“Muslims most disadvantaged in Britain”- Study

A new survey released Thursday by the Office of National Statistics and considered the most detailed snapshot taken of UK’s diverse population, showed that Muslims living in Britain, the most ethnic religious group in the country, suffer the highest rates of disadvantage in terms of employment and housing.

The survey said that UK Muslims are more than twice as likely to be unemployed than followers of other faiths and up to five times as likely to live in overcrowded housing.

"Of the different religious groups, unemployment rates among Muslims were more than double those in other groups," the study said.

17 percent of Muslim men and 18 percent of Muslim women were unemployed compared to just five percent of Christian men and four percent of Christian women, the 162-page study found.

The report, the first to analyze UK along its religious as well as its ethnic lines, provides a bleak assessment of Muslims’ life in Britain, most of whom are ethnic Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis.

It stated that African Muslims had some of the highest unemployment rates in 2001, 28 per cent for men and 31 per cent for women.

And for Indian Muslims, it was found to be 11 per cent for men and 12 per cent for women, more than double the national average, said the survey, based on data from the 2001 national census.

"Bangladeshi, Pakistani and Black African groups had low levels of participation in the labor market," the survey further revealed.

"Their high unemployment rates suggest that even when active in the labor market they experienced difficulties finding employment."

A third of UK Muslims live in overcrowded households, compared to just six percent of Britain's Christians.

The study also found that 44 percent of ethnic Bangladeshi and 26 percent of ethnic Pakistani households were deemed to be overcrowded, compared to an average for the country of seven percent.

Half of Muslim households owned their houses compared to a national average of nearly 70 percent, according to Reuters.

There are 1.6 million Muslims in the UK- that is the population of Birmingham (1 million) and Glasgow (600,000) combined. One in eleven Londoners is Muslims.

•Muslims consider leaving UK

A Guardian/ICM poll carried out last year found that hundreds of thousands of Muslims consider leaving Britain.

The figure illustrates the extent of suffering and discrimination Muslims endure, specially following the July 7 bombings, which were used by the Western media to fuel negative sentiments against the world Muslims, specially those who live in the United States and Europe despite their eagerness and active participation in those societies with the aim of fulfilling true and meaningful integration of the Muslims into western societies.

The Guardian/ICM also found that tens of thousands of Muslims suffered from increased Islamophobia, with one in five saying they or a family member have faced abuse or hostility since the attacks.

UK Police reported receiving more than 1,200 Islamophobic incidents across the country ranging from verbal abuse to one murder in the three weeks following July 2005 bombings in London.