In Britain, the debate over multiculturalism has really heated up in recent weeks. Fueling it have been speeches by four prominent members of the Labour party—John Reid (the Home Secretary), Jack Straw (the former Foreign Secretary and current House of Commons leader), Ruth Kelly (the Communities Secretary) and Prime Minister Blair. Adding fuel to the fire have been comments by the Church of England. The war of words, which has included numerous editorialsi and op-edsii, has focused on greater Muslim involvement in fighting terrorism, the wearing of the veil by Muslim women and the public funding of faith schools.

WHY WE SHOULD CARE

There are several reasons why Americans should be paying close attention to the British debate:

  • While the strains that are so readily apparent in British society are not nearly as severe here, it would by foolish to assume that we may not face similar problems in the future. As I noted in March, Muslim groups in the U.S. are attempting to establish enclaves in which they can uphold and enforce greater compliance to Islamic law. In Little Rock Arkansas, they have succeeded.

  • What is happening in Britain is also taking place in other European countries. But because of language barriers, we (or, at least, I) know far less about the continental debates. If history is any guide, however, the debates of which we are far less aware are probably more vituperative than Britain’s. By reputation, at least, the Brits are a more tolerant people.

  • Earlier this month, MSN Money and the Financial Times reported on research conducted by Harvard’s Robert Putnam, currently teaching at Manchester University in the U.K. and the author of Bowling Alone. The FT summarizes Putnam’s argument this way:
    in the light of “home grown” Islamic terrorism in Europe, and evidence that some immigrants feel alienated by western society, academics and politicians are rightly thinking how to adjust the compromise on which a multicultural society is based. That compromise means neither forcing immigrants to abandon their culture nor the acceptance of separate communities living in the same land. It must be built instead on universal acceptance of some basic principles: democracy, the rejection of violence, and equality of gender, sexuality, race and religion. But multiculturalism also needs trust, and that requires different communities to meet each other and communicate.

    MSN’s summary is bleaker:
    The core message of the research was that, “in the presence of diversity, we hunker down”, he said. “We act like turtles. The effect of diversity is worse than had been imagined. And it’s not just that we don’t trust people who are not like us. In diverse communities, we don’t trust people who do look like us.” MSN adds that British Home Office research has pointed in the same direction and Prof Putnam said other European countries would be likely to have similar trends.

  • In his recent and provocative book, The War of the World, noted historian Niall Ferguson describes the German diaspora that existed before World War I:
    In 1901 there were more than thirteen million Germans living beyond the Reich’s eastern frontier. Around nine million lived in Austria, but around four million lived further east, principally in Hungary, Romania and Russia. There were substantially German communities along the Baltic coast, in Poland, Galicia and Bukovina, as werll as in Bohemia and Moravia. There were also Germans to be found in Slovakia, Hungary, Transylvania and Slovenia. Nor were these settlements to be confined to the Hapsburg Lands. There were German populations in Russian territory, too . . .

    The forces of nationalism unleashed and sanctified by the Versailles Treaty brought the German minorities into ethnic conflicts with the majority populations of the nations created at World War I’s end. Hitler transformed the German minorities into Fifth Columns, the best known of which was the Sudeten Germans in Czechoslovokia.

    In his epilogue, Ferguson says that, a hundred years ago,
    the frontier between West and East was located somewhere in the neighbourhood of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Now it seems to run through every European city.

    The frontier he’s referring to is the one created by the mass migration of Muslims into European population centers and the multicultural policies enacted by their host governments. As evinced by the atrocities in Madrid and London involving the participation of second-generation native Muslims, the seeds of twenty-first century Fifth Columns have started to sprout. Bin Laden and other fanatical Islamists are to the Muslim diaspora in Western Europe what Hitler was to the German diaspora in Central Europe.

It’s not a pretty picture, and some key leaders of the Labour party have recognized it.

THE LABOUR PARTY AWAKENS

    John Reid

After a recitation of platitudinous truths (“It is not a war on Islam; it is a struggle against extremism, against terror and against intolerance”; “Our fight is with those who do not share our values and who use terror to force us to accept theirs”) —Home Secretary John Reid laid it on pretty thick during his September 20th speech, attempting to turn his Muslim audience against those who reject values shared by Muslims and non-Muslims alike.iii

After telling his audience that

They believe (and would have you believe) that the West is evil and that all modern values are corrupting to Muslims, when in fact, it is they who are wicked and ruthless and they who are corrupting young Muslim minds. They would have you believe that we are the enemy, when it is they who seek to destroy the peace and understanding that we have sought so hard to achieve between different faiths and ethnic groups in this world.

And that the fight against terrorism is
a conflict of values and not of religions. It is a conflict between modern Islamic values versus archaic and intolerant values. It is a conflict within Islam as well as outside of it. It is a fight against extremism, intolerance and terror – and not Islamic values and teachings. 9/11 in the US, 7/7 in the UK, 11/3 in Madrid, the attacks in Indonesia, Turkey, Afghanistan, and the conflict in Iraq are all part of the same struggle . . .

