Thank you very much; I am absolutely delighted to be here. I have to confess that it is my first visit to Istanbul and I have ever been to Turkey once before very briefly for a wonderful summer holiday. But there was a particular interest for me to come to turkey. It seems to me that Turkey has absolutely vital role to play in many of the issues that I cover as a journalist. So I found Richard’s contribution enormously helpful and extremely interesting and now I want to put in a very very different perspective in front of you. A perspective which I’ve leaned over 10 or more years now of covering the British Muslim community and some of the ways which it is evolving and grappling with questions of identity and its place within Europe. And why it is that I feel that Turkey has a particularly significant role in establishing of a secure sense of a European Islam.

The word that comes to mind frequently I think for me when I hear of the Huntington type thesis is a Greed word Kayros which is a point of crises but within that word it is also always the sense of the possibility of opportunity and it seems to me that, that is really the point we are at the moment. That there are many causes for concern I am not underestimating for a moment many of the difficulties in this area. But I also think that there is an extraordinary opportunity for a development of human understanding around co-habitation between two great great religious traditions between neighbors and I want to describe to you something of that sense of opportunity while also acknowledging the crises.

Let me start with what I understand the crises to be about. It seems to that throughout Europe and as I visited other European countries and talked to Muslims within those countries there are common issues around identity. There is a tremendous sense of anxiety within many European countries around their own sense of national identity. Very briefly I think that there is a process of social and economic change, which is so rapid that it dislocates all kinds of traditional identity be that gender identity whether local identity, your sense of place, the process of economic change is so fast that it set up all kinds of anxieties around identity. If you look for example the trouble France was having which perhaps we’ll hear more about later, you look at Netherlands and the murder of Pym Portune and how that has led to a very unexpected reaction within the liberal traditions of the Netherlands. Or Denmark where I was in January at the height of the cartoon crises and of course in London, the crises came very very close for me when a bomb was suspected on my local bus, a few hundred yards from my house. In fact it was second set of attacks and they were able to defuse those bombs. I live in an incredibly ethnically diverse area of East London in Hackney where around me my neighbors come from every part of the world. Co-habitation for me is not an abstract issue; it is about how my children grow up along side the children in their classes and the children in their streets. So I have a very personal interest in how we resolve these questions.

Question that seems to loom very large over many of these European countries and within Britain, is it possible to be a European and a Moslem? For myself it seems no brainier of a question, it seems quite evidently, quite obviously completely possible. But what I’ve found increasingly disturbing over the last few years is that I seem to be in a minority. Time and again I am brought up short where I am in discussions with people of great intelligence and great influence, considerable status who radically disagree with me. And what I find very very challenging is the levels of what I would describe as Islamophobia, which are now implicit and embedded within many parts of the British political spectrum. So we are not talking just about a right wind xenophobic tradition, which has I am afraid always existed on the margins of British politics. We’re talking about other forms of Islamophobia right across the political spectrum and on the left. My newspaper is left of center newspaper so for my newspaper it is a particular challenge to our understanding that here we have an ethnic minority which increasing is asserting its identity not in terms of its ethnicity but in terms of its faith. We are British Moslems say an increasing number of British people and they do not want to be described as Asian British or Pakistani British, they are Muslims. Now for the left that is a profound challenge to one of its most central principle, which is a concept of secularism. So if you like I’ve had a sort of ringside teeth within the editorial conferences, within the leader editorial writing meetings about how does the left engage with the issue of a faith based political identity. What troubles me particularly is that the left has been the engine of anti-racism policy in the UK for the last generation so what we are talking about is the crumbling of an old alliance whereby the left and its passionate commitment to anti-racism allied itself with ethnic minority group to push through series of very important pieces of legislation, combating discrimination in the work place and many other, very important victories. But where you’d have had the left and the center gathering absolutely shoulder to shoulder with community, ethnic minority community leaders now there is a new degree of distrust of suspicion of anxiety. Will a Muslim based political identity challenge our progress in terms of gay’s rights, in terms women’s rights and I can’t tell you how many times this kind of issue emerges in the news. A Moslem community leader has said that homosexuality is wrong, instant headlines, everybody wants to know what exactly is the future that British Moslem has of, how can they co-habit with an homosexual community. There will be a very very interesting and very stormy chapter in the history of human rights in the UK in the next few years. As we try to strengthen our human rights regime by bringing whole range of equality issues into one body so that the body that has campaigned for racial equality will sit alongside those that have campaigned for gay rights. So you can imagine how complex and difficult that is for Moslem community leaders to sit down alongside and listen to arguments around gay rights etc.

