RESPONSES
‘I am glad that the ground is shifting’
In defence of David Cameron’s speech on
multiculturalism
BY MAAJID NAWAZ
Some reactions to the prime minister’s speech have been the best
evidence for the point he was trying to make. Let us put aside the
use of contested terms. As if bandying about the term
neoconservativism – in a rather “muscular liberal” way, may I add –
were any less emotionally charged than the term “multiculturalism”.
Let us put aside the coincidence (and the subsequent unrealistic
demand arising from it) that the speech was made on the day of an
English Defence League (EDL) march in Luton. As if the machinery of an
international conference of heads of state and a prime minister’s
agenda were that easy to move around. Let us put aside the way that
media pundits have reported it, as if sensational reporting were ever
controllable by anyone, let alone the government. Let us put aside the
typical sidestep (regularly resorted to by people who have themselves
received government grants) that Quilliam, my think tank, “receives
government grants” and hence will naturally “defend” the speech. In
case you missed it, Quilliam has had its public money completely cut
under Cameron’s coalition government. And I am rather known for
challenging and debating government representatives on a range of
matters, such as my opposition to banning Hizb ut-Tahrir, to
censorship and to profiling – just search the Web.
Indeed let
us stop clutching at straws and for once actually focus on the content
of the speech itself. And that is possible if we read it rather than
automatically adopt the victimhood caricature that has embarrassingly
come to be associated with so many Muslim commentators. I for one find
it hard to conclude that this time the prime minister’s speech is
anything but balanced, nuanced and reasonable. Some ideologues will
never be happy and for them it is this very nuance that has now become
the problem.
Here we have, finally, a speech which recognises
that there are more than Islamist forms of extremism. Here we have a
speech that acknowledges the symbiotic relationship between two
extremes: of Islamism and anti-Muslim fascism. Here we have a speech
that criticises minaret and headscarf bans and asserts that
conservative practice of the Islamic faith is not the same as
extremism.
I say to my fellow Muslim commentators, seriously,
what more could you want from a Conservative prime minister? Coming
out wholeheartedly against this speech, in an atmosphere of increasing
community polarisation, is a self-defeating form of victimhood that
only serves to further the very polarisation Cameron is worried about.
The fact is that there is a serious problem of extremism with
minority groups within Muslim communities. The fact is that there is a
similar level of far-right fascism on the rise. The speech addresses
both, and the EDL march only reinforces this point. The fact is that
our communities are growing together and apart. Visit Tower Hamlets
and then visit Dagenham, preferably in the course of the same day.
Aside from the socially mobile urban elite, are Britons really living
together or are we living in mutually suspicious monocultural
enclaves? And yet surely that is exactly what multiculturalism was
supposed to bring to an end, whatever one’s interpretation of the
term?
As with Egypt, we are living in a world where comfortable
parameters steeped in colonial assumptions are shifting very fast.
Gone are the old frames of reference, Islamism or secular
dictatorship, multiculturalism or fascism. Yesterday’s voices are
increasingly becoming boring and I for one am glad that the ground is
shifting.
(Maajid Nawaz is co-founder and
executive director of Quilliam, a controversial London-based think
tank which claims to challenge Islamic extremism in the UK. This
article was published in the New Statesman on February 6, 2011.)
Courtesy: New Statesman; www.newstatesman.com
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