Muslim Integration in Scotland

Posted on August 30, 2010 by Clive D. Field

The British Council Scotland has recently released a report on Muslim Integration in Scotland, by Amy Homes, Chris McLean and Lorraine Murray, and based upon quantitative and qualitative research undertaken by Ipsos MORI Scotland. The report, commissioned under the auspices of the Council’s ‘Our Shared Europe’ programme, is available to download at:

http://www.britishcouncil.org/scotland-society-muslims-integration-in-scotland-report.pdf

The focus of the study was an examination of Muslim and non-Muslim perceptions of one another and of the extent of Muslim integration in Scotland. Potential barriers to integration were also explored and ways in which these may be overcome.

The quantitative phase of the research was a series of questions included in the Ipsos MORI Scottish Public Opinion Monitor. Telephone interviews were undertaken with a representative sample of 1,006 Scots aged 18 and over between 18 and 21 February 2010. As there are relatively few Muslims in Scotland, such a random survey is essentially of non-Muslims. Findings from this phase appear on pp. 2-7, 18-27 of the report.

The qualitative phase comprised seven focus groups, three of Muslims and four of non-Muslims, in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dundee between 9 and 23 March 2010. Muslim groups were composed of Muslims born in Scotland and those born elsewhere but who had lived in Scotland for varying periods of time. Non-Muslim groups were made up of non-Muslims who were white Scottish and Christian or had no religion. Findings from this phase appear on pp. 8-9, 29-41 of the report.

The quantitative research is naturally of principal interest to BRIN. Key findings include the following:

  • 66% of Scots held a favourable opinion of Muslims and 21% an unfavourable one. However, this favourability rating was lower than for all other religious groups, with 85% for Christians, 80% for Jews, 77% for Buddhists, 75% for Hindus, 72% for Sikhs and 71% for atheists.
  • 46% of Scots considered that Muslims living in Scotland were loyal to the country and 33% not. This was a higher loyalty score than for Britain, France and Germany, as recorded in the Gallup Coexist Study of 2008. 
  • 48% of Scots agreed and 41% disagreed that Scotland would begin to lose its identity if more Muslims came to live there. This compared with 50% and 31% respectively in the 2006-07 Scottish Social Attitudes Survey.
  • 59% of Scots agreed and 28% disagreed that most Muslims in Scotland were integrated into everyday Scottish life.
  • 66% agreed and 24% disagreed that the attempted bombing at Glasgow airport in 2007 had made people in Scotland less tolerant of Muslims.
  • Whereas 80% of Scots agreed that Christianity was compatible with life in Scotland, only 42% said the same in relation to Islam (and 37% disagreed).
  • On almost all questions, those living in the least deprived areas of Scotland, people under 55, readers of broadsheet newspapers and Liberal Democrat voters had the most positive views of Muslims and Muslim integration.

So, Islamophobia is clearly becoming something of a problem in Scotland. On the whole, however, as Clive Field’s analyses of British public opinion polls conducted between 2001 and 2010 have shown, it is perhaps still less of a challenge there than in England and Wales.

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Who Rates Religious Education?

Posted on August 29, 2010 by Clive D. Field

The 2010 A Level and GCSE results season has now been and gone. The number of candidates taking religious studies at both levels has steadily risen over the years (see http://www.brin.ac.uk/figures/#RSExams), but how worthwhile do Britons as a whole think the subject is?

YouGov released some pertinent data on 25 August. In an online poll conducted on 1-2 July 2010, the company asked a representative sample of 2,233 adults aged 18 and over how important they thought it was for all British schoolchildren to study each of 21 different subjects.

When it came to religious education, 37% of respondents deemed the subject important and 31% unimportant, with 29% neutral and 3% don’t knows. Sixteen subjects were judged more important than religious education, particularly mathematics (95%), English language (94%), IT/computing (91%) and science (90%). Just four subjects received a lower rating: German (31%), Spanish (30%), drama (25%) and Latin (12%).

No sub-group recorded an absolute majority saying that religious education was important, but there were some demographic variations. Those most likely to think the subject was important were Conservative voters (41%), women (40%), adults aged 60 and over (42%) and Londoners (43%).

