Is Tolerance Enough? Inventing Britain For the 21st Century (Part Five)

Is Tolerance Enough? Inventing Britain For the 21st Century (Part Five)

In my blog of 14 December, I examined the question of whether Britain was a tolerant nation, in relation to some of the philosophical and judicial implications of the term. This was in response to recent attempts – by Tony Blair and senior Anglican churchmen among others – to place tolerance at the heart of the new ‘Britology’: the set of core, shared British values that are being advocated as the basis for greater cultural integration and social cohesion in the UK.

In that previous entry, I argued that Britain was not really a tolerant nation in the full sense of the word; but that tolerance on a whole range of cultural and social issues was limited by a moral framework inherited from Christianity (which I am now calling Christo-liberalism, or ‘evangeliberalism’). In particular, this fusion between liberalism and the Christian tradition endows the criticisms of, and potential legal restrictions on, the Muslim veil with a tremendous degree of ambiguity: the veil as a symbol of an intolerant (anti-liberal) culture at odds with ‘our’ tolerance; or the veil as the symbol of radical Islam that provokes fear in us as Christians, and unites us in wishing to exclude that Islam from our culture and even from our land.

Tolerance also refers to personal and, by extension, national characteristics, and these are what I wish to focus on today. As discussed in the entry of 14 December, referring to somebody as a tolerant person can carry a number of implications, some more negative than others. It can imply being over-indulgent towards other people’s foibles; being too passive and timid in accepting anti-social behaviour. Conversely, a tolerant person can mean someone who is possessed of the positive philosophical quality of tolerance: who has strong liberal principles making them a stout defender of the rights of people both to live their lives as they wish and not to infringe the same liberty in others.

Both of these implications are at work in the recent advocacy of tolerance: we Brits are tolerant in a liberal sense but perhaps have tended to be somewhat too indulgent towards other cultures, which may need to change. In addition, both aspects are presented as being fused within the British character, whereby British people are viewed as ‘naturally’ tolerant towards people of different ethnicities and cultures in a broad sense that also includes Western sub-cultures. This tolerance comprises an acceptance of other people in their difference, and a genuine willingness to accord them the right to live and express their culture in Britain. But it also involves qualities of reserve, detachment and fear of difference, whereby different people may be allowed to live in Britain but not really embraced as British: welcomed into British people’s land but not their hearts. These are understandable reactions, and British people are far from unique in being reserved towards in-comers and nervous about the changes to the receiving nation’s traditions and way of life that successive waves of immigration may bring.

Tolerance in the sense just described is predicated on separation and a hierarchy of values, both of which imply a form of rejection of difference at an emotional level. One can be tolerant only towards people whose values and behaviour are different to one’s own. So, on the one hand, tolerance is acceptance of others, but only as other: ‘we will accept you but only so long as your culture remains distinct and does not impinge on, or seek to change, our own’. On the other hand, when our ability to assimilate different cultures and value systems is viewed as founded on tolerance, this involves subordinating them to our pre-existing values: ‘if your traditions and behaviour fundamentally transgress our principles, they are not welcome here; you must modify your culture to fit in with the overall principle of tolerance’. When tolerance is also taken as a personal and emotional characteristic of British people, this enables qualified tolerance of difference to be supported by an appeal to ‘reasonableness’, fairness and moderation: ‘we’re tolerant people but don’t push us too far as we won’t tolerate extreme and intolerant behaviour from you’.

The two faces of tolerance – separation and hierarchy – described above could serve as basic descriptions of different forms of multiculturalism. The established British multicultural model that is increasingly being questioned and dismissed involves the former approach: enabling the different cultures within Britain to continue to express themselves and prosper side by side, which ultimately involves them remaining separate. As part of this approach, traditional British culture (discuss) has been deliberately under-emphasised. But this does not really equate to greater acceptance of diversity, precisely because it perpetuates separation and difference: ‘keep your culture and express it openly in the public domain, and we’ll keep ours to ourselves’.

The new Britology is built on the hierarchical method: ‘your culture can be integrated with ours but only if you tolerate others as we tolerate you; radical deviation from our values will not be tolerated’. But again, this implies really that the different cultures remain different: both united and separated by mutual tolerance.

The cultural integration that the hierarchical method of tolerance aims to foster is one that is effective only at the level of publicly articulated, politically correct values. We can all do lip service to having shared values; but at a visceral, emotional level, this tolerance is built on ambivalence: a fair-minded willingness to give others a chance to make a life for themselves alongside a fear of change and a rejection of diversity.

The new tolerance is a ‘many-into-one’ model for cultural integration: the multiplicity of in-coming cultures merges into our pre-existing set of values that ultimately remains unchanged because those values are timeless. The now much-despised multiculturalism is a ‘one-in-many’ model: the idea that a new British culture could be fashioned from a multiplicity of cultures, with the traditional British culture assuming no hierarchical precedence. But again, this ultimately involves cultural separation. What is needed is a ‘many-as-one’ model: the creation of a new culture based on a genuine coming together of and dialogue between cultures and traditions, in which all must be prepared to embrace change or remain rooted in separation. The traditional British culture must of course continue to occupy a central role; but cultural integration will not be real and will remain only an abstract ideal unless that culture, too, is willing to learn from and be changed by the cultures of those whom it wishes to call British.

The many and the one cannot remain many nor be united in the one. They must evolve into the new.

Season's Greetings

Season’s Greetings

Or should that be ‘happy Christmas’? This year, there seems to have been an increase in the politically correct tendency to replace explicit references to Christmas with alternative expressions that are non-specific to any religion. ‘Season’s Greetings’ is the favourite term of this sort. The trend has been particularly in evidence in the world of commerce, with stores keen to encourage all customers – not only those who would consider themselves to be personally or culturally Christian – to participate in the seasonal orgy of debt-fuelled consumerism.

There have been numerous complaints, too, about schools not doing anything special to mark Christmas, such as carol singing; using the non-specific circumlocutions to refer to it; and not adequately teaching children about the Christmas story.

This is ironic, as there has been a strong backlash this year against inclusive multiculturalism, of which this could be interpreted as an example: not wanting to cause offence to persons of other faiths or none by forcing them to participate, directly or indirectly, in a Christian celebration.

But is this inclusive or exclusionist? Isn’t it more inclusive to let Muslim children and those of other faiths participate in the joyful Christian traditions of the festive season and the celebration of the nativity, of which even many more established British ethnic communities (Christian or not) no longer believe in the literal truth? So long as this is done in a non-proselytising way (and, let’s face it, not even many Christian schools could justify the epithet of proselytising), it is almost discriminatory to deny that cultural experience to non-Christian children living in this country.

