這是Tariq Ramdan教授今年三月在英國John Moore大學的演講。他談到歐洲多元主義下穆斯林的困境與建議。影片片長接近ㄧ個小時，OnIslam網站特別提供演講摘要。演講最後內容提到歐洲穆斯林該如何與多元社會共處，由於該網站沒有摘錄，因此這邊稍微補充。Ramdan教授提出三項準則，ㄧ是遵守當地法律、二是說當地的語言、最後是對當地社會忠誠，成為該社會的ㄧ份子。
By Reading Islam Staff
Sunday, 25 March 2012 12:14
Transcript of part of a talk by Dr. Ramadan on Europe, Islam and Pluralism which he gave in March 2011 at Liverpool John Moores University, UK
Let me start with an introduction with three main points about what we are witnessing in Europe, in the European countries.
And by the way, it’s not only in the European countries. If you go to the United States of America you will find some of the common challenges around.
Trust Identity Crisis
And even if you go to African or Asian countries, once again the question of identity, the question of defining oneself, trying to understand in which world we are living, and how do we deal with pluralism is an international and universal question now.
It’s not an easy question, and we are facing what I described in my book “What I Believe”, and also in the last one about the philosophy of pluralism, as “Trust identity crisis” because this is what I think we are witnessing today. And when it comes to this identity crisis, it’s important to come to the historical dimensions, the causes, and to try to find solutions, and in which way. Every one of us as citizens, as human beings, as members of structured societies we have to be involved in the discussion.
So my talk this evening is not only a theoretical discussion about how it is good to deal with pluralism, it is what should be our personal commitment, because it takes effort to live with people coming from different backgrounds. It is not an easy way to define ourselves and our own identity, but it’s not easy dealing with people coming from different cultural and religious backgrounds.
As you know, I have also been dealing for the last 25 years with interfaith dialogue. It’s not easy. It’s easy when you know the people, but when you try to reach out the surrounding society you understand that it’s not easy. You are dealing with mindsets, you are dealing with mentalities and psychology and you are not only dealing with rules. It’s not an objective discussion, it’s a very subjective way of dealing with this discussion.
Islam in Europe
So as for the western countries and the European countries now, and from where I’m coming, when it comes to Europe and the Muslim presence over the last twenty years we have something which is clearly the question of “Islam in Europe”, the Islamic question with the new Muslim presence. By the way it is a new Muslim presence, it is not the first time because Muslims have been involved in the construction of the European identity since the middle ages and up to enlightenment. If you are serious about discussing the European history and the European memory you will understand that Islam is not alien to Europe. That’s not true.
I don’t want to come to this, I just want to talk about the new Muslim presence, and to say that today the question of Islam in the European societies is a transnational phenomenon. You can’t go to any European society without getting the question “What about Islam, and what about the Muslims, citizens, or residents or immigrants?” It depends, and by the way you have to differentiate the status. The discussion about Islam is very often connected to immigration and immigrants, and it’s not the reality of it.You have millions of Muslims who are now European citizens. They are Europeans, as I am a European. And I’m always saying I’m adding dimensions to my identity: I’m Swiss by nationality, Egyptian by memory, European by culture, universalist by principles, and Moroccan by adoption! (When you like a country you can just take it as part of you, and no one can deny your right to do so).
So I think here it’s important to get an understanding of this very loaded discussion about pluralism. On the one side, what we have now in the Anglo-Saxon societies is people coming and questioning what we call “The multicultural model”; that it’s failing. You have heard recently the Prime Minister Cameron saying it’s failing, it’s not working, the Muslims are self-segregating themselves, it’s not working, we don’t have a unified society. A few weeks before, Angela Merkel a few weeks before was saying the exact thing that multicultural society is failing. So we have a perception that something is going wrong in our societies.
At the same time, on the other side of the political spectrum, of the social model spectrum, you have the French society that says “Oh, multiculturalism is exactly what should not be done.” This is the negative model, why? Because the Anglo-Saxon model that is perceived as accepting the religious and cultural communities to live together, and not putting as a primary element of your belonging to the society the fact that you are a citizen and that you are an individual, so you are perceived as belonging to a community which is not what the French model is all about.
On the other side, in the name of the “unity of the republic” what you have now in France is saying “It doesn’t work”. Either, integration doesn’t work, it’s not working.” And we take as an example what happened in 2005, when the riots in the suberbs in France happened. What happened there served to show how much this model is not succeeding and integration is failing. And in 2005 after the riots, you have now for example the Front National, the populist party, saying “Look at these Muslims. They are praying in the streets. It shows that they are colonizing us.” And by the way you get this kind of statements, and this is now the first party according to the last surveys in the country. Marine Le Pen, the daughter of John Marie Le Pen, is now leading even ahead of Sarkozy.
So this is what we have in Europe. This new presence is sending back the question of who are we, and what are these new people and these new citizens in our society, and we are dealing with loaded concepts. Integration is a loaded concept, and on the other side multiculturalism is now a loaded concept. But behind these discussions about what is integration, what is a multicultural society, you will find the very question of identity: Who we are, and how do we define ourselves.
Pluralism
So I think that we have to come to the deep question here when we are dealing with this. So in my view, I’m not using when I speak about our societies now, I’m not talking about multiculturalism society because it’s a loaded term. I’m not talking about the Republic and the unity of the Republic. I’m just using an objective concept. Wiling it or not, today we are dealing with something which is called “Pluralism”, we are in a pluralistic society.Don’t put any ideology. Look at this room. This is the pluralistic society of today. It’s people coming from different backgrounds, different religions, different cultures, but with the same status: You are citizens, or you are residents and you are building this society. Britain is a pluralistic society. That’s it!