So distrust of Islam, anxiety and the suspicion is something that I’ve spent considerable time trying to analyze where is it come from and what it is about and why it is that the anxieties around national identity get projected on to the issue around Islam and position of the British Muslim community. It seems to me there are many many causes that are feeding this distrust of Islam and I want to pick out just a few. One of them is how it is nourished by an historical predigest and the profound ignorance. The deepest embarrassment is that some of the most articulate critics of Islam would be UK are profoundly ignorant. I think if you set them down and said name a Moslem philosopher, they would struggle and yet it doesn’t stop them pontificating in the most sweeping terms as I heard one very important commentator, he told me that Islam was intellectually bankrupt had to be in for hundreds of years, intellectually stagnant had no respect for the rule of law, no understanding of democracy, profoundly hostile to the rights of women. I was so stunned as were the Muslims in the room, it was hard to know how to begin to engage in the debate and I think it I that level of ignorance amongst very highly educated people that we need to be aware of if we are going to map a future.

Another aspect that is feeding this distrust is a completely unrelated issue in theory, which is a crisis of illegitimacy amongst the political establishment in many Western European countries. Now you say to me, what can this possibly have to do with the relationship with Islam. I would suggest this which is that when politicians are struggling to get themselves heard, when they’re struggling for the attention of bored apathetic voters, they will turn to stories that engage, that get people interested and the problem is that stirring up antagonism towards foreigners, towards ethnic minorities and above all towards Moslems is a way to re-engage with the voters. What politicians do is offer a story to a voter which explains their circumstances and what we’re seeing in many European country is that the story that’s been offered by right wing politicians is that many of the troubles you the voter are experiencing can be related to Muslims, arrival of foreigners in your country with different ways of life, different cultures.

So that in only last week in the British local elections you saw the British National Party yet again campaigning no longer on a racist platform, they no longer talk about the color of someone’s skin, they talk about Islam. And in the literature of far right, you see again and again that the reference is utter Islam and they made a number of successes particularly white working class areas of the country. They won local councilor seats.

So those are ways which I would regard profoundly illegitimate causes for the kinds of concern and distrust of Islam and now I want to turn to another set of causes in which there is more substance and I think we need to look more closely. One of the things that is fascinating is that Richard talks about the way and which Christianity and Islam around the Mediterranean within Europe have had such a deep interconnected relationship for so long. But what is fascinating about the development of Muslim communities in Western Europe is that they are coming from all over the world. Majority of British Muslims are Pakistani, 70%. And of that about 70% are from one region of Pakistan Niyepoor in Pakistani Kashmir. So what we are talking about is a very very specific rural community, very very poor that in the 60’s saw Britain and factories of Britain as an economic opportunity and came to work factories particularly the textile mills of the Northern British industrial towns.

Now this experience of migration is very important background to understanding British Muslim community today because what happened is they arrived in 60’s and they had the best 20 years of employment, many of them arrived 60’s, 70’s but by the early 80’s we’re talking about mass unemployment, most of those mills were closed down, textile industry of Bradford, Manchester and Lanckishire collapsed. You get mass unemployment just at the point that you get family unification, so this paradox those factory workers were bringing over their wives and their children are precisely the moment that they were struggling themselves with redundancy and unemployment. So if you look across many parts of the large Muslim communities in the UK, in Birmingham and in Manchester and Bradford they’ve struggled with economic deprivation over the last 20 years of a particularly sharp nature.

What you get in terms of social economic profile of the Muslim community is a very very high level of low skills, low paid work and that has fed through the low educational achievement for many of their children. The anxiety among many within the Muslim community and broader British community is that you have intergenerational cycle, poverty and low educational achievement and low aspirations.

