Egypt & Multiculturalism
February 6, 2011 5 Comments
A guest post by Saadaab Janab.
Recently, discussions of politics and world issues have centred around fears that if given democracy, the Middle East and North African region of the world will become destabilised. Apparently the primitive foreigners who vote in the likes of Hamas and Mahmoud Ahmedinajad will allow their political process to be hijacked by “extremists” or “fundamentalists” – or whatever convenient umbrella term people are using these days. They usually come from the same sneery short-sighted right-wingers that kept Margaret Thatcher in Number 10 for 11 years, elected George W Bush for two terms and are giving the Tea Party a sniff of getting into office. Can you think of two more extremist threats to world peace than Dubya and Sarah Palin? So when we have the likes of Melanie Phillips and Damien Green appearing on Question Time talking about Egypt, they’ll first give some wishy-washy nonsense about how they’re inspired by the uprising, say something patronising about how they worry for the “radicalisation” of the state, follow it up with some more 60 year old crap about Israel’s right to exist (of course, no mention of Palestine’s right to exist), and end with that fantastic buzzword, ‘stability’. The freedoms and democratic rights of the Egyptian people are the most important consideration in this whole affair. Not Israel, not Vodafone and not “American interests”. I’m sickened by anyone that disagrees.
Who else sickens me? How about David ‘dishface’ Cameron? I can’t be the only one insulted by his “Multiculturalism has failed” speech. He must have known – even from Munich – that there was an EDL march on the same day. What was he even doing giving a speech like that in another country?! How are we ever supposed to progress as a society if we don’t have the opportunity to understand each other?
Where I come from, you don’t see any white people, and when I was a kid we’d be fed some pretty unsavoury myths about “other people” who were “different” from us. I’m not just talking about white people, black people, Jews or Hindus, but even other Muslims: if they were Bengali, Pakistani, African, or even other Indians that weren’t Gujarati, they were supposedly inferior to us. Thankfully I’ve had the opportunity to get to know people from all types of backgrounds – and thanks to the diversity at my university I’ve made friends from all corners of the world. I know all these stereotypes and prejudices are complete shit. But not everybody does. There are right-wing dickheads preaching discrimination and even hate in every ethnic community, often hiding behind religion for some false justification.
The only way to fix this and get people to think for themselves is through education. And I don’t mean just getting a degree. Going to university gives young people the chance, possibly for the first time in their lives, to engage properly in intellectual discussion about real issues. So when the government spouts incendiary divisive rhetoric on top of trying to deny young people the opportunity that I’ve had – to learn about the world and discover for myself that everyone is the same – you have to ask why. People like to talk about stuff they or their families do as being typically [insert ethnic background adjective]. But in reality – for most things – you can interchange said nationality for anything and it’ll apply. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched the Sopranos and chuckled at how they’re just like apra waros (our lot), or Karen’s mum in Goodfellas – not the mob stuff of course! I’m sure most of you have seen My Big Fat Greek Wedding…need I say more?
In reality, you can swap Indian, Turkish, Greek (don’t shoot me!), Colombian, Palestinian, Japanese, Armenian, Jewish, Italian (apologies for those I’ve missed out) in the “that’s so…” sentence and it still works. We all have the countless cousins, including the ones we don’t even know exist, the flippant parents, bossy aunts and let’s not forget the never-ending list of ‘uncles’. We’re all the same, whether we know it or not. It doesn’t matter that we have different sounding names or different colour skin; we’re bound by more than what divides us. It doesn’t matter that I’m Muslim and I’m not white – I can still be English at the same time. It doesn’t matter where my parents or your parents are from; it’s not a barrier to separate and isolate us, but an opportunity to celebrate our differences and unite us. The Egyptian Muslims and Christians in Tahrir Square know this. (WARNING: Impossible to view without blubbering!)
