The principle winner from the misplaced boys of the UK, as described in a brand new report into younger male under-achievement by the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), is sure to be Islam.
Based on the CSJ’s Misplaced Boys report, printed this week, “for the reason that pandemic alone, the variety of males aged 16 to 24 who are usually not in schooling, employment or coaching (NEET) has elevated by a staggering 40 per cent in comparison with simply seven per cent of females”.
“For these younger males who’re in work, the much-vaunted gender pay hole has been reversed. Younger males at the moment are out-earned by their feminine friends, together with among the many college educated.”
The CSJ additionally discovered that “the rising divergence in boys’ and women’ outcomes doesn’t solely apply to schooling and employment. We’re additionally seeing a rising divide within the social and political attitudes of the sexes.
“In Britain, as in nations throughout the developed world, younger males are more and more drawn to conservative, traditionalist or right-wing political actions, while younger ladies turn into ever extra liberal and left-progressive.”
The Misplaced Boys report declared: “As Britain grapples with an epidemic of household breakdown, tens of millions of boys are disadvantaged of any constructive mannequin of manhood. For boys and younger males in Britain – particularly those that are poor – the image is an more and more bleak one.”
Writing in The Each day Sceptic on Monday at the beginning of Ramadan, Christian Concern’s head of public coverage, Tim Dieppe, identified that Islam is the quickest rising faith within the UK:
“On the final census in 2021 there have been 3.9 million Muslims within the UK, or 6.5% of the inhabitants. This has risen fairly quickly from solely 105,000 in 1960. The earlier census in 2011 confirmed a Muslim inhabitants of two.7 million. Islam was due to this fact the quickest rising faith within the UK over the 10-year interval from 2011-2021, exhibiting development of some 44%.
“The typical (median) age of Christians in England and Wales is 51 years-old. This compares to the typical age of Muslims at 27, and the typical age of the inhabitants as an entire at 40 years-old. Already in 2015 8.1% of all college age youngsters have been Muslim.”
The expansion Dieppe is describing is pushed by immigration and the comparatively excessive Muslim start fee within the UK. He identified that “the identify Muhammad, when permitting for spelling variants, has been the highest boys identify for infants in Britain yearly since 2011”.
However what the findings of the Misplaced Boys report sign is the true chance of Islam attaining vital conversion development amongst younger males from non-Muslim backgrounds. Islam presents disenfranchised younger males in post-Christian Britain three specific sights:
· A purposeful peer group – a holy brotherhood – led by father figures who’re revered of their communities.
· An enemy to compete towards and to hunt to subdue – the secular, permissive tradition of the West.
· The chance to realize respect from their male friends and adulation from the females within the sub-culture by exhibiting braveness and resilience within the apply of Islam.
Dieppe concluded his piece with a strong name for Britain to vary religious course:
“As a Christian I lament the decline of the affect of Christianity in Britain. I can solely blame the church for its failure to boldly and unashamedly proclaim the reality of the gospel…My view is that we will solely actually get well our perception in Christian values by perception in Christianity itself. We are able to observe the true faith, or a false one. For the time being we’re transferring in the direction of a false one. I hope, for the great of the nation, we alter course.”
However the UK is exhibiting no indicators of adjusting course with the Labour authorities set to present Islam particular protections towards criticism beneath an anti-Islamophobia regulation.
This might give Islam a big benefit in its public proclamation over towards Christianity which its opponents would nonetheless be free to lambast to their coronary heart’s content material.
Nevertheless, even with out this political privileging, the sensible actuality now’s that Islam has been given an open purpose for conversion development by the collapse of the standard household within the UK for the reason that Nineteen Sixties and particularly the pandemic of fatherlessness. How can it fail to attain with a big rise within the variety of younger males from secular backgrounds changing into Muslims within the coming years?
Julian Mann is a former Church of England vicar, now an evangelical journalist primarily based in Lancashire.