How do you break that generation-to-generation cycle? You also get very introverted communities. If you’ve gone through process of moving from very poor rural background to one of the big industrial cities of Britain and then experience unemployment and redundancy it is only to be expected that the community turns inward, looks to itself help support each other through very very tough time. I think in many ways that’s part of what happened. Very introverted community. What I think has exceserbated that introversion it is a British model of multi-culturalism. The British model of multi-culturalism owes something to our imperial history. I have to say that it is very interesting when you hear British Moslems drawing from their own understanding of development of imperialism in the subcontinent in Pakistan and India and relating and comparing that with the kinds of multi-culturalism in the UK. Much of it within British multi-cultural policy over the last 20 years has been, you look after yourselves; you organize yourselves and providing your sense of representatives along to the town council, to the meetings that’s fine by us. We’ll deal with your representatives. As one Moslem said to me “it was basically send me your headman” which is pretty much how the British ran Africa. And I think the problem has been that British tolerance and I put this in quotation marks which is much discussed in the UK has been in large measure about British indifference. “We don’t want to know your business you leave us to get along with our business”. Along with that you get a large number of Muslim women never learning English their children growing up with a mother tongue different from what they then went into education to speak with and you had type of ghetto community particularly in many of the areas outside London. Hardly surprising then, it is a recepie for alienation for second, third generation growing up. They experience their parent’s poverty, they experience discrimination, they experience poor schooling, it was not surprise to many people the bombings of 7/7 last summer nor was it a great surprise that the 4 men blew up 56 people on the British underground were all British born, they had no links to Al Kaide, they were not Al Kaide operatives, they were alienated young British Muslims. What is so disheartening is that for at least a decade the most articulate members of the British Muslim community had been warning of precisely this situation.

What particularly was a problem about this British model of multi-culturalism, the last thing that the British wanted to get involved with was the running of mosques, training of imams who taught what kind of Islam to a new generation of British Muslims. The result was that the poor communities from Pakistani or from Silet in Bangladesh were in many cases turning to Saudi Arabia for funding for mosques, for the training of their imams and the very very radical extremist form of Islam came into the UK over the course of last 25 years, is very evident. We can see for example one of the most successful students as well Muslim organizations which has absolutely any kind of wisdom starts democracy, which educated returned to be qualified and which has extraordinary attraction for many most educated most successful Muslims in British universities.

So where is the balance of hope, where is the possibility of changing? I think I am very optimistic. I’m aware of challenges, I’m aware of differences. But one the reason why I hope is a new generation of Muslims is coming range in Europe. Second of thought of generation many educated in UK, France, Germany, Denmark.  They have a very very secular sense of European identity. There is no question. They are British, French, German, Danish and they have a very strong sense of their identity. They are exploring the meaning of both of those and how they might relate with reinforce each other. How does being a Muslim make me a better citizen is the kind of conversations that I hear among many Muslim professionals, educated teachers for example within the UK. So what we’ve got is a new kind of leadership within the Muslim community, which is formulating a European Islam, and along with it they bring very vibrant debate around secularism, around the relationship between faith and state.

And this is where Turkey comes in because it seems to me that amongst the 20 million Moslems in Western Europe this debate is going on in many ways, in many places and it is grassroot debate, that’s what makes it so vibrant and so exciting and it seems to me that Turkey with its great history of understanding and exploring secularism, relationship of faith to state the great resources of its history as multi ethnic empire with a great tradition of tolerance, of other religious traditions has an enormous amount to contribute to assist the development of this European Islam, and along with that to recapture and re-energize a great intellectual tradition of Islam. Now this is a project of compelling importance and that is precisely why I was so delighted to get the invitation to come to Istanbul because it has huge significance for the way and which the American and Middle East evolves for all these questions around global peace and cooperation but it also has great significance for the peace and harmony of European cities at the very basic level, at a level of very close personal interest. How are the cities such as Rotterdam, Copenhagen, London, Birmingham to evolve if they do not find a model of co-habitation I dread to think. Because right now we have to find a model, there is no choice about it. If my children are to grow up in a peaceful London they need a deep informed understanding of Islam. So there is a huge opportunity to grasp and I think it needs and will only work at grassroots level. What I think the future must be about is school exchange programs, local government councilors meeting each other, exchanges such as this where business people meet each other. We need a myriads of different kinds of formal and informal contacts and networks. We cannot leave it to experts, it’s got to be at a human level where people are meeting and finding and learning about each other and finding their common human interests.

So one final point, the phrase that keeps coming back to me, the phrase of Freud’s “the narcissisms of small differences” that is what the clash of civilizations is. The differences between Islam and Christian Europe are very very small compared to far bigger challenges around peace, around the environment and indeed another kind of cultural dialogue which we will be talking about in 10 to 20 years which is the cultural dialogue replaces such as China. How do we understand China and its cultural history and perhaps then we’ll begin to understand but Islam and Christianity been such close neighbors that in fact we have so much common to draw upon and it will be then that we’ll begin to grasp that. Thank you very much.

