Civitas Blog

According to Mr Ahmed, what is drawing young British Muslims into extremism is not religious zeal, but simply anger at their straightened economic circumstances. He writes:

‘A poll for Policy Exchange last week found that about a third of younger Muslims would like to live under Sharia… [But] ask these kids if they can explain the details of Sharia… When they can’t, ask them what they’re really upset about.

‘British Muslims, usually of Pakistani or Bangladeshi origin, are the ethnic group most likely to be unemployed, poor and live in overcrowded homes… Radical Islam has become an off-the-peg label that young Muslims can wear to rebel against their dads and wider British society. Like punks before them, they’ll grow up and grow out of it.’

Mr Ahmed may well be correct that today's young Muslim extremists will eventually outgrow their current preparedness to maim and murder. But there is no reason to think what he alleges to be the cause of their extremism will go away so long as their communities refuse to relinquish those elements of their traditional lifestyle that impede their economic self-advancement here: most notably, inter-continental arranged marriages, often to first cousins, very high birth-rates, and a refusal on the part of their young to move to where job opportunities are.

So, the extremism of today’s young British Muslims may well disappear with age. But, if their communities continue to remain immured in their largely self-induced poverty, then, according to the logic of Mr Ahmed’s own argument, the children and grandchildren of today's extremists will remain just as prone as to extremism as their parents. In short, Muslim Punks are unlikely to give way to Muslim New Romantics.

If Mr Ahmed sincerely believes that that what predisposes young British Muslims to get drawn into terrorism is their relative poverty rather than their faith, then surely the best contribution, as a moderate, he can make towards restoring peace and tranquility here is to draw to their attention what their own faith communities are doing to hold back their economic advancement. If, as he claims, what is radicalising these young Muslims is their relative poverty and poor prospects, then what they need to be told is that the malady from which they suffer is one of which their own communities are the principal, if not entire, cause.

If, therefore, moderate Muslims like Mr Ahmed sincerely wish to take a stand against their home-grown extremist co-religionists, then, rather than bleat on about their straightened economic circumstances which only exacerbates their sense of victimhood, the moderates should be drawing the extremists' attention to how it is their own communities that place and keep them in the poverty trap.

Otherwise, moderate Muslims simply reinforce the extremists' sense of victimhood. Thereby they help stave off the day of reckoning the extremists must face if and when they come to realise it is their own communities, and no one and nothing else, that is principal cause of their poor prospects, as it is that of the similarly poor prospects of many of their less well-off coreligionists elsewhere in the world.

Of course, it may be that what draws some young British Muslims towards terror has nothing to do with adverse economic circumstances -- think: Osama bin Laden -- and everything to do with a perncicious version of their religion into which get they drawn. In that case blathering on about their poor economic prospects as the cause of their extremism is at best useless. If that should be so, then moderate British Muslims wishing to do something constructive to combat their extremist co-religionists should either be engaged in theological debate, or, perhaps to stand a better chance of being effective, they should be steeling themselves to go undercover to root them out.