 Fel ydym gofio, rydw i, gwneud y brifatio i'w ddaeth yma, dr Matthew Wilkinson, ddwy'r syniad yn y ddweud yn y Ddweud ond dweud yr ystwymiad yng Nghymru a'r Ffilosofiïn Fyglwydol Fyrdiol. Fyddiol Toolbone, yn y ddownod. Fyddeollog yng Nghymru, mae'r fawr cyntaf, mae'r ffilosofiïn. Mae'r prif turning y gwaedddiamell yma yw calib ar arddigolion drwy'r forb wneugas llaw yn ymlaen â'u i'r wych ei ystyried fel hynny. Felly, mae'n gofynio gwahanol hwnnw a mynd o'r wneugas llaw a tychymydd o'r modd mewn tejw yw mwylo yn ymlaen, a ydych chi'n fyddwch i'r pheth, mae'n mynd i ei addangos oaf o'r prignoses sy'n cyffrous, mae'r sefydlu lle bobl yng Nghyrch Eistedd Gwllt-rwylo oherwydd yw'r pryn syniadau o'rwylliant â y mwylo oedd yn i fwyaf i'n bwydiffo'i gyrddau yma. I started my thinking life as an Anglican theologian. I then embraced Islam and became a Muslim Islamic Studies and History teacher. I am now still a Muslim, a philosopher of Islam in multi-faith societies. I'm also director of the research programme Curriculum for Cohesion, which is now proudly based at the Centre for Islamic Studies, SOAS. Our research programme examines the relationship between Islam and Muslims and the institutions and ideas that underpin multi-faith societies. So, for my critique, political ideology has tended to oscillate between assimilationists and multiculturalist models of integration. The right has tended to favour assimilation and the left multiculturalism. Both are inadequate models for authentic Muslim integration. Assimilationism unfairly privileges dominant secular, cultural, ethical and usually arreligious norms. It assumes that normative Islamic beliefs and behaviours are deficient when compared with a liberal, secularising worldview with its attendant values, assumptions and behaviours. By contrast, multiculturalist models homeostasise Islamic cultures as fixed and belonging to an ancestral homeland when in fact cultures of all types including Islamic and British ones are necessarily poorless and mutually transformative. Both these models are damaging to the ability of Muslims, especially to the young, to relate authentically and productively to British life since they locate Islam qua faith as essentially belonging elsewhere. Neither models takes account of the fact that the Muslim community is primarily a faith community and that any model of Muslim integration needs to be appropriate to the ontologies of faith. By contrast, a satisfactory model of Muslim integration would need to mobilise the intellectual spirit on cultural tools of the Islamic faith and it would need to reflect the fact that for many Muslims, especially third generation young British Muslims, to enact our faith is our way of being British. That is to say, Britain warts and all has provided us with the opportunity to be more completely and dynamically Muslim. So, within our Islamic community of faith, we already have some ready-made tools, Islamic tools, to help us in the necessary prophetic task of relating authentically and productively to our fellow compatriots and citizens. For example, applying the categories of Islamic jurisprudence law and the objectives of the Maqasid of the Sharia, the objectives of law, the principles that underlie the law. In the name of assimilation, we can never, for example, make permitted what God has forbidden. We cannot assimilate happily into alcoholic drinking cultures and permissive sexual cultures. However, equally importantly, there's a flipside to this. In the name of multicultural identity politics, we cannot make forbidden what God has permitted and this includes aesthetic cultures, cultures that encourage freedom of expression, albeit not as we've heard absolute ones in political democratic cultures. We cannot make these cultures forbidden either to us or to others. There are other legal categories of the recommended and the disliked, which can also help us to make nuanced choices about the elements of British majority cultures that we can embrace, elements that we need to transform and elements that we would do best to avoid. Within this conceptual toolbox, I want to focus primarily on contemporary philosophical theology of Islam, called Islamic critical realism, and its role in helping to develop the type of mindsets of Muslims who can be confident of the realities of faith, even in hostile environments, and yet open to the wisdoms, truths and learnings of those of other faiths and none. I take this form to be the basic form of Muhammad and his companions and of the authentically integrated British Muslim. So, what is Islamic critical realism? It is a philosophy of Islam which enables Muslims to engage with contemporary modernity with deep spiritual rationality. It is based on the seminal insights of critical realism philosophy as polite in particular to Islamic praxis. It foregrounds the power of human agency to transform the iniquities of structure. However, it does not demonise structure. Structure, for example, governance, are necessary, Islamic and potentially good, but also prone to hiata, split, corruption and negative absence. This foregrounding of agency is based upon the Quranic principle. God does not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves. So, there are five foundational principles of this systematic philosophical theology of Islamic critical realism, which, by the way, is fully outlined in my book, Fresh Look at Islam in a Multi-Faith World. The first is a meta-theoretical commitment to underlaboring. The second is a meta-theoretical commitment to philosophical and religious seriousness. The third is the application of the critical realism nature of the Quranic message in its totality, including the primacy of unity over duality. The fourth is an exploration of the critical realism nature of the divine message, and the fifth is the fact that the critical realism idea of dialectical change in the conditions of being was exemplified in the life and the person of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. So, the first principle underlaboring. The primary purpose of critical realism's thought is to underlabour, which means to be conceptual and philosophical clarity to other intellectual and practical causes by clearing away erroneous and redundant philosophical concepts. This philosophical commitment to, in John Locke's word, clearing the ground away and removing some of the rubbish that lies in the way to knowledge and to a comprehensive conception of the practices of human flourishing is precisely shared by Islam and its tradition of theological philosophy, both Calerm and Falserfa. Islamic theological philosophy was traditionally the creative interface between the revelation of the Quran and the injunctions of the Sunnah and the contemporary novel circumstances in which the Muslim community found itself as it expanded. As such, like the edifice of Islamic practice itself, Islamic philosophical theology has traditionally underlaboured the recovery of human wellbeing through knowledge of God and through enlightened human relationships. Islamic critical realism likewise intends to provide a radical bridgehead between the post-enlightment intellectual conditions of modernity and the eternal revealed principles of the Islamic faith. The second foundational principle of this system is what I call seriousness, philosophical seriousness. Islam and critical realist thoughts are philosophically serious. That is to say they demand a knowledge practice consistency which is essential to their very nature. Islam in its authentic manifestations is characterised by religious seriousness. As to say in Islam, belief for knowledge are inextricably interpenetrated with practice. For example, the phrase, those who believe are those who believe and do right action is the most frequently repeated of all Quranic like motif. As Cardiad of Granada has explained in this partnership, the Arabic pronoun wa indicates an intrinsic partnership and not an extrinsic relationship. Islam authentically understood is serious religiously committed to a doctrinal belief. You have also committed to a set of practices. It is the interpenetration of practice and belief in a way that is consistent with one's lived circumstances that generates the human relationship with God. Similarly, critical realism has demanded philosophical seriousness in knowledge practice consistency right from its start. Critical realist thinkers, for example Baskar, its founding figure critiques Hume's denial of the ontology of causal laws and deep natural structures and Hume to state, there was no reason why he should not leave a building by the first story window at least 50% of the time, but of course he never did this. Thus, Hume in actualism and postmodernist derivatives of it extrude thought from the experience of the world and are therefore philosophically unserious. Extreme Islamisms do the same. They extrude Islam from the lived conditions of contemporary life. By contrast, the marriage of philosophical and religious seriousness is at the beating heart of Islamic critical realism. The third principle is the principle of Islamic critical realism grounded in the core critical realist understanding of reality. Five minutes. The core grounded in three interrelated principles, ontological realism, epistemological relativism, judgmental rationalism as applied to the dimension of the spirit. By the principle of ontological realism, that being exists independently of knowing, for example the sun and the experience of it did not change in a heliocentric or geocentrally described universe. God can be said or not to exist independently of a knowledge of him. Likewise unseen spiritual realities, the human divine spirit can be said to exist independently of our knowledge or belief or lack of it in them. Ontological realism about God does not claim a priori that God exists, although of course as a Muslim I believe he does. But the fact and the realities of his existence are not dependent on our knowledge and belief in them. Therefore ontological realism about God makes God talk philosophically plausible and indeed necessary. Relatedly in this discussion, epistemological relativism pertains to the different faith traditions and perspectives within faith traditions that pertain to and direct their gaze at the realities of faith. In this understanding or interpretations of the ontology of faith are subject to radical human fallibility and the potential to be wrong, which does not mean that the ontological realities to which they refer to does not exist. In other words, by the principle of epistemological relativism the fact that God has been known differently does not mean that God does not exist or that the God that exists is different. So the compatibility of these two things ontological realism and epistemological relativism necessitate judgmental rationality. There must be and can be discovered effective ways of choosing or distinguishing between one mode of spiritual access as opposed to another. In Islam, for example, systematic theology, philosophy, contextual exegesis and understanding of culture are all the traditional tools of judgmental rationality. Therefore it is possible with the Islamic Criticories ffocrum to claim both that God has accessed and been accessed through a variety of traditions and to choose one tradition as opposed to another while still drawing on the insights and understandings of other faiths. In the perennialist language we can allow for the fact that many paths lead to God without thinking that they are all equally effective or truthful roots. Thus the ffocrum of critical realism can be the critical framework for allowing young people to justify and take confidence from the divine ontology of their faith while accepting the potential fallibility of all interpretive statements about faith and accepting the need to learn from the insights of others of other faiths and none. How long have I got? You have three minutes. My fourth principle is that the Quran is a critical realist document. This does not of course