Nigel Farage claims that British Muslims are just as concerned, if not more, by the threat of Islamist extremism. The Reform leader said that ‘if you’re a Muslim family and the news is all about radical Islamists committing heinous acts, you’re going to think “wow, my neighbours may well be prejudiced against me because I’m Muslim’”.
Farage is determined to face down his critics
Farage is right: after all, wicked crimes committed by a sliver of British Muslims – especially Islamist terrorist attacks – have the potential to fan the flames of prejudice towards the entire group. Farage, whose political image is centred on being a straight-talker when compared to the technocratic creatures of the ‘establishment’, unusually called for a more nuanced conversation about the place of British Muslims in the UK. He argued that, while some may have different sympathies to the mainstream and are instinctively tribal, the majority ‘live peacefully’.
Farage claimed that British Muslims are growing by 75 per cent every ten years. While his numbers may well be off – from 2011 to 2021 across England and Wales, the Muslim population increased by 44 per cent from 2.7 million to 3.9 million – other politicians who shy away from talking about Islam and the integration of British Muslims could learn from Farage.
‘If we politically alienate the whole of Islam, we will lose,’ Farage said on the Winston Marshall Show. While he reiterated the need to crackdown on radical extremists, he said ‘we have to do everything we can’ to bring the majority of British Muslims ‘with us’ and ensure they are part of the national community.
Farage sang the praises of Reform UK’s chairman Zia Yusuf, who has previously described himself as a ‘British Muslim patriot’. Under the chairmanship of Yusuf – a businessman of Sri Lankan Muslim heritage who was born in the Scottish town of Bellshill in North Lanarkshire – the party is on a mission to professionalise both its public image and organisational structures. But the former Conservative Party voter’s position in Reform UK has been greeted with its fair share of hostility, especially by some on the so-called ‘Dissident Right’. Critics fear that Reform’s ‘professionalisation’ project will result in it losing its identity, with the party ending up sitting only ever-so-slightly to the right of the metro-liberal Tories on matters of immigration, integration, and identity. For many of Reform’s rank-and-file and anti-Tory members of the Very Online Right, this would pose a problem.
But Farage is determined to face down such critics. The truth is that we are very much at a crossroads – and many have not grasped the complicated nature of the portrait of modern Britain. The UK is an international hotspot of family fragility. Rampant loneliness among both the young and old tell a depressing story of intergenerational disconnection. Out-of-wedlock births – which often lead to the risk that a child suffers parental separation in their formative years – have been normalised. Christian devotion has declined in an era of fast-paced secularisation and celebrity worship. One of the most ‘culturally assimilated’ ethnic-minority groups – the hyper-integrated Black Caribbeans – rank poorly when it comes to family stability, academic performance and socio-economic status.
Is it any wonder that some don’t want to integrate? Perhaps the most significant development in modern Britain is that some law-abiding Muslim social conservatives – those that Farage wants as fellow travellers on the train of civic nationalism – have made the calculation that ‘integrating’ into the mainstream is not desirable; a certain degree of ‘insulation’ may even be preferable. It’s perhaps hard to blame them.
Many British Muslims appreciate the opportunities and freedoms offered by their country, ‘selectively’ integrating in the sense of being decent neighbours and wanting to earn a better living. But, as with other groups, there may well continue to be a divide between different communities. In a country where a fifth of people say they have an unfavourable view of Muslims as a group, and three in five British Muslims believe that most Brits prioritise their individual interests over their own family and local community, how easy is it to bridge such a gap?
The tensions may well get worse when upwardly-mobile British Muslims begin to hold more positions of influence in the market economy, public sector, and large-sized civic associations. British Muslims – who are more likely to value the institution of marriage and consider child-raising to be an integral part of adulthood – will continue to grow at a notable pace. This is a change that cannot be ignored.
No one said governing modern Britain is easy. But it will be made even more difficult if we don’t understand the realities on the ground and refuse to be honest about them. Farage, at least, deserves some credit for talking about a subject that many politicians shy away from.
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