BRITAIN has allowed bedrock values to be compromised.
AS well as making tough, necessary economic decisions, British Prime Minister David Cameron is emerging as a leader willing and able to confront difficult philosophical and cultural questions. Many Australians familiar with modern Britain will admire him for putting the doctrine of "state multiculturalism" high on his reform agenda. For years, expatriates and others from Australia visiting Britain have watched traditional British culture being pushed aside, especially in major cities. Far from being racist or encouraging discrimination, as his critics are claiming, Mr Cameron's courageous speech to the Munich Security Conference highlighted the importance of reversing a trend that has increasingly seen different cultures living separate lives, apart from each other and the mainstream. Britain, he pointed out, has been too tolerant of segregated communities behaving in ways that run counter to democracy and liberal values.
In advocating a "more active, muscular liberalism" where equal rights, the rule of law, freedom of speech and democracy will be actively promoted, Mr Cameron set out a raft of sensible measures that should be implemented without delay. These include immigrants learning English and the basics of a common culture and curriculum, withholding public money from organisations opposed to democracy, free speech, integration and human rights, preventing such bodies spreading their credos in universities and prisons and denying them the opportunity to share public platforms with government ministers. The government will also be more proactive in proscribing organisations that incite terrorism.
The fact that Mr Cameron's speech has drawn howls of misguided protest might seem extraordinary to Australians, where multiculturalism, despite some controversies, has not encroached on our underlying national values in the way it has in Britain. It would be unimaginable, for example, for any leading Australian churchman to call for aspects of sharia law to be adopted, as the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams did two years ago. The fact that Britain has reached such a point, however, should serve as a warning to Australia to avoid the kind of cultural and language segregation that has run unchecked in Britain for too long.
As Mr Cameron said, claims that terrorism arises from poverty and discrimination suffered by Muslims ignores the fact that many of those found guilty of terrorist offences in the UK and elsewhere have been middle-class graduates. The problem is the ideology of extremism, not the religion of Islam. With Britain's Muslim community growing at 10 times the rate of the general population, accounting for 2.4 million out of 61 million people, it is essential, as Mr Cameron said, that people of all backgrounds feel comfortable saying "Yes, I am a Muslim, I am a Hindu, I am Christian, but I am also a Londonder or a Berliner too." Or an Australian, embracing the values and culture that make a great nation.
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