On 2/5/2011 6:30 PM, Alan Rudy wrote:
> In addition to what Rob Hoveman says... it is really important that it is
> Cameron saying this and even if it is true that British Muslims feel less
> British than other European Muslims feel associated with their countries of
> residence/citizenship... the question is now what are they feelings by why
> are the feelings. If there is that level of variability across Europe, then
> it isn't a Muslim thing, its a British thing. Given what Bhaskar and Rob
> have presented here, the attitudes of English Muslims and the contradictions
> of what the British call multicultural policy are far less important than
> whether or not Cameron's neoliberal policy alternatives are going to
> exacerbate the situation.
If I read you right, you're saying David Cameron's agenda should be opposed. I can't disagree with that. But I wonder what the discursive purpose of saying it on this listserv is. Not a single person here likes David Cameron's politics. What I have trouble understanding is the urge to "change the subject" - something I notice not only in this thread but often on this list.
This thread is a good example, though. You posted news about Cameron blaming multiculturalism for the failures of British-Muslim integration. Your response to this news was, basically, (1) surely there's no integration problem, it's just a smokescreen invented by Cameron; and (2) if there is an integration problem, surely multiculturalism has little to do with it, so instead we should concentrate on housing policy which must be the real issue. I'll leave aside the fact that you give no indication of actually knowing much about the issue - i.e., British Muslim integration, British housing policy, etc. (Not that I'm any expert myself.) The thing that strikes me is you fervent haste to discard the thorny and difficult issue of multiculturalism and to refocus the discussion on the utterly easy and unifying issue of housing policy and neoliberal cuts.
We all know what we think about Cameron's austerity, we're all against it. Whereas multiculturalism is something of a can of worms, which to my mind makes it an interesting topic. In certain discursive contexts, it makes sense to want to elide the hard questions - e.g., in an election campaign, where "debate" has a certain instrumental quality, i.e., to win the maximum number of votes. But this list is a basically private gathering of relatively like-minded intellectuals. Surely this would be the place to gravitate toward the hard questions, no?
Again, it's always possible that you're factually correct to dismiss the subject of British Muslim integration as a non-issue, or to claim that multiculturalism has little real effect in Britain. (I'd be curious to hear from someone who knows about this stuff.) But to me, at least, it seems clear that you do this not because you've studied British multiculturalism and have concluded it's a sideshow, but just that you don't want to talk about it - which makes me wonder why you posted the news article about multiculturalism to begin with?
SA