David McWilliams: Islam is the fastest growing religion in Ireland and muslim immigrants are the fastest growing immigrant group. Very soon Ireland will have its first generation of second generation muslims. Today we’re asking if all other migrants seem to be integrating quickly why are muslim immigrants not integrating like other groups. I’m joined by a practicing muslim and FT journalist Mehreen Khan. What I want to ask you is, your parents were muslims in England who kind of hid their Islamic faith. Your generation are much more open. Why is that?
Marine Khan: I think you see a pattern with every immigrant group the first or second generations that come in its very economically driven. Its economic migration so people, they want to get their head down. They want to work very hard and they want their kids to succeed. And that is the general pattern of immigration in Britain whether its Jewish communities, African communities, Carribbean communities, Asians and then later on third or fourth generation migrants are far more self-confident about who they are because they don’t necessarily see themselves been pulled between two cultures. So my parents and my grandparents have some kind of psychological connection towards their ancestral home in a way that I won’t really have because I will just visit it sporadically. But when it comes to religion I think Islam offers a universalism which is not cultural. It is a faith and it's a faith which can be taken outside its historical context and adapted to wherever an muslim wants to practice it. It's the same as any Abrahamic faith like Christianity or Judaism. And I think that what we’ve seen with Britain is that we have economically mobile migrants who then have children who are then born into kind of lower middle classes and they have a version of their own Islam which is very different from the Islam of their parents or their grand parents. So for example if you were born in a muslim majority country there’s really no need to wear the head scarf because everyone is muslim around you so do not need to assert that identity. But for some muslims they do want to be seen to be muslims.
David McWilliams: It’s interesting talking to you because Irish Muslims kids born now first generation are going to end up very much like yourself, the second generation, third generation muslims in England with these dilemmas that they have to deal with. The cost of standing out at the moment whether you’re in Holland, or France or America is very high.
Mehreen Khan: Its changed I think in the last five or six years. But then you have to think about. If you’re a young person and you’re brought up in a faith which for you is beautiful, its spiritual and its about families and values. But the minute you open the newspaper and look at the television and suddenly this thing islam is scary and it's a threat to the west. Young people are I think are rebellious by nature. For me when I was very young. Islam was seen pilloried and it was something that was scaring people and it actually attracted the kind of rebel in me. Well if people were going to be scared of me. Its not that dissimilar to being a punk or loving certain types of music and getting told by the Daily Mail in the seventies that you were a threat to British values.
David McWilliams: Lets talk about the studies that we’ve seen in the UK which have been unambiguous in their conclusion which is that Islamic people do not blend into the UK society as quickly as other immigrants.
David McWilliams: But in a multiracial society what’s very interesting about the surveys is that most muslims respond I wouldn’t marry for example, I would choose not to marry a non muslim. Now, in a multiracial society does that mean that you’re separating yourself at very profound moments of your lives and that scares the host population.
Mehreen Khan: The mayor of London. He’s a man who identifies as being a muslim. He’s married to a muslim woman and he brings up muslim children and one of that has stopped him from being a very fully participating active member of society and most of the people that I know are very similar. I think we start from the premise that being muslim somehow is a little bit foreign and just not part of us. I would tell people particularly in Ireland that being a muslim you basically share ninety per cent of the socially conservative values of your host country which is Ireland which has a predominantly Christian and catholic culture and muslims have a strong sense of social conservatism. Muslims traditionally they should in the UK vote Tory, because that is the roster of social moral values all Muslims are brought up with.
David McWilliams: When you see fundamentalism how does that make you feel?

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