I confess, I have never had a Muslim to dinner By Max Hastings (Filed: 31/07/2005)
Sunday Telegraph Home-grown terrorism has prompted an intense debate about the rights and obligations of everyone who lives in our society. We have been brought face to face with the fact that some people who hold British passports nonetheless dislike this country so much that they are eager to immolate innocent people as well as themselves, to demonstrate their alienation. This has done enormous harm to race relations. Many white people are instinctively looking askance at young Muslims. They wonder which side they are on. This assertion is neither flippant nor hyperbolic. More than a few representatives of old Britain ask a brutal question of new Britain: "If you don't like it here, why don't you simply go somewhere else?" Emigration was the historic recourse of the disaffected. A host followed where the Pilgrim Fathers led, to America and the colonies. If some Muslims perceive Western societies as deplorably decadent - which last week's Daily Telegraph poll convincingly suggested - then why should they not transfer themselves and their resentment to an Islamic society? In truth, of course, few dissidents are likely to do this, because they cherish the economic advantages available in the West. Migrants are struggling to reach Europe and the US, because these offer standards of life and liberty unattainable in Pakistan or Iran. Yet why should we welcome anyone who comes here only for the money? If a newcomer is unwilling to defer to our values, flawed as these may seem, then surely no Western society has a moral obligation to admit him? I suspect this view will be increasingly and energetically expressed by "old" residents, in Britain's harsher post-July 7 social climate. The most generous interpretation of multiculturalism has become unacceptable: that people can pitch camp here as migrants or asylum-seekers on their own terms, heedless of our custom and practice. For instance, no one should expect to live in Britain unless willing to treat women with the respect accorded to them by the majority of British people. Those culturally committed to women's subjection should choose somewhere else. A vital factor in sustaining a racially mixed society is a sense of shared purpose, such as the United States has historically achieved. It is not only the number of uncontrolled migrants which makes British citizens today feel vulnerable. It is also the failure of government to impose any plausible social contract for newcomers' domicile. The majority have human rights, too. Many of us find it relatively easy to agree on that, even if Tony Blair does not. Now we come to the hard part, the other side of the deal: what can new Britain reasonably demand from old Britain? Do we try nearly hard enough, to make welcome those newcomers who, in the fullest sense, want to belong ? Last week, a letter appeared in the Financial Times, from a Malcolm Subhan. He wrote: "As a good 'brown Englishman' I took my assimilation into Western society for granted - until it suddenly occurred to me, a few months ago, that to the white-skinned 'natives' I am a dark-skinned foreigner, an outsider, ultimately a good imitation of an Englishman. What should I do to let people know that I am one of them? Hand out cards setting out my credentials - that I attended the primary school attached to the Anglican cathedral in Lahore, that I was brought up on Sexton Blake and Sherlock Holmes, that I read politics at Oxford, that I think in English, probably dream in it as well? Is integration - never mind assimilation - possible for those of us who are dark-skinned?" This is an extraordinarily moving declaration - no, interrogative - from someone who seems to fulfil every criterion to be considered a "true Brit" by even the most reactionary of his fellow-countrymen. It evokes the tragic predicament of Harry Kumar, the public-school Indian in Paul Scott's Jewel In the Crown. Those of us who pin our hopes for British society upon assimilation are brought up short when reminded how hard it is to make this real. I was shocked recently at a business dinner in a northern city where there was not one black or brown face among 600 guests. As a society, we must do much better than that. The challenge is to advance integration, without imposing unreasonable demands on the traditional community. The Countryside Agency, a Government quango, recently made itself ridiculous by urging that rural Britain should become more user-friendly towards minorities. This prompted many perfectly decent white rural-dwellers to demand: what in God's name do they want? Chapattis in Cornish tearooms? Rice paddies in Wiltshire? If some readers find such remarks tasteless as well as facetious, they were understandable. Nothing is more certain to damage race relations than clumsy demands for old Britain to change its character to suit new. Why should it? By contrast, positive discrimination in employment seems vital. As a newspaper editor, for some years I resisted this, then grew so discouraged by the tiny number of job applicants from minorities that I acknowledged its indispensability. John Birt, as director-general of the BBC, deserves credit for having pursued an energetic policy of minority recruitment, the fruits of which are visible on every television channel. Shopping in a small English country town last week, I felt a stab of optimism, amid the relaxed friendliness of the Asian shopkeepers who now play so significant a part even in rural communities. I think also of my grown-up children, infinitely less race-conscious than our generation, embarrassed by anything resembling a racist joke. It is among the middle-aged, I fancy, more than the young, that an effort is needed to reach out to good citizens like Mr Subhan. While searching my own soul about our cultural predicament, I acknowledged an embarrassing truth. In the course of my life I have entertained only perhaps a dozen black guests at parties, and have never had a Muslim to dinner in my house. The same must be true for many British middle-class people. Until interracial experience finds a path into our own lives, it remains hard to boast that we are contributing much to the assimilation we deem vital to our future. This is a two-way street. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------ Yahoo! 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