Grasping the Nettle - Q-News July 2006, Issue 367

Enoch Powell sure had a way with words. In the aftermath of any urban unrest, there is the ritual invoking of the coming “rivers of blood” and incessant talk about the trouble with minorities who just can’t seem to integrate. It was no different in 2001 when the disturbances in the North of England captured the nation’s attention and sent the reactionary pundits swooning with delight at the thought that Powell’s prophecy-cum-curse had finally come true. Yet life moved on: cities returned to ‘normality’, just as the think tanks, policymakers and journalists set up shop to provide their analysis and solutions to the integration problem (a feeble cipher for the ‘Muslim problem’). Atif Imtiaz puts forward a primer on the ‘integration question’ and asks whether years of official reports and policy diktats have simply missed the point.

Let’s be honest: when politicians, policymakers and pundits talk about integration, they are talking about Muslims. 9/11 dramatically and globally heightened the concerns raised by the Northern street violence just a few months earlier: are we a community capable of being British or are we an indigestible minority, forever doomed to the status of a fifth column.

Since the 2001 disturbances, three interventions stand out. The first came from Ted Cantle and suggested that the problem was “community cohesion” or rather a lack of it - and although the report didn’t state this explicitly, its findings are popularly remembered as fingering Muslims as not wishing to integrate. Questions were raised about the way funding regimes were managed and their effects on community relations.

A second came from David Goodhart, the contrarian editor of Prospect Magazine. In his article, “Too Diverse”, he asked whether the increasing diversity of British society was beginning to strain the solidarity that is required for a nation to hang together and share resources such as the welfare state. One didn’t have to read between the lines too closely to see that Goodhart’s missive was spurred by uneasiness with an increasingly prominent Muslim presence and it consequent impact on public life.

The third and most recent intervention has come in the form of a study into the changing cultural and social milieu that is East London. Michael Young, Geoff Dench and Kate Gavron’s The New East End, examines the changing demographic and cultural situation in the East End and argues that the post-war welfare state and championing of ethnic minorities by sections of the Left have resulted in the white working classes becoming subject to a nihilistic individualism and alienation.

Reasonable Options?

Through the prism of these interventions, Muslim communities face four options: assimilation, isolation, emigration or integration. In many senses, these options only remain options to the extent that Muslims themselves are able to achieve them. But ‘to integrate’ is a passive verb and the assumption of the liberal intelligentsia is that Muslims cannot integrate themselves, they can only be integrated.

It’s a quandary that raises some important questions. Can Muslims integrate by themselves, without help or intervention? Should Muslims attempt integration at all? Why aren’t we integrated already? Bristol academic Tariq Modood sees integration as socio-economic, socio-cultural and civic participation: socio-economic integration is about educational achievement and increasing employability; socio-cultural integration is about the sharing of values; and civic participation is about participation in local and national public life. Civic participation is in many ways up to others, mainly the political parties and the media and more specifically depends on the kinds of representatives they choose to engage. A more open and courageous attitude from both will help increase civic participation immediately and where this has already been achieved, the results are clear to see. A challenge for Muslims here is the development of a language of engagement that connects with wider society and yet remains truthful to Islamic teachings. A socio-cultural form of integration could be regarded as assimilation. But this assumes a reified form of Britishness which at best is difficult to pin down. What is Britishness: politeness or vulgarity? What are the norms of British public life: a meritocratic approach or an old boy’s network? Is generosity of spirit part of the British character or a polite, distant and insincere approach to personal relations? The last resort for the foundationalist liberal is a Britishness built on human rights, but this seems to be too thin a container because, for example, it cannot offer a theory of prejudice.

National organisations such as the Muslim Council of Britain and the British Muslim Forum, as well as campaigning groups such as MPAC and FOSIS, are the ‘usual suspects’ through which the integration agenda can be moved forward. Scholars and academics are also agents of integration. They lead the way or map out a trajectory for engagement. But then again, individuals and organisations can only move things so far. Ultimately, it is up to partner institutions - the Home Office, Metropolitan Police, national media and local and national government - to open their doors wide enough for meaningful engagement. If Muslims are to grasp the nettle of integration, it will be the extent to which powerful ‘partner’ institutions return the gesture through grasping the nettle of Muslim public assertiveness that will determine the success of any integration initiative.

