The Muslim News - British Muslims youth, seen but not heard

Issue 245, Friday 25 September 2009 - 6 Sha'ban 1430

British Muslims youth, seen but not heard

By Sughra Ahmed

They appeared a little apprehensive at first, shuffling and wondering, as if a new teacher had walked in for the term. But no sooner had pleasantries been exchanged, despite placing my voice recorder in the centre, postures began to change. We were now a group of plugged-in minds and eager voices, attentive postures and regional English, Scottish and Welsh accents.

This was one focus group of many for a major new study of Britain’s Muslim youth Seen and Not Heard: Voices of Young British Muslims, published by the Policy Research Centre, which explored some of the key concerns and challenges facing Britain’s young Muslims. That’s quite a task given the facts: according to Census data, the average Muslim is 28 years old (which is 13 years below the national average), roughly half are below the age of 25 and one third is 16 or younger. Moreover, intense public, media and policy interest, from a mainly security angle, has meant that print rollers have been in constant revolution, reporting on the young (angry and male) British Muslim. Even Google Images is awash with images of angst and problems. Why then a nationwide trek to discover what everyone must surely know?

Much may be written about young Muslims, and more still is swapped across scathing blogs that stem from reports, but when you peel away at the surface, it isn’t usually the voices of young people themselves, but others speaking about them - or for them. It’s almost become an industry and yet rarely are we hearing their own voices. And young Muslims know it all too well.

Women are also largely forgotten in most research ventures on young Muslims, which typically dwell on sole inner city concentrations that already have a fair dose of ‘research fatigue’. It’s an easier route but by accessing male voices from a single concentration spot to speak for young people across Britain, research projects can inadvertently perpetuate stereotypes (less than 5% of British Muslims live in Bradford).
The gender bias aside, what does surface, as a look in, is all too often through the security lens. We are used to hearing about young Muslims in the context of radicalisation, but their lives are far more complex (and, it should be clear – quite removed from debates around extremism). There is an untold story of intergenerational tensions, failure of community leadership and also alienation from institutions of wider society.
Seen and Not Heard is the result of 18 months of trekking, listening and analysis that brings together the views – the thoughts, aspirations and frustrations – held by British Muslims of over 15 ethnicities, from across England, Scotland and Wales. It provides a channel to female and male voices, on how they feel they are perceived and how others talk about them. So what are we not hearing?
Young Muslims feel strongly that ‘we’, which can be taken to mean you, I and the rest, do not see them as they see themselves: as basically modern young people. Almost in chorus, they stress that we should not regard them as living in a contradiction between their religious and national identities.
These identities (note the plural) are in a sort of whirling negotiation, sometimes subconsciously, as they respond to discourses, experiences and pressures that seem to hound the complex lives of young people. The young people described their modern life as surrounded by communication gaps, particularly when it came to intergenerational gaps within their own communities. They also feel largely disconnected from community organisations and leadership.
Self-identification for young Muslims was not just about negotiating the big mad world of politics, or even organised religion for that matter. There is a strong sense of localised identity in young adults, whose grandparents may have had migratory roots but they have lived local lives. Scottish participants were expressly Scottish and proud. But this was also partly connected to acceptance.
The Muslim Youth Helpline, which provides a confidential counselling service to Muslim youth (albeit primarily in the London area), finds that relationships and mental health related issues are among the uppermost reasons for its callers, a third of whom are 16 to 19 year olds. The pressures of life upon young Muslims are yielding social and emotional disorders for a number too great to ignore. More precise numbers cannot yet be established but, worryingly, the evidence available to date points to many young people feeling most of the existing mainstream service providers will not understand them.
The majority of young Muslims are showing sophisticated ways of negotiating complex patterns and relationships in their woven worlds. And an instinctive sense of pragmatism marks this negotiation.
Several young women spoke of having felt compelled to find Islam out for themselves in the face of scrutiny and surrounding discourses, but, in living out their new religious confidence, found the realities of the cultural understanding and expectations of their parents’ generation difficult terrain. Others, from both sexes, admitted to being faced with two starkly different lives – one life inside and one outside the home – as a way to negotiate the intergenerational challenges that, for them, was due to a communication divide, modern life and ways and community taboos.
It’s a complex tapestry of pictures, but young people feel a strong sense of patriotism and really want to do things to make their lives better. However, they also feel that their voices are not getting across to society. Did we hear that?
Sughra Ahmed is the author of the report Seen and Not Heard: Voices of Young British Muslims, and is Research Fellow at Policy Research Centre, Islamic Foundation..