New Jersey Jewish News
Commentary
An ‘open’ Europe: Too much of a good thing?
The Board of Deputies of British Jews recently
joined leaders of other religious communities in declaring that religious education should teach respect for and sensitivity to others in order to understand “how to live in a multicultural society.” Prime Minister Tony Blair, in his widely reported “clash about civilizations” foreign policy lecture on March 21, echoed the sentiment: Britons “believe in religious tolerance, openness to others, to democracy, liberty and human rights administered by secular courts,” he said.
Words like these are important, but in the current search for a truly open and more secure society they are clearly not enough.
In a conversation I had in March at Oxford University with Glenda Abramson, I learned a great deal about the U.K.’s version of the multicultural society. “The United Kingdom believes its Jews represent a model of citizenship,” said Abramson, Oxford’s Cowley Lecturer in Post-Biblical Hebrew. “They admire the way Jews manage to play a constructive role in the country’s public life and still remain a distinctive community.” She said that the Brits want to see Muslims adopt the same posture. But she noted that when Jews appear “too strong,” the grave limits to this heralded paradigm and what it implies about the distinctiveness of its constituent cultures come into focus. Israel is the obvious example, which helps to explain why mainstream society in the U.K. is so consistently critical of the Jewish state.
Discomfort with the “too strong” Jew could also be seen in a March 19 Sunday Times article about Lord Michael Levy, Blair’s influential political and financial broker. The article said Blair is “in thrall to [this] rich man” who is “a pillar of British Judaism and a leading international Zionist.” The article also made much of Levy’s Jewishness in his alleged role in the current loans-for-peerages scandal — the practice of selling political offices; its focus on Levy’s “ruthless” financial deals to explain his own “unlikely rise” and his “four million pound sterling hacienda-style north London villa” seemed to invoke old anti-Jewish canards.
Strangely, the London Jewish Chronicle’s Alex Brummer affirmed the Times’ implicit conclusion in his March 24 column on the subject. Jews who are active in public life, he remarked, “should behave with the maximum of rectitude.”
Surely, Muslims appear “too strong” in British society, as elsewhere in the West. Noting with breathless consternation that Muslims now number 15 million to 20 million on the Continent, and wondering if it’s really true that Muslims plan to build a mosque in London that will hold 40,000 worshipers, U.K. citizens commonly feel inundated by what seems like an inexorable historical tide. The fact that Europe became home for so many Muslims in just three decades exacerbates these worries. Multiculturalism demands an openness, but for a growing number of British citizens it should occur surely within progressively stricter limits.
Of course, many argue that Muslims would mutate British and European society unless restrictions are imposed, an argument deployed against Jews as well. But if the U.K. wishes to become a multicultural society, it will have to consider the advantages of a more open society that includes wider and deeper channels to allow for the greater flow of free expression.
Abramson believes that, indeed, Muslims may have something valuable to offer. She observes that in their current “unstable” condition in the West, Muslims exist within their own communities, wary about colliding with modernity. Complementing this is a commendable determination, in her view, to “speak out” about their beliefs.
At this point of the conversation I start imagining a can of worms. But free speech, like democracy generally, would never work if it were absolute. Elections, alone, cannot guarantee accountability unless society remains vigilant, and the same principle holds for free speech. Unfettered expression, like self-government, is necessary to a free society but becomes toxic when it violates the premise of its existence and becomes abusive.
In his Jewish Chronicle commentary on the notorious Danish cartoons, Geoffrey Alderman wrote that “religious leaders of Islam [must] come to terms with the rights of others to criticize” any aspect of the faith they proclaim. It is difficult, however, to agree with him — as much as I instinctively would like to — unless Jews and, for that matter, everyone else are also largely prepared for responsible criticism and even for self-criticism. Our political discourse is too polarized for that right now. But imagine the multicultural society the Brits could really achieve if Jews and Muslims and Christians were open not only to criticism but to new ideas.
The argument for a European Islam is one example. I heard Geneva-based author Tariq Ramadan speak on this subject at Oxford the week before my meeting with Professor Abramson. His call for a “European Islam” draws considerable attention and prodigious skepticism, if not ire, from both Arab Muslims and Western critics, including many Jews. But though his views may be sometimes objectionable, his conviction that religion, any religion, should inform public discourse — just as Muslims, he feels, must come to know the language of the country they live in — is an appealing notion for Jews who already recognize, but rarely openly affirm — at least in the U.K. — the defining influence of their Judaism and Jewishness in public life.
If it is to emerge into a truly open, free society, Great Britain would be a lot better off once its citizens speak up more often, recognizing that, within a framework of common understanding and respect, it is impossible to be too strong.
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