Some people are Muslim. Many of those people will have children. It’s possible to measure the rate of births among people who are Muslim and compare it to the rate of births among the general population. If you do so, it’s possible that the rate of births among Muslim couples will appear to be different from that of the general population. You might, as the Times did this Saturday, find the disparity “startling”; so much so, in fact, that you make it your front-page splash. You might, as the Times did, argue that the “Muslim birthrate” means “almost a tenth of babies in England and Wales are Muslim”.
This use of language is annoying. Children are not “born” Muslim, any more than they are born supporters of West Bromwich Albion, or speakers of Russian. As the National Secular Society commented, it is “specious and unhelpful” to label young children with the religion of their parents, pointing out that “religion and belief should be freely chosen, not assigned”. Or, as Richard Dawkins wrote in a letter to the Times this morning: “Babies and toddlers are too young to know what they think about origins, moral philosophy or the meaning of life: too young to know whether they have a religion at all”.
Many of these children will indeed grow up to adopt their parents’ religion. Others will abandon the religious beliefs but continue to identify, in one way or another, with the term “Muslim”. Saif Rahman argued for the value of the term “cultural Muslim” in a piece for New Humanist last year. As he pointed out, it’s hardly an original concept:
“Much of this will be familiar to British humanists who at weddings, Easter and funerals revert to a default mode and become cultural Christians […]These patterns are comforting, familiar and a way to stay connected to your community. They are not so easily sloughed off when you renounce your belief in god. Nor should they be.”
Yet it’s obvious that a UK newspaper story about the “Muslim birthrate” is of a different order to one about the “Christian birthrate” or the “Jewish birthrate”. The reason a higher birthrate among Muslim couples is “startling”, as the Times puts it, is because a significant proportion of the British population have negative views of Islam and of Muslims. This has, in no small part, been driven by media coverage itself. Fears generated by the war on terror – along with responses to violent attacks like the 7/7 bombing or the murder of Lee Rigby – have given rise to the perception that Muslims are an “enemy within”; that they pose some sort of inherent threat to British values; and that they stand poised to take over the country.
Such distortions are not only fuel for anti-Muslim bigotry, they make it harder for people – Muslims and non-Muslims alike – to identify and challenge religious fundamentalism where it does exist. The Times has quoted an academic who says the birthrate statistics could "generate alarmism". But to what extent is the story itself alarmist?
