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rfmcdonaldThe ever-interesting site Butterflies and Wheels links today to Andrew coates' "In Defense of Militant Secularism", which examines why the French population generally and the French left specifically opposes the official recognition of an anachronistic Muslim specificity that would oppress French Muslims, and why the British left is willing to do the contrary.
Why are Britain and France so different? Coates identifies three key differences.
The central problem with the French republic, as it is currently constituted, is that it does a very poor job of recognizing differences, that it is a fundamentally homogenizing entity. By the same token, one of the benefits of the French republic is that--officially, at least--it does not distinguish between its citizens on the basis of native language or gender or religion, that all are equal, and that intermediate groups don't have the right to limit the freedom of the people who are affiliated with them. That the various French republics have taken a long time to realize the full implications of the theory of French republicanism, and that certain implications remain to be fully realized and implemented, doesn't weaken the basic principles of universal human rights which define (and, to a superficial extent, are defined) by French republicanism.
I like multiculturalism, mind, quite a bit. My ideal model for a mulitethnic society would combine the principles of French republicanism as the foundations and the acceptance of the Other (rather more precisely, members of groups typically stigmatized as belonging to the Other) as a legitimate participant in society that is inherent in multiculturalism. (I'd like to think that Canada has come closest to realizing my ideals, but I'm hardly an objective observer.) Critics of French republicanism are correct in that, taken too far, it can be unnecessarily alienating. Multiculturalism can be taken too far, too: The well-publicized errors of Rohan Jayasekera, who bought completely into the Orientalist myth of the passive Muslim woman when he unfairly and without justification criticized the Netherlands' Ayaan Hirsi Ali as a weak woman dominated by the slaughtered Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, are only some of the less harmful errors that can be produced by well-meaning people who don't understand the implications of a multiculturalism unmoored from its roots to become pure moral relativism.
The immediate cause of this polemic is the progressive decision of an otherwise right-wing French government to ban the veil (le voile), and other divisive badges of faith from the public educational sphere. This was supported by the immense majority of the French left. Even most of those opposed to a formal interdiction admitted "the veil is an oppression" (that is the position of the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire). Nearly all sides have pointed to the simple fact that men, under dominant interpretations of the Qur’an, are not required to cover their hair, and that women are obliged to do so because it is held that the sight of female coiffure will cause sexual feelings. Members of the North-African feminist movement, Ni Putes Ni Soumises, were at the forefront of the battle against the veil. Fadela Amara has declared that, whilst a believer, she sees the veil as "a tool of oppression, of alienation, of discrimination, an instrument of power by men over women".4 These brave feminist voices have aroused the violent hostility of the French Islamicists, the tellingly named Frères musulmans (Muslim Brotherhood). Only a tiny minority of the French left, inspired by the British Socialist Workers Party, or post-modernist relativism, defended the absolute right to be oppressed.
Why are Britain and France so different? Coates identifies three key differences.
The first derives from straightforward British imperialism. That is the practice of separating "communities" on religious ground. Under the Indian Raj different religious groups had the right to distinct "personal law". That is that the profoundly unequal relations between men and women under Hindu and Islamic "law" (with the notable contradiction of Sikh rules) were eternalised in jurisprudence. At present in Canada there are serious attempts to re-establish this state of affairs. "Community leaders" (not elected but given by their status as religious figures) are recognised by the state as those who determine "their" communities’ rules.
[. . .]
Secondly, there is the adoption of the American model of "multi-culturalism". This, as Historical Materialism (Vol.11 No.4, 2003) details, is a model of social conflict in which different ethnic groups assert their "rights". The very particular conditions of American class formation (in which the heritage of slavery, different waves of immigration, the existence of a colour-based privileged layer in the working class, and an immensely powerful bourgeoisie have combined) are regarded as universal. In place of unified class conflicts, we have religious and cultural organisations from the different class and ethnic fractions as permanent lobbies. Each is held to be separate but equal. Those British groups, such as Socialist Action, which derive their politics from America, are quite open about this. Class unity is dropped in favour of the "right to be different". Lee Jasper, a key adviser of Ken Livingstone, has gone so far as to advocate racially segregated schools in the name of ... anti-racism!
Thirdly, this last response indicates another basis for Islamophilia. The French Nouvelle Droite (New Right) may seem an unlikely home for this. Anglophone readers are not generally familiar with the works of Alain de Benoist but at his core are some familiar themes. That is "neo-paganism", the right to "difference" or "identity", and the transposition of genetic racialism to cultural distinctiveness. Hostile to an Islamic presence in Europe, the Nouvelle Droite has enjoyed warm relations with Political Islam in what are considered "Arab" countries.5 Following an identical relativism anglophones claim that everyone has the right to his/her cultural practices, and that there are no universal rights. Furthermore it is held that for "Europeans" to criticise Islam is inherently racist. The British defenders of the Qur’an are not very open about the affinity between their ideas and the heirs of Maurras. But there is an American point at which the extreme right culturalists such as Alain de Benoist and the remnants of the post-modern New Left overtly meet, and that place is called Telos.
The central problem with the French republic, as it is currently constituted, is that it does a very poor job of recognizing differences, that it is a fundamentally homogenizing entity. By the same token, one of the benefits of the French republic is that--officially, at least--it does not distinguish between its citizens on the basis of native language or gender or religion, that all are equal, and that intermediate groups don't have the right to limit the freedom of the people who are affiliated with them. That the various French republics have taken a long time to realize the full implications of the theory of French republicanism, and that certain implications remain to be fully realized and implemented, doesn't weaken the basic principles of universal human rights which define (and, to a superficial extent, are defined) by French republicanism.
I like multiculturalism, mind, quite a bit. My ideal model for a mulitethnic society would combine the principles of French republicanism as the foundations and the acceptance of the Other (rather more precisely, members of groups typically stigmatized as belonging to the Other) as a legitimate participant in society that is inherent in multiculturalism. (I'd like to think that Canada has come closest to realizing my ideals, but I'm hardly an objective observer.) Critics of French republicanism are correct in that, taken too far, it can be unnecessarily alienating. Multiculturalism can be taken too far, too: The well-publicized errors of Rohan Jayasekera, who bought completely into the Orientalist myth of the passive Muslim woman when he unfairly and without justification criticized the Netherlands' Ayaan Hirsi Ali as a weak woman dominated by the slaughtered Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, are only some of the less harmful errors that can be produced by well-meaning people who don't understand the implications of a multiculturalism unmoored from its roots to become pure moral relativism.