Similarly, when Christmas is de-christianised for the sake of commerce (with the magic face of present buying – Father Christmas – conveniently emphasised almost to the exclusion of the actual Christmas story), is this not in fact also denying the opportunity for people of other cultural and religious backgrounds to share in the specifically Christian features of the feast? We wish each other a bibulous Merry Christmas and enjoy our family Christmas traditions; but effectively turn our backs on our non-drinking Muslim neighbours by wishing them only Season’s Greetings. The inclusive thing to do would be to invite them into our homes to take part in the Christmas feast, and so learn more about the things that are different about each other, but still more importantly about the values we hold in common.

Muslims believe that Christ was a prophet (the last great prophet before Mohammed) and believe in his virgin birth from his holy mother Mary. How many of ‘us’ Christians believe even that much?

So happy Christmas to all my readers (whoever you are out there), and a more inclusive and genuinely tolerant New Year to everyone!

The Madness Of Tony Blair: Fighting For Tolerance and Moderation In Iraq

The Madness Of Tony Blair: Fighting For Tolerance and Moderation In Iraq

Tony Blair visited Iraq yesterday on the third stage in his Middle East tour that is supposedly aiming to promote peace initiatives throughout the region. On two occasions – a press briefing with the Iraqi prime minister Nouri Maliki and a speech to UK troups – he reiterated his government’s policy that British forces would remain in Iraq, in whatever role was required by the Iraqi government, until the job was done. By implication, this means until the survival of Iraqi democracy is assured. As Mr Blair put it to the soldiers, “All over the world, the same struggle is going on, and if we don't stand up and fight for the people of tolerance and moderation who want to live together, whatever their fate, then the people of hatred and sectarianism will triumph”.

Mr Blair seems to see this struggle in terms reminiscent of the Second World War: “Our country and countries like it are having to rediscover what it means to fight for what we believe in”. I don’t think that most people in the UK would share the prime minister’s vision of the purpose and nature of the fight in which British forces are embroiled in Iraq. What struck one as particularly surreal and incongruous about Mr Blair’s pronouncements was the emphasis placed on defending tolerance and moderation, which he has only recently made the cornerstone of his vision of British values and the need to defend them against Islamic extremism within the UK (see my blog of 9 December). This established a curious associative link in Blair’s statements between the battle against the Iraqi insurgency and the efforts to oppose extremist strands within Islam in the UK – a link which the UK government has persistently denied in its attempt to refute claims that British involvement in Iraq has exacerbated Islamic radicalisation in this country – as both enemies are essentially one and the same, united in their antagonism towards tolerance and moderation: “This is real conflict, real battle, and it is a different kind of enemy – not fighting a state, but fighting a set of ideas and ideologies, a group of extremists who share the same perspectives”.

But it is not at all clear to anyone who follows developments in Iraq that there is any tolerant, moderate, democratic position left to defend there. During Mr Blair’s visit, a group of insurgents kidnapped around 30 staff and visitors at the Iraqi Red Crescent office in Baghdad. It would be easy to point to this incident as proof that the security and humanitarian situation in Iraq has completely broken down and that Western forces should get out and leave the Iraqis to work out their own destiny. Indeed, humanitarian crises and violent attacks against aid workers are regularly exploited by the media to make political points like this. Probably, the people responsible for carrying out the kidnap were aware of this, and it was precisely their aim to time their action to coincide with Mr Blair’s visit for maximum impact. So in a sense, describing this incident as an example of the break-down of order and of efforts to really help the Iraqi people merely encourages the men of violence.

But what this kidnapping puts me in mind of is some of the media attention-grabbing tactics of Saddam Hussein when he was in charge of the country, such as the kidnap of Western civilians whom he used as human shields during the Gulf War in 1990/1. Similarly, the mindless violence directed on a daily basis against civilians by the Iraqi insurgency – while also in part a tactic to gnaw away at the Western conscience and keep up the pressure for military withdrawal – is reminiscent of the mass-murderous assaults against his political and ‘sectarian’ enemies that Saddam Hussein is known to have authorised. What makes the present situation arguably worse than Saddam Hussein’s rule is that now it is both sides of the major sectarian divide in Iraq (Shi’a and Sunni) that are perpetrating the same sort of anti-civilian violence against each other. And indeed, the situation has splintered still further, leading to violence between different insurgent groups on the ‘same’ side of the sectarian divide, and to Sunnis and Shi’as murdering civilians of their own and the other side, sometimes indiscriminately.

The democratic politicians are not above all these terrible divisions as some sort of beacon of tolerance and moderation, as Mr Blair referred to them. It is well known to Iraq watchers that many (perhaps most) democratically elected members of parliament in Iraq have ties with leaders of the insurgency on their respective sectarian sides. In a way, this is totally inevitable, as it is the insurgents who are the real power brokers in the land, and it is they who effectively delivered the vote for the democratic representatives of the different sectarian parties in the Iraqi elections. In other words, the relationship between the insurgency and the democratic parties in Iraq is rather like the one that existed between the Provisional IRA and Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland: the parties represent the ‘political wing’ of the insurgents and terrorists, providing PR to Western and Islamic media for their sectarian positions and creating another channel for the fight for political supremacy over their enemies.

It was of course the ‘pro-democracy’ violence of the invasion of Iraq by US and UK forces that unleashed the hatred between the different sectarian communities in Iraq that had been kept suppressed by Saddam Hussein’s autocratic regime; and it was perhaps inevitable that once a cycle of violence between Shi’as and Sunnis got underway, both sides would resort to the homicidal methods that were previously practised only by the Sunni faction, from which the dictator drew his support. But are the insurgents on both sides – whom Mr Blair simplistically lumps into a single category of extremist / terrorist – really united in a common cause against democracy? Or is it the case that the British and Americans are viewed, or at least presented, by the insurgents as defenders of elements within the Shi’a and Kurdish majority (who by that token are the beneficiaries of democracy) who, together with the Sunnis, are engaged in a ruthless, violent civil war for control of the country? British and US support for democracy, in this context, appears like ever less influential but nonetheless destructive support for one side in a civil war over the other: a symbol of Sunni humiliation and a constant pretext for further violence.

The initial violence in the Iraqi crisis – the US-led and British-backed invasion – could even be viewed as providing the template, and certainly the excuse, for the sectarian violence that followed. This is because it was basically a grab for power that used the aim of bringing about democracy as its pretext and as a means to the end. A strong democracy in Iraq, so the strategic thinking must have gone, would shore up US / Western influence and power in the region: acting as a bulwark to defend Saudi Arabia in its own struggle against an Al-Qaeda-backed insurgency; a means to counteract growing Iranian regional agitation; and securing the vital access to the region’s oil reserves.

