It’s an Outrage
A reader tells me I’m wrong in the Flexible Labour comment – that Muslims (from the Indian subcontinent) were not recruited to move to the UK in the 50s, and that I have them confused in that respect with West Indians, who were. Okay. I did look it up before posting, in a reference book I happened to have handy (the Oxford Companion to British History) which did say people were recruited from the subcontinent, because I thought I thought that was the case but wasn’t sure. But one reference book can always be wrong.
I also apparently didn’t make my meaning entirely clear – probably because I knew so well what I meant that I didn’t notice it wasn’t clear. By ‘dirty little secret’ I didn’t mean the recruitment itself, but the broader or perhaps vaguer point that immigration policy is not motivated solely by altruism or multiculturalism but also by a demand for cheap labour. The reader tells me that’s not a secret, dirty or otherwise, in the UK. Okay. Perhaps I’m misled by the way the subject is discussed in the US, which is generally extremely euphemised and dressed up and generally disguised. Maybe that’s just as well, maybe a blunter discussion would be disastrous. But I think euphemised discussions tend to be confused.
In any case, this article suggests a different reason for ‘alienation’ and grievance and generally feeling pissed off.
What is revealing is that the feelings of alienation suffered by Muslims in the YouGov poll are far greater among men than women. Muslim girls, on the whole, are liberated by living in Britain. Their education is deemed as important by the State as their brothers’. Those whose parents don’t encourage them to stay on at school and go to university will be encouraged by their teachers instead. For many of them, Western society offers the chance of escape from oppression by fathers, brothers and husbands.
Not to mention from ‘the community’ at large. ‘Community’ has become such a hooray word – a usage which overlooks how oppressive and coercive and narrowing a community can be. Not to mention punitive. And if it’s a community that hates women – well, it’s all those and more, for women and girls.
This suggests that the problem with Britain — and the West as a whole — is not that it is un-Islamic. If that were the case, then Muslim women would surely feel as alienated as Muslim men. More plausible is that Muslim men resent the way in which their traditional feelings of superiority over women are challenged in the West. Here, they simply can’t get away with subjugating their womenfolk in the way that they can in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan or Somalia.
Actually, often, they can, if they do it behind closed doors. But they can’t subjugate all women. They’re constantly affronted by the presence of women who are not generally globally subordinated and submissive and inferiorized. There’s a grievance for you.
I think the picture is fairly complicated, in fact. The Asian populations of Lancashire and Yorkshire were, I think, largely recruited from villages in Pakistan to work in mills. There are also many Asians (Hindu, Sikh and Muslim) who came to the UK as refugees (and British passport-holders) from East Africa in the 1970s. The latter group didn’t come for labour market reasons and are relatively prosperous.
Ah, thanks, Chris. Useful.
OB: “They’re constantly affronted by the presence of women who are not generally globally subordinated and submissive and inferiorized. There’s a grievance for you.”
What an interesting, and (I’ll say it) in hindsight, obvious observation! I wonder how true it is? Or, of how many it is true?
And it ties in well with the fact that it seems to be mostly young men who go off the deep end.
Ah, data – tricky stuff, ain’t it? Especially when you have an agenda… (There we go, that’s an opener that’s going to earn my post a slap-down, I’m sure:))
The YouGov study cited by Mary Ann Sieghart certainly has interesting data, but it doesn’t really justify the strong conclusion she draws (and which OB and Keith – in the comments above -endorse). She claims that the data indicates that “…the problem with Britain — and the West as a whole — is not that it is un-Islamic.” (Incidenbtally, her implication appears to be that the West is *not* un-Islamic, not simply that this is not the problem; but even if I misinterpret this it does not unddermine the point I am about to make.) She then goes on to extrapolate that the source of Muslim “rage and alienation” (to use OB’s phrase) is that “Muslim men resent the way in which their traditional feelings of superiority over women are challenged in the West.”
T-t-t-time OUT!! It may well be the case that (a proportion of) Muslim men do indeed feel such resentment. But to suggest that this is the ‘real’ problem – more to suggest that this is the primaly indication of this data – it simply foolish and ignorant.
It is at least equally likely that the issue is one of *relative* benefit. To clarify: it may be that Western social attitdes are indeed profoundly anti-Islamic. Muslim women, however, might feel the relative benefits they receive from a less-gendered society offset the discrimination they receive (or feel themselves to receive) for being Muslim, while Muslim men find that as they receive no such offsetting benefit they feel the blow of such (perceived) discrimination more sharply.
This could potentially be exacerbated by the vary nature of Western anti-Islamic prejudice: we find the sexist attitudes of much of Islamic culture deeply offensive, and as a result it may well be that hostility to Muslim women is lessened to a certain degree by the feeling of self-satisfaction we derive from seeing Muslim women doing better in our own society than they would be likely to do elsewhere. Young Muslim men, on the other hand, are more likely to on the receiving end of verbal and physical assault – as a demographic, young men in general are most at risk of such assaults; it seems a reasonable assumption that the Muslim population would not be immune and is also likely that such assaults on a young Muslim either would be or would be perceived as being motivated by anti-Islamicism or racism.
