Clash of Cultures

The Press reflects on the “uncovered meat” remarks by Australia’s top Muslim cleric. Extracts from their editorial titled Clash of cultures:

Underneath, however, lie more troubling questions about the acceptance by minority communities of freedom and Western values.

The row in Australia is only the latest in which the limits of the openness and tolerance espoused by modern Western societies have been tested by attitudes and practices by migrant groups that are incompatible with that openness and tolerance. In Britain and Europe, migrants, particularly from the Middle East, have until recently been encouraged to retain the customs of the places they have left. This multiculturalism, it was believed, was better than the alternative, generally practised in the United States, of promoting assimilation. European governments have belatedly come to realise, however, that one unintended consequence of multiculturalism has been the growth of a generation of whom many are estranged from the society in which they have grown up and susceptible to the preachings of reactionary religious leaders hostile to those societies.

A visible sign of this separation has been the spread of Islamic dress for women, ranging from headscarves to full burqas that cover the entire body and face. This might ordinarily be unexceptionable were it not for the fact that it is not simply an outward expression of a religious choice. It is more than that. As a former British foreign secretary, Jack Straw, has observed, the veil, especially in its full forms, is a deliberately distancing expression of alienation from the rest of society and even hostility towards it. Further, it is also, as was shown by the Sydney preacher’s remarks, something that in many cases is imposed on unwilling women by belligerent and domineering males with antediluvian views on women’s place in society.

These are part of a realisation, which John Howard’s Government in Australia also subscribes to, that there are some basic, non-negotiable values and attitudes within society that all who join it should learn and share. The issue is not the wearing of veil but what it can represent: an intolerant repudiation of the hard-won freedoms and advances that largely define what those societies are.

I point out that this is exactly what Don Brash was talking about a few months ago – the notion that there are some non-negotiable values such as democracy, freedom of speech, a secular state, equal rights for women etc. which a country has, and which should be made clear to those wishing to live here. A failure to do so can only have bad consequences.