov, which carried it out, has no excuse for using such a piddling survey size; with a section of society as specific as Muslim students, one would have thought they could have surveyed as many people as they do with a normal poll, which would have made it more representative.
Besides, the question about "killing" is meaningless, because there are a variety of reasons why someone might kill in the name of their religion - such as, for example, someone being executed under Shari'ah law for killing someone during a robbery and defending the Muslim lands from invaders. It does not mean they support terrorism, yet this is what the headlines this report generated produced.
Really, Muslim organisations should be getting the message through to the Muslim public: do not answer opinion polls. Ever. There have been several such polls in the last five years or so which have been used in high-profile media Muslim-bashing campaigns. The source for their malicious tittle-tattle should be cut off.
Any sincere effort to promote social cohesion will consult genuine sociologists to decipher why youth of certain age tend to express opinions that range anywhere from non- conformist to rebellious. One element which is found lacking any appropriate mention in the "Islam in Campus" report is the sociological interpretation of dejection and disengagement among youth.
When it comes to interpret the results, why we don't see specialists in youth mindset/psychology engaged to elaborate on probable conditions? Is this an expression of disconnection, disengagement and disenchantment that may have led some respondents to answer in a particular tone?
Why social interest champions such as Centre for Social Cohesion fail to analyze the bigger picture and recommend appropriate solutions instead of spending energies on what a disoriented lot boasts about to amateur surveyors? Their recent study "Islam in Campus" could have considerably benefitted from the analysis of Cardiff University psychologist Gregory R. Maio who encourages us all to examine motives behind value-expressive attitudes. He is joined by scholars like Mark M. Bernard, Jochen E. Gebauer who consider it is necessary to analyse what is being expressed and distinguish between Whether cultural estrangement arises from discrepancies between personal and societal values (e.g., freedom) rather than from discrepancies in attitudes toward political (e.g., censorship) or mundane (e.g., pizza) objects. The relations between different types of value discrepancies, estrangement, subjective well-being, and need for uniqueness needs to be examined.
Would a respectable institution such as those behind Pew Religious Landscape Survey or Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life ever consult report authors John Thorne and Hannah Stuart or their director Douglas Murray as experts on Muslim youth opinion? Looking at the academic qualifications and professional exposure of these three doesn't help get a convincing yes.
If any youth sociologists are consulted on the implications of survey's finding, they will list several factors that make some youth give non-traditional, non-conventional responses that reflect their displeasure and an urge to sound different. In 1970s the hippies rebelled against established institutions, criticized middle class values and opposed the Vietnam War. In 2000s we have others who dissent and debate on new issues face now. We really don't need knee-jerk reactions to the responses of any dejected or disoriented lot.
Commentators from Centre for Social Cohesion need to come clear on the fact if trend of violence cited in their reports is specific to a tiny religious faction or a wider, nation-wide phenomenon?
To establish the fact it is helpful to look at country-wide for recent years.
According to the National Criminal Intelligence Service, the number of illegal firearms in the UK ranges from 200,000 to 4m. Offences involving firearms rose by 40% between 2000 and 2002.
What emerges most clearly from the research is that the problem is social as well as criminal, and that it defies easy answers.
Referring to violent British youth, Hugh Muir, writes in The Guardian: They are young men living in the shadow of the gun: deriving all their power, reassurance, self worth and respect from the very act of carrying illegal firearms. Recent research suggests that the proliferation of illegal weapons in some of Britain's most deprived communities - particularly replica and converted ones - is now such that there is a gun or an imitation firearm easily available for almost everyone who wants one. They are being routinely carried for criminal purposes, but also as fashion accessories and a "necessity" by marginalised young men who have come to view this ownership as a rite of passage.
This trend has led scholars such as University of Portsmouth's Gavin Hales, who led a study on a criminology trends in the UK, observe that guns can provide an intoxicating and almost pornographic attraction to young men who often feel powerless. Other academics in the field like Richard Garside, director of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, say the high rate of gun crime in black communities was more to do with the fact the victims tended to live in inner city areas with a lack of social and economic opportunity.
The number of young people prosecuted for firearms offences has risen by more than 20 per cent in the past five years - and children as young as eight have been found carrying weapons, cites a report by Richard Edwards, The Telegraph's Crime Correspondent. Edwards notes that six teenagers were shot dead in London in 2007 and more than 50 children arrested for serious gun crimes in some of the capital's worst-affected boroughs. In 2001, 1,193 youngsters under 21 went to magistrates courts on gun-related charges. By 2005, that had risen to 1,444.
Jon Murphy, the head of the gun crime task force at the Home Office, said the youths involved in gun crime are volatile and unable to see the consequences of their actions - which will "inevitably" lead to a tragedy. Speaking at the first European Serious Organised Crime Conference, hosted in Liverpool, said: "Fifteen years ago a feud may have been settled with a fist fight, 10 years ago with a knife fight, but now it will be guns."
To ensure objectivity, were the questions and their wording vetted by qualified professionals. It depends on how the questions were posed and interpreted. Given to an advocate of exclusion (Nick Griffin), the "Islam in Campus" survey's findings will take a different trajectory. Whereas a promoter of pluralism (Trevor Phillips) will underline about the richness diversity can bring.
Is the media and the government paying more attention to those who are with loud shrill but shallow suggestions? Respectable writers warn against policy making that all too often appears to be operating in an evidence-free zone. Striking research conclusions are ignored or distorted. Expertise appears not to be valued.' Professor Reece Walters of the Open University is critical of the government for not listening to critical voices. He says: `civil servants in the Home Office do not want to `learn' from academics - in their minds, there is little that academics can teach them....We live in a society where government manipulates or cherry-picks criminological knowledge and produces distorted pictures of the `crime problem''.
Recalling some of his first hand observations, Professor Rod Morgan, former chair of the Youth Justice Board and former Chief Inspector of Probation says he was `incensed... by the incomprehension and arrogance regarding the research process which some administrators displayed'. Professor Morgan notes that `Despite the mantra about pursuing evidence-based policy, some of the politically highest-profile policy areas, such as anti-social behaviour, involved initiatives where there was little or no evidence base and no serious attempt to collect data, even to the point of not honouring government obligations to monitor ethnic impact.'
It remains to be seen when social interest champions such as Centre for Social Cohesion will offer some positive contribution to British youth, so that we all hear what solutions they could offer to these pressing challenges?