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- [00:00]
A
Hi, I'm Justin Guest, a doctoral student in the Department of Government here at the lse. And with us on today's edition of the Hot Seat is Anne Phillips, professor of Political and gender theory at the lse. And we're here to talk about multiculturalism and democracy and the most recent comments by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. And why don't we start there, Professor Phillips? Last week, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, sparked widespread outrage in a certifiable Anglican crisis with comments about the inevitability of Sharia law being enforced in Britain. Now, beyond this massive criticism that happened afterwards, those familiar with British Islamic culture have said that on closer look, many Muslims already follow Sharia, perhaps privately and informally, but they do in fact follow it, and that the archbishop statements will hopefully direct attention to different uninstitutionalized cultures and lifestyles here in the uk. My first question is whether or not you think that's true. However, yes or no, either way, I wonder, did the Archbishop's comments, as they're awarded, needlessly widen the gap in social cohesion between non Muslims and Muslims here in the UK or in the long term, did he perhaps bring us all closer together?
- [01:14]
B
Well, I think for the moment, it looks as though it's widened the gap, not necessarily because of the way he put it, but certainly the way in which it was almost inevitably picked up by the media. I mean, I think it's given a platform to all kinds of stereotyping of Muslims in Britain and the usual kind of, you know, overreactions when the term Sharia is heard. I mean, I think, as far as I can understand what he was saying, that, I mean, his argument, it did seem as though he was arguing for a level of institutionalization of Sharia that I think would be deeply problematic. But the issues that he's raising are ones that are, in fact, I think, quite important. And it's a shame that we can't have a more nuanced debate. I mean, for me, the kind of, the really important thing about the Sharia councils is the ways in which they've provided, you know, a way out for devout Muslim women from marriages that otherwise they can't get a divorce from. I mean, obviously they can get a civil divorce, no problem, but if you're, you know, if you're devoutly religious, then getting a civil divorce is not adequate. And, you know, unfortunately, in Islam, I mean, in, I think all schools of Islam, but certainly most schools of Islam, the man has the right to refuse the divorce, unless that's unless an alternative judgment comes from Sharia council. And so, in fact, I mean, the Sharia councils vary. The Sharia councils that operate in Britain vary, and some are a lot more conservative than others, and some, you know, much more likely to try and persuade women back into unhappy marriages. But, you know, for a lot of women, basically, they've managed to get a religious divorce through the Sharia courts. So, you know, there are complicated issues there about, you know, to what extent. I mean, I think the issue that, to me, is kind of complicated, but it's far too nuanced for, you know, you know, for the kind of discussion that Rowan Williams tried to open up. The issue that, for me, that's kind of. That's. That's kind of a difficult one, is given that the Sharia courts vary a lot in terms of what they offer, would it be useful to have some further level of monitoring and regulation, which could be a way of actually ensuring that the kind of judgments that were given were much more equitable across the country, rather than being some that are more progressive and some that are more conservative. But doing that actually means institutionalizing Sharia courts much more formally, which then does seem problematic. So, I mean, I think there's an important and troubling issue there, but I don't think that's the one that we're having a debate on at the moment.
- [04:22]
A
Well, the divide over these issues is certainly there now. In an edited volume some years ago, Steve Rutovic, professor of anthropology, formerly at Oxford, actually wrote that the vast majority of our mentions of social cohesion usually actually refer to its deficiency. I wonder what, for you, is social cohesion and what does it look like?
- [04:45]
B
Well, I think social cohesion to me is hard to imagine in societies in which you have really major inequalities of income. And I think that one of the things that's gone really wrong with the discussion about social cohesion is that it's become so much focused on issues to do with migration, to do with religion, to do with supposed cultural difference. When it seems to me some of the biggest problems of social cohesion that we face at the moment are much more kind of grounded in levels of income inequality, deprivation and so on. So that human. If you think about what are the two issues that people actually discuss at the moment, there's the kind of the anxiety about sort of alienated, disaffected youth, which is, you know, I mean, complicated story. Everything in society is complicated, but clearly is grounded in some way in social and economic inequalities. And then the other story that people tell is about the supposed alienation, disaffection of Muslims within Britain, which is then seen as grounded in religious and cultural difference. And I just wish people would actually put those two stories together a bit more and actually really discuss questions of social cohesion in ways that actually saw the wider picture. But that's a kind of negative. That's what I think social cohesion isn't, rather than what I think it is, which I find much harder to answer. I mean, to draw up a picture of what social cohesion looks like. It's clearly a problem if you don't have social cohesion. But I think there's also a very big problem in the way in which people misdescribe the problem of social cohesion.
- [06:30]
A
Well, with or without social cohesion, Professor Phillips, in your career, you've been a general proponent of secularism and disestablishment of the Church. I wonder for you, why is secularism the best way to organize a polity of multiple faiths and multiple ethnicities when many of those faiths and ethnicities actually desire positive recognition and equal protection?
