LONDON, Nov 21: Two British universities have come up with research findings that reject the widely-held notions that Asian Muslim children are less willing to integrate than young white school children and that Muslims living in ghettos are more likely to become involved in terrorism than those living in mixed areas. These studies also fail to support government thinking on social cohesion.
The first study made public some weeks ago was prepared by the University of Lancaster which showed that white schoolchildren were less willing to integrate than Asian Muslim children of a similar age. The study, paid for by the government, found that white children were more intolerant of other faiths and races when educated separately than Asian Muslim pupils.
And the second study by Manchester University which was made public on Sunday said that "terrorist hotbeds" are a fantasy and concluded that Islamist terrorists are as likely to come from towns and cities with small Muslim populations as from so-called "self-segregating" Muslim areas.
In the wake of the July 7 bombings, the government set up a special commission on integration aiming to tackle "segregation" which it has been claimed contributes to violent extremism.
Trevor Phillips, head of the Commission for Racial Equality, claimed that "maximising integration" led to "minimising extremism" in his September 2005 speech in which he claimed Britain was "sleepwalking to segregation".
Draft documents from the Department for Education asking universities to help anti-terrorism police identify potential extremists warned that Muslims from "segregated" backgrounds were more likely to hold radical views than those who have "integrated into wider society".
The Manchester University study examined the cases of 75 Muslims charged with terrorism offences. It looked at the areas they came from and examined what percentage of the population were Muslim, as stated in the 2001 census.
The study's authors said they could not examine the backgrounds of those convicted, as only nine out of 27 people found guilty of terrorist offences since 9/11 are Muslim, and therefore would provide too small a sample.
