Kenan Malik skriver på Newsmill, obligatorisk läsning:
There is little love lost between multiculturalists and proponents of the clash of civilization thesis. The former accuse the latter of pandering to racism and Islamophobia, while the latter talk of the former as appeasing Islamism. Beneath the hostility, however, the two sides share basic assumptions about the nature of culture, identity and difference. Both start with the question: ‘Can Europe be the same with different people in it?'. They give different answers. But the question itself is the problem. It assumes that minority communities are homogenous wholes whose members will forever be attached to the cultures, faiths, beliefs and values of their forebears. Being born to European parents is not a passport to Enlightenment beliefs. So why should we imagine that having Bangladeshi or Moroccan ancestry makes one automatically believe in sharia? In confusing peoples and values both sides betray a lack of faith in their own abilities to win peoples of different backgrounds to a common set of Enlightened values.
And that is the real problem: not immigration, nor Muslim immigration, nor yet the ‘Islamization' of Europe, but the lack of conviction, on the part both of multiculturalists and clash of civilization warriors, in a progressive, secular, humanist project. It is this that has led both sides to betray basic liberal principles.
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