But what kind of democracy, tolerance and moderation is the UK defending in Saudi Arabia? Clearly one that is so strategically essential that Tony Blair himself had to intervene last week to halt a UK police anti-fraud investigation into allegations of bribery by the arms manufacturer BAE Systems involved in securing a multi-billion-pound deal with the Saudis? And similarly, is UK and US support for the ‘moderate’ Fatah movement in Palestine against the ‘extremist’ (albeit democratically elected) Hamas really contributing to peace and security in the Middle East as those two factions slide into civil war-like conflict in Gaza?

Strong support for one side over another in the bitterly divided Middle East (albeit if the side you back is nominally the democratically elected power, which it only occasionally is) is not a recipe for tolerance and moderation UK-style. Only engaging all the parties and affected countries in negotiation and dialogue – however difficult this is, however long it takes, and however many strategic advantages to one’s own country may have to be compromised – can provide a way forward. This is of course what was recommended by the Iraq Study Group in their report released a couple of weeks ago, which Blair and Bush – shall we say concertedly? – appear to be ignoring. But the way to achieve peace in the Middle East is certainly not standing up and fighting for a tolerance and moderation that has long been lost precisely because of all the fighting.

Modern Sexual Morality: Time To Finish With Christo-Liberalism?

Modern Sexual Morality: Time To Finish With Christo-Liberalism?

One issue that gay civil partnerships and gay marriage (see my blog of yesterday) cast an interesting light on is that of sexual morality. On the TV news yesterday morning, they brought up the fact that civil partnerships that break up cannot be formally dissolved on the grounds of adultery as straight marriages can. Instead, the only justification that is accepted in law for ‘gay divorce’ (. . .) is unreasonable behaviour on the part of one or both partners; and infidelity is by definition not equated with that.

Well, of course, on the literal definition of the term, you can’t have adultery if the relationship that is offended against isn’t a marriage. And so, the signalling of this loophole is being allied to calls for full equality with straight marriage, i.e. for gay marriage.

But the point I’m interested in is this. Adultery is a rather strong moral term, associated with Christian repudiation of sexual acts that violate the sacred marriage vows. So if gay marriage brings with it a distinction between infidelity in marriage (adultery) and ‘mere’ infidelity (e.g. infidelity by one gay person to another gay person with whom they are in some sort of committed relationship other than a civil partnership / marriage), has the concept of gay marriage led to the introduction of a hierarchy of ethical values into our understanding of sexual morality and the morality of gay sex?

In other words, is sex within gay marriage somehow morally better even than sex in a committed but non-formalised relationship, which in turn is better than promiscuous gay sex? This hierarchy would mirror that of traditional Christian morality, which views (straight) marriage as the proper context for sex; while most Christians in modern societies would then go on to say that a committed relationship is the next-best thing; and promiscuity is the least moral option.

I suppose it was only inevitable that the advent of gay marriage (which is what civil partnerships are in all but name) would lead to moral differentiations being made between different sorts of gay sex and relationship, because it sets up a standard for the type of gay relationship that society officially sanctions and regards as the ideal. Anything that falls short of this ideal is therefore by implication less deserving of social approval and support, and less morally good. On one level, this is a symptom of the maturing of the gay community and of its integration within the social mainstream: as society officially recognises gay relationships as a ‘normal’ aspect of life – which it therefore develops formal social structures to accommodate – so gay relationships take on more of the moral standards of normal society. But some gay people will doubtless mourn the passing of more anarchic manifestations of gay sexuality, which have often deliberately gone to the opposite extreme from the straight norm of monogamy within marriage in order the more to affirm the right and freedom to openly express a distinctive gay identity.

But can gay partnerships or marital unions really be described as an intrinsic moral good in the same way that straight marriages have traditionally been? What I mean is, it’s one thing to say that gay sex within formally recognised, long-term relationships is better than loveless one-night stands; but is sex within gay marriage in itself a good thing? I think society does and will continue to make a distinction between gay and straight marriage in this regard, such that the use of the word ‘adultery’ to describe infidelity in the context of a gay marriage may always seem a touch misapplied. This distinction is not arbitrary but is of course connected with the role of straight marriage and sex in bringing children into the world (seen as being something intrinsically good) and in creating secure, stable family and community environments in which those children can be brought up to be responsible, constructive contributors to society. Gay marriages are unlikely to ever be viewed as essential foundation stones of family life and social cohesion in quite the same way. Nor is the social cost of gay marriage break-up anything like as great as the potential cost of straight divorces, in terms of the long-term cycle of damage it can engender in the families torn apart (see my blog of 15 December). Hence, straight adultery really is a misdemeanour worthy of the name, owing to the immense harm it can cause; whereas adultery in a gay marriage is less likely to have many ramifications beyond the couple concerned and their immediate circle of family and friends. Until such time, at least, as gay nuclear families (families with same-sex parents) themselves become part of the norm.

But it does strike me as interesting that you can have the development of a new social phenomenon – gay civil partnerships – that adopts the Christian-derived moral conventions and language of straight society; whereas the traditional orthodox Christian moral judgement would be that any kind of gay sex was immoral or sinful, irrespective of whether it was in the context of a stable relationship or not. This is another case of the blend of, or compromise between, radical secular liberalism and traditional Christianity that is the true face of Western liberalism, and which I’ve decided here to call ‘Christo-liberalism’. (My more fanciful, verbally eloquent term for it would be ‘evangeliberalism’.) Gay civil partnerships themselves are a further instance of this Christo-liberalism (as discussed in my blog of 16 December).

But one does not need to limit oneself to gay civil partnerships to find examples of this Christo-liberal sexual ethics. I think it’s statistically true that the majority of couples in the UK today who eventually marry initially live together out of wedlock, and not just on a ‘try before you buy’ basis but because that is the type of relationship and lifestyle they choose. The eventual decision to marry is then made for a whole variety of reasons, only one of which is children and family, as an increasing and substantial proportion of parents who stay together either never marry or marry only years after having their first children. On a narrow, legalistic interpretation of orthodox Christian moral teaching, both sex between partners of this sort, and infidelity by one such partner towards another could be termed extra-marital sex, even adultery, if one or both of the co-habitees are separated or divorced from previous spouses, given that some churches (e.g. the Catholic Church) do not recognise divorce.

And yet, the conventional ethical rules that govern such partnerships clearly derive from traditional Christian morality, even if the relationship as a whole could be seen as being in violation of those standards. And those rules involve an emphasis on the duties of both partners towards each other and their dependants, and condemnation of infidelity on intrinsic moral grounds (i.e. because it is ‘morally wrong’) as much as for the damage it causes to other people and society at large. The Christo-liberal dimension here consists of the limits that are placed on the degree of sexual freedom that is tolerated and considered to be morally acceptable. And those are – as with gay civil partnerships – those of Christian marriage in all but name; it’s just that the ‘franchise’ of marriage has been extended in a liberal manner to encompass extra-marital partnerships, and gay partnerships. The moral condemnation of sexuality that transgresses the limits that marriage places upon it remains intact.

