Dominic Green, historian and columnist, is editor of the U.S. edition of The Spectator and a commissioning editor of The Critic. Green writes frequently on books and arts for the Wall Street Journal, the New Criterion, The Spectator (U.K.), Standpoint, the Literary Review, and The Oldie. Green spoke to an April 7 Middle East Forum Webinar (video). The following summarizes his comments:
The influx of Muslim migration to Britain, which began in the late 1950s into the 1960s, was driven primarily by economic pressure. At the time, populations from what is today Pakistan were needed to fill jobs as unskilled and semi-skilled laborers. The emerging communities were concentrated in the industrial cities of the Midlands, Northern England, and London. With the collapse of heavy industry in Western Europe by the 1970’s, followed by high unemployment during the economic turbulence in the 1980s, “not only were the economic assumptions which had driven the pro-immigration policy of the 1950s and ‘60s unfounded, but it also turned out that the assumptions about assimilation based on the very limited prior experience of Western European societies was also untrue.”
There was an “internal dynamic” within the Islamic world as its adherents observed the “post-liberal” ennui throughout Western liberal societies. Thus, Islam advanced as an alternative global force.
Instead of Muslim community members assimilating into Britain’s mainstream society over the decades, their “institutions became captured by radicals.” Although there were different languages and extractions among the Muslims immigrating to Britain from such as India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, as well as varied religious denominations, including Shia, Sunni, and Ahmadi, the British government regarded them all as a single group.
Islamism in the U.K. spread due to “an immigration policy that failed, a pre-existing history of colonial-era antagonism,” and a “surge of political and intellectual energy” that has been playing out among the portion of Britain’s Muslim community that failed to integrate. The modern conveniences of air travel and the digital age further aided the “normal movements of human populations sped up to warp speed by modern communications.”
Adding to these conditions was the “internal dynamic” within the Islamic world as its adherents observed the “post-liberal” ennui throughout Western liberal societies. Thus, Islam advanced as an alternative global force. Arguments questioning the benefit of integration in becoming part of a perceived “loss of energy and purpose” in secular society drew Muslims to be part of “something which is far stronger, older, and more vibrant.” Such is the “unprecedented challenge to the assumptions and nature of Western liberal societies.”
This contributed to the spread of “parallel communities alongside mainstream British society.” In a 2021 census, people who identified as Muslims constituted only six percent of the British population. As a group, Pakistani Muslims, “shorthand often to note everybody from the Indian subcontinent and thereabouts,” have largely failed to integrate and have a very low rate of “academic attainment.”
The British state exacerbates the problem by failing to enforce basic laws, choosing instead to engage in “community policing.” The result is a parallel society of immigrants who adhere to values from the old country “in matters of social morality,” with standards set by radical Islam.
A growing disaffected Muslim population, with its attendant “low levels of educational attainment [and] some of the worst levels of workforce participation,” set the stage for radicalization to take root and spread. The British government concluded that if it cannot influence the community, the only option for managing an intractable problem is by compromising. “Giving it what you think it wants, particularly if a small number of its members are willing to conduct the most appalling terrorist atrocities to make their feelings felt.”
To understand the scale of the growing problem, British security services “have about 40,000 people under active surveillance for Islamist activity.”
Ironically, “extremist groups which would not be allowed to function in the Muslim majority states of the Middle East are able to operate openly in London.”
East London is peppered with Islamist institutions openly tied to terrorist organizations and enabled by the British historical “traditions of free speech and tolerance.” They are also enabled by the British security establishment’s belief that cultivating connections with radical groups rather than banning them will “maintain connections and influence.” The United States shares this belief “in the sense that having Qatar as a deniable conduit to Hamas was actually an American policy.”
Ironically, “extremist groups which would not be allowed to function in the Muslim majority states of the Middle East are able to operate openly in London.” In addition, “simple incompetence” drives the fear in “not wanting to poke the hornet’s nest.” This accounts for the pervasive government attitude that ignores the level of radicalization in, for example, HMP Franklin, one of the U.K.’s “most secure” prisons, by accommodating its “substantial Islamist gang presence.” The British government is “perfectly prepared to have one gang of thugs running a prison, and they don’t really care whether it’s a drug gang or a gang of Islamists, they just want the prison to be quiet.”
The Islamists are also empowered by “the progressive woke left-wing movement” that includes academics, left-wing revolutionary campus activists, and members of Parliament. Instead of furthering multiculturalism, the opposite occurs as the monoculture of “Old England” is gradually being replaced by the “monoculture of international Islamism.” The Islamist monoculture has the means to impose and spread its standards on public life. Because of contemporary mores, this “monoculture versus monoculture” is portrayed as “diversity and multicultural,” when it is Islamism as the political monoculture of Islamic practice “being pushed into public spaces.” An example of this process may be seen in taxpayer-funded public baths that now have “women only days.” Rather than framing this as an accommodation to “conservative Muslim sensibilities, they’re often depicted as a triumph of feminism.”
Among the U.K.’s political parties, public outrage over “Islamist violence and intimidation and the failure of the immigration system” has seen the rise of a right-wing party, the Reform U.K. party led by Nigel Farage, “that has outflanked the conservatives.” There is also an “independent Islamist party” that is a splinter from the Labour Party and is set to grow. Labour is “most definitely the party of British Muslims,” and it is currying favor with a voting constituency as part of its “electoral strategy” to attain political power.
And what of the “silent majority” of British taxpaying Muslims who live “pious lives” but do not constitute a security risk? They need support, but “the media to which they’re being exposed demonstrably is funneling people towards radicalism.” To arrest this, certain media outlets, such as Al Jazeera, should be banned from operating in liberal societies. Such was the case when the Irish Republican Army (IRA) was active. The British government banned IRA spokesmen at the time to marginalize and stigmatize them. “If you conduct yourself in a certain matter, you lose the privileges of expression that are granted to everybody else. In other words, there is such a thing as a contract and laws and, if you break them, you lose the privileges that come with it.”
With the mounting level of anger among the rest of British society that cannot be pushed to the margins, changes are underway, “and so, I would not, therefore, write off Britain.”
However, the British bureaucracy, “the operating system of a state,” as well as the British government, surrender to “the loudest voices” among Islamists. This approach is not helping the large number of British Muslims who are moderate and sincere in their religious beliefs, who “don’t believe that they should attempt to alter the nature of British society.” Unless there is a change in policy, this will lead to “civil conflict.” Rather than policing lawbreaking terrorists or Islamists, particularly given the growing violence between Muslim groups who have formed “their own quasi-paramilitary groups,” police see their role as “controlling the reactions of the majority.” That short-sighted strategy ignores the impatience and anger percolating among the ninety-four percent of the country, which is “going to be far harder to manage than the six percent.” Similar unrest is unfolding in European countries, where the same problems are found in the Muslim communities of France, Germany, and Scandinavia.
The inability to address the issue risks the emergence of the next phase, which is likely to be “comparable to Northern Ireland during the Troubles where there [was] territorialism, criminal groups funded by gang activity, massive terrorism, [and] a policing policy which involved suspending the normal rights that people would have under arrest.” The sympathy being afforded Islamist groups has become embedded in the government bureaucracy, which has “made a deal, as it were, with Islamism.”
With the mounting level of anger among the rest of British society that cannot be pushed to the margins, changes are underway, “and so, I would not, therefore, write off Britain.” There is now a willingness among the majority to “discuss these things openly,” which spotlights how “out of touch the political establishment is, and what a shock they’re going to be in for. I think there’s going to be a massive, massive public reaction against all of this and it’s going to, with a bit of luck, change the nature of our governments and change their assumptions about what their responsibilities are.”