For the complete data tabulations, see:

http://today.yougov.co.uk/sites/today.yougov.co.uk/files/YG-Archives-Life-SchoolSubjects-020710.pdf

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Faith Schools

Posted on August 29, 2010 by Clive D. Field

ICM Research has just posted on its website the results of a ‘faith schools survey’ undertaken by telephone between 25 and 27 June 2010 among a representative sample of 1,003 adult Britons aged 18 and over. They were randomly selected from the BT database of domestic telephone numbers.

A somewhat incomplete set of detailed computer tabulations, with breaks by standard demographics, can be found at:

http://www.icmresearch.co.uk/pdfs/2010_august_c4_FaithSchools.pdf

The survey was commissioned by Barnes Hassid Productions, seemingly in connection with their production of Faith School Menace?, presented by the renowned atheist and evolutionary biologist Professor Richard Dawkins and broadcast on Channel 4 on 18 August. He is an arch-critic of faith schools and of government’s plans to expand them.

At the same time, the schools are popular with parents, albeit often for their supposedly better track-record on educational standards and discipline as much as for their religious advantages. There is a useful guide to the literature in Elizabeth Green, Mapping the Field: A Review of the Current Research Evidence on the Impact of Schools with a Christian Ethos, London: Theos, 2009.

Question 1 is not reported on ICM’s website, but it may possibly have been about the principle of state funding of faith schools, in which case the answers can be inferred from elsewhere in the tables as: 50% for, 45% against, 5% undecided.

Question 2 is likewise not recorded in detail but shows up as a variable in analysing Question 3. It asked: ‘Which, if any, of the following would you be prepared to do in order to obtain a school place for your child at your preferred local school?’

The options, with those replying yes, were: buy a property within the school’s catchment area (52%); rent a property within the school’s catchment area (40%); regularly attend the place of worship of a religion you do believe in (50%); regularly attend the place of worship of a religion you do not believe in (7%); none of these (26%).

Question 3 related to instances where parents had pretended to belong to a religion in order to get their child into a faith school. Three-fifths of respondents thought this was wrong, while 37% said that parents could not be blamed for doing whatever they could to get their child into their preferred school.

Apart from majorities of 18-24s (51%) and students (54%) not blaming parents, demographic differences were not notable, even between those with and without a religious affiliation. However, 57% of those who were willing to attend a place of worship they did not believe in also exonerated parents for playing the system.

Question 4 tested opinions on whether children should have a daily religious assembly and prayers as part of their education (a requirement introduced for all schools by the Education Act 1944). Here views were split straight down the middle, 45% agreeing and 44% disagreeing.

Most in favour were adults aged 65 and over (65%) and those with a religion (56%). Most opposed were the irreligious (66%) and those who objected to the state funding of faith schools (55%).

Question 5 concerned government plans to expand faith schools, including Muslim ones (which were specifically mentioned). 59% felt that schools should be for everyone, regardless of religion, and that the government should not fund faith schools of any kind.

This position was held particularly by men (64%), Scots (66%), the irreligious (73%), and those who had said that the state should not fund faith schools (82%) or who disagreed that there should be a daily religious assembly (68%).

A further 27% (rising to 44% among those who supported state-funded faith schools) accepted the logic that, if there are Anglican, Catholic and Jewish state-funded schools, there should be Muslim ones, also, but 10% were hostile to Muslim schools even though they conceded that faith schools were an important part of the educational system. This 10% varied little between demographic sub-groups.

Five years ago, when ICM posed the identical question for The Guardian, 64% believed that state schools should be for everyone and opposed state-funded faith schools, 25% agreed that there should be Muslim state schools and 8% were clear that the government should not be funding Muslim schools. So, on this specific measure, there have been only marginal shifts in public opinion over time.

All in all, the role of religion in education remains somewhat divisive. As can be seen from the BRIN database, a fair number of surveys has been conducted which touch on the issue of faith schools, but their outcomes are rather dependent upon the question-wording (and, to an extent, the client paying for the poll). Not unexpectedly, people can take a different position at the level of principle than when confronted by a scenario which might directly impact their own child(ren).

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Recent Academic Journal Articles

Posted on August 28, 2010 by Clive D. Field

There follow brief reports of three recent articles in academic journals. These are subscription-based, with free access only available to institutional and personal subscribers. A pay-per-view option is also offered via the relevant publisher websites.