However, one problem with this is that these conventional rules and their Christian derivation remain unspoken and merely implicit. This means that many individuals enter into partnerships, either without realising that they are effectively consenting to an unwritten social contract governing their sexual behaviour, or else use the fact that they didn’t explicitly sign up to such a deal as a get-out clause to justify subsequent infidelities and separations. This affects actual marriages (civil or religious) as much as it affects what I’ve described as unofficial marriages (non-formal or civil partnerships), in that individuals get married often without any faith in, or assent to, the obligations and life-long fidelity they are nominally committing themselves to (with the get-out clause in their minds, ‘well, if it doesn’t work, I can always divorce and re-marry’). But despite what those individuals believe or think, society does still maintain Christian-type expectations of marriage; and the individuals will be made to feel the condemnation of their betrayed spouse, of the family and of society as a whole if they do flout the standards that are expected.

Does this mean that those standards should be modified or abandoned altogether, on the basis that they are too contradictory, and encourage hypocrisy and duplicity of the sort just described? I don’t think they should or can be abandoned altogether. But there should be a more explicit acknowledgement of the somewhat questionable basis for these conventional rules, in Christian terms, and more realism about the ability of people to live up to those standards when the way they (and society as a whole) live their lives, and how they base their decisions, are largely not informed by Christian faith and commitment.

It comes down, on the one hand, to a requirement for greater honesty on the part of individuals entering into relationships about what their expectations are of each other and of the relationship, including standards of sexual behaviour and fidelity. This is not, nor has it ever been, an easy thing to achieve. But this goal could be advanced by foregrounding the Christo-liberal basis for some of the mismatch between partners’ expectations. For instance, one partner – not always but often the woman – might invest Christian-derived expectations into the partnership that effectively turn it, in her/his eyes, into a marriage in all but name; whilst the other partner – again, not always but often the man – might see this arrangement as a ‘marriage of convenience’ that allows him/her to have a sexual relationship with the (wo)man without his/her having to commit him-/herself to a permanent situation, such as might be involved in a formal marriage.

I’m not condoning the behaviour of the latter partner; but the ambiguity of the situation in Christian terms creates the conditions on which such behaviour can be justified, however fallaciously. For this sort of relationship is not strictly in conformity with Christian standards; in a historical perspective, it would be possible to see it as downright sinful (‘living in sin’, as it used to be frequently referred to only thirty years or more ago). Therefore, to that extent, the expectation of the former partner that the relationship should live up to Christian moral standards and the pattern of a marriage is unreasonable and involves wanting to have it both ways: to have the potential freedom and independence of not being married, while demanding of one’s partner the loyalty and commitment of a spouse.

On the other hand, at a collective level, what is required is some effort to formulate a new ethics of sex and relationships that is more explicit about what it takes from traditional Christianity and where it diverges from it. This parallels what I recommended in my blog of 16 December: that there should be more separation between the concepts and practice of religious marriage (strictly heterosexual), civil marriage (straight and gay), and another type of formally recognised partnership (straight and gay). This would begin to remove the Christo-liberal ambiguities from sexual relationships: either one makes a Christian (or Muslim, Jewish, Sikh, Hindu, etc.) commitment to one’s spouse and family in marriage; or your marriage and partnership is a civil arrangement for which it is then up for society to set out the standards it expects. Those standards might well continue to be basically Christo-liberal. But at least then there would be no get-out clause, no wriggling out of one’s responsibilities or wanting to have it both ways, because it would become much clearer what the acceptable norms of behaviour were, not just for married partners, but for anyone in a committed sexual relationship.

It is realistic to achieve this renewed, clearer definition and assertion of modern sexual morality within relationships. This would be similar to the way in which, in recent years, Western society has become far more aggressive and definite in formulating and imposing standards relating to other sexual areas with a clear moral dimension, such as child abuse and, more recently, rape. The example of rape, in particular, is one where there have been efforts to reconcile the different expectations and experience of women and men; something which clearly needs to be done for relationships, too.

But in order to achieve this increase in clarity and consistency – and thereby help the many millions of adults and young people that labour under the current lack of unambiguous guidelines and certainties – there is going to have to be a degree of honesty and courage in clearly differentiating the behaviours and relationships that society considers to be normal and acceptable (e.g. gay and unmarried straight committed relationships) from Christian standards. Not to undermine the latter; because setting out the way in which Christian teachings actually set the bar higher than conventional mores, and indeed set a distinctive standard for society to follow (rather than, as now, accommodating and adapting to society’s standards), could well be the spur for a renewal of interest in basing one’s life on Christian principles.

The Paradoxes of Gay Marriage

The Paradoxes Of Gay Marriage

Gay marriage is a defining issue. The position that an individual and society as a whole take on it reveals much about their social philosophy, their religious views and experience, and their (attitudes towards) sexuality. At the social and political level, the question about whether to introduce some form of legalised gay marriage relates to fundamental issues of equality and liberty. At the religious level, teachings about marriage – being such a fundamental and universal feature of human cultures – touch upon core elements of belief; and the idea of gay marriage is naturally viewed by many as challenging those traditional teachings and, by extension, the religions themselves. And at the sexual level, the idea that marriage – previously the exclusive prerogative of heterosexuality – could also be opened up to gays and lesbians challenges the barriers separating different forms of sexuality that cultures have traditionally set up; marriage being one of the main ones.

The concept of gay marriage is, among other things, another illustration of the interplay between secular liberalism and traditional Christianity within modern Western culture, and the attempt to reach a synthesis between the two. With respect to legislation, this involves a situation whereby the extent to which our laws embody liberal tolerance and protection for different lifestyles and activities is limited by a moral framework that is Christian in origin, if not necessarily consistent with any specific form of doctrinal Christianity (e.g. evangelicalism or Catholicism). (See my discussion of 14 December on this in the context of the laws on drugs and prostitution.) UK civil partnerships (formally recognised gay relationships that have a similar legal and fiscal status to marriages – introduced at the end of 2005) embody these contradictory pulls. On the one hand, they give to gay people a greater degree of equality with the straight population than they have ever enjoyed. They are effectively gay civil marriages in all but name, involving ceremonies and a legal contract that are almost identical to those of straight civil marriages; which are carried out by the same registrars who officiate at straight civil marriages; and are treated by the couples and their friends and families – and indeed are referred to in popular parlance – as gay marriages.

