British Muslims hold hyphenated dual identities more patriotic than white Britons.
Evidence
If we move to a further attitudinal indicator concerning self-identification with Britain, we find that Muslims are in many respects highly integrated. In analyses of the UK Government’s Citizenship Survey, Heath and Roberts (2008: 2) found ‘no evidence that Muslims … were in general less attached to Britain than were other religions or ethnic groups. Ethnic minorities show clear evidence of “dual” rather than “exclusive” identities.’ These authors point instead to hyphenated identities, showing that 43% of Muslims say they belong ‘very strongly’ to Britain and 42% that they belong to Britain ‘fairly strongly’. Taken together, these figures are higher for Muslim respondents than the equivalent figures for Christians or those of ‘no religion’. What is especially interesting is that this confident British Muslim identity has developed alongside pan-Muslim solidarities, the idea of the Muslim ‘ummah’ or ‘community of believers’. This has proved quite consistent with the widely accepted body of findings, reiterated by Wind- Cowie and Gregory’s (2011) conclusion, that ‘overall British Muslims are more likely to be both patriotic and optimistic about Britain than are the white British community’. — A. Hussain, N. Meer, Framing Muslim Integration, 467
Categorization
- CANDY: The finding that Muslims score higher on British attachment than Christians or ‘no religion’, and are more patriotic than white Britons, is a genuinely surprising, conversation-ready point.
- XREF: This challenges integration-deficit assumptions in the Runnymede and citizen-integration literatures this chapter engages.