The British Prime Minister’s recent comments on the failure of “state multiculturalism” and his call for “muscular liberalism,” have revived debates about assimilation and minority rights that extend at least as far back as the 1988 ban on Salman Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses. After observing that “the backgrounds of those convicted of terrorist offences” indicate that they found little in British culture to offset the lure of religious extremism, Mr Cameron proposed that “Instead of ignoring this extremist ideology, we – as [European] governments and societies – have got to confront it. Instead of encouraging people to live apart, we need a clear sense of shared national identity, open to everyone.”
Leaving aside the question of whether Mr Cameron’s remarks unfairly target British Muslims, it is worth noting that many critics of “state multiculturalism” have long questioned whether the policies to which Mr Cameron was referring really deserve to be thought of as “multicultural” at all. The notion that a modern democracy can be composed of easily distinguishable cultures that coexist peaceably, providing sufficient respect is shown for religious customs and taboos, is a convenient bureaucratic desideratum, but it hardly reflects the reality of post-colonial immigration in developed Western countries. The economist Amartya Sen has used the term “plural monoculturalism” to describe this sanitized model of diversity, because instead of integrating foreign cultures into a harmoniously confused multiculture, what Mr Cameron calls “state multiculturalism” has in fact perpetuated the idea that new immigrants are distinct from the society they wish to join. Many analyses of the rise of Islamist groups in Europe have proposed that they are the result of young Muslims trapped between two cultures. This is too simplistic. More detailed and nuanced accounts of second generation Muslim life – from Ian Buruma’s Murder in Amsterdam to Melanie Philips Londonistan – suggest that in fact most disaffected young men succumb to Islamism because it fills the void of living with no culture. Wary of the customs and religion observed by their parents, and finding themselves alienated from a host culture in which they are a perpetual minority, some angry young men find solace in religious extremism.
In an incisive book on the evolution of racial, religious and political attitudes in Britain between the Rushdie fatwa and the 7/7 bombings, the writer and broadcaster Kenan Malik dryly observes that “The term ‘multicultural’ has come to define both a society that is particularly diverse… and the policies necessary to manage such a society. It has come to embody, in other words, both a description of a society and a prescription for managing it. Multiculturalism is both the problem and the solution – and when the problem and the solution are one and the same we can only be dealing with political snake oil.”
The reason this snake oil has been popular for so long is that a generation of politicians – both British and European – has shirked the hard work that genuine assimilation, muscularly Liberal or otherwise, would entail. When black and Asian immigrants finally began to organize themselves against racial violence in Britain’s inner cities, Whitehall panicked and set about funding “minority communities” – hoping to prevent further riots and other confrontations. This had the unintended consequence of empowering community leaders – often with unshakeable religious opinions – and giving them the right to speak for thousands of people who belonged to these “communities.”
A quick thought experiment shows the absurdity of this arrangement. Imagine a part of Britain in which a white minority was asked to elect a spokesman for their entire “community.” There would be immediate and justifiable consternation among the Marxists, Catholics, atheists, Protestants and other groups forced to shoehorn their interests and identity into this ridiculous category. Yet, for at least a generation, British Muslims – from many different countries, sects and of varying degrees of religiosity – have been treated as though they can be spoken for by a handful of community leaders. Sadly, the same patronizing attitude has informed much of the multicultural approach to the “Afro-Caribbean” community.
Seen in this light it may be worth asking whether Mr Cameron’s laudable desire to encourage a shared national identity does not somewhat distort the historical record in which previous Conservative governments made determined efforts to ensure that while government policies were carefully presented with a multicultural veneer, Britain’s immigrants have been repeatedly discouraged from any real sense of belonging. The undeniable decrease in British racism and xenophobia has more to do with individuals from visible minorities who have altered British culture, literature, business, politics and athletics over the last twenty years than it does with any of Whitehall’s timid pursuit of “plural monoculturalism.” It is high time that the sham of “state multiculturalism” was denounced, but Mr Cameron would do well to acknowledge Britain’s uneven record with immigration, its often blinkered treatment of minorities, and to consider the blessings that genuine multiculturalism – as a description rather than a prescription – might produce.
