Today' YouGov poll of Muslim students in Britain makes for mostly grim reading. The Centre for Social Cohesion, which commissioned the poll, has published its full report Islam on Campus on its web site. The Executive Summary notes:
- 32% of Muslim students in Britain believe that killing in the name of Islam can be justified.
- 40% support sharia law for Muslims in Britain and 33% support a global Caliphate based on sharia law.
- 40% believe it is unacceptable for Muslim men and women to mix freely.
- 57% said that British Muslim servicemen should be allowed to opt out of taking part in military operations in Muslim countries.
But more positively:
- 68% believe Islam and Western democracy are compatible
- 89% support equal treatment for men and women.
- Only 15% said they understood Islam as a religion and Islamism as a political project to be one and the same.
The first thing to be noted about this poll is how consistent it is with years of polling of British Muslims of all ages. Last year's Policy Exchange poll of British Muslims found 7% admired Al Qaeda and 59% back sharia law. Two years ago a Populus poll found 16% of British Muslims backed suicide attacks on military targets and 7% backed suicide attacks on civilians. 2% said they would be proud if a family member joined Al Qaeda and 16% would be "indifferent". 13% said the 7/7 bombers are "martyrs". In a 2004 poll for Channel Four News, 45% agreed that the 11 September 2001 attacks were part of a conspiracy by America and Israel. 31% of young Muslims polled said the 7/7 bombings were justified because of Britain's support for the war on terror.
Consistently, polls show a majority of British Muslims rejecting violence and Islamism. But just as importantly, substantial minorities - amounting to hundreds of thousands - are consistently supportive. In any discussion of cohesion and integration, no mainstream politician in Britain fails to point out the first of these facts. But the second and less comforting of these statements goes largely unacknowledged. Most common is the claim that only a tiny minority of British Muslims back extremism. This is a hopeful claim made with the best of intentions, but it is a claim now undermined by years of polling.
It is obvious why politicians, especially Conservative politicians, are wise to avoid any rhetoric that would explicitly declare unacceptable and deeply problematic the views of a third or more of British Muslims. But in making policy, the empirical evidence matters most. A situation in which substantial minorities back extremism and violence may demand a very different response from a situation in which only a tiny minority do.
The Centre for Social Cohesion's report, for example, does make clear how much more moderate, on the whole, are the views of Muslim students who do not become involved in university Islamic societies. In part, this may be because Muslims who already hold the most extreme views become involved in these societies at university. But it also suggests one way to tackle extremism may be a much closer monitoring of these organisations. A clear-headed acceptance of the available polling data by politicians is the first step towards combating extremism.
