A Problematic Defence of Britishness

by ash sharma 3 Mar '07. Comment (1) | Print
the Commons: Politics

‘Living Apart Together: British Muslims and the Paradox of
Multiculturalism’ [PDF file] - published by Policy Exchange

Has anyone read this recent report? It was quite high profile in the media. It might be useful to discuss further given that it represents one clearly articulated attempt to critique any form of multiculturalism and ‘politics of identity’ and defends some notion of shared ‘Britishness’- an increasingly problematic trend.

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1 Comment so far

  1. comment #1 sara wajid (2) on 24 Apr 07 at 11:10 am

    Dodgy. Couldn’t understand why M Mirza was blaming multi-culturalist policies at local gov level for the rise of extreme politica Islamic identity. Just doesn’t add up - those policies are far too recent and took a relatively superficial hold on the culture, far too superficial to affect identity so deeply. I went to school with Omar Sheikh, now jailed for killing of daniel pearl, and if anything ‘over-radicalised’ him - it was probably naked 1980s essex racism not a surfeit of multi-culturalism encouraging him to think of himself as Muslimfirst and British second. Some good points in it about the broader context of the drift of Brit identity but these anti-mc policy bits were plain wrong-headed. Bit dangerous.

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