Eastern food in a Western dish

I’m very grateful to Bob Patterson, a good friend though we’ve only ever met on line, for pointing out that the latest New Yorker contains an article focused on Luton, where I live. It’s not often that so august a journal turns its attention to this humble town (to be honest, it isn’t that common that it catches the eye even of far less worthy publications, such as the Sun or the Times). And when the prestigious journal is transatlantic, well the least I can do is take a look.

As it happens, the article – England, their England by Lauren Collins – is less about Luton than about the movement it spawned, the English Defence League, and the Moslem community of the town against which the EDL first directed its wrath. It also mentioned one of the more shameful acts of our present Prime Minister, who really does little quite as well as shamelessness, when he denounced multiculturalism at a speech he gave to a conference in Munich last February. He probably thought this was a bit of a vote-winner and a great way of aligning himself with the increasing Islamophobia around Europe, sparking minaret or Burka bans.

In what Collins rightly calls an ‘unseemly coincidence’, Cameron gave his speech just when the EDL was preparing to march through Luton, precisely to denounce multiculturalism.

Having seen some EDL members on a train to Luton, it’s not clear to me that they’re ready to grasp multiculturalism. I can understand why they’d be keen on mono-culturalism – it didn’t strike me that they had learned to cope with even that much – in fact the only culture they seemed to have any affinity to would be the kind you might find adorning a Petri dish in a lab somewhere. This lot took up a lot of space on the train, metaphorically but also physically. They had also taken steps to keep the level of blood in their alcohol streams within reasonable bounds, and they expressed themselves in a language of astonishing richness – every third word or so seemed to be concerned with procreation or bodily waste.

At first glance, it’s a little difficult to understand the bad press that multiculturalism has been getting all round Europe recently. After all, its basic proposition is that people of different faiths or races should be able to get on with each other without either forcing any of them to change fundamentally or spilling any of each other’s blood. I can’t quite see why that shouldn’t be rather a good thing. Being against it feels a bit like telling a new beauty queen that ‘actually, world peace isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.’

In any case, since last Friday in Norway it feels as though it’s Geert Wilders in Holland, Nicolas Sarkozy in France and, yes, David Cameron in England who need to do a bit of explaining. Anders Breivik has shown just how far you can go when you start getting really passionate about your opposition to multiculturalism. Not that any of those politicians would back the action he took – but they might like to reflect on whether their stance doesn’t give some kind of endorsement to the views he holds and encourages those who share their more extreme forms.

Where anti-multiculturalism can take us

As for me, well I’m just going to stick with my attachment to multiculturalism.

To me, multiculturalism is the woman I saw in London the other day, in black Moslem dress from head to – well, actually not quite to toe. The dress stopped just above the ankles so we could all admire the elegant pale blue leather and cork creations she was wearing on her feet, with their three inch heels. The Islamic extremist would denounce her for the display of flesh and fashion, the EDL for the headscarf. The multiculturalist just smiles at the contradictions.

To me, multiculturalism is the cricket team that occupies the best ground in Luton – ‘Luton Town and Indians’. ‘Indians’? Most of the ‘Indians’ in Luton actually have their roots in Pakistan. Did they play for the old ‘Luton Indians’ club? And some years ago it merged with Luton Town. For her article, Lauren Collins interviewed Abdul Kadeer Baksh, who leads the Luton Islamic Centre’s vigorous campaign against Moslem extremism. Responding to the EDL’s taunts he told her, ‘when they say we don’t integrate, they mean we don’t assimilate.’ Well, quite – and why should they assimilate? Surely I can cope with not being the same as my neighbour? To be honest, I’ve had neighbours I’d hate to resemble, but that doesn’t stop me living next door to them. ‘Luton Town and Indians’ – in that preservation of both names, don’t we have a wonderful illustration of integrations without assimilation?

And finally, to me multiculturalism is my wife going into a butcher’s in Bury Park, the ‘Indian’ area, to buy halal chicken last week. The butcher’s astonished response was ‘Why?’ And Danielle had the best possible answer: ‘because we have friends from Pakistan coming round for a meal.’ The friends wanted a typical European dish, so Danielle roasted chicken for them (though by its quality it was nothing like typical). Western cooking for Moslem friends required halal meat.

You know, Cameron, it wasn’t that hard. It didn’t require us to compromise any principles. And we all had a great time.

Remind me – just what is it that you, Wilders, Sarkozy – and Breivik – have against multiculturalism?