It was February 1989. I was in Bradford, a few weeks after the demonstration
on which a copy of Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses had been burnt.
I had gone there to interview Sher Azam, president of the Bradford Council
of Mosques, and the man who had torched the book. Waiting in the drab building
that housed the Bradford Council of Mosques, I heard a familiar voice.
'Hello Kenan, what are you doing here?'
It was Hassan, a friend from London, whom I had not seen for a couple of years.
'Good to see you Hassan. I'm doing some interviews about Rushdie', I said.
'What are you doing in this God-forsaken place?'
' Trying to make it less God forsaken', said Hassan. 'I've been up here a
few months, helping in the campaign to silence the blasphemer.'
'You what?'
'No need to look so shocked. I've had it with the white left. I'd lost my
sense of who I am and where I came from. So I came back to Bradford to rediscover
it. We need to defend our dignity as Muslims, to defend our values and beliefs,
and not allow anyone - racist or Rushdie - to trample over them.'
I was astonished. The Hassan I knew in London had been a member of the Socialist
Workers party (as I had been for a while). Apart from Trotskyism his other
indulgences were sex, Southern Comfort and watching Arsenal. We had marched
together, chucked bricks together at the National Front, been arrested together.
I had never detected a religious bone in his body. But here he was in Bradford,
an errand boy to the mullahs, inspired by book-burners.
Today 'radical' in an Islamic context means someone who espouses a fundamentalist
theology. Twenty years ago it meant the opposite: a secularist who challenged
the power of the mosques within Muslim communities. The expunging of that
radical secularist tradition has played an important part in the rise of Islamic
militancy in this country. Hassan embodied this mutation from left-wing activist
to Islamic militant. And he was not alone. A surprising number of anti-Rushdie
demonstrators were young. Few were religious, let alone fundamentalist. Many
did not attend mosque, only a handful could recite the Koran, and most flouted
traditional Muslim taboos on sex and drink. They felt resentful about the
treatment of Muslims, disenchanted by leftwing politics and were looking for
new ways of expressing their disaffection. While many began as secularists,
they formed the pool of discontents into which radical Islamic organisations
dipped. It was in the late 1980s and early 1990s that militant Islamic groups
like Hizb-ut-Tahrir began organising in this country, particularly on campuses.
Like Hassan, many of their recruits came from the ranks of former leftwing
activists.
The Rushdie affair was a turning point in the relationship between British
society and its Muslim communities. It was the moment that Islamic militancy
announced itself as a major political issue. It was also the moment that Britain
realised it was facing a new kind of social conflict. From the Grunwick dispute
in 1977 to the Broadwater Farm riot in 1986, blacks and Asians had often been
involved in bitter conflicts with authority. But these were political issues,
or issues of law and order. The Rushdie affair was the first major cultural
conflict, and one that seemed to question the very possibility of social integration.
For me personally, the Rushdie affair was a turning point in another way.
It made me question my own relationship to the left and to the antiracist
movement. The transformation of Hassan mirrored a wider transformation that
was taking place on the left itself, a transformation from a belief in secular
universalism to the defence of ethnic particularism and group rights. Once
the left had been a champion of Enlightenment rationalism and humanism. It
had believed in the ideas of a common humanity and universal rights, argued
that everyone should be treated equally despite their racial, ethnic, religious
or cultural differences and looked to social progress as a means of overcoming
cultural differences. Today many on the left decry the Enlightenment as a
Eurocentric project. They promote the idea of multiculturalism and of group
rights, argue that different people should be treated differently because
of their racial, ethnic, religious and cultural differences and worry that
social progress is undermining cultural authenticity. 'You have to treat people
differently to treat them equally', Lee Jasper, race adviser to London Mayor
Ken Livingstone told me when I interviewed him for a Channel 4 documentary.
Or as Labour MP Keith Vaz has put it, 'Britishness cannot be imposed on people
of different races, cultures and religions.'
In the aftermath of Rushdie, I came to realise that as important as challenging
racism was tackling this 'politics of difference'. A decade and a half later,
as we debate how British Muslims could turn into savage terrorists, understanding
that retreat from secular universalism is as important as ever.
The roots of the politics of difference can be found in the new forms of radicalism
that emerged in the 1960s. Traditionally even revolutionaries who were hostile
to capitalism saw themselves as standing in the Western intellectual tradition.
