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| Is Europe giving up toleration of diversity? |
| Pallavi Aiyar / Brussells Dec 10, 2009, 00:35 IST |
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Maybe not, but pluralistic values are struggling with popular suspicion of Islam.
For the majority of Europeans, the unsavoury ghosts of the 20th century-past have been laid to rest. Europe today is a post-modern, post-sovereign entity, with world wars and colonialism reduced to distant whispers.
As of December 1, the European Union’s long-anticipated Lisbon Treaty came into effect, ostensibly establishing the foundations for a stronger Europe, rooted in core values of democracy, solidarity, tolerance and minority rights. With 23 official languages, diversity is another concept central to Europe’s self-image.
But, as the recent referendum in Switzerland that saw 57.5 per cent of the population voting to ban the construction of minarets exemplifies, in Europe, diversity is also a circumscribed and conflicted concept.
The same Europe that celebrates its tolerance is simultaneously the site of one intolerant act after another, from the 2004 banning of headscarves in schools in France, to a bill introduced earlier this year in Italy seeking to ban mosque construction and restrict the Islamic call to prayer.
It is in the name of values such as a belief in minority rights and diversity that Europe censures countries like China for the restrictions it places on the free practice of religion; on Muslims in Xinjiang for example. Yet, these same values are not always practiced at home, especially when it comes to Islam.
Despite its claims to linguistic and geographic diversity, Europe in its current avatar in fact demands a conformity and obedience from its citizens that is rooted in a kind of secular liberalism, underpinned by shared, albeit unarticulated, Christian values. Valourising an abstract idea of citizenship that divests the individual of alternative identities, this kind of liberalism sits awkwardly with the values of the region’s diverse immigrant populations, many of whom are Muslim and many, though certainly not all, are religious rather than secular-liberal in outlook.
Being forced to confront genuine difference by virtue of sharing public spaces with people who look different, dress differently and worship differently has engendered in Europe something akin to a moral panic; a crisis of identity, compounded by anxieties of the relative decline of the region’s global clout and supremacy.
It is in this context that we must understand the recent Swiss referendum on minarets. Switzerland has traditionally been hailed as a model of tolerance. The vast majority of the 400,000 Muslims who live in the country are from Turkey and Kosovo, and do not wear the headscarves and burqas more commonly seen in some Islamic countries like Saudi Arabia. The sum total of minarets in Switzerland is an underwhelming four.
But, the poster used by far right groups to rally against the construction of minarets depicted a Muslim woman in niqab standing before a forest of minarets rendered to look like missiles. That a clear majority of Swiss voters were swayed by such an image despite its clear disconnect with the everyday lived reality of the average Switzer speaks volumes about the insecurity and fear many European countries feel in a globalising world.
Switzerland, while not a member of the EU, is certainly not unique in Europe. Denmark now has a law preventing citizens under the age of 24 from securing residence rights for their foreign spouses. In September this year, the Flemish city of Antwerp, famed for its business-oriented, multi-cultural tapestry of orthodox Jews and Gujarati Indians, joined France in banning the headscarf in schools.
The xenophobic intolerance that the visible “otherness” of many Muslims engenders is complicated by the fact of global terrorism and the emergence of radical Islam. As Samuel Huntington’s thesis of a clash of civilizations has tragically found itself becoming a self-fulfilling prophesy, a rash of European countries have been victims of terrorist attacks at the hand of fanatical Muslims.
The London underground bombings, the Spanish train bombs, the murder of Dutch film director Theo van Gogh, have all contributed to the mainstreaming of Islamophobia, freeing it from the confines of the ravings of the far right into the commodious drawing rooms of (usually) polite, liberal society.
The issue is further problematised by a widespread feeling that European political elites, struggling to reconcile the espousal of pluralistic values with the reality of the popular suspicion of Islam, apply a set of double standards which are favourable to the Muslim minority.
At a recently held debate in the European Parliament in Brussels, Douglas Murray, a neoconservative political commentator from the UK, got a warm round of applause for accusing the British political establishment of pandering to Muslims out of a sense of guilt and misplaced liberalism.
That ordinary Europeans are confused is understandable. If tolerance is a European virtue, then all Europeans, regardless of religion, ought to be equally tolerant. Yet, as the aftermath of the 2005 incident of the Danish cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammad revealed, there are sharp limits to what most European Muslims would accept as the legitimate exercise of free speech.
Douglas argues that Europe suffers from a pathology of too much tolerance; a tolerance of (Muslim) intolerance as it were. His detractors accuse him of being intolerant of tolerance.
What is clear is that Islam and Europe intersect on many axes. There is, however, less clarity on how issues of class, economic stagnation, immigration and terrorism are often conflated to muddy the water.
Europe’s current attempts to handle the integration of its Muslim immigrants are in danger of being seen as a failure not only by the outside world but by its own people. Neither the British model of multiculturalism nor the French approach of secular assimilation has proved up to the task.
The intellectual and ethical bankruptcy with which Europe continues to tackle this challenge is however not a concern restricted to European borders. It is, rather, a concern for everyone who believes a tolerant, diverse society to be an ideal that humanity should not give up on, no matter how tempting this may sometimes be.
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