Big Brother's Not Been Watching Enough: The Hypocrisy Of British Tolerance (Part Four)

In the preceding three entries, I've discussed three examples of how British society and culture deal with beliefs and behaviour that are considered to be 'beyond the pale': instances of radical intolerance or hostility towards the 'tolerant society' that are by that token 'beyond tolerance' – intolerable to the tolerant society. These examples are those of 'racism', 'terrorism' and 'anti-social behaviour'. Britain responds to these phenomena in a manner that is reminiscent of psychological censorship and repression. In Freudian terms, the super-ego (the authorities) suppresses the irrational, violent thoughts and desires of the id (the racist / terrorist / anti-social individual) from the conscious mind or ego (from the public domain) and then keeps jealous watch to make sure that these 'undesirable' tendencies do not re-manifest themselves openly – resulting in them being acted out in another way that eludes the scrutiny and sphere of operation of the super-ego. Hence, the racist, terrorist and lout are placed under a regime of watch and control (Celebrity Big Brother, Control Orders and ASBOs); but their thoughts and they themselves nonetheless elude their detention, because Big Brother has merely suppressed and displaced the forces that drive its enemies, not dealt with them and resolved the conflict.

Notice that I referred to these three forms of antagonism towards tolerance in inverted commas. One of the means by which censorship of these phenomena takes place is that particular individuals are stigmatised and scapegoated as representatives of the tendencies that society wishes to repress. In psychological terms, society projects onto those individuals its stereotypical image of the racist, terrorist and yob. These stereotypes in turn partly represent the racism, destructive violence and anti-social attitudes of normal, tolerant members of society themselves. By then suppressing those individuals and confining them to a limited, private space, society believes that it is dealing with racism, terrorism and mindless thuggery themselves – in the same way, and for the same reason, that respectable and respected members of the tolerant society believe they have resolved these very tendencies in themselves: by locking them up in a private, mental space that does not, and must not, be articulated openly.

In other words, all of us individually, and society as a whole, bear an uncanny resemblance to the racist, terrorist and hoodlum. They are as it were extreme manifestations of our own petty intolerances. But because we cannot admit to being intolerant, violent and anti-social in whichever respects apply to each of us, we end up wanting to suppress those extreme examples rather than deal with the underlying issues, which would involve confronting the 'enemy within' ourselves. That's not to deny that racism, terrorism and anti-social behaviour are real problems in the external world, for which practical solutions need to be sought. On the contrary, no real solution to these issues can be found if we're not prepared to admit that we're also an integral part of the problem.

Putting this in more straightforward language: to what extent really is any kind of understanding of the reasons for antagonism between the different races, nationalities and religions currently crowded together in the UK advanced by merely stigmatising Jade Goody as a racist and reprimanding Channel Four for not censoring material that offended the veneer of British inter-racial, multi-cultural tolerance and harmony? Similarly, we do not know whether the terrorist suspects that escaped from their Control Order detention the other week were really terrorists or not: one of the purposes of Control Orders is to suppress any possibility of public scrutiny of these cases and of an open debate on the grievances of those who might be drawn to terrorist-type violence. Tony Blair said we were placing too much emphasis on the civil liberties of the suspect. But if they're only suspects – assumed to be innocent until proven guilty – surely, they should be accorded every civil liberty. But 'suspect' in Blair's book seems to imply that that they are, and indeed they are treated as, guilty without trial.

Mr Blair himself, of course, has been widely accused of being the equivalent of a terrorist: a war criminal and mass murderer because of the direct and indirect consequences of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Branding someone a terrorist or a war criminal is a way to distance and differentiate oneself from one's enemy: to refuse to see any parallel or linkage between your actions and those of your adversary. And so the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians are not to be compared with those of 2,000 tragic victims of 9/11. The former are a consequence of 'justifiable' resistance to terrorism and defence of Western strategic interests; while the latter are mere terrorism – not an example of an albeit extreme and, in some cases, desperate response to the injustices for which the West is blamed in Palestine and to Western efforts to place the Middle East firmly under its control. And yet millions of tolerant British citizens gave Mr Blair their approval for the Iraqi foray – apparently accounting the lives of Arab civilians that would be lost as of less importance than those of the Westerners supposedly threatened by Saddam's WMD; just as the so-called Islamist terrorists apparently account the lives of Western 'infidels' as of less importance than those of Muslims.

