Multiculturalism, Religion and Women: Doing Harm by Doing Good?

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Multiculturalism, Religion and Women

10.1057/9780230245174 - Multiculturalism, Religion and Women, Marie Macey

Also by Marie Macey

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NEGOTIATING BOUNDARIES? Identities, Sexualities, Diversities (co-edited)

10.1057/9780230245174 - Multiculturalism, Religion and Women, Marie Macey

Doing Harm by Doing Good? Marie Macey University of Bradford, UK

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Multiculturalism, Religion and Women

© Marie Macey 2009

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All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission.

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This book is dedicated to my colleague, co-author and friend, Professor Sheila Allen, who taught me most of what I know and who died just before the book was completed. Many times as I was subsequently writing something, I could hear Sheila’s voice saying – as she did many times when we wrote together – ‘You can’t say that!’ But, as Sheila would have expected, I did – and carry full responsibility for doing so.

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Preface

viii

Acknowledgements

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1

The What and Why of Multiculturalism(s)

1

2

Multiculturalism, God and Gender

35

3

Multiculturalism in Practice: Forced Marriage

63

4

Multiculturalism and Liberal Democracy

89

5

So, What’s Wrong with Multiculturalism?

123

6

Where Do We Go From Here?

158

Notes

167

References

170

Index

201

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Contents

Preface

It is now over a decade since the late Susan Moller Okin had the courage to put into writing the question that many women only dared to think about or discuss (quietly) with close friends and colleagues: Is multiculturalism bad for women? (Okin, 1997). Okin continues to be vilified for having raised a question that, on the surface, seems no more than a legitimate academic feminist concern, but which, on closer analysis, raises a whole raft of challenges to the conventional wisdom in academia, politics, social policy and practice, and, indeed, wider society. Perhaps it is for this reason that her work continues to attract such furious descriptions as colonialist, ethnocentric, imperialist and Orientalist from supporters of multiculturalism, both male and female. I have not seen the accusation of racism levelled at Okin, but, arguably, this is the subtext that runs through many of the criticisms levelled at her. For Okin committed the cardinal sin in multicultural terms of being critical of the way that some minority cultures treat women and suggesting, therefore, that affording rights to such groups/communities could be bad for women. What has changed since Okin voiced her concerns about the effects of multiculturalism on minority ethnic women? On the one hand, the answer is not a lot, other than the fact that multiculturalism has had another twelve years in which to become even more firmly institutionalised. On the other, for the first time in decades, concern is being expressed in Britain and elsewhere that multiculturalism might not be quite the complete solution that it was assumed to be to the issues raised by the reality of increasingly diverse societies. And there is little doubt that this shift, insofar as there is a shift, has been influenced by the shockwaves that reverberated around the world in the wake of the terrorist attacks and murders that have taken place this century and which were carried out, not by an external enemy, but by ‘home-grown’ perpetrators, that is, citizens of Western societies. In Britain, a major influence on the move towards ‘cohesion’, as compared to ‘multiculturalism’, pre-dates these events and consists of the violent public disorder and riots that took place in a number of northern towns and cities in 2001. But what these incidents share with the terrorist attacks on the United States in 2001, the train bombings in Spain in 2004 and the bombings in England viii

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The background to this book

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in 2005 is that the perpetrators were simultaneously ‘insiders’ – Western citizens – and ‘outsiders’ – members of minority ethnic/religious groups. This has raised questions about the previously assumed effectiveness of multiculturalism in promoting both equality and integration and has resulted in supporters of multiculturalism developing entrenched positions around the notion that not only is multiculturalism under attack, but that such attacks are, at root, racially motivated.

My reasons for writing this book This is not, then, the best of times to write a book that is critical of multiculturalism, though my motives for doing so have little to do with the violence noted above. For this book has been in my head for many years prior to those events, and a number of the concerns raised in it have also been expressed in various articles. Nor is my main reason for writing the book the fact that sociological contributions to the multicultural literature are – with notable exceptions – as thin on the ground as are references to women, though this is a factor. At root, my motivation stems from my direct experience with minority ethno-religious women, specifically those of Mirpuri heritage and Muslim faith living in Bradford, West Yorkshire. Many of these women are relatively privileged insofar as they are university students and therefore have a degree of freedom not afforded to the majority of their ‘sisters’ (and indeed ‘brothers’). Others are severely disadvantaged, the victims of forced marriage and domestic violence whom I met through my involvement with a domestic violence agency which worked particularly closely with Pakistani communities. And some are professional women who have succeeded in carving out careers for themselves – often against all the odds. What these women have reinforced for me is that there is considerable variety within ethnic and religious communities and that women have a central role to play in working for change within such communities – both of which are ignored by the vast majority of multiculturalists. But what these women have also reinforced for me is that Okin was absolutely correct when she suggested that minority ethnic women are generally more vulnerable to oppression and violence than are their Western counterparts and that the reasons for this are rooted in patriarchal cultures imported from the ‘homeland’ (Akpinar, 2003). Vulnerability to oppression and violence is particularly acute for women who enter the UK as brides and whose immigration status is uncertain – sometimes because men keep it this way as a means of exercising control over them (Dilday, 2007; Macey, 2008). Many of these

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Preface

Preface

women do not speak English – again sometimes because men keep it this way as a means of controlling them. Many, therefore, have no knowledge of their rights. Need I repeat that this facilitates male control over women? Here, I do not refer to human rights in an abstract sense, but in such concrete situations as that of domestic violence. In all these examples, of course, British society plays a part. Women’s vulnerability due to their uncertain immigration status is linked to the immigration law that enables men to use this to their own ends. Lack of access to English is not due solely to the restrictions placed on women by their husbands and families, but the fact that there is inadequate provision for teaching English as a second language. And although women who enter the country as brides could be given basic information about their rights, they are not. I do not wish to pre-empt matters that are dealt with in some detail in various places in this book, particularly chapter 3. However, many minority ethnic and religious women have voiced their concerns about abuses within their communities that are being ignored by wider society. Some of these were powerfully highlighted in the 2006 reports of two government-funded consultations with Muslim women, one in England (Raz, Muslim Women’s Network), the other in Wales (Mahoney and Taj, The Saheli Project). The women who took part in these consultations raised such issues as: women as young as eleven and as old as 65 ‘disappearing’; forced marriage; domestic violence; ‘honour’-related violence, including murder; paedophilia in the community; sexual abuse in homes and mosques; incest; rape; attitudes and actions towards LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people); and the difficulty of obtaining a divorce. They also expressed concern about the role of professionals (police, social workers, teachers) and the government in enabling violence and oppression to continue by: treating culture as constituting a mitigating circumstance for violence; restricting so-called community consultation to male (often self-styled) ‘leaders’; failing to understand the concept of izzat (honour) and its impact on women; failing to investigate adequately incidents of abuse; and generally failing to intervene in communities because of fear of being accused of racism, or allowing ‘political correctness’ to take precedence over women’s, children’s and young people’s human rights. Mahoney and Taj comment: Whilst we extol the virtues of living in a global village where the advancement and promotion of equality, justice and the advocacy of human rights is a social norm, there are still those men and women subjected to complex and archaic customs such as the practice of

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Preface

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honour related conditioned/cultivated behaviour, violence and abuse, living here in Wales. (2006: 17)

As readers will have noticed, I did not come to this book as a neutral commentator, but as a sociologist and a feminist critical of the role of multiculturalism in the oppression of minority ethnic women. This does not imply that I entered the debate with a totally closed mind or restricted my reading to material that supported my initial views. On the contrary – as the references should illustrate – I have tried to read as much of the large literature on multiculturalism as possible, most of which is written by its proponents. Far from changing my mind, this process has actually strengthened my conviction that Okin was correct in suggesting that multiculturalism is bad for women. Not only that, but I have found myself pushed in the unanticipated direction of now feeling that multiculturalism is not only bad for minority ethnic women, but for all of us – men as well as women, majorities as well as minorities, wider society as well as minority communities, and, indeed, liberal democracy itself. In other words, what started as a relatively narrow exercise focusing on minority ethnic/religious women has turned into a wide-ranging analysis of the implications and possible consequences of multiculturalism for British society as a whole.

What this book is … and isn’t This book is an attempt to counter the current neglect of women in the multicultural (and cohesion) literature (Okin, 1997, 1999; Mirza, 2003; Bhavnani et al., 2005). It is not, however, limited to women, largely because I found it impossible to avoid the implications of multiculturalism for other social actors and institutions. The book also examines the role of religion in relation to multiculturalism and women because: • this is a surprisingly neglected variable in both the multicultural and

race/ethnicity literature, given that while religion and culture are conceptually separable, in reality, religion is a central aspect of culture and identity for many minorities in contemporary Britain (Allen and Macey, 1994); • religion is frequently used to justify gender inequality and oppression;

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The process of writing this book

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Preface

• there is currently a resurgence of religions across the world (Kepel,

1994, 2004; Furbey, 2008); the importance of religion and faith communities, particularly in education and the community and voluntary sector (CVS) (Farnell et al., 2003; Furbey, 2008; Macey et al., 2009); • the hard cultural conflicts tend to be religious (Gutmann, 2003; Joppke, 2004); • the mark of religious affiliation is to be exclusive (Zolberg and Long, 1999), which is in clear conflict with community cohesion; • recent legislation on religion and belief affords institutional religion and individual believers protection from discrimination and gives them particular rights (Macey et al., 2009). However, the focus of the book overall is on religion as culturally defined, rather than on its theological aspects, though these are discussed where relevant. This focus has led to considerable oversimplification of the distinctions within, as well as between, religions, and though this reflects the available literature, it is a limitation that needs to be borne in mind. Finally, the general neglect of a focus on the ability of individuals to interpret their religions differently should not be taken to imply my lack of awareness of this reality. In using a large quantity of empirical data, the book is an attempt to rectify the current imbalance between theory and research in a literature that is predominantly theoretical (Kelly, 2002; Flint and Robinson, 2008). Sociological and social psychological theory is used as appropriate and the multicultural theory that underpins various policy decisions is critically analysed, as is that which I believe has impacted directly on minority ethnic and religious individuals and communities. But theoretical development is not a key aim of this book. In adopting a sociological and feminist perspective on multiculturalism, the book also aims to fill a gap in a multicultural literature that is currently oriented towards philosophical and legal approaches. This is, of course, a particular brand of sociology and feminism and one that is critical of the influence of postmodernism and constructivism on sociology, feminism and multiculturalism. The book focuses mainly on Britain and is therefore limited to evaluating multiculturalism in relation to immigrant minorities, rather than the national/native ones which are the focus in countries of immigration (such as Australia, Canada, Israel and the US). Some reference is made to these insofar as multicultural theory and practice developed there have

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• over recent years the British government has increasingly emphasised

been imported into British multicultural theory. Reference is also made to changes brought about by globalisation and migration, including challenges to the concept of the nation-state (Koenig and de Guchteneire, 2007). Using the term ‘multiculturalism’ in the title of this book may be open to challenge by the growing focus, both nationally and internationally, on ‘cohesion’ (Cantle, 2001, 2005; Sané, 2007; Singh, 2007). This is hopefully discussed in sufficient detail to answer critics. Finally, while this book lends cautious (and limited) support to some of the conclusions of the Commission for Integration and Cohesion (Singh, 2007), this does not imply acceptance of the multicultural, social cohesion or integration and cohesion agendas. Nor does my criticism of these concepts constitute a call to return to mono-culturalism, if, indeed, this ever existed in Britain in anything other than Anderson’s (1983) sense of an ‘imagined community’. Nor is it to support what Balibar describes as ‘social authoritarian arguments for the forcible assimilation of [ethnic] minorities into the national culture’ (1991: 5). It is, however, to propose that some level of integration and shared values is necessary to the maintenance of society and that this needs to be considered in responding to Grillo’s question: What kind of pluralism is possible or desirable in countries like Britain, France and the USA, where there is a commitment to universalistic, democratic ideals? What room should such societies allow for being French or British or American ‘differently’? (1998: 189)

Some final comments and caveats I have to confess that I have been shocked by the viciousness of some of the (profoundly anti-academic) comments on Okin’s writing on the topic of this book, particularly since I share Pollitt’s initial reaction: ‘I have to say I’ve had a hard time understanding how anyone could find these arguments controversial’ (1999: 27). Since then, I believe that there has been an increase, rather than a decrease, in the dominance of ‘political correctness’ in the discourse on minorities in general and multiculturalism in particular. I am therefore under no illusions that any caveats that I insert at this stage will protect me from criticism, but having found myself qualifying virtually everything that I wrote – to the point of nearparalysis – I decided to insert some brief notes in this preface rather than the book itself.

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Preface

First, the language used in the multicultural and race/ethnicity literature is contested and constantly changing in terms of what is acceptable and/or fashionable. I am conscious that I have already breached some contemporary ‘rules’ by using such terms as minorities’, race (without the required scare quotes), victims instead of survivors, and so on. There is also some variation in terminology in the book – for instance, South Asian, Pakistani, Mirpuri – and though I have tried to be as specific as possible, some inconsistency has inevitably resulted from my use of empirical research that uses such terms differently. Second, the question of generalisation is a difficult one and although, in the interests of brevity, I do not always specify the limitations on generalisation from particular pieces of research, I have tried to be as clear as possible. Third (and linked to the preceding point) the crucial question of correlation versus causation runs through this book, particularly in relation to my central thesis that multiculturalism has negative consequences for certain social categories and in relation to certain social processes and events. However, there are few – if any – cases in which multiculturalism can be said to have caused x, y or z. This is partly because the complexity of the social world – the subject matter of sociology – is such as to militate against the production of causal relationships. It is also because much of my discussion is centred on multiculturalism as an ideology, and it is notoriously difficult to prove a direct/causal relationship between ideas and action, behaviour or events. I am satisfied, therefore, to accept that my work is concerned with correlation rather than causation. Fourth, issues of agency and change necessarily arise from my adoption of a critical approach to the effects of multiculturalism on particular ethnic and religious communities. As with previous points, the insertion of caveats in the text became not only repetitive, but interfered with what I was trying to say. It is thus perhaps necessary to say at this point that nowhere do I intend to imply that minority communities – like majority ones – are static rather than dynamic, or that minority (or minoritised) women lack agency. Fifth, there is some concentration in this book on the Pakistani (Mirpuri) culture and Islam. This is a reflection of both my own research and the available literature, and this itself is connected to the fact that it is this category that has most frequently challenged British policy and practice and demanded that it be changed. Finally, a point that is more a reflection than a caveat per se is that at the end of the day, I am not entirely sure that it is multiculturalism itself, however defined, that I feel so uneasy about, or whether this concept has

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come to represent a constellation of related ideological changes, many of which I actually regard as positive. These include a growing emphasis on human rights, particularly in relation to disadvantaged social categories such as ethnic, racial and/or religious minorities, women, non-heterosexuals and disabled people. Whatever the case, my problems are less to do with the underlying philosophy of what might be termed the equalities agenda, than they are with how this is operationalised – especially under the banner of multiculturalism.

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Preface xv

Professor Susan Moller Okin, whose work on gender justice, particularly multiculturalism and women, was a major inspiration to me and whose death has been a great loss to the ongoing debates on feminism and multiculturalism. Dr Clare Beckett, who played a significant part in encouraging me to write this book in the first place and who gently harassed me when I showed signs of flagging. My younger son, Iain, who kept me going throughout with both practical and emotional support, and who continued to believe in me when I had difficulty believing in myself.

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Acknowledgements

1

Introduction The logical way to start this chapter would seem to be with an analysis of the meaning of the concept of ‘multiculturalism’ as used in Britain and elsewhere. But multiculturalism was, and is, a response to cultural and religious diversity in society, so that to understand it we need to locate it within a wider socio-historical context. This chapter, then, first gives some information on diversity in contemporary Britain, then traces the origins and change over time of the policies developed in Britain to cope with these demographic changes. Finally, it moves towards trying to establish the key principles of multiculturalism as I use the concept in this book.

Diversity in Britain According to the 2001 census, 92.1 per cent (54,153,898) of the total population of the United Kingdom was ‘white’. Non-white minority ethnic groups constituted just 7.9 per cent, comprised of such diverse groups as: ‘mixed’, Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, ‘other Asian’, black Caribbean, black African, black ‘other’ and Chinese (ONS, 2005a). In terms of religion, 70 per cent of people (40 million) identified themselves as ‘white Christian’; 71 per cent of black and 52 per cent of ‘mixed’ ethnicity also identified their religion as Christian. Other faiths included Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism and Sikhism. The largest minority ethno-religious group was Pakistani Muslims (686,000); other sizeable groups were Indian Hindus (471,000), Indian Sikhs (307,000), Bangladeshi Muslims (261,000) and white Jews (259,000) (ONS, 2005b). These facts raise two important points: first, the so-called white population – the vast majority – is far from homogeneous, but 1

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The What and Why of Multiculturalism(s)

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comprises people whose contemporary and historical origins span the globe; and second, the minority ethnic and religious categories – only some of which are seen to be in need of multiculturalism – are also highly diverse. Together, these points raise some fundamental issues about the multicultural project, not least why it should be considered necessary, how it is possible and on what basis its roots in racialisation are justified. These issues run throughout this book and are discussed in more detail in various places.

The making of multicultural Europe The historical context of multiculturalism is the need, following the Second World War, of most economies in Western Europe to draw on non-indigenous labour to boost their workforces. Some societies, notably Britain, France and the Netherlands, made use of labour from their former colonies, while others, such as Sweden, Switzerland and West Germany, drew on the southern peripheries of Europe, with Germany also going further afield to the Philippines and Korea. From the outset to the present day, patterns of recruitment and the conditions attached to migrant workers have varied among countries (European Commission, 1985) and are related to both historical and contemporary factors. The former include nationalism and deeply entrenched beliefs about who could – and could not – be a citizen (Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI), 1989; Just, 1989). The latter include the effects of membership of the European Union, such as the co-ordination of increasingly restrictive immigration policies (Hammer, 1985; Cohen, 1988; Allen and Macey, 1990). The legal, political, social and industrial rights (or lack of rights) of non-EC nationals varied according to the domestic law and administrative regulations of the country in which they lived. These included no security of residence, no right to vote in or stand for election, no right to be joined by family members or visited by relatives, and children born in the country having no automatic right to citizenship. Switzerland, for example, had an ‘open door’ tradition with respect to tax and capital, along with a ‘closed door’ approach to outsiders, policing foreign workers vigorously via permits of abode or residence (Cohen, 1988: 164). Germany enforced a strict distinction between Gastarbeiter (guest workers) and the Volk (the people) whose citizenship was determined by inheritance (blood ties). Instructions on implementing

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2

The What and Why of Multiculturalism(s) 3

Foreigners enjoy all basic rights, except the basic rights of freedom of assembly, freedom of association, freedom of movement and free choice of occupation, place of work and place of education and protection from extradition abroad. (Castles et al., 1984: 77) Sweden, which has long made use of labour from Finland and more recently from Yugoslavia and elsewhere, was one of the first countries to accept fully the consequences of this economic need and to take steps to treat immigrants as more than labour units. France has always operated an egalitarian policy in relation to immigrants and citizenship, on the condition that they accept total assimilation (Melotti, 1997), though some writers now dispute this, as discussed below. Under the 1948 British Nationality Act, Britain granted full citizenship to the Commonwealth workers it recruited and was, Melotti suggests, more tolerant of cultural differences and the formation of minority ethnic communities, while not being committed to equality of membership of the national community. According to Sniderman and Hagendoorn (2007), however, it was Britain and the Netherlands that made the first, and most ambitious, commitment to multiculturalism in Western Europe, earning them the title of the ‘standard-bearers’ of European multiculturalism (Joppke, 2004: 247).

The making of multicultural Britain Although black people have lived in Britain for over 500 years (Fryer, 1984), like most other Western European countries, Britain only became significantly multiracial/ethnic when post-war restructuring and expansion forced the reluctant recruitment of overseas labour. Despite being British citizens, the overwhelmingly male migrants were viewed as units of labour who, it was assumed, would return to their countries of origin when they were no longer needed. Migrants were discriminated against in the workplace, lived in appalling conditions and suffered ignorance, prejudice and outright racism in society. Because many South Asians subscribed to the ‘myth of return’ (Anwar, 1979), they tolerated this with little, or no, complaint, believing that they could save enough money to return to much improved living conditions in their homelands. The recruitment of overseas labour was, of course, linked to an earlier period of globalisation during which Britain and other Western European

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the 1965 Foreigners Law in West Germany stated, with no apparent irony:

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countries colonised much of the world (it was also linked to the fact that women who had been doing ‘men’s jobs’ during the war were expected to leave the labour market once the war was over). Thus, when confronted by serious gaps in the labour market, Britain turned to its colonies and former colonies to meet its needs. By the late 1940s, recruitment campaigns in the Caribbean had brought black people to Britain to do the work that white people were no longer willing to do. They were followed during the 1950s by migrant workers from the Indian subcontinent who generally took unskilled or semi-skilled jobs, significantly in industries that were in decline, such as textiles.

Britain’s response to ethnic, racial and religious diversity There are three levels at which Britain’s response to diversity can be analysed. First, what might be termed the grassroots, that is, how white British citizens reacted to their black and Asian counterparts; second, how the state dealt with diversity in terms of the law and social policy, and, third, the ideological level – the ideas, principles and beliefs that underpinned state-instigated policy and practice. While one might expect there to be a dialectical relationship between these spheres, there is also tension and contradiction within and between each, as well as a gap between rhetoric and reality.

The grassroots level (1): racism and discrimination in post-war Britain The Policy Studies Institute claimed that, in 1985, there had been no overall change in the geographical or economic position of black Britons since they first arrived as immigrant workers in the 1950s and 1960s (Brown and Gay, 1985). Others claimed that there was evidence of systematic discrimination against black and Asian people on every social dimension and in all spheres of policy and provision. In health, Gordon and Newnham (1986) pointed to widespread inequality in standards of health and the resources provided to combat these, while Burke (1988) reported differences in both the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness. In housing, overcrowding and poor conditions were noted by Brown and Gay (1985), the Association of Metropolitan Authorities (1985) and the Greater London Action for Race Equality (1987). In education, there was evidence of racism on the part of both staff and students (All Faiths for One Race, 1982; DES (Swann), 1983; All London Teachers Against Racism and Fascism, 1984; Troyna and Williams, 1986).

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4

In employment, black and Asian people generally remained in manual jobs and/or suffered discrimination in relation to promotion prospects (Allen et al., 1977; Association of Metropolitan Authorities, 1985; London Association of Community Relations Councils, 1985; Newnham, 1986; Brennan and McGeevor, 1987; Gifford and Bundy, 1989). In social services and social security, widespread racism was reported by Gordon and Newnham (1985), Connelly (1987) and Rooney (1988). A similar charge was made by Gilroy (1982) with respect to the criminal justice system. By 1981, the police admitted that racially motivated violence was common and increasing, with attacks on Asians running at 70 per 1,000 and on African-Caribbeans and Africans at 50 per 1,000 compared to 1.4 per 1,000 for whites (Home Office, 1981). In 1987, the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) stated that racially motivated attacks, particularly on and around people’s homes, were extremely high and growing at an alarming rate. In 1988, Pilger claimed that racist attacks in London had reached a level reminiscent of those against Jews at the start of the twentieth century. Overall, then, after 30 years in England, and despite the implementation of three Race Relations Acts (in 1965, 1968 and 1976), there was little improvement in black and Asian people’s position on conventional measures of social wealth. Nor, as Allen and Macey observed in 1990, had the position of their children improved; indeed, for many it had actually worsened, partly due to the economic situation (Allen and Macey, 1990).

The grassroots level (2): racism and discrimination in contemporary Britain As illustrated above, when black and Asian people first came to Britain in significant numbers, they experienced racism and discrimination. Today, 60 years down the line, there is still evidence of systematic inequality across all the dimensions discussed above in relation to earlier periods, though there is also considerable variation between ethnic groups. It needs to be noted, however, that there are difficulties in comparing different periods of time, not least because the categories used for the collection of statistics varies. Today, for example, the breakdown of ethnic categories is more refined than in earlier periods, and the 2001 census collected information on religious affiliation for the first time. This shows that there is a correlation between religion and advantage/disadvantage, though it is extremely difficult to disaggregate religion and ethnicity (Macey et al., 2009).

