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