I am the same as you, and you are the same as me. I know this because our societies have integrated and live not only side by side but within each other. So when David Cameron tells you multi-culturalism has failed, give him the same response as you do when his government makes scathing cuts in public services, or hikes up the cost of going to college or university. We’ll stand together, and we’ll move forward as a society despite his best efforts to undermine us.
About Soph
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Hi Saadaab,
We are same, I agree, which is, – one could argue – why multiculturalism isn’t valid, because we have universal values, not “multicultural = diverse” values. But that is the confusion spread by politicians, I guess.
Btw, I am from Germany. same. The difference I enjoy really, is when I am seeing the sameness, feel it, through a filter of different expression, different verbal programming, because at the end of the tunnel, I am seeing human being. Love, compassion, passion, connection. This notion of “multiculturalism having failed”,
I want to come back to this metaphor of “end of the tunnel” that I used. This tunnel of perception of difference, which is, what “diversity” is, could be also seen as a joy, a flavour, the joy of diverse form and design. Which is basicly, what makes up attraction and distraction in the end.
different form, different ritual, strategy to meet same need and thirst,. But in all that, I want to emphasize, that the central universal values is common to all beings with two legs and head and arms, and face, that can express emotion:
we all want to be in peace. we all want to feel joy, and be satisfied. So, maybe it is true. Multiculturalism has failed.
Because we are one. culture is no more than a clothing. but our needs are same. Freedom, support, nurturing, love, inspiration, health, peace diversity and all the others. we are same. multiculturalism is just a superficial “strategy” that somehow suggests, we are different, but we have to cope with that.
We are not different. We have the same needs. That is why we can understand each other. And words isn’t the most important channel of communication. But smile, and crying, and all the other body language, and art, music, convey much more of our similarities. Do you agree?
I don’t know, what these politicians mean really, when they say these things. They first play a card “multiculturalism” – put a certain premise to it, as i said, and then a few years later, they say a different thing, “that it has failed”, and what I see in my environment is, there is lots of people with different skin colours, different hair styles, and languages around, coming from all the conflicts around the world, people travelling to and living in different countries, well, sounds like these politicians promoting conflict between different hairstyles.
You understand what I mean? But you know what? I understand the needs, that politicians have, when they say these things. “divide et impera”, that is how the roman called this tactics. “Divide and conquer”. that is a request for power actually. When someone says these things, they feel powerless. They are calling for support from people, who buy into this “cling to my skin colour for power” thing. What do you think?
I read your article with some interest and I have to say that it is well and truly disappointing, lazy and churning out of tired old clichés. Truthfully, did you even bother to read dishface’s speech? Because if you had spent a moment or two away from your self righteous anger and looked at the speech you would have realised that most of what you have hinted at and said in your article was exactly what he was talking about. Just as you have in your article, he talked about communities closing themselves off to ‘others’ and how that needed to be challenged, the real threat of extremist rhetoric and how some in the younger generation suffer an identity crisis and how that needs to be dealt with.
As you describe yourself as a brit and a Muslim perhaps you were a success off the integration policy of past governments but unfortunately others have not and fall into extremist hands and the right ‘honourable’ prime minister was talking about how more needed to be done to ensure the youth of today have a definitive identity. Nowhere in his speech did he profusely announce that multiculturalism had failed, what he did acknowledge was that a) more needs to be done and b) underneath we are not all that different from each other. By a striking coincidence that seems to be the jist of your article also. Perhaps you and the prime minister are not so different after all (hey hey isn’t that what your article was saying).
I totally agree with your piece. But sadly most others don’t.
Even people who are happy to have friends from other cultures would say they’d never marry them. A Greek would rather marry someone of any other culture than a Turkish person, even though culturally, Greeks & Turks probably have the greatest number of similarities.
Also I find it amusing that despite being British, born in England and having lived here all my life, not that long ago one of my teachers told me there was special help given by my uni for “ethnic minorities” like myself. That made me laugh. How the hell am I considered an ethnic minority. I’m a London girl.
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