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The What and Why of Multiculturalism(s) 5

Multiculturalism, Religion and Women

As in the period of initial settlement following the Second World War, minority ethnic/religious groups have worse employment prospects than their white counterparts and are paid less. Pell (2007) shows that there is a discrepancy between the employment rates of minorities and majorities of between 60 and 76 per cent, with considerable variations between groups. Indian men have the same rates as whites and Indian women have almost as high rates as white women; Bangladeshi men have the lowest employment rates (57 per cent) and Pakistani and Bangladeshi women at 24 per cent have the lowest rate among women. In terms of religion, Muslim women have the highest economic inactivity rate of all faith groups – 68 per cent compared with 28 per cent for Christians and around 35 per cent for Hindus and Sikhs (Open Society Institute, 2005). In terms of earnings, Berthoud (2000) refers to an ‘ethnic deficit/penalty’ in male weekly pay, showing that when such factors as education and age are controlled for, there remains an ethnic penalty of 7 per cent for Indians, 24 per cent for Caribbeans, 36 per cent for Bangladeshis and Pakistanis, and 40 per cent for Africans. These differences are not restricted to majorities versus minorities, but are gendered. Platt (2007a) points to substantial pay gaps, not only between men and women, majorities and minorities, but between minority men and women with an average weekly pay gap for minority women of 20 per cent – over three times as high as that suffered by minority men, at 6 per cent. She also demonstrates that educational qualifications make little difference to the prospects of minority ethnic women, whereas they do for all men, other than Africans. However, some caution is needed in interpreting these statistics because there are fewer minority women in paid employment, more work part-time and their characteristics differ from those of men due to changes over the lifecycle related to childbearing/rearing and other caring responsibilities. On the other dimensions discussed above, gaps remain between members of majorities and those of minorities. These include health (Ahmad and Jones, 1998; Sproston and Mindell, 2006); mental health, where minorities are over-represented in the mental health system (Nazroo, 1997; Sproston and Nazroo, 2002); housing, with overcrowding, poor conditions and impoverished neighbourhoods (Sellick, 2004; Beckford et al., 2006); education, where again, while gaps remain between majority and minority ethnic groups, they vary by both gender and ethnicity/ religion, with some minorities (such as Indians and the Chinese) doing as well as, or better than, their white counterparts, while Pakistanis are underachieving, though girls are beginning to catch up (Abbas, 2002,

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2003; EOC, 2007a; T. Phillips, 2007); the use of health and social services provision varies by ethnic, religious and racial group (Chambra et al., 1998; Ahmad et al., 2000; Atkin et al., 2002; Katbamna et al., 2002; Chahal and Ullah, 2004); black men have long been over-represented in the criminal justice system, including in prison, and young Muslim men are increasingly involved in crime (Macey, 2002). A different aspect of this is that these groups are significantly more likely to be stopped and searched by the police (Jones and Singer, 2008). And both black and Asian people are more likely than whites to be the victims of racially motivated violent crime, including homicide (Institute of Race Relations (IRR), 2008; Jones and Singer, 2008). In sum, it would appear that efforts to eliminate racially and ethnically based inequality in Britain have been less than fully successful, despite considerable strengthening of the race relations legislation in 2000 and amended regulations in 2002. This raises a number of questions about the reasons for disadvantage, which should, of course, inform the development of policy to tackle it. This is a particularly important point in relation to a book on multiculturalism, and one to which I return below.

The state, law and social policy One of the most striking aspects of British social policy with respect to immigration is the lack of preparation or provision for the black and South Asian workers who entered the country as a result of post-war recruitment drives in the Caribbean and the Indian subcontinent. This is clearly connected to the assumption that migrant workers would be a temporary feature of the British landscape. Indeed, it was not until the early 1960s when the families of such workers had begun to settle in the UK that it was realised that African-Caribbean and South Asian Britons were ‘here to stay’ (Gilroy, 1987). It was then acknowledged that ‘something had to be done’, at least about non-English-speaking children in British schools. So began a series of interventions, defined by Mullard (1982) as ‘assimilation’, ‘integration’ and ‘pluralism’ and corresponding to changing ideologies at government level, as discussed below. Suffice it to note at this point that these interventions are deeply revealing of attitudes and have had long-term consequences for racialised relations in Britain. The neglect that characterised the welfare policy arena did not extend to the sphere of immigration legislation, which, from the early 1960s, was characterised by increasingly restrictive laws directed primarily to

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The What and Why of Multiculturalism(s) 7

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Multiculturalism, Religion and Women

If we went on as we are, then by the end of the century there would be four million people of New Commonwealth or Pakistani origins here. Now that is an awful lot and I think it means that people are really rather afraid that this country might be swamped by people with a different culture. And you know, the British character has done so much for democracy, for law, and so much throughout the world, that if there is a fear that it might be swamped, people are going to react, and be rather hostile to those coming in. (Thatcher, 1978) This and similar negative comments by other politicians, together with increasingly restrictive immigration legislation, provoked Ben-Tovin and Gabriel to suggest that: state racism has over-shadowed all subsequent discussion and action in the field. The official equation of blackness with second-class and undesirable immigrant – the principle that black people are in themselves a problem and the fewer we have of them the better – has dominated the public ideological discourse on race and has set the parameters for political action in this arena. (1982: 146) Whether or not changes in immigration legislation constitute ‘state racism’, there is no doubt that from 1962 such changes, and the political discourse that accompanied them, were characterised by a focus on visible minorities. Thus, the 1962 Commonwealth Immigration Act restricted immigration to citizens with passports issued in the UK or by a UK government representative overseas (such as the High Commissioner of a former colony) or who held a Ministry of Labour employment voucher. In 1965, the Home Secretary announced a tightening of immigration controls in a speech that was marked by open hostility towards African-Caribbean and Asian people. In the same year, Labour imposed a ceiling of 8,500 labour vouchers per year for the entire Commonwealth, as well as giving sweeping new powers to the Home Secretary. The 1968 Commonwealth Immigrants Act, passed by a Labour government, withdrew the right of British passport holders in East Africa to live in Britain. This was in response to the large numbers of East African Asians holding British passports who had been forced to leave their homes as a result of

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limiting the entry of black and Asian people. The former Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, justified this in an interview by saying:

Ugandan and Kenyan ‘Africanisation’ policies. The Act restricted entry to Britain to those whose citizenship had been acquired by birth, adoption, registration or naturalisation, or if they had a parent or grandparent who had been born or adopted in the UK, or who had obtained citizenship in the UK itself. This not only represents a highly novel interpretation of the meaning of citizenship, but one that emphasises ‘ancestral connections’ that are – almost by definition – white. The 1971 Immigration Act replaced all previously existing immigration laws and virtually ended immigration for settlement, restricting it to spouses and dependants of those already settled here and those who had a parent or grandparent born in the UK (though this has not been the case with respect to transcontinental marriage, as discussed in chapter 3). Notwithstanding the 1968 Commonwealth Immigrants Act, in 1972 the admission of 27,000 Asians expelled from Uganda resulted in a new ‘moral panic’ over immigration and led to the establishment of a Select Committee on Immigration and the introduction of further stringent immigration curbs. The 1981 British Nationality Act removed the ancient right of birth on British soil (jus soli) as the basis of citizenship and replaced it by that of descent (jus sanguinus). It created three classes of citizenship: British citizens; British dependent territories citizens, and British overseas citizens. Of these, only British citizens had unqualified right of entry to Britain – and British overseas citizens actually had no right of abide anywhere! It seems that the British government’s policy on black and Asian immigration was considerably more highly developed and consistent than was that on social welfare. It is not, then, surprising that many academics and activists levelled the accusation of racism against the government (Sivanandan, 1982; Macdonald, 1983; Layton-Henry, 1984; Miles and Phizacklea, 1984). However, in a more nuanced approach to an analysis of changing immigration law and its effect on racialised relations, Solomos (1989) points to the complexities and contradictions inherent in the situation – one of which was change over time in the ideas that underpinned government thinking about how to deal with diversity in Britain.

Diversity and ideology It is clear that the ideologies that have driven social policy and practice in the sphere of race and ethnicity in Britain have changed significantly over time. The rationale for such change includes the growing awareness of racialised difference and division in society and the role

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The What and Why of Multiculturalism(s) 9

of racism in this. In addition, there was pressure on the government to adopt a pluralist, or multicultural, approach to education and through this to society as a whole. This pressure came from a number of sources, including two official inquiries – one into the educational underachievement of black children in schools (the Swann Report); the other into the reasons for the urban disorders/riots in the 1980s (the Scarman Report). And over time, black and Asian people themselves organised to put pressure on the government, first in the name of equal opportunities/antiracism and subsequently through the development of identity politics, to claim the right to be different under the banner of multiculturalism. Assimilation (1950s–1965) The ignoring of post-war migrant workers noted above only began to change when these workers started to exercise their right as British citizens to bring their families to join them here. The immediate concern then was assimilation, that is, how to absorb immigrant children into ‘the British way of life’ as quickly as possible. This rested on the belief that a harmonious nation could only be created by minimising difference, and the best way of achieving this was by instilling both the English language and culture into Asian children. The focus on Asian, rather than black, children was for the simple reason that most black children came from the Caribbean where English was their first language and where they were educated within an English (and Christian) system. Asian children were sent to reception centres, language units or, in the 1960s and 1970s, dispersed via ‘bussing’. The official purpose of bussing was to try to avoid schools in areas of high Pakistani settlement being unable to cope with large numbers of children who had no access to English – a strategy that was condemned as racist and against which protest was mounted (see Troyna and Williams, 1986). The situation in cities such as Bradford is now one where some schools are close to 100 per cent Pakistani Muslim and there are areas where over 75 per cent of children start school with no access to English. In wider society antagonism to immigration was growing, fuelled by the overtly racist speeches of some politicians and, perhaps, by the introduction of increasingly draconian immigration laws directed particularly towards visible minorities. Integration (1965–early 1970s) The integration phase saw the government shifting from an ideology of assimilation to one that saw integration ‘not as a flattening process of assimilation, but equal opportunity, coupled with cultural diversity, in an atmosphere of mutual tolerance’ (Jenkins, 1970 [1966]: 267).

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This constituted an acknowledgement that ‘the problem’ did not rest entirely with minorities, but that white racism was also implicated. In schools, however, the approach was not to challenge racism, but to teach indigenous children to be tolerant of ‘other’ cultures. In 1971, Bernard Coard published a damning indictment of racism in education in his book How the West Indian Child is Made Educationally Subnormal in the British School System. However, at the same time as the government was publicly promoting integration, individual MPs were doing little to further the cause of good racialised relations. In the 1964 election, a virtually unknown Conservative used the slogan ‘If you want a Nigger for a Neighbour, Vote Labour’ to topple a leading Labour politician from a safe seat in the Midlands (Ballard, 2007). And in 1968, another Conservative politician warned of ‘rivers of blood’ flowing in the streets as a consequence of lax immigration laws (Powell, 1968). The government’s restrictive immigration controls also continued to target black and Asian people. Cultural pluralism (1970s–1980s) Cultural pluralism represented a significant shift from the assumption of a culturally and politically united society to acceptance of distinct cultural/ethnic groups in Britain. This was the beginning of what is today called ‘multiculturalism’, with the government stating that the school curriculum must take account of the multiracial nature of Britain. In 1979, it also launched an official inquiry into the educational underachievement of minority ethnic children. The outcome – the Swann Report – provided a semi-official legitimation for tackling prejudice in schools with the aim of promoting cultural pluralism in both the education system and wider society (Department of Education and Science, 1985). Meanwhile, public antagonism to visible minorities continued to be fuelled at the state level, including the distinction made in 1977 between British citizens and British overseas citizens. Racialised relations deteriorated and in 1980–1 there were a number of urban uprisings, termed ‘race riots’ by the media, despite the involvement of white as well as black people in them. These resulted in an official enquiry, the report of which called for an urgent response from the education system (Scarman, 1982). The development of multiculturalism From the 1960s to the 1980s, education engaged in a form of multiculturalism ‘ based on the premise that the key issue facing schools is how to create tolerance for black minorities and their cultures in a white nation

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The What and Why of Multiculturalism(s) 11

now characterised by cultural diversity or cultural pluralism’ (Rattansi, 1992: 13) This version of multiculturalism is a million miles removed from any of the ways that the term is used today, and was scathingly dismissed by such committed anti-racists as Mullard (1985) and Troyna (1993) as ‘the 3 Ss approach – Saris, Samosas and Steel Bands’. The focus was on prejudice (rather than racism) and the belief was that this could be eliminated by teaching white children about minority cultures. This was despite such evidence of racism in schools as that published by the CRE, Learning in Terror, which pointed to the widespread abuse of black and Asian students by white ones, including physical attacks that required hospital treatment (CRE, 1988). The change to anti-racism The situation in schools was, of course, a reflection of that in wider society, and by the 1980s an anti-racist movement had developed, partly as a result of anger at the failure of multiculturalism to eliminate racism in schools and society. This viewed racism as embedded in social structures and institutions and proposed that institutional ideologies and practices must be challenged and links made with other oppressions based on class and gender. However, in 1988, Murder in the Playground reported an inquiry into the murder on school premises of a thirteen-year old Asian boy by a white boy. This report, written by committed anti-racists, castigated the anti-racist policies of the school and local education authority as having contributed to the murder, labelling them ‘doctrinaire, divisive, ineffectual and counterproductive’ (McDonald et al., 1989). This raises questions about effective strategies for achieving racial equality and positive inter-ethnic relations that are directly relevant to the topic of this book, and which are discussed later. And back to multiculturalism It was not only such shocking events as a murder on school premises that gave anti-racist supporters pause for thought, but during the 1980s and 1990s a series of articles were published that were critical of both the theory and practice of anti-racism. These pointed to theoretical and conceptual inadequacies, including its essentialising of black people through its failure to deconstruct ethnic categories; its failure to locate anti-racism within an economic context or to properly consider the intersections and interactions of class and gender, its ignoring of Asian and religious identity, and its inability to include the growing number of people of ‘mixed parentage’/dual heritage (Modood, 1988; 1989; Miles, 1989; Mason, 1990; Gilroy, 1992; Hyder, 1993; Lindsey, 1994; Macey, 1995a; 1995b).

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By the 1990s, anti-racism had ceded the ground to multiculturalism, albeit a multiculturalism claimed by its adherents to incorporate the best of anti-racism and – through its emphasis on access to power – to constitute a move towards real cultural pluralism (Modood and Werbner, 1997). This retreat from the potential radicalism of a Marxist-inspired and sociologically oriented anti-racism was undoubtedly welcomed by politicians who were more comfortable with the ‘psychological’ and less threatening approach of multiculturalism.

Minorities, anti-racism and multiculturalism Before bringing my account of the ideologies underpinning Britain’s response to becoming a multicultural society up to date, it is pertinent to ask what minority communities and individuals were doing while the government was changing its policy and practice in this sphere. At the risk of some oversimplification, the answer is that there was considerable divergence between black and Asian populations. For, though some Asian people, notably the young of Indian origin, were involved in various anti-racist struggles, it was generally young Caribbean people who were at their forefront, inspired first by the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, then the Black Power Movement in the US, and the anti-apartheid and Black is Beautiful campaigns in South Africa. But these movements were not only operating in a totally different context from that which applied in Britain in the 1970s (when their influence was felt most strongly here), but were underpinned by very different philosophies. Though all sought the advancement of black people, the civil rights era was fundamentally about achieving equality within society as it existed, an approach that some saw as assimilationist. The Black Power Movement, on the other hand, was about the politics of black self-identity and, indeed, in some cases separatism (Gaber, 1994). So it was to be in Britain. Short-circuiting the need to consider differences in the history, groups involved or philosophies that underpinned North American struggles for racial equality, Britain blindly followed where the US led. This resulted in the widespread adoption by anti-racist groups of the self-definition ‘black’, which was seen as a ‘political’ tool aimed at uniting all people who were subjected to racism, irrespective of their ethnicity, culture or religion. That this intention, laudable though it may have been, was fraught with both theoretical and pragmatic difficulties is highlighted by Dummett’s observation that: The term ‘black’ is de rigeur in some circles for all victims of discrimination: the use of this term can lead, on the one hand, to calling the

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The What and Why of Multiculturalism(s) 13

14 Multiculturalism, Religion and Women

Notwithstanding the implications of Dummett’s statement, the overarching (and simultaneously inclusive and exclusive) term ‘black’ was subsequently adopted by academics, politicians and policy-makers. This resulted in considerable confusion in relation to both empirical research and the implementation of inappropriate and inadequate policies based on this, particularly in the spheres of education and social work. The acceptance of the right of self-definition in the academic, policy and practice spheres was indicative of the growing influence of minority pressure groups operating within an anti-racist and multicultural framework (see Gaber, 1994, for an analysis of this, particularly at the local state level). However, while there are clearly positive aspects of this, there are also serious negative ones. It led, for example, to accepting that black children underachieved educationally and therefore that the appropriate policy focus was on anti-racist education. However, using data that deconstructed the category ‘black’, Hymas and Thomas (1994) came to very different conclusions. They showed that black Africans, the Chinese and Indians from Africa and parts of the Asian subcontinent in fact achieved higher educational qualifications than whites and that a higher proportion held top professional jobs. Had Hymas and Thomas thought of gendering the categories that were said to be failing, e.g. African-Caribbeans, they would also have found that it was the boys who were underachieving, while the girls were succeeding educationally. (See Macey, 1995a, for a fuller discussion of the role of ideology in social science research; Mason, 1990, on the role of categorisation in research; Tomlinson, 1983, and Tanna, 1990, for critiques of educational research.) At this time, for a variety of reasons – some of which can only be described as racist – the majority of people of South Asian heritage rejected the term ‘black’. An important factor was that many people from the Indian subcontinent were less concerned with fighting racism than they were in establishing what Ballard (1994) terms ‘ethnic colonies’ and reasserting the norms and traditions of their homelands in British cities. This is linked to the perception that their stay here would be temporary – until they could improve their situation ‘back home’. Thus, unlike African-Caribbean settlers who regarded England as the ‘motherland’ (Green, 1990), South Asians were mainly concerned to ensure that neither they nor their culture was tainted by unnecessary contact with a

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Chinese black, and, on the other, to denying that anyone who is not at least in part of African or Asian descent could be the victim of racial discrimination. (1991: 172)

society and a people whose morality they viewed with less than wholehearted admiration! (See Ballard, 1994; Shaw, 1994; Lewis, 2002; Macey, 2005a and Yip, 2004 for examples of negative evaluations of British morality, both historical and contemporary.) It is interesting to observe at this point that women were centrally implicated in the self-exclusion from wider society that would subsequently facilitate male control over them within self-contained communities. This ‘separatist’ orientation was encouraged by chain migration,1 which enabled the establishment of ethnic enclaves comprised of close-knit, often related, people (Ballard, 1994), and which facilitated the maintenance of the norms, values and traditions of the homeland. These differences in orientation between black Caribbean and South Asian settlers have had a significant influence on their subsequent trajectories which are highly relevant to the multicultural enterprise. Community/social cohesion (2001–) Community cohesion – later termed social cohesion – is (almost) the latest in a series of ideologies concerned with both racially based inequality and exclusion and – more broadly – with the social relationships (or lack of relationships) between ethnic groups. And though some see this as a retreat from multiculturalism and an over-reaction to ‘Islamic terrorism’, this is not correct. For by the late 1990s, concerns were being expressed in many Western European societies that multiculturalism had reached an ‘impasse’ and that a new, multicultural model of integration was needed (Melotti, 1997; Joppke, 2004). However, these were undoubtedly given a new urgency by the terrorist attacks on the US in 2001 (9/11), the murders in the Netherlands of Pym Fortuyn in 2002 and Theo van Gogh in 2004, the train bombings in Madrid in 2004 and the bombings in London in 2005 (7/7) (see Sniderman and Hagendoorn, 2007, on the Netherlands; Abbas, 2005; 2007, on Britain). In the UK, though, it was local events in 2001 that precipitated the development of the concept of community cohesion. These consisted of a series of violent public disturbances and riots in a number of northern towns and cities, which were carried out almost entirely by young men of Pakistani heritage and Muslim faith (Carling et al., 2001; Macey, 2005b). In all the areas involved, the men’s families originated from Mirpur in the (Azad) Kashmir area of Pakistan, i.e. from a rural, rather than an urban area. And in all cases, the communities in which they lived in England were – and are – residentially and socially separated from others. This is particularly striking in cities like Bradford, West Yorkshire, which was the scene of the worst rioting for 20 years on mainland Britain

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The What and Why of Multiculturalism(s) 15

(Macey, 2005b). In a report written before the riots, Sir Herman Ouseley (2001) used the term ‘parallel lives’ to describe the extent of ethnic separation in Bradford, and official investigations highlighted this factor in relation to the other towns and cities involved, notably Burnley and Oldham (Cantle, 2001; Clarke, 2001; Denham, 2001; Ritchie, 2001). An earlier inquiry had also highlighted residential and social separation as one of a number of influences on public disorder (Allen and Barrett, 1996). Hence, community cohesion was born out of crisis (violent public disorder and riot) and the inquiries into this, which focused strongly on the lack of social interaction between ethnic individuals, groups and communities. It probably goes without saying that this approach was greeted by a storm of protest, as appears to be the case with every government initiative that is seen to impact on the apparently sacrosanct right of minority groups to live exactly as they choose. An example here is the introduction under the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 of an English language requirement for settlement in the country. This was greeted by widespread accusations of ‘racism’, despite the obvious positive effects that access to English confers on individuals and communities. In particular, women who do not speak English are vulnerable to various kinds of abuse, including domestic violence and husbands who use their wives’ irregular immigration status to control them, and/or to take additional wives (Dilday, 2007; House of Commons Home Affairs Committee (HAC), 2008; Macey, 2008). However, leaving aside the knee-jerk – ‘it’s all racism, innit?’ – reactions epitomised by writers such as Back et al. (2002) to the suggestion that lack of interaction between ethnic groups was implicated in the riots, a number of more measured criticisms were made. These included questions about the reality of separation (Phillips et al., 2002; Simpson, 2004) and about its assumed effects (Amin, 2002; Robinson, 2005; Ballard, 2007). Others, however, had pointed out that segregation can turn into polarisation (Modood et al., 1997); that lack of interaction across ethnic boundaries can strengthen (already conservative) community traditions (Parekh, 2000a); and that lack of contact between ethnic groups can lead to defining outsiders as not sharing in the moral community, with potentially lethal results (Horowitz, 2002). Notwithstanding any of these responses – whether positive or negative, knee-jerk or nuanced – community cohesion became government policy with amazing speed or, some might suggest, unseemly haste. By 2002, the Local Government Association (LGA) had issued detailed guidance to local authorities and other public bodies on how they should promote (and measure) community cohesion (LGA, 2002). There has

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been a broadening of the range of agencies assigned key roles in this process (Flint and Robinson, 2008), including education and housing (Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF), 2006; 2007; Housing Corporation, 2007). In the CVS, projects applying for funding are now required to demonstrate a cohesion element, i.e. to show that they are working across ethnic boundaries (Community Development Foundation, 2007). All this is based on the ‘contact hypothesis’ – the notion that interaction between groups can reduce stereotyping and prejudice (Brown, 1995; Hewstone et al., 2006). This, in turn, is based on a range of psychological and social psychological theories about individuals, groups and identities (Adorno et al., 1950; Tajfel, 1970; Dozier, 2002). And though Amin observes that ‘Habitual contact in itself, is no guarantor of cultural exchange’ (2002: 14), it may be that the negative effects of racism, social exclusion and residential and social separation are such as to demand a radical rethink of multiculturalism. Whether ‘social cohesion’ represents this is a different question and will be discussed later. Integration and cohesion (2007–) Notwithstanding the fact that social cohesion policies had not been implemented long enough to assess their effectiveness, in 2006, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government announced the establishment of a Commission on Integration and Cohesion. Chaired by Darra Singh, Chief Executive of Ealing Borough Council, the Commission published its final report, entitled Our Shared Future, in June 2007. The upbeat title reflects the general tenor of the report in which much is made of surveys claiming to show that the vast majority (around 80 per cent) of UK citizens perceive people of different backgrounds as getting on well in their local areas (Attwood et al., 2004; Kitchen et al., 2006; MORI, 2007). This is an extremely odd finding that contradicts a large number of surveys and inquiries which consistently demonstrate the geographical and social separation of ethnic groups. These include the official inquiries following the ‘Northern Riots’ already referred to; Channel 4 Dispatches (2006); Peach (2006); Mirza et al. (2007); and Carling (2008). I can only assume that the explanation is the definition of ‘local areas’ used in the survey (on which no information is provided) together with the fact that inter-ethnic work-based contacts were counted as ‘mixing’. Whatever the case, the report states that ‘Cohesion rates in areas ranged from 38 per cent to 90 per cent – but in only ten out of 387 areas was it under 60 per cent’ (Singh, 2007: 21). This statement is made even

