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Right of a culture became more important than the right of the individual
By Edward Turner
Posted: Jan 1, 2007
In 1970, the Daily Telegraph columnist W. F. Deedes wrote: ''What nobody is clear about is the kind of
society that may eventually emerge.'' Two years earlier, Enoch Powell had taken his own apocalyptic
answer from Virgil's Aeneid: ''Like the Roman, I seem to see the River Tiber flowing with much blood.''
Today, multiculturalism is the hot controversy it was thirty-six years ago. Only the facts on the ground
have changed significantly. Then immigrants numbered about one million; today there are five times
as many. Many of these newcomers are Muslims.
And it is the separatist Islam that is the main feature of our multicultural society today.
The 1988 publication of Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses changed everything. Multiculturalism had
been about socio-economic discrimination and verbal abuse such as monkey-chants at football
matches. Overnight it was transformed into a question of political legitimacy of the British state and
threats of deadly violence and, eventually, suicide bombers. Why? The British government, reflecting a
liberal heritage, refused to enforce Islamic blasphemy laws. In reply, the Ayatollah Khomeini issued a
fatwa, reflecting Muslim values. Many aggrieved British Muslims agreed with the revolutionary Iranian
martyr-man and Rushdie went into hiding in fear of a later-day assassin.
Since 1989 the ranks of British separatist Islam have swelled: immigration increased with the Labour
Party's rise to power in 1997. By the time of the 2005 London Bombings and the 2006 Danish
Cartoons controversy Britain's 1.7 million Muslims exceeded the combined populations of Bahrain and
Oman. Islam is in Britain; and Islam is here to stay. A clear statement of this fact is that twenty percent
of British babies are born to foreign mothers; British Muslims will soon outnumber even the Welsh.
The Thames does not flow with blood but a clear trend has emerged for the contemporary observer to
contemplate. All over the country radical imams clamour for special laws and rights. Neighbourhoods
from Leeds, Luton to London have become segregated into ethnic enclaves; while their edges spark
with tension. Many British women do not have their civil rights, hidden by their men behind a veil of
submission. Muslim disaffection with the liberal state is growing: a 2006 NOP poll showed one in
three of Britain's state-sized Muslim community would prefer Sharia to British law.
No more a green and pleasant land of four nations, Britain is gestating, if not in the process of giving
birth to, an urban fifth.
A more pertinent question, perhaps, than what kind of society may eventually emerge from where we
are today is: how did we get here? The obvious answer: with immigration and multiculturalism. The
former provided the numbers; the latter the nasties. But there is a paradox: why, when the United
Kingdom is a textbook example of a 'multicultural society', four nations under one Union Jack, did
Britons 'celebrate' under the umbrella of multiculturalism the most monocultural of her new citizens?
Indeed we seem to have forgotten what we have in the process rejected. The United States, the
Commonwealth and India are all beneficiaries of England and Scotland and Wales and Ireland's good
multiculturalism. Britain's proselytising liberal version: an alliance of Locke and the Lord, a
multi-individualism based on the absolute right of the individual, over the doctrine and dictator; that is,
still, Britain's gift to a world on which the sun never sets.
The self-evident, universal moral truth of every individual's right to basic freedoms -- of speech,
association and security -- is, more important than ever, fighting Islamic radicalism in Britain. Where
have the good multiculturalists gone?
Bad multiculturalism has undoubtedly arrived. It rode in on a trendy relative conception of right in which
the right of the culture became more important than the right of the individual. The roots of this
multiculturalism lie within Western political correctness. It is a branch on an ancient phylum of
relativism dating from Nietzsche the nihilist, Herder the romantic, back to Protagoras the sophist.
Multiculturalist thinking is so overwhelmingly dominant it is the basis of international agreements (The
International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination stretches
discrimination beyond political and economic imagination to 'social, cultural or any other field of public
life') and popular sociology such as James Jones's concept of ''cultural racism''.
The ultimate absurdity of multiculturalism without basic liberal values (such as the absolute right of
freedom from arbitrary killing) is that it becomes indistinguishable from anarchic barbarism. We agree
we have the perfect right to kill each other if that is our culture. Is it a surprise that multiculturalism has
excused suicide martyrdom?
