Post 9/11 paradigm shift

When Muslims with British passports were found to be fighting with the Afghan Taliban against British forces a discussion began on the loyalty of Muslims who were also British citizens and who were now seen as a people apart with a disparate vision of how society should look. Were Muslims a fifth column? Was their primary loyalty to the ummah (the worldwide community of Muslims) as opposed to any nation-state? Could the shari’ah (Islamic law) and human rights be reconciled? Finsbury Park Mosque in North London was particularly prominent in the debate and estimates of large numbers of radical, subversive jihadists led to cosmopolitan London being nicknamed ‘Londonistan’ by the C.I.A. (or l’antechambre de l’Afghanistan by the DGSE - French Secret Service) (Ulph, 2004).

This was analogous to the criticism of Commonwealth immigrants of the 1950’s when they were rejected and constructed as the ‘other’ with the far right on the march. Soon the discussion reverted to one last seen when Lord Norman Tebbit remarked in 1991:

“Great waves of immigration by people who do not share our culture, our language, our ways of social conduct, in many cases who owe no allegiance to our country, was and is a destabilizing factor in society (Mueen, 2003)”.

The core debate was on how to cope with a segment of the population that was becoming more detached and isolated. Phrases like segregation, secular melting pot and integration crept back into vogue. Most significant was the term ‘social cohesion’ which encapsulated the liberal vision of society unified by individuals with a common identity and shared values in public.

The rhetoric was eerily similar to the ‘liberal hour’ discussion of 1965-68. Once again, but this time in the twenty-first century, the insidious influence of outsiders who didn’t ‘belong’ had to be corrected through integration policies but this time there were significant differences.

This New Liberalism in minority-relations differed from the 1960’s liberalism as race was no longer the popular issue. Security concerns in the charged post 9/11 atmosphere dictated that loyalty to the nation’s values was of paramount importance. The question for liberals was whether Muslims even wanted to be part of British life. Liberals began to debate the impact of Islam on Western society, often unfavourably, and as the considerations of social cohesion changed a New Liberalism began to emerge.

New Liberal values

The defence of certain values is central to the New Liberal thesis, as integration cannot take place unless the common public identity and culture can be defined for the newcomer to accept. The debate on these values is not isolated to Britain as the entire continent is grappling with similar questions on values and identity (Toggenburg, 2004), the various public comments by followers of New Liberal trend substantiates this. Václav Havel and others set out these ideas on values comprehensively in the ‘Charter of European Identity’ of 1994 that set out a secular worldview lifted direct from the Enlightenment:

“Europe is above all a community of values...They are rooted in common legal principles acknowledging the freedom of the individual and social responsibility. Fundamental European values are based on tolerance, humanity, fraternity. Building on its historical roots in classical antiquity and Christianity, Europe further developed these values during the course of the Renaissance, the Humanist movement, and the Enlightenment, which led in turn to the development of democracy, the recognition of fundamental and human rights and the rule of law” (Zemni & Parker, 2002).

Whenever the discussion on European values begins anew it is clear not much, if anything, has changed since then, or even from the Enlightenment. Liberals still claim that their values are universal and should dominate in order for progress to ensue. Jack Straw stated this explicitly in March 2004 when he spoke on Middle Eastern reform:

“Promoting the values we believe in-good governance, human rights, tolerance and the rule of law-is not an attempt to impose ‘Western’ or ‘Christian’ values on Arab countries at the expense of their traditional culture. The values set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are just that-universal, and drawn from the traditions and values of countries around the world. They are values for which people around the world strive; and which are compatible with every single faith in the world. We want to see them fully realised everywhere” (2004). New Liberals have no hesitation or compunction in declaring the universality of their values. Therefore, it is of no surprise that the outcome of the New Liberal ‘consensus’ throughout Europe is that immigrants have to be ‘integrated’ into a common identity and culture (a mutual collective history, joint vision of the future and shared value-system) that stems from liberal thinking to prevent them segregating to live parallel lives in parallel societies.

The multicultural ‘settlement’ was still largely in evidence up to 9/11 (Kundnani, 2002). This point should have meant that like all other minority groups Islam should have benefited from the same advantages others had gained through multiculturalism i.e. unswerving amnesty from criticism, the right to be treated like all other ways of life simply by existing plus the opportunity to remould its place in the public sphere on its own terms.

It was inconceivable, post-’settlement’, that a minority group with its own way of life could come under sustained fire so Islam should have found the same ‘recognition’ and comprehensive acceptance that other minorities had found. Many expected that protection. Instead, in a reversal of the original Master/Slave dialectic, the first genuine strains on multiculturalism began in the aftermath of 9/11 as a resurgent New Liberalism, determined to ‘deal’ with the wayward allegiance of Muslims by imposing its values through integration, clashed with the dominant theory.