« Sorry, Suu Kyi, but love won’t topple the junta | Home | A good dose of fear will cure our hospitals »
Fear of giving offence is killing our culture
‘So, Minette Marrin – all cultures are equal, yes or no?” This was the challenge put to me live and rather scarily by a BBC World Service presenter a few years ago. She was chairing a debate about multiculturalism in front of a large audience of people who were mostly black or brown. Judging from her manner and from the previous panellists’ remarks, her question was one of those that expect the answer yes, at least from a civilised person.
“No,” I said firmly, but nervously, since I don’t like inviting contempt and anger any more than anyone else. Those were the days when the multicultural orthodoxy prevailed and when it was genuinely hard to point out that cultures that treat women as irresponsible inferiors, that hang young gay men, mutilate criminals and silence debate are not equal to ours. They are inferior and it is not self-evidently racist to say so.
For at least 20 years there was a debilitating fog of moral relativism in the air, a miasma of guilty self-loathing, to the point when some natives persuaded themselves that although all other cultures were equal, ours alone was less equal than others, or might at least be offensive, and should be suppressed. Even the phrase “host culture” was considered unacceptable.
We have moved on since then, supposedly, and surprisingly suddenly. Many prominent multiculturalists, including the Commission for Racial Equality itself, have recently performed swift U-turns and the bien-pensant orthodoxy now is that multiculturalism has been a divisive failure. Integration is the new big thing.
The host culture is no longer to be demonised, but to be accepted and respected. Even manipulative politicians, such as Gordon Brown, now realise that saying so will do them no harm these days. It might seem, superficially, that the Victoria Climbié report and the massacre of 7/7 in London, among other shocks, have brought us back at last to our cultural senses and our cultural self-respect.
Not entirely so, unfortunately. There are still signs that many people are in the grip of the old orthodoxy; its hold on public institutions and the public mind seems to be remarkably persistent. A week ago The Sunday Times reported that some Muslim workers in Sainsbury’s are refusing to check out purchases of alcohol on the debatable ground that it’s against their religion. Whenever the sinful stuff is presented by a customer at the till, the Muslim expects an infidel colleague to hurry over and sully his or her hands with the transaction instead.
This is preposterous and a depressing sign of the times. But the painful truth is it would be just as preposterous to blame the Sainsbury’s Muslims. For years now ethnic minorities have been encouraged to insist on their cultural differences and on their human right to have these differences respected and actively promoted. It is hardly surprising that they have responded by doing so. It is those who have encouraged them who are to blame.
The point about this story is not the absurd demand, but that Sainsbury’s gave into it, quite unnecessarily, of its own free will. It wasn’t even being pressed to do so by any prominent Muslim figures. Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, leader of the Muslim Parliament, said last week: “This is some kind of overenthusiasm. One expects professional behaviour from people working in a professional capacity and this shows a lack of maturity. The fault lies with the employee who is exploiting and misusing their goodwill.”
Surely the fault lies with Sainsbury’s, for cultural funk. And it lies with all those others who out of some strange abandonment of common sense – such as the government’s laissez-faire guidelines on wearing Muslim veils in schools last week – bottle out.
Think of the headmistress in Yorkshire who removed stories about pigs, including the Three Little Pigs, from her school in case they might offend her tiny Muslim pupils. Think of the councils that have banned Christmas, or hot cross buns, or the council worker who banned a flyer about a Christmas service from a council notice board but held a party to celebrate Eid.
I remember being shown round a good care home for young people dying of a terrible degenerative disease. Unable to move, talk, see, hear, taste or eat, they had to be spoon-fed pureed food and the staff told me proudly that they made a point of respecting cultural and ethnic differences. In practice this meant that one person (the only person who was not 100% British) had a great deal of meat in her puree (unlike the others) because she was a Turkish Cypriot, from a meat-eating culture.
I could only assume these care workers were the victims of extensive brain washing. Theirs was the behaviour of underconfident and undereducated people who have been ceaselessly bullied by ideologues.
This example is trivial, but there are countless well documented cases that are not trivial, because cumulatively they constantly wear away at our customs and our identity – we being the host culture. In many cases Muslims (or Jews or Hindus – or Cypriots no doubt) who are asked to comment say publicly that it was all quite unnecessary. They would not have been offended at all and nobody had bothered to ask them. People in the grip of this daft racial correctness take it upon themselves, or make others feel obliged to go far further than good manners or common sense or the law would take them.
In the case of European Union regulations this is known as gold plating and the British bureaucrat is notorious for it. Some – perhaps a lot – of the European red tape and rules that we love to hate may not be European at all but British, added on to satisfy the strange moral imperatives of interfering apparatchiks. Ethnic gold plating is even more mysterious; it comes from a decadent loss of belief in ourselves, in our own culture and in its superiority – warts and all – to others that may threaten it.
No well mannered person wants to go about pronouncing that western civilisation, particularly the British variety, is better than others. But sometimes it is necessary to risk giving offence, to defend what matters. It may not cause offence; it might even command respect.
The Sunday Times | Sunday, October 07, 2007
Comments:
Dear Mrs. Minette Marrin. I just read your article "Let’s stop pretending all faiths are equal"
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/minette_marrin/article2801033.ece
I posted 2 comments on TimeOnLine but it seems I have been censored (again :( ). So here I am, posting them here at your blog, because I really wanted to thank you for that article (as an atheist!) and tell you my thoughts.
