Becoming extreme

There was a piece on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme this morning discussing a survey of young Muslims in Britain. The survey found that the younger people in the Muslim Britain are more “radical” than their older fellows, and more likely to have a “politicised” view of their religion – they’re more likely to support Sharia law, the wearing of the veil and even the actions of groups like Al Qaeda.

What struck me was this – that the young are always more “radical” than their elders, more excitable, more prone to simplistic answers to complex questions. This point was raised by the interviewer, but wasn’t really dealt with. The tone was rather that there’s something unexpected going on here, that there’s something wrong that needs fixing. And what was even stranger was the cause to which this problem was attributed – multiculturalism. The suggestion was that the presence of many cultures in Britain was making the young more insular and extreme. And this seems nonsensical to me.

If we want to look for an answer to the question of why young British Muslims are turning away from the modern liberal society towards a vision of their own (an answer beyond the tendencies of the young I discussed above), surely the first place we need to look is at the failure of that very society that they are rejecting. Modern liberal secular democracy is not a shining beacon of hope. It is a bastion of power held by the rich over the poor. It enshrines centralised power with a sham of voting every few years that changes almost nothing, as politicians push their own agendas, which have nothing in common with the concerns of most people in their countries. It elevates hypocrisy and self-interest to hitherto unknown levels.

And it is starting to come unravelled. The hard-won liberties of person and community are being eroded and ignored as our governmentsemphasise spin and deception over principle, as they award themselves more and more power with less and less oversight, as they institutionalise the use of torture of and spying on their own subjects and foreigners.

Is it any wonder that people turn away in search of something better? All this says to me is that our society desperately needs to recover a vision of what it is, and why it is, and how it can be restored.

pax et bonum

Article posted at 12:01pm on 29 January 2007
Category: General, Politics