UK
Senior Muslim leader urges Britons to focus less on Gaza for sake of integration
Fewer than 10 per cent of young Muslims view Britain as a tolerant country, new polling reveals
April 7, 2025 11:32
Fewer than 10 per cent of young Muslims view Britain as a tolerant country, new polling reveals
April 7, 2025 11:32British national security is threatened by increasing disillusionment over the war in Gaza, the head of one of the world’s most influential Islamic organisations has warned.
Mohammad bin Abdulkarim al-Issa, a Saudi Arabian religious leader, cautioned that integration between young British Muslims and non-Muslims is under threat over the Middle East conflict – threatening to breed extremism on both sides.
Issa, the head of the Mecca-based Muslim World League (MWL), advised Muslims and non-Muslims alike to focus on domestic issues. “A political situation outside should not interfere with integration inside,” Issa told the Times.
MWL is an influential NGO which states it aims to “present the true Islam and its tolerant principles,” and to combat extremism, violence and exclusion.
Issa said Muslims and non-Muslims were “living separate lives. The Muslim World League believes that this distance creates divides, and extremists – both Muslim and non-Muslim – flourish where there are divides.”
He said this division had been made worse by the war in Gaza.
“The problem of integration has been exacerbated by the conflict in Gaza and the politics in the Middle East. The Muslim World League calls on Muslims and non-Muslims in the UK instead to focus on domestic issues where there are shared concerns. Such as policy areas that unite rather than divide.”
Issa said integration needed to be at the centre of UK government policy, or national security could be at risk.
“Without integration there is isolation, fear of the other. That can cause a vacuum that the evildoers will try to fill,” Issa told the Times.
According to Issa, 50 per cent of British Muslims are under the age of 25 and that younger generation is growing increasingly disillusioned and alienated over UK foreign policy in the Middle East.
MWL’s new polling found that young Muslims and non-Muslims had key differences in their values. Younger Muslims were less likely than their elders to view integration as an important duty and were more isolated from mainstream politics, according to the Times.
MWL’s polling revealed a large gap between how the two different groups view the role of religion in politics. Almost one in five Muslims wanted religion to play a part in politics, compared with just 5 per cent of non-Muslims.
The poll, which had a sample size of more than 5,000 people, including over 450 Muslims, found that nearly 40 per cent of non-Muslims saw increased diversity as a bad thing, whereas 70 per cent of Muslims said it was positive.
Issa reported that fewer than ten per cent of Muslims aged 18 to 24 viewed Britain as a tolerant country. Young Muslims were more likely to say Britain was less tolerant than older Muslims. The younger group was also more likely to say concerns about Islam in Britain were illegitimate or based on media sensationalism.
Muslims were more likely to say they had a positive relationship with non-Muslims (nearly two-thirds of Muslims said there was a positive or mostly positive relationship with non-Muslims), compared with less than a quarter of non-Muslims.
In 2020, Issa led a delegation of Muslim leaders to Auschwitz, as part of a joint visit with the American Jewish Committee (AJC), the most senior Islamic leadership delegation to visit a Nazi death camp. In 2022, he led another delegation to the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum.
In March 2023, he was received by King Charles at Buckingham Palace, the first prominent Muslim leader to be received by the monarch.