Just dipping into the Pew report, here are some graphs that show the attitudinal differences between British Muslims and Muslims elsewhere in Europe:
Now to be honest, I'm a bit at a loss myself at the difference between Britain on the one hand and other European countries on the other. France in particular, with its recurring wildfires of riots in the suburbs, doesnt have a particularly good name after all, when it comes to race relations.
The example of France might tempt one into suggesting that there is something particularly good (or relatively less-bad) about the French model: accepting everyone who was born in France as true Frenchmen, but expecting assimilation, in particular to the secular state, in return. However, Germany - one of the other countries that apparently turn out to have relatively less hostile Muslims - is traditionally the archetypical example for the
opposite model: it was long extremely hard to become a German citizen, the right being based on lineage rather than place of birth, but in return immigrants were until recently left relatively at freedom to live how they wanted.
So what might be a common denominator that sets both and Spain apart from Britain?
I'm speculating, but perhaps it's that it's a mistake in the first place to assume that the kind of government policy automatically determines the outcome. There are other factors at play as well, after all.
For example: countries of origin. In Germany, the largest group of Muslims hails from Turkey. In France, they're most likely to be from Algeria. In Britain, that would be, I guess, Pakistan. That should make a difference. Pakistani culture is very different from Turkish culture. Even if we realise that the labour immigrants that came to Europe were mostly from the most backward (poorest) regions of their respective countries, the most underdeveloped regions in Pakistan are a lot more religiously conservative and insular still than their counterparts in Turkey.
There could be other determinators as well. London, for example, is a hub. A hub of global communication. Exile newspapers are published there, international Muslim organisations have main offices there, it functions as a nerve centre for information, organisation and mobilisation. That should make London's Muslim communities much more vulnerable to outside/global agitators than their relatively more insular counterparts in Germany.
Mind you, German Turks are closely connected to Turkey, reading Turkish newspapers, watching Turkish TV etc; but then, a) Turkish media are mostly secular and b) the Turkish community, in Holland too, seems mostly self-contained at least ethnically, stable in its strong community ties, with relatively little influence from global, pan-Islamic actors. (I'm thinking out loud here, so no links or stats, just my take).
Dutch Moroccans, on the other hand, for example, are characterised by very fragmented community ties and family ties. While among Turks, fathers and figures of authority appear to still wield enough power to keep the community relatively isolated but also restrained, among Moroccans there's a greater sense of unhingedness, especially re young men. Fathers unable to exert authority over their sons like in the old days, Arabic- or Berber-language, home country-oriented community structures that are unable to 'catch' the young men too, and a Dutch society that, as these kids drop out of school and into crime, doesnt even want them, all conspire to create prime targets for radical Islamist agitators posing as ersatz fathers and figures of authority.
So - there's a lot of differences between Muslim groups, between and within European countries, that have nothing to do with the national policy of the government, is what I want to say. But which the government in turn does have to respond to and deal with.
Britain might simply have a harder boat to row, is my impression, with London a magnet for international and global organisation and agitation, and a Muslim population that is both (even) more diverse and, possibly, from especially problematic regions than that in other countries (on that one I'm mostly thinking Northern Pakistan). So you have to take that into account before immediately assuming the findings discredit British
policy.
And thats aside from my previous question how someone who blames British "appeasement" (and that includes Pipes when he writes that "The situation in Britain reflects the "Londonistan" phenomenon, whereby Britons preemptively cringe and Muslims respond to this weakness with aggression") would explain the milder disposition of Muslims in other countries that dont have especially harsher policies. (Now, if they'd included Holland and Denmark, the countries with the arguably harshest policies, that would have been interesting.)
