Muslim soldiers of a more local kind concern Shiraz Maher in Ties that Bind, a remarkable new report issued by Policy Exchange (£10). At present there are only 600 Muslims in Britain's armed forces. That represents 0.3 per cent of the total, whereas Muslims comprise an estimated 4.6 per cent of the general population. Maher, who also writes for Standpoint, shows how Islamist activists have succeeded (partly through our negligence) in substituting a story of conflicted loyalties for a historical reality where there were none.
In the Great War, Indian Muslim leaders successfully countered German propaganda which sought to portray the Allies as anti-Islamic, particularly after they found themselves at war with the Ottoman Caliphate. The British military went to considerable lengths to cater for these Muslim servicemen, who realised that the conflict was political rather than religious and served everywhere from Flanders to Mesopotamia. Much the same pattern recurred during the Second World War, when the Japanese made their anti-colonial pitch amid the fraught climate of demands for Indian independence. A high proportion of Muslims again fought with great distinction in the Indian Army, a sacrifice belatedly recognised in the commemorative stone gates at the Hyde Park end of Constitution Hill.
Maher rightly argues that this Muslim contribution needs to be incorporated into the "renationalised" school curriculum we have been repeatedly promised, not least to counteract the religious separatism being propagated by Islamist extremists. As in other areas of our national life, so-called community leaders are more hindrance than help. The Education Secretary Michael Gove's rediscovery of the 18th-century Prussian practice of using retiring NCOs as village schoolteachers may reconnect the services with British society. Just as Muslims in the empire made a rational choice to fight for Britain, so nowadays we need to present a career in the army as a proven route out of the structural unemployment which dogs young Muslims.
