Deborah Orr: Talk of 'British Muslims' is a nonsense

In my opinion, multi-culturalism is a sham, which pays lip-service to celebrating difference

Turn on the television news, and it's like you're living in the dystopian future you read about in Judge Dredd. Step out the front door though, and reality becomes more comforting. Few people seem excitedly to be discussing the revelations the media bring us every day. At a party in Guildford at the weekend, I even heard a woman greet a reference to the "London bombing" with the mild enquiry: "What bombing?"

Who can blame her? Where do you want to be: perched above the South Downs, glass in hand, with old friends and lovely grub; or inside your own head, wrestling with the stubborn brutalities of human history, and beating your breast about your own tiny fragment of human culpability?

I know what choice I made on Saturday night. But if you're a "British Muslim", it appears, you don't have that choice. If you're a British Muslim, then your duty is to "do something", because you've already been in denial for far, far, far too long. British Muslims all over the country are taking long hard looks at themselves and their communities and finding fault. About time too, eh?

Oh dear. Just when there was a chink of hope that "multi-culturalism" might have had its day - with high-profile political thinkers such as Trevor Phillips having made recent public critiques - it suddenly, once again, becomes "the answer". The British Muslim community, everyone seems to agree, must sort out extremism for itself, with each and every British Muslim, racked with guilt over events they did nothing to create, bending to the task of putting the British Muslim house in order.

It is well documented that for the first hours and days after the bombing, British Muslims prayed that the bombers would not be from their number. Then, when the worst-case scenario was realised, the four bombers were described as "clean skins", unknown to the intelligence services - or anyone else - emerging as if by conjuring trick, from a community and culture that contained no extremist element.

Now, further down the perilous path to The Truth, it turns out that, actually, the four guys went to the extremist gym, got their videos from the extremist bookshop, worshipped out on the street because they were banned because of their extremism from the local mosques, worried banks with their weirdo shopping habits, freaked out their families with their funny attitudes, and in some cases were known to the intelligence services, who didn't "do anything" because of "political correctness".

Oh dear. There's another one: "political correctness". How on earth did an intellectual system that evolved as a challenge to the widespread habit of giving unbridled expression to all sorts of prejudices pop up in this day and age in the intelligence services, then? Let's see. You're detailed to gather information about a terrorist organisation that defines itself as Muslim, but you don't follow-up suspects because they're ... what? Muslim? I don't find that very illuminating.

On the contrary, it's the most lame excuse in the world, and one that can be used to justify virtually any sort of laziness or silliness or ignorance. In fact, if our present strategy, of carrying on "as normal" unless we happen to be "British Muslims", turns out to have been less than effective a few years down the line, we can even say that "political correctness" was the problem once again.

It's politically correct, after all, to subscribe to multi-culturalism. But in my opinion, multi-culturalism is a sham, a way of promoting "tolerance" in the literal sense of "enduring" or "permitting", which entrenches difference without paying any more than lip-service to celebrating it. Multi-culturalism came about as a compromise against a crude idea of integration that remains bossy and prescriptive. But like so many compromises, it is not very helpful to any of the parties involved.

All this talk of "British Muslims" is nonsense for a start, and for two main reasons. First, there is no such thing in the nation's unwritten constitution as a "British Muslim". The only established church in this country is the Church of England and our mad old laws still prevent a "British Catholic" from being Head of State, so religious tolerance is hardly endemic to the British way of life.

When Prince Charles broached this subject a few years back, saying that when he was King he wanted to be "defender of faiths", everyone laughed and said he was a politically correct loony. But actually, he's right. A nation that truly values religious freedom doesn't continue to enshrine such ancient hatreds in its constitution, and it is about time we had a major spring-clean.

For many, this is the worst possible news, carried away as they are with their "we will not let this change our way of life" rhetoric. But actually, what we shouldn't let this do is stop us from trying to improve things for our citizens as the world changes and grows and develops.

Second, there's no such thing as British Islam, so there can't be such a thing as a distinctively "British Muslim". Muslims in Britain tend to rely on the communities they came from to give spiritual and intellectual guidance. Often, religious leaders come from abroad, and may not speak English that well. Their ideas are not shaped by British culture, or even by industrial or urban culture. The world in which their congregations operate is not one they necessarily understand, so no wonder they often struggle to create a version of Islam that can meaningfully describe itself as "British" and "Muslim", let alone manage to communicate it to this resolutely Protestant nation (not that there's any significant apparatus that encourages such exchanges anyway).

The big paradox of the aftermath has been the sudden pride with which we talk of our successful multi-culturalism. It's a bit like failing to give yourself proper credit for the brilliance of your parenting until your toddler starts biting the rest of the children in the nursery.

Multi-culturalism often leaves people feeling ghettoised and untrusted. When the initial shock and horror has worn off, "British Muslims" will start to realise that this phrase - and this move to collectivise responsibility - ghettoises all Muslims as being part of the problem too.

The first thing we need to do - British people of all faiths and none - is decide what we are going to call these elements in our society - Wahhabi extremists? Jihadi fanatics? Bin Ladenite terrorists? - and share with each other all the information we can glean of their activities. Muslims are better placed to do this than anyone, of course. But there's no need to bang endlessly on as if some kinds of religious faith make you unable to remember what's written on your passport.

d.orr@independent.co.uk