Reid then announced his purpose:
I came here today because I believe the message that this is a struggle against terrorism and intolerance and not Islam has become drowned out by the volume of accusation and counter-accusation. And I have come here today because I need your help to defeat these extremists. I cannot do this on my own, and Government cannot do this on its own; it’s going to take all of us.

Next, he admonished his audience, depicting the extremists as Fifth Columnists:
The days of burying heads in the sand are over. Extremists have to be stood up. And they can be: the pattern by which they take control is not new . . . They come into our organizations, intimidate good people away from meetings and from being involved in the movement. They try to change the very nature of what you stand for. Many good people believe that by accommodating them you can influence them for the better. That is not the case. You cannot and must never compromise with fanatical beliefs.

He told the audience he understood that the task confronting Muslims was a difficult one:
I know your task is so much harder [than the Government’s]. This is the dilemma you face in some of your communities where they come with their hate filled thoughts, they start by banishing the women, intimidating the moderates and then brainwashing the young.

That was made more difficult by distrust:
I am acutely aware that many of you might think I, and this Government, are not in a strong position to ask for your help. Not because – as the terrorists would have you believe – that we are fighting an unjust war – but because many members of your faith and communities are in the front line in the western response to Muslim terrorism.

The distrust must be overcome, as it’s necessary to prevent terrorist attacks, not just respond to them:
We must all be attentive and we must help to prevent any future tragedies. And that means we must be more vigilant and more attuned to signs of terrorist activity and support – within our own communities and – yes – within our own families. And that is why we must all be vigilant and have the strength to speak out.

Then, in the most memorable part of his speech, Reid said:
There is no nice way of saying this. These fanatics are looking to groom and brain wash children, including your children, for suicide bombing. Grooming them to kill themselves, in order to murder others. Look for the tell tale signs now and talk to them before their hatred grows and you risk losing them forever.

    Jack Straw

I’ve already posted on Jack Straw’s criticism of the Islamic custom of wearing a full facial veil and urging of Muslim women to remove it when talking to him in his district office. The veil, he wrote in his local newspaper is “such a visible statement of separation and of difference” as to jeopardize British social harmony. Speaking to the BBC, Straw said “Communities are bound together partly by informal chance relations between strangers, people being able to acknowledge each other in the street or being able to pass the time of day. That’s made more difficult if people are wearing a veil. That’s just a fact of life.”

    Ruth Kelly

Like the Home Secretary’s, the Communities Secretary’s speech, delivered on October 11, was intended to assist “the fight within Muslim communities against terrorism.” Citing the debate over the veil, she said she was certain that “trying to sweep disagreements under the carpet will ultimately be more dangerous than discussing them openly.”

Kelly insisted that

on one thing we can be clear. There is more that holds us together than divides us. I believe there are some cultural aspects we should share – speaking English and having a sense of British history and traditions for example. And all of this needs to be grounded in a set of non-negotiable values. They belong to us all. They are found in Islam as . . . other traditions: respect for the law, freedom of speech, equality of opportunity, respect for others, and responsibility towards others.

While she differentiated these non-negotiable values from political issues, Kelly said that “even here there are dangers that differences become exaggerated and exploited.” The example she gave was support of the newly-elected governments of Iraq and Afghanistan. On these issues, a “full and frank” debate is needed. However, she averred that there “is a danger . . . if in debating them, that is used to suggest foreign policy here is anti-Muslim overall.”

Next, Kelly noted the Government’s support of the Religious Hatred bill, which provoked controversy. She defended the bill, saying that

it is designed to tackle those who incite hatred, not just those who cause offense. If we value free speech and freedom of religious expression, we will all have to accept from time to time we will feel insulted or offended by other people’s actions or comments.

She also said that
we also have to stand together to tackle those fomenting divisions and extremism within Muslim communities . . . Al Qaeda’s political ideology was being used to radicalise and groom vulnerable young people long before [the British interventions] in Iraq and Afghanistan.

As did Reid, Kelly told her Muslim audience that
All of us must play a part. That means government. And it also means communities and individual citizens themselves . . . without you fully [on] our side we will fail. Your voice is more powerful than mine. And your actions can be more effective . . . It is not good enough to merely sit on the sidelines or pay lip service to fighting extremism. That is why I want a fundamental rebalancing of our relationship with Muslim organisations from now on.

    Tony Blair

In the House of Commons on October 17, the Prime Minister was asked whether British children should be taught by teachers who wear a veil in the classroom. His answer:

I think there is a debate that we need to have and it is a debate that has got two aspects to it in my view. One is the relationship between our society and how the Muslim community integrates with our society, which is an important debate that non-Muslims need to have with the Muslim community, and difficult though these issues are I think they have to be raised, and confronted and dealt with. And then there is a second issue, which is about Islam itself and how Islam comes to terms with and is comfortable with the modern world. And you know the fascinating thing about this debate, I just asked before I came here since I thought I might be asked about it, for just an analysis of what is going on around the whole of Europe and then in the wider world, and basically in most major countries in Europe today a debate similar to the one we are having now is going on there, in Germany over the opera, in France over I think the academic who wrote the polemic about Islam. It is interesting if you look at the front page of Le Monde this morning it has actually got a picture of a woman in a veil, and with the British issue this is reverberating right round. If you look at Holland, Denmark they are having the same arguments.

