In 2006 the gloves came off in the fight to define what it means to be British. Whereas the dominant response to the London bombings was confusion over how anyone raised in this country could commit such atrocities, the veil debate detonated by Jack Straw and the teaching assistant Aisha Azmi was notable for its muscularity. Sentiments that might once have been considered too insensitive were openly expressed. "The right to be in a multicultural society," argued the prime minister in a speech last month, "was always implicitly balanced by a duty to integrate, to be part of Britain." Behind these remarks was an assumption that integration is a one-way street. However, there are many things that the rest of the country could learn from Muslims.

In the present climate, integration is the only show in town and multiculturalism has joined political correctness as a favoured target of those who feel that their Britain is disappearing before their eyes. Hence the calls, growing ever louder, for Muslims to integrate: no more forced marriages; no more honour killings; accept the rule of law.

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 rampant 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 deference 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 clamour 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 extremism, drugs or crime, those involved are largely third-generation Muslims who are so integrated into white society that they are emulating its worst characteristics. Integration did not save them, it created them.

www.sarfrazmanzoor.co.uk

Source: guardian.co.uk

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