Questions - Answers

Prof. Dr. Tayyar Sadıklar: Başkent Üniversitesi öğretim üyesiyim. Birlikte yaşama kaygusu içindeyken dünyada birdenbire beliren bu soykırım konusunu ağzımıza aldığımız zaman bizi cezaevine gönderecek kararlar alabilen parlamentoların tutumunu nasıl değerlendiriyor konuşmacılar?

Barbaros Dinçer: İstanbul Üniversitesi İktisat Bölümü öğrencisiyim. Benim sorumun özel olarak bir konuşmacıyı hedef alması gerekmiyor. Konuşmacılar bahsettikleri konular itibariyle kültürün çevresinde döndüler. Hepimizin bildiği bir gerçek var. Geçmişte çok kültürlülük, toplumların beraber, birlikte yaşaması ve barış içinde yaşaması için bir söylem olarak dile getirildi ve bunun sosyal anlamda yaşanacak olan problemleri bir çözüm olabileceği ileri sürülmüştü. Ama bugün geldiğimiz noktada sosyal krizler ve toplumsal anlamda çok büyük sorunlarla karşılaşmaktayız. Benim bu noktada düşüncem şu: Çok kültürlülük de artık bazı sorunların çözümüne cevap olamamakta. Bunun yerine kültürler arası diyalog, kültürlerin karşılıklı olarak birbirini anlaması sözkonusu. Bu bağlamda, demokrasi kavramı özellikle temsili demokrasinin günümüzde çok ciddi anlamda bir krizde olduğunu düşünmekteyim ve katılımcı demokrasi konusunda konuşmacılarımız ne düşünüyor. Farklı kültürleri kabul edelim, birbirimize paralel yaşamlar yaşayalım yerine, içiçe geçmiş yaşamlar, herkesin temsil edilebilmesi, herkesin demokrasiye katılabilmesi anlamında bir çözüm olabilir mi?

Sefa Erkan: Marmara Üniversitesi İktisat üçüncü sınıf öğrencisiyim. Charles Butterworth’ün konuşmasından şunu anladık: Amerika, Müslüman profesörlere dahi vize vermeyerek, şu mesajı veriyor: Müslümanları sevmiyoruz, tanımıyoruz, tanımak ve anlamak da istemiyoruz. Ben buna katılmıyorum. Çünkü Amerika yüzbinlerce insanla Irak’a gelip, orada bazı İslami araştırmalar yapıyor. Demek ki, İslam’a alaka duyduğunu gösteriyor. Kendi ülkesinde görmek istemiyor ama kendisi buraya geliyor. Hatta son zamanlarda İran’da da bazı araştırmalar yapmak istiyor. Acaba bir zaman sonra Türk İslamını da daha yakından tanımak, zorla tanımak ister mi? Zorla tanımaya çalışmak bir Amerikan tarzı mı? Asla değişmesi mümkün değil mi?

Naci Ekşi: Sayın Turan konuşmanız her ne kadar kültür ve medeniyet konumuz öyleyse de, işin bir ekonomik boyutu olduğunu işaret ettiniz. Kültür ve medeniyet başlığını unutmadan bugün AB’ni düşündüğümüz, AB’ne girmeye çalıştığımız bir devrede nasıl ki bir zamanlar Müslüman olduklarını bile bile bizim insanlarımızı alıp, Avrupa’da çalıştırdılar ise, bir gün AB acaba ekonomik nedenlerden dolayı kültür ve medeniyeti co-habitance bir tarafa bırakarak “gelin arkadaş, biz size muhtacız, kol kola girelim” diyebilirler mi? Özellikle yabancı konuşmacılardan bu konuda bir değerlendirme istiyorum.

Coşkun Varlık: Erciyes Üniversitesi İşletme Bölümü öğrencisiyim. Konuşmacıların bahsettiği Islamic Fobia denilen İslam korkusundan bahsedildi. Bu şimdiye kadar yeni oluşan bir şey sanırım. Bunun temelinde acaba petrol kaynaklarının İslam dünyasının elinde bulunması olabilir mi? Yani Sayın Bulliet’in bahsettiği gibi, Avrupa dolayısıyla Amerika kültürünün temellerini İslam dünyasından almıştır ve İslam’ın kelime manası barıştır. Nasıl böyle bir şeyden korkulabilir?

