The Need for Debate

Several events have given impetus to debate in the UK about what it means to be ‘British’ and a citizen. These include the Salman Rushdie Affair (1989), the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington, racially motivated riots in the North of England during the summer of 2001 and recent increase in the popularity of the BNP. The official report examining the causes of and remedies for the civil disturbances of 2001 highlighted the need for debate ‘about citizenship, civic identity, shared values, rights and responsibilities’ so that people ‘from diverse backgrounds, faiths and cultural traditions’ could develop a ‘common sense of belonging’. The report suggested that a ‘common sense of belonging’ to society would follow from the identification and affirmation of ‘shared values’. The Home Office’s report Secure Borders, Safe Haven (2002) took up this call for debate, on the one hand affirming Britain’s commitment to welcome refugees and migrants while on the other suggesting that new citizens need to affirm a common understanding of ‘citizenship, cohesion and community’ based on an agreed view of what it means to be British.

For others, however, the cause of the problem is cultural and religious pluralism and the best solution would be a return to the good old days when, supposedly, the British were all mirror images of each other. Parekh (2000) cites liberal politicians in Britain who, following the Rushdie affair, expressed unease about an immigration policy that might have ‘let in’ too many Muslims. Even Roy Jenkins, the father of the Race Relations Act (1976) and ‘a politician of immaculate liberal credentials’, thought that ‘we might have been more cautious about allowing the creation in the 1950s of a substantial Muslim community here’, and even linked Muslim behaviour in the UK with his reluctance to admit Turkey into the EU (p 301). Tariq Modood (2003a) comments how in the summer of 2001, the racist British National Party began explicitly to distinguish between good, law-abiding Asians and Asian Muslims (see BNP website). Much low-level harassment (abuse, spitting, name-calling, pulling off a headscarf and so on) goes unreported, he says but the number of reported attacks since September 11 has been four times higher than usual (in the US it has increased thirteen-fold, including two deaths) (The Independent, 4 January, 2002) (p 5).

Religion as Part of the Problem

Samuel P Huntington’s much debated clash of civilizations thesis not only anticipated a global confrontation between the Western and the Muslim worlds but criticised the USA’s multicultural policy, arguing that supporters of multiculturalism sell their birth right, rejecting ‘their country’s cultural heritage’. ‘Instead of attempting to identify the United States with another civilization’, he continued, ‘they wish to create a country of many civilizations, which is to say, a country not belonging to any civilization and lacking a cultural core’ (1996 p 306). The events of 9/11 and subsequent terrorist action linked with radical Islam raises for some the question: is Islam qua Islam, rather than a version or a misinterpretation of Islam, inherently violent and irreconcilable with human rights? Bangladeshi exile, Tasrina Nasrin (2000) says ‘yes’. In her view, all religions cause discord and hatred and are the root, not the cure, of any problem. Reforming Islam will gain nothing, she argues. What is needed is a uniform civil code of laws not based on religious dogmas, and one that is equally applicable to men and women. She calls for the replacing of all religions with universal human values. Similarly, Richard Dawkins, professor of the public understanding of science at Oxford, sees religion as a malady that ultimately has nothing to offer humanity. For him, religion lurks behind not only September 11^th’s suicide atrocity (which could not have occurred without ‘belief in an afterlife’) but also the Israeli-Palestinian and Northern Irish conflicts, not to mention numerous other trouble spots around the world. Linguistic gymnastics that avoids using the ‘word’ religion are misguided and dangerous, since it is religion that presents the real threat. Dawkins writes (2001):

It is a spade we have here, let's call it a spade. The Emperor has no clothes. It is time to stop the mealy-mouthed euphemisms: 'Nationalists,' 'Loyalists,' 'Communities,' 'Ethnic Groups.' Religions is the word you need. Religion is the word you are struggling hypocritically to avoid.

Parenthetically, religion is unusual among divisive labels in being spectacularly unnecessary. If religious beliefs had any evidence going for them, we might have to respect them in spite of their concomitant unpleasantness (‘Time to Stand UP’, http://www.ffrf.org/dawkins.html, Freedom From Religion Foundation).