And yet, the law stopped short of officially calling them gay marriages. Why? For the same reason that it took so long to introduce civil partnerships themselves: that the country at large (or so it was thought) still held dear the view that marriage can only be between a man and a woman; and because the UK is still ‘officially’ (in terms of the established order) a Christian country. In other words, the legislation stopped short of being truly egalitarian and liberal (allowing gay couples to have an equal status – marriage – to straight couples) because of Christian-derived moral scruples. In the same way, it has also been argued that civil partnerships discriminate against unmarried straight couples, in that they are open only to gay couples. And, again, the reason why civil partnerships were not made available to straight people was because they had their own form of it: civil or religious marriage. Adding a third type of legal status (or should we say, rather, making the same legal status available to both straight and gay people?) would only confuse people about the meaning of these different things and undermine marriage (straight marriage, that is). Therefore, gay civil partnerships were to be viewed as the ‘gay equivalent to’ straight civil marriages; but, at the same time, they are not in fact deemed to be equivalent = of equal value to straight marriage. Hence, while the straight variety is called marriage, the gay version is called a partnership.

The thing is a conceptual mess; and yet, at the same time, it’s a very British compromise: a pragmatic solution that ‘gives gays what they want’, addresses the demands (at least in part) of the liberals, and retains marriage as the preserve of heterosexuals, in line with the Christian tradition. But like all compromises, this keeps everyone happy while definitively satisfying no one. The ultimate battleground, if it can be called that, is over the meaning of marriage (the word and the status) itself, and whether that can and should be extended to gay couples.

In my Myspace blog of yesterday (see http://blog.myspace.com/culturalcritique), I argued that the social consensus about the meaning and purpose of marriage has broken down. In a way, there seems little point – from a philosophical or semantic point of view – haggling over whether to allow gay civil partnerships to be ‘upgraded’ and be officially referred to as marriages, and / or to allow unmarried straight relationships to be formally recognised as civil partnerships. (In fact, I argued for some version of this latter option in the blog entry just referred to.) This is because until we know what we mean by marriage, what we call the relationships in question will remain extremely relative or arbitrary. It is ironic that gay people, not just in the UK but around the world, are campaigning for the introduction of gay marriage at a time when the meaning of marriage has never been in greater doubt.

Opponents of gay marriage would of course say that this is not ironic but that there is a causal relationship: the more the concept of gay marriage is accepted, the less there is consensus about and assent to traditional ideas about marriage. But even that’s not really the full picture because one of the reasons why many gay people want to see gay marriage become a reality is because they do cherish traditional ideas about marriage (e.g. exclusivity, life-long fidelity, self-giving in love, even family) but just long for it to be accepted that these can take expression in gay relationships as well as straight.

This difficulty in reaching consensus about the meaning of marriage, and consequently about the possibility or not of extending marriage to gay people, is a stumbling block only if one thinks it is necessary to achieve that consensus in a definitive way, based on what I referred to above as some sort of synthesis of secular-liberal and Christian-traditional frames of reference. My own view is that it is not possible to reach this consensus, because orthodox Christian faith – whether Catholic or evangelical – can and will never accept it. This is because, putting it simply, the heterosexual nature of marriage is a core element of dogma: orthodox teaching that the faithful have an obligation to accept. Nevertheless, the attempt to realise a synthesis between the liberal and the Christian – not just in connection with marriage but across the board – is in my view a (perhaps the) fundamental project of modern Western culture. Liberalism itself – in its ‘pure’ or ‘radical’ form – is not comprehensible without taking into account the Christian tradition and heritage from which it evolved and which it took forward.

So efforts will continue to introduce an official status for gay marriage, which I suppose might be referred to in the law along the lines of ‘marriage between persons born with or currently having the same physical sex as each other’ (but let’s not complicate things by getting onto the trans-gender issue . . .). And parallel with these efforts, there will be an attempt or desire to obtain general socio-cultural recognition of gay marriage as being in the full sense equivalent to straight marriage. This latter aspiration will not be ultimately successful, for the religious reasons just mentioned, as well as for anthropological reasons (to do with the role of marriage in reproduction and family) that I haven’t had time to go into here.

But if you don’t strive to achieve this elusive higher-level of acceptance of gay marriage (as an instance, indeed, of the marriage of liberal tolerance with Christianity), there is no reason why one can’t accept a secular definition and understanding of gay marriage that could be enshrined in law. What you might then end up with is church marriages (and marriages in other religions) remaining exclusively heterosexual (although it’s always possible that some liberal churches might eventually introduce gay matrimony); straight and gay civil marriages – complete equality there; and straight and gay civil partnerships (or some new term that would encompass existing gay civil partnerships that the couples involved chose not to ‘upgrade’ to marriages, and was made available to unmarried straight couples).

Whatever the eventual mix of legal statuses for gay and straight couples that was adopted, such a set up would be dependent on accepting a separation between the religious and secular understanding of marriage. And that doesn’t mean that a ‘secular’ (civil) marriage, for either a gay or straight couple, can’t have a private or publicly celebrated religious significance of its own. But there should be a renunciation of the painful and ultimately fruitless endeavour to get official (civil) gay marriage accepted as marriage in the full sense by the Church; or, putting it in a less Western-centric and more multi-faith way, by all of the main faith traditions in our society.

United In Tolerance: Inventing Britain For the 21st Century (Part Four)

United In Tolerance: Inventing Britain For the 21st Century (Part Four)

The Bishop of Liverpool was on Radio Four’s ‘Thought For the Day’ slot this morning. He described how a group of which he is a member, consisting of four Christians, four Jews and four Muslims, discussed Pope Benedict’s recent controversial statement that had been taken as implying that Islam was a violent religion. They ended up agreeing a set of five values that for them defined Britishness. They were:

· Respect for the law

· Liberty

· Language (i.e. English, not the only ‘indigenous’ British language be it noted)

· Landscape

· Monarchy

It seems that many people have their own lists of essential British values and virtues. The Bishop went on to explain that, in his view, these values – in Britain at least – had a Christian foundation, but that he had not wanted to emphasise this point at the meeting of the group. However, he would express this opinion at their next meeting, which had agreed the topic for discussion as that of tolerance. Pregnant pause as the slot came to an end; unspoken allusion to Tony Blair’s contribution on that theme last week (see my last blog, dated 9 December).

Is tolerance a – perhaps the – core British value that unites us all around common principles allowing us to express our differences within a framework of mutual respect? Tolerance is actually quite an ambiguous value. For a start, it can refer either to a personal characteristic (‘x is a tolerant man’), or to a quality or virtue, in a philosophical and ethical sense. As a personal characteristic, tolerance can have more than one resonance: being (over-)indulgent towards others; being prepared to put up with the annoying behaviour of others; having a high anger threshold; or being possessed of the ‘virtue’ of tolerance in the ethical sense just alluded to.

As an ethical and philosophical value, tolerance demarcates the boundaries of liberty: it refers to a high-minded, libertarian affirmation of the freedom and the right of individuals and groups to carry on their lives in the manner of their choosing, regardless of whether those lifestyles seem distasteful or even morally wrong – up to the point at which those behaviours become intolerable. They are intolerable, precisely, if they infringe the liberty either of the individuals concerned, or of others; or, in a more general sense, if they undermine the basic principles – of which liberty and tolerance are cornerstones – that create a framework under law enabling us to live together harmoniously.

