About Muslims in Western countries

Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | What young British Muslims say can be shocking - some of it is also true

This article suggests that maybe Muslims have a point in their complaint about some aspects of Western society (in this case, British society in particular):

Particularly among younger Brits in urban areas, which is where most British Muslims live, we drink more alcohol faster, sleep around more, live less in long-lasting, two-parent families, and worship less, than almost anyone in the world. It's clear from what young British Muslims themselves say that part of their reaction is against this kind of secular, hedonistic, anomic lifestyle. If women are reduced to sex-objects, young Muslim women say, I would rather cover up. Theirs is almost a kind of conservative feminism. Certainly, it's a socially conservative critique of some aspects of British society, particularly visible in their generation, in the urban neighbourhoods where they live.

And the critique is nuanced. Half those asked for the Channel 4 programme thought Muslim girls should make up their own minds whether to wear the hijab to school. Nearly a third of female respondents felt there was some truth in the idea that Islam treats women as second-class citizens. (The men just couldn't see it. Now I wonder why ... ) And a majority said that British society treats women with respect.....

The idea that these young British Muslims might actually be putting their fingers on some things that are wrong with our modern, progressive, liberal, secular society; the idea that rational persons might freely choose to live in a different, outwardly more restricted way; these hardly feature in everyday progressive discourse. But they should.

A fair enough point really, although of course one has to be careful not to let this argument turn into an excuse for militancy and murder within a society which (after all) they themselves chose to move to.

The ironic thing is that commentators who most vigourously promote understanding of the Muslim perspective are usually of the Western Left, which (at least in its current form) is the side most likely to promote the social issues like gay rights and laissez faire feminism which would most offend the conservative Muslims.

It may be difficult for conservative parties to make political mileage out of it (because they don't want to be seen as bending to a Muslim agenda), but there is an argument that voting conservative in Western countries is more likely to lead to less alienated Muslims within that country.

(OK - maybe that doesn't work in the US, because Republicans went into Iraq and are currently identified more closely with Israel than under the Democrats. And in Australia and Britain, conservative parties are not so socially conservative anymore. At least some of them draw a line at gay marriage, I suppose, and take a more pragmatic view of feminism. The difference is perhaps only marginal, but I still think it has some validity.)