Dawkins invented the theory that culture is transmitted by ‘memes’, which are carried by ‘meme vehicles’ such as pictures, books and language. Good memes ultimately survive because they continue to perform a valuable function despite changed circumstances while bad memes (which can be compared with viruses) will eventually die. Dawkins considers religious faith to be ‘a type of mental illness’ (1989 p 330) since it is capable of justifying anything, such as that a person ‘should die – on the cross, at the stake, skewered on a Crusader’s sword, shot in a Beirut street, or blown up in a bar in Belfast’ (ibid p 198). For Nasrin and Dawkins, religions have nothing to contribute to ‘shared citizenship’ or indeed to moral or ethical or social discourse aimed at improving the quality of human existence, or at solving the challenges that face us globally. Nor is such thinking new. Jeff Spinner-Halev's Surviving Diversity: Religion and Democratic Citizenship (2000) has an excellent summary of liberal/modern views of religion; generally, liberals anticipate its demise (chapter one, pp 1 – 23).

The Errors of Multiculturalism

Current debate pits on the one hand the right of minorities to maintain distinctive cultures against the desirability of some sort of dominant culture, into which minorities should to some degree integrate. The Cantle Report rejected as mythical the idea that there is or ever has been a ‘single dominant and unchanging culture into which all must assimilate’. Criticism of ‘multiculturalism’ also comes from those who support people’s right to affirm religious identity, such as Bhikhu Parekh and Tariq Modood, respectively a Hindu and a Muslim. Parekh, a professor at the London School of Economics and former Deputy Chair of the UK Commission for Racial Equality and Chair of the Commission on the Future of Multi Ethnic Britain, has been in the forefront of - re-thinking multiculturalism. In his book of that title (2000) he advocates a type of dialogical pluralism. In his view, sameness can not be expected in a multi-cultural society but loyalty to its core values and institutions can be, albeit individuals and groups may ‘criticize the prevailing form of government, institutions, policies, values, ethos and dominant self-understanding in the strongest possible terms, but these should not arouse unease or provoke charges of disloyalty so long as their basic commitment to dialogue is not in doubt (p 342). Parekh defines citizenship in ‘political-institutional rather than ethno-cultural terms’ (p 231). The ‘prevailing view of national identity should allow for… multiple identities without subjecting those involved to charges of divided loyalty’ (p 232). In this understanding, what is necessary for shared citizenship is not common ethnicity, colour, religion or culture but loyalty to civil structures and ability to participate in civil and political life. This, Parekh suggests, requires addressing why some feel excluded. It is unfair, he says, to expect citizens to be committed to their ‘political community unless it is committed to them’. Consequently, some individuals who are free to take part ‘stay away or ghettoise themselves for fear of rejection … or out of a deep sense of alienation’ (p 342). Being legally equally does not automatically translate into people feeling equal, or into ability to participate. Parekh suggests that pluralist societies need public forums to enable minorities, who are often ‘culturally and psychologically insecure’ to voice concerns and to take part in national discussion on crucial issues, and that Parliament, divided on party lines, is not such a place (p 306). He believes that the type of ‘broadly shared culture’ that a pluralist society needs to sustain itself will evolve by fusion and cross-fertilization (p 219).

Modood, Professor of Sociology at Bristol University where he directs the Centre for the Study of Ethnicity and Citizenship, has long advocated multiple or composite identity as British and Muslim, or British and Black (see his Not Easy Being British: colour, culture and citizenship, 1992). He calls on the majority community to be more inclusive in how it understands belonging to Britain. He believes that religion should be recognised as an ingredient of peoples’ identity. On the one hand, the anti-Muslim wind blowing across Europe perceives Muslims as ‘making politically exceptional, culturally unreasonable or theologically alien demands upon European states’ (2003b p 1) while on the other hand in the face of discrimination and animosity, few Muslims see assimilation as the way forward. Modood advocates that equality, ideologically and politically regarded as a human right, be extended to embrace two concepts:

· the right to assimilate to the majority/dominant culture in the public sphere, with toleration of ‘difference’ in the private sphere;

· the right to have one’s ‘difference’ (minority ethnicity, for example) recognised and supported in both the public and the private spheres (p 6).