We may ask why Britain fell under the spell of multiculturalism. Did decolonisation and the loss of
world status make it psychologically easier to reject British history as evil, and to start anew? As
Zygmunt Bauman suggested in Modernity and the Holocaust, did the West conclude Adolph Hitler was
a product of Western rationalism gone mad? Perhaps globalised, hedonist, post-Christian lives have
skewed priorities; Britons have replaced moral rights with a world of emotional wants, including crazy
notions of fairness and guilt for the radical next door who want us dead.
How has an anti-British culture arisen amongst millions of essentially freedom-loving people, then?
First, as above, there is the disarming rejection of absolute values and a self-defeating belief in relative
values. Second, there is the marginalisation of Christianity and the damaging historical-psychology of
modern life in the West. Third, there are institutions within society that are perpetual sources of bad
multiculturalism.
Bureaucratic institutions such as the Immigration Service, Department for Communities and Local
Government and European Union spread multiculturalism -- rules on equal treatment for cultures. The
welfare state provides unassimilated immigrants funds that maintain their many cultures.
Bureaucracies don't stop until deprived of funding or political leadership (and an electoral mandate).
Politicians like George Galloway (RESPECT coalition) and Ken Livingstone (London Mayor) owe power
to a big new electoral group -- immigrants. These individuals are major public figures and their power
--and that of the party institutions they represent -- rests on their voters and their cultures. These
cultures may not support liberal British values. Increasingly, the British politician does not have to be
liberal to be voted in again.
Businesses can benefit from immigration: it keeps down the minimum wage. Immigrant cultures may
add spice to existing markets-- indeed Islamic banking, religious paraphernalia open new markets.
Anti-discrimination and cultural knowledge in the workplace is law but also wise business-sense. The
business of mass media does not have to be a pro-multiculturalism institution to be a source of bad
cultural information.
In social science the driving power of multiculturalism comes from the originality of scholarship in the
ignorance of a hard science of culture. Funds of research institutions are given to anti-rationalistic,
aesthetically minded intellectuals who teach students that an ever-greater range of things are ''socially
constructed''. Many practice what they preach in street marches in support of terrorists' culture; and
likewise often claim to be victims of the same massive (but invisible) conspiracies. Without a science
of culture the university will remain untethered to facts.
In the 1970s British Sikh institutions were among the first immigrants to campaign for special rights
(such as the right to wear a religious dagger in public). ''Legal Islamism'' describes how Muslim
institutions have gained privileges (like segregated swimming times at Croydon public baths) through
aggressive lobbyists and lawyers. Since 9/11 claims of Islamophobia (cultural racism) have deflected
investigation into the extremist culture in Islamist institutions on to those who question the position of
Islamic institutions on individual rights issues. There is immigration itself: almost all immigrants arrive
unassimilated; many now enter into unassimilated micro-societies, replete with their own
self-enforced laws.
On December 8, 2006, Prime Minister Tony Blair said immigrants must assimilate to ''British values''.
Is multiculturalism dead? Even the question has probably been long extinct. Debate has moved
beyond multiculturalism to whether monocultural Islam can assimilate with liberal society. The short
answer: no. There is no moderate Islam: Islam means submission. There are, however, signs that
moderate British Muslims -- like the Independent columnist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown -- can guide the way
forward. These individuals are the secret to developing the ''social capital'' of a new British multicultural
society based on old liberal values.
In Bowling Alone Robert D. Putnam conceptualised two types of relationship: bonding and bridging.
Bonding occurs between friends; bridging between enemies. Multicultural society then must build on
bridges with''enemies'' (immigrants and disaffected youth, who become ''friends'') and bonds
with''friends'' (the ''British'' identity). Islam has the advantage of being very good at bonding but
possesses the distinct weakness of burning its bridges.
Islam is unable to bond with a culture of absolute individual rights, elections and joint associations.
Radical Muslims opt out of infidel (enemy) groups and associations and instead bond with their own --
such as in a British ''Muslim Parliament'' (there are no alternative Sikh, Jewish or Buddhist
Parliaments). Political Islam -- whose burning of bridges with the liberal state began with the books of
Salman Rushdie -- is however weak to bridges, through absolute individual values, with individual
Muslims. And with enough of these free associations only the hijabs (and hoodies) will burn.
### ### ###
Edward Turner is a freelance journalist based in London.
