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ABSTRACT
Debate has grown about the legitimacy of Muslim faith schools within the British education system. At the same time, scepticism has developed towards multiculturalism as a normative approach for dealing with diversity. This article argues that it is worth retaining the normative impetus of multiculturalism by returning to its roots in political philosophy. In particular, we can draw on Will Kymlicka’s distinction between ‘internal restrictions’ and ‘external protections’ as a way to assess the legitimacy of minority claims. Having outlined this distinction, the paper applies it to the case of Muslim Schools.
6. Acknowledgements
This study is part of the research for a PhD thesis Normative Questions in Multicultural Society: A Case Study of Muslim Schools in the British Education System. This was completed under the supervision of Professor Rob Stones in the Department of Sociology, University of Essex, UK.
Notes
1 The ‘Trojan horse’ incident refers to an alleged plot by Muslim hardliners to take over academy schools with a large Muslim intake in Birmingham. Then education secretary Michael Gove set up an investigation chaired by Peter Clarke, a former counterterrorism chief, into these schools. The report found that there was no evidence of radicalisation, but that there was evidence of intolerance, a narrowness of curriculum and a hard-line strand of Sunni Islam within some of these schools (Clarke, Citation2014). While this article is not a direct comment on the incident, the distinction between external protection and internal restriction explored in it might help provide normative clarity on an issue that often gets lost in a general political rhetoric.
2 The term multiculturalism can be considered both descriptive and normative (Parekh, Citation2000, p. 6). As a descriptive term, it means a society with two or more cultures within it. As a normative term, it refers to a response to the fact that tries to preserve diversity, rather than a response that would aims to get rid of it (assimilation). While it will become apparent that this paper does not value all kinds of diversity uncritically, the position taken is a form of multiculturalism since it holds that – all other things being equal – diversity is a good thing. Diversity is a good thing because it reflects the reality of our human cultural existence.
3 I use the adjective communitarian in a loose descriptive sense to describe cultures where the focus is more on the community than on the individual.
4 To Kymlicka’s credit, he does not ignore the well-being justification. He says that cultural membership is the ‘primary foci of identification’, ‘based on belonging’, it is bound up with ‘esteem’, ‘dignity’, ‘self identity’, ‘solidarity’ and ‘trust’ (Citation1995, pp. 89–90). In Kymlicka’s own view, however, when there is a tension between the well-being justification and the individual autonomy justification, the latter must win out. Indeed, it is on this basis that Kymlicka et al. (Citation2003) is more sceptical of claims made by religious groups, as opposed to cultural groups, since the former are less conducive to individual autonomy.
5 Although I have defined well-being broadly as the positive psychological effects of group membership, as Bhikhu Parekh points out (Citation2000, p. 217) well-being cannot be defined in the abstract since it is always culturally interpreted and defined. Deliberative theory’s emphasis on the voices of all potentially affected allows us to access these interpretations without making a priori assumptions.
6 It might be pointed out that the distinction between external protection and internal restriction does not exhaust the debate over the legitimacy of Muslim schools. One might reasonably mention other important aspects such as social integration (for example, Tinker, Citation2009), and equality (for example, Gewirtz and Cribb, Citation2008). While these are indeed important aspects of the debate, the distinction offered here provides a basis for such a debate. By which I mean, firstly, internal restrictions provide a bottom line in relation to legitimacy; even if a school increased social integration or equality of attainment between groups, its legitimacy would still be questioned to the extent that it was internally restrictive. Secondly, given the deliberative focus on determining what warrants external protection, aspects such as social integration and equality in attainment should also be considered within that deliberation. Thus, while I do not provide a full discussion of these aspects, both of them are mentioned in the empirical discussion of external protection.
7 Of course, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis are not necessarily Muslims, and there are other ethnic groups that are Muslim. That said, the same study shows that almost all Pakistanis and Bangladeshis are Muslim and that these groups make up over two-thirds of the British Muslim population.
8 A list of ‘Muslim needs’ should not be read uncritically. Indeed, it is pertinent to note that one of the documents cited here, the Muslim Council of Britain’s (Citation2007) Meeting the Needs of Muslim in State Schools, is much maligned within the Trojan horse report (Clarke, Citation2014, pp. 123–127). The Trojan report argues that the Muslim Council of Britain’s recommendations do not represent the real views of Muslims, but rather they represent a particularly hard-line version of Sunni Islam. For balance, the Muslim Council of Britain – which has consistently referred to itself as an umbrella group for the different branches of Islam – considered it ‘patently absurd’ to be described in the way they were by the report (Muslim Council of Britain, Citation2014). The extent to which a group that claims to represent a larger group really does is always an empirical question. However, just as we should not uncritically accept the viewpoint of those who claim to represent, neither should we suggest that they have no legitimacy within the group simply because we disagree with them (e.g. because their conservatism jars with our liberalism). Indeed, it might have been the case that the Trojan horse report was too quick to dismiss the Muslim Council of Britain’s recommendations since academics have pointed out that these Muslim needs do have some currency within Muslim communities (for example, Parker-Jenkins, Citation1995).
9 I am not claiming here to exhaust the debate on Muslim schools and social integration; rather, I am highlighting a connection between social integration and well-being. The potential for Muslim schools in relation to social integration mentioned here would have to be balanced against the relative lack of face-to-face contact between Muslims and non-Muslims that Muslim schools might imply.
10 The Runnymede Trust is a leading race equality think-tank in Britain.
11 This sets up something of a dilemma for a strict liberal perspective. Muslim schools are not – at an ideological level – the context of choice providers that liberal schools are. However, the by-product of the trust developed within them might, paradoxically, mean that the net amount of autonomy in society is greater. Put in simple terms: more Muslim schools, more Muslims at university, more opportunities and choices open to them later in life.
12 I am making a link here between equality of attainment and well-being, rather than a decisive statement about the role of Muslim schools in equal attainment. This is because if Muslim schools were seen as the answer to the underachievement of Muslim children, this might lead to another form of inequality; inequality between Muslims who had access to Muslim schools and Muslims who did not.
13 I may be reading too much into the phraseology here, but by referring to a ‘homosexual perspective’ their argument does seem to imply that having a certain sexuality causes you to hold certain axiomatic and demonstrable propositions about it, and further that one can have empathy towards, but not actually share, these propositions if one does not share the sexuality. All this seems erroneous epistemologically speaking.
14 As Leila Ahmed (Citation1992) points out in her seminal discussion of gender and Islam, it is important not to confuse patriarchal interpretations of Islam with Islam as such.
15 Women against Fundamentalism (n.d.) was formed in 1989 ‘to oppose fundamentalism in all religions’; South Asia Solidarity Group (n.d.) is ‘an anti-imperialist, anti-racist organization based in Britain’ a group that aims to; and Southall Black Sisters (n.d.) was formed in 1979 to ‘meet the needs of “black” (Asian and African Caribbean) women’.
16 I stress that state funding is a possible opportunity, not the solution. While many Muslim schools want to be state funded, many do not. It would be extremely questionable to say that the normative standard of internal restriction is only imperative on those schools that cannot afford to buy out of their normative responsibility by remaining private.