TIME TO CHANGE OUR ATTITUDE TO MULTICULTURALISM

Manzoor Moghal has written the First Person column in today's Leicester Mercury. 

 

Time to change our attitude to multiculturalism

Chairman of the Muslim Forum Manzoor Moghal speaks out over David Cameron's recent speech

Our Prime Minister's recent salvo at the Muslim community and multiculturalism at the Munich Security Conference seemed to be somewhat gratuitous and very disingenuous. Multiculturalism as a policy supported by the state for several years has indeed been showing signs of fatigue and failure because of the way previous governments have been imposing their will on the communities through large amounts of funding which was misspent.

The recipients of such funding, who were encouraged to promote multiculturalism, were in turn expected to provide political support in electoral terms for the government. This has been the main weakness of the government's misguided policies on multiculturalism, but that does not mean that multiculturalism should cease to exist in the United Kingdom.

It is an undeniable fact that we are a multicultural society and will continue to be so, as indeed are many other countries in the world. What needs to change is the government's and society's attitude towards it. Our multicultural society should be allowed to evolve naturally through the inevitable interaction of these different cultures in all aspects of our lives in the UK, which would then result in a more cohesive and integrated society. It is the interference from government policies which is a problem, and not multiculturalism.

It  is a well known fact that there are some misguided and very vulnerable Muslim youth in the country who have been and will continue to be beguiled by preachers of hate against the West. Some of these elements have killed innocent citizens through their violence and caused huge damage, but that does not mean that the whole community should be directly or indirectly maligned – especially at a time when the likes of the English Degfence League are on a warpath against Islam and Muslims simply because they hate them through their ignorance and racism.

Our intelligence and security services seem to have brought extremist elements under control through their vigilance, and one would like to hope that these extremists are prevented from committing any further acts of violence. However, whilst combating violent extremism and endeavouring to abate extremism from misguided Muslim youth, the government should also feel obliged to review our foreign policies towards Muslim countries, which have been a very significant contributory factor in the radicalisation of Muslim youth both in Britain and in other parts of the world.

Simply to suggest that the illegal war against Iraq and the offensive against Afghanistan were in the past and therefore we should learn to move on, as suggested by Baroness Warsi at her lecture at the Univesity of Leicester, is naïve and supercilious. The alarming drift in Britain and Europe to right-wing politics should be a matter of great concern for all those who espouse democracy, liberty and equality. This alarming trend needs to be checked, and we need people of political maturity to do so.