- [06:53]
B
Yeah, well, I think for me, secularism is precisely a recognition of the fact that there is a multiplicity of faiths, and of course, a multiplicity including people who don't have, you know, who aren't believers. And within that kind of context, we need a kind of politics which is kind of able to give both guarantees of religious freedom to people, regardless of the differences in religion, and is able to sort of operate equal respect across different religions and across those who have beliefs and those who don't. I think what's really problematic at the moment is the way that the kind of notion of secularism is debated being defined against religion. I mean, to me, secularism kind of arises as an issue precisely because there is religious difference, there are religions, there are non religions, and that's why we have an issue of secularism. I think one of the kind of rather worrying things about the current discourse is that there's a kind of rather more strident secularism, which is not the kind that I feel most at home with, which is kind of like falling into defining religion and religious belief as kind of like superstition, irrationality, backwardness in ways that actually make it very difficult to, certainly very difficult to think in terms of social cohesion. To go back to your earlier question.
- [08:20]
A
Well, do you think that the Archbishop would have felt as obligated to make the remarks that he made if the Anglican Church were not the established church in Britain, but was actually one of many.
- [08:31]
B
Possibly. Possibly. I hadn't really been thinking along those lines, but yes, I mean, I think probably the Anglican Church has this sense of its position as the kind of privileged and favored church and possibly therefore more of a responsibility to speak out for other religions than might otherwise be the case. You know, sort of. I mean, who knows whether that's what's part of what's going on.
- [09:01]
A
Well, in a similar spirit, a lot of ink has been spilled writing about how civic democracies should change with the composition of their societies to meet the needs of the different ethnicities and religions living therein. But how should the ethnically and religiously different change in order to meet the needs of the civic democracy itself?
- [09:23]
B
Yeah, I'd start a bit of a stage back in answering that question, in fact, because, I mean, my view is that we hugely exaggerate the nature of cultural difference in contemporary society and that we've got into a way of talking about cultural difference and talking about cultures which really just doesn't kind of correspond to the reality of most people's lives. I mean, one of my most recent publications, a book called Multiculturalism Without Culture, is a kind of argument for multiculturalism that tries to take issue with some of the, I think, kind of over sort of rigidified, essentialized, I think, really distorted understandings of cultural difference. So first of all, I'd say that the problem that we face is not a problem of people, you know, locked in kind of like sort of somehow profoundly different cultures with profoundly different sets of values. And in fact, I'm quite sort of critical as a result of some of the ways in which people throw around the notion of British values, as if there is kind of the values of one culture which can be called the British values, and then there's somehow the completely different and opposing values of other cultures. So I think the problem is sometimes kind of misdescribed as one of how do we bring together groups of people whose values are profoundly different and who kind of can barely begin to speak to one another? I think, having said that, I think societies operate successfully when there's a certain kind of, you know, shared set of, you know, you know, roughly shared set of kind of understandings and principles that kind of guide that society? I don't think many societies have that, to be honest. I mean, I think, you know, you know, except at a pretty thin level, I think there aren't many societies in the world which have, you know, you know, a really kind of shared, you know, consensual notion of what it is that's important. I mean, you know, I think it's kind of part of the nature of human existence that we have hugely different views, but they're not views that can be simply characterized as the kind of the differences between culture A and culture B. I think that that's kind of very often a misrepresentation.
- [11:49]
A
Does Britain have one of those shared values, or if not, perhaps which one should they have?
- [11:57]
B
Well, I think principles of human rights, principles of democracy, principles of equality between the sexes. I think all of these are kind of hugely important values. They're values that have been fought for over centuries. They're ones that have only been very. They only have a kind of very recent and kind of fragile status. I mean, as you know, human rights is something that successive politicians have, you know, have felt was kind of somehow alien to the, you know, British way of thinking about politics. Equality between the sexes is a kind of, you know, very recently kind of accepted as a kind of working principle of our political lives, and it clearly isn't yet a principle of our economic lives, you know. So, I mean, these are important values, and they're ones that have been thrown up through, you know, basically through history of kind of political struggle. They're not absolutely embedded in the consensus, but they're kind of sufficiently embedded so that you could kind of talk about them as being, you know, sort of so that at least people would understand what you meant when you said that these were kind of important principles. So, you know, those sorts of things seem to me to be important. It would, of course, be a complete misdescription to describe those as British values, you know, as if, you know, they're not precisely the kinds of values that, you know, like, you know, half the countries in the world would also want to subscribe to, but, you know, they're important values.
- [13:35]
A
All right, we'll leave it there. Thank you very much, Professor Phillips. With us today was Professor Anne Phillips, and author of the book Multiculturalism Without Culture. That will do it for this edition of the Hot Seat. Please join us next month with a new edition here on the Government Department website. We'll see you then.