mean that God Almighty was a critical realist. But it is to say that the Quran in its totality presents a critical realist vision of the universe. According to the Quran, the universe and its natural and social structures including nations, tribes and the individual soul are real. The Quran says we have created the heavens and the earth and everything in between them with truth and reality, knowable being, Bill Huck. The Quran speaks of the stratified ontological stages and emergence of the creation. Yet the reality of these things, existent though they are, can only be apprehended through deep spiritual and intellectual reflexivity and evidenced investigations. Critical rationality is a core quality of authentic Quranic belief. Unthinking belief or blind following is not an Islamic state of mind. Reality, existent as it is described by the Quran, demands not only that we be critical but also that we be self-critical. Finally, it is credible to make the claim that the mission of the Prophet Muhammad was critically realist. That is to say, he was intellectually critical in the way that he applied Islamic teaching to enable the behaviour of enlightened individuals to transform social structures. He was realist in understanding that they should not be dismantled abruptly if the message of divine unity was to be apprehended and to have enduring appeal. The prosecution of his message was that the paradigmatic, dialectic development described by critical realists in being in history. The moment of distinction is the moment of non-identity of distinction. Belief is distinguished from unbelief. Truth is distinguished from falsehood. Social welfare is distinguished from social neglect and malpractice. This leads to the second dialectical phase, absence. Non-identity with tribal beliefs and practices results in an absence of recognition, a loss of social position and physical persecution for the person of Prophet Muhammad. This absence generates radical change in the form of the emigration to Yathrib, which becomes Medina, the place of totality, which leads to the third dialectical stage, totality, internally related being, where Islam is enacted in its totality, Muammal et, Ibadet, as the totality of relations, and the constitutional brotherhood of all Abrahamic faiths is declared. This leads at the fourth dialectical level to transformative practice whereby the whole behaviour of the Arabian peninsula is changed. I will have 20 seconds, thank you. Thus, the example of Muhammad, thus delineated, can help young Muslims understand that a peaceful engagement with transforming society does not mean being consigned to passivity, persecution or marginality. Through this model, we can apprehend that it is not an excess of Islamic practice that has hindered authentic integration, but an absence of Islamic practice and an excess of Islamic identity that have been the obstacles. So, in summary, my final slide. Thus, Islamic critical realism applied through education can help young Muslims engage authentically with the multi-faith world by fulfilling the traditional role of philosophical theology. It can be the basis for a Muslim citizen who both retains a critical distance from and is deeply engaged with and belongs to British life. If you want to read more, can I recommend my book, A Fresh Look at Islam in a Multi-faith World? Thank you all very much for listening. Thank you. Thanks very much, Dr Wilkinson. Our next speaker is Professor Jorgen Nielsen from the University of Copenhagen on how European is the British Muslim experience a comparative reflection. Please welcome Professor Nielsen. Thank you very much. The University of Copenhagen is true enough, but it's a bit misleading. I live in Birmingham. It's been very interesting these two days. If one had listened to all these conversations and contributions, just as they stand, one would think that Britain is already out of the EU. I think it's very useful in this kind of conversation to have a perspective from outside and to have a look at what the situation in Europe looks like but also comparatively how it compares with Britain. I'm going to be chased up in now nine minutes with a statement that I've got five minutes left. So I'm going to have to squeeze a heck of a lot into a very short time. When I first moved to Copenhagen University in 2007, I was very soon after had a meeting with the British ambassador. Much to my surprise, he told me that they had a staff member who had a watching brief on Danish integration projects, local and national. I thought, given everything that one says around Europe about the British experience with immigrants and ethnic minorities and religious minorities, namely that Britain is way ahead of the rest of Europe, I found it interesting that the British embassy thought that he could learn something from this small country across the North Sea. When we talk about Britain and Europe comparatively, we are very often thrown into, especially from French voices, we are very often thrown into this dichotomy of British communitarianism against French individual citizenship. Just one example. The French laicite against the British system. The French laicite is more ideological than real. We forget that when 1905 religion and state were split in France, the state kept possession of the Catholic churches. So when Notre Dame today needs repairs, the state pays for it, a situation which the Church of England must envy, because they have to collect every single penny to do up York Minster. You could also compare, and I've heard it done in Germany quite often, a distinction between Britain, which has become increasingly secular, not just in the social sense, but in the legal sense, through the decisions of courts. You hear churches and Christians complain about being discriminated against by the courts. In fact, my suggestion would be that what's happening in Britain is that through these court cases, the courts are basically following a principle of equality between the religions, which means that, on the face of it, it looks as if the churches are being cut back, whereas the other newer religions are being favoured. I suppose in practice it must be a bit like that, but it is the principle of equality, whereas in most of mainland Europe, where the constitution agrees freedom of religion, the constitution do not guarantee equality of status among the religions. There are enormous dissimilarities across Europe. It gets up my nose when people start talking about Muslims in the West. Yeah, alright, but the moment you start getting any closer than a geostationary orbit, you very quickly begin to see such differences among European countries that it's very difficult to generalise. In Eastern Europe, you have a long tradition due to traditions of political control, you have a long tradition of state recognition of religious communities. Romania had a chief mufti in the communist period. But in the communist period, he had a monopoly of the control over the Muslim community. Of course, it was a means for state control in the Soviet systems, and these muftis in the various Soviet and Soviet satellite countries were almost invariably officers in the local KGB. In Scandinavia, you have national churches with different relations to the state. If you look at Danish statistics, you will find that 80% of the population are members of the national Lutheran church. It's a bit of a fraud because baptism is a kind of cultural right of passing and by baptism you become a member of the church. You'll be lucky to find 2% in the church on a Sunday. In some countries, there is significant public funding for religions, including increasingly for Islamic activities. In Belgium, Islam was recognised in 1974. In Austria, an old recognition from 1912 was renewed in 1979. In both cases, it entailed, although there have been practical difficulties in Belgium, it entailed public funding for Islamic religious education in schools. In Belgium, it entails that the public pays the salaries of priests, which forces the Muslim community to figure out what is a Muslim priest to be able to get their hands on to that funding. Germany finally accepted towards the end of the 1990s that it was a country of immigration, and within 20 years, the Muslim communities in a number of the German states are either close to recognition as a public body in the same status as the churches in the Jewish community, but certainly in a number of states have already gained recognition for the purposes of Islamic religious education in schools and to service that the federal government has put in five years of seed money into five universities for the development of courses in Islamic theology to train the teachers who have to teach this subject. And again in Laïciste, France, the central government pays the salaries of imams and priests in Alsace-Morsle, Alsace-Lorraine, because that had operated under that system after it was conquered by the Germans in 1870, and it was retained when it came back to France after the end of the First World War. Norway and Sweden, there is public funding for Muslim organisations. So we're dealing with a continental system where the variety, in many countries, there's a variety of various forms of public funding for recognised religious communities, which does include very often and increasing numbers, does include Muslims. Now across Europe, there are increasing number of common conditions. And what's driving this? From the outside, that is outside the Muslim communities, EC policies, European Commission policies, European Union policies are a major driver. Policies towards harmonisation. Yes, the status of religion and the relationship between religion and state in the various European Union member countries is under the authority of the state, it is outside the competence of the European Commission in Brussels, but there are constantly regulations and policies being introduced have been, which indirectly have an impact on the status of religions and thereby also on the living conditions of Muslims. The most well-known one is, I think it's 2000, the directive on employment and training where discrimination on the basis of religion, among other things, was banned. It's taken some years for various countries to introduce that directive into their national legislation, but as it has been introduced in Britain and various other countries, it is impacting quite markedly through court cases on the situation on the ground. International events have driven the discourse and the practice quite significantly, ranging from the obvious of Islam going up the horizon of attention, starting with the Iranian Revolution and going through events ever since. There was a world before 9-11. It's not just 9-11 has changed things. There were a lot of things going on before 9-11 served in my view to confirm rather than to start new developments. What nobody has talked about either in these two days is the current refugee situation. This is, well, you can thank Cameron and his attitude to the camps in Calais for the fact that this doesn't seem to have impacted much on British domestic discussion. But you don't have to go far from the channel before you run into it head first. Pegida, in Germany, is being strengthened enormously. The right-wing nationalist parties of Scandinavia are being strengthened. Hedvildas is having a whale of a time in the Netherlands because of this perceived, actual perceived threat of hundreds of thousands of, well, Syrians, Afghans or whatever. They are all Muslim, aren't they? The fact that 10% of the Syrians or more may be Christian is neither here nor there. They are all Muslim. And it's really skewing the political debate towards the right. There's been a drift towards the right anyway for the last 20 or so years, if not more, but certainly the last 20 years. But this last year, that rightward shift has become distinctly dangerous. And that feeds in, then, to the driver of securitisation. The security debate and security measures taken by European governments are harmonised