‘I denounce European colonialism’, CLR James once wrote, ‘But
I respect the learning and profound discoveries of western civilisation’.
James was one the great radicals of the 20th century, an anti-imperialist,
a superb historian of black struggles, a Marxist who remained one even when
it was no longer fashionable to be so. Today , though, many on the left would
dismiss James' defence of 'Western civilisation' as insufferably Eurocentric,
even racist. To be radical has come to mean the rejection of all that is 'Western'
in the name of marginality or difference. The modernist project of pursuing
a rational, scientific understanding of the world - a project that James unashamedly
championed - is now widely decried as a dangerous fantasy that must be resisted.
The pursuit of difference has always been at the heart of the racist agenda.
It was always conservatives who decried reason and sought refuge in what Edmund
Burke called 'wholesome prejudice'. Reactionaries have long sought to block
the advance of science and modernity in the name of tradition. So how did
the left end up embracing difference, decrying reason, and defending tradition
against modernity, all in the name of multiculturalism?
The postwar left was shaped by the experience of Nazism, the failures of old-style
class politics and the emergence of new struggles such as the civil rights
movement and feminism. For Marxists such as CLR James, their universalism
was rooted in their class politics. James believed in a universally valid
notion of progress. The key to emancipation, he argued, was the same everywhere.
The working class was the 'universal class' because it would help bring about
such emancipation. But from the Soviet Union, where the workers' state had
turned into a tyranny, to the West where, in the words of historian H Stuart
Hughes, the proletariat seemed to prefer 'creature comforts to heroism and
kitsch to the elevation of its intellect', the class that Engels had called
the 'heirs of classical philosophy' was not behaving in the manner that radicals
expected of it. In the postwar years, the radical intelligentsia's relationship
to the working class was, as Terry Eagleton once observed, a bit like the
Virgin Mary's to the baby Jesus, reverently acknowledging his divinity but
harbouring no illusions after cleaning up his shit.
Disenchantment set in not just with class politics but with the very ideas
of Enlightenment rationality and progress. Postwar radicals had asked why
it was that Germany, a nation with deep roots in the Enlightenment, should
succumb so completely to Nazism. The answer seemed to be that it was the logic
of Enlightenment rationalism itself that gave rise to such barbarism. As Thedor
Adorno and Max Horkheimer, founders of the Frankfurt school, put it in their
seminal work, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 'Enlightenment is totalitarian'.
Or as Herbert Marcuse, one of the Marxist gurus of the 1960s student revolt,
explained: 'Concentration camps, mass exterminations, world wars and atom
bombs are no "relapse into barbarism" but the unrepressed implementation
of the achievements of modern science, technology and domination.'
'Testifying at the trial against barbarism', the French philosopher Alain
Finkielkraut's memorably observed, postwar intellectuals came to 'identify
the Enlightenment with the defence and not with the prosecution'. The roots
of barbarism, many argued, lay in Western arrogance and the roots of Western
arrogance lay in an unquestioning belief in the superiority of Enlightenment
rationalism and universalism. Antiracism, therefore, came to be defined as
treating all peoples and all cultures with equal respect, and seeing none
as backward, primitive, irrational. Radicals, Finkielkraut suggests, came
to believe that 'the so-called civilised ones should come down from our imaginary
heights and recognise with humble clarity that we were only another kind of
native'. Increasingly relativism came to be a defining feature of postwar
radicalism.
Both these themes - disenchantment with class politics and a hostility to
Enlightenment rationalism - were at the heart of the New Left that emerged
in the 1960s. The New Left was a loose association of groups and individuals
that was self-consciously opposed to the 'old left' of the communist parties
and trade unions. Where the old left looked to the working class as the agency
of change, the New Left found new, surrogate proletariats in the so-called
New Social Movements - third world liberation movements, civil rights organisations,
feminist groups, campaigns for gay rights, and the peace movement. Where the
old left talked of class and sought to raise class consciousness, the New
Left talked of culture and sought to strengthen cultural identity. Culture
was the defining feature of groups and the means by which one group differentiated
itself from another. Every group, whether Cuban peasants, black Americans
or women, had a specific culture, rooted in its particular history and experiences.
That culture gave shape to an individual's identity. For an individual identity
to be authentic, collective identity must be too. That required the group
to be true to its own culture, to pursue faithfully the traditions that mark
out that culture as unique and rebuff the advances of modernity and of other
cultures.