Hayrullah Özkan: Konunun sürecinde medya sessiz çoğunluğun etkileşimi, dışlamalar kimlik tartışmalarında basının yerini bölümleştirmede fayda görüyorum. Bu tespitimi yaparken ben İngiltere’de 4 yıl, Amerika’da 9 yıl yaşadım. Üniversitede araştırma asistanlığı ve mühendis olarak bulundum ve İstanbul’da yaşayan bir kimliğim vardı ve hiç rahatsızlık duymadım. Fakat son 10 yıldır memleketimde buradan İngiltere’ye, buradan Avrupa’ya ve Amerika’ya baktığımda, çok çirkin bir yapı görüyorum. Gerçi ben Amerika’dayken sürecin geldiğini hissediyordum. Yani Lübnan’da bir savaş varken, arka planda cami gösteriyordu. Kişiler korkutularak planlanıyordu. Hadise şuna geliyor: Dünyadaki güç dengeleri finansal ve yapısal olarak, bunlar dünyayı nasıl yönetmek isterlerken, kişilere olayları nasıl aksettirmek istiyorlar. Burada zaten dün akşamki açılış konuşmasında bu iş şöyle tanımlandı. Güç sahipleriyle değerler sahiplerini buluşturma. Bence kimlik tartışmasını da doğru bulmuyorum. Çünkü kimlik, ötekini yaratır. Yani Fenerbahçe/Beşiktaş, Avrupalı/Avrupalı olmayan. Daha ziyade temel olarak ontolojik questioning yapmak lazım. Sorgulama şu: Ben hangi takımdayım değil de, ben insan mıyım? İnsanlık değer nedir? Paylaşmak mı? Yoksa hayvansal güçlerle güçlü olan öbürünü yemeli mi? tartışmayı bu zemine taşımak lazım.

Sayın Kırdar: Çok teşekkür ederim. Enteresan bir paneldeyiz. 3 panel üyesi Anglo Sakson olduğu için müsaade ederseniz, ben sualimi İngilizce olarak sormak istiyorum.

First of al let me introduce myself, I have a Turkish passport but have been living for 32 years in New York and I worked for UN and I consider myself a global citizen plus I am a member of New York Interfed society which has been chaired by Dean Molten who used to be Dean of St.Johns Cathedral so I’ve been involved with this subject. The point what I am trying to drive and ask is a question to you, instead of looking as a clash of civilization, it is not the clash of religious that what are the basics of quote and unquote “civilized societies”. If we look from that point of view we see couple of points, first of all one of the most valuable thing is freedom of life and freedom of expression so our common search should be for instance to maintain that.

First point is, how to maintain secularism which is being endangered as Prof. Butterworth has mentioned, I can see how the system becoming politicized today. That is common danger.

The second point is freedom expression. In Europe, a few months ago there been the case of that cartoon and at that time it was defended as freedom of expression. Prophet was equaled to a terrorist and that is being argued as a freedom of expression. Nowadays we see under the freedom of expression a law being pushed so that the French Senate referring to Armenian genocide should become kind of crime to be punished. So should we look at it at the end of this panel…thank you.

Atilla Silahtaroğlu: Silkar A.Ş.’yi temsilen burada bulunuyorum. Çok kültürlülük deyince, dünya üzeride çok kültürlülük sanki sırf İslam kültürüyle, orta doğu kültürüyle Avrupa kültürü beraber yaşaması çok kültürlülük gibi anlaşılıyor. Başka kültürler de var. Uzak doğu kültürü var. Afrika kültürü var. Bugün uzak doğu kültürüyle Türk kültürü ya da İslam kültürü orta doğu kültürünün ya da Amerika kültürünün beraber yaşamında hiçbir problem olmuyor. Afrika kültürüyle de aynı şekilde. İslam kültürünün ya da orta doğru kültürünün beraber yaşamında bir problem olmuyor. Problem genelde Avrupa kültürü ile İslam kültürü arasındaymış gibi algılanıyor. Bu neden böyle algılanıyor? Niye bunun üzerinde odaklanıyoruz?