in practice through Brussels. And we have got to the position where, across Europe, I think one has to accept that the only way legitimately to be a Muslim in Europe is to be a pacifist Muslim. A contradiction in terms, not only for Muslims but also for most Christians with possibly the exception of Quakers. There are drivers internally from within the Muslim community. The Muslim communities came first when they arrived in Western Europe as ethnic communities, as national communities. They came as Algerians, Kashmiris, Pashtuns, Turks, Kurds, and so on and so forth. But increasingly, with the passage of time and the passage of generations, they have become, are becoming Muslims. There is a shared Islamic identity developing across Europe, which is replacing, or is it becoming? It is replacing the ethnic identities of the past or is it becoming a new ethnic identity? And this shared Islamic identity across Europe is beginning to show impacts of a harmonising nature. It is the same agendas, the same pressures, the same objectives that active Muslims are working for in various Muslim countries. And in doing so, in the last ten years we are beginning to see growing networks of Muslim co-operation across European borders. Now that's new. Thirty years ago, Muslim political activism took place in the local authority areas, because that's where you had to go to get the immediate benefits. Gradually it expanded to the national level and the increased membership of Muslims, of participation of Muslims in national politics, representation in parliaments and so on. Now it's going transnational within the European communities, especially encouraged by article 7 of the Lisbon Treaty, which requires that the European Union establish some kind of regular relationship with the religious communities, and not only the churches, the religious communities of Europe. Finally, I would suggest that we are seeing emerging of Eastern Europe with Western Europe, not just politically, emerging of outlooks. In Eastern Europe we had a long history of authoritarian regimes, variously fascist, then after the Second World War communist, and there's a sense across, for example, the Balkans that the old national rivalries had been subsumed into the shared dictatorship of the proletariat. In Western Europe after the Second World War there's a sense that after many decades, generations of religious and national contests, we had finally figured out and become comfortable with what it meant being French or Dutch or Danish or German. The last 30 years that has been upset, since 1990 especially. Time up. The national rivalries of the Balkans resurfaced. They had not been subsumed by something in common. The growth of multicultural populations through immigration in Western Europe meant that the comfort of what we thought was our national identity had been upset. Suddenly on both sides of Europe, on both sides of what used to be the Iron Curtain, issues of citizenship, religion, national identity, participation, et cetera, et cetera, were now open to question again. I took part in a seminar in the European Parliament in the 1990s. One of the parties had discovered that Muslims were also voters, so they had a day seminar on Muslims in Europe. The various parties from the various countries that had invited Muslim representatives to take part. It was lovely to see, for example, all these Turkish participants from France and from Germany, from the Netherlands and from Britain all greeting each other like long lost brothers. Professor Nelson, can I ask you to wrap up please? Pardon? 20 seconds. 20 is fine. It was lovely to see them greet each other like long lost friends. The moment the discussion started, the German Turks wanted concepts clarified. The French Turks philosophised. The British Turks asked whether it works. Within one generation, I would dare to suggest they had actually become integrated. Thank you. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Argil Ahmed, the head of BBC Religion and Ethics, and a man who has to grapple with the reality of our theory and how to apply it to something concrete on screen. Please give a warm welcome to Argil Ahmed. I thought I was last. Adam Planned. I feel like a bit of a fraud here today because I am a professor but a professor of media and professors of media just talk rubbish but not in a non-academic way. So today I'm going to speak about integration but from integration from a point of view of not so much the things that you would have heard and I'm really sorry that I've not been here for the past two days so I don't actually really know if I'm going to be repeating what people have said but effectively the thing for me that I want to talk about is, well, it's about me really and what I do and what people like me do and the problems that we have trying to put integration into practice for a mass audience. So there's something I'm just going to get out of the way at the start and that is I'm not talking about narrow casting. So people who are professional Muslims or in the world of broadcasting or the media if they're talking to themselves, if we're talking about very narrow small newspapers, magazines, websites, TV channels, et cetera, that's narrow casting and there's nothing wrong with narrow casting but I'm just going to be ignoring that for a time being and I'm going to talk about broadcasting which is actually dealing with that wider group of people, people who may not necessarily share your background, your perspectives, your knowledge or your interests and that's the world that sadly I live in which makes it very, very hard. In the past about 14 or 15 years I've been involved in the world of religion and ethics and before that I was primarily a current affairs producer and then somebody asked me if as a young executive producer in the BBC News and Current Affairs I was asked to be executive producer a season on Islam and this was going to be the BBC's first ever season on Islam and if any of you can remember it because we were old enough to remember it about 14 or so years ago it had the first ever documentary on the haj and we had everything from a Jules Holland special on music through to the history of Islam, et cetera, et cetera and it was great. I dedicated 11 months of my life to that I thought I'd done something fantastic and I then went back to current affairs and then about three or four days later 9-11 happened and so the whole world changed and the whole world changed that day for people even in the world of religious broadcasting on that point onwards someone like me suddenly became more important simply because in religious broadcasting there hadn't really been anything other than, say, Christian broadcasting and that's not to be used in any kind of derogwstu way it's simply to say the world we lived in was a world of songs of praise and ethical documentaries and I ended up working looking after a series called Every Man if any of you are old enough to remember Every Man I looked after Every Man and this was big flagship documentary kind of output but we still weren't making programs that may feel relevant so I looked after Every Man in a post 9-11 world and we didn't know programs about Islamic terrorism or about et cetera because they didn't even though we are told by lots of lazy journalists have interviewed me over the years and academics as well and students for their dissertations et cetera and they all asked the same question which is the events of 9-11 and 7-7 and the war in Iraq et cetera and all those things must have made your job easier because there's more of an interest in religion and I always come back with the same point which is you can say this and you can write this but it's not a reality and the reality is at the BBC and I then went to Channel 4 a couple of years after 9-11 I was the commissioner for religion the programs I inherited at Channel 4 I think two years after 9-11 were programs I think the last three programs were a program on two athletes at the Commonwealth Games in Manchester who happened to be Christian the Joanna Southcott Society if any of you know what that means there's a few people nodding you may have watched it because nobody else did and I think the final film was a film about evangelical clubbers in Ibiza this is two years the interesting thing about evangelical clubbers in Ibiza is that's what I called a 12th of I met them on the 12th of September those same people when I was looking after everyone they came to see me on the 12th of September I'd arranged the meeting very excited about this idea and on the 12th of September it seemed like the most ridiculous idea on earth at 10th of September they would have got the commission from the BBC they met somebody at Channel 4 in between that period he thought it was a great idea but that's how fickle and shallow life can be you can make a decision based on what's around you so anyway I inherited this kind of world and what we have done is try to understand the world that we live in so coming from a background of current affairs coming from a background of history, politics all the things that I studied I felt there had to be an understanding we had to understand what was going on and that is involved with using the kind of contacts and knowledge and experience and friendships and incredible great filmmakers and journalists that they know we then went along and we made programmes such as Inside the Mind of a Suicide Bomber The Failed Palestine Suicide Bombers The Cult of the Suicide Bomber you name it, we've had Emmy nominations and all sorts for these particular kind of programmes and culminating in a really interesting piece of research when I was at Channel 4 about 7 or 8 years ago which was the audiences started to dip for the Cult of the Suicide Bomber and all those programmes and you've got two options at that point one is which to carry on or you think about why those audiences dipped the research came back to me was that well they're fascinated now about the mechanics of what's going on now they want to know the reality of what's going on with regards to why would somebody want to do this is there something in their faith there is a lack of understanding of their faith and further research told us that the audiences that like programmes like history for the sake of argument would be interested in religion but they wanted to understand what religion had to do with the world and not necessarily how it manifested itself in say suicide bombing or whatever was the issue 10 years ago but how it explained that world and that's why whether it was regards to Christianity we did a huge series called Christianity of History 8 part series on Channel 4 or we did the Quran which was the first ever film on the Quran in the west which if any of you can remember that we went out on Channel 4 a couple of million viewers that people at the time sold all around the world and it obviously explained the story of the Quran to a non-muslim audience and to a muslim audience for that matter as well but also explored what some of the basic issues that people wanted to know about today such as the role of Islam and women or the role etc or the role of conflict in Islam what the Quran had to say about any of that so it had some direct relevance to today and that's one of the things that I picked up from that kind of knowledge from that kind of research which was we can go along making programs for those who know nothing to narrowcast but when you're broadcasting you're making programs for a whole load of people and you want to integrate that knowledge with people but you can't force it down you can't force them to watch a documentary on the Quran but you can somehow get 2 million people on Channel 4 just to put it into perspective at a time when Big Brother was getting about 3.5 million which is a huge amount for Channel 4 so to get 2 million people to tune in meant that they were tuning in because it meant something it was of relevance to them they had a thirst for that particular knowledge and when I came