LONDON: The Gaza war is causing young British Muslims to become disillusioned and isolated, the head of the Muslim World League has said, urging the UK government to consider integration as a national security issue.<\/p>\n
Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulkarim Al-Issa told The Times that division between Muslims and non-Muslims has been \u201cexacerbated\u201d by the conflict, allowing extremism to develop on both sides.<\/p>\n
\u201cA political situation outside (the UK) should not interfere with integration inside,\u201d he added, calling on both sides to focus on domestic issues of mutual concern.<\/p>\n
Al-Issa previously warned that rising Islamophobia was a threat to peaceful coexistence in the UK.<\/p>\n
The MWL is one of the most powerful Islamic organizations in the world, and in 2023 Al-Issa became the first prominent Muslim figure to be received by the UK\u2019s King Charles at Buckingham Palace.<\/p>\n
Al-Issa\u2019s warning came amid new polling by the MWL that found stark differences in values and perceptions between Muslims and non-Muslims, especially among young people.<\/p>\n
Younger Muslims in Britain are more isolated from mainstream politics and less likely to view integration as an important duty, the poll found, based on a sample size of more than 5,000 people including more than 450 Muslims.<\/p>\n
Almost two-thirds of Muslims described their relationship with non-Muslims as \u201cpositive\u201d or \u201cmostly positive,\u201d while less than a quarter of non-Muslims felt the same.<\/p>\n
Only 5 percent of non-Muslims felt that religion should play a role in politics, compared to almost 20 percent of Muslims.<\/p>\n
More than 70 percent of Muslims labeled increased diversity as \u201cpositive,\u201d compared to about 40 percent of non-Muslims.<\/p>\n
Less than 10 percent of Muslims aged 18-24 viewed the UK as a tolerant country, and said British concerns over Islam were illegitimate or based on sensationalist media reporting.<\/p>\n
About half of the UK\u2019s Muslim population is younger than 25, Al-Issa said, highlighting the importance of the poll and the effect of British foreign policy in the Middle East.<\/p>\n
The MWL \u201cbelieves that this distance creates divides and extremists \u2014 both Muslim and non-Muslim \u2014 flourish where there are divides,\u201d he added, warning that both sides are \u201cliving separate lives.\u201d<\/p>\n
Al-Issa said: \u201cWithout integration there is isolation, fear of the other. That can cause a vacuum that the evildoers will try to fill.\u201d<\/p>\n
The MWL announced a \u00a3100,000 ($128,000) donation to develop a social fund that will build bridges between Muslims and non-Muslims in Britain.<\/p>\n
Integration must be at the heart of UK government policy or national security will be threatened, Al-Issa said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe problem of integration has been exacerbated by the conflict in Gaza and the politics in the Middle East,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
The MWL \u201ccalls on Muslims and non-Muslims in the UK instead to focus on domestic issues where there are shared concerns, such as policy areas that unite rather than divide.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LONDON: The Gaza war is causing young British Muslims to become disillusioned and isolated, the head of the Muslim World League has said, urging the UK government to consider integration as a national security issue. Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulkarim Al-Issa told The Times that division between Muslims and non-Muslims has been \u201cexacerbated\u201d by the conflict, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":79276,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79264"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79264\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79277,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79264\/revisions\/79277"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}