Less than a year ago, immigration into the UK had never been higher, yet public concern about it had rarely been lower. In the 12 months up to October 2023, non-British arrivals totalled a record 1.16 million, double the level three years before, when former prime minister Boris Johnson had quietly loosened immigration policy to offset the effects of Brexit.
Non-EU citizens accounted for most of the total. Before Brexit, they had been fewer than half.
Also in October 2023, the number of people saying immigration was the most important issue facing the country dropped to 20 per cent in a tracking survey by YouGov. This figure had fallen steadily from a peak of 71 per cent just after the 2015 EU referendum. It had been a consistent 50 per cent in the years prior to the vote. Observers marvelled at how the UK had apparently put its Brexit-linked immigration concerns behind it. There was speculation that unprecedented levels of immigration had become acceptable because people felt the UK had “taken back control”. This has all been forgotten amid a fresh surge of alarm. The tracking figure has risen back up to 41 per cent.
The turning point, unmissable on YouGov’s charts, is the October 7th attack on Israel.
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Freedom to practise their religion is what British Muslims value most about the UK, according to multiple surveys
The scale and intensity of the protests that followed have caused a backlash against both immigration and the UK’s 4 million Muslim citizens. Tentative progress on understanding Islam in Britain has been thrown into reverse. As an illustration, footage flooded social media last week of Ashura processions in London, Glasgow and other British cities. Ashura is an annual Islamic festival of mourning or commemoration, sometimes featuring dramatic scenes of self-flagellation. Many videos were posted disapprovingly, as if they self-evidently showed streets being taken over by a community incapable or unwilling to integrate. In reality, they showed integration at work.
Freedom to practise their religion is what British Muslims value most about the UK, according to multiple surveys. This in turn underpins their unusually strong sense of British national identity. An Ipsos Mori review of all polling research on British Muslims in 2018 found only British Sikhs and Northern Ireland Protestants are more likely to describe themselves as British. Partly this is because they do not relate to Englishness, just as the Protestants do not relate to Irishness. As with the Protestants, that does not make their Britishness any less sincere.
Muslims in western countries are sometimes accused of putting their religion first, as an insinuation of disloyalty. Ipsos Mori found British Muslims do rank religion first in their sense of identity, but this operates in tandem with their Britishness, rather than in opposition to it, with 95 per cent saying they feel “loyal” to Britain. They are significantly likelier than the British public as a whole to say their national identity is important to their sense of who they are. They are also likelier to say they are “satisfied with the way democracy works in this country”. To the accusation they are more Muslim than British, Muslims can counter they are still more British than the average Briton.
Modern British society struggles to value religious freedom in practice. People who support it in principle can still react badly to shouty preachers, ultra-conservative views and unfamiliar rituals in the street. What passes for British secularism can be a kind of lapsed Anglicanism, with little thought behind it.
British Muslims see religious freedom differently. They value it not only in terms of their faith, but of their national minority status, the sectarianism and repression they might experience in Islamic countries and the trend towards restrictions elsewhere in Europe, such as bans on headscarves in public or religious symbols in the workplace.
The Ashura festival is a perfect example. Sunnis and Shias observe it in diametrically opposed ways, sometimes leading to antagonism and violence in other countries. The freedom to mark it safely in the UK is treasured, although this is not some fairy tale of integration. British authorities must protect that safety from imported and home-grown hatreds. There are plenty of people keen to stir the pot, or just too ignorant to distinguish a religious ceremony from a political demonstration. Nor can religion, like immigration, be tolerated without limit.
The sudden rise in inter-communal tensions in the UK is a tragedy and potentially a disaster. In the general election earlier this month, a “Muslim vote” movement emerged in response to the Gaza conflict that may become a permanent feature on the political landscape. Parallels with Northern Ireland have been widely made, but they should not be overdone. Northern Ireland is divided by national identity; for most of its people, the religious aspect of this division is little more than a coincidence.
National identity unites British Muslims with their compatriots. The key to building on that success is to take its religious aspect seriously.