Barriers to Integration`

One such barrier has to do with norms and codes. British public language operates in codes at the higher and more influential levels. One is expected to understand if a concession is being offered or recognise rhetoric as rhetoric. Sometimes those having a discussion simply aren’t speaking the same language.

Then there is the role of the gatekeeper - mediating between the Muslim community and officialdom. Whether it was the Anglican Church or the CRE-led race industry, questions now arise about their continuing utility and ethical viability. Why are gatekeepers necessary in such a dynamic political and policy environment.

Policymakers love to theorise - put a complex set of issues in a framework of convenient assumptions easily digestible by officialdom. Modood’s perspective is instructive: different cultures and religions have different demands, so what is required here is not some universalist multiculturalism - this repeats the mistake of universalist anti-multiculturalism - instead, what is required is a pluralistic approach to integration that takes into account the different needs of different groups. The new single equality scheme will have to meet this uneasy challenge within a one institution. The rush to theory also flattens Muslim difference, absolutising the genuine diversity that exists within one faith community, whereas other forms of equally impossible contradiction are ignored or unacknowledged. It is simply put a form of intellectual prejudice.

A final barrier here is the relation with the white working classes. Increasing integration - or increasing equality - could be adversely affected by the response of the white working classes, who could feel that they are being hard done by when in fact resources are being more equitably redistributed. As such, increasing equality will damage integration. This further highlights the tensions between law and culture. This problem is relational and must be addressed by the Muslim community if it is to pursue long-term integration.

Many of the assumptions that underlie the Muslim integration debate are in fact barriers to integration themselves - in other words the framing of the debate worsens or indeed creates problems. Why, for example, did The Guardian or The Independent, as the houses of enlightenment liberalism, accept the notion of British Muslims first and before the Telegraph? Is it because anti-racism is more important than the sharing of values? Why is religion as a marker more significant than old age and disability? Does the marking of Muslim religious identity exacerbate its identity politics? Should immigration not affect the society that it impacts upon? Does Islam lead to the empowerment of women in that few things are as effective in regulating male sexual behaviour than the criticism of a pious wife?

Are honour killings better understood as collectivist forms of crimes of possession? Is a Muslim underclass emerging as it begins to share values more? In what ways is our experience similar to the Irish experience of terrorism and Jewish experience of assimilation? These questions are proposed to confound the many assumptions that underlie the current debate.

In his leaving speech to the MCB, Iqbal Sacranie recently spoke about four significant stages in the development of the Muslim community: mosque building, political campaigning, the formation of the MCB and moving beyond identity politics. I would probably suggest three stages of community development: mosque building (the 1980s), political oppositionalism (the 1990s) and, now - post 9/11 and onwards - engagement. Looking ahead, leading sociological thinkers suggest that the Muslim community will be assimilated in two generations and I would suggest that any consideration of future strategies should incorporate measures to deal with such potentialities.

What is required, therefore, is institution building and investment in cultural capital. By this I mean the whole cultural nexus: scholars, intellectuals, historians, artists - that provide some substance, explanation, meaning and expression in a deep and relevant manner, as mass culture and high culture, to a long-term, identifiable Muslim presence in Britain. The state or law itself cannot enforce belonging. Belonging or sharing requires persuasion and this is the realm of culture, not law.

Finally, a word of caution against all pessimists that consider assimilation to be inevitable: many thought that much of our generation would have been assimilated. This is happening, but at the same time there are many who are far from being digested. This is because there is not much to assimilate into (as those who do assimilate very quickly discover). Liberalism in various guises stands today unsure of itself. Its values seem to be determined more by the market, than any compelling moral, social or political philosophy. An emergent, collectivist, alternative-value based identity that challenges the individuating process of economic privatisation has now passed on its communalism to the white working classes - a phenomenon which leads to much political and policy theorising of the kind that this article has attempted to wish away. The question of integration in the Northern towns and cities is essentially about the relation between Muslim communities and the white working classes. And for Muslims, the key question is, what do Muslims owe the white working classes, if anything?