And is the anti-social individual really any more anti-social than the mass of citizens who pursue their private interests and preoccupations with little concern for those who get left behind? The 'ASBP' (anti-socially behaving person) is stigmatised, on one level, precisely because (s)he is the symbol of the asocial society we have built: one where there is no longer any real shared vision of the type of society and communities we wish to create and sustain, but where individuals invest their energies and aspirations into their own private realm – their homes, their assets, their careers and relationships. The ASBP is someone who is left behind in this rat race. Deprived of the means, opportunity or ability to strive after these personal goals – and without any social or community network to re-direct their energies – they are people confronted by social indifference and lack of personal purpose. So in a sense, it is inevitable that they take it out on a society that has turned its backs on them and attempt to wreck our nice, quiet, comfortable lives. In this way, the ASBP is perhaps more social than the rest of us: they are crying out for the help and attention of a society that doesn't want to know. Rather than opening out and engaging in the social realm that is falling apart around us, our response to ASBPs exemplifies our own social alienation that has given rise to the anti-social behaviour in the first place: the ASBP is merely suppressed, placed under the terms of an ASBO – made to become merely another private individual that will no longer demand that we reach out to them from beyond the parapets of our homes-as-castles, thereby acting in a social, collective manner that could change all of our lives and begin to re-make a broken society.

Those who we ostracise as beyond tolerance – the racist, terrorist and anti-social person – are, ultimately, symbols of the limits of our own tolerance: of the prejudiced bigot, the supporter of violence and the selfish individualist that we all are to some extent. Overcoming these problems will involve defeating them in ourselves: to love our enemies, indeed, as ourselves.

Britain As a World Power: Inventing Britain For the 21st Century (Part Six)

Britain As a World Power: Inventing Britain For the 21st Century (Part Six)

According to news reports, Tony Blair is to give a speech today in which he will put the case for Britain retaining a role as a “major player on the world stage” (sounds like himself after leaving his post as PM), i.e. remaining what you might call a ‘world power’. In Blair’s view, this is important above all in the context of the fight against global terrorism, whereby Britain has a duty – alongside its allies – to stand up for the values it believes in.

Most people would agree that it’s important to try to defeat homicidal terrorist organisations and prevent any further atrocities such as 9/11 or the July 2005 London bombings. However, most British people would now, I think, be sceptical that the best way to do this is to send our troops to former outposts of the British Empire such as Afghanistan and Iraq to wage futile wars we cannot win, in the usual sense of the term.

But I’m not intending to enter the debate over the ‘War on Terror’ here. What Mr Blair’s sense of Britain’s global mission exemplifies, it seems to me, is what I termed the ‘British’ value of ‘ethical imperialism’ (see the second blog in this series, dated 3 December). The idea that Britain in and of itself – irrespective of the degree to which our European allies are prepared to co-operate with this mission – has a moral duty to remain a world power and help lead the struggle against the evil of terrorism is a clear inheritance of the British Empire and the ethical purpose that Britain always strived to bestow upon its imperialism. This purpose was then – and is now increasingly once more becoming – one of establishing and maintaining a particular Western form of civilisation, which elsewhere I’ve referred to as ‘Christo-liberalism’: an ambiguous combination of social and economic liberalism with an ethics and humanistic spirituality derived from (but not necessarily completely consonant with) traditional Christian beliefs.

Wanting to help defeat murderous terrorism, and maintain international peace and security, is one thing. But with Blair, this comes with a mission: ultimately, that of defending and perpetuating a vision of Britain’s very identity as in some sense indissociably bound up with Christo-liberal values and the future of Christo-liberal civilisation. Whether this set of values is in itself coherent and capable of building cultural integration and national unity within Britain is a debate in itself. Whether this set of values is the flagpole on which British forces should be pinning the Union Jack in battles against Muslims (as if this could defeat ‘Islamist’ ideology rather than inflaming it) is of course another.

But really, is it sustainable for Britain (or should that be Tony Blair?) to keep posturing as a world player? In the business world, most people agree that in the era of globalisation, the real powers in the 21st century – along with the USA – will be Brazil, China, India and Russia. Islamism could be seen as an attempt to reunite the Arab-Muslim world into a rival power to these massive states. Curiously, Afghanistan and Iraq are frontier lands between the Arab-Muslim world and three of those 21st century powers.

Dear old Little Britain, on its own, doesn’t have a prayer. Don’t we need to reinvest our energies, and – in the context of the threat of climate change – energy, into trying to build a sustainable economy and security situation in partnership with our European neighbours?

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.

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.

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?