The relationship between ethnic, religious and social communities in some western European states is surrounded by a sense of crisis. The atmospherics of this crisis - immigration, visible difference, tension over "trigger issues" such as women's apparel or icons of faith, the pervading fears of the post-9/11 world - are easier to identify than its actual character. In this circumstance, where evidence of conflict is readily available but a view of the whole picture is harder to achieve, it is not surprising that many people - seeking to make meaning from apparent confusion - look for scapegoats. In media, academia and much public discussion in the first years of the millennium (particularly in Britain, with which this essay is mainly concerned), one of the principal scapegoats has been and continues to be multiculturalism.
The extent of the "backlash" against multiculturalism - the political accommodation of post-immigration minorities - will be familiar to many with even a passing interest in the subject. True, multiculturalism has always been controversial and contested; and its critics are far from sharing a single view of what is wrong with it. But two additional factors have coalesced to make their critique more powerful and more important to address today: its association with Muslims, and its linkage to arguments about national identity.
Tariq Modood is professor of sociology, politics and public policy and the founding director of the Centre for the Study of Ethnicity and Citizenship at the University of Bristol. His latest book is Multiculturalism: A Civic Idea (Polity, published on 21 May 2007)
Also by Tariq Modood in openDemocracy:
"Muslims and European multiculturalism"
(15 May 2003)
"Remaking multiculturalism after 7/7"
(29 September 2005)
"The liberal dilemma: integration or vilification?"
(8 February 2006)
The aspect of the critique of multiculturalism that focuses on Muslims has a longer history than is often realised. It predates the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and their aftermath, though in Britain at least 2001 is a pivotal year. The late spring of that year saw urban disturbances in a number of northern English towns and cities in which young Muslim men (mainly of Pakistani origin) played a central role. The dominant political response was that the riots were due to a one-sided multiculturalism having facilitated, even encouraged, segregated communities which shunned each other.
Many subsequent events - from legal disputes over schools' dress-codes to the London bombings of 7 July 2005 - have been interpreted as pointing in the same direction. For example, Gilles Kepel observed that the 7/7 bombers "were the children of Britain's own multicultural society" and that the bombings have "smashed" the implicit social consensus that produced multiculturalism "to smithereens" (see Gilles Kepel, "Europe's answer to Londonistan", 24 August 2005).
I would like to respond to this critique by restating a conception of multiculturalism which clearly distinguishes it from certain narrow forms of liberalism, but which places it squarely within an understanding of democratic citizenship and nation-building.
Multicultural citizenshipJust as social democrats have a notion of positive equality around socio-economic equality (what might be called social citizenship), a parallel case can be made for positive equality in connection with the symbolic dimensions of public culture. This is based on the understanding that citizenship is not just a legal status and set of rights but is amplified by a certain kind of politics. In particular, citizenship should be seen as possessing the following three features, each of which exemplifies why citizenship and multiculturalism are not antithetical:
- Citizenship is non-transcendent, and pluralist
Citizens are individuals and have individual rights - but these rights are not uniform, and their citizenship contours itself around groups of people with specific cultures and histories. Citizenship is not a monistic identity that is completely apart from or transcends other identities important to citizens, in the way that the theory - though not always the practice - of French republicanism demands. The creation of the United Kingdom created new political subjects (for my purpose "citizens", with due qualifications about legal status and nomenclature) but did not eliminate the state's constituent nations. So the creation of a common British citizenship was quite compatible with being Scottish, English, Irish or Welsh, thus allowing for the idea that there were different ways of being British. This idea, moreover, was and is not confined to constituent nations but is capacious and flexible enough to include other group identities. The plurality, then, is ever present - and each part of the plurality has a right both to be a part of the whole and to speak up for itself and for its vision of the whole.
Among openDemocracy's many articles on multiculturalism are:
Paul Gilroy, "Melancholia and multiculture"
(3 August 2004)
Neal Ascherson, "From multiculturalism to where?"
(19 August 2004)
Ruben Andersson, "Multiculturalism at work" (16 June 2006)
Rajeev Bhargava, "India's model: faith, secularism and democracy"
(3 November 2004)
Theo Veenkamp, "After tolerance"
(24 November 2004)
Paul Kelly, "Multiculturalism and 7/7: neither problem nor solution"
(20 October 2005)
Sarah Lindon, "Diversity in question"
(20 December 2005)
- Citizenship is multilogical
The plurality speaks to each other and it does not necessarily agree about what it means to be a citizen. There can be a series of agreements and disagreements involving cross-cutting areas of consensus and schism, and shifting alliances across the issues. But there is enough agreement and above all enough interest in the discussion for dialogues to be sustained. As the parties to these dialogues are many, not just two, the process is more aptly called "multilogical" than bilateral. The multilogues allow for views to qualify each other, overlap, synthesise, be modified in the light of having to coexist with that of others, hybridise, permit new adjustments to be made, new conversations to take place. Such modulations and contestations are part of the internal, evolutionary, work-in-progress dynamic of citizenship.
