When four British-born Muslims blew themselves up on the London transit system on July 7, 2005, many Britons were convinced that their country’s model of assimilation had failed. The attacks, coupled with a war on terror that seems to reveal an ever-widening gulf between Islam and the West, sparked talk of a crisis of integration, seen most clearly in the acute alienation of the country’s Muslim youth.
But for all the talk of crisis, a new Gallup World Poll finds that more binds the British majority with its religious minority than not. The greatest challenge of all may be in moving beyond minor, symbolic controversies in order to pave a path toward a shared future.
Identity Crisis
A 2006 Pew poll of the British public found that British Muslims, when asked to cite the source of their primary identity, overwhelmingly chose their faith, while the majority of the British public chose their country. The finding set off alarm bells in a nervous Britain still reeling from the 7/7 attacks and was widely cited as proof that the country suffers from a crisis of integration.
Similarly, our 2007 Gallup poll illustrates the importance of religion in the lives of London Muslims. The vast majority of Muslims say religion is an important part of their lives, compared with only slightly more than a third of the general public.
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