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In Britain, we have learnt to celebrate the talents and contributions to our society of people from different backgrounds, races and faiths. We are becoming more comfortable in our differences and confident in our shared values. The latest data from the Citizenship Survey shows that 92 per cent of people feel that individuals from different backgrounds get on well in their area. (2009: 3) This raises the obvious question of why, if inter-ethnic relations are so positive, there is any need for multiculturalism, community cohesion, integration or the allocation of significant sums of money to improve cohesion – £50 million announced in 2008 under the cohesion banner, with a possible additional £8 million under ‘connecting communities’ in 2009 (Kitchin, 2008: 1–2). This question is of some significance in assessing whether multiculturalism has had positive or negative effects on social relations across ethnic and religious boundaries, to which I shall return. At this point, the question is whether the cohesion agenda differs significantly from the multicultural one. Perhaps not surprisingly, the answer is ‘yes’ and ‘no’. On the one hand, Cantle is at pains to reassure his readers that community cohesion involves no lessening of commitment to diversity, including the maintenance of minority languages and cultures. He states: ‘By actively seeking to maintain different traditions and views, we make it clear that one “value” that we hold in common is to respect what we do not have in common’ (2005: 148). He repeats this in a subsequent book when he refers to the need to maintain ‘genuine cultural distinctions’ and ‘linguistic differences within communities to underpin cultural differences’ (Cantle, 2007: 94). Thus, despite its title, it is difficult to see Cantle’s version of cohesion as anything other than remaining rooted in multicultural thinking. Arguably, in his addition of ‘integration’ to Cantle’s ‘cohesion’, Singh (2007) moves further from the multicultural paradigm, and in so doing has attracted accusations of promoting assimilation and retreating from multiculturalism (Baubock, 2002; Burnett, 2004, 2008; Rattansi, 2005; Bourne, 2007). What is certainly the case is that Singh raises a number of issues that can be seen to challenge ‘conventional’ multicultural thinking. First, he points to the changing nature of migration and settlement, linked to

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more strongly by Hazel Blears, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, in her foreword to the Cohesion Delivery Framework Overview, where she states:

globalisation, and to what he calls ‘super-diversity’ (2007: 34). By this he means that migrants now come from all over the world, rather than just countries with historical ties to the UK. Of course, in a sense this was always the case, though there is no doubt that the magnitude of diversity has grown, as has the variation in types of settlement, with many from the former Eastern Europe having no plans for permanent settlement here. Nevertheless, I think a criticism of multiculturalism is that from the outset its focus has been both essentialised and racialised, as discussed in chapter 5. Second, Singh takes on board the fact that identities are multiple, rather than singular, though I disagree with his suggestion that this is either new or that a single-identity orientation was adequate in the 1960s and 1970s (Singh, 2007: 34). On the contrary, I would argue that one of multiculturalism’s most basic flaws is its prioritisation of ethnic identities over all others and its failure, therefore, to deal adequately with the differences and divisions that accrue from such aspects of the person as, say, age and gender. Again, this is dealt with in more detail in chapter 5. Finally, Singh highlights trans-nationalism as a particular form of multiple identity, and while I agree with him that this is a very important aspect of the whole multicultural/cohesion/integration debate, it is hardly new. It is, and always has been, particularly relevant to my concerns about the potentially negative effects of multiculturalism on minority ethnic/religious women. Singh states that research suggests that trans-nationalism helps, rather than hinders, integration because ‘a trans-national identity may give people the confidence in their own identity to engage with wider society’ (2007: 35). Unfortunately, no information is provided about this research – which I am certainly not aware of – but the notion that maintaining (an ossified version of) the culture of the homeland somehow aids integration and participation in British society is pure multicultural theory. I would argue exactly the opposite for some of the reasons that Singh himself refers to: On the other hand, there are also those who are isolated from wider UK society, as they get all their information about the world from internet sites and satellite TV based in their home country. And transnational identities can be prioritised over national ones in narratives of war or extremism, as seen in the emphasis on global issues expressed by the 7/7 bombers. (2007: 35) While I would suggest that international, rather than trans-national, influences are probably more relevant to suicide bombing, of more

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The What and Why of Multiculturalism(s) 19

immediate concern to me is the influence of trans-national identities on the treatment of women. For encouraging the maintenance of the culture of the homeland can be extremely dysfunctional for women if this culture is rooted in highly restrictive definitions of their roles. This is particularly the case when such women do not have access to alternative views of the world, and therefore choices, because they do not speak English – a situation that was, and is, encouraged by multiculturalism and on which the government has only recently taken action. Multiculturalism’s encouragement of trans-national identities and orientations has both direct and indirect effects on women. An example of the former is forced marriage (discussed in chapter 3); an example of the latter concerns its potential impact on male attitudes to violence against women. There is evidence, for example, of how events on the Indian subcontinent impact on attitudes and actions here, as Samad (1998) notes in general terms and Allen and Barrett (1996) report with reference to the specific instance of voting in local elections. It is an open question whether this influence extends to so-called ‘honour’ crimes of the extreme type reported in newspapers and updated regularly in the Pakistan Journal of Women’s Studies (see Khan, 2008). In relation to gender issues, Our Shared Future is actually a considerable improvement on previous offerings in the arenas of multiculturalism and cohesion in that women actually receive some attention! And Singh’s emphasis on women as key agents in unlocking the potential of communities, the need to work with them and the need to encourage participation and leadership at the local state level are both long overdue and welcome. Whether this constitutes a retreat from, or a threat to, multiculturalism is another question. But it is certainly a ‘softer’ form of multiculturalism and one that seeks to balance the rights on which multiculturalism has focused with the responsibilities of citizenship. But women will only benefit from the integration and cohesion agenda if it can begin to undo some of the harm done by multicultural thinking. This is, of course, a very big if – and one that will need to be supported by central government through changes to social policy and by local government ceasing to interpret earlier cohesion policy in ways that impact negatively on women. Action so far does not leave me sanguine: in February 2008, the government formally accepted just two of the Commission’s recommendations, both concerned with definitions/typologies (Kitchin, 2008). In January 2009, it issued a new Cohesion Delivery Framework Overview (CLG, 2009), which mentions women just once, and that only to note research suggesting that ‘vulnerable people’, including women, have more negative perceptions of cohesion (CLG,

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2009: 23, based on research by Laurence and Heath, 2008). Notwithstanding my scepticism about the reality, as against the rhetoric, of the difference between the integration and cohesion agenda, its predecessor social cohesion and multiculturalism, I accept that, theoretically at least, the latest version has the potential to challenge multiculturalism. I do not, therefore, include this when I refer to multiculturalism in the remainder of this book, but return to it in the final chapter. Despite my acknowledgement that the government’s newfound focus on integration and cohesion could be interpreted as a retreat from multiculturalism, this may be more apparent than real. Time will tell. However, multicultural thinking has become so institutionalised in Britain that few pause to challenge its underlying assumptions or to ask whether or not it is really a ‘good’ thing. This is partly because it is seen, at least by politicians, policy-makers, activists and academics, as part of the struggle against ethnic and racially based inequality and exclusion. That the public may not share this view is clearly of no concern to any of these people, despite its implications for the likely success of the multicultural/cohesion agendas. And it is worth noting here that surveys in Australia, Austria, Canada, Germany and the Netherlands indicate that the general population is far from supportive of multiculturalism (see Betts, 1996, on Australia; Sniderman and Hagendoorn, 2007, on the Netherlands; Poulter, 1998; Barry, 2001, on Canada, and Hjerm, 2000, for a comparison of Australia and Canada, and Austria and Germany). Perhaps in these countries – as in Britain – to question either the validity or utility of multiculturalism is to invite the accusation of being right wing, conservative or reactionary, if not out-and-out racist. It is pertinent, therefore, to ask whether multicultural (or anti-racist) approaches to tackling racism or racially based inequality have been effective, or, in the case of the newer integration and cohesion, are likely to be so. Certainly, the material presented above under the heading ‘Racism and Discrimination in Contemporary Britain’ would appear to leave no room for complacency. However, a more critical look at this is in order – for things may not be entirely as they seem!

Difference, disadvantage and discrimination – a cautionary note Throughout this chapter I have reported, rather than questioned, the research on racism and discrimination. And there is no doubt that various forms and expressions of racism exist in Britain that impact – sometimes fatally – on those British citizens who are recognisably

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‘different’, whether on the basis of skin colour or such other signifiers as dress codes. Nor, as illustrated above, is there any doubt that some visible minorities are disadvantaged across many areas of social wealth and that some of this is the result of discrimination based on race, ethnicity and/or religion. Finally, there is no doubt that visible minorities are sometimes culturally and/or religiously different in terms of attitudes, values and lifestyles. In all these cases, the key word is ‘some’ and this is a matter for empirical investigation, not assumption. However, it is crucial to distinguish between difference, disadvantage and discrimination, particularly in carrying out, and interpreting, research that may be used to inform social policy. That this is not always the case in the arena of racialised relations is illustrated by research that starts by ruling out any consideration of the potential effects on disadvantage of ethno-religious differences. In most cases, this is so taken for granted that authors do not make it explicit. An exception is the Equal Opportunities Commission’s statutory investigation into Bangladeshi, Pakistani and Black Caribbean women and work in England, Scotland and Wales. This states at the outset that the researchers were determined to ‘move away’ from cultural, ethnic or religious influences to focus on workplace discrimination (EOC, 2007a: 4). I believe that this illustrates the stranglehold that multicultural ideology has gained over our thinking and perceptions to the point that ‘disadvantage’ is used synonymously with ‘discrimination’. So convinced have we become that racism and Islamophobia are widespread, if not endemic, in Britain that the possibility of some disadvantage being a function of difference rather than discrimination is rendered as being ‘beyond the pale’. It is arguable, however, that the relative disadvantage suffered by some minority ethnic groups is not the result of discrimination, but of cultural and/or religious beliefs and the lifestyle choices that follow from these. A clear example of this is material inequality. We are repeatedly told that Bangladeshi and Pakistani Muslims are the poorest people in Britain. Berthoud (who does not ignore the contribution of cultural factors to poverty) comments: ‘Name any group whose poverty causes national concern – pensioners, disabled people, one-parent families, the unemployed – Pakistanis and Bangladeshis were poorer’ (1997: 180). Leaving aside the fact that the operation of a cash economy2 makes it impossible to use conventional measures to assess their economic position, there are a number of aspects of Pakistani and Bangladeshi culture and religion that clearly contribute to poverty. These include: larger than average family size; the high incidence of children with disabilities; extended family living; women who do not work outside the home; unemployment or

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low-paid male employment – largely, but not entirely – related to lack of educational qualifications and skills; the practice of sending remittances ‘home’ to Pakistan or Bangladesh, and undertaking regular visits there. Many of these factors are significantly exacerbated by transcontinental marriage, as discussed in chapter 3. An obvious point here is that lack of money has knock-on effects in other spheres, such as housing and health, which are then listed as if they were independent variables to produce a picture of widespread deprivation over which people have no control and that is widely assumed to be the result of racism and/or Islamophobia. None of this is to suggest that that racism and/or ethno-religious discrimination play no part in disadvantage and deprivation, though the extent of this is far less clear than is widely assumed. It is to suggest, however, that it is not the only factor and that to ignore cultural and religious influences is to present a very partial picture. Moreover, the danger of this is that it will influence the construction of social policy in ways that are unlikely to be effective in improving the situation of disadvantaged groups. This may well be one of the reasons why so little apparent progress has been made in closing the gaps between ethnic and/or religious groups – though it is crucial to remember here that there are major differences between minority as well as majority groups, as noted above. This, in itself, should make us cautious of too ready an acceptance of the blanket ‘explanation’ of racism, suggesting, rather, that it would be wise to consider differences within, as well as between, ethnic groups. This is particularly highlighted by those categories whose members are not easily distinguishable in terms of appearance but are in very different structural and material positions, such as Indians (Christians, Hindus and Sikhs) relative to Bangladeshis and Pakistanis (Muslims). Thus, if one takes a number of the areas in which equality has remained elusive, as noted above, one finds that there are, indeed, cultural differences that should be considered in arriving at an understanding of the reasons for disadvantage. For instance, an extended family of grandparents, parents and five children supported by a single, low-paid wage earner is unlikely to be financially well off. This will be exacerbated if that family also helps to maintain relatives in Bangladesh or Pakistan (Ballard, 2004) and if, as is the case in a significant percentage of South Asian families, a number of the children have disabilities (Health Education Authority, 2000; Mir et al., 2001; Overall et al., 2002; Christianson and Modell, 2004). The policy initiatives that might help to alleviate the difficulties faced by such a family will obviously depend on the reasons for their situation.

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The What and Why of Multiculturalism(s) 23

Thus, if the reason for there being only one member in the labour force is due to ethnic/racial/religious discrimination, then an appropriate response is through existing race relations and/or religion and belief legislation. If, however, it is due to a cultural and/or religious belief that a woman’s main role is centred on childbearing and rearing and the home, then such legislation is totally irrelevant. Similar points apply to this hypothetical family’s need for specialist disability services. If the wife’s inability to work outside the home is due to lack of such services, then a logical response is to improve the provision of these. If, however, such services are available but are rejected for religious or cultural reasons, as Shah (1995; 1999); Ahmad et al. (2000) and Atkin et al. (2002) suggest, it is difficult to see how this family can be helped – other than by setting up totally separate childcare and special needs provision for Muslims, as, in fact, has been proposed in relation to the health service itself (Sheikh, 2007). All this is so self-evident that it is utterly perverse to ignore it – as the literature does – and this raises some fundamental questions about the knowledge of reality, or the motivations, of multicultural theorists, which are discussed later.

Difference, disadvantage and multiculturalism My reason for including the above section is not to criticise the values and lifestyles of minority individuals and groups who suffer relative material deprivation. Nor is it to ignore the key structural influences that are arguably at the root of working-class and minority ethnic disadvantage (Flint and Robinson, 2008; Bottero, 2009; Sveinsson, 2009). It is, however, to question the validity of locating all the blame for inequality in racism or ethnic or religious discrimination. It is also to question the logic of, or justification for, multiculturalism – a movement based on assumptions of cultural differences – choosing to ignore these as and when convenient. The reasons for stressing the need for a broader approach to the analysis of potentially contributory factors is because of its implications for the development of social policy and service provision designed to ameliorate the situation. This is where multiculturalism comes into the equation as part of the struggle against inequality that is perceived to be linked to discrimination based on race, ethnicity and, increasingly, religion. What I have suggested so far is that minority ethnic disadvantage is not only the result of discrimination, but that there are some aspects of some minority cultures and religions which are centrally implicated in inequality. From this it follows that it is counterproductive to adopt a

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policy (multiculturalism) that is geared to perpetuating these under the banner of working towards equality. This is not an entirely original thesis, and a number of multiculturalists themselves, such as Fraser (1997), have expressed concerns about the neglect of the material dimension. Critics, of course, have also done so. Barry, in particular, writing as an egalitarian liberal philosopher, provides an impressively detailed analysis of the tensions inherent in the struggle for equality being located within a multicultural framework. He concludes that ‘a politics of multiculturalism undermines a politics of redistribution’ (2001: 8). However, I part company with Barry when he says: ‘But it remains true that ‘culture is not the problem, and culture is not the solution. Ill-conceived public policies can make culture into a problem …’ (2001: 317). For while I acknowledge the philosophical accuracy of his comment, I think it is sociologically questionable in relation to certain elements of inequality, as noted above. I think it is even more normatively questionable in the sphere of gender, where Okin (1999) proposes that ‘multiculturalism is bad for women’, and Patel states that multicultural policies ‘have had an enormous and devastating impact on women’s autonomy and rights’ (1998: 22). These arguments will be illustrated in chapter 3 with reference to the practice of forced marriage, but before going further in my criticisms of multiculturalism, some definitions of the concept are necessary.

So what do we mean by multiculturalism? When I first started writing this book I thought I knew what multiculturalism meant – at least in Britain. However, the more I became immersed in the literature, the more I realised how wrong I was. For trying to articulate a clear definition of the concept is like peeling an onion, where one layer is followed by another … and another … and another. Every time I thought I’d achieved at least an operational definition of the term, up popped another definition, or policy, or practice, or argument for or against the philosophical underpinnings of the term. The only consolation is that a number of renowned advocates of multiculturalism clearly share my problem. Kukathas (1986; 1992; 1996; 1997; 2001) suggests that ‘What exactly multiculturalism amounts to … is not so clear, since policies bearing that name vary, and principled defences of multiculturalism do not always defend the same thing’ (2001: 85); and Modood (1994; 1997; 2001; 2005; 2007) says: ‘multiculturalism is conceived differently in different countries and is given varied institutional expression depending upon the local and national political culture’ (1997: 4). The situation is positively encapsulated in Anthias’ comment that: ‘there are

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‘Multiculturalism’ has been used to describe a wide range of circumstances and is understood and interpreted in a number of different ways. As a result, it no longer has any real meaning, other than at a very generalised level and in political terms. (2008: 68) Of course, it may be that it is the very breadth of definition that enabled Kymlicka to state in 1998 that there is no clear alternative position to multiculturalism, and in 2001a, that multiculturalism is now the dominant, and accepted, approach to diverse societies across the world. For if everybody is using the term differently, it is easy – though not necessarily true – to claim that multiculturalism is the agreed way of dealing with culturally and religiously diverse societies. This is not to suggest that the widespread acceptance of a theory, policy or practice necessarily makes it true or accurate, let alone the right, best or most effective way of dealing with a particular situation. In this case, ‘the situation’ is the increasing cultural diversity of European societies following the Second World War and ‘multiculturalism’ is the range of theory, policy and practice that has increasingly been implemented to deal with this. It is worth remembering here, however, that, prior to multiculturalism, the dominant approach to increasing diversity – in both numerical terms and in relation to the extent of cultural difference – was assimilation, which at the time also went largely unchallenged. It is also the case that much of the non-Western world that has become multicultural in normative terms expects settlers, whether permanent or temporary, to operate on the adage ‘When in Rome … ’. And this is not entirely unreasonable in relation to people who choose to migrate to other countries, presumably in full knowledge of differences in their social norms and values. In other words, we need to exercise caution in accepting that the latest thinking is necessarily the best – particularly in the sphere of inter-ethnic or religious relations which history shows are marked more by conflict than by goodwill. Notwithstanding this, as noted above, since the 1940s, increased migration has turned most industrial, or post-industrial, societies into multicultural ones – at least in terms of the ethnic and religious composition of their populations. And since the 1980s, more and more Western European states have implemented some variant of multiculturalism characterised by the accommodation, rather than assimilation, of minority

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as many varieties [of multiculturalism] as Heinz or blossoms’ (2002: 279) and negatively in Cantle’s statement:

cultures and religions into liberal democratic societies. Notwithstanding this, the difficulty of defining what constitutes multiculturalism is illustrated by recent comments on France, a country widely viewed as a bastion of secular assimilation. Echchaibi (2007) points to the introduction of multicultural policies in France in the early 1980s, and Aitsiselmi suggests that France has ‘shifted from a centralized model of national identity, based on total assimilation, to a multicultural approach which recognizes cultural and religious differences’ (2006: 131). Schain (1999) argues that France is now de facto multicultural (which is not to say that it has embraced a multicultural ideology). Bertossi (2007) points to the influence of republicanism on French thinking about nationality and citizenship and how this has affected subsequent attitudes to immigration and settlement. Hamdan (2007) argues that multiculturalism is not compatible with French secularism. Whatever caveats apply to defining societies as multiculturalist, it is fair to say that there has been a general shift from assimilation to accommodation, not only in Europe but in many other countries, notably Australia, Canada and the US. This has come about for a number of reasons, some of which concern the desire to narrow the economic gaps between ethnic groups; some reflecting changes in philosophical, ethical and political thinking about equality and human rights, and some in response to grassroots struggles, first for racial equality and later for cultural and religious recognition. Though there is no single, agreed definition of multiculturalism, a number of references suggest at least some level of shared understanding. For example: 1. ‘in broad terms, multiculturalism advocates dealing with diversity not by assimilating, or expelling, cultural minorities, but by accommodating them’ (Kukathas, 2001). 2. ‘Multiculturalism … is underpinned by notions of respecting diversity and valuing cultural difference …’ (Meetoo and Mirza, 2007). 3. ‘Multiculturalism is a policy agenda designed to redress the unequal treatment of cultural groups and the “culture-racism” to which members of minority cultural groups are often exposed’ (A. Phillips, 2007). 4. ‘Multiculturalism as a political, social and cultural movement has aimed to respect a multiplicity of diverging perspectives outside of dominant traditions’ (Willett, 1998). 5. ‘Multiculturalism is a political and normative perspective on cultural diversity, where this is positively valued and worth securing and promoting’ (Parekh, 2000b).

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6. ‘Multiculturalism involves a range of rights, different foci, including political representation, affirmative action, exemptions from laws, recognition of traditional legal codes, etc.’ (Kalev, 2004). 7. ‘Multiculturalism – the belief that all cultures are equal in value; every individual and every culture in which individuals participate, as being equally valuable’ (Minogue, 2005). 8. ‘Britain should develop both as a community of citizens (the liberal view) and as a community of communities (the pluralist view)’ (Parekh, 2000b). 9. ‘the political idea of multiculturalism – the recognition of group differences within the political sphere of laws, policies, democratic discourses and the terms of a shared citizenship …’ (Modood, 2007). 10. ‘A shift to true multiculturalism … would involve the abandonment of cultural hegemony by the native Britons’ (Melotti, 1997). Put at its simplest, multiculturalism refers to the policies and practices developed by Western societies to cope with the non-Western cultural and religious diversity that now exists within their borders. But this is where there ceases to be anything ‘simple’ about it, for multiculturalism – like culture itself – is not static, but dynamic, so that theory, policy and practice change over both time and place. Cantle (2008) refers to ‘a spectrum from “assimilation” to “co-existence”’ (2008: 90). Anthias distinguishes between ‘liberal … and critical or reflexive multiculturalism’ and contrasts ‘hard and soft versions of this’ (2002: 279). On a ‘common-sense’ level one could, perhaps, place the definitions above on a continuum from soft, through liberal to hard, with critical or reflexive multiculturalism being seen as aspirational and concerned to remove the barriers to accepting the legitimacy of ‘different ways of being’ (May, 1999). At the soft/liberal end of the continuum, it could be argued that there is – on the surface at least – little that is particularly original, radical or objectionable about a multiculturalism that talks about not removing from the country people whose cultures or religions differ from the majority (Kukathas), trying to reduce their structural inequality (Phillips) or treating them with respect (Meetoo and Mirza). However, things start to look more problematic when demands are made that all cultures be regarded as equal (Minogue), that group differences should be recognised within the public arena (Modood) or that Britain should cease to define its own culture (Melotti). But even with the softer forms of multiculturalism the devil is in the detail, for it all depends on what happens to theory when it becomes enshrined in policy and operationalised in practice. This is not always easy to assess, partly

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because few societies have adopted multiculturalism as an official policy in the way that Canada has, so that it is not clear what it means, for instance, to say that Britain, Australia, Italy, the Netherlands or France are multicultural societies. It is also because multicultural theory, policy and practice – like culture itself – change over time and place, and so, too, do the reasons for it, the ethnic and/or religious groups it targets and its focus, whether on government policy, activist and/or community groups or individuals. But multiculturalism is considerably more than a policy approach to coping with the cultural and religious diversity that now characterises Western societies. It is an ideology (in every sense of the term) that aims to influence both individual and societal attitudes towards different cultures and religions and their embodiment in individual and community lifestyles. Some would call this ‘social engineering’; Flint and Robinson, however, while apparently seeing no problems with multiculturalism on this dimension, refer to the more recent cohesion agenda as ‘the contemporary manifestation of a civilising offensive through which governments seek to inculcate particular values and to reshape the morals and behaviour of the population’ (2008: 259). This seems to suggest that multiculturalism is acceptable because it targets only the white majority for change, while adopting a laissez-faire attitude towards ethnic and religious minorities. Integration and cohesion, however, are not acceptable because they suggest that change is a two-way process, requiring adjustments by all members of society. This attitude seems to me to permeate a great deal of multicultural thinking and is deliciously illustrated by Modood’s criticism of ‘the “naïve” use of the term “Asian” by some white British people in ignorance of the cultural heterogeneity it encompasses’ (1997: 13). Modood is absolutely correct; however, he seems to be blissfully ignorant himself of the fact that exactly the same criticism applies to his own use of the term ‘white’! This is a rather amusing example of the tunnel vision that seems to dominate multiculturalism, but it is one that has potentially negative implications for the multicultural enterprise. It may, for instance, explain why many ‘ordinary’ (majority? white?) people feel that multiculturalism treats their culture with a serious lack of respect and that it is a threat to British culture as a whole. It is this kind of feeling that could engender support for far right political parties, such as the British National Party (BNP). Going where angels fear to tread, I would say that despite significant differences on a number of dimensions, most multiculturalism rests on a number of assumptions that have become so taken for granted that they have virtually ceased to be open to critical appraisal. Some of these