These ideas echo the late 18th-century Romantic backlash against the Enlightenment.
Whereas Enlightenment philosophes saw progress as civilisation overcoming
the resistance of traditional cultures with their irrational prejudices and
outmoded institutions, for the romantics the steamroller of progress was precisely
what they feared. For Johann Gottfried Herder, the 18th-century German philosopher
who best articulated the Romantic notion of culture, each people or volk
was unique and this uniqueness was expressed through its volksgeist
- the unchanging spirit of a people refined through history. Rejecting the
Enlightenment belief that the same institutions and forms of governance would
promote human flourishing in all societies, Herder held that the values of
different cultures were incommensurate but equally valid. Every culture was
authentic in its own terms, each adapted to its local environment.
The Romantic idea of culture flowered in the 1960s initially through the idea
of self-organisation, a concept that emerged from the struggle for black rights
in the US. In the 1960s, black America was squeezed between an intensely racist
society, on one hand, and, on the other, a left largely indifferent to its
plight. Many activists accused the left of indifference to their cause and
argued that blacks must take matters into their own hands. They ceded from
integrated civil rights organisations and set up separate black groups. Black
self-organisation soon gave way to the idea of black identity. Blacks had
to organise separately not as a political strategy but as a cultural necessity.
'In Africa they speak of Negritude', wrote black power activist Julius Lester.
'It is the recognition of those things uniquely ours which separate ourselves
from the white man.'
Soon, not just blacks, but everyone had an identity that was uniquely theirs
and that separated them not just from the white man, but from every other
kind of man and from men in general. Using the template established by black
power activists, Native Americans, Puerto Ricans, Chicanos, Chinese Americans,
not to mention a myriad of white ethnics all set up their separate cultural
organisations. Women and gays became surrogate ethnics, each with their own
particular cultures, identities and ways of thinking. 'The demand is not for
inclusion within the fold of "universal humankind" on the basis
of shared human attributes; nor is it for respect "in spite of one's
differences"', wrote feminist and sociologist Sonia Krups. 'Rather, what
is demanded is respect for oneself as different.'
'The very language of commonality', American cultural critic Todd Gittlin
observes, 'came to be perceived by the new movements as a colonialist smothering
- an ideology to rationalise white dominance'. The irony is that the politics
of identity itself drew on the most reactionary of ideas - the claim that
one's political beliefs and ways of thinking should be derived from the fact
of one's birth, sex or ethnic origins.
Social and political developments over the next two decades helped entrench
such ideas. The weakening of both social democratic and Stalinist parties,
the demise of Third World national liberation movements and the transformation
of many third world countries into tyrannies and, finally, the end of the
Cold War all added to the belief that radical social transformation was a
chimera. The New Social Movements themselves had largely disintegrated by
the 1990s. All that was left was the sense of difference. Social solidarity
became increasingly defined not in political terms - as collective action
in pursuit of certain political ideals - but in terms of ethnicity or culture.
'Stripped of a radical idiom', the American critic Russell Jacoby writes,
'robbed of a utopian hope, liberals and leftists retreat in the name of progress
to celebrate diversity. With few ideas on how a future should be shaped, they
celebrate all ideas.' Multiculturalism, Jacoby concludes, 'has become... the
ideology of an era without ideology'. What began in the 1960s as a way of
organising against oppression had ended up by the nineties as way of rationalising
the left's impotence. Romanticism was born in the late 18th century out of
the fear of the radical change unleashed by the Enlightenment and the French
revolution and out of the desire for the safe anchor of ancient traditions.
In the late 20th century, it was the fading of the possibilities of social
transformation that led many radicals, albeit unwittingly, back to a Romantic
view of the world.
It is against this background that we must understand the transformation of
someone like Hassan from leftwing activist to Islamic militant. In Britain
the black and Asian population is smaller than in the US, and its political
and economic clout less significant. The attempts at self-organisation have
been much weaker, while the authority of both the moderate and extreme left
in Britain has been much greater. As a result, until the 1980s, the influence
of identity politics remained weak.