The above are purely hypothetical explanations; it strikes me, however, that they are at least as likely – in fact rather more likely – accounts of the reported data as Sieghart’s extremely simplistic assumption.
outeast’s alternative hypotheses are plausible and I think sit as contenders to OB’s (also plausible) one. I wonder if we can fit some distinctive predictions that would distinguish between them?
Thinking aloud, OB’s argument rests on the idea that the ability to subjugate women that is enjoyed by men in the Muslim west is a net good for them. Muslim & Western gender relations don’t just differ, they differ in a way that is in the men’s favour, and the women’s detriment, in the Muslim world. One would expect (without an auxillary hypothesis) that this would incentivise Western men to be favourable towards the Muslim system.
Alternatively, gender relations may be non-zero-sum. That is, the freedoms that women enjoy in the west do not have an equal negative effect upon men. It’s a net gain overall. This would predict that Western men have no interest in advancing an Islamic system here. This view folds onto outeast’s perspective, I think: the clear gain that women get from life in the west cancels out its un-Islamic features, whereas the new culture does not offer any obvious advantages to the Islamic male, so un-Islamic aspects can lead to resentment more easily.
At bottom this is an empirical question. In my mind it is clear that some men would want women to be subservient, and forced into traditional roles. But it seems equally clear that many more do not, and enjoy the equality among sexes and the benefits that brings. Without any auxillary hypotheses, I see no reason for Islamic immigrants to fall from this pattern.
I’ve realised that the implications of this (‘this’ being, really just a bit of thinking aloud actually fall between OB and outeast. Namely, that it is consistent with outeast’s hypothesis regarding general Islamic immigrant sentiment to the West, but also predicts a subset, the Pat Robertsons or Norman Tebbits or (insert traditionalist here) of the set, who would compound this resentment with particular grievances about how “things were better”; better in the Islamic world, rather than the good old days.
Any thoughts?
Alex:
“OB’s argument rests on the idea that the ability to subjugate women that is enjoyed by men in the Muslim west is a net good for them”
It also rests upon this being the single most important cultural issue for Muslim men. While I am sure it is so for some I would suggest it is unlikely to be for many; my own (untested) gut feeling would be that it would be immigrant fathers from the more conservative Islamic cultures who would be most sensitive to the gender issue, not young, childless British-born men.
(Incidentally, I think the distinction I’ve drawn, between immigrant and British-born muslim is significant – young British-born Muslims cannot be harking back to the ‘old land’ but rather to an imagined, inherited idea of the old land; it is not that they have been deprived of power or influence but that they imagine that were they in an Islamic world they would be powerful and influential. This misconception makes them ripe for exploitation.)
On the whole, though, Alex, I’d concur with much of what you have to say. I suppose an appropriate line of investigation would be to find out exactly which issues Muslims of different genders, ages, and backgrounds feel most strongly about?
As an aside, given the levels on which (especially) young men operate it would be interesting to find ot how young Western women regard Western-born Muslims – it’s not unlikely that there’s a sexual rejection issue to factor in here:)) It’s been a while since I’ve lived in Britain, but I do remember my asian friends at my Northern university bitching profoundly against what they saw as racist white girls; and where I live now (in the Czech Republic, an admittedly more monoracial country) a common theme among the young ethnic-minority men I know is how common it is to be rejected as a possible partner on the basis of race (black men are anecdotally regarded as desirable fucks, but no more, while asian of all hues seem to be generally despised). Thisa is certainly one of the fundamental things underlying such people’s common dislike of the country!
Just a thought.
Minor addendum (yes, I know, I’ll shut up soon)…
I note the police are making arrests of women as well as men in connection with the London bombings – although we don’t yet know why this may be an indication that this murderous extremism is not quite as gendered as B&W has been making out.
I don’t think OB was claiming women couldn’t be involved, but merely writing from the apparently still valid perspective that it is overwhelmingly male.
“What an interesting, and (I’ll say it) in hindsight, obvious observation!”
Actually, it’s not purely hindsight. I did a N&C a long time ago on the ‘grievance’ issue – prompted by some comment by a reader on, I think, Crooked Timber – saying much the same thing. There are all kinds of grievances; just because someone has a ‘grievance’ doesn’t automatically mean it’s a respectable or legitimate grievance; it was a ‘grievance’ to Hitler that there were so many Jews cluttering up the place; by the same token it is a ‘grievance’ to many ‘devout’ men that women are not officially and legally subordinate; so what?
I mean, this is blindingly obvious, surely. The first thing talibanists do when they get power is shove women into chadors or burqas. That’s not news.
Found the comment – from September 2004. So it’s not just hindsight. It’s being repetitive, instead! I am repetitive – I say the same things over and over. But if they need saying…what else can one do?
outeast: read more carefully. I didn’t endorse the cited explanation: I said it was an interesting observation. I followed that immediately by saying: “I wonder how true it is? Or, of how many it is true?”
OB: I read that comment but I don’t think I transferred it geographically.