Multiculturalism and the Muslim Question

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.13169/reorient.6.2.0219
• Published date: 01 April 2021
• Date: 01 April 2021
• Pages: 219-225
• Author: Uzma Jamil

ReOrient 6.2 Produced and distributed by Pluto Journals

McGill University

MULTICULTURALISM AND THE MUSLIM

QUESTION

Uzma Jamil

There are two ways of reading a book, one for what it says, and one for what it

doesn’t say. While the former is determined primarily by the author, the latter is also

a reflection of the reader’s preoccupations. Tariq Modood’s work is noteworthy for

recognizing and calling for Muslim political demands and experiences to be recog-

nized by the state as distinctly Muslim, at a time when this was not an established

way of thinking about Muslim presence in western nations. This book is a collection

of his essays published between 2005 and 2018 on Muslims in the UK and western

Europe, engaging topics of multiculturalism, secularism, Islamophobia, racializa-

tion, and racism. It allows him to look back on the state of the field and re-examine

his work in light of the evolution of the British and western European political con-

texts. Modood’s intervention on the Muslim question brings together modified ver-

sions of the political frameworks of multiculturalism and secularism in the UK.

To summarize, the multiculturalism framework is based on a majority–minority

relationship which seeks to balance the recognition of difference of minorities with

the construction of an inclusive national (majority) identity. “Multiculturalist interest

in ‘difference’ is in extending equality to those identities that have not been posi-

tively incorporated into the majority matrix” (Modood 2019: 8). This forms the basis

for Modood’s call to extend the multiculturalism framework to include Muslims as

racialized and religious minorities. He traces the history of minorities who mobi-

lized around their ethnic and racial identities as the basis for political recognition

within multiculturalism, from the 1960s onwards. Religion serves as the latest group

identity marker to be a basis for a political demand, dating from the Satanic Verses/

Rushdie affair in 1989 and into the 1990s. Modood argues that Muslims are a “new”

racialized, ethno-religious identity group within the framework of multiculturalism.

Between the desire not to exceptionalize religion, nor to consider it as interchangeable

with other markers, such as “race” and ethnicity, while still accepting that Muslims

are both a racialized and religious group, Modood focuses on the outcome: Muslims

should be offered the same degree of protection against racism and the accommoda-

tion of their symbols and practices in public culture and institutions as other minority

identity groups (Modood 2019: 5). Furthermore, he argues that the state ought to