Journal of Beliefs & Values, Vol. 31, No. 1, pp. 89-92: Christopher Rutledge, ‘Looking behind the Anglican Statistic “Usual Sunday Attendance”: a Case Study’

Rutledge conducted two censuses, four years apart, of adult attendances at the main services in a suburban Anglican parish church, the first over four weeks and the second over five. He demonstrates that neither electoral roll membership nor planned financial giving is an accurate predictor of churchgoing.

Two-fifths of those on the electoral roll did not worship during the census periods, while there were numerous regular worshippers not on the roll. Likewise, many of those who supported the church through standing orders or weekly giving envelopes did not attend services during the census. Overall, usual Sunday attendance is shown to greatly underestimate the number of people engaged with the local church.

Journal of Empirical Theology, Vol. 23, No. 1, pp. 64-81: Lewis Burton, Leslie Francis and Mandy Robbins, ‘Psychological Type Profile of Methodist Circuit Ministers in Britain: Similarities to and Differences from Anglican Clergy’

Psychological type theory is used to profile similarities and differences between 1,004 Methodist ministers in England surveyed by Burton in 2004 and the 863 Church of England clergy profiled in an earlier study reported in Leslie Francis, Charlotte Craig, Michael Whinney, David Tilley and Paul Slater, ‘Psychological Typology of Anglican Clergy in England: Diversity, Strengths and Weaknesses in Ministry’, International Journal of Practical Theology, Vol. 11, 2007, pp. 266-84.

The two groups recorded similar profiles in many respects, especially when viewed against the profile of the UK population. However, male and female Methodist ministers were less likely to prefer intuition, and more likely to prefer sensing, compared to their Anglican colleagues. Also, male Methodist ministers were more likely to prefer feeling and less likely to prefer thinking in comparison with Anglican clergy.

The findings are interpreted to illuminate strengths and weaknesses in Methodist and Anglican ministry and to highlight areas of potential conflict, disagreement or misunderstanding in effecting cooperation between the two denominations.   

British Journal of Religious Education, Vol. 32, No. 3, pp. 307-20: Mandy Robbins and Leslie Francis, ‘The Teenage Religion and Values Survey in England and Wales: an Overview’

The Teenage Religion and Values Survey is by far the largest study of religious and moral beliefs and behaviours of young people in this country yet to be completed. It was conducted by Leslie Francis and associates throughout the 1990s by means of self-completion questionnaires from 33,982 13- to 15-year-olds in years 9 and 10 of 163 schools in England and Wales.

The survey has already been widely reported in the academic literature (see the entry in the BRIN database at http://www.brin.ac.uk/sources/1780). The present article opens by reflecting on the methodology of the research as regards design, measurement and sampling. It then reviews some of the insights which it generated, especially in respect of personality, spiritual health, religious affiliation, belonging without believing, and church-leaving. The major published outputs from the survey are listed and discussed, and three lessons learned are spelled out.

The research group is currently devising a new study of similar scope for the first decades of the twenty-first century and is inviting collaborators to work with them.

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Doctors and End-of-Life Decisions

Posted on August 26, 2010 by Clive D. Field

Terminally-ill patients would be well-advised to find out the religious beliefs of their doctor, according to print and online news media reports of research showing the effect of faith on a doctor’s willingness to make ethically controversial decisions that could hasten death and calling for greater acknowledgement of the relationship of doctors’ values with clinical decision-making.

The research was undertaken by Clive Seale (of the Centre for Health Sciences, Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry) and published on 25 August in the ‘Online First’ edition of the Journal of Medical Ethics under the title ‘The Role of Doctors’ Religious Faith and Ethnicity in taking Ethically Controversial Decisions during End-of-Life Care’.

The article is based upon a self-completion postal questionnaire sent to UK medical practitioners in Binley’s Database, of whom 3,733 (or 42%) responded during the period November 2007 to April 2008. Of these, 2,923 reported on the care of their last patient who had died.

According to Seale, doctors who described themselves as extremely or very non-religious were almost twice as likely to take decisions that might shorten the life of somebody who was terminally ill as doctors who were deeply religious, while doctors with strong religious convictions were significantly less likely even to have discussed options at the end of life with the patient. No such correlation existed for ethnicity.