Posted by: Anna Doe | 4 Nov 2007 04:05:50
Multiculturalism and political correctness are killing us! I will never respect islam because in islam paedophily is allowed. You see mohamed is the model for all mankind, all time and all places. Whatever he said or did is good/halal so because he married a 6 years old girl and raped her when she was 8 years 9 months old (she was his 3rd wife, Aisha), the sharia allows marriage with children, it is why there are child brides in muslim countries. I am a mother and this makes me fear the day islam will rule us. What a shame, to see people respect a religion that could force in time all our daughters to child brides like it is happening since islam took over in muslim countries like Afganistan or Iran! This is not the only crime sanctioned by allah and mohamed in islam, I don't want to be turned into a sex slaves either, but this is the crime that makes me wordy-fight islam for the last 2 years. Before I was a peace activist defending islam and sure it was a religion like any others, until I learn about Aisha, the child-bride of mohamed. Please check here for example chapter 10 (and 9): http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/fundamentals/hadithsunnah/muslim/008.smt.html#008.3308 (islam is based on the koran, the sahih - authentic - ahadith and the sira. Muslim ahadigh are sahih).
Posted by: Anna Doe | 4 Nov 2007 04:16:45
I would like to quote Ayaan Hirsi Ali: "Human beings are equal; cultures are not. A culture that celebrates femininity is not equal to a culture that trims the genitals of her girls...A culture with courts that punish a husband for forcing his wife to have sex with him is not equal to a culture with a tribunal that decrees a young woman be gang-raped for talking to a boy of an allegedly higher caste....A culture that insists on holding open a position for women in its Supreme Court is not equal to a culture that declares that the testimony of a woman is worth half of that of a man"
Of course Mrs. Blair was contradictory, islam abuses women, how can she respect it? I don't. She was mislead too, the koran clearly says that a man can beat his wife if he FEARS she is disobedient. He can beat without having proofs of her disobedience!! Check koran 4:34 http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/004.qmt.html#004.034 and don't forget that the parentheses are not in the koran, that is not words of allah, but words of the traductors, trying to sugar-coat the koran for the Non-Arabic speakers Muslims and the Non-muslims, us. As if the koran in English wasn't shocking enough!
Thank you again Mrs. Marrin, please continue to defend us before it is too late.
Posted by: Anna Doe | 4 Nov 2007 04:27:37
I am really intrigued at the articles and comments I have read here today.
In my eyes, it displays ignorance. I'm a Muslim woman, and don't even think it's worth defending my religion to such people, I'm not even offended. All I can say is good luck, Anna you're a mother.. All the more for you, let's hope you don't pass on your "knowledge" to your children.
Posted by: Afshan Khan | 18 Nov 2007 16:30:13
Dear Afshan Khan,
Have you read the koran? All by yourself, not some parts of verses your imam was willing to let you read.
I have read the koran, many ahadith and the sirat rasul allah.
Don't tell me I am ignorant, please. But refute me! If you succeed to prove me wrong, I won't have to warn my children about islam, if you can't, why shouldn't I teach my children to fight an ideology that want them killed, enslaved, raped or subjugated and forced to pay the jiziya in submission, as a punishment to not convert to islam? Please know your religion before being offended of the truth and before defending a mass-killer, a rapist, a paedophil, a enslaver, a terrorist, a thief called mohamed.
If only you would read your koran, and be honest with the feelings that will come from reading such a book of hatred, and let your humanity and decency prevail above your pride and sense of duty, I think you will join mankind and leave the outgrown cult of islam.
Unless you agree with allah's orders of killing the non-believers if they don't convert to islam, or fighting the Christians and Jews until they pay the jiziya in submission as a punishment to not convert to islam, of allowing the muslims to beat their wives if they only suspect them of disobedience, of allowing marriage and nikah (sex) with children like mohamed did with his third wife Aisha, married her when she was 6 and raped her when she was 8 years and 9 months, of allowing the rape of Non-muslim women taken as booty of the wars (jihad) done to force Non-muslims to islam. And more...
Don't believe me, read your koran, ahadith and sunnah!
And yes, of course I am sorry that I am hurting you. But the truth has to be told unless we want our countries to become Lebanon, Iran, Saudia Arabia or Afghanistan etc... The true Muslims are ben laden, abu hamza and khomeini, they are just doing what allah asked the Muslims and they are just following mohamed's example.
I hope you are not. The gentle Muslims are unfortunately the highjackers of islam, not the terrorists.
Please search the web for Ibn Warraq, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Wafa Sultan, Nonnie Darwish, Ali Sina.
Anwar Shaikh: "The problem is not the Muslims, the problem is islam".
Posted by: Anna Doe | 27 Nov 2007 03:00:30
Anna Doe, as an atheist I can tell you I have read the Koran. And I don't really find any problems with it. The problem is, with the interpretation religion is defined how you interpret it, if you interpret it in a negative light such as you are doing, then Islam will seem negative to you.
Then you state we should search for ibn waqqar and other get rich off the ignorance of those who hate Islam. As if their opinions of Islam are going to be unbiased, you cannot get propaganda machines to get an opinion on something, that is just silly. I think you should leave Islam alone, and stop trying to demonaize it as something crazy out to get anyone who dont believe in it.
Oh and by the way, most Muslims I know disregard the hadith. They don't take them literally.
I am actually sick and tried of johnny come lately experts on Islam.
Islam has existed for over 1400 years. Why should we believe now its out ot get us? Muslims in places like Pakistan reject fundamentalism. I am talking about your average citizen. All Muslims I know are good law abiding family oriented Muslims, with prefect credit ratings.
Posted by: Simon | 4 Jan 2008 20:34:01
If your so sorry of hurting Muslims feeling, then just shut up.
Posted by: Simon | 4 Jan 2008 20:37:25
