Anti-multi-culturalism in a diverse society is a recipe for conflicts and disasters

By M Ahmedullah, 25 June 2016

The relentless attacks on British multi-culturalism by the Tories after coming to power in 2010, to replace it with what they call ‘muscular liberalism’, have unleashed ugly xenophobic forces in the country.

The Tories and their supporters argued then and still do that the problems with community integration in the UK, especially concerning the Muslims, were caused by several decades of multiculturalism and liberal appeasement.

This perspectives, which informed a lot of Tory policies, according to me, has caused a lot of xenophobia. Although it may be good for some people’s political ambitions, as a nation, we will end up paying a very heavy price, by experiencing many decades of unnecessary and unwanted community conflicts.

Rather than rubbishing and trying to replace British ‘multi-culturalism’, which, I believe, was and has been the best policy for living together in an every-increasing diverse society, a better approach would have been to opt for a mix of ‘assertive liberalism and passionate social justice’ in support of ‘multi-culturalism’.

In a society with increasing diversity and multitudes of race/faiths/cultures living side by side, there are no rivals or alternatives to multi-culturalism.

One of the reason is that today all people will fight for the rights to develop and grow according to their wishes and cultural traditions. Synthesise with outside influences is a natural and beneficial part of human interactions when people from different traditions find themselves living together. No people or group will allow their traditions to be trampled upon and destroyed or only allowed to be lived or practised within the framework of some externally defined perimeters and limits. Anti-multi-culturalism in a diverse society is a recipe for conflicts and disasters.

Multi-culturalism allows and encourages diverse cultures to live side by side and grow according to their traditions; interact with each other; achieve syntheses and generate new creativity through mixing. This is the best formula for a diversity of peoples living together, out of which, will continue to emerge a new evolving macro-identity rooted in the diversity of developing and evolving micro-identities: micro-identities developing and combining generating a combined dynamic macro-identity.

Any attempt to replace British multi-culturalism with so-called ‘muscular liberalism’ has been and will continue to be a disaster for Britain. The end product will be more painful and there will be more conflicts between communities. No groups will willingly give up their desires to preserve and develop their cultural traditions, based on their perspectives. They will fight to the end for whatever they consider important and essential to who they are as a group.

Assertive liberalism coupled with passionate social justice can aid and support multi-culturalism to deal with some of the identified negative impacts of multi-culturalism. All cultures and traditions have elements, which are out of date; discriminate against women; promote inequalities between people and cause harm to people or prevent the free growth of human beings.

These bad practices, some of which are also evil, can be effectively challenged and dealt with by assertive liberalism and passionate social justice. All groups and communities living in diversity will support the elimination of bad practice or the adaptation of some of them so they do not remain bad anymore. Force marriages and FGM are examples of bad practices that no multi-cultural societies can and will tolerate and accept.

Trying to get the so-called ‘muscular liberalism’ to rescue the country from the so-called failures of multi-culturalism was a foolish and dangerous way of thinking. The xenophobic forces that this Tory perspective has unleashed is proving to be more harmful to community integration in a diverse Britain than any imagined failures of multi-culturalism.

It will be an assertive multi-culturalism that will be able to rescue the country from the negative impacts of the xenophobia forces unleashed by so-called ‘muscular liberalism’. So, let us assert our multi-cultural identities and promote multi-culturalism with a greater level of confidence, vigour and self-belief.