RESPONSES
‘Cameron’s message is that Muslims are not wanted’
Using “outsiders” as whipping boys
Not many
dawns have passed since the sparky Tory chairwoman, Sayeeda Warsi,
spoke up about the “dinner table”
libelling of all Muslims, now routine,
normalised, unremarkable, intimate, uncontested. I see and hear it too
– prejudices passed around with the balsamic vinegar or ketchup. Some
Muslims deserve castigation and worse for the terrible things they do.
I frequently denounce them in my columns. But sweeping, indiscriminate
execration of any collective is abhorrent and must be confronted.
Warsi did that, knowing her words would infuriate right-wing Tories
who can’t stand the brown little upstart.
Now, how will she
react to her leader who has amplified the small talk of bigotry and
boomed it through a megaphone perhaps to slap her down? I found
Cameron’s speech in Munich indefensible even though I completely agree
with some observations and policy ideas. We discussed these two years
back when we met in his office for over an hour. Self-exclusion,
special pleading, women’s rights, community oppression,
anti-democratic attitudes, terrorism, the spread of Wahhabi Islam are
serious problems and growing. Laissez-faire multicultural policies do
not serve our times. State institutions should fund shared spaces,
crossover ideas, openness and modernity. Many of us Muslims would be
with David Cameron if his speech hadn’t shown him to be selective,
hypocritical, calculating, woefully indifferent to Muslim victims of
relentless racism and chauvinism. He was speaking the words of white
extremists but in posh. There was so much that was objectionable –
where he spoke, what he said, the timing, the purposes loitering
behind the fine façade of his personality.
By speaking out in
Munich he allied himself with the ghastly Angela Merkel who delivered
a similarly provocative sermon last autumn. Racism is rife in both
countries; in both nations, millions of their own natives rigidly hold
on to their languages and cultures. Think of those Germans who go
abroad on holiday and stay in walled-off camps where only German is
spoken. Countless Britons are similarly against integration with the
people of unfamiliar countries they visit or migrate to. I would
rather have my tongue chopped off than lose my mellifluous home
languages. To learn and love English shouldn’t mean the destruction of
world languages, most of which we are lucky enough to have on our
isles.
Remember the PM was at an international security council when he let
rip – an outrage. Diversity is one of our greatest assets, an antidote
to militancy, not its cause. A new study by the Runnymede Trust in
Birmingham shows young citizens are more bonded and at ease with
difference than their elders in that multifarious city. As the speech
progressed, you realised that Cameron’s problem isn’t cultural
difference. It’s the people whom marauding Christian crusaders called
“curs”, wretched Mohammedans. Cameron isn’t troubled by Hasidic
enclaves, Orthodox Jewish dress codes or their religiously sanctioned
gender inequality and stubborn self-removal from mainstream societies.
I have been rebuffed by a veiled Muslim woman and a Hasidic Jewish one
when I tried to talk to their children. And the other day a young
white mum told her daughter to come away from me, the “Paki”.
Moreover, those who only want to live with their own in white
heartlands are thought to be no threat to integration – they are only
doing what comes naturally. Little official concern is expressed about
crimes committed by various non-Muslim ethnic groups against each
other, against Muslims or white Britons. Even more disgracefully,
Tories ignore racists who terrorise people of colour. How unfair is
that?
Our PM in effect identified himself with the abominable English
Defence League when he spoke up a day before the league marched
through Luton shouting abuse. Are these the laudable British values we
must embrace? Hot-headed Muslims will be even more convinced they are
not wanted in the land of their birth.
The next charge:
hypocrisy. This government is enthusiastically funding schools for
separatists – from snooty white middle classes to pedantic, purist
Hindus, nutty, evangelical Christians and introverted, uncompromising
Muslims. How does that foster integration? Michael Gove (secretary of
state for education) has just been accused by the Bradford City
Council of encouraging segregation by funding a new free school
started up by Ayub Ismail who wants to ensure his pupils are not
“absorbed into the dominant culture”. Saudis are allowed by our
government to brainwash Muslims who are then despised. The Tory
party’s right and left buttocks move in different directions. Not
clever nor consistent with the PM’s Big Message of the week.
So why is he doing
it? When politicians are in trouble, they pick on “outsiders”, put
them into stocks so the people can turn on them and relieve their
feelings of frustration. Andrew Lansley, now in charge of health, said
shamelessly in 1995 that they were using the anti-immigration card
because it played well with voters. Recently, he blamed migrants for a
rise in TB in Britain, a link that used health care concerns to whip
up xenophobic panic. Cameron himself designed the disgraceful
anti-refugee campaign for Michael Howard in 2005.
The German
Marshall Fund has just published a comparative survey of attitudes to
migrants in western countries. Britons, noted The Economist, are shown
up as a “mean-minded lot” – negative, hostile, paranoid. I don’t
believe that is the full picture. Britain is also uniquely receptive –
which is why so many of us would not live elsewhere. But it is going
through a seriously bad mood and Cameron is exploiting that.
I accept
our citizens are unnerved by those British Muslims who make endless
demands, are full of wrath and murderous plans, or choose
ghettoisation. However, the widespread national unhappiness is created
by policies pushed through by this government. Muslims and migrants
are being used to distract people from the planned chaos implemented
by this unpopular coalition. It is politicking of the worst kind.
Which is why it must be opposed vehemently. As the daughter of a
survivor said to me at the Holocaust Memorial Day in January: “We Jews
must look to our failings and crimes. But when outsiders try to use
that for their devilish reasons, we know where we must stand.” Me too.
(Yasmin Alibhai-Brown is an award-winning
British journalist, author and radio and television broadcaster. This
article was published in The Independent on February 7, 2011.)
Courtesy: The
Independent; www.independent.co.uk
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