- Citizenship is dispersed
If citizenship is not monolithic, it follows that action and power are not monopolistically concentrated - and that the state is not the exclusive site for citizenship. We perform our citizenship and relate to each other as fellow citizens, and so get to know what our citizenship is in all its dimensions in relation not just to law and politics but also to civic debate and action across the social field (initiated through voluntary associations, community organisations, trades unions, newspapers and media, educational and religious institutions). State action, laws, regulation and prohibition may effect much reform; but public debate, discursive contestations, pressure-group mobilisations, and the varied and the (semi-) autonomous institutions of civil society also contribute to shaping change. Moreover, when we say that citizenship is a public not a private identity it is important to clarify what we mean by "public". If citizenship involves concern for issues such as poverty or the qualities of prime-ministerial leadership, this can take place in a trade-union meeting or a mosque or in reading a novel or watching a television documentary in the privacy of one's home. It is the concern for the civic condition that is the issue - not the how and where. So the idea that, for example, religious spaces - mental and physical - are inherently "private" and non-civic is unnecessarily restrictive and purist.
Muslims and identity
How does this relate to Muslim identity politics, one of the central sources of anxiety and disillusionment about multiculturalism? British Muslim identity politics was virtually created by the Satanic Verses affair of the 1989 and beyond: that is, in the protests against Salman Rushdie's novel and the counter-reaction against them (see Tariq Modood, Not Easy Being British: Colour, Culture and Citizenship, London: Runnymede Trust/Trentham Books, 1992). This event led many to think of themselves for the first time as Muslims in a public way, and to think that this choice was important in their relation to other Muslims and to the wider British (and international) society.
This process is movingly described by the author Rana Kabbani, whose Letter to Christendom begins with a description of herself as "a woman who had been a sort of underground Muslim before she was forced into the open by the Salman Rushdie affair" (see Rana Kabbani, Letter to Christendom, Virago Press, 1992).
Such shocks to Muslim identity are hardly a thing of the past. The present situation of some Muslims in Britain is nicely captured by the young professional (and aspiring New Labour parliamentary candidate) Farmida Bi, who had not particularly made anything of her Muslim background before 7/7 but was moved by the bombings to claim a Muslim identity and found the organisation, Progressive British Muslims. As a self-described member of the group of "integrated, liberal British Muslims" who were forced to ask "am I a Muslim at all?", Bi writes: "7/7 made most of us embrace our Muslim identity and become determined to prove that its possible to live happily as a Muslim in the west" (see Farmida Bi, "Alienation", in "The London bombs, one year on", 3 July 2006).
This sense of feeling that one must speak up as a Muslim has nothing necessarily to do with religiosity. Like all forms of difference it comes into being as a result of pressures from "outside" a group as well as from the "inside". But in this particular case, each location has a powerful geopolitical dimension. The emergence of British Muslim identity and activism has been propelled by a strong concern for the plight of Muslims elsewhere in the world, and reinforced by a double perception: that opposition to this plight is a form of anti-imperialist emancipation, and that the British government, in its tolerance of (or worse, complicity or active engagement in) the destruction of Muslim civilian lives, is part of the problem.
British, American and Australian (perhaps to some extent most western) Muslims are engaged in an extremely daunting task: having to develop a sense of national citizenship in, and to integrate into, polities which are at war with or occupying some Muslim countries (and have adopted a confrontational posture against others) - in what is perceived by all sides to be a long-term project. Moreover, domestic terrorism, as well as non-violent political opposition, has unfortunately become part of this large political context. The danger of "blowback" from overseas military activity remains considerable, and capable of destroying the movement towards multicultural citizenship.
At the same time, one reason why I think we should persevere with this ambitious political goal is that I am impressed by how many British Muslims have and are responding to these difficulties: by standing up for their community through civic engagement, and by refusing to surrender either their Muslim identity or their slice of democratic citizenship. Despite this dependency on overseas circumstances outside their control (which might be expected to induce passivity and self-pitying introspection), many British Muslims exhibit a dynamism and a confidence that they must rise to the challenge of dual loyalties and not give up on either set of commitments.
