Prime Time 7, Coursebook plus Semester Self-checks

9 The UK: Inside – outside Before you read Describe the picture below and comment on it. Reading: British Muslims Read the text about British Muslims, then choose the correct answer (A, B, C or D) for questions 1–5. Put a cross ( ✘ ) in the correct box. The first one (0) has been done for you. Britain should integrate into Muslim values Fact file British people of Pakistani or Bangla- deshi origin are mainly Muslims, while those whose families originally came from India are mainly Hindus and Sikhs. F 1  2  Fact file On 7 July 2005 four Islamist- extremist suicide bombers killed 52 people and injured 700 others on Underground trains and a bus in London. Three of the bombers were British-born citizens and the fourth was a British resident born in Jamaica. F Think of the words “Muslim community” and what do you see? A succession of veiled women walking silently behind their husbands? Bearded men gesticulating outside mosques? But there is another version of the Muslim community. It is easy to dismiss Muslim parents as old-fashioned and traditional, but when the rest of the country is busy wondering how to respond to a culture of unrestrained disrespect, it is worth considering whether they could learn from Muslim values. Muslim children are more likely to be brought up in two-parent families rather than the single-parent households that are increasingly common in Britain. Muslim parents also tend to be less interested in child-centred parenting and more into parent-centred parenting. For example, when I was growing up there was no possibility of answering back to my parents, and this was accompanied by an all-pervasive fear of letting them down. This was a model of parenting that put great faith in politeness and respect and, while at the time it felt regressive, it was also what kept my generation in check. My father often used the threat of “What might the community say?” as a weapon to control my rebellious teenage desires. I resented the power that this community had over me, but it is only now that I can appreciate its value. The knowledge of the hardship our parents had endured, alongside their old-fashioned attitudes towards parenting, meant most second-generation Muslims simply did not have the opportunity or desire to cause trouble. Instead we were conditioned not to get mad at whites but to get even, by making something of our lives. Many members of my parents’ generation may have been uneducated, employed in manual labour and unable even to speak English, but they raised their children to value values. They instilled in them a strong moral code, in which children’s greatest fear was of bringing shame on their family. Their children learned that responsibility to their parents does not end at the age of 18. That is why so many British Muslims live in extended families today; why my brother lives next door to my mother so that his children can see their grandmother every day; and why our mother does not feel abandoned and useless in her old age. If the greatest weakness of the Muslim community has been its insularity, then that has also been the source of its greatest strengths. As the strongly expressed demand for British Muslims to integrate grows louder, it is worth remembering that, amid all the negatives arising from living inside a tightly knit community, there are also positives worth retaining – the greater the integration, the weaker the sense of community. It is the third generation – those in their teens and 20s who have been raised by parents often more liberal than my parents’ generation – who are the young men and women now tarnishing the reputation of British Muslims. Whether the danger is religious 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 130 Ethnic and cultural diversity Nur zu Prüfzwecken – Eigentum des Verlags öbv