UK Muslim population, young and 'confident'
Categories: Latest News
Friday January 10 2014
The Independent and the Daily Telegraph both repeat The Times (£) front page story today on figures from the 2011 Census that show that almost a tenth of babies and toddlers in England and Wales are Muslim. The papers note that of the 3.5 million children aged 0-4 years, 320,000, or 9%, are Muslim. This is in contrast to the proportion of Muslims in the population as a whole, where British Muslims make up almost 5% of the UK population.
The 2011 census figures show there were 3.5 million children aged 0-4 of whom 43 per cent, or 1.5 million, were Christians, remaining the largest religious group. There are also 1.2 million (34.1%) stated as having ‘no religion’. The population across all ages amounted to 56 million of which 58.8% were Christian, 24.7% had no religion and 4.8% were Muslim.
The Daily Telegraph describes Britain’s demographic shifts as ‘startling’ considering the percentage of Muslims under the age of five is almost twice that of the general population. The shift in demographic trends are noted in the age distribution of the Muslim population, with only one in 200 Muslims aged 85. The results confirm the Census 2011 results which show British Muslims to have the youngest age profile of all UK faith groups.
Shaykh Ibrahim Mogra, of the Muslim Council of Britain, tells the paper, “This generation [of Muslims] is very much British. They feel very much this is their home. It’s not about Britain becoming a Muslim country but about Britain enabling the practice of Islam”.
The point about ‘Eurabia’ – the fear of Muslims outnumbering the native population, is addressed in The Times with the paper citing Professor David Voas who, noting the ‘low level of falling away from religion among Muslims’ tells the paper that there is no prospect of Muslims becoming a majority in Britain.
Fears of ‘Eurabia’ are nonetheless present with an Ipsos Mori poll last year showing the degree to which the general population overestimated the size of the British Muslim population as a proportion of the total. “On average, respondents thought that 24% of the [UK] population was Muslim.”
The issue of religious nurture among Muslim families was the subject of research study undertaken by academics at Cardiff University’s Centre for the Study of Islam in the UK. The research shows the higher level of transmission of religious nurture and learning in Muslim families. The results show that 77% of adult Muslims actively practise the faith they were brought up in, compared with 29% of Christians and 65% of other religions. Furthermore, 62% of Christian children surveyed had the same religion of their parents, compared with 98% of Muslims and 89% of other religions.
Professor Voas also tells the paper that it was not ‘inconceivable’ that observant Muslims could outnumber praticising Christians.
On national identity, an analysis conducted by the Centre on Dynamics of Ethnicity (CDoE) last year showed Muslims are more likely than Christians to identify as British (57% as compared to 15%). A poll by Demos in 2011 revealed that 83% of Muslims agreed with the statement, ‘I am proud to be a British citizen’ compared to 79% among the general populace.
The Times also notes that “fast growing Muslim families are making their mark on society”, and lists the growing number of Muslim schools, mosques and business ventures catering for the community.
Danny Lockwood, publisher of a local paper in Batley, West Yorkshire, which has a significant Muslim population, tells The Times, “When the families manage to keep their young people close to them, there is a great work ethic and their children are incredibly high achievers.”
Something evident in this story from the Stoke Sentinel earlier this week reporting the outstanding Ofsted review for a Muslim Academy school in Staffordshire.