Ideological and violent extremism is indeed undermining the conditions of and hopes for multiculturalism; but - contrary to the multiculturalism-blamers I began with - this extremism has nothing to do with the promotion of multiculturalism but is coming into the domestic arena from the international.
Also in openDemocracy on British Muslim identity:
Mohammed Sajid, "The gap between us: British Muslims and 7/7"
(18 July 2005)
David Hayes, "What kind of country? "
(28 July 2005)
Maruf Khwaja, "Muslims in Britain: generations, experiences, futures"
(2 August 2005)
Ehsan Masood, "British Muslims must stop the war"
(30 August 2005)
Abdul-Rehman Malik, David T, Max Farrar, S Sayyid, Mohammed Sajid, Sami Zubaida, "In search of British Muslim identity: responses to Young, Angry and Muslim"
(28 October 2005)
National identity and "being British"
This leads me to the second potent factor in recent arguments about multiculturalism: its linkage to discourses of the nation. Here, although multiculturalism does not deserve to be scapegoated for current problems (nor indeed to be7 deserted by the political centre-left), some of its advocates can be seen to have overlooked or at least underemphasised a point that is integral to its core idea.
This, put simply, is that one can't just talk about difference. Difference has to be related to things we have in common. The commonality that most multiculturalists emphasise is citizenship. I have argued that this citizenship has to be seen in a plural, dispersed and multilogical way and not reduced to legal rights, passports and the franchise (important though these are). I would now like to go further in suggesting that a good basis for or accompaniment to a multicultural citizenship is a national identity.
We in Europe have overlooked that where multiculturalism has worked and been accepted as a state project (Canada, Australia and Malaysia, for example) it has been integral to a nation-building project (to creating Canadians, Aussies and Malaysians). Even in the United States, where the federal state has had a much lesser role in the multicultural project, the incorporation of ethno-religious diversity and hyphenated Americans has been about country-making, civic inclusion and making a claim upon the national identity.
The importance of the point is twofold. First, the tendency in Europe has been for some advocates of pluralism and multiculture (whether or not the vocabulary of multiculturalism is used) to put aside other fundamental disagreements and argue as if the logic of the national and the multicultural are incompatible. Partly as a result, many Europeans have come to think of multiculturalism as antithetical to rather than as a reformer of national identity.
Second, it does not make sense to encourage strong multicultural or minority identities and weak common or national identities; strong multicultural identities are a good thing - they are not intrinsically divisive, reactionary or subversive - but they need the complement of a framework of vibrant, dynamic, national narratives and the ceremonies and rituals which give expression to a national identity.
It is clear that minority identities are capable of exerting an emotional pull for the individuals for whom they are important. Multicultural citizenship, if it is to be equally attractive to the same individuals, requires a comparable counterbalancing emotional pull. Many Britons, for example, say they are worried about disaffection amongst some Muslim young men, and more generally about the lack of identification with Britain amongst many Muslims in the country. Yet surveys over many years have shown that Muslims have been reaching out to identify with Britain (in one, a Channel 4 / NOP survey of spring 2006, 82% of a national sample of Muslims said they very strongly [45%] or fairly strongly [37%] felt they belonged to Britain).
True, there is a lot of anger and fear around these issues, especially in relation to terrorism and aggressive Anglo-American foreign policies. I do not feel that we are at all close to undoing the mess that these actions and policies have created, but alongside them is clear evidence of support among Muslims in Britain for a sense of national belonging - and this is a valuable opportunity to create an obvious counterweight to the ideological calls for a jihad against fellow Britons.
In this light, the interest by politicians of the left in British national identity is to be welcomed. A leading example is Gordon Brown, the imminent successor of Tony Blair as Labour Party leader and prime minister. He has argued for the need to revive and revalue British national identity in a number of speeches, most notably at the 2006 annual conference of the Fabian Society: "Who Do We Want To Be? The Future of Britishness".
Brown wants to derive a set of core values (liberty, fairness, enterprise among them) from a historical narrative of Britain's development. The problem is that such values, even if they could (singly or in combination) be given a distinctive British take, are too complex, and their interpretation and priority too contested, to be pressed into the service of meaningful definition.
After all, every public culture must operate through shared values, which are embodied in its institutions and practices (and also may be used to criticise these for falling short). But to be effective such values cannot be uniform or one-dimensional; and their meaning needs to be discursively grasped as old interpretations are dropped or as new circumstances unsettle one consensus and another is built up. To declare that freedom or fairness is a core British value is unlikely to settle any controversy, far less to clarify, for example, what is hate speech and how it should be handled.