back to the BBC about 6 years ago I made a series which I've been trying to make for about 6 or 7 years which were on the life of the Prophet Prophet Muhammad and if any of you caught that that was again 9pm BBC 2 you're not making this for Muslims you're making it for them and actually quite frankly Muslims aren't watching any of these programs anyway that's the biggest thing that I've realised over the years so you're making it for non-Muslims and then we get into the whole conversation about how you do that and what is the reason for doing that it's because it's one of the best stories ever so this is the first ever series on the Prophet so the first ever program on the Quran the first ever program on the Prophet even before that the first ever program on the Hajj if you're really really old I did the investigation into corruption in the halal meat trade 25 years ago which to my shame the next day there was the creation of the halal food authorities and all those things so yes that little known secret big northern bloke here 25 years ago as a young boy did a BBC 2 documentary on halal meat and that's why you now have all these people making a fortune out of halal food authorities etc which didn't exist at that time but making that program all the way 25 years on to now is that program was made for Asians stroke Muslims but mainly for Asians now we don't make programs for Asians or Muslims when you're broadcasting you make it for a wider audience so you have to integrate the subject matter in for that wider audience but you're integrating that subject matter for an audience which has zero religious literacy the people watching the life of Muhammad on BBC 2 and there's about 1.8 million of them on whatever in her first episode on first transmission that's not 1.8 million people with any knowledge probably of the prophet these are figures which you wouldn't bet your mortgage on and they're not very scientific but effectively 1.8 million people you're making a program where we're having to explain to them a subject matter so that they can understand it and that makes it directly relevant to them and at times there'll be people who'll watch these programs and they'll say that doesn't mean anything to me and that's because I go back to that point about integration means something completely different in the world that I'm in which is it's my job to do a number of things and these current guys are being the head of religion for the BBC I say we have three particular things that we have to do where integration plays a part one is we are to make programs that reflect the audience and the audience's needs and the vast majority of the audience would be from a Christian perspective tradition we have an important role to play in marking what goes on in the calendar and that could be anything from Easter, Christmas, through to Diwali we have you know a Jewish New Year or whatever it may be I think the next film we have going out in that particular area is a film on Princess Sophia the granddaughter of Dilip Singh I think who was the granddaughter of Queen Victoria and a very famous suffragette and that will go out in a few weeks on the period of marking the birth of Guru Nanak for the Sikh faith so we do all of that and we play a part in reflecting that lack of understanding of religious literacy and that lack of understanding of religious literacy is the thing that I would like to really leave you all with and something maybe we can explore later on and that is the lack of religious literacy applies to absolutely everybody you know I've got loads of great stories about the lack of religious literacy in the industry I work in I know and people think I sort of theology because effectively I've been working in this field so long and I've made thousands of hours of television and radio etc in this field that effectively you kind of end up knowing everything or a little bit about something so I know a little bit about everything but the fact of the matter is we live in a world where people don't and you can be some of the most educated people on earth and you can have zero knowledge about anything so we talked about, someone talked about Calais just recently so I went to Calais with the team it was my stupid idea to send the songs of praise guys to Calais and we had to have a senior manager on the ground it was me or my executive producer for songs of praise I can speak a bit of Arabic, Isa Scouser I thought I had more chance of getting through to people on the ground than he did so I went along as was described by a Sunday journalist who didn't know who I was as the Asian Ross Kemp security guard and I he had no idea what story he had in his hands, he told me to get lost get me that woman producer over there in the thoughts of the Asian Ross Kemp security guard which I felt great, if you knew who you were talking to that would be a bigger story but while we were there there was an interesting thing about when we talked about that I I wrote a blog explaining why we went and in that blog we talked about for our Christian audience this is really important because for our Christian audience they will understand what migration what asylum means in the story of the Holy Family in Christianity it's an important part the flight to Egypt etc it was ridiculed and vilified on the express and in some right wing press and on all the right wing blogs and websites saying what's the nativity story what's the census got to do with migration in Calais and you think to yourself are you an idiot it's not Bethlehem we're talking about it's when they go to Egypt so who am I to tell these people their own religious story but the fact of the matter is decisions are made about how I operate what our Christian audience may be interested in and people are having an opinion on that with a complete lack of literacy so when we make some of these programs we have to understand that everybody we make programs for and whether you're a journalist or an academic or just in every form of life the people that we do things for often have no idea how effective of what their faith is so as I said I know a little bit about everything but the vast majority of people know Diddley Scott about everything as it were and so because of that we live in a world where integration is it's virtually impossible without a better understanding of religious and cultural literacy without religious and cultural literacy integration in my opinion is very difficult to pull off becoming event essentially assimilation or isolation the middle ground of integration will require everybody or whatever their faith is or no faith to understand that without that little bit of knowledge of other faiths we will never be able to integrate around all of us so thank you thank you very much our next speaker is Dr David Feldman from Burbeck University and he is going to us about a model minority question mark thank you yes I was asked if I talk about the comparisons which are sometimes made between the Jewish and the Muslim minorities in Britain there is the idea that the Jewish minority constitutes a model minority they perform this role in the imaginations of Enoch Powell Margaret Thatcher and most recently David Cameron in this respect at least apparently Jews are indeed a light unto the nations earlier this year David Cameron expressed his opinion that Jewish communities for centuries have been putting into practice his idea of the big society they look after each other and integrate into the mainstream this model of mutual support social mobility and political integration seems to be attractive to conservative politicians but I think not only conservative politicians who then use it as a model for other apparently more problematic minorities to follow in the 1970s the other minority was the population of immigrants from the Caribbean and their English born children more recently of course it is Muslims who have been the target of these unflattering comparisons so what I want to discuss today are two things really one is the question of the extent to which the Jewish experience in the UK the extent to which this view of the Jewish experience in the UK is an accurate one or a helpful one when we think about Muslims in the UK and secondly what does the history of Jews in Britain tell us about the British model of integration are there ways in which this history helps us to understand why Muslim integration is a subject of debate and policy discussion in the early 21st century well on the question of whether this is a helpful comparison I think really it's important to understand that in most respects what we're dealing with here are apples and pears the Muslim population in contemporary Britain in present day Britain is just much larger and much more diverse than the Jewish population ever was as I'm sure you will know according to the census in 2011 there were 2.7 Muslims living in England and Wales and one of the consequences of what sociologists call hyperdiversity is that the Muslim population comes now from many other parts of Asia not only from Pakistan, Bangladesh and India many other parts of Asia and of course from parts of Africa as well by contrast there were 150,000 Jewish immigrants who came to the UK from Eastern Europe between 1880 and the First World War 150,000 who came from Germany and Austria in the 1930s so just in terms of size and in terms of diversity we're talking with two very different sets which I think undermines in many ways the usefulness of the comparison the comparison is an inaccurate one though in a second way because what it ignores is the extent to which the Jewish minority in Britain today is becoming less integrated not more integrated according to some measures the two most important respects in which this applies is the rise extraordinary rise of separate Jewish schooling 60% of Jewish children in England and Wales now enter specifically Jewish schools this is an unprecedentedly high figure something really quite extraordinary has happened there and the second change and the first change I've just spoken about might be related to the second change I'm about to mention is the perception of rising anti-Semitism 48% of Jews who were surveyed in 2013 saw the rise of anti-Semitism as a big problem 68% thought that anti-Semitism had risen in Britain over the last five years what we're seeing here I think what this reflects irrespective of real or imagined whether these levels of anti-Semitism are real or imagined what we're seeing here is a much greater willingness on the part of the Jewish population on the UK to talk about anti-Semitism to complain about anti-Semitism I'm a historian so I'm going to say something which you can trust me on if you were so moved to look at the Jewish newspapers from 1900 and compared them with the Jewish newspapers in Britain today you would think that there was no anti-Semitism in Britain in 1900 and there was lots of it today but I can tell you that that is not the case there was plenty in 1900 and there's probably less today than there was in 1900 so there is a greater willingness to talk about anti-Semitism and this has been described this shift has been described I think illuminatingly by the sociologist Ben Gidley and Keith Carnharris as a shift from a strategy of security a strategy of saying everything's okay even when it's not to saying everything isn't okay we're really in peril this strategy of insecurity it seems to me is hardly a a sign of successful integration except perhaps in one respect I think it actually reflects the Jewish populations integration within the politics of multiculturalism because within the politics of multiculturalism it's actually for the first time it has become a good thing in British history to be a victim you can make claims by parading your victim status and just in that respect perhaps Jews are actually in that political sense are integrating when they complain about anti-Semitism the last point I want to make in this respect is to say that Jews in Britain are not uniformly integrated