Are the British coming to terms with the need for multi-culturali
Tue, 17 May 2011 14:12:00 BST
Professor Mark Halstead disagrees with the common diagnosis, made by a succession of politicians and commentators, that multi-culturalism in Britain is dead or dying. Indeed, he believes that it should be encouraged, being good for the health of society.
Mark, who joined the University of Huddersfield’s School of Education and Professional Development in 2006, sees himself as a cross-cultural interpreter. His research and many publications help to interpret Islamic ideas and culture to the West, and vice-versa.
His varied career as a journalist, teacher and academic means that he is ideally qualified for this role. As an Oxford undergraduate, his subjects were Arabic, Turkish and Islamic studies. This was followed by a spell in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia as a journalist and lecturer.
He returned to Britain to work as a school teacher in Bradford, a city that would be the cauldron for many of the controversies surrounding multi-culturalism and the place of Islam in British society. For example, Mark has researched and written about Ray Honeyford, the Bradford headmaster who gained a national profile when he was accused of racism in the early 1980s. He has also researched the Bradford riots of 2001.
His experiences in Bradford - where he taught at a Catholic school that had a 15 per cent Muslim intake - led Mark to complete a PhD on the education of Muslim children. He has since become established as a leading researcher, author and authority on the subject and he has developed a deep understanding of and respect for Islamic ideas and values.
There are, he acknowledges, fundamental differences in attitudes towards education and philosophy in Islamic and Western thought. But there are shared values too.
“Moral values like honesty, trust, generosity and so on are shared between the two communities. But from a Muslim perspective you are honest because God says you should be honest, whereas from a Western perspective you are honest because ultimately it’s the rational thing to do and the fundamental values of our society pre-suppose a commitment to honesty.”
Occasionally, however, tensions between the two systems of thought can lead to conflict - as in another controversy that erupted in Bradford, the protest over Salman Rushdie’s book The Satanic Verses. More recently, there have been episodes such as the Danish newspaper cartoons row and continual Western criticism of Muslim women wearing the veil.
“Westerners see it as the oppression of women but, on the other hand, it could be to do with the right to self-expression as well. So there is an ambiguity in Western attitudes to the veil, whereas from a Muslim perspective it is ultimately a matter of obedience to God and respect for God and putting the values of the Qur’an and the Hadith into practice in one’s daily life.
“The flaunting of the body or the presentation of the body as an attractive spectacle isn’t an important part of life; what’s important is living a life of prayer and humility and submission to God.”
Mark Halstead has written in support of the establishment of Muslim faith schools in Britain - the arguments against them, are weak, he says, and therefore the principle of freedom of choice means that Muslims should be allowed to have such schools, though not all want them. He regrets that so few are publicly funded - only eight - and these provide places for only about one per cent of Muslim children in Britain.
“Currently, the poorest part of the community, the Muslim part, is being asked to pay twice for education - once through their taxes and then again though school fees if they choose to send their children to independent Muslim schools.”
As a university professor, Mark does not notice any difference between Muslim students educated in the normal school system and those educated in Muslim schools when it comes to integration in university life, although possibly those who have been to Muslim faith schools have a stronger sense of their own identity.
This observation feeds into his arguments in favour of multi-culturalism. Young Muslims whose schooling is in line with the values of their parents are less likely to experience feelings of cultural conflict, he says.
“After the Bradford riots of 2001, more than 200 people were convicted. None of them went to a Muslim school; they were all people who went through the community school system and they seemed to me to be confused in their identity.
“For example, a typical story from one of the rioters was, ‘I’d just drunk a bottle of vodka and I didn’t know what I was doing and I started picking up paving stones and throwing them at the police’. Now where did that student learn to drink a bottle of vodka? Not in the home, not from the mosque, not from a Muslim school.
“This was because of the influence of non-Muslim students, perhaps mainly through attending community schools. Through not having a consistent set of values, the students are more vulnerable to a range of different influences while still young and they sometimes may get involved in violence; but if they have a consistent background, where the values of the school are in line with the values of the home, then there is more of a chance that they will grow into mature individuals and ultimately slot better into society because they know who they are and what they stand for.’
Multi-culturalism in Britain is highly controversial and has been blamed for many problems, including Islamic extremism.
But such criticism is based on a misunderstanding of what multi-culturalism is, according to Mark Halstead.
“It developed as a practical response to the fact that there is a growing number of people living in western societies who originate from different cultural backgrounds. Is it right to force them to conform in all aspects of their life to Western values and expectations, or do they have a legitimate right to retain their original cultural beliefs and values? Good sound Western liberal teaching says they do have that right, so long as this does not harm the public interest or the rights and freedoms of other individuals.”
Multi-cultural education, says Mark, means that all children should be prepared for life in a multi-cultural society and that people should have the freedom to build in their own cultural values as part of the education they receive.
“Multi-culturalism says that we should respect the beliefs and values of others. We must start with the assumption that people have a right to difference.
“To talk about the death of multi-culturalism means in effect forcing people to conform to ways of life that are not part of their tradition; it is imposing alien values, which I don’t think the state has a right to do. It can confuse the children and cause resentment among the community. That resentment can then become part of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
“So if you are looking at how to deal with extremism, respecting other cultures is the most promising way forward. People are more likely to live together in harmony if their differences are respected rather than if they are forced to conform to a framework of shared values that they don’t really believe in.”
