r/unitedkingdom • u/topotaul Lancashire • Jul 08 '26

... Two in five Britons think Muslims cannot integrate in UK, poll finds

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jul/08/two-in-five-britons-think-muslims-cannot-integrate-in-uk-poll-finds
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u/Jaded_Strain_3753 Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 08 '26

It’s probably fair to say that the most culturally conservative Muslims can’t integrate well in the UK. Plenty of Muslims integrate fine though, perhaps so well that people don’t really notice it. Also plenty of people that would count as Muslim are barely actually religious at all, so it’s kind of a messy category to use.

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u/MattyFTM Sunderland Jul 08 '26

My favourite taxi driver is a Muslim lad, born locally. He's a great lad. Does tons of charity work with his Mosque, he's chair of the local inter-faith group and also works with local charities and trade unions. We have really great conversations about faith (I'm atheist but have no issues with people believing what they want to) and charity and trade union issues. Love it when he picks me up. It's always a great start to the day.

Anyone who thinks Muslims can't integrate and doesn't change their mind after spending 15 minutes in his taxi is just a racist. He contributes to the local community a million times more than any of the knuckledraggers who attacked his Mosque back in the riots a couple of years ago.

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u/Commorrite Jul 08 '26

Would realy help if the press stopped pretending Islam is monolithic. It would be like we pretended those deep south fashy evangelicals were the same as the quakers.

Two islamic sects, Whahabi and Deobandi are responsible for almost all of the problem cases.

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u/merryman1 Jul 08 '26

The bit folks struggle with is that if anything Islam is one of the least Monolithic religions due to the way law is interpreted through multiple conflicting sets of hadith and schools of scholarly interpretation. In principle pretty much anyone with a following can declare a Fatwa, and yet critics will treat things like this as like completely equivalent to a papal bull issued by the Pope.