By Edward Turner
Posted: Jan 1, 2007
In 1970, the Daily Telegraph columnist W. F. Deedes wrote: ''What nobody is clear about is the kind of
society that may eventually emerge.'' Two years earlier, Enoch Powell had taken his own apocalyptic
answer from Virgil's Aeneid: ''Like the Roman, I seem to see the River Tiber flowing with much blood.''
Today, multiculturalism is the hot controversy it was thirty-six years ago. Only the facts on the ground
have changed significantly. Then immigrants numbered about one million; today there are five times
as many. Many of these newcomers are Muslims.
And it is the separatist Islam that is the main feature of our multicultural society today.
The 1988 publication of Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses changed everything. Multiculturalism had
been about socio-economic discrimination and verbal abuse such as monkey-chants at football
matches. Overnight it was transformed into a question of political legitimacy of the British state and
threats of deadly violence and, eventually, suicide bombers. Why? The British government, reflecting a
liberal heritage, refused to enforce Islamic blasphemy laws. In reply, the Ayatollah Khomeini issued a
fatwa, reflecting Muslim values. Many aggrieved British Muslims agreed with the revolutionary Iranian
martyr-man and Rushdie went into hiding in fear of a later-day assassin.
Since 1989 the ranks of British separatist Islam have swelled: immigration increased with the Labour
Party's rise to power in 1997. By the time of the 2005 London Bombings and the 2006 Danish
Cartoons controversy Britain's 1.7 million Muslims exceeded the combined populations of Bahrain and
Oman. Islam is in Britain; and Islam is here to stay. A clear statement of this fact is that twenty percent
of British babies are born to foreign mothers; British Muslims will soon outnumber even the Welsh.
The Thames does not flow with blood but a clear trend has emerged for the contemporary observer to
contemplate. All over the country radical imams clamour for special laws and rights. Neighbourhoods
from Leeds, Luton to London have become segregated into ethnic enclaves; while their edges spark
with tension. Many British women do not have their civil rights, hidden by their men behind a veil of
submission. Muslim disaffection with the liberal state is growing: a 2006 NOP poll showed one in
three of Britain's state-sized Muslim community would prefer Sharia to British law.
No more a green and pleasant land of four nations, Britain is gestating, if not in the process of giving
birth to, an urban fifth.
A more pertinent question, perhaps, than what kind of society may eventually emerge from where we
are today is: how did we get here? The obvious answer: with immigration and multiculturalism. The
former provided the numbers; the latter the nasties. But there is a paradox: why, when the United
Kingdom is a textbook example of a 'multicultural society', four nations under one Union Jack, did
Britons 'celebrate' under the umbrella of multiculturalism the most monocultural of her new citizens?
Indeed we seem to have forgotten what we have in the process rejected. The United States, the
Commonwealth and India are all beneficiaries of England and Scotland and Wales and Ireland's good
multiculturalism. Britain's proselytising liberal version: an alliance of Locke and the Lord, a
multi-individualism based on the absolute right of the individual, over the doctrine and dictator; that is,
still, Britain's gift to a world on which the sun never sets.
The self-evident, universal moral truth of every individual's right to basic freedoms -- of speech,
association and security -- is, more important than ever, fighting Islamic radicalism in Britain. Where
have the good multiculturalists gone?
Bad multiculturalism has undoubtedly arrived. It rode in on a trendy relative conception of right in which
the right of the culture became more important than the right of the individual. The roots of this
multiculturalism lie within Western political correctness. It is a branch on an ancient phylum of
relativism dating from Nietzsche the nihilist, Herder the romantic, back to Protagoras the sophist.
Multiculturalist thinking is so overwhelmingly dominant it is the basis of international agreements (The
International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination stretches
discrimination beyond political and economic imagination to 'social, cultural or any other field of public
life') and popular sociology such as James Jones's concept of ''cultural racism''.
The ultimate absurdity of multiculturalism without basic liberal values (such as the absolute right of
freedom from arbitrary killing) is that it becomes indistinguishable from anarchic barbarism. We agree
we have the perfect right to kill each other if that is our culture. Is it a surprise that multiculturalism has
excused suicide martyrdom?