obviously we can attend to the populations of ultra-orthodox Jews in parts of north London in Manchester where there is not a lot of mixing high degrees of segregation and a lot of poverty and a distance from mainstream British mores to the extent that recently one rabbi of a Hasidic group advised the women in that group that really they should not drive their children to school in a car interestingly not really much fuss is made by politicians and policymakers about this lack of integration and that's something I will return to before I end the next point I want to make about Jewish integration is that in so far as this has happened and clearly it has happened to a degree to a high degree it has taken place over several generations and this should not be a surprise to anyone the pioneer sociologists in Chicago I'm sorry in Chicago in the 1920s who spoke about assimilation people like Robert Park and Lewis Worth saw this as a process taking place over four generations the idea that somehow we should be surprised that there's a relative lack of integration according to some measurements among populations who have been in the country for less long is not at all surprising I also want to make two more points before concluding one point is one really important difference between the Jewish population and the Muslim population is the degree of institutional centralisation of the Jewish community this is a process which emerged this is a situation which emerged in the 19th century as the established Jewish population worked hand in hand with the state to and use that power that they received from the state to force out, marginalise rabbis who promoted Jewish law where it stood in a contradiction at a British law and they used that power to discipline the immigrants indeed earlier today people have spoken about the sort of good Muslim bad Muslim contrast in rhetoric that also existed with Jews to a degree it still exists now but it also existed within the Jewish community itself the last point I want to make is about political integration now Jews seem very well integrated politically that's an extraordinarily recent development in the 1890s they were regarded as anarchists in the first world war they were regarded as shirkers in the 1920s they were regarded as Bolsheviks and the Zionists were Bolsheviks as well in 1948 there were anti-Jewish riots in Liverpool, Leeds and Manchester after Jewish guerrillas in Palestine killed two British sergeants clearly this isn't a mark of political integration the integration of Jews really occurred not merely after 1948 and the creation of the state of Israel but really after 1956 and the Suez debacle because after that point there became a much greater intersection of the interests of those Jews who were Zionists and by then most Jews did support the state of Israel and the interests of the British government and it is this political point on which I want to conclude because it was when Bill Clinton had a notice on his wall which said it's the economy stupid in these matters of integration one minute the notice ought to be it's politics stupid if only people were more concerned about poverty and segregation and separation if they were they would be concerned about the Hasidim in north London but they are not people were concerned about Jewish integration when Jews were seen as anarchists and Bolshevists and Zionists when Zionists were in conflict with the British state now they're not and it seems to me it is there that we have an illuminating something which can illuminate our understanding of Muslim integration not illuminate our understanding of social mobility the lack of it segregation or the lack of it but when and why politicians find this alarming and the reasons they find this alarming is because of the politics stupid thank you very much our last but final final speaker but certainly not least is Professor Anthony Heath from the University of Oxford who will be speaking on moving the conversation forward thank you I grew up in Liverpool in the 1940s and 50s and I remember in Liverpool at that time there wasn't any I remember or as aware of any anti-Jewish prejudice or hostility there wasn't any anti-Muslim prejudice and hostility but there was anti-Catholic anti-Irish Catholic prejudice and dislike and discrimination and it didn't take four generations I think in my lifetime the Catholics become another model integrated minority their achievements are equal on almost every dimension to those of the white British the prejudice and sort of anti-Catholic feeling that we used to have has almost totally vanished so in my own lifetime there has been a transformation taken 50, 60 years perhaps I don't see why we can't have something similar I hope rather faster than the next 50 or 60 years I don't see why it shouldn't be over the next 20 years in the case of Muslim integration I'm going to advance six theses from I must confess a very classic British liberal tradition that's what I belong to my first thesis is that we must make a sharp distinction between integration and assimilation in the liberal tradition there are many issues which are matters of private concern only and are not the business of the state these are to do with beliefs identities and values there are not issues those are concerns for an assimilationist for someone who takes a liberal view those are not proper matters of government intervention you should be allowed as an individual to choose whatever values identities you wish there are not matters for public concern unless they have negative impacts on other people so when we talk about within the liberal tradition about integration we are talking about areas where there is legitimate concern for government intervention that's my first thesis integration is not a euphemism for assimilation it's something very different by integration my second thesis I'm going to focus on economic integration particularly in terms of economic activity access to the labour market and to good jobs civic integration political integration but also I think importantly I want to talk about playing the law and about avoidance of committing crime I think this is the legitimate dimension of state interference and high rates of incarceration or criminal activity would in this liberal view be a matter of concern for the state a legitimate matter of concern my third thesis is that on some of these criteria although not equally on all there is empirical evidence of some integration gaps that is to say lack of muslim integration on some of these dimensions I want to add though that this is not unique to muslims there are integration gaps for other groups in British society particularly poorly qualified white British youngsters I think are poorly integrated if we take the same criteria that we have set up for discussing faith integration I also sometimes wonder how well integrated the super rich are in British society that's a separate issue which I need to look at my fourth thesis is that integration of muslims and of other faith communities in Britain is already better than it is in almost any other European country and if you know of a country which has been more successful in integrating minorities and different faiths I'd love to know about it and love to know what the evidence base is so fourth thesis is Britain is pretty good when it comes to integration or putting it differently perhaps muslims are pretty good when it comes to integrating in British society and once more what we are seeing is improvements integration in Britain is getting better over time is particularly getting better as other speakers have already pointed out across generations if we compare recent migrants with people born and educated in Britain and with the third generation whose parents were born here we can see very clear narrowing of many of these integration gaps so many of the integration gaps are made of their own accord without any need for any government interference government should leave well alone unless there is evidence that intervention is needed to speed things up I think some things could be speeded up and I think greater attention to providing resources for learning English for recent migrants would actually speed up integration but on the whole I think if it's not broke don't mend it in many respects Britain is already doing well and is likely to continue to do well and better in the future so I think that's my fourth thesis but the fifth thesis is that there are some integration gaps which are quite stubborn which are remaining and one I've already referred to in my talk yesterday with respect to unemployment the very high unemployment rates and poverty rates of British Muslims I think that I haven't got the facts and figures at my fingertips that incarceration rates which I think are very important are also quite stubborn and maybe worse in the second generation and in the first generation so there are integration gaps which need to be addressed to know whose responsibility they are we need to understand the drivers of those gaps without a proper understanding of the causal mechanisms what is generating these gaps we cannot have sensible policy or sensible interventions moralising responses which are not based on proper causal evidence of course just as like to make things worse as to make them better in many areas we do not actually understand what the causes of the remaining integration gaps are so that's my fifth thesis we need to have better understanding of the drivers before we come up with policy interventions because they may be counterproductive and I believe most policy interventions are actually utterly ineffective and a waste of money but some can actually be counterproductive and then I think I should have a sixth thesis which is that we do know about some of the barriers so I think if we're looking at the drivers of lack of integration we can very crudely distinguish those them into ones which are due to barriers institutional barriers intentional or otherwise in British society and on the other hand matters of choice or an unwillingness to integrate on the part of the relevant communities it could be either or it could be a combination I don't know it's a matter for investigation but my sixth thesis is we do know that there are barriers of racial faith symbolic discrimination that from a liberal perspective our first job is to ensure that we British liberals cannot be blamed for being hypocrites and failing to ensure that British society is a land that offers equality of opportunity when we have achieved equality of opportunity and have shown and have removed the barriers due to discrimination then it may become clear that there is continuing lack of integration which might have other causes which we could then address my suspicion but it's perhaps a matter of hope rather than of evidence is if we remove the barriers and provide opportunities five minutes I only need one minute if we remove the barriers I believe that other communities which lack integration at the moment will gladly avail themselves of the opportunities and that any desires to be different to be separate to be apart will be removed first job and I think primary job is to get rid of the barriers thank you fantastic thank you to all our panellists for this final Q&A session I would like the Nohoods scholars back on stage to participate it's going to be a very dynamic Q&A session and I think we'd love to hear a bit more from our Nohoods scholars so if you could all come back up on stage so first question over here thank you I enjoyed that there was a lot I could speak about but I would like to put a very simple question to Matthew now I may have and I apologise if I missed it because I was in a conversation outside and I came in a little bit late but I just wondered whether particularly in the view of the panel before which talked about reclaiming from the margins there is another if you want model besides the normal paradigm of Mecca Medina and the Hijra to Medina which is actually the migration from Mecca