The best we can hope for is tolerance

17 February 2007

John Gray, Britain’s foremost political philosopher, says that Ruth Kelly’s new campaign against Islamic extremism is doomed because it exaggerates the scope for cohesion in our fragmented modern world

These early modern thinkers have more to offer than the doctrinaire liberals and secular fundamentalists who make so much noise today. The lesson they teach us, I believe, is that trying to curb differences in belief and lifestyle is a recipe for chronic conflict. While it may seem that social cohesion and the pursuit of peace go together, the insistent demand for integration can be highly divisive. Crowd-pleasing comments by senior politicians that suggest wearing the hijab signals a refusal to join the British mainstream do nothing to create a climate of tolerance. By strengthening Islamist ideologues who claim Muslims are outsiders in Western societies, they speed the process of radicalisation. As things stand, Islamist terror has inflicted much less loss of life and limb in the UK than the IRA did. Unlike the IRA, it may be acquiring a mass base here and in other countries which makes it a more intractable problem. Rather than raking over the ashes of multiculturalism, political leaders should focus on genuine obstacles to peaceful co-existence between Britain’s communities. This means being ready to shut down organisations that preach hate. The closure of the Jameah Islamiyah school, which was raided last year by police as part of an anti-terror operation, seems to have been for educational rather than security reasons. But it should be part of the terms of peaceful co-existence in this country which schools that teach hatred of Jews or Christians, or which make any religious or ethnic group a potential target of violence, should be put out of business. There can be no question of tolerating such institutions, which threaten the very possibility of peace.

Achieving a modus vivendi with Islam is not going to be easy. Geopolitical events — not least an attack on Iran that would compound the folly of Iraq — could make it almost impossible. But there is no alternative. The attempt to create a liberal monoculture, which many commentators have urged, founders on the fact of diversity. The fantasy of a morally cohesive society has inspired some of the worst types of repression. It is ironic that a panicky reaction against the idea of multiculturalism should have engendered a liberal variant of this dream. The reality is that we cannot hope to share many of our fundamental values. But we can still rub along together, if we can relearn the habit of tolerance.

John Gray is Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics. His Black Mass, Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia is published by Penguin in July.