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are discussed in more detail in chapter 5, but it is worth noting two foundational ones at this point. The first is the apparent belief that without active state intervention, minority cultures will become extinct. Watson refers to ‘coercive assimilation’ whereby mono-cultural state institutions act to suppress other cultures that thus ‘are persuaded to wither away’ (2000: 3). Cantle describes assimilation as entailing ‘the loss of minority languages, traditional dress and other outwardly identifiable characteristics, as well as the adoption of political economic and social norms that are determined by the majority’. He goes on to say: ‘with limited or no provision to support them, differences may nevertheless soon be expected to wither away’ (2008: 90). In addition to being patronising, I think this is one of a number of seriously erroneous assumptions that underpin multiculturalism. And in encouraging state intervention, it is one that flies in the face of the liberal democratic principles that gave birth to the multicultural movement. Leaving aside the question of why the ‘withering away’ of differences between people is felt to be a wrong that merits state intervention to prevent it, there are two elements to this assumption. First, the notion that without active (state) support cultures will wither away seems to rest on a very odd definition of culture. All cultures change over time, through interaction with other cultures, so in diverse societies, unless we propose banning all forms of inter-ethnic interaction, change is inevitable. It may even be that some aspects of cultures do, indeed, cease to exist over time, but anthropological and sociological intelligence suggests that this occurs over a very long period of time. The important points from this are first that cultures are inherently dynamic, and second that cultures develop in response to the challenges posed by their context/environment – and when that environment changes, so too do cultures, albeit sometimes rather slowly. In extreme conditions, such cultural adaptation is actually a requirement of human survival; in more benign ones, it is more a matter of cultures working for or against the interests of the group. What usually happens is that people retain certain aspects of their original cultures unchanged while modifying others to ‘fit’ better with the new environment. Generations of migrants to Britain have sustained strong and vibrant cultures without any help from multiculturalism, as is evidenced by such communities as Orthodox Jews and Catholic Poles. A major difference between such communities and the ones on which multiculturalism focuses is that outsiders have not tried to insist that individual members must conform to aspects of their culture that they might wish to reject or tried to lock them into

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continuing membership of cultural communities that they might wish to leave. A further aspect of the argument that minority cultures need help to preserve themselves is highlighted by Cantle’s reference to political, economic and social norms being determined by the majority. The implication that it is somehow illiberal, unjust or wrong for the majority to define the norms of society runs through a great deal – though not all – of multicultural theory. But one of the key definitions of liberal democratic societies is that they represent the will of the majority, so that in criticising this, multiculturalism is challenging liberal democracy itself. And on a practical level, it is difficult to see how else liberal democratic governments could run the state. The second assumption that multiculturalism appears to share is that the communities and cultures they seek to protect and preserve are both unchanging and homogeneous up to, and including, being ungendered, which, as most women know, translates in practice to being male. Nor, apparently, are minority ethnic/religious communities troubled by other internal differences – and divisions – that are a feature of majority ones, such as age, class or sexual orientation. Thus, the prioritisation of ethnicity over all other aspects of the person is a common characteristic of multiculturalism, though rarely is an attempt made to justify this. Mirza (2003) notes that in the Commission on the Future of Multi Ethnic Britain (Parekh, 2000a) women get just a three-page mention out of 314 pages and Bhavnani et al. (2005) observe that Cantle’s Community Cohesion report (2001) fails to look at the specificity of gendered social action. Nor has this generally changed over time, despite key developments in feminist theory and Okin’s work on gender, culture and inequality, including her seminal critique of the effects of multiculturalism in these areas (1989; 1997; 1998; 1999). Even in Canada – the country that first introduced multiculturalism and is still seen as its leader in both theory and practice – the parliamentary briefing on Canadian Multiculturalism makes no mention of women (Dewing and Leman, 2006). And Canada’s guru on multiculturalism, Will Kymlicka, has little more to say about women in his 2007 book than he did in 1995, with only six mentions in 374 pages. It remains more commonly the case that it is work that has moved towards ‘cohesion’ rather than multiculturalism that takes at least some account of women, though even here this is not always so. Thus, for example, Britain’s architect of community cohesion, Ted Cantle, mentions women briefly only five times over the 236 pages of his 2005 book, and has little more to say about them in his 2008 one, other than with

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reference to (white women’s) enfranchisement, sexism and the authoritarian personality. In the proceedings of the Runnymede Conference on Community, Cohesion and Citizenship (2002) minority ethnic women are not mentioned at all. The Communitarian Network (2002) does better, mentioning women twice – once stressing women’s, and gay, rights and stating that discrimination against either group is unacceptable. The report of the Commission on Integration and Cohesion (Singh, 2007) also refers to women, including having a specific section and recommendations on ‘working with women’. Nevertheless, though this attention to women’s issues is a welcome improvement on most other writings, it remains a very small part of a lengthy (173 A4 pages) report. I would argue that the neglect of women is not a minor issue of concern only to feminists, but constitutes a crucial omission in most multicultural theory, policy and practice, an omission that has profound consequences, not only for women, but for all members of minority ethnic and religious communities. This argument is further developed in chapter 5, but before that I want to discuss what I believe is another central neglect of multiculturalism – that of religion.

Summary: the what and why of multiculturalism(s) In this chapter I have traced the historical development of multiculturalism in Britain and continental Europe to the large-scale recruitment of workers from non-European countries (frequently colonies or former colonies). This was to fill the gaps in the labour market following the Second World War when British workers who had served in the armed forces had been promised improved educational, health and working conditions. The result was that overseas workers were generally employed to do the jobs that indigenous workers were no longer prepared to do and this started a cycle of disadvantage that continues to impact on the children and grandchildren of these early migrants. The government made no preparations for such workers, largely because they were not expected to remain, even though they held British citizenship. South Asian migrants shared the government’s expectations, believing that their stay would be limited to such a time as they had amassed enough money to return home as relatively wealthy men. (This was in contrast to their counterparts from the Caribbean, who regarded the UK as the motherland and whose expectations were of permanent residence.) It was not until the 1960s, when the wives and families of migrant workers began to join them, that the government realised that the new British were here to stay, and that ‘something had to be done’ – at least

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about non-English-speaking children in UK school system. This began a series of government interventions, particularly in education, which were based on ideologies of ‘assimilation’, ‘integration’ and ‘cultural pluralism’, and were expressed through various forms multiculturalism, anti-racism and a later form of multiculturalism that claimed to incorporate anti-racism. The current ideological position is ‘cohesion’ which, for the first time, has become the government’s official position. Both African-Caribbean and South Asian people were confronted by discrimination in the workplace and by rampant racism – including violence – in wider society. Their reactions to this differed significantly and this is connected to both the form of migration and the longer-term orientations of the two groups. At the risk of some over-simplification, Caribbean people were less tolerant of racial discrimination than were South Asians, because the latter saw their situation as temporary. Thus, it was mainly black people who were instrumental in developing the anti-racist movement and exerting pressure on the government to take action against racism, which it did through race relations legislation of varying strengths. The various multicultural, anti-racist and cohesion policies developed partly in response to perceived racial, ethnic and religious discrimination and to the reality of the continuing material disadvantage of minority ethnic/religious groups relative to majority ones. However, while stressing the reality of racism based on skin colour, culture and religion, I have also drawn attention to the fact that there are significant differences between ethnic groups. Some, in fact, are doing better than their indigenous (white) counterparts. This, I suggest, should alert us to the question that is generally ruled inadmissible within a multicultural discourse: what role might culture play in perpetuating disadvantage? The reason for the neglect of this question is that multiculturalism stresses the equality of cultures, which leads to an emphasis on only the positive aspects of diversity and a concomitant rejection of the possibility that minority cultures might also contain negative elements. Similar observations do not apply to multiculturalism’s references to white cultures which enter the multicultural debate only in terms of assumed racism! My discussion of the meaning of multiculturalism acknowledges that it is a contested concept that varies over time and place – hence my pluralising of the concept in the title of this chapter. Notwithstanding this, I note a number of shared characteristics that can be seen to constitute a continuum from ‘soft’ to ‘hard’ versions of multiculturalism in terms of both theory and practice. These raise different levels of challenge to conventional ways of running liberal democratic societies, but all, to some

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The What and Why of Multiculturalism(s) 33

extent, involve governments in what might be termed social engineering in their aim to change the values, attitudes and behaviour of diverse citizens towards each other. And at a different level, all rest on some notion that minority cultures are fragile and therefore in need of protection, as well as that minority cultures are homogeneous and ungendered. Both assumptions have resulted in serious omissions in multicultural theory; both have had significant consequences for multicultural policy and practice; and in combination, both have had serious negative consequences in relation to the impact of multiculturalism on minority ethnic women. The neglect of religion, to which I now turn, has exacerbated these consequences.

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2

Introduction In the first chapter, I discussed some of the reasons for the development of multiculturalism in Britain (and wider Europe). In this chapter I focus on two of the most striking omissions in this development – the almost total absence of both women and religion. I have linked the two in one chapter because I believe that secular multiculturalism intersects and interacts with religion in ways that can both exacerbate and legitimise the oppression of women in some minority ethnic communities.

Multiculturalism and religion Death … In an article in which we commented on the absence of women in the literature, Sheila Allen and I suggested that religion was ‘[another] neglected dimension in the study of race and ethnic relations’ (Allen and Macey, 1994: 120). Religion is also a major omission in multicultural theory, policy and practice, and a neglected variable in considering the impact of multiculturalism on women. For religion is a central component of identity for many minority ethnic individuals and communities (Wagley and Harris, 1958; Yinger, 1986; Rex, 1991). Indeed, though religion and ethnicity are conceptually separable, they are often considerably less so in reality, to the point that in some cases it is reasonable to talk of ethno-religious communities. However, caution needs to be exercised in this sphere and assumptions avoided, as Mahoney and Taj’s (2006) work with Welsh Muslim women demonstrates. For in making some extremely strong criticisms of their own communities and statutory service providers, the women were at pains to emphasise that their problems 35

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Multiculturalism, God and Gender

were not a consequence of religion, but of culture. This highlights the difficulty of separating religion from culture, given that – by definition – religion originated and operates within cultural boundaries, albeit ones that are sometimes constructed trans-nationally or internationally, and always – again by definition – having a transcendental element. Early sociology accorded religion a central role in understanding society (Durkheim 1915; Weber, 1963), with religion being seen as a kind of social glue that bound individuals and groups into the social or cultural order (Durkheim, 1933; Parsons, 1965). Religion was also seen as providing a symbolic universe, or sacred canopy, that gave meaning to a world of otherwise potential chaos (Berger, 1969). The underlying assumption was of relatively homogeneous societies in which Christianity was the norm, so that interest in difference was generally limited to Catholicism versus Protestantism. In Western Europe and North America, this led over time to a focus on the processes of modernity and secularisation. This was influenced by the nineteenth-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, whose proposition that ‘God is dead’ (Nietzsche, 1992) has been applied to the contemporary Western world by sociologists such as Bruce (1992). A further influence on sociological thinking on religion is the Marxist conception of it as a means of social control, oppression and maintenance of the unequal status quo. This view (or ideology) neglects the fact that – historically and internationally – religion has been centrally involved in revolutionary social change in North and South America and India, for example. Notwithstanding the general sociological orientation, debates on the reality of secularism in the West have continued unabated (see Davie, 1994; 2001; 2002; 2004; 2006; Bruce, 2002, 2006; Voas and Bruce, 2004; 2006; Voas and Crockett, 2005; Crockett and Voas, 2006). Arguments against secularisation are fuelled by such facts as that found in the 2001 census, which recorded that 72 per cent of the UK population defined themselves as Christian, though what this means is unclear and is not reflected in church attendance (Macey et al., 2009). And the growth in new religious movements (NRMs) also casts some doubt on the secularisation thesis, at least in terms of spirituality, if not institutionalised religion (see Barker, 2001; Heelas, 2001; Heelas et al., 2005). But it is in relation to diversity that the neglect of religion is most serious because of its link with ethnicity. It is also because religion is not only a source of stability and social cohesion, but is centrally implicated in conflict. Religion can provide individuals with strength and hope, but it can also be used to mobilise them to divide and kill (Afshar, 1989; Al Sadaawi, 1991; Lutz, 1991; Rath et al., 1991; Rex, 1991; Turner, 1991; Macey,

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Multiculturalism, God and Gender 37

1992; Allen and Macey, 1994). And, on a day-to-day basis, religion is frequently used to justify discrimination against, and the oppression of, minorities within minorities – particularly women and young people.

Within this Eurocentric framework, it is probably fair to say that most of us had lost sight of the historic power of religion, which was in fact responsible for creating much of the world as we know it today (Allen and Macey, 1994). We had also lost track of the fact that both Islam and Judaism were major contributors to what is generally thought of as Christian European culture (Dummett, 1991; Turner, 1991; Modood, 1992). And despite our awareness of the role of religion in conflict, viewing the world through the lens of modernity and secularism led us to locate religion safely within the private sphere. It was into this millpond that The Satanic Verses (Rushdie, 1988) dropped, whose ripples of conflict and violence, death and destruction spread across the world. Even this, however, was not enough to serve as a wake-up call to most sociologists, who, with such notable exceptions as Modood (1992; 1998); Rex (1991; 1992; 1994), Macey (1992; 1999a; 1999b) and Samad (1992; 1998), continued to treat religion as of minor interest to the study of ethnicity. It took a series of incidents of violent public disorder and riot in Bradford (Macey, 1999b; 2005) and, eventually, acts of terrorism in the US and Europe before most sociologists fully realised that God is neither dead nor living in purdah, but very much alive and active in the public arena. Indeed, not only is God not dead – and never has been for a large percentage of the world’s people – but, as Kepel (1994) observes, since the mid-1970s, there has been a worldwide resurgence of the three Abrahamic faiths – Christianity, Islam and Judaism. Furbey suggests, following Sennett (1998) and Bauman (2004), that: ‘much of this global religious resurgence is associated with separation and conflict, reflecting a defensive reaction to the uncertainties and risks of a globalised and “liquid” world’ (2008: 120). This fits with earlier work, which suggests that in situations of rapid social change people have a tendency to turn to older certainties, such as those provided by religion; and that religion in these circumstances tends towards the fundamentalist, rather than more liberal variants (Neilsen, 1984; Robinson, 1988; Macey, 1991). This obviously has particular implications for women. Despite the growth in religiosity or religious self-identification generally, it is Islam that is the focus of most Western attention and, along with the US’s ‘war on terror’, there is a ‘war for Muslim minds’ (Kepel,

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… and resurrection

2004; Ramadan, 2004). This is not surprising, since Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world, a growth that includes significant numbers of white, largely working-class, converts, some of whom have been involved in bombings or attempted bombings in Europe (Kepel, 2004). And it is the involvement in terrorist attacks by British Muslims that has played a major part in motivating the British government to afford Islam a new central role, particularly in the community and voluntary sector (CVS) – even though, as we have seen, Muslim women’s voices are often not heard (Macey et al., 2009). Thus, religion in contemporary Britain is now the subject of considerable attention, both positive and negative. The government has done an almost complete volte-face from the days when Prime Minister Thatcher responded to the Church of England’s publication of Faith in the City (ACUPA, 1985) by stating vehemently that religion had no place in politics, to one that actively promotes it. This approach is linked to New Labour’s ‘modernisation’ of social democracy (‘The Third Way’), a renewed emphasis on social integration and an interest in communitarianism (Farnell et al., 2003; Furbey and Macey, 2005). While the government’s interest in the faith sector actually pre-dates this government (Furbey, 2008), it is particularly evident in New Labour thinking. Tony Blair made explicit the government’s approach to religion in his comment: Our major faith traditions – all of them more historic and deeply rooted than any political party or ideology – play a fundamental role in supporting and propagating values which bind us together as a nation. (Blair, 2001) In the context of terrorism justified by religion, it is fascinating that Blair’s comment is so clearly rooted in a consensus approach whereby the conflict that is virtually inherent in religion due to its exclusivity is totally ignored. It also shows no awareness of the tension between the government’s privileging of religion on the one hand, its demand for community cohesion on the other, and, indeed, the relatively recent religion and belief legislation. All these impact differently on men and women, minorities and majorities, secularists and religious, but the government, like multiculturalism, appears blind to this reality. Thus, to give just one example, the negative consequences for women’s rights that can accrue from ceding more autonomy to ethno-religious leaders is ignored (see Shachar, 2001, for a detailed discussion of the impact of cultural

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and religious differences on women’s rights; Southall Black Sisters (SBS), 2008, for an example of the negative effects of the cohesion agenda on ‘single-issue’ groups; the British Humanist Association (BHA), 2007, for concerns about the extension of policy and practice to religions in the public arena). Before moving on to a discussion of the impact on women of the interaction between religion and multiculturalism, I want to mention another element of the so-called ‘Rushdie Affair’, whose significance bypassed many people at the time. This is that the violent public disorder that accompanied protests against publication of The Satanic Verses in Britain signalled a very public consolidation of a change in (Pakistani) Muslim attitudes, which had begun in cities like Bradford, West Yorkshire, in the early 1970s (Macey, 2005b). This involved a shift away from demands for equality on the basis of race/ethnicity to demands for special treatment on the basis of religion (Macey, 2005b). The magnitude of this change cannot be overstated: it represents a turning-point in inter-ethnic relations, halting previous joint action against racism by Asian, black and white people, and heralding a new era of identity politics involving separatist Muslim action – and development – which remains to this day. Although a whole raft of both domestic and international factors played a part in this new prioritisation of religion as the aspect of identity around which mobilisation occurred, it could not, I believe, have taken place in anything other than a multicultural and liberal democratic context. Multiculturalism had paved the way for acceptance of demands for special treatment in terms of both exemptions from and extensions to the law, and the redefinition of equality as requiring different treatment. Liberal democracy had enabled freedom of speech, the right to make demands on government for change and the right of public protest (though not violence). Modern communications technology had brought the global to the local, as well as facilitating mobilisation. All this came together in ways that Muslims in Bradford and elsewhere made extremely effective use of in furthering their aims and gaining special privileges (Ansari, 2002). There are two important aspects of the above that are worth emphasising with respect to women. The first is that a brand of multiculturalism (or community cohesion) that involves ceding autonomy to communities through male ‘leaders’ does not generally operate to further women’s struggles for rights or autonomy. And in a context of residential, social and religious separation – as is the case for a number of Muslim communities in Britain (Peach, 2002; 2006; Carling, 2008; Macey et al., 2009) – the control and oppression of women is removed from public scrutiny

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Multiculturalism, God and Gender 39

40 Multiculturalism, Religion and Women

and its perpetuation thereby enhanced. All this needs to be read in the awareness that all religions discriminate against women in a number of ways and in a number of arenas; it is to these that I now turn.

Turner (1991) states that all the Abrahamic faiths are patriarchal and that this permeates their theologies and practices; de Ferrari points to the ‘persistence of an anthropology that assigns a “special nature” to women’ (2000: 25–6); and Lerner observes that a basic gender assumption of patriarchy is that: Men and women are essentially different creatures, not only in their biological equipment, but in their needs, capacities and functions. Men and women also differ in the way they were created and in the social function assigned to them by God. (1993: 4) All religions have clearly defined gender roles, usually based on that most telling of sayings ‘equal but different’, all of which carry prescriptions for behaviour. Brown observes that the concept of complementarity is central to an Islamic understanding of the relations between the sexes as operating in harmony with the skills and natural attributes of men and women. Complementarity asserts that biological differences determine how to be a good Muslim and that society should be ordered for the fulfilment of men’s ‘regency on earth’ (2006: 424). Brown notes that this leads to women’s roles and identities always being defined in relation to men, as daughters, sisters, wives and mothers. In other words, women – unlike men – are not seen as autonomous beings, but as existing only in relation to men! I have always held the view that it is not religion per se that leads to the oppression of women, but cultural interpretations and uses of it. However, Manji (2005) and Hirsi Ali (2006) write that discrimination against women is inherent inn Islam itself, and Moghissi (2000) states that: No amount of twisting and bending can reconcile the Qur’anic injunctions and instructions about women’s rights and obligations with the idea of gender equality. Regardless of the interpretation of the Qur’an and the Shari’a, if the Qur’anic instructions are taken literally, Islamic individuals or societies cannot favour equal rights for women in the family or in certain areas of social life … If the principles of the Shar’ia

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Multiculturalism, God and Gender 41

Against this, some feminist scholars propose that international Islam can offer a way for Muslim women to attain their human rights: Dwyer (1999) says that the Qur’an can be used by women to invoke religious rights, although Philip Lewis (pers. comm.) points out that the Hadith – referred to in Islamic jurisprudence to interpret the Qur’an – can be used to override this; Brown (2006) suggests that global Islam could provide a platform from which women might extend their rights; and Afshar (2007) proposes that Islam can provide a framework to open pathways towards feminism. For these writers, Islam offers theological possibilities for women’s liberation. For others, it is the realistic analysis of the power of religion in some communities that leads them to adopt a pragmatic approach. Thus CIMEL/INTERIGHTS (2001) suggest the need to work through both religious and secular channels, and Woodhead (2008) observes that Muslim women are more likely to achieve equality by working within their religious culture than by rejecting this. Whatever the case, as with culture, all religions have a particular focus on women because of their intimate involvement in biological, cultural and religious reproduction. As the bearers and principal socialisers of children, women’s reproductive capacity and social location mean that men express concerns about women’s sexual purity. At a personal/individual level, this may be related to paternity – the simple fact that while a woman can never doubt that she is the mother of a particular child, a man can never be certain that he is the father unless he uses a DNA test. However, a different order of concern and control occurs in cultures that emphasise ‘purity’, and where this determines structured relationships and status. Thus, for instance, the concept of izzat (honour) has far-reaching consequences for women’s agency because loss of a woman’s honour also involves loss of male and family honour. Afshar observes that ‘any transgression denotes a failure, not only of the women, but also and particularly of their menfolk and hence the entire family’ (1994: 134). Since the consequences of this can extend across the economic as well the social dimension (Khanum, 1992; Bhatty, 1988; Moghissi, 2005; Bhatti, 2007), it is not surprising that young men in cities such as Bradford are obsessed with policing the appearance and behaviour of women (Afshar, 1989, 1994; Alibhai-Brown, 1998; Scott, 2003). This is not only to do with family honour, but is linked to

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are to be maintained … women cannot enjoy equality before the law and in law. The Shar’ia is not compatible with the principles of equality of human beings. (2000: 140–1)

masculinities (Jacobsen, 1998; Dwyer, 1999, 2000; Macey, 1999a; Beckett and Macey, 2001; Archer, 2003) and – though arguably cultural, rather than religious – it is justified in the name of religion. Ultimately, however, such control can involve both mental and physical violence – up to and including murder (Afshar, 1994; Macey, 2007a; 2008). Efforts to control sexuality are not restricted to women or the Islamic faith, as is illustrated by religious attitudes to homosexuality (see Crockett and Voas, 2003; Yip and Keenan, 2004, on Anglicanism; Yip, 2004, on Islam), though I am not aware of any other religion that takes this to the extremes that Islam does. Nor, of course, is the control of women only a religious concern, though there is little doubt that this is enhanced if religion can be used to legitimate it. As one of the participants in the government-funded consultations with Muslim women in England observed: ‘Men in all societies may control women, however they don’t use religion as a justification, the way it is wrongly used by Muslim men within the community’ (cited in Raz, 2006). This comment is a profound illustration of why it is legitimate to suggest that multiculturalism contributes to the oppression of minority ethno-religious women, but also highlights some difficult questions around religious versus cultural requirements and the impact of these on women’s choices in a wide range of arenas – from style of dress, through educational opportunities, to choice of friends and even marriage partners. All of these raise complex questions: even the Muslim hijab (headscarf) is not, as Hoodfar (1993) points out, a neutral signifier. Rather: It has come to symbolize everything from Islamic fundamentalism and women’s subordination to freedom of religious expression and women’s empowerment and equality. (Hamdan, 2007: 2) This is illustrated by a number of high-profile cases in Britain, some of which have gone as far as the High Court for resolution. They mainly concern challenges to school uniform requirements, though one involved the dismissal of a teaching assistant who insisted on wearing the niqab (veil which covers the face) in class. The grounds for dismissal was that this interfered with her ability to do her job of helping non-Englishspeaking children to learn the language, though a common response was that it was motivated by racism or Islamophobia. Generally speaking, British schools have amended their uniform rules to allow Muslim girls to wear the hijab, but have drawn the line at the niqab, jilabaaba or burqa1 on the grounds of ‘health and safety’ because they prevent recognition, as well as interfering with