to Ethiopia and I that's of course a marginal community but it may offer some scope from that perspective that offers a way forward for Muslim communities that go into non-Muslim societies right from the very origins of Islamic history thank you the second question was over here Mike, that's great and then there's a gentleman over here and this man here cool thank you very much for that I'd be very interested in knowing what your opinions are on the relationship and trade-off between Muslim and integration Akil talks about religious literacy is there a relationship between religiosity of Muslim and integration particularly as generations go on there's a gentleman here so my question is directed to Dr Matthew Wilkinson and it's regarding his this model the Islamic critical realism model and it's specifically about one aspect of the triad of his model which pertains to the epistemological relativism and that's justifying critical and self-critical trajectories in the Quran so I think of one verse which is oft repeated in throughout Islamic scholarship we heard and we obeyed my question to you is how do we justify the critical position which you've taken in this part of your model thank you because there are two questions there to Matthew specifically can I take a third I think there was a gentleman here that wanted to ask and I'll come to you in the next round so in the second row here or third row as it were that was really really interesting and I just wanted to pick up on a couple of things I completely take the point that was made about the lack of religious literacy and I want to connect that to the idea of barrier to integration it seems to me absolutely without question that lack of knowledge what was it, everybody's got a total lack of knowledge of everything let's be completely skeptical about it that surely is a huge barrier and most of the problems we have are because of ignorance of each other but what do we do about that and I'm skeptical about the ability of the media to be able to bridge that gap how are we going to get people to know each other better assuming that that is a major barrier to all round integration with each other not just one group having to integrate with another group but us all getting our act together how are we going to do that I'll take a few more questions after that if we start maybe with you Matthew because there are two questions addressed to you if you maybe recap them to the gentleman at the top there it's a very good point you made thank you for bringing it up I think jurisprudential we've got a lot to learn from situations where Muslims migrated as to be a minority in a Christian or other non-Muslim setting I'm not going to think of other ones Sicily for example is another case where Muslims became a minority under a Christian and there are others so I do think we've got a lot to learn from them bearing in mind that the geopolitical and other conditions of those times are very different from our own I think that's a very good point the reason why I chose the emblematic story of the Prophet Muhammad to exemplify the dialectics of criticalism action in history is because the purpose of this philosophy is to present Islam to young people and children for whom those stories are already part of the hustle of what they've accepted about their religion so in the sense I've taken things which are in the sense that people always learn them are things that young people are going to recognise as part of their story and that's why I chose that majority narrative does that answer your question? well I totally agree and please bear in mind I had 50 minutes to compress a 270 page book so 7 years research that means by the book that means by the book so if we move on to the second question which was a relationship the question posed by Nizam about the relationship between Muslims and integration so I'll be so bold as to put the question to the people I'd like to hear from if that's okay and specifically amongst the Nihud scholars so you've got a little time to get your thoughts together I'd love to hear thoughts from Ali and Omar on this particular question but I'll confess to Professor Nielsen to hear what your thoughts are on that Nizam, do you want to repeat your question? Just shout Trade-off makes it sound like an awfully dirty commercial bargain trade-off makes it sound like an awfully dirty commercial bargain trade-off makes it sound like an awfully dirty commercial bargain it's probably not what you mean it's probably not what you mean it's probably not what you mean I've long argued that one of the processes that is happening among Muslim minorities of immigrated origin differently in different countries and certainly differently between Western Europe and North America for social-cultural reasons one of the things is that Muslims are identifying and they've got the skills to do this particularly, one of the things the intellectual critical skills they've picked up in through school is to learn to distinguish between what is essential to being a Muslim and what is culturally relative that very often brings them into conflict with their parents and sometimes with their local mosque leaders but basically I've argued that one of the processes is that there's a kind of cultural undressing going on in the process of which Muslims identify what is necessary to retain, develop to be Muslim and then a cultural redressing so that instead of being a Kashmiri Muslim you are a Scouse Muslim of course in that process you don't have a harmony of answers and you will reach different conclusions as to what is essential to being a Muslim it may be various forms of external religiosity it is in some cases, in other cases it's some form of internal religiosity internal piety but I also think you have to be careful about what you mean by religiosity because if you go back to the countries of origin or I don't know Kashmir but I know Lebanon, Syria very well the level of religiosity there within a kind of generally Muslim cultural space but the religiosity levels can be surprisingly low so if anything one possibly sees an increase in religiosity in the minority situation I don't like to hold the word but I'd like to answer that question because I do actually have some evidence about it which I'd like to share with you the research about especially about Muslim young people in education in Britain in state schools shows a very interesting thing which is that religiosity can both be a platform for educational engagement and success and it can be an obstacle for the stumbling block and that partly explains the difference that we heard about yesterday between the way that Muslim women in Britain and females are doing better at school and at university and Muslim boys and especially in the Pakistani origin groups are lagging behind and not doing well because it shows that it's been much for some reason easier for Muslim girls to mobilise their faith as a platform for success for getting on at school because Muslim boys they've tended to use their faith as a position to resist the authority of schools and to construe learning in state schools as white and un-Islamic and therefore uncool so religiosity as it's played out at the moment can go both ways and I think it's very important that as responsible adults we work to ensure that the religiosity of young people acts to propel them towards success rather than failure on the newest scholars to respond on that Anyone want to come back? With regard to Nizam's question I worked on a research project that actually addresses this directly a few years ago it was run by the Lokahi Foundation and it was looking at faith as a factor in terms of integration and it was a comparative study looking at different faith communities and whether religious observance affected social and other integration markers and very interestingly it showed that higher levels of religious observance however that's measured internally within their different communities be it muslim, evangelical, hindu higher religious observance led to greater investment in civil society and a greater investment in interacting socially with others now it was a small study but I think it's very important that it was comparative because as I mentioned yesterday a lot of the research on this issue does tend to be very muslim focused and it just kind of increases the problem of muslim exceptionalism and problematisation of muslims but I think it does have something to contribute but that doesn't I think cancel out the concern that sometimes there can be a tendency of bi-religiously observant communities to self-segregate because it's the need for controlling cultural and social reproduction within the community controlling or reproducing for the younger generation sometimes social segregation is seen as a way to ensure that so yeah it can go both ways Thanks Alia Next question was which was about the lack of religious literacy and what do we do about that and is media part of the problem or is it part of the solution I have a little bit about Nizam's question and maybe I've misunderstood the question because my response would be very different and my response is particularly if you look at that card if universities study about the religiosity of young children it doesn't take a genius to figure out that in vast parts of the country young muslim children muslim children are more religious than their parents or they're as religious or they're more religious and that's an issue that you don't when we talk about economic progression et cetera what normally happens is people become more secular all the time that's what we've seen in various different religions and various different cultures across the country and across the west and as we live in a post-christian Europe where religion has been taken out of the public space and no longer is something impact that it had in previous times when you do have that increase in religiosity it effectively means that the things that we are now experiencing in certain geographical locations where muslims in this particular using this particular example may be in the majority and may have particularly what we can describe as conservative views on segregation or on education or whatever those things may be in comparison to what the established liberal views may be of the rest of society then yeah, it's happening and the conversations that I've been having and we've been having is actually to try and understand in terms of what that language we can what's the kind of language we can use to describe these incidents when they happen because anybody that thinks that what happened in Birmingham in schools in a couple of years ago was a one-off is probably fooling themselves in a particular future in certain geographical locations because of the increase in terms of religiosity not just of children but of lots of people and it is irrespective of your socio-economic background or what your particular job level may be or your income stream may be it seems that in a numbers game that muslims are not becoming more secular which is what is the norm in standing out more than it is for other particular cultures and I think that's something for us to think about I'm not particularly saying that that's a black and white answer but I think we have to think about that in terms of that and that then fits in with answering your question as well which is because that's happening because we've had that post-Christian Europe century or more than a century because we've had all of that and because for many people Islam feels very alien but also to be honest with you so does Sikhism, so does Christianity I mean I've had to explain to some very very well educated people that Jesus was Jewish when they wanted to know why am I obsessed with the Jewish Jesus programme I said because he's Jewish and we laughed and then I realised that you don't realise yet sorry he's Jewish and I had to explain this to somebody and this is one of the most senior people in brilliant minds I've ever worked with on