Author: Hugo Young
Publication: The Guardian, UK
Date: November 6, 2001
Introduction: British Muslims must
answer some uncomfortable questions. We tiptoe round the norms and obligations
that are central to being British
When immigration was first becoming
an issue in British politics, the question of patriotism barely arose.
Loyalty was not the major problem, let alone the right of a citizen to
support war against Britain and her allies.
The discussion in the 1960s and
70s was rooted in the harsh, unabstract realities of everyday life. Housing,
education and jobs were the focus, together with an increasingly bilious
argument about numbers. How many Jamaicans, Pakistanis and Indians could
be integrated into British society? Enoch Powell wasn't the only person
prepared to ask. All parties were already engaged in an auction to keep
the number smallest.
The debate revolved around a proposition
that is now being reversed. At that time what bothered social reformers
and politicians was whether, and if so how, non-white migrants would be
allowed to become full members of this society. The presumption was that
they wouldn't unless the state intervened - and even then, the chances
might be slim.
Now the question is the opposite.
It asks: do all citizens of migrant stock, particularly Muslims, actually
want to be full members of the society in which they live? A shocking and
unacceptable reversal, September 11 threw up many crises for the world.
For Britain, none could be more profound than this one.
A 1969 study, Colour and Citizenship,
edited by EJB Rose, paints a faithful picture of that, era. It's a detailed
socio-economic report and a manual of liberal aspirations, but what strikes
a contemporary re-reader is what it doesn't say. It barely mentions Islam.
It describes migrant Pakistanis as being less pre-occupied with religion
than with their economic problems. It deplores immigrant ghettoes less
for their cultural impact on the newcomers than because they make "the
link between colour and squalor which is firmly cemented in the public
mind".
The Rose report was an invaluable
document. It addressed the preoccupations of its time - for example, Jamaican
rather than Asian migration, being numerically dominant, formed its major
context. Its underlying stance was on the victim's side. This was earnest,
liberal Britain asking itself, under influence from Boy Jenkins's first
tour of duty as home secretary, how it could do the right thing by incomers
afflicted by inequality. Its guiding light was a Jenkins formula that defined
integration as "not a flattening process of assimilation but as equal opportunity
accompanied by cultural diversity, in an atmosphere of mutual tolerance".
Thirty years on, the problems Rose
tried to grapple with have not been solved. There's still plenty of prejudice
and discrimination, still therefore the need for as much attention to equality,
diversity and tolerance. In policing, in schools, in employment, the problems
are better publicised, and so better understood. But the old diagnosis
holds. The unglamorous remedies of law, regulation and persuasion will
always have a vital place.
However, they're nothing like enough.
Society has moved on, or perhaps back. Victimhood is an inadequate matrix
for the depiction of a more, copiously multicultural country. The problems
is no longer just one of hoisting oppressed communities into membership
of a colour-blind majority but, it now turns out, of establishing the terms
on which a religious minority is prepared to acknowledge prime loyalty
to the society in which it lives and works. The aftermath of September
11 has dramatically changed the context in which this needs opening up,
putting liberals to a question that's central to their beliefs.
British Muslims going to fight against
British interests in Afghanistan is a quite extreme case. We don't know
for sure if any have done that. In any case the numbers will be few, though
there's an issue about whether they will get back unpunished. The telling
question arises out of pervasive statements of support for the Taliban,
backed up by a lot of airy declarations by Islamic leaders here that their
religion comes before their country, together with a reluctance by British
progressives to attempt a rigorous definition of the limits of multiculturalism.
A successor to the Rose report was
produced last year under Lord Parekh. It does not read well in the, light
of post-September Islamic outpourings. It made reasonable recommendations
for enhancing the old remedies, and needed at the time some defence against
the Powellite ranting that greeted it from the hard right. But its ideology
can now be seen as a useful bible, for any Muslim who insists that his
religio-cultural priorities, including the defence of jihad against America,
overrides his civic duties of loyalty, tolerance, justice and respect for
democracy. Very many Muslims, to judge from new opinion polls and a fair
number of agonised but feeble statements, find it impossible to sort out
this ambiguity.
As a cradle Catholic, I grew up
amid a perception, if not the fact, of divided loyalties. But we were taught
quite early that the papist conspiracy was a chimera in which we did not
need to enlist. British Jews have been open to a similar charge, and have
given every proof over centuries of its falsity. Perhaps the trouble for
British Muslims as a community is that not enough of these uncomfortable
questions have been asked of them. "Multiculturalism" gives them shelter
from decisions about allegiance that the events of 11/9 can no longer allow
to be postponed.
No one is arguing for mono-cultural
uniformity, nor is any disrespect implied for the cultural varieties that
enrich this country. But we're learning that, out of concern for the defence
of immigrants, we tiptoe round the values and norms that constitute the
obligations that are central to being British - and the policies to serve
them.
Attempting to formulate these would
be a big project. It sweeps in many controversial issues, from obligatory
learning of English to faith-based schools. The American model, so much
more enlightened and successful, rejects church-based state schooling with
its capacity to harden communal separation. Tony Blair perversely wants
to extend it. That's just one of the societal dilemmas that need to be
confronted by anyone who sees the new politics of national identity in
its true light, as the corrosive national danger that's capable of outliving
terrorism.
It needs a long, honest debate.
But the beginning of wisdom is to acknowledge the problem. This is being
buried by collusion between old liberals and new hypocrites. Hypocrisy
is the only word to describe people who live in British freedom, yet support
systems of thought which deny that freedom, or Britain, must be defended.
Liberalism is betrayed by other people who put the comfort of immigrant
minorities before the insistence on an irreducible list of British civic
values: democracy, mutual tolerance, equality of liberty, the rule of law.
Let's hear it from the mullahs, right and left.
(h.young@gwardian.co.uk)