Seen and Not Heard is an assessment of young Muslims in the United Kingdom, by Sughra Ahmed of Britain's Policy Research Centre. The study, conducted over 18 months and released in September 2009, aims to give voice to young Muslims who are often analyzed by researchers, but rarely heard from. And as someone who was born in the United Kingdom, spent her early years there, and recently lived in London’s East End - an area with a large urban Muslim population - I found Ahmed’s report to be highly topical and necessary.

Over 100 young Muslims were interviewed across the country in various focus groups, all representing over 15 ethnicities. Ahmed’s work is an intriguing analysis on the state of young Muslims in the UK and clearly has much input from the young Muslims that she spoke to. Seen and Not Heard informs us that young Muslims have a plethora of issues to deal with – including poverty, education, subcultures, the generational gap, media, police interactions – and of course, religion.

But first, there’s the terminology itself. Ahmed notes that a primary distinction must be made in addressing and discussing young Muslims in Britain. The term “youth” has the negative connotations of being affiliated with gangs and violence, which occurs all too often in perceptions by the government, police, and media. “Youth” are seen as a problem in society and Ahmed therefore proposes that Muslim youth be addressed as “young Muslims” or “young people,” which some of her interviewed youth workers also recommended, for a step in preventing “otherization.”

A highly refreshing aspect of Seen and Not Heard is Ahmed’s analysis of the interactions between young Muslims and their parents, and how education comes into play. Overall, the tensions between the two are often comparable to what young people in general experience with the older generation – this intergenerational gap is present in many communities, Muslim and non-Muslim.

However in Muslim communities, factors such as language and culture are also present and frequently cause distance between parents and their children. Such circumstances do affect the education of young Muslims and their attitudes towards it, as many Muslim parents in the UK are not able to engage with their children’s education:

“The research shows that attitude, language, poor education background and feeling insecure with systems of school governance can turn parents away from helping children with their homework, coursework and other assessments, remembering that many parents of the first generation didn’t attend school in the UK and in fact have a generally poor track record of education themselves.”

In other words, this results in young Muslims thus not taking their education very seriously, for their parents do not check on their progress. This was certainly the case with me – my parents, like many, were either too busy with work or were not able to understand my teachers and coursework, resulting in disengagement (though not indifference) with my education.

In contrast, after we moved to the United States, I noticed that young American Muslims around me often had their parents involved with their education, while I was left to my own means. Ahmed has shed much light onto my shared UK experience and recommends that schools need to extend outreach to parents of young British Muslims with a better cultural understanding. This would result in a better education for young Muslims, and ultimately, better life and job opportunities.

A discussion of the media’s treatment of young Muslims is another critical and necessary - but rare - insight offered by the report. Ahmed quotes many young Muslims on their perceptions of how media portray them negatively, and documents how this affects their identity. For example, young Muslims are often unfairly forced to answer for the actions of Muslims abroad, and more frequently so because of an increasingly globalized media network.

Some interviewees often times felt helpless at the expense of the media, saying, “You can’t really make a difference.” Ahmed recommends that young Muslims be encouraged to enter media fields as a means of empowerment. As a precursor to this, other interviewees have proactively countered the negative perceptions enforced by the media simply by getting to know their non-Muslim peers.

Ahmed concludes that the identities of young Muslims in the United Kingdom are constantly in flux, because of shifting attitudes towards education, culture, and religion – and that the media’s everyday barrage also spurs perceptions to shift quickly. By dispelling many stereotypes and misconceptions, Seen and Not Heard demonstrates that young Muslims in the United Kingdom do have a lot of potential. It’s just that their potential needs to be recognized and respected.

>>> This was certainly the case with me – my parents, like many, were either too busy with work or were not able to understand my teachers and coursework, resulting in disengagement (though not indifference) with my education.

Many immigrants have a different attitude to work and education. Maybe to this extent they are responsible for their own self-conscious attitudes. Education in a new environment is considered the territory of wealthy whites. Immigrants believe in hard work and family loyalty as the primary driver for successful economic integration.

My mother was taken out of school 2 years prior to completing, to work in the shop with my grandfather. They lived 10 people to a 3 bedroomed house, an outside toilet and a coal stove (the stories are repeated non-stop). My uncle and aunt were encouraged to study, but they was the youngest of five and it ultimately became financially too burdensome, nevermind their lack of preparedness for the alien and political culture a liberal and english South African university in the 70's. Neither completed their first year, to my grandfathers shame. Its only really with our generation that the value of studying can be understood, and the economic burdens at home can be delayed by a few years.

But we can't also deny that this is primarily an attitude thing. Alienation is a two way road, especially when people are rushing to make basic participation like joining the police force HARAAM, and a doctors work is not considered as exemplary as sitting in a bhayaan.

http://www.7cgen.com/index.php?showtopic=12196
http://forum.hizbuttahrir.org/archive/index.php/t-1204.html
http://www.al-islam.org/Organizations/Aalimnetwork/msg00349.html

These types of ideological withdrawals and double-standards aren't happening in a vacuum, but they certainly aren't helping. Placing the entire situation squarely on the shoulders of the government is an unfair assessment. And this isn't even peculiarly Muslim phenomenon. Many poor English families and other immigrants are experiencing similar isolation by the economic mainstream.