The remedy to the present problem lies not in ‘rejecting the right to assimilate, but in adding the right to widen and adapt the national culture, and the public and media symbols of national membership, to include the relevant minority ethnicities’ (p 6). Modood wants what he calls ‘an equality embracing public ethnicity’. Analysts comment that as the European Union expands, the question of what it means to be a European is firmly on the agenda and involves not only assimilating the new Eastern member states but also the Muslim minority already resident in Europe. There is a real possibility that European identity will include an anti-American and an anti-Muslim element. Many wanted the new European Constitution to recognise Christianity as part of the cultural heritage of Europe. Turkey’s desire to join the Union for some resurrects memories of the days when the Turks were the enemy. Austria fought the Turks for two hundred years, less time than they fought the French. However, it is the driving back of the Turks and not of the French that is regarded as a seminal event, similar to the Spanish defeat of the Moors, annually commemorated in many parts of Spain on St George’s Day (see Mark Urban’s Newsnight report, BBC2 30^th April 2004; also see Akbar Ahmed’s 1992 Living Islam, episode 2, Challenge of the Past).

Muslim scholar Bassam Tibi, a Syrian born German citizen, also criticises ‘multiculturalism’, which he says marginalizes communities by creating ‘separate entities’ and invites the toleration of practices that are not tolerated in the mainstream, on the basis that ‘their ways are not our ways’. He prefers to talk about political rather than cultural integration, since the first implies the ‘granting’ of ‘citizenship rights and duties’ and the ‘demanding’ from Muslims of loyalty to European laws, while the latter implies ‘a denial of the cultural identity of migrants’ (2001 p 208). Tibi advocates what he calls an international, cross-cultural morality and believes that religions have a valid role to play in arriving at ethical consensus on shared values. He writes (1998)

World peace among civilizations requires … ethical convergence ... In the pursuit of a united humanity sharing an international morality, it is essential that a basic program of human rights and democracy be asserted and honoured by all of the world’s civilizations (p 183).

The Catholic theologian, Hans Küng famously called for a global ethic. He wrote, ‘there will be no orderly human co-existence in this world, no resolution of all the problems of peace, justice, and preservation of the created world unless the religions make a decisive contribution, each from its own spiritual resources’ (1984 pxii). At the 1993 Parliament of the Worlds Religions, many delegates endorsed a statement on global ethics (see World Faiths Encounter, 6: 63-4).

Religion: Part of the Cure

There are two approaches to the question posed by this essay. One responds negatively to the question of how religious values can contribute to shared citizenship, arguing that as the cause of conflict religion is best banned from public discourse. The second says, yes, religions can contribute. Human beings throughout the world show little sign of abandoning religion, even if they do not (as in the UK) openly identify with established religious institutions. Religions can be misused to fuel and to feed hatred of ‘others’, who are culturally, racially or religiously different from us. There is also a very thin line between saying that 9/11 was inspired by an interpretation of a religion and saying that the atrocity was inspired by religion. All readings of religious texts are interpretations. A reading of the Qur’an that justifies an act of violence and one that prohibits and condemns it are both interpretations. Whose interpretation is right, whose is wrong and who judges between them? On the other hand, those who are committed to a peace-affirming, and life-enhancing interpretation of their religion and of its foundational discourses can speak out as loudly and as persuasively as they can to counter alternative, life-denying, enmity-generating interpretations. There is no reason why the former and not the latter should, in the end, be seen to represent authentic religion. There are interpretations of religion that emphasise exclusive notions of truth and there are those that are open to multiplicity. There are views within religions that see their traditions as univocal while others see their traditions as multi-vocal. Why should the former, not the latter, be seen to speak for all who belong to each religion? In any society that seeks cohesion and harmony, that which divides and causes discord will in the end be sidelined. Dawkins is right to suggest that if religion is a bad meme, it will die out. However, if it proves to be a good meme, it will not only survive but also thrive and it will do so by helping to make our society become the sort of society we all want to live in. Religion will not gain acceptance as a valid social category, as Modood hopes, if the majority of people see it as endangering shared citizenship. By stressing those values in our religious traditions that affirm the dignity and worth of all people, that celebrates difference as God-given, choice as providential and ability to disagree amicably as a human virtue (only God’s knowing is perfect) religions will embrace the type of pluralism in which all can flourish.

