A few things have popped up recently that led to this question. A week or so ago, there was a thread about the systematic victimisation of women by a Pakistani gang(s?). In the thread about ISIL, it was noted that more British Muslims have gone to fight for ISIL than do so for the British army, which reportedly only has 600 Muslims.
This is not the case with all minorities. I’ll quote myself from the other thread.
*Armed forces percentages calculated using UK regular forces as base, numbering approx 155,000
Then, on a different article, someone had commented with links to the disproportionate representation of Muslims in British prisons. The percentage of Muslims in prison is three times more than in the general population.
Is this because the UK has failed in integrating their Muslim minority, or the Muslim minority that has particular features that prevents it from becoming part of the mainstream? UK dopers?
One possible way to illuminate the issue should be to look at Indian and Pakistani populations in the UK. Both brown and otherwise almost exactly the same. Are there differences in how these groups have functioned/fared within British society?
Well, I just read today that the average household wealth of Sikhs and Hindus in the UK is more than double that of Muslim households, and the unemployment rate is of Sikhs and Hindus is half that of Muslims.
A recognized problem in general with how European countries have engaged with their growing Muslim minorities is that they try to treat them structurally like Christians and this doesn’t work well. In the UK, the government has a poor track record with ‘Muslim community leaders’ they choose to support.
Religion may be a confounding variable here. Hindu, Sikh and Buddhist immigrants to the UK may well have structural historical differences in culture- family structure, social structure and so on, compared with Moslems. The pool of peel who provided the immigrants may well have traits that are more dependent on culture rather than religion.
An historical comparison could be made with the experience of immigrant groups to the USA in the nineteenth century from developed and less developed European countries.
This. The great bulk of the British Muslim community stems from migration from Pakistan and Bangladesh, and a signficant driver for that migration was poverty and lack of opportunity in the home country. They come, therefore, disproportionately from the poorest and most isolated, and therefore least-educated and least-resourced, parts of those countries.
By contrast, a significant chunk of the Hindu and Sikh communities stems from migration from East Africa, and the driver of that migration was political and racial discrimination. They weren’t necessarily poor, under-educated or under-resourced.
And it’s notable that British Muslims of East African or Indian origin tend to be signicantly wealthier than those orginating from Pakistan or Bangladesh. This tends to support the view that it’s not the community’s religion, but their social and economic conditions in the country of origin, which is influencing the degree of successful integration into, or alienation from, British society.
You more than likely would need to examine exactly HOW they came to the country - it wouldn’t surprise me if many of the Muslims were political or economic refugees. And it also wouldn’t be surprising if there were “personal” issues that made these folk more prone to problems.
When it comes to the numbers in the armed forces - I also wouldn’t be at all surprised if there are systemic features of being a soldier in the UK that mitigate against Muslims - for example - is the food halal? Will they get time to pray 5 times a day? etc etc. And yes, I do know that many of these requirements are malleable if there is a “need” for the well being of the individual etc, but I would still suspect that it is a factor that someone like myself wouldn’t need to consider
The best cite I can find(British Indians - Wikipedia) suggests only 16% of the British Indian population comes from Africa.
This is also why I suggested comparison of Indian and Pakistani/Bangladeshi migrants, unless you think Indian migrants faced different conditions with regard to poverty and lack of opportunity in their home country?
To my mind Sikh is not a good comparison to Muslim for a whole range of reasons,
first up - I think Sikhs are “more respected” in England than brown skinned Muslims,
after that, I think that Sikhism puts a higher value on education than Islam
Not that my post said Sikh at any point, but if Sikh culture vs. Muslim culture is in fact different with respect to education, then I think that IS a good comparison that would shed light on the question at hand.
I think the above article is a good one and goes to the notion that immigrants will integrate when there isn’t continuous immigration. Put another way, a reduction or ban on immigration from a particular country/group will allow the existing immigrants to assimilate over time. It is highly unlikely that the will assimilate when their numbers are constantly being increased to the point where they haven’t really immigrated but simply changed climates.
