CAMBRIDGE LETTER
Debates on difference
BILL KIRKMAN
"Amidst all our concern about security, and the real threat of terrorism, we run a grave risk of demonising Muslims".
EVEN 60 years after the end of the Second World War, a visit to the Jewish Museum in Berlin is an extremely moving experience. I was in the museum 10 days ago, for the first time.
Grim reminder
In a sense, there was nothing for someone of my generation to learn; the Holocaust, and the unbelievably inhuman treatment of Jews in Germany by the Nazis, have been well known and well described. Nevertheless, seeing the evidence, seeing the pictures of thousands of corpses, and thousands of men, women and children dying in the concentration camps, brings a grim reminder of the depths to which people can descend in their treatment of fellow human beings.
It is important to recall that the German Jews were German. They were not unknown aliens (though even if they had been, the treatment of them would have been inexcusable). They were citizens contributing fully to their country. Indeed, the museum contains poignant pictures from the 1930s — as the Nazis were tightening their hold — of Jews participating with pride in German sport.
For the Nazis, as we now know with grim historic certainty, the Jews were dehumanised. Every aspect of their treatment demonstrated that. They were not people. They were demonised. They did not matter. They did not count.
Lessons to be learnt
Are there still lessons to be learnt? I pondered the question, and I came — ruefully — to the conclusion that the answer must be yes, and it must be yes even in the United Kingdom.
Amidst all our — understandable, and necessary — concern about security, and the real threat of terrorism, we run a grave risk of demonising Muslims in this country. Since Jack Straw, a senior member of the government, expressed some unease at holding conversations in his local MP's "surgery" with Muslim women wearing a niqab, a torrent of anti-Muslim sentiment has been unleashed. It has been encouraged by the bigotry which is a feature of some of the popular press. The flames of religious, and ethnic, hostility have been fanned by ill-considered words and actions by leading politicians. For example, Ruth Kelly, the Secretary of State for Communities, withdrew funding from the Muslim Council of Great Britain on the ground that it was failing to fight religious extremism. And David Davis, the shadow Home Secretary (Minister for Home Affairs) has accused Muslim leaders of encouraging "voluntary apartheid" by helping to create closed societies "excessively sensitive" to criticism.
Of course rational debate is important. In a multi-cultural society, things which emphasise difference need to be carefully discussed and considered. Careful discussion, however, is made more difficult by attitudes often dictated more by hysteria than by reason. Two columnists, both of Jewish background, recently summed up the problem well. In The Guardian, Jonathan Freedland referred to "an irrational mood, a kind of drumbeat of hysteria in which politicians and media have turned again and again on a single, small minority". In The Times, David Aaronovitch commented that the niqab affair is turning nasty, noting that abuse against Muslims had shot up.
On BBC radio, as I write, Trevor Phillips, head of the Commission for Racial Equality, has warned that the polarised debate over full-face veils could spark race riots in the U.K., adding that the debate "seems to have turned into something really quite ugly".
Encouraging signs
The fact that so much concern has been aroused by the racist hysteria is encouraging. No mainstream politicians, even in their most insensitive and populist mood, are seriously suggesting that Muslim citizens are "non-people".
A real problem remains, however. There are people, including supporters of fringe political groups of the extreme Right, who would gladly purvey the idea that some ethnic and religious groups are not, and should not be, accepted in British society. Anything which feeds, even indirectly, the idea that some of our fellow citizens ought to be treated as less than fully belonging will take us a dangerous step towards the idea that they do not matter, because they are not proper human beings "like us".
Future hopes
We are, I hope, a long way from that, but everyone who exerts any influence on our national life has a duty to ensure that we do not move in the wrong direction. In November the Commission for Racial Equality will host the largest race convention held in Europe, marking the body's 30th anniversary, before it is merged into a new Commission for Equality and Human Rights. How that convention succeeds in leading public opinion will be of great importance.
Bill Kirkman is an Emeritus Fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge, U.K. Email him at: bill.kirkman@gmail.com
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