television so one is extra say well what can we do or we, I mean I'm the father of teenage kids who have gone through the education system and we can the much maligned education system with religious education but my kids know a hell of a lot more at their age than I did and both my daughters have gone on to study at a GCSE and an A level so effectively there's a much more of an interest in this subject than there was before so I think there are children if they go through that it's compulsory, if they go through it and they're taught well they will learn something but the bigger point we have to make is we have to accept this is an issue the rest of society has to accept it, it's no point blaming the media because the media is made up of society so within society if there is this lack of religious literacy the media can't be blamed for it because effectively the workforce comes from that particular pool so until we accept it until we say that this may be a barrier to integration this may be a barrier to economic development for the nation this may be a barrier to social cohesion until we accept that is the case that we are all to blame then I don't think we can progress other than individual pockets of progression and those individual pockets of progression from school children we have a bit of more knowledge through to people becoming people with that knowledge then getting jobs to be able to influence what is decided around them so without that those are little pockets they will make a bit of a difference but they won't make the ultimate difference and the ultimate difference will only come from acceptance of its importance as a subject can we take a few more questions? sorry to make can I just answer the question of the gentleman at the top who we are going to address very briefly epistemological relativism what I was describing was a philosophical response to the nature of the universe so that's where the epistemological relativism comes in the universe is there it exists but the human responses to it are always contextualised grounded in realities but in terms of semi-aneu that's no exception because the practice the profit piece and blessing to be upon him was that if something had come down as we believe as a revelation from God people either did it or stopped doing it alcohol when the final prohibition came down people stopped and that came from God the governance of the community a military strategy and things like that the closest companions and others questioned the profit about his strategy it wasn't a blind following before some of the most important engagements of Islam he consulted his companions about the most appropriate way forward so there is definitely an ethic in Islam that we respect authority and we advise it and when it's appropriately engaged with the polity and the civic body we obey it but nevertheless even that is from a critical position where each individual believer is answerable to God for what they do thank you I know I want to come back really quickly if that's possible because I want to get back to the audience if that's alright I wanted to just reflect on the last couple of days so if you do okay yeah that's fine so can I take three more questions so the lady here will come to you who's got the mic sorry don't I thank you quick question for Anthony I hope I'm not putting words in your mouth but I think I've read somewhere that you've mentioned that the moment in terms of policymakers that there's no political will for change that there's no political will for change amongst policymakers when it comes to structural inequality and if that's the case in this context what's the role or is the role of academics and researchers redundant and a quick question for Achille what's the role in terms of diversity and inclusion through things like comedy, drama, music and sport what drives that agenda is it quite ad hoc is it a long term strategy at the BBC and your thoughts on that okay thank you there's a question down here yeah there's a gentleman up there and we'll come to you after that My question is for Professor Nielsen those who have been comparing British Muslims and content of European Muslims particularly with regard to the active use and adoption of national symbols and histories for their own integration purposes so for example in the UK I'm thinking of things like the poppy hijab active participation in Remembrance Day where we have Muslim representatives laying wreaths on Remembrance Day and the extent to which European Muslims do or do not adopt use of their national flags other parts of their national histories for example commemorating the fall of the Bastille in France etc so maybe we take this one on the left here and then we'll come to you so we'll get all of them in a gentleman just here in the shirt thank you this question I think is broader I liked Professor Heath's six thesis and the question I would like to ask is that for those of us who are Muslims and especially the young Muslims do you think that there are young Muslims who should also come to some sort of cognisance of what their thesis should be as well as a contribution and here I'm thinking of one particular area which I wonder can cause a sort of a displacement for young Muslims you know when we looked at the typologies that are often presented they were presented during a time when there were empires so this notion of Darul Islam was born and you have Darul Islam versus Darul Other so is it that Muslim youth must create a thesis in which we re-conceptualize the Darul Islam in some other format because we are now in nation states and democracies and then the gentleman up here all the way up there my question is there was a tendency I observed in my humble opinion to separate cause from effect and anyways my first question is the scholar do forgive my poor memory who dealt with I believe who dealt with issues in second one from the right you spoke about shifting allegiances shifting allegiances meaning that things that were not pointed out some time ago are pointed out today vis-à-vis the Muslim community for example the far right, extreme right today maybe 50 years ago they wouldn't even have thought about gender equality or homosexuality or stuff like that but today you notice that they say that Muslims are gay and just this in an attempt to kind of demonize Muslims so to speak I think I'm not articulating my thoughts clearly but we see that people are shifting their allegiances in order to demonize Muslims even if that means accepting things that 50 years ago they wouldn't have accepted so isn't it pointless somehow to envisage some kind of integration since whatever we do somehow they will always find something wrong in us the other question is I'm really just sorry I don't think we have time because we still have to get all of those in and we were supposed to wrap up but thank you so much can we try and keep the responses as short as possible please I'm going to come back to the questions so Professor Heath there were two questions to you so I'm going to give off with you if that's okay do you need a recap on them or you click yes can I have a recap please one of them was is there no political will for change and the second was about whether young Muslims should be developing their own theses yes well on the first one I've certainly argued in the past that there is no political will I was quite surprised with David Cameron's recent speech at the Conservative party conference he actually did talk about discrimination and I think there are suggestions that the government does want to do something about that so I think maybe I think it was true of the last government I'm slightly more optimistic I'm in some conversations with the cabinet office I think they might be trying to do something I think as an academic one has to be careful not to muddle up too much the activist role and the lobbying role which I think I would quite like to play from but that might endanger my other role which is to provide dispassionate evidence so I think your second question I think is quite tricky because it's very easy to wander over the borderline and if I became too activist I suspect I wouldn't be taken seriously when I provide the evidence although it's just Anthony sounding off as usual about his pet hobby horses so I think as an academic one has to stick with what the evidence is and a lot of my role is simply trying to present evidence to government so it's speaking truth to power tell them the truth don't tell them what they want to hear if they choose to ignore me that's their right that's their responsibility they're elected I'm not and the second question is about the different theses do you think we need to move on from this Dar al-Islam Dar al-Halb is that something you would speak to I think it's a very interesting set of questions I've not really thought about it maybe if Matthew then there's a very important question and I think that young people will definitely need to take creative ownership of thinking about what the nature of the world that they live in is, Islamically speaking and regarding Dar al-Islam Dar al-Kufl Dar al-Halb, the other part of that binary I think it's very very important to realise that those constructions and they lasted a long time and you could say they lasted for maybe a thousand years but they were they were political and human constructions they're not designated in the Quran they're not essential to the Dar al-Islam and they serve to describe a world when international relations were usually undertaken at the point of the sword of course at the moment we live under a nexus of international relations that are governed by treaties signed up to by Muslim and non Muslim countries by alliances, by visas, by passports by a whole different configuration of transaction across international borders so I think it's crucial that young people take ownership of deciding what the nature of the world Islamically is that they live in Don't worry, talk about Dar al-Islam it's amazing to me that people here and in some other parts of the world outside of Middle East still talk about Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Halb talk about it first men countries who were at war and Muslims stayed so during the second world war Germany was Dar al-Halb as regards the British here but to keep saying the division of Dar al-Halb and Dar al-Kofra and so on this is a long dead and gone from the discussion in the central Muslim lands Thanks to the clarification professor Argyll onto you on your agenda at the BBC If you're any broadcaster whether you're funded by a licence for your advertising you want people to watch your programs so if it's rubbish nobody would watch it now you can have if you're talking about Citizen Carn I mean you might not like that I actually know Adil very well and I go through the scripts and it's not my idea of comedy but there are bits of it which I quite like I think there's a general point that all broadcasters do if you're in the broadcasting market and if something's very good or if something you feel will be watched by a lot of people you do so therefore that's why you will have Nadia on Bake Off not necessarily Nadia winning Bake Off that would be fixing things but Nadia being a contestant on Bake Off or anybody is simply because you want to reflect society so first of all she has to be good at producing shows many many years ago and actually I produced a quiz show called Bollywood or Bust about 25 years ago if any of you remember that on Bollywood Cinema and we had an academic I think from this institution in fact from SOAS turned up who was an expert on Sanskrit and she turned up at the interview stage and she was white and I put her straight in simply because she was our cultural diversity on that show so the thing is there's a lot of on you need that cultural diversity and when it comes to something like sport we did a programme a couple of years ago on the Muslim Premier League at that time over 50 Muslims in the Premier League playing football and one