UK Prime Minister David Cameron has apparently taken a cue from his German counterpart, Chancellor Angela Merkel. At an international conference attended by world leaders last Saturday in Munich, Germany, Mr. Cameron characterized his country’s policy of multiculturalism as “a failure,” and one of the elements that has fostered Islamic extremism. “If we are to defeat this threat, I believe it’s time to turn the page on the failed policies of the past,” he said.
Cameron continued: “Under the doctrine of state multiculturalism, we have encouraged different cultures to live separate lives, apart from each other and the mainstream. We have failed to provide a vision of society to which they feel they want to belong.”
Unsurprisingly, Mr. Cameron’s assessment was condemned by Muslim groups in the UK. Faisal Hanjra, assistant secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, a group which receives government funding to combat extremism, called the remarks “disappointing,” in an interview with BBC radio. ”Again it just seems the Muslim community is very much in the spotlight, being treated as part of the problem as opposed to part of the solution,” he added. Mohammed Shafiq, chief executive the Ramadhan Foundation, a British Muslim welfare group claimed that “[S]ingling out Muslims as he has done feeds the hysteria and paranoia about Islam and Muslims…. British Muslims abhor terrorism and extremism, and we have worked hard to eradicate this evil from our country. It would help if politicians stopped pandering to the agenda of the BNP and the fascist EDL.”
The BNP is the British National Party, an activist group which, until it was challenged in court in 2009, restricted its membership to “indigenous Caucasians.” In 2010, it changed that policy, with group chairman, Nick Griffin claiming that blacks and Asians could now be members, “providing they agree with us that this country should remain fundamentally British.” The English Defense League is another activist group which opposes Islamic extremism and Sharia law in England. Street protests are their vehicle of choice, and on the same day as Mr. Cameron’s speech, they held a demonstration in the city of Luton, where as many as three thousand protesters chanted “never surrender” and waved signs reading “No more mosques” and “Islam is the devil.”
Despite the fact that Mr. Cameron never mentioned the EDL in his speech, Sadiq Khan, a lawmaker for the opposition Labour Party, accused Cameron of “writing propaganda for the EDL.” Yet Foreign Secretary William Hague saw it differently. “This is a prime minister giving a speech about the future of our country, that doesn’t have to be re-scheduled because some people have chosen to march down a street that particular day. This is a speech that will endure over the months and years long after people have forgotten what was going on on that particular Saturday afternoon.” Yet Mr. Hague qualified his remarks. “I do think the prime minister was unwise not to make it clearer that he was criticising all kinds of extremism,” he said. Labour Party member Yvette Cooper concurred, adding that Mr. Cameron should have also criticised the EDL and “non-violent extremism.”
What David Cameron did propose was something he referred to as a “more active, muscular liberalism” as opposed to “the passive tolerance of recent years” which has led to separatism and fed extremism. ”A passively tolerant society says to its citizens: as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone. It stands neutral between different values. A genuinely liberal country does much more. It believes in certain values and actively promotes them.”
Part of that active liberalism does indeed get to the heart of the matter: ”Some organisations that seek to present themselves as a gateway to the Muslim community are showered with public money despite doing little to combat extremism. As others have observed, this is like turning to a right-wing fascist party to fight a violent white supremacist movement. So we should properly judge these organisations: do they believe in universal human rights–including for women and people of other faiths? Do they believe in equality of all before the law? Do they believe in democracy and the right of people to elect their own government? Do they encourage integration or separation? These are the sorts of questions we need to ask. Fail these tests and the presumption should be not to engage with organizations–so, no public money, no sharing of platforms with ministers at home.”
All of this sounds wonderful–until it is undone by the very same multicultural assumptions that Mr. Cameron was ostensibly kicking to the curb: ”On the one hand, those on the hard right ignore this distinction between Islam and Islamist extremism, and just say that Islam and the West are irreconcilable–that there is a clash of civilizations….If they want an example of how Western values and Islam can be entirely compatible, they should look at what’s happened in the past few weeks on the streets of Tunis and Cairo: hundreds of thousands of people demanding the universal right to free elections and democracy…I simply don’t accept that there is somehow a dead end choice between a security state on the one hand, and an Islamist one on the other.”
Thoughtful people are looking at the streets of Tunis and Cairo, Mr. Cameron. In Tunis, long-time opposition leader Sheikh Rachid Ghannouchi and other members of the Islamic al-Nahda Party have returned to the country after more than twenty years in exile. He, too, believes Sharia law and democracy are “compatible,” despite the inarguable fact that Sharia law codifies the second-class status of women. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood, which has already called for renewed hostilities with Israel should they attain power, is holding talks with what remains of Hosni Mubarak’s government.
Substantial numbers of people in both countries, if not outright majorities, are calling for the imposition of Islamic governments. That they would achieve that end via the ballot box may be reassuring to Mr. Cameron. But one suspects that if the same scenario were playing itself out in Europe–and given the disparate birth rates between native Europeans and Muslim immigrants, such a possibility could exist in the near future–Mr. Cameron might be less enthused. Once again: it is a fatal mistake to believe that democracy and freedom are interchangeable terms. Those who welcome the rapid ascent of democracy–absent the most basic understandings of freedom–are cultivating the potential for the very same clash of civilizations they claim to abhor. American democracy took thirteen years, from 1776 to 1789, to find its footing, and still required a Civil War costing half a million lives to make it permanent.
Mr. Cameron’s speech is a refreshing change from the status quo. But until Muslims themselves, in far greater numbers than anything witnessed so far, can explain how freedom, not democracy, is “compatible” with Sharia law, muscular skepticism, not liberalism, remains the order of the day.
Arnold Ahlert is a contributing columnist to the conservative website JewishWorldReview.com.
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