An Exclusory Voice

The
UK’s conservative image in my mind has been reinforced again.

Perhaps surprisingly, I have changed my impression of the UK as a proud country to it being a more tolerant and multicultural one after coming to the
UK. I saw many Muslims, Japanese, and Chinese groups living in big cities like London and Manchester, composing integrated as parts of the
UK population together with the native Britons.  

However, one leader in last week’s the Economist shattered my newly- formed
UK image. The leader expressed Briton’s dissatisfaction and discomfort towards the foreign migration under a globalisation context. While admitting that the
UK’s economy has benefited from globalisation, the article meanwhile says “Britons have found it socially troubling”. Moreover, it attributes this as “one of the reasons why the country is not entirely at ease with itself.”  

British may be frightened by the specter of terrorism. But is it rational to attach the growing militant values within the young British Muslims community to actually being home-grown Muslim terrorism? Therefore it expresses dissatisfaction with the government’s policy of encouraging migrants to retain their dress, language, faith and customs and suggests the government should “abandon this multiculturalism” and treat the ethnic minorities as “individuals equal before law”.  This in my eyes is undoubtedly an exclusionism. 

This time I regard the
UK as an “intolerant nation” by its exclusory voice from an influential medium. I wonder there is any logical strength between the idea of “Muslim values” and “home-grown terrorist”. Given that globalisation has become an irresistible trend,
Britain needs to work at changing attitudes towards minorities – though its actions abroad may well militate against peaceful relations in the short-term. 

~ by anniexf on February 13, 2007.