Access to the article is available free to subscribers to the journal (or whose institutions subscribe) and by pay-per-view for others. See:

http://jme.bmj.com.ezproxyd.bham.ac.uk/content/early/2010/07/22/jme.2010.036194.abstract

Other publications by Seale based on the same research and touching on religion include: ‘Legalisation of Euthanasia or Physician-Assisted Suicide: Survey of Doctors’ Attitudes’, Palliative Medicine, Vol. 23, 2009, pp. 205-12 and ‘Hastening Death in End-of-Life Care: A Survey of Doctors’, Social Science & Medicine, Vol. 69, 2009, pp. 1659-66.

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Angus Reid Public Opinion Round-Up

Posted on August 23, 2010 by Clive D. Field

Angus Reid Public Opinion (ARPO, formerly Angus Reid Strategies) is the Vancouver-based public affairs practice of Vision Critical and conducts online surveys. It was originally founded in 2006 by Dr Angus Reid, a Canadian sociologist with four decades of experience in market and public opinion research.

Following considerable success in Canada, ARPO established a British adult panel (http://www.springboarduk.com) last autumn and obtained high visibility for its political polling in the run-up to the 2010 general election. But ARPO has also dipped its toes into British religious waters. Relevant questions are summarized below, with further details available at: http://www.visioncritical.com/category/public-opinion/

HALLOWEEN (fieldwork: 28-30 October 2009, n = 2,004)

Only 14% of Britons always celebrate Halloween (compared with 41% of Americans and Canadians), 41% never celebrate it and 45% sometimes do. 55% intended to carry out no Halloween-related activities during the 2009 weekend (against 26% in Canada and 14% in the USA), handing out sweets to trick-or-treaters being the commonest activity.

While 45% of Britons associated Halloween with fun, 35% regarded it as overrated. 30% saw it as harmless, but for 31% it had connotations with paganism and for 40% with witchcraft. Of the various faith alternatives to Halloween, 37% said they had participated in harvest festivals.   

ATTITUDES TO MUSLIMS – MINARETS (fieldwork: 9-12 December 2009, n = 2,002)

Following last November’s Swiss referendum which led to the prohibition on the construction of minarets on Swiss mosques, ARPO sounded out the publics of Britain, Canada and the USA on the issue. 43% of Britons claimed to have followed the story in the media.

Offered a précis of the arguments used in Switzerland, 44% agreed with the proponents of the ban and 28% with the opponents. However, 52% felt that it was unfair for the proponents to have used a poster depicting minarets as missiles.

37% of Britons said they would vote for a similar ban in our country (more than Canadians and Americans, 27% and 21% respectively), with 25% against a ban and 39% abstainers or unsure.

ATTITUDES TO MUSLIMS – RELIGIOUS DRESS (fieldwork: 20-21 January 2010, n = 2,001)

ARPO showed respondents pictures of three items of Muslim women’s dress – the burqa, the niqab and the hijab – and asked whether their use should be forbidden in the UK in public places, at airports and at schools and universities.

Large majorities agreed with banning the burqa in all three situations (ranging from 72% in public places to 87% at airports), and likewise the niqab (from 66% in public places to 85% at airports).

67% considered that garments which conceal a woman’s face are an affront to British values, although, somewhat contradictorily, 58% agreed that the Government should not be allowed to tell individuals what they can and cannot wear.

Far fewer felt it necessary to prohibit wearing of the hijab (from 22% in public places to 34% at airports).

CREATIONISM (fieldwork: 1-9 July 2010, n = 2,011)

Invited to explain the origin and development of human beings on earth, 68% of Britons opted for evolution (almost twice the proportion of Americans), 16% for creationism (one-third the US figure), with 15% unsure.

Creationists were especially plentiful in London (25%, perhaps reflecting the concentration of black-led churches and Muslims there) and thin on the ground in Scotland. Men were more likely to be evolutionists than women, partly because more women registered as unsure.

RESPECT FOR MINISTERS AND PRIESTS (fieldwork: 20-23 July 2010, n = 1,992)

Asked whether they had a great deal or fair amount of respect for each of 25 professional groups, 56% replied affirmatively for ministers and priests, leaving them in sixteenth position in a league table extending from doctors (91%) to car salesmen (12%).

