ninme

Times Online - Multiculturalism has fanned the flames of Islamic extremism, by Kenan Malik

Muslims have been in Britain in large numbers since the 1950s. Only recently has fanaticism taken hold. The first generation of immigrants faced greater hardships and more intense racism than today’s Muslims do. Yet most thought of themselves as British and were proud to be here.

While that first generation often put up with racism, the second generation — my generation — challenged it head on, often leading to fierce confrontations with the police and other authorities. But however fierce those confrontations, we recognised that to fight racism we needed to find a common set of values, hopes and aspirations that united whites and non-whites, Muslims and non- Muslims, and not to separate ourselves from the rest of society.

It has been only over the past decade that radical Islam has found a hearing in Britain. Why? Partly because, in this post-ideological age, the idea that we can change society through politics has taken a battering. And partly because the idea that we should aspire to a common identity and a set of values has been eroded in the name of multiculturalism….

That old racist notion of identity has thankfully crumbled. But nothing new has come to replace it. The very notion of creating common values has been abandoned except at a most minimal level. Britishness has come to be defined simply as a toleration of difference. The politics of ideology has given way to the politics of identity, creating a more fragmented Britain, and one where many groups assert their identity through a sense of victimhood and grievance.

No time to comment, except for perhaps a “Hear! Hear!” I mean, the “British” with the empire and all that, did a lot of good things (parliamentarian governments, rule of law, personal property rights, all the sort of thing that made Anglosphere countries work and places like Zimbabwe previous to Bob Mugabe) but because of all the bad things, after the bad things had been fixed, people turned away so strongly from what was that they can’t see how helpful it could be if they did it again but learning from their mistakes.

Plus, I guess, there are “multi” cultures that manage to keep their cultures without blowing things up, so it’s only a few cultures that can’t play by the other cultures’ rules. So, something’s very wrong.