Mycket bra om Egypten

För att få en bra bild av muslimska brödraskapets roll i Egypten, Mubaraks misstag och en rad andra viktiga frågor läs gärna denna essä av Kenan Malik:

The crushing of radical secular movements is one of the reasons that in recent years opposition protests in Egypt have been led mainly by the Muslim Brotherhood. Until now, that is. What makes the current protests so different is that ordinary voices, repressed for so long by both religious and secular authorities, have finally broken out. The revolt reveals a democratic spirit that neither brutality nor bigotry has been able to crush.

Vad som gör upproret så fantastiskt är att det inte är dominerat av någon enskild kraft. Det skapar även möjligheten att tiden efter Mubarak kan kännetecknas av en verkligt demokratisk regim och inte någon islamistisk "demokrati" eller valfri nationalistisk eller röd regim. Men mycket återstår innan Egypten befinner sig där.

Samtal med Kenan Malik

Ett artikeltips i lite märkligt format, nämligen ett samtal mellan författaren Kenan Malik och den slovenske konservativa politikern Fero Sebej om multikulturalism, väldigt bra läsning:

Western governments did not set out to create a segregated society. Most politicians set out with the best of intentions to combat racism. But at the same time, we have to say that the multicultural policies were flawed from the very beginning: it wasn't as if this was a good set of policies that somehow eroded over time. The fact is that it was a lot easier to combat racism by saying to people "go on, follow your own values, cultures, lifestyles, beliefs, we will fund your festival, your dance troupe, your cultural centre"... we used to call it the "saree, samosa and steel band brigade".

Klokt om både multikulturalismens politiska misslyckande men även samhällets förändring.

Kenan Malik på Newsmill

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.