First generation black and Asian immigrants were concerned less about preserving
cultural differences than about fighting for political equality. They recognised
that at the heart of that fight were shared values and aspirations between
blacks and whites, not an articulation of unbridgeable differences. Throughout
the 1960s and 1970s, three big issues dominated the struggle for political
equality: opposition to discriminatory immigration controls; the fight against
racist attacks; and the issue of police brutality. These struggles radicalised
a new generation of black and Asian activists and came to a climax in the
inner city riots of the late 1970s and early 1980s.
In April 1976, 24 people were arrested in pitched battles in the Manningham
area of Bradford, as Asian youths confronted a National Front march and fought
police protecting it. It was seen as the blooding of a new movement. The following
year the Asian Youth Movement was born. Built on the model of self-organisation,
the AYM was nevertheless more outward looking, working closely with other
anti-racist and radical organisations. AYM activists did not distinguish themselves
as Muslim, Hindu or Sikh; indeed many did not even see themselves as specifically
Asian, preferring to call themselves 'black' which they viewed as an all-inclusive
term for non-white immigrants. They challenged not just racism but also many
traditional values too, particularly within the Muslim community, helping
establish an alternative leadership that confronted traditionalists on issues
such as the role of women and the dominance of the mosque.
The next few years brought further conflict between Asian youth and the police,
culminating in the trial of the Bradford 12 in 1982. Twelve young Asians faced
conspiracy charges for making petrol bombs to use against racists. They argued
they were acting in self-defence - and won.
Faced with this growing militancy, Bradford council drew up a new antiracist
strategy, based on a template pioneered by Ken Livingstone's Greater London
Council. It established race relations units drew up equal opportunities policies,
and dispensed millions of pounds in grants to black and Asian community organisations.
Bradford's 12-point race relations plan declared that every section of the
'multiracial, multicultural city' had 'an equal right to maintain its own
identity, culture, language, religion and customs'. At the heart of this multicultural
strategy was a redefinition of racism built on the insights of identity politics.
Racism now meant not simply the denial of equal rights but the denial of the
right to be different. Black and Asian people, many argued, should not be
forced to accept British values, or to adopt a British identity. Rather different
peoples should have the right to express their identities, explore their own
histories, formulate their own values, pursue their own lifestyles. Through
this process the politics of difference became institutionalised
.
Multiculturalism transformed the character of antiracism. By the mid-1980s
the focus of antiracist protest in Bradford had shifted from political issues,
such as policing and immigration, to religious and cultural issues: a demand
for Muslim schools and for separate education for girls, a campaign for halal
meat to be served at school, and, most explosively, the confrontation over
the publication of The Satanic Verses. Political struggles unite
across ethnic or cultural divisions; cultural struggles inevitably fragment.
As different groups began asserting their particular identities ever more
fiercely, so the shift from the political to the cultural arena helped to
create a more tribal city. Secular Muslims were regarded as betraying their
culture (they belonged to the 'white left') while radical Islam became not
just more acceptable but, to many, more authentic.
This process was strengthened by a new relationship between the local council
and the local mosques. In 1981, the council helped set up and fund the Bradford
Council of Mosques and looked to it as a voice of the community. This helped
marginalise secular radicals - the Asian Youth Movement eventually broke up
- and allowed religious leaders to reassert their power. As the secular tradition
was squeezed out, the only place offering shelter for disaffected youth was
militant Islam.
Multiculturalism did not create militant Islam, but it helped create a space
for it within British Muslim communities that had not existed before. It fostered
a more tribal nation, undermined progressive trends within the Muslim communities
and strengthened the hand of conservative religious leaders - all in the name
of antiracism. It is true that since 9/11. and particularly since 7/7 there
has been growing questioning of the consequences of multiculturalism. From
former Home Secretary David Blunkett to CRE chief Trevor Phillips many have
woken up to the fragmenting character of pluralism and have talked of the
need to reassert common values. Yet the fundamental tenets of the politics
of difference remain largely unquestioned. The idea that society consists
of a variety of distinct cultures, that all these cultures should be respected
and preserved and that society should be organised to meet the distinct needs
of different cultures - these continued to be regarded as the hallmarks of
a progressive, antiracist outlook. The lesson of the past two decades, however,
is this: a left that espouses multiculturalism makes itself redundant. In
a world of narrow, competing interest groups there is little room for a progressive
vision. Back in the 1980s, my old friend Hassan may well have taken to militant
Islam because of his disenchantment with the left. But it was the disenchantment
of the left with its own secular, universalist traditions that helped ease
his path to the mosque - and the path of many others since.