Tibi (2001) usefully describes pluralism as referring ‘to the concept of people representing different views [that is, from their particular worldview or religion] while at the same time [being] strongly committed to common rules and, above all, to mutual tolerance and mutual respect as the binding value-based consensus’. ‘Tolerance’, he says, ‘can never mean that only one party has the right to maintain its views as the expense of the other’ (p 209). In the context of debate and discussion in the UK about an understanding of shared citizenship around which people ‘from diverse backgrounds, faiths and cultural traditions’ can ‘unite’, the religious communities, either through a new or an existing organization might help to provide the sort of platforms for which Parekh calls. However, in order to participate in public discourse, religions need to recognise that they are all humanly mediated and therefore fallible. Therefore, as Parekh says, ‘a religious group that seeks to impose its beliefs on others betrays its inability to accept them as equals and respect their integrity, and forfeits its claim to their tolerance and goodwill’. ‘An intolerant religion’, he continues, ‘that refuses to engage in open-minded dialogue with other points of view and respect majority decisions defeats the very grounds for welcoming it’ as a contributor to public debate (p 333-4). The divine lies behind religions (I would say that religions’ sacred texts may be revealed and free from error) but ‘adherents cannot hide behind God’s authority and must accept responsibility for what they say and do’ in God’s name (ibid).

References

Cantle, Fred (chairman of the review team) (2001) Community Cohesion: A Report of the Independent Review Team, London, The Home Office

Dawkins, Richard (2^nd ed, 1989) The Selfish Gene, Oxford, Oxford University Press).

Dawkins, Richard (2001) ‘ Time to Stand Up’, Freedom From Religion Foundation, September 2001 http://www.ffrf.org/dawkins.html

Huntington, Samuel P (1996) The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, NY, Simon & Schuster

Küng, Hans (1984) Christianity and the World Religions, London, SCM

Modood, Tariq (1992) Not Easy Being British: colour, culture and citizenship, London, The Runnymede Trust

Modood, Tariq (2001) ‘Muslims in the West: A Positive Asset’, The Observer, 30^th September 2001 (www.guardian.co.uk)

Modood, Tariq (2003a) Multiculturalism, Muslims and the British State’, The American Muslim, May-June 2003 (http://www.theamericanmuslim.org/2003may_comments.php?id=134_0_20_0_C).

Modood, Tariq (2003b) ‘Muslims and European Multiculturalism’, OpenDemocracy, www.opendemocracy.com, 15.05.

Nasrin, Taslima (2000) ‘They Wanted to Kill Me’, Middle East Quarterly, V v1 No 3, September; www.meforum.org/article/73

Parekh, Bhikhu (2000) Rethinking Multiculturalism: Cultural Diversity and Political Theory, NY, Palgrave

Secure Borders, Safe Haven (2002) London, The Home Office

Spinner-Halev, Jeff (2000) Surviving Diversity: Religion and Democratic Citizenship, Baltimore, MD. John Hopkins University Press

Tibi, Bassam (1998) The Challenge of Fundamentalism: Political Islam and the New World Order, Berkeley, CA, University of California Press

Tibi, Bassam (2001) Islam Between Culture and Politics, Basingstoke, Palgrave

Clinton Bennett, an ordained Baptist minister, is currently Operations Manager at Birchfield Community School Birmingham and Visiting Fellow, Graduate Institute for Theology and Religion at Birmingham University. He is also an Affiliated Lecturer of the Centre for the Study of Jewish-Christian Relations, Cambridge.