Is Britain a tolerant nation in this latter sense? I think it is not, nor do I think the new-found champions of tolerance really want it to be. There is always, and arguably always should be, a moral basis to the law that limits the tolerance of society to a greater extent than is implied by the description of the libertarian limits of tolerance above. For instance, the idea of legalising the use of many currently illegal drugs is generally rejected, but not because free drug use in itself violates the principle of tolerance (allowing people to choose to harm themselves if they want to). On the contrary, the liberalisation of drug use is dismissed at least in part because taking drugs of these types is thought to be morally wrong, both in terms of the damage the user can do to themselves, and because of its potential to harm the wider ‘social fabric’. And this is despite the potential benefit that controlled legalisation could have in terms of decriminalising the supply of drugs. The same type of argument applies in the case of prostitution, which has recently come to the forefront of British public attention as a result of a series of murders of prostitutes in the town of Ipswich. Legalising the soliciting of acts of prostitution, so the argument goes, would make prostitutes’ working lives safer and the risk of sexual infection smaller. But such a change is rejected because of the moral condemnation of prostitution and the fear that legalisation would encourage its spread, thereby undermining marriage, family and social cohesion as a whole.

So Britain is not really a tolerant society in the full sense of the word, which would effectively be synonymous with radical liberalism. British tolerance is circumscribed by ethically defined limits. And those limits are Christian-derived – inherited from our Christian tradition – even if they would not necessarily be accepted as properly or entirely Christian according to either evangelical or Catholic orthodoxies. In this context, one cannot help wondering to what extent this Christian element within our tolerance plays a part in the thinking about appropriate responses towards, indeed legislation about, Muslim women wearing the full veil – niqab – or the burka (the body-length gown that incorporates the niqab). Is the view that it might be right to ban women from wearing the niqab in certain or even all public places derived from liberal principles concerning the limits of tolerance, or from inherited Christian responses?

From a liberal perspective, one could advance a view that it would be a good thing to ban the niqab in public on the assumption that some – possibly many – women are forced to wear it against their will. (There was an implication of this in Tony Blair’s speech last week; see my blog of 9 December.) This violates their liberty, and therefore, it should be stopped. (What happens in the home is another matter; but equally, it would be interesting to see what measures, if any, the potential legislators might propose to defend women whose husbands or families try to coerce them into wearing the niqab in private.) In reality, most of the media testimonies from recent adopters of the veil that have been printed or broadcast since the start of the public debate about it in October of this year emphasise the fact that they have freely chosen to wear it as an expression of their commitment to Islam and its moral teachings as they interpret them.

An additional argument from tolerance in favour of banning the veil in public would be one that relied on the more general basis for regarding a particular type of behaviour as intolerable, i.e. that it undermines the common principles or values that provide the framework for people of different cultures and faith backgrounds to live together in a way that does not infringe their legitimate rights and freedoms. In fact, the way this argument has tended to be put forward recently is not that wearing the niqab, as an expression of ‘radical’ Islam (definition please?), undermines those common principles and the established rule of law they support; but that it somehow intrinsically subverts the social cohesion and cultural integration that is the ideal end result of the application of those principles. In other words, the advocates of restricting the veil start from the supposedly visible effect of impaired cohesion (embodied in the veil) in order to infer the existence of a set of alternative principles and values (those of militant Islam) that is opposed to British values of tolerance. But no one in the public debate, to my knowledge, has set out a credible critique of the way Islamic teachings do (or do not) really conflict with and undermine those values. Now that really would be interesting!

In other words, we seem here to have a classic case of prejudice. We assume that a group of people who are different from us have beliefs and practices that undermine the whole basis of our society simply because they look different, talk differently (indeed, refuse to communicate with us; cf. veil debate), and adhere to a religion we find – in some ways, understandably – threatening and terrifying. But this is surely the point: we have an inherited, Christian-derived prejudice against Islam, which recent history appears to have confirmed and has certainly reignited. And it is that, more than any intrinsic opposition that Islamic values might pose to our own, that determines that beyond a certain point of moderation, public manifestations of Islam are no longer tolerable.

The ‘good intention’ of these British-value formalisers (let’s call them the ‘Briticists’) is to promote the adoption – in social practice and in law – of a value system that is a unique (?) British combination of liberal-tolerant and Christian-derived principles: one which sufficiently abstracts ‘core’ Christian moral and social teachings from any particular formal dogmatic expression of them in order to re-present them as universal, rational-ethical principles to which members of any religion can in principle assent because those core principles are also fundamental to their own religions. Except – so the thinking goes – in the case of ‘radical’ Islam. But here’s the whole heart of the matter: is fundamental Islam the one exception to the rule; the one religion whose core values are irreconcilable with the values that are common to Christianity, liberalism and all the other religions of tolerant Britain? Or is thinking along these lines just a prejudice – Christian in origin – that justifies a refusal to engage in dialogue with Islam; and then perhaps to discover a whole tolerant, humane tradition within that faith that is not so different from our own – and from which our own in many senses actually derives?

But so much for tolerance as a philosophical and ethical principle. In the next instalment of this blog (failing some news event that stirs me into a tangential diatribe), I will examine the question of whether or not Britain is temperamentally a tolerant nation and what that might in fact mean.

Tolerance Makes Britain: Inventing Britain For the 21st Century (Part Three)

Tolerance Makes Britain: Inventing Britain For the 21st Century (Part Three)

In a high-profile speech yesterday, Tony Blair set out his vision of the new multiculturalism based on a set of common British values to which everyone must be expected to conform. The heart of these values was tolerance: tolerance is an essential part of being British; tolerance is “what makes Britain”.

Clearly, a minor revision is needed to what I referred to in the last entry of this blog as ‘Blair’s Britology’: the set of supposedly shared British values that are being promoted as the basis upon which all the peoples of Britain should unite, politically and culturally. In this list, I included ‘respect’ – a previous mantra of Mr Blair’s – rather than tolerance; although I regard tolerance as an implied sub-category of respect, as I was going to clarify in subsequent blogs. It is clear that Mr Blair links the two concepts closely, too, as his list of “our essential values” in his speech yesterday makes plain: “belief in democracy, the rule of law, tolerance, equal treatment for all, respect for this country and its shared heritage”. Tolerance towards diversity goes hand in hand with respect for the pillars of the shared socio-cultural edifice: equality of all under the law made by democratic government.