There were no great differences by age and region, but gender was significant: 63% of women against 49% of men had respect for ministers and priests. At the other end of the scale, 39% had little or not much respect for the clergy, rising to 46% among men.

The survey replicated another ARPO poll between 13 and 26 August 2009, which showed respect for ministers and priests running at 57% in Britain, 65% in Canada and 82% in the USA.

Besides polling, the company is also responsible for the Angus Reid Global Monitor, which commenced in 2003. This includes a database summarizing 22,000 polls from around the world and from many different polling agencies. See http://www.angus-reid.com/

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More Perceptions of Islam

Posted on August 4, 2010 by Clive D. Field

Islamophobia certainly appears to be a hot topic in 2010. Ten opinion polls have already been undertaken between January and July to gauge the attitudes of adult Britons towards Islam and Muslims.

Now The Guardian of 3 August has noted another, carried out on behalf of the London-based Islamic Education and Research Academy (iERA). iERA was established in 2009 as a global organization committed to presenting Islam to the wider society (a process known in Islamic theology as dawah).

The iERA investigation was conducted among a random sample of 500 English-speaking non-Muslims aged 16 and over interviewed face-to-face on the street in Britain by DJS Research in November 2009. Fieldwork seems to have occurred disproportionately in major British cities. 

The full report on the survey is entitled Perceptions on Islam & Muslims: A Study of the UK Population, with Hamza Andreas Tzortzis as the senior researcher. It can be downloaded (albeit not in a very printer-friendly form) from:   

http://www.iera.org.uk/downloads/iERA_NonMuslimPerceptionsOnIslam_and_Muslims_ResearchReport.pdf

The enquiry covers similar ground, but in rather more detail, as the YouGov poll for the Exploring Islam Foundation which we have already featured on the British Religion in Numbers website (on 8 June).

However, as iERA notes on page 5, the results of the two investigations differ in various ways. iERA attributes this to the methodological inferiority of YouGov’s approach, not least the fact that it uses a panel (deemed by iERA to constitute a self-selecting sample), obtained a low response rate and employed only closed questions.

80% of the iERA sample had no or very little knowledge of Islam, with 17% having basic knowledge and 3% a lot. 40% did not know who Allah is, 36% did not know who the Prophet Mohammed was, and just 20% had come into contact with the Koran (compared with 95% for the Bible).

Only 14% had been taught or actively sought information about Islam, in contrast to the 84% who had not. 76% had never spoken to a Muslim about Islam and 71% had never seen or heard any dawah material. Even when exposed to such material, attitudes were more likely to remain unchanged or to worsen than to improve. 77% had no desire to learn more about Islam.

27% of respondents entertained negative perceptions of Muslims, with 55% neutral and 18% positive. Around three-quarters thought that the contribution of Islam and Muslims to Britain was either non-existent or negative; and disagreed or were neutral when asked whether Muslims positively engaged with society.

For one-third Muslims were seen as the major cause of community tension, 32% being convinced they preached hatred. 24% viewed them as terrorists, with one-fifth denying they were law-abiding and peaceful. 30% were antipathetic to Sharia law and 59% agreed that Islam oppresses women.

The commentary (pages 30-39) records the more significant breaks by demographic sub-groups, although too much significance should not be attached to these disaggregations on account of the relatively small size of the overall sample. In particular, the report inclines to make more than is advisable of replies from those aged 21-24 (of whom there cannot have been more than about 45 interviewed).

The conclusion (page 10) is: ‘The general population has displayed a negative perception concerning religion, Islam and Muslims. The dawah has had limited reach and it has not improved perceptions about Islam. There has also been a consistent trend of apparent neutrality; we believe this indicates apathy and indifference coupled with genuine ignorance about religion and specifically Islam.’ Nineteen recommendations are advanced (pages 39-45) to improve this situation.

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Trust in the Clergy

Posted on August 3, 2010 by Clive D. Field

How trustworthy are the clergy, both absolutely and in relation to other professionals? Several opinion poll companies have tried to answer this question over the years, including Ipsos MORI, which has data on the extent to which Britons trust the clergy to tell the truth or not going back to 1983, some of which is abstracted at:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/figures/documents/Table-9-1-Trust-Professions-Ipsos-MORI-1983-2009.xls

GfK Custom Research has undertaken a similar exercise annually since 2003, asking respondents whether they trust the clergy and other groups or not. But GfK has polled internationally and not just in Britain.

