Free Radikal

Archive for the ‘diversity’ Category

Religion is fast replacing other ideologies such as Marxism-Leninism and anti-colonialism as determining social and political relations in our postmodern world. One result of the post September 11 world has been the demonization of Islam and the ‘politics of fear’ around the discourse of Islamic fundamentalism. This is despite the fact that fundamentalism, that potent ‘f word’, is originally Protestant, not Muslim, put forward in California in 1910 in a pamphlet titled The Fundamentals: A Testimony of Truth, which was circulated in 3 million copies, aiming to stop the erosion of what they saw as the ‘fundamental’ beliefs of Protestantism.
I do not need to re rehearse here the consequences of discourses such as ‘the clash of civilizations’ and the racial profiling of Muslims in the wake of 9/11 and the attacks in Madrid and London, which have resulted in what has been named the war on/of terror, waged mostly against Muslims.
One interesting consequence of this demonization has been the Swiss referendum put forward last November by the Swiss People’s Party aiming to ban the construction of minarets in Switzerland.
There are 400,000 Muslims in Switzerland (a small minority in a population of 6.4m of whom 1.96m have ‘immigrant background’), and only four minarets. Minarets, therefore, are not a huge problem, yet, according to the SVP, they are ‘a sign of Islamisation’. More than 57.5% of Swiss voters in 22 out of 26 cantons - or provinces - voted in favour of the ban, which was condemned by most world leaders from the Pope to Muslim leaders, yet has remained surprisingly undiscussed. There are unofficial Muslim prayer rooms in Switerland, and planning applications for new minarets are almost always refused. However, supporters of a ban claimed that allowing minarets would represent the growth of an ideology and a legal system - Sharia law - which are incompatible with Swiss democracy.
In the face of the success of the minaret ban, it is startling to think of the other Swiss referendum, put to voters in March, proposing to adopt the rights for animals to be legally represented. The proposal is based on an existing system in Zurich, according to which creatures such as goldfish and canaries, pigs, budgies and other animals should have legally enshrined rights including the right to be regularly exercised and cared for. This proposal was rejected by nearly 80 per cent, but the implications are interesting.
On the one hand, Switzerland has voted to outlaw the right of its Muslim citizens and residents to exercise their religious rights by praying and congregating in a publicly sited mosque, complete with a minaret. On the other, the Swiss seriously considered extending legal rights to animals – symbolically placing animals above people of the Muslim faith.
According to Maynooth media scholar Gavan Titley, the minaret ban – which means Muslims in Switzerland have to continue to pray in private facilities and thus keep their religion in the private domain – is part of a perceived ‘crisis of European multiculturalism’ which is accompanied by an ‘unapologetic demand for disintegrated migrants and Muslim populations to display loyalty, adopt ‘our’ national/liberal/universal values, and prove the legitimacy of their presence and belonging’.

A letter I sent to the Irish Times on 24 December 2009

Madam

Fintan O’Toole’s (spot-on as ever) article on the ironies of the Bishops’ multiculturalism (December 22, 2009, http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2009/1222/1224261109443.html) has broader ironic implications.

One irony relates to the church’s role in migrant integration. Having lost their key role in education and health service provision, Catholic religious orders have been working with migrants, refugees and asylum seekers. While extremely useful, many of the projects initiated by relilgious orders are run by white, Christian, settled Irish people, without giving leadership roles to migrants and other racialised people. This top down, and at time destructive approach means that migrants have little say in how these organisations are
funded and run.

The other, even broader, ironic implication relates to Irish integration policies. On the one hand, the Republic of Ireland claims to have ‘got it right’ in avoiding the pitfalls of both French assimilationism and British
multiculturalism through what it terms ‘interculturalism’ and ‘integration’. However, integration policies, which since the recession have been  conspicuous in their absebce, are targeted only at ‘legal’ migrants with refugee status or work visas, leaving other migrants, including asylum seekers, here ‘legally’ to seek refuge, out of the loop.

