Sharia in multicultural Britain

Jul 29, 2019 by

by Ralph Grillo, MercatorNet:

Tracing the history of an often heated debate.

Since 2001 the governance of the UK as a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural society has seemed increasingly problematic, with principles which underpinned that governance from the 1960s widely questioned. This was partly the outcome of changes in the populations with which governments, national and local, had to deal; in the 1950s immigrants from the Caribbean; in the 1960s and 1970s, from South Asia, with distinctive cultures and languages; in the 1990s and 2000s economic migrants from Eastern Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa, and refugees from all over the world.

Cities like London became “superdiverse”, creating many problems for governance. At the same time, the lives of the descendants of the earlier waves of immigrants, born and brought up in Britain, underwent profound change.

These developments are reflected in the way diversity in Britain has been conceptualised. If in the 1950s-60s the otherness of minorities of South Asian background was represented through the language of “race” or “colour” (as in “race relations”), and in the 1970s-80s through “ethnicity” and “culture”, in the 1990s and beyond “religion” became increasingly dominant. In a complex dialectical relationship with the reality of everyday lives, government policy emphasised “faith” as a mode of recognising and working with minorities.

“Faith”, however, was double-edged, especially when it meant “Islam”, often seen as an aggressive, conservative force, indeed an existential threat, with values at odds with liberal secular democracy. After 2001, it was Islam, and the radicalisation of Muslim youth, that came to preoccupy the governance of others, feeding growing misgivings about the extent and nature of diversity, and often open hostility towards multiculturalism.

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