We may ask why Britain fell under the spell of multiculturalism. Did decolonisation and the loss of
world status make it psychologically easier to reject British history as evil, and to start anew? As
Zygmunt Bauman suggested in Modernity and the Holocaust, did the West conclude Adolph Hitler was
a product of Western rationalism gone mad? Perhaps globalised, hedonist, post-Christian lives have
skewed priorities; Britons have replaced moral rights with a world of emotional wants, including crazy
notions of fairness and guilt for the radical next door who want us dead.
How has an anti-British culture arisen amongst millions of essentially freedom-loving people, then?
First, as above, there is the disarming rejection of absolute values and a self-defeating belief in relative
values. Second, there is the marginalisation of Christianity and the damaging historical-psychology of
modern life in the West. Third, there are institutions within society that are perpetual sources of bad
multiculturalism.
Bureaucratic institutions such as the Immigration Service, Department for Communities and Local
Government and European Union spread multiculturalism -- rules on equal treatment for cultures. The
welfare state provides unassimilated immigrants funds that maintain their many cultures.
Bureaucracies don't stop until deprived of funding or political leadership (and an electoral mandate).
Politicians like George Galloway (RESPECT coalition) and Ken Livingstone (London Mayor) owe power
to a big new electoral group -- immigrants. These individuals are major public figures and their power
--and that of the party institutions they represent -- rests on their voters and their cultures. These
cultures may not support liberal British values. Increasingly, the British politician does not have to be
liberal to be voted in again.
Businesses can benefit from immigration: it keeps down the minimum wage. Immigrant cultures may
add spice to existing markets-- indeed Islamic banking, religious paraphernalia open new markets.
Anti-discrimination and cultural knowledge in the workplace is law but also wise business-sense. The
business of mass media does not have to be a pro-multiculturalism institution to be a source of bad
cultural information.
In social science the driving power of multiculturalism comes from the originality of scholarship in the
ignorance of a hard science of culture. Funds of research institutions are given to anti-rationalistic,
aesthetically minded intellectuals who teach students that an ever-greater range of things are ''socially
constructed''. Many practice what they preach in street marches in support of terrorists' culture; and
likewise often claim to be victims of the same massive (but invisible) conspiracies. Without a science
of culture the university will remain untethered to facts.
In the 1970s British Sikh institutions were among the first immigrants to campaign for special rights
(such as the right to wear a religious dagger in public). ''Legal Islamism'' describes how Muslim
institutions have gained privileges (like segregated swimming times at Croydon public baths) through
aggressive lobbyists and lawyers. Since 9/11 claims of Islamophobia (cultural racism) have deflected
investigation into the extremist culture in Islamist institutions on to those who question the position of
Islamic institutions on individual rights issues. There is immigration itself: almost all immigrants arrive
unassimilated; many now enter into unassimilated micro-societies, replete with their own
self-enforced laws.
On December 8, 2006, Prime Minister Tony Blair said immigrants must assimilate to ''British values''.
Is multiculturalism dead? Even the question has probably been long extinct. Debate has moved
beyond multiculturalism to whether monocultural Islam can assimilate with liberal society. The short
answer: no. There is no moderate Islam: Islam means submission. There are, however, signs that
moderate British Muslims -- like the Independent columnist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown -- can guide the way
forward. These individuals are the secret to developing the ''social capital'' of a new British multicultural
society based on old liberal values.
In Bowling Alone Robert D. Putnam conceptualised two types of relationship: bonding and bridging.
Bonding occurs between friends; bridging between enemies. Multicultural society then must build on
bridges with''enemies'' (immigrants and disaffected youth, who become ''friends'') and bonds
with''friends'' (the ''British'' identity). Islam has the advantage of being very good at bonding but
possesses the distinct weakness of burning its bridges.
Islam is unable to bond with a culture of absolute individual rights, elections and joint associations.
Radical Muslims opt out of infidel (enemy) groups and associations and instead bond with their own --
such as in a British ''Muslim Parliament'' (there are no alternative Sikh, Jewish or Buddhist
Parliaments). Political Islam -- whose burning of bridges with the liberal state began with the books of
Salman Rushdie -- is however weak to bridges, through absolute individual values, with individual
Muslims. And with enough of these free associations only the hijabs (and hoodies) will burn.
### ### ###
Edward Turner is a freelance journalist based in London.
| (c) 2006 New Criterion Foundation, London |
| Security. Ideologies. Multiculturalism. |