of the great things that came out was this story of Stephen Gerrard and the fact that most footballers in this country are way ahead of everybody else when it comes to religious literacy of Muslims it may sound like one of the most ridiculous things you're going to hear but we should all learn from premiership footballers on the day no one would agree with you because on the day that they won the league cup the team doctor is a Muslim and he told us this story that Stephen Gerrard said to him he said Zaf we're going to spray champagne around in the dressing room we don't want to offend you so if you want to come back in 20 minutes if that is difficult for you come back in 20 minutes he came back 20 minutes later they'd hung his suit his shoes his bag he said now that lack of knowledge you know let's ask Muslims living in Bradford or Bolton and all those places where I grew up and that's then did they have that same lack of knowledge and awareness for people of other faiths so that's the issue it's not about wanting to engineer the world it's just that when the world is changing around you you have to reflect it and I think Omar wants to come back quite quickly on that one if that's alright I totally appreciate that point I spoke to with Dr Mick Barth he's part of the research I interviewed him and he mentioned the point in terms of the game I think it was a Champions League match where his clothes were put on the side but interestingly from other football players that I've also interviewed most of them have said that because they're respected as football players and that's just an important point not to be naive within the realm of sport Muslim football players are seen as assets as opposed to Muslim human beings so to speak so that's a very critical point here because I have to respect Muslim football players because I am paying their wage I am paying their salary I am relying on those players to score goals to win trophies then Baba had his name being called out amongst 50,000 Newcastle fans because he was scoring goals most importantly because he was scoring goals he was sending the leaves to send and Muslim yes they appreciated that they appreciated the fact that he was fasting during Ramadan but again the notion I think someone on the panel mentioned Nadia from the British Bake Off and my point when I discussed this is Nadia was baking cakes she wasn't talking about the topic of integration as we are doing today so she's accepted other football players who are Muslim are accepted because they are perceived as a football player as opposed to anesthec minority so that's the point I want to make Thank you Professor Nielsen on poppy hijabs and remembrance I don't think that's a simple answer because the moment you start talking about national symbols you have to consider nation and the British sense of nationhood is a much much weaker sense of nationhood than is the German and the French for example at the same time the German and the French senses of nationhood are very different in character one of the reasons why Germany was so long in like three generations before they started generating out German passports to Turkish residents was because the German concept of nationhood was one of inheritance which was why they could so easily bring in thousands and thousands of ethnic Germans from Central Asia after the break up of the Soviet Union whereas the French sense of nationhood is one based on citizenship on the citizen and the right of the participation of the citizen it was very interesting in that context that at the time of the protests against the plans to introduce hijab ban in secondary schools in France it was a very telling protest that the women wore hijab in French flag colours you couldn't have done that in Germany and the whole concept, the whole feeling about nationhood in this country is so lazy that why bother and then in one sense that's why ELD and BNP find it so easy to occupy the St George's flag it was actually quite cheery a few years ago when the Rugby World Cup was being played in Australia and England was moving through very successfully that lots of Asians recaptured the flag of St George and you saw Asians driving around Birmingham with the flag of St George, Asian supporters of the England team but that was quite unusual but it is enormous different there isn't a general answer I'm afraid I'm too academic of that I don't know if Barton would like to come back on this because your research is on issues to do with dress any comments you'd like to come back on on that? I can't remember the exact questions it was a mean question about poppy hijabs and national symbols use of national symbols national symbolism wasn't a topic or a theme that came up in the conversations with the women that I interviewed or even the men the hijab was just simply treated as something again there were multifaceted responses to the hijab itself where to some women it meant a relationship of God or for some of them it was a political statement of asserting their muslim nurse and being in spaces like Tahr Hamlet's council being in spaces like secondary schools, six forms where they did feel a need to express that so poppy hijabs didn't really come up but personally I had my reservations about the whole campaign itself but it wasn't something that came up in my research The final question is for Zia but I'm very aware that David are there any final thoughts you'd like to make so Zia, I'm going to hand to you for the question which was about shifting allegiances that you mentioned in your talk and then we'll end with Mohammed if that's okay to make a final comment Yeah, hey man you make a really sound point and probably one of the most troubling findings is exactly what you said so for example take the Prophet's marriage to Asia that is a classic example middle ages no one says anything Victorian times you start getting people who are like oh well maybe Asia was just a bit too young to take on the duties of marriage but then you have a lot of other Victorian writers who'd be saying oh no this was normal back then and you know the eastern women developed faster and so it's justifiable etc and it seems as the sexual deviant category of pedophilia was constructed around the late 1800s and the demonisation of that as that increased so did the antagonism towards the Prophet's marriage to Asia so there was a correlation between if we don't like something then you must do it then you're probably guilty of it and that is a worrying fact and there are other examples but I'll leave it there Okay well thank you for this opportunity This is just a reflection on the last two days I'm a little bit saddened that there aren't more people from government in here there haven't been over the last two days and I say this as somebody who worked in government for quite a long spell and I know that this isn't for lack of trying but I feel that the situation is getting very polarised now Government is moving towards this very unfortunate position on prevent in terms of how it's covering non-violent extremism and I think here in this hall over the last couple of days we've been fairly critical of where government is going but I think for the welfare of our society we need to find a middle ground between the government and large sections of the Muslim community and right now what we need and I hope this is where we're moving towards with the Nahud project as well is bridge builders between government, policy people and the Muslim communities and I think just two points on the two issues that we've spoken about at great length yesterday and today the first is on the issue of security or prevent I think in the Muslim community we have to be honest and I think we have to accept that there is a problem here and we need to look into the causes of the problems as many people have said but we also need to work towards preventing another atrocity like 9-11 or 7-7 and if we feel as a lot of people have said that the prevent strategy we have coming from government isn't going to work then I think the onus is on us to find an alternative strategy to do prevent in the Muslim community and the old excuse that we don't have the resources in the Muslim community just doesn't wash anymore we raised £100 million last Ramadan for charity work internationally if we are serious about dealing with this problem we can find the resources in the Muslim community very quickly the second point on integration very quickly it's a very flippant example but it illustrates I think how I feel about this and it's this that I come from India, Bangladesh and a lot of people here come from Bangladesh and if I went to a wedding in India or Bangladesh or a Bangladeshi community here inevitably the bride would be dressed in red I travel a lot to Turkey every wedding that I've been to the bride is dressed in white and elsewhere are the parts of the world that I've gone to the bride is dressed in a local colour and to me that's a sign that Islam has found a local colour in those cultures the fact that we're red in the Indian subcontinent comes from the local cultures there white comes from the local culture in Turkey I don't feel that we've found a local colour for Islam in Britain as yet I think we need to work on that I think that's a really beautiful note to end on just very finely three words three words having said that I think I need to say the reverse side of the coin and to emphasise that I do a lot of youth work and there's three words that I keep on mentioning to the people that I work with firstly critical secondly Muslim and thirdly citizenship I think we should emphasise all of those three things equally thank you very much I realise it's been a very long day so I just want to thank all of our panellists the Nuhud scholars for their fantastic contributions all of our chairs all of you in the audience for being here and I really want to say a special shout out thank you to all the volunteers and Nia Maberni who really has been the driving force behind this and to say a final farewell and thank you I would like to invite Professor Dill Halim and it's goodbye from me thank you very much Alhamdulillah thank you and praise to God this has been to me a very successful conference it exceeded all my expectations really and truly we had excellent speakers as you have seen we have very responsive and active audience which made it all lively and interesting and refreshing now all this would not have been possible without the Nuhud Foundation for Development in Kuwait Dr Ali Azumaya and Dr Fahd Azumaya the Nuhud Foundation have paid all are paying all the costs for the conference in fact they have paid for everything in the integration project including scholarship for these beautiful students here who have done very well and have been very eloquent and also for the conference I should thank them all I thank the Nuhud Foundation and I also like to thank people who have worked hard for this conference the first of all is Naama Bani Naama she has worked harder and longer than anybody then of course Miriam Miriam Francois and then we have Hannah and a very active, beautiful and charming team like Heba and Sarah and many others I tell you I must also thank my wife really and truly she has worked very hard for this conference before it started and she kept saying to me you haven't invited so and so you have not, you should include so and so a long hard work for her the difference is this that Naama and Miriam and others are all dead by the centre of Islamic studies and my wife is not she is fully committed to two things number one is the protection of the environment exceeds anybody's expectation and recently integration and Nuhud projects of integration and so on I thank you all and good news for you that the Nuhud Foundation are going to carry this further and you are all invited to next year's conference which will be about the same time many thanks many thanks to you the Nuhud Foundation Doctor Ali Zumaia and Doctor Fahdi Zumaia and all our speakers and everybody Alhamdulillah