10 April 2015

MI5 and police partly to blame for radicalisation – say four in 10 British Muslims

Four in 10 British Muslims believe that police and MI5 are partly responsible for the radicalisation of young people who support extremists, new polling has found.

A survey commissioned by Sky News, also found that more than a quarter of British Muslims have some sympathy with those who have left to join fighters in Syria.

Among Muslim women and those under the age of 35, the figure rises to a third.

While almost three quarters of Muslims polled said they believe the “values of British society” are compatible with those of their religion, one in seven said they were not.

But the polling of 1,000 Muslims and 1,000 non-Muslims by Survation, also pointed to a growing sense of alienation between members of Britain’s fastest growing faith group and wider society.

A third of Muslims said they experience more suspicion from others than a few years ago.

The perception is backed up by polling of non-Muslims, of whom 44 per cent – and 49 per cent of men – admitted they were more suspicious of Muslims than they were.

Strikingly, only one in five (22 per cent) of non-Muslims saw Islam as compatible with British values, with just over half saying it is not. [The Telegraph] Read more