I recently received an email from someone who reads this page, which I think is typical of what a lot of people are thinking. I'll just quote parts of it: "You say that whilst 8% of Muslims are in higher education, only
1% are lecturers. The inference to be drawn, presumably, is that
institutional racism is to blame for the discrepancy." 

"[But] amongst people who describe themselves as being of (mainly Muslim) Pakistani and Bangladeshi origin unemployment is significantly higher than the average. Among women, the rates are 68% and 77% respectively. These figures are so high, that there must be a large element of choice here, based on cultural expectations within those groups."

"I do not dispute that Muslims suffer from a degree of racial or religious discrimination. Clearly, there is more that can be discovered in this area. But from the raw figures above it does seem that cultural values and practices within Muslim society itself make a significant contribution to their relative socio/economic position."

Now from my response:

If you look at what I wrote, you'll see that I'm talking about students and lecturers in Further and not Higher Education (ie 16-18 not 18-21). The figures come from the Learning and Skills Council website.

I'll accept that the disparity isn't 'just' about race: in fact if you look at all non-white students and all non-white lecturers, the gap is less extreme: 15% of students are black and 9% of lecturers: black lecturers are under-represented but not by a factor of 8 to 1.

Is gender an issue? I'd say not. If you look at the numbers of Pakistani and Bangladeshi women working as lecturers in Further Education, they are actually higher than the numbers of Pakistani and Bangladeshi men.

There are some other factors at work other than just race (or maybe it would be better to say working in conjunction with race): eg age. If you look at cities like Bradford, London, Birmingham, you'll find that the age population of the Muslim communities is lower than their white counterparts - there are more Pakistanis and Bangladeshis aged 16-18 (and so likely to be FE students) than aged 40-50 (and so likely to be FE lecturers).

Even taking that last point into account, I think you would still expect to see a gap that was similar to the gap for black students an lecturers, or maybe just a bit worse, but the figures as I've said above are 15% and 9% for black students and lecturers, which is nothing like the gap between 8% and 1% for Muslim students and lecturers.

You suggest that 'cultural values' may be fuelling self-exclusion among Muslims in Britain, but that doesn't explain why a very large number of Muslim students stay in education beyond 16: Muslims are only 4% of the total British population, so if they make up 8% of the FE student population, that suggests a desire to experience education and get on.

I think the basic experience behind the FE figures is depressingly common. Even in cities like Middlesbrough or Bradford with large Muslim communities, the majority of the institutions with which people interact (services, local government, chain stores, housing departments, and yes education too) are dominated in the middle and at the top by white non-Muslims. We don't give young Muslims enough reasons too feel that they have a stake here.

There are really two ways society could respond to the British Muslims: either by more intensive policing, more of Blair's speeches, more pressure on Muslims to conform, or by accepting that there has been a problem of segregation and marginalisation, especially in the Midlands and the North.

Are 'they' the problem - or are 'we'?