İkincisi, refah düzeyi daha yüksek olan toplumun bireylerinin refah düzeyi daha alçak olan toplum bireylerini kültür farklılıklarını anlamakta daha büyük sorumlulukları olduğunu düşünüyorum. Amerikan kültürü, uzak doğu kültürü arasında da olmuştur. Aynı şekilde orta doğu kültürüyle İslam kültürüyle de Amerikan, Avrupa kültürü arasında da olması gerektiğini düşünüyorum. Onları yönetmek yerine, onlarla beraber yaşamak ve anlamak çerçevesinde.

Aydın Bandırma: Eskişehir’den katılıyorum. Birinci konuşmacımız Sayın Richard Bulliet’in sunumundan şunu çıkardım: Avrupa medeniyetinin gelişmesinde İslam dininin birtakım rolü olmuş. Avrupa insanları İslam dininin mesajlarını iyi algılayıp, kendi medeniyetlerinin gelişmesini kullanmışlar. Ancak, ters yönden baktığımızda, İslam ülkeleri nedense bu mesajları alamamış ve gelişmelerini sağlıklı bir şekilde tamamlayamamış olduğu ortaya çıkıyor. Burada o zaman konumuz gereği, co-habitance ile Avrupa ülkelerine de bir görev düşüyor diye düşünüyorum. Avrupa ülkeleri İslam ülkeleri ile biraraya gelerek, iyi niyetlerle toplantılar, görüşmeler yaparak, İslam’ın mesajlarının daha iyi algılanmasını sağlamakta bir rol oynayabilirler diye düşünüyorum. Bu konuda görüşleri nedir acaba?


Madeleine Bunting: Very briefly, first one, somebody said that there is crises in representative democracy and I think it is a crucial issue for Turkey to be aware of how this is being played out in the politics of Western European countries so that is extremely important. The other issue, which I think is very important for Turkey to have mapped, is that the economic dynamic of Turkish membership of the EU is extremely important and powerful. The geo-strategic advantages, the energy advantages, these are very important economic agenda both within Europe and Turkey for membership of the EU. But the crucial issue is that the political elite must take the masses with them on the issue of Turkish membership and if they don’t it will get derailed at some point just as the constitution was derailed. But perception in much of Western Europe is that Euro elite has an agenda, which has very little connection with many of the concerns of ordinary people on the ground and I think that the key to the question about taking the masses with you is the point that was raised by Dr. Gul, which is this issue that Turkey and Islam has been conflated so the irony is that Turkey may not feel it is an Islamic country but to every single person in Britain if you talk about of the Turkish membership of the EU, the best point they’ll make is but they are all Muslims. That would mean 18 million Muslims in the heart of Europe and in the heart of Europe’s decision making. And I quote a recent conversation that I had which used precisely those terms.

Finally I just want to make a very brief point about multi-culturalism. I came at the end of question where somebody was suggesting that it failed and that it didn’t work, there is a long history where France and Britain tend to take pork chops at each other and say you got it all wrong and we got it better then you, France and Britain do represent very different models of how to deal with ethnic minorities and just in defense I don’t think but multi-culturalism has failed nor do I think we reached the point where we tucked it out and find something better. I think it is more a question of evolution that we need to take multi-culturalism a stage further. I think we need to be very aware that there have been tremendous strengths to multi-culturalism. In London on July the 8th the day after the bombing on the London underground, on the busses it was extremely moving to me that there was no reaction against member traveling together who were perhaps Muslim or people of different ethnicity. That was the most astonishing sense within London that we are one of the most diverse cities in the world, arguably recent research says the most and we like it that way and we are proud of it that way and there is no way that we are going to let something like this set any of that back. So I think multi-culturalism has great strengths the point is we have to build on those to a better future.

Somebody said multi-culturalism, the problem is always Islam and Muslims, may I just say NO, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Multi-culturalism has a very contested history in the UK. Much of the debate 10 – 15 years ago was about the integration of Africarabians who is one of he largest ethnic minorities in the UK we have very comparable discussions about African integration into UK as we do about Muslim so no, no, no don’t get the sense it is all about Muslims. And therefore the reason why multi-culturalizm is so important it is again the point that Dr. Gul made about the third option, about giving up fixity of identity, a purity of identity. I think the interesting development within the multi-culturalism is about being pioneering hybrid identities and hyphenated identities. The idea of British-Muslim, British Pakistani, these recognize the complex heritage that people come from and it seems to me this is a very promising way forward.