Wikipedia says 12% British Indians are Muslims. I have no idea what their relative level of integration/success is.
Yeah, it’s this fact that makes me think there’s something interesting going on. AFAIK, the two migrant populations were as close in terms of culture as it is possible to be while still having one large difference. ‘Race’, culture, income levels, geographic origins, language, you-name-it. Yet, community outcomes seem to have diverged significantly.
It’s an interesting read, but I don’t find it particularly illuminating. He seems to essentially be claiming that the Pakistani community is particularly insular, and remained so because they would marry only within the community. This is not a practice unique to Pakistanis. In India, the NRI(Non Resident Indian) groom and the desirability thereof have long been a thing(although not as much anymore). He also asserts that British Pakistanis are held back by race. Why are British Indians not held back to the same extent?
Huh? My grandfather and his siblings were born in Rotherham…
But yes, in Africa the shopkeeper and merchant class (and educated class) were East Indians who came in as part of the British colonization. They did well and were relatively well off. As British colonies became independent, the locals became increasingly resentful of the Indian merchant class, and with good reason.
Idi Amin famously kicked out all the Indian merchants. They took the profits from their enterprises, and often sent those back home to India to pool with the extended families’ wealth, rather than investing in Africa. A friend of mine from Nyasaland said the same thing - the Indians faced severe currency export restrictions, so they’d devise means to smuggle wealth out - jewelry, gold, etc. Once in a while one would get caught, the government would confiscate all they had, and with the help of family and other Indians in the community, they’d start over and be back on their feet in no time. The Africans hated their guts. They also had the money to give their children excellent educations. As the going got tougher, many of them had held on to their British Subject status which I understand gave them a head start in emigrating to Britain. They already ahd a decent amount of integration into British culture and education.
Pakistanis and Bangladeshi, from what I understand, tend to be relatively dirt-poor types who entered Britain at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder.
When any group immigrates in large numbers, they tend to stick together in communities; this exacerbates the problem - for many, there is no need to learn English, they can live just fine in their native language. (I don’t know if Britain had a policy like Canada, where the families could even bring over their elderly parents - adding to the strict old-country cultural influences) The children do not encounter as much western influence if the majority in the schools are the same culture. Fortunately, there’s popular culture, a force that cannot be stopped… but it will take a generation or more for the influence to take hold.
Are you under the impression that they just started showing up last week? Mass immigration to the UK from the Indian subcontinent began more or less with Partition/independence (1947).
Especially since the “abuse of white women by east Indian gangs” mentioned in the OP goes back at least 15 years. Idi Amin booted the Asians out of Uganda in the early 70’s. And so on…
Decolonization - independence of various colonies - was an aggravating factor. As a hedge, many Asians in Africa chose to retain British Subject status rather than receive the citizenship of their new home country. This also got the locals annoyed at them, but made it easier to leave Africa and move to Britain.
As I said in my post about Nyasaland from someone who grew up there- they took their profits and sent them “home” to India. Minimal investment in their new homeland. They didn’t assimilate (not that Africa was something they wanted to assimilate to). As my friends from Uganda told me, they paid their maids about a dollar a day. The locals hated their guts. One mentioned he had hit an African on a bicycle with his car, then drove him to the hospital. The other bystanders told him he was lucky - if he’d still been there when the soldiers arrived, they would have shot him for hurting an African. (Amin’s soldiers used to wander into their store and say “I want that, and that, and that” then walk out without paying. What’re you going to do? They had guns, it’s not like their commanding officers are going to listen to Asian complaints. They were hated like the profit-taking class everywhere, more so because they were different and foreign and the money all left the country.
Whatever mystical fluffery Amin said, it was a simple economic decision. They took all the money and possessions and now Amin’s friends owned the stores and factories. Not much different than Mugabe with the white farmers.