Nothing objectionable about that, one might say. However, in Blair’s new Britain, tolerance towards those of different faiths or from different cultural backgrounds is accompanied by zero tolerance towards those whose faith and cultural practices are perceived as being fundamentally at odds with the British tradition and the shared British norm. In particular, Mr Blair singled out “extremist” Islam as his example of a minority viewpoint and cultural grouping that would no longer be tolerated. Accept and conform to our shared values and way of life, or else you are not welcome here was Mr Blair’s message. The prime minister stated that the “duty to integrate” and take on these common values should now take precedence over any particular religious practice.

In what appeared to be a reference to the recent debate over the Muslim full veil, or niqab, Mr Blair indicated that the Equal Opportunities Commission would be looking at concerns about women's status inside Muslim communities. So, extrapolating from Mr Blair’s speech, if the view were taken – and, indeed, legislation to that effect were passed – that wearing the niqab did represent a religious practice that ran counter to the aims of integration (and that it was also based on unequal treatment of some Muslim women), then the duty to integrate and conform to the British value of equal treatment for all would override the religious duty that some Muslim women sincerely believe they have to wear the veil.

This can surely not be right. Where do you draw the line between the demands of social conformity and those of obedience to the tenets of religious faith? There are many faith symbols worn about the person that mark out their wearer’s adherence to a set of religious values that may be at variance with the norms and traditions of British society. But it is clear from the row over the BA employee suspended from her post for refusing to cover up her cross pendant – a position clearly supported by the UK government (see my blog of 25 November) – that there are some symbols and religious beliefs that can be tolerated within the new Britishness, and some that can’t. But there is actually no difference in kind, only one of degree, between the different faiths of Britain: every religious faith puts obedience to its teachings and laws ultimately above those of the society in which the individual lives. If there is a fundamental conflict between the two, then it is the religious law that takes precedence.

Mr Blair’s singling out of certain Muslims in this regard is in fact a threat and a warning to all faiths. And as there is no inherent justification for differentiating in all circumstances between veil-wearing Muslims, turban-wearing Sikhs or cross-wearing Christians, the real reason for doing so is merely political and tactical. It involves simplistically identifying the communities that support women wearing the niqab with those that are sympathetic towards, even actively supportive of, Islamic terrorism; and it is a way to signal to these ‘extremist’ Muslims that the government means business and to put pressure on Muslim communities to reform from within – or else.

The fact that Mr Blair is acting in such a menacing way towards one religious community, but not towards others that might also have fundamental qualms about putting conformity to social norms above some of their religious practices, betrays the fact that this stance is politically motivated. This is evident in that, ironically, Mr Blair is transgressing the very British values he claims to uphold when he singles Muslims out in this way: he is treating them unequally and is displaying intolerance towards diversity because he identifies a particular type of Muslim (at least, rhetorically) with a fundamental challenge to those values, and by extension to his authority and ‘righteousness’ in his dealings with Muslims in Britain and other parts of the world. Therefore, the Muslims who – in Blair’s view –place themselves outside British values no longer deserve to be treated in a way that is consistent with those British values: they must be excluded from the new British culture.

But they’re here; they’re British. What are we ultimately supposed to do to those who won’t conform? ‘Repatriate’ them?

Creating Britain: Inventing Britain For the 21st Century (Part Two)

Creating Britain: Inventing Britain For the 21st Century (Part Two)

What are ‘British values’? The very general and open nature of this question suggests the multiplicity of the possible responses. Not so very long ago, in the Thatcher era, there were calls for a return to ‘Victorian values’ as encapsulating the ‘true’ British values that had been forgotten during the nation’s post-war love affair with ‘progressive’ or liberal values. It is possible, approximately, to identify Victorian values with one version of right-wing Conservatism, involving ideas of individualism, enterprise and empire counterbalanced by Christian faith and philanthropic concern for the less fortunate. Similarly – also very approximately – you could argue that the Labour Party is the home of ‘progressive’ Britain, while the Liberal Democrats are the natural home of liberalism.

What the current emphasis merely on ‘British values’, without any ideological or philosophical qualifier, seems to involve is a typical Blairite (con)fusion of these three strands in the effort to distil a core and, as it were, timeless set of shared values that everyone can agree on and unite around because they are common to the different political traditions. Let us try to enumerate some of these universal British values as they emerge from the discourse and policies of those who advocate them (shall we call them Blair’s ‘Britology’?):

· Free competition (of ideas, individuals, businesses, economies)

· Equality of opportunity

· Democracy

· Respect

· Decency

· Moderation

· Honesty / integrity

· Courage

· Resourcefulness

· Determination

· Pride

· Independence

· Ethical imperialism

One thing that strikes one in this list of familiar British values is that they are really British virtues: political and ethical ideals for which, by labelling them as British, it is implied that they belong to something that might be called the ‘British spirit’ – both highly valued qualities, and ones which the British naturally admire and aspire to.

Absent from this list are more basic terms describing ‘typically British’ personal, social and cultural characteristics. One of the reasons why the campaigners for reaffirming shared British values tend to emphasise the above set of ideals rather than the more intimate, socio-anthropological descriptions of Britishness one could come up with is that it would be more natural and revealing to talk of Englishness (and Scottishness, Welshness, etc.) at this more personal level. But then one would start to move away, precisely, from the shared nature of those British values and to treat the different national identities of Britain as distinct entities. As I have argued before in this blog (15 November), Britishness – and, indeed, the very political identity and coherence of Britain as such – is articulated across a set of abstract qualities and ideals that are shared because they are universal in a philosophical sense, not necessarily because they are really common characteristics of all the peoples of Britain, whether English, Scottish, Welsh, Irish, or other minorities.

Cross Ban Reviewed, Veil Ban Confirmed: A Bad Day For Multiculturalism

Reconsideration Of the Cross Ban, Confirmation Of the Veil Ban –

A Bad Day For Multi-Culturalism

Yesterday, BA – the UK airline – caved into the barrage of criticisms that had been directed at it for its decision on Monday (20 November) confirming that it would not allow one of its employees, Nadia Eweida, to visibly wear a cross pendant during her duties as a check-in operative. On the same day, it was reported that the school-classroom assistant, Aishah Azmi, who had been suspended from her duties for refusing to remove her full veil (niqab) in front of male teachers, had finally been sacked on the alleged grounds that her veil made communication with her pupils difficult.

I have written extensively on the veil issue, particularly during the controversy in the UK in October over calls for Muslim women not to wear the full veil (see http://blog.myspace.com/culturalcritique). On Wednesday of this week, I also discussed the case of Nadia Eweida and concluded that, while on the face of it, BA’s actions had been discriminatory, it was a complex situation and there were in fact some legitimate grounds for BA’s decision. In particular, BA’s response could be viewed as that of a Western-style ‘liberal-Christian’ organisation acting to prevent an ‘inappropriately’ overt expression of Christian faith on the part of a front-line employee: as it were, a disciplinary action carried out by individuals some of whom would consider themselves (perhaps justifiably) to be acting in a Christian way, within a ‘broadly’ Christian corporate culture, towards another Christian employee; not a monolithic secular organisation acting from outside the bounds of Christianity to clamp down on an open expression of that faith within the workplace.