Such definitions of core values tend either to be bland or (if they are too narrow and prescriptive) divisive. In the context of my argument, moreover, the idea that there has to be a schedule of value statements to which every citizen is expected to sign up to is not in the spirit of a multilogical citizenship. This holds that national identity is not reducible to a list but should be woven in debate and discussion; and that the citizenship which is central to this national identity carries the right to make a claim on it - challenging negative difference and supplanting it by positive difference. Indeed, a sustainable intellectual or political vision of social reform and justice in the 21st century cannot afford to omit these aspects of multicultural citizenship. Rather, the turning of negative difference into positive difference should become a key test of social justice in coming decades.
I cannot conclude on a clear note of optimism. But we do need some optimism and self-belief if we are even to limit the damage that is currently being done to our multicultural politics and current prospects, far less to create more enriching ones. The 21st century is going to be one of unprecedented ethnic and religious mix in the west. In the past, multicultural societies have tended to only flourish under imperial rule. If we are to keep alive the prospect of a dynamic, internally differentiated multiculturalism within the context of democratic citizenship, then we must recognise that multiculturalism is not the cause of present discontents but part of the solution.
Comments
The current climate of filling in forms segregates people. It's a US style positive discrimination attempt taken up by the EU, that separates and annihilates people. See US for details.
' Thought is best to write this coming from 'grass roots', other then the usual lala.
My citizenship is my immediate environment and as far as I can imagine and think. In any case, it's a whole load of waffle, trying to teach 'foreigners' manners, instead of imposing their cultural values on us. Why doesn't multi-culturalism work? Simple. Try walking down the street, as a woman or a male homosexual on Edgware Road in London and you'll have your answer within seconds.
In a way, you are right. The individual should throw out this psycho-nonsense that you, amongst others, perpetuate. Please, stop this going from the particular to the general. It's ego-centric, at best.
Individual's are part/icles of a society. All those people you mentioned could not function without a movement, only within.
The problem is COLLECTIVE lies and dishonesty.
Heaven help us, if we end up going down that idiotic, moronic, despicable root of calling ourselves Baaarkshirrian Britanican, a la Africa American.
It's beyond belief and ludicrous that such idiotic, primitive forms of identification based solely on accidents of birth are promoted and even worse still , see US again for details, with even more idiotic notions of 'I'm proud to be a Baaaaarkshirrian Britanican'. Who comes up with these moronic idea anyway?
I get sick to the stomach with people calling themselves, giving themselves brand names e.g. British Muslim. It's pathetic.
As much as I would love to go with Brown's ideas of fairness etc., why do I know that these will just become 'sound bite, political commodities'?
The concept of citizenship, as part of the entire idea of a modern state, rests on the axiom of individual rights and responsibilities. A modern state is not a loose confederation of legally-defined groups that share power according to an elaborate set of rules like, say, the Ottoman or Habsburg empires. It is a collection of sovereign individuals, a.k.a. citizens, in whom rights are vested and from whom we expect a range of personal obligations.
Such individuals are free of being of any religion or none. They can join forces in free associations that help them to address important aspects of their lives: religeous groups, political parties, football clubs or groups of rubber fetishists. They do so as individuals and have every right to do so as individuals. Unlike South Africa in the awful days of Apartheid, citizenship is neither colour-coded nor religion-coded. It is personal.
It is legitimate to ask what are the rights and the obligations of citizenship. It is legitimate to ask how can we live harmoniously in a diverse society, accommodating individuals of different culture, faith and origin in mutual respect and tolerance. It is legitimate to ask how can we purge racism from our society. It is legitimate to ask how can we conduct more ethical foreign policy. But, unless we want to regress to an pre-Enlightment mindset, we must uphold the principle that citizenship is always individual and undivided.
Multiculturalism can only exist if there is one law - the civil law which all citizens must obey. If the law of the Koran differs from the civil law, whether in spirit or in fact, then the Muslim must either be untrue to his faith or flaunt the law, ie be placed between a mosque and a law case.
Quote of the Day: International Herald Tribune
May 31, 2007
Our goals are beyond Lebanon. We want the Levant to be governed by Islam again and then in the whole world. We want to bring people back to Islam, and we want to liberate our land occupied by Zionists." Abu Salim, a spokesman for Fatah al Islam, the group holed up in the Palestinian camp near the Lebanese city of Tripoli.
The reality is that 1.2 billion Moslems are not going to abandon Islam en mass. Islam cannot move forward with force and threats. Islam needs to be reformed and new ideas need to be incorporated for fresh thinking and survival. Reformation will be resisted by Islamic fundamentalists with violence and terrorism. For the future of our freedom, peace and life it must be undertaken. A reformed Islam will have more influence and acceptance around the world.
