Young Muslims in the UK: Education and Integration A briefing paper for the FES/ippr seminar By Jodie Reed, ippr December 2005 In the last five years, western policy-makers have addressed the question of what to do about young Muslims with a new sense of urgency. The UK’s history of “multicultural” politics and policies has not rendered her immune to emerging concerns about integration. On the contrary, two particular sets of events have given this issue a political resonance in the UK to match that of any other country. The first set of events was rioting in the summer of 2001 across three towns in the north of England. Hundreds of people were injured and over£30 million of damage done in disturbances in Bradford, Burnley and Oldham involving young Muslims. Though much of the violence was stirred up by right wing extremists, the resulting inquiries also identified deep-rooted and fundamental fault lines that ran through these deprived communities. They found these were that these were“shockingly” divided communities(Richie, 2001) leading“parallel lives”(Cantle, 2001). They also concluded that the areas were affected by high unemployment, lack of a strong cultural identity and disenfranchisement of young people(Denham, 2001). Immediately, the debate was focused around questions about the integration and education of underprivileged Muslim communities. The second set of events was the London bombings of July 2005. Since 9/11 there had been a heightened vigilance around Muslims who might be deemed to represent a terrorist threat but, this was largely directed at foreign nationals. To the surprise of many, the four perpetrators of the London bombings of 7 th July 2005 were all British citizens, born and brought up in England. Concerns around the identity and integration of UK Muslims resurfaced. Yet the story of the 7/7 bombers is very different to the story of the story of those who rioted in 2001. Three of the four men were educated to degree level and all were from middle class backgrounds. Consequently, the messages for education policy-makers are distinct from those being asked in 2001. They go beyond underachievement and social exclusion, to raise more profound concerns around cultural disaffection. 1