Tweet

Email

Print

European societies need a leitkultur to defeat radicalization and violent extremism. The Muslim democrat and scholar Bassam Tibi first introduced this idea of a “leading culture” in Europa ohne Identität? in 1998. Multicultural European societies needed some glue if they were not to fragment, he argued. They needed a core culture built on the values of “modernity, democracy, secularism, the Enlightenment, human rights, and civil society.” However, the concept was soon turned into a political football by opportunistic German parties playing to their bases. Tibi declared the debate a failure and retreated.

For three reasons, we Europeans, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, should try again.

First, because in countering radicalization identity matters. In 2006, the scholar D. E. Pressman found that the eight most salient factors that left individuals at “high risk” of radicalization related to their sense of membership: acceptance, equal opportunities, integration and acceptance of social values, toleration/welcome, entitlement, loyalty, and language competence.

And if you do not like the slightly scary German word leitkultur, we can say “national-popular public philosophy” instead. This concept unites important insights from the writings of the radical democratic political theorist Ernesto Laclau and the communitarian political philosopher Michael Sandel.

Laclau’s notion of the “national-popular” highlights the key requirement of any political project—it must acknowledge (selectively, for sure) national traditions, offer compelling representations of “the people” as a whole, and engage their affections by sketching their shared future. Sandel argues that political communities need a public philosophy because without animating ideals implicit in their practices and institutions they struggle to answer questions regarding the good life, the meaning of justice, the boundary between the unacceptable and the acceptable, and what it means to be “American” or “Dutch” or “British.”

Second, we need to cultivate a leitkultur or public philosophy because, absent this underpinning, counter-radicalization policies are doomed to remain a securitised, “Islamified,” and disputatious affair. Only when they are framed as the natural expression of a shared national project to which all citizens, Muslims and non-Muslims, are committed, can counter-radicalization efforts begin to take on the localized, popular cultural and social movement forms that alone can guarantee their success.

Of course the notion of a leitkultur has been used for reactionary purposes. (But which political idea has not?) However, we can ground belonging not on “race” or ethnicity or religion but on a secular public philosophy embedded in our common ideals, shared values, and expressed in active citizenship. We could come together on the ground of shared universals. Yes, of course the precise content of those ideals and values would be debated—but the public philosophy would provide that argument with boundaries, and those boundaries would animate hearts in a viable political community.

How would this work? Well, it is working now, only not enough. For example, it is not the Belgian Way for teachers to tell little girls who do not wear the headscarf that they are “sinful.” So when they do, we suspend them. And when racist mobs attack a mosque in the UK, we rally round. MPs, police, and community show their solidarity with the worshippers and we hunt down the perpetrators. Why? Because that’s the British Way.

The third reason we need to cultivate a leitkultur is to encourage integration. Many progressive European Muslims have highlighted the damage caused by the absence of a national-popular public philosophy. Writer and broadcaster Sarfraz Manzoor has called for a compelling vision of “what it means to be British.” He insists it is needed most by second and third generation Muslims whose fate it is to face “profound questions of belonging.” Muslim activist Yahya Birt has called for “an open-ended conversation about how to define what we Britons have in common.”Academic Dilwar Hussain has argued that integration succeeds only when Muslims accept that they “are British, that this is their home,” and move on to [ask] “how to build a place for themselves in Britain, how to contribute to the lives of the people.”

Of course, most Muslims have done exactly that. The trouble is that the adversary culture insists on treating as the “authentic” Muslims those that have not! This is typical of multiculturalist ways of thinking—the reactionary Islamists or Salafists get taken for “real” Muslims while the progressive British Muslims are treated as weirdly inauthentic. It is the racism of low expectations.

It’s time for a bit more self-confidence. Far from being reactionary, a national-popular public philosophy could re-frame counter-radicalization efforts as the natural expression of long-standing ethical discourses of Muslims and non-Muslims alike. In Britain, for example, we should talk much more about our shared commitments to “moderation” (and the Koranic notion of “middle community”), and to “the common good” (and the Koranic notion of “co-operating towards goodness”). And about our love of ordered liberty (and the Koranic notion of “Sakinah”).

The Cambridge Islamic scholar Abdal-Hakim Murad (a.k.a. Tim Winter) sees a great potential for a meeting of hearts and minds. Islamic commitments to moderation and “the middle community,” he argues, dovetail with British notions of common sense, reverence for the empirical, fair play, and liberty. “The British Isles,” he points out, “have for several hundred years been the home of individuals whose religious and moral temper is very close to that of Islam.”

Writer and broadcaster Ziauddin Sardar has argued that the true spirit of Islam lies in the Koranic description of Muslims as “the middle community,” i.e., “a just, equitable, balanced, moderate people, who shun extremism of all types.” He claims the notion of middle community is “capable of being translated [into] most aspects of our life and thought.”

It is not really that important if Murad and Sardar are “right” or “wrong” in theory. What really matters is whether or not we can invent a tradition and by so doing make real their vision of a shared future in practice.

For sure, this business of inventing tradition through conversation and action—the creation of a new “we”—is something we Europeans are wary of. But these are different times, with different problems, and we cannot afford to remain the prisoners of our history. Perhaps we have been scared of own national shadows long enough.