On the other hand, the state insists on integration ‘on our own terms’. Thus it demands proficiency in English, the state’s second language (while at the same time cutting the number of language support teachers), as a pre-condition to acquiring citizenship. And thus  An Garda Siochana refuses to allow Sikh volunteers to don a turban on duty, while not outlawing Catholic symbols, all in the name, the Garda insists, of ‘impartiality’ and ‘cultural diversity’. All of which makes a joke of the mantra of integration as a ‘two way process’, and is a far cry from the republican values of civic equality upheld by O’Toole.

Yours etc,

Ronit Lentin

An Garda Siochána have again made it absolutely clear that they do not want foreigners in the police force. In 2007, having appealed for recruits from what is euphemistically called Ireland’s ‘new communities’, it refused to allow a Sikh volunteer to the Garda reserve force to wear his turban on duty. The Garda explicitly denied that the turban ban was based on race or religion, but rather on the imperative to provide an ‘impartial police service’ requiring, among other things, ‘our standard uniform and dress’. According to Kevin O’Donoghue, Head of the Garda Press and Public Relations, ‘within the principles of an intercultural approach, An Garda Siochána is not advocating one religious belief over another, nor are we, in any way, being racist. We are attempting to… retain an image of impartiality while providing a State service to all citizens’. At the same time, An Garda declined to rule out the wearing of Catholic religious symbols such as crucifixes, Lenten ashes and pioneer pins.

It was an opportunity missed. Rather than occasion a much needed debate on the secularisation of the Irish public sphere, the turban ban drew supporters and opponents for an ‘Irish’ way of doing culture. Irish Times columnist Fintan O’Toole, arguing that Garda and state practice is replete with Catholic symbolism and practices, proposed that state institutions either adopt a ‘no religious symbols in public’ ruling across the board, including Catholic religious symbols – his preferred option – or allow all religious symbols, including turbans and veils. In an interesting twist, Harpreet Singh, president of the Irish Sikh Council, linking immigration and Irish emigration, pointed to the large number of Irish migrants in the US who have converted to Sikhism and asked whether they would face the same barriers if they return home.

This was in 2007, towards the end of Ireland’s Celtic capitalism era. In 2009, as Ireland is sunk in the depth of a gloomy recession, the turban issue raises its head again. But wait for it, this time is it explicitly reiterated in the name of none but ‘diversity’. As the Garda’s ‘diversity champion’ chief administrative officer John Leamy said in a Garda conference on diversity on 19 November, the force’s diversity strategy ‘has taken an intercultural model, where diversity was respected and reflected in the force’ rather than an ‘assimilation model where newcomers would have to accept the majority status quo’. And yet again, the Garda claims the ban is about ‘impartial policing’ – as if a turbaned or veiled Garda officer cannot possibly be impartial, as opposed to a Catholic, cross-bearing officer of course.
But hold on a second. If diversity is ‘respected and reflected in the force’ and newcomers ‘do not have to accept the majority status quo’, how come the Garda is still insisting on assimilation, as Dr Jasbir Singh argued, effectively denying ‘equal employment rights’ to Sikhs and other minorities? The ban affects not only naturalised Sikhs migrants, but also their Irish born Sikh children. Dr Singh reminded the conference that in Britain and other countries turbaned Sikhs serve in the police.

Remember however, that the performance of cultural diversity becomes a device, a brand, as state bodies, companies, and educational institutions pride themselves on their ‘happy colourful faces’, albeit without relinquishing control of those diversity projects to the owners of these very faces. The reiterated turban ban denotes the confusion, by the Gardai and other state bodies, about the meaning of ‘interculturalism’, an Irish (policy) solution to an Irish (immigration) problem, both multiculturalism and assimilation under a different name. It is absurd to both claim diversity and interculturalism and demand ‘newcomers’ do things ‘our’ own way without taking any steps towards officially secularising Ireland’s (Catholic) public sphere.