IMPORTING THE SUPERIOR CULTURE:

Britain should integrate into Muslim values: The moral code my parents instilled in me could help counter this country's culture of rampant disrespect (Sarfraz Manzoor, January 4, 2007, The Guardian)

It is easy to dismiss Muslim parents as old-fashioned and traditional, but when the rest of the country is busy wondering how to respond to a culture of rampant disrespect, it is worth considering whether they could learn from Muslim values. Muslim children are more likely to be brought up in two-parent families rather than the single-parent households that are increasingly common in Britain.

Muslim parents also tend to be less interested in child-centred parenting and more into parent-centred parenting. For example, when I was growing up there was no possibility of answering back to my parents, and this was accompanied by an all-pervasive fear of letting them down. This was a model of parenting that put great faith in deference and, while at the time it felt regressive, it was also what kept my generation in check.

My father often used the threat of "what might the community say?" as a weapon to control my rebellious teenage desires. I resented the power that this community had over me, but it is only now that I can appreciate its value. The knowledge of the hardship our parents had endured, alongside their old-fashioned attitudes towards parenting, meant most second-generation Muslims simply did not have the opportunity or desire to cause trouble. Instead we were conditioned not to get mad at whites but to get even, by making something of our lives.

Many members of my parents' generation may have been uneducated, employed in manual labour and unable even to speak English, but they raised their children to value values. They instilled in them a strong moral code, in which children's greatest fear was of bringing shame on their family. Their children learned that responsibility to their parents does not end at the age of 18. That is why so many British Muslims live in extended families today; why my brother lives next door to my mother so that his children can see their grandmother every day; and why our mother does not feel abandoned and useless in her old age. If the greatest weakness of the Muslim community has been its insularity, then that has also been the source of its greatest strengths.

As the clamour for British Muslims to integrate grows louder, it is worth remembering that, amid all the negatives arising from living inside a tightly knit community, there are also positives worth retaining - the greater the integration, the weaker the sense of community. It is the third generation - those in their teens and 20s who have been raised by parents often more liberal than my parents' generation - who are the young men and women now tarnishing the reputation of British Muslims.

Whether the danger is religious extremism, drugs or crime, those involved are largely third-generation Muslims who are so integrated into white society that they are emulating its worst characteristics. Integration did not save them, it created them.

A nation whose Archbishop is proud to be a druid can hardly become Muslim fast enough.

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 4, 2007 1:58 PM