Tariq Modoods work has increasingly focused on British Asian Muslims, and the politics of being Muslim in Britain (and the west). He has sought to anchor this work within the theory (and politics) of multiculturalism. The latest of his articles, Remaking multiculturalism after 7/7, which appears on the openDemocracy website, , provides an honest summary of his theoretical and political endeavours.
There are some key assumptions in Modoods argument or reasoning around multiculturalism and (Asian) Muslims. We will treat each of these in turn and will then seek to show by precedent that his and the British governments so-called solutions to the problem of jihadist terrorism are likely to recreate the situation they seek to end. In order to do this, we start with a brief summary of Modoods position on multiculturalism.
The authors are responding to Tariq Modoods openDemocracy essay, Remaking multiculturalism after 7/7
Also in our debate on British Muslims, multiculturalism, and democracy:
Maruf Khwaja, Muslims in Britain: generations, experiences, futures
David Hayes, What kind of country?
Gilles Kepel, Europes answer to Londonistan
Ehsan Masood, British Muslims must stop the war
Saleh Bechir & Hazem Saghieh, The Muslim community: a European invention
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Multiculturalism
In Tariq Modoods recent formulation, multiculturalism has three key aspects.
First, it is a space where processes of integration are seen both as two-way and as working differently for different groups. For this space to exist there needs to be a notion of already classified groups, each with distinct characteristics or identities.
Second, Modood sees multiculturalism as working simultaneously on two levels: creating new forms of belonging to citizenship and country, and helping sustain origins and diaspora. The result without which multiculturalism would not be a form of integration is the formation of hyphenated identities. In his view it provides a rival model to both assimilation, which he sees as a one-way process, and to integration, which is a two-way process like multiculturalism but one that does not recognise the social reality of pre-existing groups, only individuals and organisations.
Third, multiculturalism embodies two other aspects: it takes race, (as well as sex and sexuality) beyond being a merely ascriptive source of identity, and includes a response to this ascription thus enabling Muslims, for example, to be treated with equal dignity and respect.
In this light, Modood concludes, multiculturalism can be defined as the challenging, the dismantling, the remaking of public identities in order to achieve an equality of citizenship that is neither merely individualistic nor premised on assimilation.
British (Asian) Muslims
Although we speak here of British (Asian) Muslims, it is important to note that Modood focuses upon British south Asian Muslims, thus subsuming the interests of British Muslims descended from Muslims coming from other parts of the world such as the middle east, southeast Asia and the Maghreb (even if these are a minority).
For Modood, the social reality of groups can be of different kinds; for example, a sense of solidarity with people of similar origins or faith or mother tongue, including those in a country of origin or a diaspora. Such feelings might be an act of imagination but may also be rooted in lived experience and embodied in formal organisations dedicated to fostering group identity and keeping it alive. In this perspective, British (Asian) Muslims present one such kind of (pre-existing) social reality.
The role of these formal organisations is to represent the group interests of British (Asian) Muslims, and act as a partner or mediator with the British state. The model favoured by Modood is a Board of Deputies-style of community representation, which he feels offers a better illustration of a community-state relationship than do secular or corporate models, which can be too controlling. Of the existing national organisations of Muslims in Britain capable of fulfilling this task the most successful, according to Modood, is the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), whose office-holders and spokespersons are more likely to be chartered accountants and solicitors than imams.
Muslim voices
The problem with nice little models of multiculturalism is that, particularly in an uncertain and rapidly shifting situation such as exists in Britain today, they are made to seem arcane and bear little relation to what happens in the outside world. As pointed out by Madeleine Bunting (Muslim voices have been lost in the rush to make headlines, Guardian, 10 October 2005), a taskforce of Muslims to advise the British government on new ideas to tackle extremism and radicalisation has hit the buffers. Consisting of more than 100 Muslims of different ages, backgrounds and experience to work in seven groups, it appears that it was not adequately resourced and faced enormous pressures of time.
As Bunting says:
Sometimes they had only a day's notice for meetings or deadlines for draft documents. Very few had a background in policy, even fewer had a research background. Most important of all, they were almost all success stories: barristers, business people, local politicians. They are members of a Muslim elite establishment, and reflect a widening class polarisation in the community. They know and understand almost as little of the problem of Muslim extremism as the home secretary The political imperative of being seen to talk to Muslims and for Muslims to be seen to help both important in their own right became more pressing than actually achieving the alleged task.
Nothing more starkly illustrates the drastic shortcomings of the Modood model. The governments expressed desire is to affect a profound shift in the culture and mindset of the Muslim community as from yesterday, without itself getting directly involved in the process by trying to get the Muslims to put in order something (jihadist terrorism) for which the government blames them. The government has spent a long time cultivating relations with the MCB, to which Modood acts as a consultant/advisor. But for many Muslims, the MCB is suspect and unrepresentative, being dominated by one strand of Islam. Hence, more recently, the government has been trying to establish links with the younger generation of Muslims, and with Muslim women. Given the nature of British multiculturalism, whether these attempts will bear fruit is debatable.
Historically, multiculturalism in Britain has consisted, over time, of a series of ad hoc responses to new arrivals to these shores and to local and national responses to them over a period dating back at least one century. These ad hoc responses have usually borne the hallmarks of Britains colonising adventures in different parts of the globe, in particular in south Asia, southern Africa and the Caribbean.
With regard to encounters with Muslims in south Asia, official British attitudes as reflected in administrative and military literature has produced a primary stereotype of the treacherous Muslim (as distinct, for example, from the loyal Gurkha, the sleek Bengali, or the brave Rajput). This is understandable: the British displaced Muslim rule in India, and the latter were bound to be resentful, hostile and rebellious. The ryotwari system of collecting taxes sought to displace the middlemen, who were the zamindars and taluqdars (largely Muslims) by more loyal landowners (both non-Muslims and Muslims).
The problems of resentment of and hostility to British rule in Bengal were not solved and the British partitioned Bengal in October 1905 between an eastern (predominantly Muslim) part and a western (largely Hindu) part. More importantly the encounter showed that different Muslims from different parts of India offered different responses. Nothing made this point clearer than Muslim responses to the movement for Indian independence.
Iqbal and Mujeeb
Muhammad Iqbal and Mohammad Mujeeb were contemporaries and leading Indian Muslim figures on different sides of the divide: the former is considered, alongside Jinnah, as one of the founding fathers and ideologues of a Muslim homeland (what was to become Pakistan in 1947); the latter, who became vice-chancellor of the Jamia Millia Islamia university in Delhi, preferred to remain within a secular democratic entity, the Republic of India.
In response to Iqbals philosophical and ideological justification for Pakistan, Mujeeb wrote The Indian Muslims (1957), a sociological and historical analysis, which questions the unitary notion of an Indian Muslim. He stated that Muslims must live and work with non-Muslims to realise common ideals of citizenship and culture. The fact that millions of Muslims threw their lot within a secular democratic republic, no matter what the difficulties and provocations from Hindu fanatics, than to cross over to live within a theocratic regime, confirms Mujeebs thesis.
British Muslims are no more a unitary entity than are south Asian Muslims. Modood, in classifying Muslims as a group, produces a mirror-image of British multicultural thought. It is ironic, therefore, that he complains about the rise of Islamophobia when he is party to a racialisation of Muslims.
Let the British government be better advised to deal with racism, including Islamophobia, and cultivate good relations with Muslims, whether self-defined by various convictions or just by heritage, however organised or not organised, as with every other part of Britain. Let us stop worrying about what is British, or the spurious scare of segregation, and be confident enough to leave it to us, British people, to find for ourselves what it is be British.