Now how are we going to deal with this? How are we going to come back to us, to ourselves? How are we going to define ourselves? This is how we are going to define the “We”, that should be our common future. That’s what I’m calling in the manifesto that I published in the book “What I Believe” A Manifesto for a New “We”. “We” is us building, shaping, constructing a future society where we are acknowledging the fact that we are coming from different backgrounds with the same status. We have common principles and common hopes, and I think that this is the starting point of the discussion.
Citizenship
Now the second thing which is important when it comes to this is citizenship, which was not often in the British discussion as the discussion of citizenship was not a usual one. Very often when we were in the French system, in Belgium, in France, or Africa even, one of the main concepts was citizenship. Citizenship is what makes you a member of a structured society. So citizenship was quite clear: When you get the nationality, when you are French in a French society, it means that you have a status and that you have equal rights with all the other citizens.
When after a while the discussion came in Britain, it started with how do we define the nationality and citizenship; that you have to understand who we are and how is
the status that you get. There are objective parameters to get define what is a citizen. When you get the nationality, when you are acknowledged as a member of the society, so this is where you should have equal rights with others. So this is something which is an objective dimension of citizenship.
But now we have a problem, why? Because this was very easy when we were dealing with homogenous cultures. So people are coming mainly from the same horizons. Still over the years I remember I was born in Switzerland and I have been raised there. When I was there, I was very much involved with sports, in football, and the people who were perceived as the foreigners were mainly Italian and Spanish. And the perception was "Oh, these immigrants, they are coming and taking our bread and colonizing us". Now it’s laughable for me to see when I go to Spain sometimes I hear from Spanish citizens exactly the same thing when they speak about Moroccans, about Asian and African people. So the victims of racism yesterday are not prevented from nurturing racist sentiments today. Your past will never protect you from being the oppressor when yesterday you were the victims.
But the point for me is this one: is that it was there. The Polish people in France were perceived as too much Catholics to be able to integrate into France. Spanish, Portuguese and Italian people coming to Switzerland were understood as immigrants that were not really part of it. But the process over two generations was a success because the perception is OK, they are immigrants but still we are sharing values and cultures, they are still Europeans.
What is new now is that new immigrants are not coming from within. They are coming from Africa, they are coming from Muslim majority countries, so there is a difference. The capacity of the rules to integrate people from other European cultures now is challenged. The rules are questioned because the cultures are too different and the religions are different. So the question is even though you are a European Muslim citizen, a Muslim British citizen, a Muslim German citizen or a French Muslim citizen or whatever, in fact your citizenship is questioned because of the “Muslim” factor.
And this is something that I have been myself facing every time, when for example I was dealing with the populist leader of the first party of my country, Switzerland, you heard about this minarets discussion and to ban the minarets in Switzerland. This is coming from the Swiss People Party. They were launching a campaign to ban minarets in Switzerland. We today have four minarets in the country, and they were saying it’s a sign of colonization! And we were all surprised that they won, and they won the case because they were nurturing fear in the country.
But the point was that when I was talking to him in a prime time TV program in Switzerland just before this referendum on the minarets, he told me looking at me:
“You know what, we made a mistake with you.”
I said: “What mistake did you make?”
He said: “We gave you the nationality!!”
Meaning by this, that the fact that I’m a Muslim I’m too much a Muslim to be a true citizen. So even though I have the citizenship, and I was born in the country, my citizenship is questioned because of my religion.
Psychological and Cultural Factors
So this is new. This is a factor which is very new, which is the religious factor and the cultural factor is questioning the objectivity of what it means to be a citizen. So while the objective factors are here: I speak French, I was born there, I got the nationality. Still I’m questioned. There is a doubt about my citizenship. And this doubt means that now we can’t only go for objective factors of citizenship, but you have to add psychological and cultural factors.
And if you don’t get this, you are not going to understand the discussion, and you are not going to confront appropriately what is coming from the far right parties and the populists, because the populists are not talking about law. The populists are talking about feelings, perceptions, fear and mistrust. So if you don’t confront this at that level, you can’t come with the law and say look I’m a citizen, they would say yes but not a true one. What are you going to say when you are perceived as not a true citizen? If you say “OK, my passport is not enough?, they would answer “Yes, but…” and after the “but..” anything is possible!
But listen to this, it’s a very critical discussion here because it has to do with your definition of your identity. What it means to be British when just after July 7 2005 in this country. What was the first question that we had? It was “What is Britishness?” Is this an objective discussion? Or is it a subjective discussion about who is truly British? Because these people who did this on the margin of the Muslim community, they were not even within the Muslim community, they were not coming to mosques they were gathering in gyms, they were on the margin of the Muslim community. These people were born and raised in Britain, and they were British. So what’s Britishness when some British Muslims are attacking their fellow British citizens? This is the point.
So you have a tension on identity. And this is a question that you can’t just avoid. All the people who think that it’s enough to be open-minded to solve the problem, it's the problem starting. You start with the problem when you think that you are open-minded, that you don’t have to face the mistrust and fears of the people, and you don’t acknowledge that the people are scared and they have questions and that some of them are legitimate questions.
Of course they are legitimate questions...
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