The Reform of Islam is a life and death issue for civilization.
The greatest danger mankind faces is the smuggling of a nuclear weapon by an Islamic Fundamentalist into a major western city killing millions in the name of and to the greater glory of ALLAH. If the hateful teachings are not removed from Islam this is the disaster that will destroy civilization as we know it. It will dramatically change human history forever. The stakes are that high.
What we want to achieve is a very limited goal of removing from Islam all teachings of violence and the subrogation of women. We are not challenging Islamic teachings such as praying 5 times a day, washing feet before praying, the non belief of Muslims in the doctrine of Trinity etc.
This is an issue of conscience. Islam as it is presently constituted is an issue of conscience and its Reform is definitely the concern of all peace loving, democratic believing peoples everywhere. Violence in Islam is a direct threat to all mankind. It is an issue of National Security not only for the West but also for Muslim countries.
Least we all forget - it is mostly Muslims who are suffering and being killed and blown up in horrific numbers. Since 911 - over 150,000 Muslims have been murdered by their fellow Muslims in the worst ways imaginable.
Murder, suicide bombings, violence, etc are evil. When these evil acts are committed in the name of and to the greater glory of ALLAH � this is the greatest evil that anyone can commit. To kill and murder so you can ascend to a Paradise of Big Breasted Nymphs to rape and molest for all eternity � this is truly evil incarnate.
WHY WE WANT THESE TEACHINGS OF VIOLENCE AND SUBROGATION OF WOMEN REMOVED FROM THE KORAN?
By leaving these violent and abhorrent teachings in the Koran, we are in effect saying that these teachings are NORMAL. We are basically acquiescing to evil. By demanding that Peace Loving Moslems prove that they are truly peace loving � by removing these teachings � will be a TRUE MOMENT OF CATHARSIS FOR ISLAM.
The Koran is accepted by all Muslims as the word of God � not subject to change- not even by one word. By forcing Muslims to confront these evil passages they will be forced to answer the following question:
Is Muhammad A False Prophet Or Is ALLAH A False Prophet?
Answer:
ALLAH AS THE CREATOR OF THE UNIVERSE - THE CREATOR OF ALL LIVING THINGS IS PERFECT.
AS A PERFECT GOD - ALL TEACHINGS OF ALLAH - MUST BE PERFECT
This means that all teachings recorded in the Koran and all other Islamic texts, revelations, writings, sayings, fatwas of murder, killing, death and destruction, violence, hate, suicide bombers, violent jihad, terrorism, torture, maiming, wife beating, inferiority of woman, subrogation of women, women as instruments of sexual pleasure in paradise, honor killings, stoning, cutting off limbs, child sex, bigotry, intolerance, slavery, inequality of infidels, inequality of any human being, that infidels can be murdered as a holy duty, that Muslims who renounce Islam can be killed, that Muslims (or anyone) who challenge the teachings of Islam can be murdered, etc are irrational AND NOT THE PERFECT TEACHINGS OF ALLAH. They are THE TEACHINGS OF MAN.
If Muhammad taught his followers that the above teachings were the WORDS of ALLAH then he is a false prophet since as a PERFECT GOD - ALLAH never would have given such revelations to Muhammad. If however, ALLAH issued any of these teachings to Muhammad then he is no longer PERFECT and therefore no longer GOD. Indeed the false PROPHET would be ALLAH. An evil false PROPHET.
Once these teachings are removed - Islam will be a TRUE Religion of Peace. Issues such as environmentalism, modern family life, poverty in the third world � modern issues that did not exist 1400 years ago � should be added to this New Modern Koran. By reforming Islam - a truly great New Koran can be created that all Muslims can take pride in. The printing of a new Koran will be a truly historic day for mankind. And it will be a worldwide best seller.
By,
Larry Houle
www.godofreason.com
Is het really unaware of reality, of is he just trying to fool us? In Malaysia, there is rather an armed pace, and many fundamental human rights are not respected, witness the women forced by he Malayan judge to officially remain Muslim, and t be judged by a sharia court for her demand to leave which will really be considered with the deepest respect for her universal right given that sharia prescribes stoning for those willing to leave the Ummah.
And Canada has already long left multiculrualism (MC)behind, in favor of interculturalism (IC), once it found out that multiculturalisms dogmatic equal rights for all cultures, fundamentally erodes democracy and universal humen rights because it would give equal rights to those cultures who reject democracy and universal rights.
And Australia is clearly steering away from the fundamentally erosive dogmatisme if multicultualism.
Looks like that quite well illustrates the basic flaw in addod's attempt.
Rudi Dierick, Leuven, Flanders
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