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the teaching/learning process. France, on the other hand, provoked an international outcry in 2004 when it introduced legislation banning ‘conspicuous’ signs of religion in public schools. Alhough this included yarmulkes (skull caps worn by Orthodox Jewish males) and ‘excessively large’ crucifixes, the ban was widely interpreted as an attack on the Muslim hijab. Ezekiel points out that issues around religious symbols have arisen in the past, and analyses why the reaction to the ban was so strong – even involving hostage-taking in Iraq accompanied by demands to revoke the legislation (Ezekiel, 2005; 2006). But the diversity of views on the hijab by both wearers and others illustrate the complexity of the issue: some see it as a symbol of chastity or modesty (Bullock, 2002) or a purely religious symbol (El-Solh and Mabro, 1994; Engineer, 1994); others define it as a symbol of resistance to Western imperialism (Smith, 2004) or as an assertion of ethno-religious identity. Still others point to its role in affording women more freedom to move in public spaces free from male harassment and family disapproval (Moghadam, 1994; Ruby, 2004), though this itself raises some basic questions about Muslim women’s freedom which are generally ignored. In many parts of Britain, the hijab is so common that it attracts little attention; it is the niqab and burqa that cause discomfort to many people (including Muslim women who choose not to ‘cover’). The increase in the number of young women wearing burqas or jilbab in recent years is read by many as indicative of at least distancing from, if not rejection of, wider British society. For me, the question remains at root whether women who cover have done so from personal choice or have been pressured into doing so. My experience of university students suggests that this varies. Some parents make university attendance conditional on their daughters wearing the burqa – which probably explains the transformation as women enter toilets fully covered and emerge in Western dress! In other cases, students have had to struggle to persuade their parents to allow them to cover and lecturers and students are suddenly confronted with a transformed, and unrecognisable, person in the lecture room. Nevertheless, I think that there are legitimate health and safety issues around the burqa, as is illustrated by the fact that one of the men involved in the murder of PC Sharon Beshenivsky in Bradford escaped by donning this garment. I also think that the concept of choice is open to question, particularly when little girls as young as nine or ten are covered from head to foot while their brothers’ Western clothing allows them to run around freely (Macey, 2007a). As noted above, the question of choice is not limited to what women can wear, but affects their freedom of movement, health and physical

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safety. For example, some women live in purdah, which was justified to me by one man as keeping them safe from the threat of rape in a corrupt society (in Farnell et al., 2003). Others are obliged to take circuitous routes to avoid walking in areas where large groups of young Muslim men cluster and subject them to verbal harassment. I have personally witnessed such young men stop their cars in the middle of the road to harangue (and even spit at) young women walking on the streets. Parents can also be harassed. I know of one young woman who changed from a full- to a part-time course to avoid her own and her parents’ harassment (Macey, 1999a). Note, too, that a third more than the national average of young Pakistani Muslim women have the highest rates of mental breakdown, self-harm and suicide in Britain (Husain et al.). It is, of course, questionable how much of this can fairly be blamed on religion in terms of theology rather than the cultural interpretations and cynical uses of it to further male control over women, but that certain men have found religion a valuable resource in this arena is indisputable (Macey, 1999a). Likewise, if multiculturalism has played a role in facilitating the control of women, as mediated by religion, it is indirectly rather than directly. It may be, for example, that in encouraging the maintenance of culture and religion as practised in the homeland, it has slowed down the process of change within certain communities. It may also be that its adoption of an essentialised and uncritical approach to ethno-religious communities renders women invisible and thus leaves the way open for gender-based oppression and even violence. Although it would seem to be Muslims who make the most overt use of religion to legitimise the control of women, other religions are not exempt. For example, some (white) Christian evangelical communities use discourses of purity to prescribe women’s dress and behaviour, instilling a deep sense of guilt in those who transgress religious norms (Aune and Sharma, 2007). Hunt and Lightly (2001) and Hunt (2002) show how a (black) Pentecostal church uses similar strategies around purity both to control women’s sexuality and to construct boundaries between itself and wider society in order to maintain the traditions of the ‘homeland’. This raises some uncomfortable questions for the government’s simultaneous emphasis on religion and on community cohesion. A further issue that has arisen as a consequence of both multiculturalism and the government’s prioritisation of funding for religious groups is that it has allowed some politically motivated projects to pass themselves off as religious ones. Mukta (2000) and Searle-Chatterjee (2000) point to so-called faith-based organisations (FBOs) that promote Hindu nationalism, and Samaroo (2005) found government-funded domestic violence

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refuges being run by imams’ wives – with the predictable result that battered women were persuaded that it is a religious requirement for them to return to violent partners. There are numerous examples of how the world faiths discriminate against and, indeed, oppress women. Some of these are ‘formal’ in that they stem from religious doctrine; some are ‘informal’ and are rooted in the gender equivalent of ‘institutional racism’; and some constitute what Glick and Fiske (2001) term ‘benign sexism’. But there is a significant number of examples of discrimination against women that are clearly related to the autonomy that multicultural policies have afforded self-styled community and religious ‘leaders’ to govern their own communities. Some of the more extreme of these will be discussed in chapter 3. At this point, I shall mention only a few examples of how the religious construction of gender roles subjects women to inequality and disadvantage. I would flag up here the observation that most of these apply to the private sphere – that which affects women most profoundly and is covered by family law – the very arena that is frequently suggested as the most appropriate in which to allow religious freedom of self-governance (see Shachar, 1998, 1999, 2001; Nussbaum, 1999a; 2000; Deveaux, 2000; 2002, for discussions of this). I begin, however, with examples from the public sphere and/or which constitute points of intersection between the public and the private. First, there is the issue of gender roles in the clergy (or its equivalent). For example, the Catholic Church prohibits women from becoming priests and treats women religious (nuns) in a deeply unequal way to their male counterparts (Utti, 2006). Orthodox Judaism does not have female rabbis, though reform Judaism does, and Islam does not have women imams (at least not in the UK, though I understand that this is not the case elsewhere). The Anglican Church admits women to the priesthood, but only agreed in 2008 that they may become bishops, and the issue of women priests remains a source of major conflict within the wider Anglican communion, particularly outside Britain. Sani and Reicher talk of the danger of schism (2000: 95), and Crockett and Voas (2003) and Yip and Keenan (2004) make similar points with reference to homosexuality. I would note in passing that the discourse on women priests and bishops constitutes a striking illustration of the extent of overt sexism relative to overt racism. (A salutary exercise here is to reflect on what happens if one substitutes ‘black people’ for ‘women’ and to ask in the light of this: on what basis does multiculturalism prioritise race/ethnicity over gender?) Another area in which gender inequality is clear is that of women’s position in FBOs, where, despite being over-represented in voluntary

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work, women are rarely found in positions of leadership or decisionmaking. In addition to this ‘glass ceiling’, a number of illustrations of gender inequality are provided by Farnell et al.’s research, summarised by the senior national community development professional who said: ‘The activity that is faith based is also in our view misogynist’ (2003: 34). In the same research, institutional or benevolent sexism is illustrated by the committee member of a Hindu temple whose response to a question about the (management) roles of women in the running of the temple was: ‘Every day women look after the kitchen very well, and wherever there is need, they are there. General maintenance, cleaning and hoovering …’ (Farnell et al., 2003: 34). Finally, an issue that raises serious questions about gender equality is the operation of religious courts in England – the Jewish Beth Din and Muslim Shar’ia courts (or tribunals). Beth Din have operated in England for over a hundred years and deal with civil disputes in a number of areas in both the private and public spheres – from divorce to partnerships in private companies. In all cases, both parties must be Jewish and have agreed to the Beth Din hearing the case. The fact that the decision, as with secular tribunals, is then binding, though not implemented by secular legal authorities, does not mitigate its effects on religious women. Shar’ia courts have existed in England since the early 1980s, but until recently have had no official standing in secular law. However, the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal (MAT) has (as they put it) exploited a loophole in the 1996 Arbitration Act which has enabled them to increase their powers significantly in a way never seen in England before. Apparently, these quasi-official courts have been operational in England since August 2007 and have already ruled on over 100 cases, though this only become public knowledge in 2008 (Taher, 2008). Given the furore that greeted the Archbishop of Canterbury’s suggestion that it was almost inevitable – and actually desirable – that elements of shar’ia law be implemented in Britain (Williams, 2008), this is likely to be deeply unpopular among the general public, and, I would suggest, with good reason, for there are farreaching implications of this, not only for Muslim women but for liberal democracy itself (a point to which I return to in chapter 4) for the use of arbitration tribunal legislation comes close to constituting a parallel legal system based on religion, though the government denies this. And it is true that such courts cannot, as yet, breach the law of the land. Nevertheless, in dealing with criminal offences, including physical assault, it is difficult to see them as anything other than alternatives to secular law. The same observation applies to the fact that they make rulings that would be out of the question in secular courts and that

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are undoubtedly in breach of British (and European) equalities legislation. This means that the judicial system could find itself policing illegal decisions – which begs the question of what it would take to constitute a ‘parallel’ or ‘alternative’ system in the government’s eyes! Responding to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s speech on shar’ia law, Phillips drew attention to some of the wider implications of parallel or alternative law for both Muslim women and Western democracy: In order to protect our female Muslim citizens, we need to remove from them the yoke of sharia law, not institutionalise it with the seal of official approval. One law for all is the very basis of legal and social justice and is the glue that binds society together. Law is the expression of a society’s cultural identity. If there is no one law, there is no one national identity and therefore no society, but instead a set of warring fiefdoms with their own separate jurisdictions. (Phillips, 2008) One of the key justifications put forward for religious courts is that they are voluntary. But questions can be asked about the reality of the concept of choice in cultures where there are large disparities in the power of men and women and in which women are socialised into accepting a subordinate role (Okin, 1997; Bhatti, 2007; Macey, 2007a). And a number of shar’ia court rulings make it difficult to see any logical reason why women would choose to be judged under religious rather than secular law. For example, in the six cases of domestic violence heard by the courts in their first twelve months of operation, the ruling was that the abusers should undergo anger management classes! I would see the fact that all the women subsequently withdrew their complaints to the police as a matter of concern, whereas the MAT view it as a positive outcome because ‘marriages were saved and couples given a second chance’ (Siddiqui, cited in Taher, 2008). This needs to be read in the context of the fact that Muslim women are already deeply disturbed by the failure of the authorities to take action against violence in their communities (Mahoney and Taj, 2006; Raz, 2006). The operation of shar’ia courts is unlikely to improve this situation, particularly when the power of multicultural ideology makes people fearful of being accused of racism or Islamophobia. Another example is a disputed inheritance case between three women and two men in which the court awarded twice as much to the sons as to the daughters. Again, it is difficult to see why women would willingly agree to forfeit money that would certainly have been awarded to them under secular law. There are serious questions here about the reality of

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women’s choices and the impact of shar’ia courts on women’s rights, to which I return later. In the interests of balance, however, it needs to be noted that a study carried out of the Muslim Law (Sharia) Council suggests that women using its mediation services had done so freely – without pressure from male family members – and partly because they felt disempowered by secular equivalents (Shah-Kazemi, 2001). Meanwhile, I conclude this section with some brief examples of the negative impact on women of religious law in the private sphere of marriage and family life, where religious doctrines are in tension, if not conflict, with contemporary civil law and wider social attitudes. A number of these illustrate Barry’s contention that when the state turns a blind eye to private coercion, this brings about much the same result as if it had formally delegated legal decision-making power, so that ‘Public tolerance is a formula for creating a lot of private hells’ (2001: 143). Perhaps the most fundamental of these relates to the decision as to whether or not to marry and the freedom to choose one’s partner. Yet all religions see heterosexual marriage as the only acceptable way of expressing one’s sexuality, and some, such as Islam and Judaism, go further in seeing it as the only ‘natural’ way of living. Indeed, in Islam, marriage is virtually a religious requirement and choice of marriage partner is severely limited, with parents sometimes arranging their offspring’s marriages at birth (MAT, 2008). ‘Mixed’ marriages (i.e. between members of different faiths and none) are also generally disapproved of by most religions, but the extent and expression of this varies widely. Orthodox Judaism refuses to accept the validity of marriage outside the faith, while Islam regards marriages between Muslims and non-Muslims as highly transgressive. It does, however allow men – but not women – to marry ‘people of the book’ (Christians and Jews) (Al-Yousuf, 2006). British law restricts marriage to adults and monogamy, and requires that people have exercised free will in their choice of marriage partners. In Islam, marriages are expected to take place early and are permissible from puberty. Child marriages have certainly taken place between British and Pakistani citizens and the Forced Marriage Unit has been involved in a number of rescues of such children from overseas (HAC, 2008). The ruling on free will also comes into play in relation to both age of consent and disability since to make a meaningful choice clearly requires a certain level of intellectual competence. This, too, has been breached in a number of cases of trans-continental Muslim marriages, and young British women have found themselves married to ‘husbands’ who are of an appropriate chronological age, but have the mental age of

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children (Brandon and Hafez, 2008; Khanum, 2008). This is related to the extremely strong emphasis on marriage in Islam as well as the preference for arranging marriages between family members, and will be discussed in more detail in the next chapter. As far as the law on monogamy is concerned, not only are Muslim men allowed to practise polygamy, but the British welfare state pays full benefits to additional families (ignoring the Islamic rule that men are required to be able to provide adequately and equally for all wives). Secular law prohibiting bigamy is circumvented by the requirement that such marriages must be contracted outside England (Wynne-Jones, 2008). It probably goes without saying that women are not allowed more than one husband in either religious or secular law. Women (and men) are protected by law from violence within marriage, though statistics on domestic violence indicate that the law is extremely ineffective in this area. However, the fact that the Qur’an actually permits the ‘limited physical chastisement’ of women (Mather, 1998) introduces an entirely different dimension to the situation. A woman’s right to refuse sex within marriage is protected by the law against rape, though, shockingly, in some European countries, the ‘conjugal exemption’ (which basically permitted rape within marriage) was not repealed until the 1990s (Romito, 2008). However, since Muslim women are expected to be sexually available on demand, secular law is unlikely to protect them: ‘A wife may not deny herself to her husband’ (Kidwai and Huda, 2007: 35). Some research with a range of religious leaders in the US is illuminating on the issue. Asked: ‘What happens if a women doesn’t want sex?’ an imam suggested that it would be unwise for her to refuse sex to her husband, since he might then decide to remarry (Levitt and Ware, 2006: 35). Whether or not to have children, and how many, is generally assumed to be an individual decision, but both cultural and religious expectations play a major role here. Muslim women, for instance, have more children earlier and over a longer period of time than their white counterparts (EOC, 2006a). Religions that have strict rules on contraception, such as Judaism and Catholicism, obviously impact on family size, despite believers’ apparent ability to exercise personal choice. Catholicism is an example of the effects of migration, inter-group interaction and integration on personal choices – in this case, family size – that may be relevant to the current Muslim situation. For Irish Catholics who settled in England in the twentieth century had very large families relative to the English norm, but this changed over time due to a number of factors, not least being the availability of contraception, but also, presumably, economic/material considerations and attitudinal changes.

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Different cultures and religions have varying attitudes towards divorce. In Britain, the right to divorce is institutionalised, but remains unacceptable within Catholicism, only allowed through men in Judaism and generally the prerogative of men in Islam, though women can sometimes instigate divorce. Decisions on the custody of children following divorce rest with the courts, but is generally awarded to the mother, though suitable arrangements for fathers’ access is required. In Islam, however, men have the right to custody of children who have been weaned, and while this is unlikely to impress secular courts, the development of shar’ia courts could impact negatively on women with respect to child custody. Negative attitudes towards divorce can place women who have custody of children in extreme financial hardship. For example, though secular law requires the payment of child maintenance, this is on divorce, rather than separation, which is not always available to religious women (Chantler, 2004). In addition, some interpretations of Islam deny alimony payments to women beyond three months following divorce (Nasir, 1990). This needs to be read in the context of Muslim women having a very low rate of labour market participation (EOC, 2006a; 2006b; Platt, 2007a). All this means that religious women, especially Muslims, are extremely vulnerable in relation to their ability to gain even minimal economic independence (Shachtar, 2001), let alone exercise the ‘right of exit’ so beloved of multiculturalists (Galston, 1995; Kukathas, 1997; Spinner-Halev, 2001). As with child custody, the new shar’ia courts are a matter of considerable concern in terms of their potential impact on Muslim women’s ability to leave abusive relationships.

Gender inequality, disadvantage and discrimination in secular society None of the above is to suggest that it is only religions and religious communities that discriminate against women and the latter needs to be assessed relative to the situation in secular society. In Britain, women are systematically disadvantaged relative to men in virtually all spheres of both the public and private arenas – the only exceptions of which I am aware are that young men’s experience of violent, stranger crime is 80 per cent higher than that of young women (Walker et al., 2006) and that women live longer than men, albeit in relative poverty since their retirement income is 40 per cent less than men’s (Women and Equality Unit (WEU), 2006). They are generally poorer, not least because much of their work is in the home, which is unpaid (Skinner, 2006; Moullin, 2007). They have less power because they are less likely to hold

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decision-making roles – only 20 per cent of MPs are women (EOC, 2007b; UK Parliament, 2007); only 10 per cent of FTSE 100 directorships are held by women (EOC, 2007a; 2007b) and only 9 per cent of High Court and more senior judges are women (EOC, 2007b). They also suffer high levels of physical and mental violence, from forced marriage, through domestic violence, to murder (HAC, 2008). There is a vast literature on gender inequality in Britain, let alone the rest of the world, but this is not the subject of this book so will only be touched on here and in order to balance any impression that religion and multiculturalism are solely responsible for this. One of the most striking – and depressing – documents in this sphere is the EOC’s Gender Equality Index (2007c). This not only produces a raft of statistics on women’s inequality in contemporary Britain, but projects the (shocking) number of years that, on present progress, it will take women to ‘catch up’ with men. The EOC claims ‘considerable progress’ in some spheres, but acknowledges that: progress has often been painfully slow … [in some areas] the index suggests that the agenda has stalled, or worse yet we’re actually going backwards. Unless further action is taken, nothing will ever change. (EOC, 2007c: 1) Nearly 40 years after the Equal Pay Act 1970, and with a whole raft of equalities legislation in place, we have still not even managed to achieve equal pay for men and women doing the same jobs. And we are a million miles from seriously questioning why what are defined as ‘women’s jobs’ are so much worse paid than ‘men’s jobs’, or why women are not paid for their work in the home and with families. We live in a world in which girls are outperforming boys educationally (Df ES, 2006), but in which gendered subject choices (at ‘A’ level and in post-compulsory education/training) have long-term consequences for jobs and salaries. Boys’ choices prepare them for well-paid jobs in science and technology, while girls’ choices lead to low-paid ‘caring’ and administrative roles (HESA, 2005; Learning and Skills Council, 2005; Df ES, 2006). Partly as a consequence of this, 65 per cent of jobs are gender-segregated (ONS, 2006b; EOC, 2007c). As far as employment sectors and pay are concerned, there is an overall pay gap between men and women of 17 per cent (15 per cent in the EU) (EC, 2008). Women in full-time work are paid on average 17 per cent less per hour than men, and 38 per cent less when part-time pay is compared (ONS, 2006; EOC, 2007c). Women are still held largely responsible for the home and family and this means that they are more likely than men to be in part-time work.

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The fact that domestic and childcare responsibilities are still perceived as almost entirely women’s responsibilities results in them moving in and out of the labour market over the lifecycle, and this has significant consequences for pay, promotion and pensions (Sigle-Rushton and Perrons, 2006). And though this section is not focused on the role of religion in women’s inequality, it is worth noting that women’s participation in the labour market varies considerably by religion. Thus, Muslim women have the highest economic inactivity rate of all faith groups – 68 per cent compared with 28 per cent for Christians and around 35 per cent for Hindus and Sikhs (Open Society Institute, 2005). Religion is also associated with labour market re-entry and there are particularly low rates of return to work for Muslims and Sikhs. Among the factors that impact on minority ethnic women’s participation in the labour market are lack of language skills, lack of English (as against overseas) qualifications and lack of support for childcare responsibilities (EOC, 2006a). The EOC’s statutory investigation into Bangladeshi, Pakistani and black Caribbean women and work in England, Scotland and Wales identified what it referred to as five ‘employment gaps’: low participation rates (Buckner et al., 2007; EOC, 2007a); unemployment (EOC, 2007a); lack of progression to senior levels (EOC, 2007a); the pay gap (Platt, 2007a); and occupational segregation (Buckner et al., 2007; EOC, 2007a; Platt, 2007a). Interestingly, while this investigation paints a clear picture of minority ethnic women’s location in the labour market, what it singularly fails to do is explain this, other than by reference to ‘barriers’ (i.e. discrimination). The reason for this is because of the researchers’ decision to focus solely on workplace discrimination (Buckner et al., 2007) and within this, on perceptions, rather than on concrete examples of discrimination. And while this is not to suggest that ethnic and/or racial discrimination do not occur most of the factors that disadvantage ethno-religious women in the labour market stem more from culture and religion than from discrimination. These include: large families; extended caring responsibilities; definitions of women’s roles as home-centred; the limitation of higher education to local universities (see Boliver, 2006, who highlights late and fewer applications by minority ethnic students and their intention to live at home while studying); constraints on participation in CV-enhancing activities; and an inability or unwillingness to travel for work (Macey et al., 2009).

Violence against women2 If some of the evidence of women’s inequality in various arenas is striking, nowhere is it more graphically illustrated than in the sphere of

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violence, which is found across the world and affects women from before birth to death (UNFPA, 2000). While violence against women is universal, its extent and expression vary and are undoubtedly related to the rights and status that women have achieved in various societies. Gill (2003) suggests that where women have gained a level of independence and autonomy through the labour market, men’s attempts to control them usually take less overt and/or brutal forms than in cultures where women’s primary role is defined as reproductive and centred in the home. This, I would argue, supports Okin’s (1999) suggestion that not all cultures are good for women so that the implementation of multiculturalism in Western liberal democracies may not be in women’s interests. This is not to minimise the extent to which violence against women occurs in such societies; it is, however, to observe that a fundamental difference between postmodern societies and some others is that in the former this is not justified by religious or cultural traditions. Nor does it generally extend to such practices as sex-selective abortions, forced marriage or female genital mutilation (FGM). I believe that it is little short of bizarre to propose, as some ‘feminists of color’ do, that there is no difference between cosmetic surgery and FGM (cited in Kalev, 2004). Such an argument may well be sustainable at a certain level of abstraction and within a particular definition of the concept of ‘choice’, but the outcome – in the real world – is to legitimise the short- and long-term suffering of girls and women. And the response that the minors on whom FGM is inflicted would not be classed as such in other cultures is as unconvincing as suggesting that because British children used to be sent to work up chimneys and down mines, it is acceptable to do so now! It is one thing to propose that liberal universalism should be open to interrogation, but this is surely relativism gone mad. As Kalev observes: cultural relativism is in itself but another form of oppression. The implication of their arguments is that universal human rights that apply equally to women and to men are only to be pursued in Western societies, whereas non-Western societies should be left to pursue practices that the West would not put up with. This is equivalent to the abandonment of the pursuit of women’s struggle for equality. (2004: 347) This raises some fundamental questions about the role of multiculturalism in the oppression and suffering of minority ethnic women in Western liberal democracies, to which I return later. First, however, I note some examples of violence against women in both Western and non-Western contexts.

