Tory opposition leader Michael Howard believes that Britain may be suffering from an overdose of multiculturalism, a concept which he describes as “confusing” in his recent article published in the Guardian. He bemoans the fact there is no British version of “the American dream” around which immigrants can rally and says those whose allegiance to queen and country is questionable should be considered security threats and stripped of their nationality.
Howard writes: “My father was fiercely proud of being British, and my mother still is. They never thought their Britishness was inconsistent with their Jewishness.” He says his parents, illegal economic migrants, and generations like them frequently disagreed with government policies “but never allowed that to affect their allegiance to the country.”
The article was, of course, directed at British Muslims who have recently come under McCarthyism-type scrutiny, “...our virtues as a nation can yet provide an antidote to the poisoned thinking that led to last month’s horrors,” Howard writes, while appearing to hold up British Jewry as a paragon of assimilation. Howard’s thinking is essentially flawed. The actions of a few misguided individuals last July does not a case against multiculturalism make, and, on the contrary, it is my belief that multiculturalism in Britain should be a cause for celebration. Here’s my answer to Mr. Howard:
Dear Mr. Howard,
If it’s “Britishness” you’re after, then as far as ethnicity goes, there is no one more so than I. However, although I was born in South Wales to parents who were a mix of Welsh and English, I received my greatest gift in life when we moved to London as a young girl.
“My father was unfamiliar with the capital and somehow we landed in Stamford Hill (then a cosmopolitan but predominantly Jewish enclave in North London) where we rented an apartment owned by a Hassidic family. It was there that I sipped on my first bowl of real Jewish chicken soup, munched on kebabs at one of the many Turkish restaurants and burned the roof of my mouth on Vindaloo, courtesy of the Anglo-Indian family next door.
“The relocation was a life-changing gift because the day arrived when I no longer distinguished people by their color or creed. Furthermore, I was inspired to learn languages under the motivation ‘another language is another friend’, while my hunger to learn about other peoples and cultures was permanently aroused.
“But there was another side to Stamford Hill which I glimpsed in those days. The Hassidic communities did not mix at all with anyone outside their sects or even with their fellow-Jews espousing a diluted version of their ideology. Indeed, they had their own schools, cultural centers, charitable organizations and even clinics.
“I attended an all-girls school and still recall how many of the Jewish students left their studies early to help out in Israeli factories and kibbutzim during the 1967 war, while others spent their pocket-money on saplings for Israel.
“It soon became clear to me that a substantial number of my classmates felt far more allegiance to Israel than they did to Britain, which they considered very much a temporary stepping stone en route to Zion. And I can only wonder what their reaction would have been had Britain lined up on the Arab side during that war. Would they have been considered “terrorists”?
“The point is that one is who one is and one’s loyalties are where they are and no amount of laws can alter how individuals feel toward a country without going down the slippery slope of ‘bring in the thought police’.
“And to those who dislike the ethnic melting pot Britain has become, I would say: Put the blame on your forefathers and their imperialist polices. Most immigrants to Britain came armed with British passports from countries that had been occupied and ravaged. Others were invited in to do the ‘dirty jobs’ that Britons felt were beneath them. Considering that they were treated as second-class citizens for decades, it is amazing the loyalty they show to Britain today. I still remember the notices up outside rental accommodation in Stamford Hill — ‘No children, No pets and No coloreds’.
“So, it seems to me, Mr. Howard, that your call is unrealistic. People who share the same ethnicity or religious belief will usually stick together. That is what British Muslims are doing nowadays...just as my schoolmates did when they flew to the then Lod airport to stand with Israel in 1967. Many told me that they were ready to give their lives for the cause; not a British cause but a Zionist cause.”
Provided they don’t break the law, British Muslims have a right to support those causes they hold dear such as the establishment of a Palestinian state and an end to the occupation of Iraq, causes shared by the vast majority of Britons of all ethnicities. Moreover, in a so-called free and democratic country, everyone should have the right to worship as they please, read what they want and peacefully protest against the policies of the government.
The writer Madeleine Bunting in an article titled “Throwing mud at Muslims” encompasses a worrying trend against British Muslims in her final paragraph.
“A new set of “cricket tests” are being imposed on British Muslims — they are expected to sign up enthusiastically to every aspect of Western secular society and to jettison any part of their intellectual heritage that is critical of the West. They are expected to keep their faith entirely out of politics (yet faith plays a critical role in US politics). Set the bar high enough and all will fail — the consequences on the streets of Luton and Bradford will be disastrous, and not just for Britain’s l.6 million Muslims.”
Bunting is right. The fact is that Muslim countries happen to the ones currently groaning under Western occupation. But in the extremely unlikely event that Israel were ever to become the recipient of US and British “shock and awe” and Israelis were being tortured and abused in secret gulags, how would Howard’s self-professed allegiance to his adopted land stand up then? Luckily for him, we’ll probably never know.