Most recently GfK surveyed 15 European countries (including by telephone in the UK) and the United States, Brazil, Colombia and India in February and March 2010 on behalf of the Wall Street Journal Europe, with an average of just under 1,000 interviews in each nation.

GfK has issued a press release about the 2010 survey, which will be found at:

http://www.gfknop.com/imperia/md/content/gfk_nop/newsandpressinformation/100609_pm_trust_index_2010_fin.pdf

Unfortunately, it does not feature any of the UK results. However, some of these have been made available exclusively to British Religion in Numbers by Mark Hofmans of GfK Custom Research and are quoted here with his kind permission.

Across all countries, trust in the clergy stands at 58%, the range being from 33% in France to 86% in Romania. In the UK the figure is 63%, the highest in Western Europe (and 15% above the sub-continental average), closely followed by Sweden on 62%.

But UK citizens’ trust in the clergy is far less than in doctors (85%), the army (85%), schoolteachers (84%) and policemen (73%), although it exceeds confidence in lawyers (48%), managers of large enterprises (34%), journalists (21%) and politicians (14%).  

GfK report that, internationally, trust in the clergy declined by 8% between 2009 and 2010, from 66% to 58%, and by as much as 17% in Germany, which GfK largely attributes to the adverse publicity surrounding the abuse of children and young people by Roman Catholic priests and the Church’s perceived inadequate response to these events.

In the UK the fall from 2009 to 2010 was only 3%, perhaps reflecting the fact that the Roman Catholic Church in Britain has been somewhat less caught up in the scandals than its counterparts in Ireland and continental Europe. The 66% having trust in the clergy in the UK in 2009 was also 6 points higher than in 2008.

Although somewhat less that the number of Britons telling Ipsos MORI that they trust the clergy to tell the truth (71% in 2009), and notwithstanding a continuing trickle of ‘naughty vicar’ stories in the media (the latest about sham marriages), the GfK figure of 63% in the UK having confidence in the clergy is still surprisingly high (and not far behind the United States on 69%).

How do we interpret this? Is the lingering respect for clergy a recognition of the influence which they exercise in the leadership of the local communities which they serve, or do we still derive comfort from the knowledge that the clergy of all denominations and faiths set a lead in religious commitment and moral standards which the rest of us will but imperfectly follow?

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Citizenship Survey, 2009-10 – First Results

Posted on July 28, 2010 by Clive D. Field

Detailed reporting from the 2008-09 Citizenship Survey may not yet be complete (in particular, the topic report on race, religion and equalities is still outstanding), but initial results from all four quarters of the 2009-10 survey were released by the Department for Communities and Local Government on 22 July in respect of the questions relating to empowered and active communities, community cohesion, and prejudice and discrimination.  

The 58-page report (Cohesion Research, Statistical Release 12) will be found at the following URL (with the 16 tables also separately available as Excel files):

http://www.communities.gov.uk/publications/corporate/statistics/citizenshipsurveyq4200910

The 2009-10 Citizenship Survey was conducted by Ipsos MORI and TNS-BMRB in England and Wales between April 2009 and March 2010. Face-to-face interviews took place with a representative core sample of 9,305 adults aged 16 and over. In addition, there were ethnic minority and Muslim booster samples (n = 5,280 and 1,555 respectively). However, the tables in this release mostly relate to England alone, and this is true of all those referred to below. We shall focus solely on those which contain breaks by religious affiliation (Christian denominations again being undifferentiated).

TABLE 2: Whereas 37% overall feel they can influence decisions affecting their local area, the figure rises to 40% among Sikhs, 46% among Muslims and 47% among Hindus. Similarly, while 20% overall consider they can influence decisions affecting Britain, the number stands at 35% for Hindus and Muslims, with 28% for Sikhs. It is not therefore the case that adherents of the major non-Christian faiths feel less empowered than Christians.

TABLE 3: 59% of all adults have participated in some form of civic engagement or formal volunteering at least once in the last year, a 3% decrease on 2008-09. The proportions are well below the norm for Muslims (45%) and Hindus (48%), and this is broadly true for each of the four constituent activity areas considered separately. Muslims’ engagement is 3 points lower than in 2008-09 and 6 points lower than in 2007-08, suggesting that there may be cause for concern about their level of integration.