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In Britain, the majority of the overt violence experienced by women is inflicted on them not by strangers, but by their partners or former partners. It is estimated that one in four women experience domestic violence3 at some stage in their lives (Mirrlees-Black, 1999; Summers and Hoffman, 2002; Home Office, 2007) and that one incident of domestic violence takes place every minute (Stanko, 2000). Domestic violence comprises 16 per cent of all violent incidents recorded by the police, constitutes 25 per cent of all reported crime and has the highest repeat rate of any crime (Kershaw et al., 2000; Walby and Allen, 2004; Home Office, 2007). Seventy per cent of incidents result in injury (Kershaw et al., 2000); a woman dies as a result of domestic violence approximately every three days (Home Office, 2007); 25 per cent of all murders in the UK are of women (Refuge Women’s Association (RWA), 2003), half of whom are killed by their partners or former partners (Flood-Page and Taylor, 2003). These statistics might give us pause for thought in assuming that ‘honour’ killings are restricted to minority ethnicities and religions. However, it is only within minorities that families and communities are involved in the murder of women and that culture/religion constitutes a justificatory ideology that is sometimes relied on as a defence in court (Okin, 1999; Phillips, 2003; Raz, 2006; Meetoo and Mirza, 2007). In addition to physical injury and death, domestic violence causes severe emotional distress (Hague et al., 2003) and both psychological and psychiatric conditions, such as depression, anxiety disorders, dissociative disorders and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (Warburton and Able, 2006; Pickup et al., 2001; Home Office, 2007). Warrington’s (2001) research shows that 50,000 abused women and their children are forced to flee their homes every year. The Women’s Aid Federation carries out an annual survey of refuges to provide a snapshot of various aspects of their use on one day in the year. The 2004–5 statistics indicated that 19,836 women and 24,347 children were living in refuges across England, with an additional 19,060 women and 23,445 children in emergency accommodation and 776 women and 902 children in second-stage properties (Williams, 2006). A particularly disturbing finding from this survey is that the number of disabled women using domestic violence safe housing is increasing yearly – between 2004 and 2005, numbers increased by 140 per cent (Williams, 2006: 5). All this represents the ‘tip of the iceberg’ of women who flee domestic violence, given the lack of refuge and other safe provision, and the fact that most women are not eligible for refuge places. The cost of domestic violence in both individual and societal terms is massive; in purely economic terms, Walby (2004) estimated the overall cost in England and Wales as £25.3 billion annually

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• it is estimated that only one in ten incidents of domestic violence are

reported to the police; • recorded statistics refer only to severe, recognisable, reported abuse

(Mirrlees-Black, 1999, cited in HO, 2007); • British Crime Survey (BCS) data exclude sexual violence; • domestic violence applies only to ‘adults’, so that young people under

the age of 18 are not included in the statistics; • domestic violence is not a specific crime in Britain, which has obvi-

ous implications for the policing and prosecution of it, as well as the collection of statistics (Macey, 2008). In 1993, the World Bank stated that domestic violence against women of reproductive age caused as many deaths as cancer and more deaths than road traffic accidents and malaria combined. Heisse et al. (1999) suggest that, world-wide, at least one in three women have been beaten or coerced into sex or otherwise abused, and that one in four have been abused during pregnancy by their husbands or families. The World Health Organisation (WHO) views domestic violence as a significant public policy, health and human rights concern which ‘continues to be frighteningly common and to be accepted as “normal” within too many societies’. WHO also states that ‘international human rights law is clear: states have a duty to exercise due diligence to prevent, prosecute and punish violence against women’ (2005: vii). Kelly (2005) supports this, observing that the 1995 Beijing Platform for Action declared that culture, tradition and religion cannot be used by states to avoid their obligation to protect women. In this context, the fact that there is no specific law in the UK against domestic violence is particularly surprising, and McKerl comments: From my experience in the field of violence against women, I have found that it is not human rights that need to be upheld, but the rights of women as citizens to be protected from violence and abuse. (2007: 195; original emphasis) Rape is another example of violence against women and men’s assertion of power over them. The BCS showed that, in 1999, 61,000 women

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(updated for 2005-6 to reflect population numbers and prices) (HAC, 2008). These shocking statistics have to be read in light of the fact that, as with other forms of violence against women, they are a significant underestimate of the actual incidence of crime, since:

in England and Wales were raped and that 754,000 women had been raped on at least one occasion since the age of 16. It is estimated that only 20 per cent of rapes (and 18 per cent of incidents of sexual victimisation) are reported to the police. Of those rapes that are recorded, 45 per cent were carried out by current partners with only 8 per cent constituting stranger rape (Myhill and Allen, 2002). Rape convictions have been decreasing over time and currently stand at only 5 per cent of the number of offences recorded (Walker et al., 2006; EOC, 2007c). This, together with the way that they are treated in court (Clarke, 2008), is unlikely to encourage women to report the crime. Some of the more negative changes brought about by the multicultural nature of British society are indicated by the fact that the Home Office definition and discussion of domestic violence now includes references to so-called ‘honour’-based violence, female genital mutilation and forced marriage. All of these now take place in certain ethnic communities in the UK (HO, 2005, 2008), though accurate statistics on their extent are in short supply. However, some indication of the potential extent of the problem is illustrated by the fact that one London-based minority women’s advice centre alone – SBS – deals with over 1,000 cases of violence against women every year. These include not only those named by the Home Office, but also assaults, the abduction of girls and women, acid attacks, violence related to dowry demands and murder (cited in Centre for Islamic and Middle Eastern Law (CIMEL/INTERIGHTS), 2001). There is growing awareness of ‘honour’ killings in Britain and wider Europe, though accurate statistics are limited, party because, as Mornington4 observes: people will not give evidence against perpetrators, sometimes because they support what they’re doing … and, even if they don’t support it, they feel it would be against the honour of their community to stand out against it. … The communities are extremely insular. (cited in Malik, 2005) In global terms, the UN (2002) estimates that around 5,000 women every year are murdered by family members – including their mothers – in the name of ‘honour’ (see also UNFPA, 2000; Thapar-Björkert, 2007, on the international dimension of ‘honour’ killings). The British police are only just beginning to pay close attention to the question of ‘honour’ killings and to ask questions about cases of missing women. The dominance of multicultural ideology is an issue here and how this might affect the police’s willingness to take seriously women’s fears of ‘honour’-related

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violence or reports of women who have gone missing (Mahoney and Taj, 2006). Forced marriage is discussed as a detailed case study in the next chapter. Suffice it to say at this point that the British government’s position to date has been that forced marriages involving British citizens are rare. A number of recent investigations, inquiries and other publications now provide grounds for challenging this assertion. A consequence of migration and settlement not mentioned by the Home Office is the growing demand for sex-selective abortions by people from countries and cultures in which there is a strong preference for boys. This demand to abort female foetuses is occurring in other Western countries (for the UK, see Walby, 2003; for Canada, see Solomon, 2007). It is also becoming more common in developing countries as access to medical technology increases (see Grewel and Kishore, 2004, on India; Shuzhuo et al., 2004, on China). Nowhere is the tension between violence against women and their right to control their own reproduction better summed up than in the UN’s comment: Around the world, women and girls continue to be victims of countless acts of violence. It is indeed a grim reality that the range of gender-based violence is devastating, occurring quite literally from womb to tomb. (UN General Assembly, 2001) This highlights a tension that runs throughout this book, because whatever the reasons, the reality is that, both directly and indirectly, women are centrally implicated in violence against women. For it is women who socialise the men who turn into oppressors of women; it is women who are often the prime movers in forced marriage; it is women in majority communities who frequently encourage their daughters to stay with men who abuse them, and who in minority communities actually carry out the abuse (up to, and including, murder); and it is women who generally carry out both virginity checks and FGM. As with the contradictions that permeate multiculturalism, this is a tension to which I have provided no answers – other than to suggest that the adoption of a multicultural paradigm does nothing to reduce it.

Multiculturalism and women In one sense, the invisibility of black and minority ethnic (BME) women in multicultural theory should come as no surprise, since mainstream

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sociology had long ignored women in general and treated feminist theory as a sub- or specialist area, rather than as a core part of sociology itself. In this sense, the sphere of racialised relations simply followed the pattern established in sociology more generally; the same applies to multiculturalism. This means that most male writers either treat minority ethnic communities as undifferentiated on such dimensions as age, gender and generation, or make a passing (token) reference to women (and even, sometimes, to young people). The latter is not significantly different from some of the early responses by white feminists to the accusations by black feminists that they were marginalised or ignored in the developing literature. In many instances, white feminists ‘dealt with’ black women’s criticisms by ‘tacking on’ a paragraph about them! As far as multiculturalism is concerned, it is the prioritisation of race and ethnicity over gender and sexuality that has resulted in gender differences remaining unrecognised (Okin, 1999; Beckett and Macey, 2001; Samantrai, 2002; Mirza, 2003). This failure to recognise that minority ethnic communities – like majority ones – are heterogeneous rather than homogeneous is deeply revealing of the racialised nature of multiculturalism. This has a number of consequences, not least that it leads multiculturalists to focus on differences between, rather than within, communities (Meetoo and Mirza, 2007). Indeed, one of the most basic criticisms of multiculturalism is that it emphasises differences and ignores similarities, thereby ‘othering’ minorities and encouraging an ‘us’ versus ‘them’ attitude between ethnic groups (Mirza et al., 2007). It also, of course, leaves vulnerable categories – such as women and children – within minority communities exposed to, and unprotected from, forces within their own communities that are far from benign (Mahoney and Taj, 2006). For while all cultures can be a source of strength, comfort and stability for their members, they are also implicated in their oppression and control. This is particularly powerful when legitimised by reference to religion. In a direct criticism of multiculturalism, Halley comments: Culture constrains. Sure, it may liberate, too, but efforts to justify cultural rights are characteristically defective to the extent that they insist on the liberation story while suppressing the constraint story. (1999: 100) Some of these criticisms stem directly from aspects of multiculturalism that are inherent to the paradigm itself. For how could an argument for differential treatment be made without focusing at the group (rather than

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the individual) level and without stressing differences between (rather than similarities across) ethnic categories, particularly minorities and majorities? For – postmodernism notwithstanding – multiculturalism in practice, and often in theory, is, by definition, founded on a static, essentialised and sometimes romanticised view of minority cultures that stresses homogeneity rather than heterogeneity. It is premised on the assumption that minority cultures differ from majority ones, and each other, to an extent that calls for differential treatment. Within this framework it is difficult to see how multiculturalism could even begin to be operationalised if one took cognisance of such realities as that women’s needs not only differ from men’s, but are sometimes in conflict with them. On a different level, since multiculturalism is about facilitating the maintenance and reproduction of minority cultures, one might expect women to occupy centre stage, and if not, at least to have a key role. The observation that women’s biological reproductive role forms the cornerstone of cultural, religious and social reproduction is not lost on most men in most societies and is intimately involved in efforts to control them. Patriarchy is universal (Walby, 1990), but its expression varies dramatically over time and place and between societies and cultures. It is undoubtedly both different and more overt in those societies that view women’s main, or only, role as located in the private sphere – centred on the home and family, caring for husbands and extended families, producing and rearing children. Differences in the treatment of women are thrown into sharp relief when diverse cultures coexist within one society, as is the case in Britain and other Western democracies as a result of migration and settlement. And it is these differences that have led a number of feminist scholars to question the role of multiculturalism in the oppression of women. For example, Nussbaum comments: ‘the current liberal interest in multiculturalism holds grave dangers for women’s equality’ (1999a: 105), while Okin observes that: ‘Establishing group rights to enable some minority cultures to preserve themselves may not be in the best interests of the girls and women of those cultures, even if it benefits the men’ (1999a: 23). In addition, cultural differences in the treatment of women are often exacerbated through the migration process itself because diasporic communities feel under pressure to maintain the culture of the homeland. This pressure is exerted particularly on, and through, women because of the symbolic role attributed to them as carriers and bearers of ethnic group identity (Anthias and Yuval-Davis, 1992; Afshar, 1994). Akpinar

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too notes the link between migration and the imposition of: ‘… patriarchal values which are remnants of a rural/feudal culture’ (2003: 428) and observes that this is sometimes expressed through increased violence against women. Afshar refers to the assertion by certain minority ethnic young men of their right to ‘police’ women – up to, and including, murder – commenting that: ‘there are many cases of daughters, wives or sisters being beaten to death, burned or grievously harmed by their kin for transgressing’ (1994: 133). Meetoo and Mira suggest that: the woman’s body is the site over which identity is asserted and culture is maintained. She, as the carrier and bearer of her ethnic group, has the obligation not to stray and disrupt the group’s identity by mixing with ‘others’. (2007: 191) These writers all raise a number of fundamental concerns about multiculturalism and women, particularly in the sphere of male control and violence against women in some of the diasporas that make up diverse Britain. In this, one of the most dangerous features of multiculturalism is that it implicitly assumes the existence of ethnic spokespersons able legitimately to speak for their communities (Yalçin-Heckmann, 1997). In reality, this has led to community consultation being largely restricted to self-styled, male community ‘leaders’ (Macey, 1999a; 1999b; 2005; 2006; 2007a; 2008; Puri, 2005; Baxter, 2006; Mahoney and Taj, 2006; Raz, 2006; McKerl, 2007). Even if we ignore the issue of violence, other implications of this for women cannot be overstated, as the numerous Muslim women cited in this book have long been telling the government, policy-makers and practitioners, though to little effect. Both multiculturalism and religion are centrally implicated in the deeply unequal – and sometimes dangerous – position of minority ethnic women (and girl children) and it is little short of astounding that they remain virtually invisible in the mainstream (male) literature.

Summary: multiculturalism, religion and women In this chapter, I have built on the process, begun in chapter 1, of tracing the development of multiculturalism in Britain, focusing in particular on what I believe are two key omissions that have had critical long-term consequences for the multicultural project and its impact on women. The first is the failure to consider the importance – indeed centrality – of religion in relation to the culture and identities of some minority groups and

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how this can be used and abused in the control of women. The second is the failure to realise that women are key players in the maintenance and transmission of both culture and religion and carry responsibility for upholding the honour of men. Together, these have had fundamental and far-reaching consequences, not only for minority women, but for other vulnerable members of communities, such as children and young people. Neglecting the influence of religion in minority cultures was, and is, an error of startling proportions. For the power of religion is profound at all levels of human social existence, as even a moment’s historical reflection illustrates. That power can be harnessed to liberate or oppress, to unite or divide, to bring peace or conflict – with the latter more common where ethnic diversity exists (Wirsing, 1981). Multiculturalism’s secular approach is surprising for two further reasons: first, that over the last 30 or 40 years there has been a worldwide resurgence of Christianity, Islam and Judaism; and second, that for over a decade, the British government has placed a strong, and growing, emphasis on religion, particularly in the CVS. In 1989, the so-called Rushdie Affair was a clear demonstration of the power of religion as a mobilising force, yet it did not act as a wake-up call to multiculturalists. Nor, indeed, did 9/11 or 7/7. Multicultural thinking continues to stress only the positive aspects of cultural diversity, with little acknowledgement of its potential for conflict and even less acknowledgement of the role of religion in this. I have argued in this chapter that while religion impacts on women in both the public and the private arenas, its influence is particularly strong in the latter. This is because all religions are patriarchal and specify ‘appropriate’ roles for women in relation to sexuality, the home, family and childrearing. In diasporic communities, where cultural and religious traditions may be perceived as being under threat, this can lead to an extreme focus on controlling women in which their choices are severely curtailed – sometimes by violent, or even lethal, means. My argument, overall, is that multiculturalism facilitates male control over women, first, by ceding autonomy to community ‘leaders’ to define the needs of communities; second, by creating a context that can hide women’s suffering by ruling criticism of minority communities to be inadmissible; and third, by making professionals reluctant to interfere in so-called ‘community affairs’ for fear of being accused of racism or Islamophobia. This argument is further developed in subsequent chapters. However, given the content of this chapter, it is probably worth reiterating that I am not suggesting that multiculturalism is the cause of women’s oppression or violence against them, nor that this is restricted to minority

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groups. Indeed, to do so would be ridiculous, given the extent of the phenomenon across the world, as reported in this chapter. However, it would be equally ridiculous to deny – as some writers do – that there are no real differences in both the expression and acceptance of violence against women in different cultural and religious groups and settings. And I find nothing in the literature to convince me that Okin (1997) was wrong to assert that Western women’s human and civil rights to protection from violence are better developed than those of their (originally) non-Western counterparts.

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Introduction There are many examples of what can be termed ‘multiculturalism in practice’ that could be used to illustrate the actual impact of multicultural policies on people in the real world. Some of these are direct, such as the ban on trans-racial adoption which has resulted in thousands of ‘mixedrace’ (or ‘dual-heritage’) children in Britain and the US being condemned to a lifetime of institutional care (Simon, 1974; Simon and Alstein, 1987; Bartholet, 1991; 1993; 1994; Alstein and Melli, 1993; Aldridge, 1994; Gaber, 1994; Macey, 1995c; 1996; 1998). Some are indirect and involve the import through migration and settlement of practices that originate in different cultural contexts. These include sex-selective abortions, forced marriage, female genital mutilation and so-called ‘honour’-related violence, including murder. I use the term ‘indirect’ in these cases to indicate the fact that none of them is sanctioned by the state or, formally at least, by the cultural communities in which they are practised. On the contrary, FGM is illegal, as, of course, is murder – whether labelled ‘honour’ or otherwise. And that forced marriages are known to be wrong is, to some extent, indicated by the widespread denial of it by minority ethnic individuals (Samad and Eade, 2002; Phillips and Dustin, 2004; HAC, 2008; Khanum, 2008), though the belief that force only occurs when violence is involved needs to be noted here. Before moving on to forced marriage, it may be worth saying a little about some of the examples cited above. For example, North American policy on trans-racial adoption came straight from the multicultural/anti-racist movement in response to such fairly extreme statements by black social workers as that placing black children in white homes constituted ‘a blatant form of race and cultural genocide’ 63

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Multiculturalism in Practice: Forced Marriage1

(Association of Black Social Workers and Allied Professionals, 1972, cited in Simon and Alstein, 1987: 143). Its relevance to this book is that it provides a good illustration of the consequences that can accrue from prioritising the rights of the group over those of the individual and the particular dangers involved when these group rights are based on ascribed characteristics, such as race. It is also relevant in that it is another example of the importation of policy and practice from another country to Britain where it has had equally disastrous consequences for children. Simon et al. (1993) present a striking example of this with respect to a Native American woman who left the reservation on which she lived to give birth to a child whom she placed for adoption with a non-Indian family. However, the Mississippi Supreme Court subsequently used the 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act to rule the adoption void. This Act prohibits the trans-racial adoption of Indian children and gives tribal courts exclusive jurisdiction over child custody proceedings. The court stated that tribal authority over children born to the reservation’s domiciliaries must be protected, even where a parent sought to avoid this. As multiculturalists in this country argue for minority ethnic rights in the public arena, including the law, it is not inconceivable that similar situations could occur here, whereby women’s (and children’s) rights are superseded by those of minority ethnic communities. In fact, this is arguably already the case, given the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal’s use of a loophole in the law to establish shar’ia law in Britain. It is important to note here that some multiculturalists, such as Parekh, are profoundly opposed to any move to allow different laws for ethnic and religious groups: ‘Britain cannot allow separate legal systems for different communities without violating the fundamental principles of common citizenship before the law’ (cited in Grillo, 1999: 204). An example of a totally different kind relates to FGM, which is known to be occurring in a number of European societies due to migration and settlement from parts of the world where the practice is common. Interestingly, though FGM is illegal in the UK and most other Western European societies, as recently as the 1990s there were demands in Britain for it to be carried out on the National Health Service (Stewart, 1998). Despite clear evidence that FGM is taking place in Britain (Dorkenoo et al., 2006), no prosecutions have been brought. The same is true in France (Hilsdon and Rozario, 2006) and Sweden (Ahlberg et al., 2004). It is interesting to relate in this context that some of my African students tell me that FGM is a routine, taken-for-granted practice in their communities, as, apparently, is virginity testing in black-led Christian churches.

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This kind of information is a salutary lesson to those of us who thought we had some sense of what is going on in minority ethno-religious communities. Two points arise from the issue of FGM in the context of a book on multiculturalism and women. The first is that the logic of multiculturalism can, and is, used to defend what I, along with many other individuals and organisations, regard as a totally unacceptable, extreme, dangerous and damaging form of violence against women and children (United Nations, 1993; UNFPA, 2000; Beckett and Macey, 2001; Kalev, 2004; UNICEF, 2005; 2006). Support for the practice of FGM comes from both the requirement to respect all cultures as equal and the principle of noninterference in minority cultures. While I suspect that few proponents of multiculturalism would openly support FGM, and some, such as Kymlicka, are utterly opposed to it, the writings of others, such as Kukathas, have been used to defend it (Margalit and Halbertal, 1994). As discussed elsewhere, ‘feminists of color’ have also raised questions that challenge Western assumptions about the distinction between such ritual practices as FGM and cosmetic surgery (see Chambers, 2004; Kalev, 2004, for a fuller discussion). The second point relates to the role of the law in relation to those cultural practices that have been defined as being sufficiently unacceptable as to be made illegal. This is discussed below, but the fact that there is evidence that FGM is being carried out on girls in Britain raises the obvious question of why no action is being taken against the perpetrators. I would lay some of the blame on the dominance of multicultural ideology and its effects on – in this case – medicine and the criminal justice system (as well as the difficulty of obtaining evidence). I would also suggest that FGM is another example of the suffering that can be caused to individual women and children when we allow the rights of the group to trump those of the basic human rights of its members. This brings me to the topic of this chapter – forced marriage. Here, as with other forms of violence against women discussed in chapter 2, my argument is not that multiculturalism causes forced marriage, but that it plays a significant role in encouraging the perpetuation of cultural practices that include forced marriage. It does so in a number of ways. First, because of its ideological influence on official and unofficial policy and practice – in this case, the government’s refusal to make forced marriage illegal and its acceptance of the legitimacy of ‘marriages’ that have taken place by telephone. Second, multiculturalism has encouraged the prioritisation of a (sometimes separatist) Muslim identity among particular groups, such as young men (Macey 1999a; 2007b; Dwyer, 2000; Archer,

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2001; Alam and Husband, 2006; Mirza et al., 2007) and – for the purpose of achieving particular ends – older men (Ansari, 2002; MAT, 2008). This impacts on both the public and the private spheres and is implicated in the continuation of trans-national marriages in which brides and grooms are brought from the homeland. Third, as noted in chapter 2, and clearly related to point two, multiculturalism has facilitated male control over women via the ceding of autonomy to religious and other self-styled community ‘leaders’. This again encourages trans-national marriages, as discussed below.

Forced, arranged and false marriages Concern in Britain that marriages between British and Pakistani citizens were not so much arranged as forced led to the establishment in 1999 of a Home Office Working Group to investigate the situation. This followed many years of questioning and pressure from the MP Ann Cryer, whose West Yorkshire constituency includes large Bangladeshi and Pakistani communities in which it is estimated that 80 per cent of marriages are with a partner from the Indian subcontinent (and which, according to MAT, 2008, are therefore likely to involve coercion). Cryer’s demands for action on forced marriage arose out of the many requests for help that she received from women who had been subjected to such marriages; despite this, she was treated to the same kind of vilification as was Okin, including from her colleagues in the Labour Party. At the local level, both she and her secretary received numerous threats, ranging from withdrawal of Muslim votes to physical violence (which actually occurred). The report of the Working Group, A Choice by Right, has largely defined the terms of subsequent research, policy and practice, particularly with respect to emphasising the distinction between ‘arranged’ and ‘forced’ marriage: The Working Group is clear that the distinction [between forced and arranged marriage] lies in the right to choose. In the tradition of arranged marriages, the families of both spouses take a leading role in arranging the marriage, but the choice of whether to solemnise the arrangement remains with the spouses and can be exercised at any time. The spouses have the right to choose – to say no – at any time. In forced marriage, there is no choice. (Uddin and Ahmed, 2000: 10) Forgetting the multicultural edict not to make judgements about the cultural practices of others, the Working Group stated that forced marriage

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is ‘wrong’ (Uddin and Ahmed, 2000: 4). This constructed forced marriage somewhat simplistically as being diametrically opposed to arranged marriages, which were seen as constituting a ‘respectable cultural practice’ (Gupta, 2003: 69). This binary divide continues to underpin research, policy and practice, despite Samad and Eade’s (2002) suggestion that it is more accurate to think of it in terms of a continuum. The polarisation of the distinction between forced and arranged marriage may also be one of the factors that encourages the widespread belief that it is only when physical violence is involved that the marriage is forced. Other investigations into, and consultations on, forced marriages and such related abuses as domestic violence and so-called ‘honour’ crimes have followed. In 2002, Community Perceptions of Forced Marriage (Samad and Eade, 2002, funded by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office) was published. In 2005, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s Forced Marriage Unit (FMU) carried out a UK-wide consultation on criminalising the practice: Forced Marriage: A Wrong not a Right (FMU, 2006). Also in 2006, a series of government-funded consultations with Muslim women took place in England and Wales, apparently linked to concern about the political radicalisation of young men, but used by women to articulate other issues. Among these was the failure of the authorities to take effective action against violence perpetrated within minority communities, including forced marriage, paedophilia, sexual abuse in families and mosques, incest, rape in families and ‘honour’-related violence (Mahoney and Taj, 2006; Raz, 2006). Concern in Britain about forced marriage is matched in other countries of the EU where both governments and women’s rights groups see it as a growing problem; for example, Hamburg city council, supported by the EU, has recently initiated a series of meetings across Europe to discuss the issue (Jones, 2008). In Britain, 2008 saw a veritable spate of publications on forced marriage, including Crimes of the Community: Honour-Based Violence in the UK (Brandon and Hafez, 2008). Forced Marriage, Family Cohesion and Community Engagement (Khanum, 2008, (commissioned by the local MP Margaret Moran’s office, the Metropolitan Police Service and the Home Office), Domestic Violence, Forced Marriage and ‘Honour’-Based Violence, the report of a House of Commons Home Affairs Committee of Inquiry (HAC, 2008) and Liberation from Forced Marriages, by the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal (MAT, 2008). The last two are highly significant: the HAC inquiry because it is the most comprehensive investigation undertaken in the UK into violence against women including in minority ethnic communities;2 the MAT publication because it is the first time, to my knowledge, that a national Muslim organisation has acknowledged

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that forced marriage is widespread in Muslim communities in the UK and that action needs to be taken to stop it. It is important to note here – and apply to other sections of this book – that the Qur’an specifically forbids forced marriage. However, the concept of ‘forced’ may be as meaningless in some interpretations of Islam as that of rape within marriage. For example, the Hanafi school of jurisprudence allows minors to be validly married on the basis of their guardians’ wishes without any requirement for the child’s consent (Poulter, 1998). And, in any case, the concept of consent is highly questionable here, given that the minors referred to are pre-pubescent – boys under twelve and girls under nine. There is no way of knowing whether such ‘marriages’ involve British citizens.

