[wvns] The collapse of tolerance
The collapse of tolerance
Charles Taylor
September 17, 2007 9:00 AM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/charles_taylor/2007/09/the_collapse_of_tolerance.html
"Multiculturalism" has become a suspect term almost everywhere in the
world nowadays, and particularly in Europe. People say things like: "I
used to be for openness and toleration of difference, but now I see
where it's leading." But where is it leading?
Almost every reason for toleration's apparent fall into disrepute
concerns Islam. Even simple requests, like that of schoolgirls to wear
headscarves in class, are suddenly freighted with immense political
significance and treated as issues that must be resolved at the
highest level of government. People - and their elected leaders as
well - often have the feeling that such seemingly innocent proposals
are in fact part of an ominous "hidden agenda".
That agenda is "Islam", which many imagine to include all the terrible
things that we can read about in the press every day: the stoning of
adulterous women under sharia law in northern Nigeria, the amputation
of thieves' hands in Saudi Arabia, honour killings of women who refuse
arranged marriages in Pakistan (or even northern English cities like
Bradford and Manchester), the willingness to justify suicide bombings.
If you reply that the girls who want to wear headscarves to school
aren't living in Nigeria or Saudi Arabia, and almost certainly don't
share the extreme Wahhabi views found in those countries, you will be
met with a look of almost indulgent pity, a look of the type reserved
for the terminally naive. Or you will be told stories about how Saudi
trained imams are twisting the girls' arms, turning them into
unwilling stalking-horses for "Islam."
Indeed, it is virtually impossible nowadays to talk about headscarves
as an issue in its own right. All the sociological evidence about the
girls' motives, which are in fact very varied, is swept aside as
irrelevant. All that matters is the threat posed by Islam.
This is a classic example of what I call "block thinking," which seems
to have made huge strides in Europe in recent years. John Bowen's
recent book Why the French Don't Like Headscarves documents this shift.
Block thinking fuses a varied reality into one indissoluble unity, and
in two ways. First, different manifestations of Islamic piety or
culture are seen as alternative ways of expressing the same core
meaning. Second, all Muslims are then seen as endorsing these core
meanings. The possibility that a girl wearing a headscarf might in
fact be rebelling against her parents and their kind of Islam, and
that others might be deeply pious while being utterly revolted by
gender discrimination or violence, is lost from view.
Block thinking is an age-old phenomenon, and we all do it to some
degree. But, while in another age we might have been indulgent about
its consequences, today it has explosive potential, because people who
think in this manner are prime recruits for seeing the world in terms
of Samuel Huntington's theory of the "clash of civilisations."
What's worse, the way such people then act tends to edge us closer to
Huntington's nightmare scenario. By treating all the varied segments
of Islam as nothing more than parts of a unified threat to the west,
they make it harder for Muslims to stand out and criticise their own
block thinkers - people like Osama bin Laden, who are building their
own unified enemy, composed of "Christians and Jews".
Block thinkers on each side give aid and comfort to block thinkers on
the other side, and with each exchange they pull us closer toward an
abyss. So how can we stop this madness?
Block thought persists in part because its critics on each side are
unknown to those on the other side. Indeed, how many times does a
critic of European block thought meet this kind of response: "But
where are the Muslims who are criticising extremist Islam?"
Of course, one isn't likely to meet them in the drawing rooms of Paris
journalists or the wider European professional political class. But
explaining that to block thinkers will never have the impact of a real
connection to the multi-faceted discourse that is actually taking
place on the other side.
The real question, then, is this: where are the crossover figures who
can provide that urgently needed connection?
Charles Taylor is one of the co-president of the Taylor-Bouchard
commission on Reasonable Accommodation in Quebec.
http://www.accommodements.qc.ca/index-en.html
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