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Posted on 12/29/2001 3:01:31 PM PST by anniegetyourgun

WASHINGTON -- All but lost in the end-of-the-year war and terrorism news was a startling report from London, yet its findings may mark crucially important outcomes for Britain, and even for all of Europe, in the wake of 9/11. On the surface, at least, the report, conducted formally by the government's Community Cohesion Review Team, recommends some seemingly innocuous things. It suggests, for instance, that people who have made their home in England take a pledge of allegiance to the country, "pursue" the English language and adopt "British norms." How terribly radical!

But under the surface, the report, which began this fall as a study of nasty race riots last summer between native Englishmen and Asian immigrants in the northern English cities of Bradford, Burnley and Oldham, effectively demolishes all the shibboleths of multiculturalism. The idea, dominant in Britain for at least the last 20 years, that newcomer immigrants would just automatically integrate into British society now lies in shards.

Consider some of the findings. "Many communities operate on the basis of a series of parallel lives," the authors began. "These lives often do not seem to touch at any point, let alone overlap and promote any meaningful interchanges." Linking this reality to the race riots, which were the worst in Britain in years, the report went on to say: "There is little wonder that the ignorance about each other's communities can easily grow into fear, especially when this is exploited by extremist groups."

Interestingly enough -- daring, indeed, to the multiculturalists who have dominated the immigration and citizenship debate -- is the report's linkage of self-segregation on the part of immigrants with segregation by design by the white community. "Segregation, albeit self-segregation, is an unacceptable basis for a harmonious community, and it will lead to more serious problems if it is not tackled."

Then, while it recognized the role of different cultures in modern British society, the report added that it was "essential to agree on some common elements of 'nationhood.'" In fact, Home Secretary David Blunkett, an outspoken law-and-order guy, went so far as actually to say that immigrants, who after all chose to come to Britain to live, must give up retrogressive (my word choice) habits such as forced marriages and female genital mutilation if they want to live in Britain.

Go back in history for just a moment. Recall that Great Britain carried democracy, law, representative government, civil service and university education all over the world. This was the colonial power, with all its admitted manifold shortcomings, that nevertheless stopped such retrogressive (again, my word) cultural habits as widows being forced to die on their dead husbands' flaming funeral pyres in Hindu India. This was the navy that sent thousands of sailors up and down the west coast of Africa to stop the slave trade once and for all.

And now we have the picture of a home secretary of Great Britain having to argue with immigrants about the horrible African and Middle Eastern practice of cutting out a girl's clitoris so she can never feel sexual pleasure. Even to call this retrogressive is daring in the multicultural world that has been not only England but most of Europe before 9/11.

Perhaps not surprising, most of the comments from Muslim immigrants living in England -- at least those that I have seen in London newspapers and those quoted in American papers -- have been negative and critical. The report is "insulting." The report "goes against the fabric of a multicultural society," Habib Rahman, chief executive of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, said in a statement.

And that, at least, is true, because this new thinking on the part of a British government does indeed challenge all the prevalent multicultural delusions.

On the British side, it is the culmination of growing disbelief in the idea that any immigrants from any culture, including Muslims whose religion defies any idea of the separation of church and state, will automatically integrate and become loyal British citizens. On the immigrants' side, the report challenges the longstanding idea in these separatist communities that they can live their old lives in Britain and work hard -- but that there is no need to have any primary allegiance to the country, to the language or to the cultural norms.

Both sides have been living in a civic dream world that was becoming a nightmare last summer. Then 9/11 came and awakened people on both sides of the Atlantic to these other threats within.

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