The extent of forced marriage in the UK The true extent of forced marriage will never be known, because so few cases are reported to and recorded by statutory agencies, but local community organisations [in Luton] receive several hundred enquiries about forced marriage each year. (Moran, in Khanum, 2008: ii) In 2000, Uddin and Ahmed lamented the lack of accurate information on forced marriage in the UK and in 2002, Samad and Eade reiterated this concern. However, the FMU reported that in 2006 they were dealing with around 5,000 enquiries and 300 cases of forced marriage each year, the majority concerning Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities (65 per cent and 15 per cent respectively) (HAC, 2008). In 2007 the FMU dealt with 400 cases of forced marriage, and in the first nine months of 2008, over 1,300 suspected cases reported (HM Government, 2008). The experience of CVS groups supports the suggestion that such statistics represent the tip of the iceberg. For example, in Luton,3 Khanum (2008) reports that there are over 300 approaches annually to various bodies for advice on forced marriage, suggesting that several thousand such marriages may be taking place every year. In Bradford4 the police, who are often the last port of call for women, recorded 191 cases of forced marriage in 2005 (155 of which involved Pakistanis). They report that the numbers are increasing every year and also note that cases are sometimes recorded as domestic violence (Bhatti, 2007). And Karma Nirvana, a small community-based project specialising in support for survivors of forced marriage, deals with over 15 new cases of forced marriage and ‘honour’-related violence every week (780 a year) (Karma Nirvana, in HAC, 2008, Ev.238). 10.1057/9780230245174 - Multiculturalism, Religion and Women, Marie Macey

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It is widely accepted that forced marriage, like rape and domestic violence, is significantly under-reported and the latter is generally estimated to constitute only 10 per cent of actual instances. If this statistic is applied to the tiny minority of forced marriages dealt with only by the FMU, it would suggest an actual figure of 4,000 cases a year in the UK. If it were applied to the cases that come to the attention of numerous bodies in the statutory and CVS, we would almost certainly be talking of many more thousands every year. Some indication of the scale of the problem may be suggested by the fact that in 2007 in Pakistan, 11,022 spouse settlement applications were issued and 3,216 refused (HAC, 2008).5 More starkly, the UK Border Agency (the immigration service) reported that in the previous year, a total of 47,000 spouses entered the UK on settlement visas (UK Border Agency). I am not suggesting that all these entail forced marriages, but I am sure that a significant proportion of those between British and South Asian citizens are not freely undertaken. Written evidence from the FCO to the HAC raises another issue that is currently causing concern in the UK and was, in fact, the subject of an Early Day Motion in Parliament (UK Parliament, 2008). This relates to marriages involving a disabled partner. Among the 407 cases referred to the Consular Immigration Link team in Pakistan in 2007 were 193 cases of forced marriage and 86 of ‘vulnerable adults’, that is, people with a severe mental or physical disability (FCO, in HAC, 2008, Ev.439). I discuss the issue of forced marriage and disability – particularly mental disability – later in this chapter, though the relevance of Khanum’s (2008) suggestion that the category of ‘false’ should be added to that of forced marriages is relevant here. She uses the term ‘false’ to describe marriages that do not need to involve force because they are based on deception in relation to the partner’s attributes, such as educational qualifications, criminal background, drug addiction or disabilities. Khanum notes that such marriages impact particularly on brides from overseas where the marriage has taken place outside Britain without the groom being present. She cites one case in which the husband’s physical disabilities were such that ‘[the bride] was forced by the groom’s family to consummate the marriage in an unthinkable manner’ (2008: 47). In sum, material published in 2008 challenges the popular assumption (encouraged by a number of reports) that only a very small number of British citizens are affected by forced marriages. The reality would appear to be that many thousands of children and young women are being forced – or tricked – into marriages every year. I suspect, too, that if ‘false’ marriages were included, the total number of marriages in which abuse is involved would expand dramatically. 10.1057/9780230245174 - Multiculturalism, Religion and Women, Marie Macey

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The reality is that in over 70 per cent of all marriages that take place, where the spouse is an English citizen and the other spouse is a foreign national from the Asian sub-continent, there is an element of force or coercion before the marriage takes place. These figures reflect the crisis that has loomed within the Muslim community without being noticed or dealt with for the past two decades. The figures that are reported to the authorities are only the tip of the iceberg. (MAT, 2008: 9)

The human face of forced marriage I am not of Pakistani heritage, I am not Muslim and I have no direct experience of forced marriage. For these reasons, much of the material in this section consists of the voices of women who do have such experience. I have, however, worked closely with a domestic violence agency with particular expertise in abuse in South Asian communities. And as a lecturer at a university in an area of high Mirpuri settlement, I have close contact with young women students being forced into trans-continental marriages (and occasionally men, for 15 per cent of the cases dealt with by the FMU are men). I have shared their sense of powerlessness and despair; I have witnessed threatened suicide, mental breakdowns, eating disorders and self-harm – the human reality behind the statistics. Notwithstanding these experiences, it was a specific incident that made me properly understand why Idrus and Bennett (2003) refer to forced marriage as ‘statutory rape’. This was when two unmarried sisters asked if I could help them to obtain the contraceptive pill. To condense a long and distressing conversation, these young women were being taken ‘on holiday’ to Mirpur, but knew that marriage to their cousins was planned and had overheard telephone conversations referring to rape as a means of ‘bringing them under’. Rape is, in fact, just one of the means by which young women are forced into unwanted marriages. Southall Black Sisters refer to: physical and sexual violence, threatening behaviour, imprisonment, abduction, mental and social pressures, including emotional

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Bhopal says: ‘I feel that in practice there is very little difference between arranged and forced marriage’ (1997: 58). Bhatti’s (2007) research, as well as her own experience, leads her to conclude that almost all the marriages between a partner from Bradford and one from Mirpur are forced, not arranged. And the MAT states:

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Research and consultation illustrate some of the thinking behind forced marriage and the range of tactics that are used to coerce women into unwanted marriages: We are Pakistani. Marriages are arranged by the parents between two families of the same qaum [caste]. Get that through your thick head, bata [child]’, shouts Dad. What my father actually means is that he has chosen a man for me and I must marry him. (Bhatti, 2007: 38) Whenever I would ask my mother why do I have to marry someone in Pakistan? Her answer would be ‘the boys here are good and you’re giving someone from a poor background the opportunity to have a better life in the UK’. (Bhatti, 2007: 68) I was raped; I didn’t want to have sex with him. He was the opposite of what I was. He was twice the size of me. And anyway they would not have let me return until I got pregnant anyway. I didn’t know him or meet him before and he was not related to me, he was just from the right caste. (Brandon and Hafez, 2008: 20) My parents are so helpless in a situation where there are no right and wrong answers for them. I know they love me. I have seen the fear in their eyes at the thought of living as outcasts in a cruel and selfish community. I have to watch my parents cry and beg me daily not to kill them off among their family and in this society. (Khanum, 2008: 25) My Mum was saying – You’ve got to marry him or your Dad will divorce me. (HAC, 2000: 6) My cousin’s parents tricked her into going to Pakistan to see her dying Grandfather. But they forced her to marry this older man. So when

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blackmail, restrictions on lifestyle such as limitations in movement, association, dress, education and career choices, oppressive financial controls, and other demeaning, humiliating and controlling actions. (SBS, 2001: 4)

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Going outside the family is punished and you are torn between loyalty and survival. (HAC, 2008, e-consultation) There is a strong feeling of ‘acceptance’ of the tradition of arranged (and if necessary forced) marriage among young women. Some young women do not see any alternative. (HAC, 2008: e-consultation) I was forced into a marriage but my parents did not think it was wrong, they thought it was the right thing to do. So how are we going to educate people like my parents, how are we going to re-write rules which have been in place for hundreds of years? (HAC, 2008: e-consultation) My parents would never think what they did to me was ‘forced’. They genuinely thought they knew what was best for me. (HAC, 2008: e-consultation) We don’t want to leave our families, we just don’t want to be forced into a marriage. (Uddin and Ahmed, 2000: 5) Because I didn’t get married to him [cousin], they gave him my sister instead – that’s what it’s like. She’s in Pakistan now. She’s 16 and she’s pregnant. They had promised me verbally to him and his family when I was born. But now because I’ve run away they’ve given my sister to him instead. …My dad won’t bring her back ’til she’s had the baby. He’s afraid that she’ll have an abortion. It doesn’t matter to them what happens to her – they got the land that his family had. (Brandon and Hafez, 2008: 13) The above quotations highlight a number of aspects of forced marriage that are relevant to understanding the processes by which young women are ‘persuaded’ into marriages that they do not want. First, young Pakistani women are socialised into accepting their parents’ right to arrange marriages for them and sometimes find it difficult even to recognise this as constituting force. Second, to reject their parents’ wishes can involve 10.1057/9780230245174 - Multiculturalism, Religion and Women, Marie Macey

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she got back to England, she did a legger. Now no one knows where she is. (HAC, 2008: 6)

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rejection by the family and community, with all the material and emotional suffering that this involves. And third, young women love their families and do not want to hurt them. All these factors render women extremely vulnerable to forced marriage in ways that cannot easily be remedied by the law, social policy or professional practice, though these have a part to play. They also illustrate Shachar’s warning about ‘the perils of multicultural accommodation’ (2001: 17) and the inadequacy of the ‘right of exit’ as an ‘answer’ to such abuses as forced marriage. I will discuss these issues later in the book.

Forced marriage, human rights and the law I think there is a need for a specific criminal offence. In this country we have an offence against littering in the streets and yet we do not have a forced marriage criminal offence, and I say that because forced marriage leads to repeated rapes, et cetera, and horrific violence. (Sanghera [Karma Nirvana], HAC, 2008: Ev.35) As already noted, neither forced marriage nor domestic violence is a criminal offence in Britain. The report of the first Working Group on forced marriage stated – without explanation – that: ‘The Working Group does not support the creation of a specific offence of forcing a person to marry’ (Uddin and Ahmed, 2000: 9). When the FMU revisited the question of criminalisation in 2006, it reached the same decision, stressing that this was based on the views of the majority of participants in consultation on the issue. What it did not point out was that this was a very narrow majority – 37 per cent against criminalisation, 34 per cent for. A number of factors are relevant to this outcome: • it is based on only 157 responses, unevenly spread across England,

Wales and Scotland, and not always providing good coverage of areas where forced marriage is prevalent; • voting varied by category, so that while all the Crown Prosecution and Probation Service respondents were against criminalisation, the majority of Children’s and Young People’s Services were in favour; • 40 per cent of those with experience of forced marriage were in favour of criminalisation, and only 24 per cent against; • the consultation involved men as well as women, but no breakdown of voting by gender is provided. In contrast to the FMU consultation, that with 600 Welsh Muslim women in the same year, concluded: ‘It is necessary to raise a question regarding the need to criminalise it and make the act of Forced Marriage an illegal offence’ (Mahoney and Taj, 2006: 16). 10.1057/9780230245174 - Multiculturalism, Religion and Women, Marie Macey

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Notwithstanding the fact that forced marriage is not a criminal offence, there is a considerable body of international and domestic legislation that either relates directly to it or can be used in relation to it. International law places forced marriage firmly within a human rights framework and, as Kelly (2005) notes, violence against women is now mainstreamed within both human rights discourse and practice. The UK is a signatory to a number of agreements, conventions and declarations specifically on marriage, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: ‘Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses’, and the United Nations: ‘A woman’s right to choose a spouse and enter freely into marriage is central to her life and her dignity and equality as a human being’; ‘State parties shall ensure on a basis of equality of men and women … the same right to freely choose a spouse and to enter into marriage only with their full and free consent’. In addition, UK law now has to be written and interpreted within a European framework, thereby increasing the power of European Human Rights legislation in the British context. However, neither the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) 1950 nor the UK Human Rights Act 1998 says anything about marriage other than that people of marriageable age have the right to marry and establish a family. Domestic law on marriage is laid down in the Marriage Act 1949 and the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973. The minimum age for marriage is 16 and marriage must be freely entered into: ‘[if] …either party to the marriage did not validly consent to it, whether in consequence of duress, mistake, unsoundness of mind or otherwise’, the marriage is voidable. A new Forced Marriage (Civil Protection) Act 2007 came into force in November 2008, and amends the Family Law Act 1996, rather than criminalising forced marriage. The Act adopts a very broad definition of ‘force’ to include psychological coercion and threats, and empowers courts to make protection orders to limit the conduct of anyone attempting to coerce someone into marriage. The new legislation is accompanied by multi-agency statutory guidelines which require public sector agencies to take action against forced marriage (Stobart, 2009). For some people this is a step too far; for others, it does not go far enough (HAC, 2008); and for yet others, it is not expected to work in practice (Khanum, 2008). HAC, for instance, states that while conflicting opinions had decided them not to recommend the criminalisation of forced marriage: If the implementation of the Forced Marriage Act [in conjunction with other measures being taken to combat forced marriage] cannot demonstrate concrete progress in reducing the prevalence of forced

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To some extent, these differences of opinion explain why the government has so far been reluctant to criminalise forced marriage. However, one might question the basis on which decisions are taken to ‘consult’ before introducing legal measures in some areas and not in others: for example, I am not aware of any consultations having taken place on whether or not to implement multiculturalism or community cohesion policies. Equally important is the question of the basis on which people are invited to take part in such consultations as the government deems fit to carry out, for there are clear indications that this was influential in the FMU decision not to make forced marriage a criminal offence. A number of sections of the Children Act 1989 provide powers that can be used to protect children (under the age of 17) who are being forced into marriage. Local authorities have a general duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of children in need and this can be used to prevent children being removed from the UK. It can also, if necessary, require their removal from families into the care of local authorities. The Education Act 1996 can also be used to prevent forced marriage since it requires that all children must be in full-time education until the age of 16. In addition, both civil and criminal law in the UK include numerous offences under which people forcing others into marriage can be charged. Common law offences cover kidnapping, aiding and abetting a criminal offence, false imprisonment and murder. Specific laws that are directly applicable include: the Criminal Justice Act 1988; the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act 2004; Children and Young Persons Act 1933; the Theft Act 1968; the Child Abduction Act 1984; the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 2003; the Offences Against the Person Act 1861; and the Protection from Harassment Act 1997. Vulnerable adults are protected under the Mental Health Act 1983, which can be used to prevent overseas travel and marriage itself. Of considerable significance is the frequently ignored fact that apparently unrelated law can play a major role in preventing forced marriage. A striking example here is the ‘primary purpose rule’ introduced by the Conservative government to curb abuses of immigration via marriage, but repealed when Labour came to power. The restriction of visas for marriage purposes had a strong and immediate impact on trans-continental marriages, as is indicated by Home Office statistics. In 1997, when the primary purpose rule was in force, there were 255 applications for visas

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marriage and increasing the safety of victims, then the question of criminalisation should be revisited. (2008: 132)

for marriage; in 1998 when it was repealed, the number rose to 1,132 (Alibhai-Brown, 1998). This, along with statistics on the number of Pakistani Muslims in the UK, challenges Samad and Eade’s (2002) statement that trans-continental marriages are favoured due to lack of suitable partners in the UK. For when the option of such marriages was removed, Pakistani parents had no difficulty in arranging marriages for their children within the UK (Beckett and Macey, 2001). This is not to suggest that banning immigration for marriage purposes would completely solve the problem, for parents can and do take reluctant daughters to Pakistan and marry them there. Nor is it to imply that no marriages within the UK are forced; however, it seems likely that British citizens have a better chance of escaping an unwanted marriage in the UK than overseas (MAT, 2008). It would seem, then, that there is more than enough legislation in the UK to prevent forced marriage from taking place. So why are thousands of British children and young women still being forced into marriage every year? There are a number of different levels on which this question can be answered. These intersect and interact and raise questions of practice, as well as policy.

Forced marriage: policy versus practice, rhetoric versus reality The UN General Secretary powerfully highlights the gap between the law and its implementation in his comment that: Violence against women continues unabated in every continent, country and culture. It takes a devastating toll on women’s lives, on their families and on society as a whole. Most societies prohibit such violence – yet the reality is that too often, it is covered up or tacitly condoned. (Ban Ki-moon, 2008) This gap, which is sometimes of chasmic proportions, is indicated in the evidence presented to the HAC (2008). The reasons for this include lack of political will, fear of being accused of racism or Islamophobia, ‘political correctness’ and, perhaps most common, a level of ignorance that has actually resulted in women being murdered. There are a number of such cases in both Britain and wider Europe and the British police are currently reopening some cases of young Asian women’s disappearances and deaths, with ‘honour’ killings in mind. One particularly shocking example is that of Banaz Mahmod, whose murder in 2007 was arranged by her father and uncle after the police had ignored several appeals for help

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from her. This was despite the fact that she named those she thought would kill her and produced telephone footage of her fears (Marshall, 2007). The Mahmod case is a chilling reminder that the law in itself is not enough: there has to be the political will to implement it. This applies not only to front-line police officers, but to professionals in education, health and social/welfare services, where policy exists but is often not implemented by the very people who are in a position to instigate preventative measures. However, it is not only the implementation of policy that is inadequate; in some cases the policy itself is problematic. An example here (which sometimes involves poor practice) is the issue of loopholes in the law. The requirement for school attendance, for instance, allows for the provision of an ‘effective alternative to school’, and though there are guidelines on this, parents can deny inspectors access to the home and the child. The HAC inquiry (2008) discovered many children missing from school rolls who remain unaccounted for, including those who have failed to return to school after a holiday abroad (250 girls aged 13-16 in Bradford alone in 2006 (FMU, in HAC, 2008: 56). Although most education providers subsequently denied any link with forced marriages (Mornington, in HAC, 2008: Ev. 342-4), there is no doubt that children are removed from school for marriage purposes and that there is widespread failure to monitor and act on this. Another loophole with extremely far-reaching consequences is the fact that marriages conducted outside the UK are generally recognised here, provided that both parties have the legal capacity to marry. There is no doubt that this is exploited by parents whose children are resisting marriage and who are sometimes tricked into ‘holidays’ or visiting ‘ill’ grandparents, only to find their passports and return flight tickets taken away from them on their arrival (Samad and Eade, 2002). Sometimes, too, these women are not allowed to return home until they are pregnant or have actually given birth (Brandon and Hafez, 2008). Such marriages may fall into Khanum’s ‘false’ category, having been conducted with only one party present, or even by telephone: I have a young mother who came in to the office and said that she wanted to get her daughter married to her nephew in Pakistan. She said ‘I’d rather the marriage takes place on the phone.’ She asked is there a way to get the husband over by doing ‘Nikah’ [religious marriage] on the phone and is it a problem that her daughter is only 16? (Taj [Henna Foundation, Cardiff], in Brandon and Hafez, 2008: 14–15)

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The law and social policy in Britain are often gender-blind, resulting in bias against women. An example here is that men in polygamous marriages are entitled to full welfare benefits for all their wives and children, despite bigamy being illegal in this country (Wynne-Jones, 2008). In contrast, women brought into the country as brides, without indefinite right to remain, are denied access to public funding, and therefore to a range of services such as legal aid, housing, refuges (Chantler, 2004) and – ironically – the FMU (Iranian and Kurdish Women’s Rights Organisation, in HAC, 2008: Ev.291). One consequence of this is that many women (and their children) are forced to remain in abusive and violent relationships, particularly since some husbands and families refuse to regularise women’s citizenship status in order to maintain control over them (Burman and Chantler, 2004; Burman et al., 2004). At the practice level, a number of issues impact on forced marriage (and other forms of violence against women). One of these concerns breeches of confidentiality by the police, doctors, teachers and social workers; the other concerns ignorance. There is evidence of doctors reporting back to parents in cases of forced marriage (Allen,6 in Sawyer, 2008) and to husbands and community ‘leaders’ in cases of domestic violence (Puri, 2005). Police officers have sometimes treated women fleeing forced marriage as ‘teenage runaways’ and returned them to their families (Allen, in Sawyer, 2008; Khanum, 2008); teachers have been tricked by parents into making contact with escapees from forced marriage, and social workers have seen family mediation as an appropriate way of handling forced marriage (Khanum, 2008). All these actions quite literally put women’s lives at risk and, indeed, a number have been murdered as a consequence. The path to hell, as the saying goes, is, indeed, paved with good intentions! Ignorance is bad enough in its consequences for women; unfortunately, not all questionable practice stems from ignorance. In some cases, minority ethnic men choose to act in the interests of parents and the community rather than those of young women. Imams, community ‘leaders’ and local councillors are widely distrusted for this reason (Keighley Domestic Violence Forum (KDVF), 1998; Gores, 1999; Macey, 1999a; 1999b; Rehman-Sabba, 1999; Samaroo, 2005; Mahoney and Taj, 2006; Raz, 2006; Khanum, 2008), and there is evidence to suggest that this is well founded. For example, workers in benefit offices and Job Centres have revealed personal information to families and ‘bounty hunters’ which has enabled survivors of domestic violence and forced marriage to be traced (Macey, 1999b; Allen, in Sawyer, 2008); social workers have passed information to former husbands on the whereabouts of women

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and children (personal communication) and South Asian police officers have passed information back to communities. To some extent, all these examples can be argued to reflect problems related to multiculturalism at various levels, and the latter illustrates the tension that exists between British equality and human rights policies as they apply to different categories. The possible consequences for South Asian women of the setting of targets on minority ethnic representation in the police service were self-evident from the outset. That they were ignored is a blatant example of the prioritisation of race/ethnicity over gender issues which is fundamental to both anti-racism and multiculturalism. It is not, then, surprising that many people see little point in introducing specific legislation on forced marriage, though this is not the only reason to disagree with this. Opposition to criminalisation reflects a range of views on the reasons for forced marriage, the likelihood of it dying out ‘naturally’ over time, the adoption of a particular ideological stance and distrust of the British government.