TABLE 7: 85% of the whole sample consider their local area to be a place where people from different backgrounds get on well together, the range being from 80% for Buddhists and those with no religion to 90% for Muslims. The Muslim figure has steadily improved from 81% in 2005, as have the statistics for Christians (80% to 86%) and Sikhs (77% to 88%).

TABLE 9: 87% of all adults claim to identify strongly with Britain. This is also the figure for Muslims (as it was in 2008-09). This is 6% more than for Muslims who identify strongly with their neighbourhood, which is 5 points above the national average. Identification with Britain is weakest among Buddhists (75%, but a very small sub-sample) and those with no religion (84%).

TABLE 11: 80% of all respondents mix regularly (at least monthly) with people from different ethnic or religious backgrounds. This is least for Christians (77%) and greatest for Hindus (96%) and Muslims and Sikhs (94% each). Ethnicity is a major driver of these differences, 78% of whites mixing compared with 96% of ethnic minority groups. The statistics show little change from previous years. Breakdowns by sphere of mixing by religious affiliation are detailed in Table 12.

TABLE 13: 7% of the whole sample feel that racial or religious harassment is a very or fairly big problem in their local area. However, the figure rises to 13% for Hindus, 14% for Sikhs and 17% for Muslims, although in each instance the percentage is a little lower than in 2008-09. For Muslims it is 3% less than in 2007-08. Islamophobia, therefore, would appear to remain a sad fact of British life. Unfortunately, too few Jews were interviewed for them to be separately categorized (they are subsumed within ‘other religion’), so we cannot say from this survey whether Judeophobia is also an issue.

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Thought for the Day

Posted on July 27, 2010 by Clive D. Field

Thought for the Day is the ‘pause’ in BBC Radio 4’s prime-time flagship morning news and current affairs programme Today when invited guests reflect on a topical issue from a religious standpoint. The feature is forty years old this year. With each reflection just three minutes in length, few radio broadcasts have acquired such disproportionate significance during recent decades.

Long regarded as a de facto part of the ‘God Slot’, or religious programming, the series has attracted increasing controversy for its persistent exclusion of members of non-religious communities and for being tantamount to a ‘religious monopoly’. The dispute is symptomatic of wider questions surrounding the place of religious broadcasting and of religious speech in an increasingly pluralist and multicultural society.

As a contribution to this ongoing debate about Thought for the Day, the think-tank Ekklesia has commissioned Lizzie Clifford to research a new paper entitled ‘Thought for the Day: Beyond the God-of-the-Slots’. This is substantially based on a quantitative and qualitative content analysis of a representative sample of 72 Thought for the Day scripts from twelve different weeks in 2007-09.

Through this analysis Clifford casts doubt on many of the claims made by defenders and opponents of the current format of Thought for the Day. In particular, ‘What some regard as the feature’s weakness, its attenuated theological content, can in other respects assist with bridge-building and conversation between people of different belief commitments.’

‘On the other hand, the restriction of presenters to those who represent groups with a long-established liturgical and doctrinal base seems unnecessary, given that the actual content of their scripts does not always make such a requirement. Humanists and those from “alternative” religious backgrounds also deserve to be heard.’

The paper further provides evidence about the presenters of the more than 900 Thought for the Day broadcasts during the past three years.

In terms of faith background, 78% of presenters were Christians, 8% Jews, 4% Muslims, 4% Sikhs, 3% Hindus and 2% Buddhists. Relative to the 2001 census of population of the UK, and excluding those with no religious affiliation or none stated, Christians were under-represented as presenters (93% being their expected share, given Thought for the Day’s current brief).

By contrast, Jews, Sikhs, Hindus and Buddhists were over-represented in leading Thought for the Day, with the representation of Muslims nearly right in terms of the census (although their numbers have increased considerably since that time).

As regards gender, 79% of presenters were male and 21% female. This distribution perhaps reflects the gender balance in the media overall, and in the composition of various ecclesiastical hierarchies, but it clearly under-represents the contribution which women make to faith overall. On nearly all indicators of belief and most measures of practice, they are consistently shown as being more religious or spiritual than men. 

Clifford’s report can be downloaded from:

http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/thought_for_the_day/main_report

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