There has been apparently an incident in Belgium over the same type of thing, in Italy they have just published I think yesterday a set of values, which is meant in part to try and deal with this issue. There is a whole question to do with integration, and my view is that we try and deal with this debate sensitively, but we have to deal with the debate. This is an issue for the British people now. People want to know that the Muslim community in particular, but actually all minority communities, have got the balance right between integration and multiculturalism, and people want to see that that balance is got right. Now we need to conduct this debate in a sensitive way, but it needs to be conducted and it needs to be conducted in part because then round the world there are people in Islam, Muslims who are also engaged in the same type of debate about Islam, and again it is fascinating. If you look at what is happening out in the Gulf at the moment, precisely the same types of debate are going on, in Malaysia, in Indonesia, in Singapore.

. . . I think we need a way of having this debate because I am sure it is there, in fact it is there in every village, town and city of the British nation at the moment, and also in other European nations and worldwide, and so we need to have it and we can have it I think in a sensitive way, but it is about as well as people preserving their own distinctive identity they integrate with British society. And that is the reason why it is important in my view that people who come into the country and settle here, learn to speak English. It is about getting the balance right between integration and your distinctive identity and we need to have that debate in a sensible and serious way. And even though probably most people wouldn’t have chosen that the debate started in this way, it is under way so we should engage in it.


THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND CHIMES IN

In what The Telegraph describes as an “astonishing attack on the Government’s drive to turn Britain into a multi-faith society,” the Church issued a report (“Cohesion and Integration”) saying that the attempt to make minority faith communities more integrated has backfired, leaving society “more separated than ever before.” It claims that divisions between communities have been deepened by the Government’s “schizophrenic” approach to tackling multiculturalism. While trying to encourage interfaith relations, it has actually given “privileged attention” to the Islamic faith and Muslim communities.

Written by Guy Wilkinson, the interfaith adviser to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, the paper says that the Church of England has been sidelined. Instead, “preferential” treatment has been afforded to the Muslim community despite the fact that it makes up only three per cent of the population. Britain remains overwhelmingly a Christian country at heart and moves to label it as a multi-faith society suggest a hidden agenda, it says.

The report lists a number of moves made by the Government since the London bombings in July last year to win favour with Muslim communities. These include “using public funds” to fly Muslim scholars to Britain, shelving legislation on forced marriage and encouraging financial arrangements to comply with Islamic requirements. These efforts have undermined its interfaith agenda and produced no “noticeable positive impact on community cohesion”, the Church document says.

  1. The Times, “Veiled Threat,” October 7; The Times, “A Class Apart,” October 12; The Guardian, “Speak Freely But Carefully,” October 17; The Telegraph, “Labour Loses Faith in Multi-Culturalism,” October 18.↩
  2. The Guardian, “Take Off the Veil Says Straw—To Immediate Anger from Muslims” October 6; The Guardian, “Blaming the Veil Is Wrong,” October 6; The Times, “Cameron Dilutes Call for Inclusive Muslim Schools,” October 6; The Times, “Why Mix? Parallel Lives Do Us Fine,” October 7; The Times, “One Glance Took Away My Freedom,” October 7; The Times, “Anger and Headscarves on Streets of Clackburn,” October 7; The Times, “Integration the Pick’n’mix Way,” October 8; The Times, “Focus: A Veiled Threat?,” October 8; The Times, “Race Quotas ‘Needed to End Divide in Schools’,” October 12; The Times, “Muslims Are the New Jews,” October 15; The Times, “New Faith Schools Must Take Outsiders,” October 15; The Times, “Teachers Asked to Root Out Islamic Extremists,” October 16; The Guardian, “Muslim Leaders ‘Risking Voluntary Apartheid’ as Veil Row Escalates,” October 16; The Times, “Islamic Militants Face Purge in Schools and Universities,” October 16; The Times, “A Proper British Veil-Wearer,” October 17; The Times, “A Safe Haven for All Our Crackpot Beliefs,” October 17; The Telegraph, “Our Failure to Confront Radical Islam Is There for All to See,” October 17; The Telegraph, “Search for the Radical Campus Groups That Operate Under a Veil of Secrecy,” October 17; The Independent, “Labour Accused of Aiding Extremists by Its Focus on Muslim Issues,” October 17; The Guardian, “If This Onslaught Was About Jews, I Would Be Looking for My Passport“, October 18.↩
  3. The rights to life, respect and equity, justice, liberty, acquire knowledge, work, basic necessities, and privacy.↩