Influences on forced marriage The meaning of marriage [Arranged marriage] helps maintain the social stratification system in the society (caste), it gives parents control over family members, it enhances the chances to preserve and continue the ancestral line, it provides opportunities to strengthen the kinship group, it allows the consolidation and extension of family property and enables the elders to preserve the principles of endogamy. (Bhopal, 1997: 58) There are some fundamental differences in attitudes to marriage between Pakistani Muslims and the native British that have to be considered in trying to understand forced marriage. Among non-Muslims, marriage is seen to be about personal happiness and love between two individuals. Among Pakistani Muslims it is a contractual agreement between two families and involves social structures and status, communal identity, culture and religion. The importance of this cannot be overstated and has far-reaching implications for our understanding of forced marriage and our estimation of the likelihood of it dying out naturally over time. Put simply, the individual’s desires, needs, interests and happiness are secondary to those of the family and community (Shaw, 2001; Zaidi and Shuraydi, 2002). However, this masks a more material reality that goes some way to explaining the preference not only for endogenous,

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The choices that are made have a far-reaching impact upon the parents, their siblings, and their siblings’ children, and a range of other relatives, affecting the futures and socio-economic positions of a much wider range of kin than just parents and children. For this reason, decisions about marriage are a matter of corporate, not individual concern. (2001: 325) It is important to reiterate that forced marriage is strictly forbidden in Islam. However, sexual relationships outside marriage are equally strictly prohibited, which is why, as noted previously, marriage is virtually a religious and cultural requirement for Muslims. In wider British society, sex outside marriage, cohabitation, single living and same-sex partnerships are widely accepted, which is related to marriage tending to take place at a later age than it does among Muslims. Pakistani parents consider it one of their principal responsibilities to arrange their children’s marriages and sometimes do so at birth or in early childhood. This emphasis on marriage seems to be close to a belief that it is a panacea for rebellion, ‘inappropriate’ relationships, alcohol and drug abuse and criminality – all of which are seen to result from ‘Western corruption’. Two obviously negative aspects of the centrality of marriage in Muslim communities relate to sexual orientation and disability. In relation to the former, there is evidence that young lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) Muslims are sometimes forced into marriage as a means of ‘curing’ them of their ‘deviance’: I know girls taken abroad, or forced into marriage because of their sexuality. There is constant pressure. I had come out [as a lesbian] to my family years before and the relatives in Pakistan said – bring her here, we’ll sort her out. I was forced into marriage. Although many people oppose forced marriage I find a lot of people say it’s OK for lesbians. (Anonymous contributor, in Raz, 2006) The appalling situation of LGBT people forced into heterosexual marriage gives a whole new meaning to Idrus and Bennett’s (2003) description of forced marriage as statutory rape. And just as forced heterosexual marriage impacts differentially on women and men, it is likely that

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but consanguineous, marriage. Shaw observes that parents usually first consider the claims of close kin on their offspring as spouses for their children because:

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lesbians in such marriages will be in a far worse position than their male counterparts. For example, Yip (2004) reports that a strategy adopted by some South Asian gay men is to maintain the façade of marriage in public while engaging in homosexual relationships in secret. He does not comment on the fact that lesbians are unlikely to have the freedom to do this or on the potential effect on wives, who suffer the ‘collateral damage’ caused by false marriages (Khanum, 2008). This would count as an example of the ‘unavoidable costs’ of cultural autonomy noted – and defended – by multiculturalists such as Kukathas (1997; 2001). As far as disability is concerned, O’Hara (2003) found that some parents see marriage as a cure for learning disabilities, irrespective of either the severity of the disability or the socio-economic status of the family (Channabasavanna et al., 1985). Such marriages are more likely to be ‘false’ than those where disability is not involved, as evidenced by Bukhar’s example: I have one case when someone was brought over [from Pakistan to England] and her husband had mental health issues; he had the mental age of a five year old but the body of a 40 year old. It was a telephone nikah [religious marriage], so the girl only saw what he looked like on picture. (cited in Brandon and Hafez, 2008: 22) Rozario (2005) and Gilliat-Ray (2007) report that some Bangladeshi Muslim families prefer the risk of having disabled children to that of damaging the marriage prospects of other children. This illustrates the strength of the cultural and religious commitment to marriage, as well as the belief that it is a sort of ‘cure-all’. It is undoubtedly facilitated by the acceptance in Britain of the validity of marriages conducted overseas with only one of the partners present, or even by telephone. But false marriage involving a partner with an undeclared disability does not only constitute an abuse of the human rights of the people directly involved, but may have long-term consequences for the children of such marriages, and, indeed, for both the community and British society as a whole. For disability in South Asian communities in the UK is three times the rate of the general population’s (Overall et al., 2002; Christianson and Modell, 2004) and is linked to genetic disorders which are related to consanguineous marriages (this link is contested by some – mainly non-medical – researchers, such as Ahmad, 1995; Darr, 1997). Such marriages occur mainly between first cousins, especially the sons and daughters of brothers, and account for between 35 per cent and

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65 per cent of Pakistani marriages (Shaw, 2001; Hussain and Bittles, 2004; Rozario, 2005). It is also relevant to note here that consanguineous marriages in England, Japan and the US have fallen dramatically during the twentieth century in all communities, other than in British Pakistani ones, where the trend is actually reversed, with cousin marriages increasing over time. Shaw (2001) suggests that the principal reason for the reduction in the US is the integration of cultural and religious minorities and immigrants, which is exactly what one would anticipate occurring over time. It is reasonable, then, to speculate that the lack of change in Britain is connected to the lack of integration by Pakistanis relative to other ethnoreligious groups (Modood et al., 1997). The question is why this is the case. I believe that multiculturalism has played a significant part in this situation. Minority cultural influences Whatever the reasons for the relative isolation, or separation, of Pakistani Muslims in British society, there is little doubt that the current situation constitutes a vicious circle in the context of a discussion of forced marriage. For marriage between British and Mirpuri citizens facilitates the reproduction of Mirpuri rural social structure and organisation in urban Britain; this increases social and economic exclusion, which encourages trans-continental consanguineous marriage, and this in turn exacerbates both social and economic isolation and disadvantage. And so the cycle continues – over half a century after initial settlement. In one sense, this is testimony to the success of the multicultural emphasis on the maintenance of minority cultures. But this ‘success’ has to be weighed against the negative consequences that accrue to it, including, in this case, the misery of young people forced into unwanted marriages. Women are centrally involved in, and affected by, social exclusion and the struggle to reproduce the culture, language and religion of the homeland in an alien environment (Afshar, 1994; Macey, 1999b; 2005; 2007). Dwyer (1999; 2000) observes that diasporic identifications are always configured through gender, and Anthias and Yuval-Davis (1992) note that gender roles are often reinforced, rather than challenged, by migration and settlement. Notwithstanding this, change over time is generally considered inevitable, as minority and majority cultures interact and exert an influence over each other. It is the intense resistance to external influence that makes Pakistani communities unique in Britain in enabling them to avoid the level of change that might have been expected by this stage of settlement. This is not, of course, to suggest that no change is taking place in individuals and communities of Pakistani 10.1057/9780230245174 - Multiculturalism, Religion and Women, Marie Macey

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heritage and Muslim faith, as I have already indicated both here and elsewhere (Macey, 2002; 2006; 2007a; 2007b). Recent publications focusing on positive change in young men include those by Alam (2006) and Lewis (2007). It is interesting that there appears to be no comparable work that deals with women, other than that which refers to improved educational attainment. Notwithstanding this, the rate of change remains extremely slow relative to comparable groups, and there is little doubt that inter-continental marriage, linked to other factors, plays a major role. Among these other factors is the creation of ethnic enclaves in some British cities, termed ‘comfort zones’ by Ouseley (2001) and Lewis (2002). These built on initial chain migration (Ballard, 1994) to produce a level of residential and social separatism whereby people in the same location live ‘parallel’ lives (Ouseley, 2001; Cantle, 2001, 2008). These comfort zones mean that Mirpuris do not need to move outside the immediate neighbourhood because all cultural and religious needs are met at the local level by fellow Mirpuris (Lewis, 2002; 2006). There are mosques and mosque schools run by imams brought from the homeland, community centres and solicitors, and shops that cater for all needs, from halal butchers, through travel agents and jewellers to undertakers (Lewis, 2004). High levels of unemployment and children attending local schools that have become dominated by the same ethnic group (Burgess and Wilson, 2003; Miller, 2004; Burgess et al., 2005; Johnston et al., 2006a; 2006b; Osler, 2007) mean that in some cases there is very limited interaction beyond the boundaries of the ethnic group (Ouseley, 2001; Macey, 2006; 2007; Carling, 2008). In addition, modern communications systems and ease of travel have encouraged the production and consumption of culture, media, politics and religion via trans-national networks and associations (Samad, 1992; 1998). These, in conjunction with lack of access to English, can act to limit worldviews to those that accord with the traditional ones of the country of origin (see Harb and Bessaiso, 2006). Finally, there are a number of Islamist websites that can be seen as actively promoting racial hatred, violence and terrorism (Brandon, 2008) and a range of publications that not only discourage ethnic mixing but sometimes come close to inciting racial/religious hatred. Among the latter are those by Hizb ut-Tahrir (1995; 1997; 2000a; 2000b; 2002); the Muslim Parliament of Great Britain, which refers to the difficulty for Muslims of leading a muttaqi (God-fearing, pious) life in a ‘corrupt’ environment and speaks of the need to ‘arrest the “integration” and “assimilation” of Muslims into the corrupt bogland of western culture and supposed civilization’ (cited in Newbiggin et al., 1998). The Islamic Party of Britain claims that ‘there is nothing in Western societies that remotely resembles good behaviour’, and Al-Hujjat states: ‘[the 10.1057/9780230245174 - Multiculturalism, Religion and Women, Marie Macey

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US and Britain] speak honeyed words publicly, and sow corruption and injustice stealthily’ (cited by The London Bible College, 1999). All these factors exert strong pressure on Pakistani Muslim communities to maintain the culture and religion of the homeland and even to resist mixing with non-Muslims, let alone integrating into British society. And in encouraging a trans-national orientation, they are centrally implicated in forced marriage or, to put it another way, trans-national arranged marriages are essential to the maintenance of the Mirpuri way of life in Britain. However, no matter how apparently impermeable are the boundaries drawn by Pakistani Muslim communities around themselves, they are not immune from the influences of wider society. Majority cultural influences In addition to multicultural ideology, there is a range of factors that can be seen to stem from wider society, or the majority culture, that influence the extent to which full participation in British society by minorities is encouraged or discouraged. Poverty, for example, has long been recognised as resulting in social exclusion and the inability to exercise citizenship rights. As already noted, Pakistani and Bangladeshi Muslims are the most deprived groups in Britain (Modood et al., 1997; Berthoud, 2000; Platt, 2002, 2007a; 2007b; 2007c; Beckford et al., 2006), which militates against their full participation in society. Further, a combination of legal requirements around citizenship and the manipulation of these by Pakistani Muslim men serves to exclude women who are brought into the country as brides (Burman and Chantler, 2004; Macey, 2007a; 2009; HAC, 2008). At a different level, British foreign policy is currently impacting on Muslim communities, particularly that which is linked to our ‘special relationship’ with the US. This has contributed to a sense of grievance by Muslims, particularly young men (Abbas, 2007; Mirza et al., 2007; Brandon, 2008), with the ‘war on terror’ being viewed by some as the Western powers leading a ‘new crusade’ against Islam (Hamid, 2007). It probably goes without saying that such young men are influenced more by emotion than knowledge (Mirza et al., 2007) and are encouraged in this by Islamist websites and, indeed, Islamic societies on university campuses (Thorne and Sharpe, 2008). It also goes without saying that this situation cannot explain the longer-term separatism of Pakistani Muslim communities in Britain. However, the latter might logically be held to have played a part in the vulnerability of young men to political radicalisation. Racially based exclusion, racism and institutionalised racism also operate to exclude people, as noted in chapter 2. Although Britain does not

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have a history of support for far right political parties, the BNP has been active for some time and, more recently, has had some electoral success, particularly in, or close to, areas of high minority settlement. It has also turned its attention from a generalised racist/anti-immigrant stance towards a specifically anti-Muslim focus (Cesari, 2006; T. Phillips, 2007; Sveinsson, 2009). Ideological influences So far, in attempting to locate forced marriage within its broader context, I have focused on what might be termed material, or factual, influences. But this is, of course, a totally artificial divide, adopted simply for pragmatic purposes. I now turn to the ideological level which I regard as being of central importance to understanding the influences on forced marriage in order to understand forced marriage itself. First, it is important to apply the concept of ideology to an element of the material sphere discussed above – that of the relative disadvantage of South Asian Muslims in contemporary Britain. Since 1997 it has been almost impossible to read anything on this that does not cite a syndrome termed ‘Islamophobia’ by the Runnymede Trust (Conway, 1997) which is said to permeate British society. Since then, we have lived through a series of terrorist attacks in the US and Europe, a number of murders, the ‘Danish Cartoon Affair’ and the ‘Northern Riots’ in England – all perpetrated by extremists claiming to be acting in the name of Islam. And though the latter were influential in the development of ‘community cohesion’, the overall reaction to these incidents has been the generation of a large volume of publications that operate on the assumption that this – and just about everything else involving Muslims – is explicable, and indeed excusable, in terms of Islamophobia (see Phillips, 2006, for a passionately argued attack on this). This is not to suggest, as noted in chapter 2, that South Asian Muslims, along with other visible minority ethnic groups, do not suffer racially based exclusion and racism in Britain. But it does not follow from this that they experience either more than other groups, or that it is specifically based on religion. It actually seems highly unlikely that British racism is sufficiently sophisticated as to differentiate between Muslims and, say, Hindus or Sikhs, neither of whom are socially excluded. Certainly at the time that the concept of Islamophobia was popularised in Britain – and described as ‘a real and growing phenomenon’ (Conway, 1997: iii) – there was very little hard evidence to support its reality, as discussed in chapter 4. Notwithstanding this, the term ‘Islamophobia’ is now used with an abandon reminiscent of poetic licence – much as

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the concept of ‘institutional racism’ was, and is, (mis)used. This is particularly the case since the 1999 report of the MacPherson inquiry into the police’s handling of the murder of Stephen Lawrence referred to the Metropolitan Police as institutionally racist, then proceeded to destroy the real utility of the concept by inaccurately defining and operationalising it (see Williams, 1985, for a correct explication of the concept of institutional racism). The importance of this is not just that it is bad social science – though it is – but because: first, it has led to a neglect of other factors that contribute to Muslim disadvantage, and hence to the failure to develop policy that might improve the situation. Second, it has affected the attitudes and perceptions of both Muslims and non-Muslims in that perceived discrimination against Muslims far exceeds its established reality (Macey et al., 2009), or, as Mirza et al. suggest: ‘The authorities and some Muslim groups have exaggerated the problem of Islamophobia, which has fuelled a sense of victimhood among some Muslims’ (2007: 6). Third, it is likely that the creation (I use the word advisedly) of a climate of victimhood has exacerbated the trend towards separatism encouraged by multiculturalism and has thus impacted negatively on inter-ethnic relationships. Finally, this is almost certainly implicated in the growing trend towards the prioritisation of a Muslim identity discussed previously and which is particularly evident in young people. Whether this is expressed through extreme religiosity (Rozario, 2005), rioting (Macey, 2005) or suicide bombing (Abbas, 2007), it is difficult to see much that is positive about it from a sociological point of view. I believe that all these factors are rooted in a brand of uncritical, illthought through multicultural ideology that has had serious negative consequences for Muslim women: What multi-culturalism does (in return for information and votes) is to concede some measure of autonomy to community leaders to govern their communities. In reality this means that community leaders have most control over the family, women and children. Together with the state, community leaders define the needs of the minority communities then limit and separate progressive voices on the grounds of these being inauthentic and westernised. More radical elements of our community are labelled as extremists. This is the result of multi-cultural policies. They have had an enormous and devastating impact on women’s autonomy and rights. (Patel, 1998: 22) There are undoubtedly several reasons for this, including demographic projections and concern about Muslim votes, the demonstrated ability of 10.1057/9780230245174 - Multiculturalism, Religion and Women, Marie Macey

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Muslims to mobilise to achieve their ends, the fear of further public disorder and even bombings, and, of course, plain old-fashioned ignorance. Various people have commented on the latter: Bright, for example, warns of the dangers of the British government, including the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, working with groups that have radical Islamist agendas with origins in the sectarian politics of Pakistan (2006: 6); and there is an ongoing debate about whether the government and the police should work with radicals/extremists, as they currently do (Panorama, 2009). I believe that all this is linked to the influence of multicultural ideology across government, academia and everyday life. I also feel that this has contributed negatively to the current situation of Muslims in Britain in the material and other spheres. However, caution is necessary here for a number of reasons: • there is no way to prove the influence of ideas on thinking, let alone

action (though the advertising industry harbours no doubts on this dimension); • there is a fundamental distinction between correlation and causation – and we are dealing with the former, not the latter; • there is considerable danger of over-simplification in what is, in reality, a complex arena in which numerous diverse influences intersect and interact – from gender and generation to modern communications technology. This includes access to both the internet and such alternative media as Al-Jazeera, both of which can be used positively – to open up thinking to international perspectives - or negatively – to close thinking to anything other than that which accords with and perpetuates existing world views and prejudices. Harb and Bessaiso, for example, found that selective media viewing by Arab Muslims in Wales was related to the development of conspiracy theories on 9/11 and the death of Diana, Princess of Wales through its reinforcement of anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism (2006: 1063).

Summary: multiculturalism, women and forced marriage We cannot sit and wait for this practice to die out with future generations. We have to be proactive in bringing the matter to the fore, making it totally unacceptable. (HAC, 2008: e-consultation) Although my main focus in this chapter has been on forced marriage, I have also touched on the ban on trans-racial adoption and the practice 10.1057/9780230245174 - Multiculturalism, Religion and Women, Marie Macey

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of female genital mutilation. My argument has not been that multiculturalism causes these, but that its widespread ideological influence has permeated government decision-making in a range of areas, including social policy and the law. This, in turn, impacts on professional practice by teachers, social workers and the police, so that women and children in minority communities are left vulnerable to physical and mental abuse. In different ways, the issues of FGM and forced marriage highlight the question of political will with respect to both the construction and implementation of the law. FGM is illegal; but there is clear evidence that the law is routinely being broken in that the practice is being carried out in Britain, yet the perpetrators are not being prosecuted. Why not? For surely there is no more barbaric example of violence against women and children than FGM – violence that leads to both immediate and long-term mental and physical suffering. Likewise, the example of forced marriage illustrates the influence of multiculturalism on political decision-making – in this case, the decision not to criminalise the practice. One of the justifications for this decision is that international and national laws are already in place to prevent young people being forced into unwanted marriages. Yet there is also increasing awareness that the numbers of British citizens affected by forced marriage in Britain are considerably higher than has hitherto been accepted. I am thus pushed to conclude that the failure to implement new, or to utilise existing, legislation indicates a lack of political will. Multiculturalism is implicated in all the cases discussed in this chapter, particularly in its emphasis on all cultures being equal and hence minority cultural traditions not being open to criticism. The reality, however, is that the vast majority of traditions are defined by men and benefit men – even those in which women are centrally implicated, as is the case with both FGM and forced marriage. I would argue, therefore, that multiculturalism carries considerable responsibility for the suffering of minority ethnic women, children and young people. However, the effects of multiculturalism are not restricted to vulnerable groups within minority ethnic and/or religious communities, but can be seen to affect wider society. In the next chapter, I examine the suggestion that multiculturalism poses a threat to liberal democracy.

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Introduction My aim in this chapter is to explore some of the ways in which multiculturalism can be seen to pose a challenge – and possibly a threat – to liberal democracy and to do so by way of concrete examples. In line with the book’s overall focus, I concentrate mainly on Britain, despite my awareness of the central – and enormously far-reaching – effects of many aspects of globalisation on multiculturalism. This is particularly relevant to a chapter on liberal democracy, a concept that highlights citizenship, equality and human rights, because ongoing changes in international thinking in all these areas have a considerable effect on thinking at the national level. For instance, European and international laws and instruments are binding on Britain and have to be considered in creating domestic legislation.1 One of the most significant of these for this chapter is UNESCO’s Universal Declaration of Cultural Diversity (2001), which lays down guiding principles for multicultural democratic societies. These are based on the idea that ‘only when cultural diversity is in balance with social cohesion, can we find ways of democratic participation and peaceful co-existence’ (Sané, 2007: xi).2 The UNESCO Declaration is significant in a number of ways. First – and contrary to multiculturalism – it stresses the need to balance the rights of cultural (and religious) minorities with those of society for social cohesion. Second – and in accord with multiculturalism – it stresses the right of minorities to maintain (and practise) their own cultures, religions and languages. This tension indicates that multicultural, democratic societies have not yet found the optimum way of dealing with diversity: ‘There is indeed a growing awareness, among politicians and academics alike, that the democratic management of multicultural societies needs rethinking 89

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The United Nations, founded to propagate the universalist ideals of Enlightened Europe, now speaks on behalf of every ethnic prejudice, believing that peoples, nations and cultures have rights which outweigh the rights of man [sic]. The ‘multicultural’ lobby dismisses the liberal values of Europe as ‘racist’, while championing the narrow chauvinism of every minority culture. (Finkielkraut, 1988, cited in Kymlicka, 2007: 6) The influence of international thinking on the British state is linked to the challenge of globalisation to the very concept of the nation-state (Koenig and de Guchteneire, 2007) and hence, in a sense, is also a challenge to my decision to focus on multiculturalism in Britain. This applies to the book as a whole, but is particularly pertinent to a chapter that questions the impact of multiculturalism at the state level. However, ideas are only translated into action through policies and laws that are designed and implemented at this level. Thus, whatever the validity of theoretical questions about the state, it remains a key locus for analysis and empirical investigation, particularly in relation to the increasing claims to recognition and rights made by minorities over recent years. In his discussion of social class and citizenship rights, Marshall (1950) recognised very clearly that if rights were to be meaningful, they had to be institutionalised: that is, there has to be some mechanism by which formal rights translate into substantive rights. The same principle applies to minorities, so we that we would do well not to deconstruct the state too readily! Notwithstanding this, the influence of the international on the national, particularly in relation to minority rights, is of considerable significance and highlights the question that I noted in the preface to this book. This is that it is not at all clear whether it is multiculturalism per se that I feel uneasy about, or whether this concept has come to represent a constellation of related ideological changes. Some of these reflect changes in thinking in the sphere of equal opportunities, including government-set targets aimed at making the labour market more representative of the ethnic composition of society. Of particular significance at both international and national levels is the shift from what might be termed ‘reactive’ to ‘proactive’ policy and practice. Many recent international developments relating to trans-national human rights law

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and further development’ (Sané, 2007: xi). This recent revelation that multiculturalism is not the panacea it was assumed to be may be new to some people, but criticisms of it go back over 20 years:

strengthen the position of ethnic, linguistic and religious minorities (Koenig and de Guchteneire. 2007), as do recent government initiatives. No longer is it sufficient for organisations to prove that they do not discriminate against minorities; they are now expected to take positive (concrete) steps to ensure equality and diversity. This applies particularly to racial and ethnic minorities in the public sector and has far-reaching implications for equal opportunities (these are discussed later in this chapter). Overall, much of this is positive and may be indicative of an increased commitment to tackling discrimination and increasing equality, which is seen to be essential to the flourishing of democratic societies. However, one has to question the potential gap between rhetoric and reality when we find ourselves defining 73 per cent of the population as being in need of protection through anti-discrimination laws in at least one area, while calculations that acknowledge the possibility of multiple discrimination would bring the figure to 109 per cent! (Green, 2006: 5–8). Relevant here is the fact that two-thirds of the cases brought under the religion and belief legislation cited race as a secondary jurisdiction (Savage, 2007). I would argue that there are elements of the current climate, particularly linked to multiculturalism, that have potentially negative implications for liberalism as the philosophy that underpins liberal democracy as a socio-political system. These include a tendency towards radical criticism of everything Western, particularly as this relates to ways of seeing the world that are informed by Enlightenment thinking. This is linked to the development and popularity of both feminism and postmodernism and has led to the rebuttal of ‘truth’ and ‘facts’ in favour of social construction (and deconstruction). Also implicated is the spread – particularly through public sector institutions – of what has become known as ‘political correctness’, which operates in a range of ways to silence not only dissent, but empirically established truths that are unacceptable within the dominant multicultural ideology. Before giving some examples, it is necessary to stipulate what I mean when I refer to liberal democracy. There is a large literature on liberalism, democracy and liberal democracy, some of which argues that there is a tension between liberalism and democracy (Wolin, 2004); some suggests that the two have a great deal in common (Song, 2007); and some proposes that they are mutually dependent: ‘liberalism is monogamously, faithfully, and permanently married to democracy’ (Shklar, 1989: 37). Song says that liberal democracy combines the principles of individual liberty with those of collective selfgovernment and egalitarianism (2007: 69). As a sociologist, rather than

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a philosopher or political scientist, I use a working definition of liberal democracy as a socio-political system, described by Abraham Lincoln in his 1863 Gettysburg address as ‘government of the people by the people for the people’ (Basler, 1953). It is a system rooted in the liberal precept that governments should reflect the will of the people rather than dictate to them, and as such seeks to protect the individual from the state. Citizenship is central to democracy, for it is individual citizens who are entitled to both protection from, and by, the state and to the range of rights (and responsibilities) that citizenship bestows on them. Marshall classified these rights as ‘civil’, ‘political’ and ‘social’, and defined them as: • the right to individual freedom and liberty, including freedom of

thought, speech and faith; • the right to full political participation; • the right to share in full in the social heritage of a society and to live

the life of a civilised being according to the standards prevailing in society. The last point involves the right to a modicum of economic welfare and security (Marshall, 1950) and is probably linked to the post-war development of the welfare state. This conception of liberal democracy yields three principles that are particularly relevant to a chapter on multiculturalism and democracy, all of which I argue are challenged by multicultural theory and practice. The first is the requirement that governments reflect the will of the people and its most obvious implications are in relation to citizenship. The second concerns the primacy of the individual whose possession of citizenship carries both rights and responsibilities. The third concerns the concept of equality and rests on the belief that by virtue of their shared humanity, all individuals are of equal moral worth. These three core values are powerfully articulated in the French motto liberté, égalité, fraternité and it may be no coincidence that France is the least ideologically committed multicultural society in Western Europe. The fact that no liberal democracy has fully achieved these ideals does not detract from their profound importance, because simply holding them has far-reaching consequences for social organisation and human interaction. At the very least, liberal democracies provide a context within which struggles for equality can, and do, flourish, as evidenced by the trade union, anti-racist and women’s movements. On the other hand, the loss of all these movements – to varying degrees and for various reasons – is a salutary reminder of the fragility of grassroots movements

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geared towards equality and human rights – a fragility that Barry suggests extends to liberal democracy itself, the conditions for maintaining which are ‘quite stringent’ (2001: 79). Marshall observed that the ideals of citizenship provide a yardstick against which the evolution of societies towards more developed democracy can be measured. These ideals illustrate the importance of the relationship between ideas (or ideologies) and material reality that is directly relevant to my discussion of the dominance of multiculturalism. They also draw attention to the importance to the democratic project of individual choice in that it is a liberal democratic principle that individuals should – as far as possible – have freedom of choice within the constraints of the law (and the requirement not to do harm to others). Although this is an ideal, it is a sociological truism that no one can choose an option that does not exist, either materially o