What is disturbing about the fact that BA’s decision to review its uniform policy and Kirklees Council’s decision to dismiss Aishah Azmi were reported on the same day is the links that this suggests between two superficially unrelated cases. Far from being a vindication of the multi-cultural right for individuals of any faith to openly wear symbols of that faith, BA’s original decision and about-turn has been seized upon as a cause célèbre by supporters of moves to define Britain’s identity and values as Christian. And supporters of this cultural trend include many of those who have made statements criticising the full veil.

Those who have celebrated BA’s uniform-policy review have said that it puts Christians on an equal footing with Muslims at BA, who are allowed to wear the head veil (hijab) in positions such as Nadia Eweida’s. But would they say the same about the niqab, or full veil? If a BA employee had been suspended for refusing not to wear a niqab, it is clear that many of the voices that were indignant about Ms Eweida’s case would have backed BA 100%. That’s not to say that it would necessarily be appropriate for a BA check-in operative to wear the niqab; although in a genuinely multi-cultural society, what are the real reasons (not the pretexts, e.g. being able to communicate with and reassure passengers; putting off passengers who have chosen BA because it is supposed to somehow represent Britain in general) why it would not be appropriate in some circumstances?

The point is that defenders of Nadia Eweida have argued that BA does in fact symbolise Britain and that, because Britain is historically and culturally a Christian country, the company should allow its employees to wear symbols of the Christian faith which – I argued in my previous blog – associate the cross with BA’s uniform in a way that subliminally puts across the message that ‘BA is a Christian company’; or at least, ‘a company that represents a Christian country’. This point of view was quite explicitly set out in the Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu’s, defence of Ms Eweida earlier in the week. The opposite is also true: that BA’s banning of open cross wearing has seen it labelled as anti-Christian and as a representative of rampant secularism.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams’, statement on the matter on Thursday was more impartial: basically, criticising BA for denying Ms Eweida a fundamental freedom to express her religious conviction openly, in this instance through the wearing of a symbol of the Christian faith. But we are not in fact talking about a private individual here, or even an employee wearing standard smart clothing of their choice when at work. We’re talking about a uniformed representative of an organisation that clearly is taken as a symbol for Britain as a whole. I would argue that what is evoked, associatively or symbolically, by a uniformed BA member of staff openly wearing a cross is quite different from what is connoted by a similar employee wearing a hijab or a Sikh turban. In the latter instances, I think how most flying passengers would react would be to think that this was an example of Britain being a tolerant, multi-cultural society that is prepared to bend uniform rules in order to allow its employees to act in a manner that is consistent with their faiths, which are minority beliefs in the UK. In the case of an employee visibly wearing a cross, many of BA’s international customers, I am sure, would think that BA had actively encouraged its employees to wear crosses to proudly testify to Britain’s status as a nation of Christian heritage, where the Christian faith is the ‘majority’ religious belief.

It is a similar – though not entirely identical – case to other organisations where uniforms directly or indirectly symbolise the British state, e.g. the army, police, emergency services, etc. I’m sure that these organisations also have uniform policies that ban the open wearing of crosses and other forms of jewellery with a symbolic function (e.g. Stars of David). But you don’t hear a chorus of demands for members of these organisations to be allowed to wear crosses openly. Why? Because – apart from pretext-type arguments around health and safety – soldiers, policemen, etc. are supposed to represent the impartiality of the state and the law to all its citizens of whatever faith; and clearly, in certain sensitive operational situations that confront the army or police, it would be detrimental for the organisation as a whole to be identified as Christian by the fact that a single individual had exercised their freedom to openly wear a cross. Similarly, I have previously argued, there may well have been unspoken security considerations of this sort behind the request made to Nadia Eweida that she wear her cross under her uniform, in order not to identify herself and her airline as Christian, thereby making herself and it more vulnerable to attack. It is consistent with such impartiality (i.e. the desire not to identify an organisation with the majority Christian constituency in the UK) for BA to ask its employees not to signal themselves – and, indeed, single themselves out – as Christian, while at the same time making a compromise that allows members of other faiths that make stricter dress-code demands of their adherents to be true to their beliefs while at work.

One of the self-appointed defenders of Ms Eweida on Thursday of this week was Jack Straw, the former UK Foreign Secretary: the same Jack Straw who sparked off the veil controversy in October by stating that he asks niqab-wearing constituents who meet him at his weekly ‘surgeries’ to remove their veils – in the presence of another woman and of their husbands – in order to facilitate better communication; and by arguing that, in general, the veil served as an impediment to better relations between the mainstream British community and the Muslim community.

Mr Straw stated on Thursday that he shared the concerns of about 100 MPs who had signed parliamentary motions calling on BA to reverse its cross ban, and he indicated that he was expressing only a personal sharing of those MPs’ concerns, not the opinion of the government, which did not have a particular position on the issue. Methinks he protests too much. Mr Straw claimed that he was expressing only a personal point of view in the original veil row; but after a succession of interventions – again, only personal – from government ministers, the prime minister eventually chimed in, stating that he thought the veil was a visible “mark of separation” between Muslims and the rest of society; thereby conveying the distinct impression that the whole controversy was a campaign deliberately orchestrated from the very top. Similarly, I think it’s almost inconceivable that Mr Straw – a close confidant of the PM – did not consult with him over what position to take with respect to the BA row and Labour MPs’ protests against BA’s actions. The two positions – defence of an individual’s right to wear an item of jewellery that symbolically associates BA with Christianity, and rejection of the full veil as something that supposedly sets Muslims apart from British society – are intimately interlinked, and are so at the highest level of our society. They are both part of a drive to reaffirm and redefine ‘common British values’ as being ‘essentially’ (one might say, fundamentally) Christian (more precisely, liberal-Christian) in a way that is increasingly intolerant to overt expressions of difference of any kind (including religious difference), which are interpreted as divisive, radical / extreme and even aggressively hostile.

This is not a victory for multi-culturalism, at least not the inclusive model of it, which does not seek to ‘officially’ identify the national culture with any one religion, while recognising the traditional pre-eminence of particular forms of belief and customs. In this instance, of course, the UK government is trying to cut it both ways: not taking an official position of support for Christianity, while it is clear what its actual position is. No, this is what I have referred to as exclusionist multi-culturalism: minority faiths and cultures must accept integration on terms dictated by the majority culture, or be excluded. And the minority and majority cultures – as the differential responses in the cases of Aishah Azmi and Nadia Eweida demonstrate – are increasingly being framed as Muslim and Christian.