Caroline Fourest: A Feminist Against Multiculturalism.

La Dernière Utopie. Caroline Fourest. (2009/11)

“..it sometimes seems as if the current enthusiasm for the ideology of ‘human rights’ is little more than twenty-first century form of the secular Christianity that played such a central imperial role in the nineteenth century.” Britain’s Empire. Richard Gott. 2011.

La Dernière Utopie begins with this declaration, “Une utopie se meurt. Celle des droits universels. La perspective d’un monde où tous les êtres humaines seraient libres et égaux, sans distinction.” (The utopia of universal rights, the prospect of a world in which all human beings would be free and equal, is dying) Today, Caroline Fourest asserts, people are turning away from universal ideas and falling back on their separate identities. Our sense of belonging, to a nation, a religion, an ethnic group, overrides the ‘abstraction’ of a common humanity. And nothing could be more abstract than world-wide human rights.

This is bold claim. Richard Gott’s view that human rights have become part of the “imperial backcloth” carries weight. Stephen Pinker’s claim that the ‘rights revolution’ has been linked to a decline in violence may reflect trends in most of Europe, America and some parts of the globe (The Better Angels of Our Nature. 2011) Overall the picture is much bleaker.

Appeals to the humanitarian duty to intervene against abuses in Iraq are fresh in the mind. Western governments have used its language to cover their unscrupulous military actions. And then we have the UN’s impotence faced with dictatorships, the remnants of Stalinism and Islamist regimes. The inability of the UN to prevent genocide in Rwanda and the killings in Africa by stateless armed gangs equally make the Declaration seem hollow. These failures, rather than ‘identity’ have been more than effective in undermining the utopian promise of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The UN and Human Rights.

La Dernière Utopie‘s opening chapter is an account of how the 1948 UN declaration came about. Fourest covers the negotiations that led to it, and the efforts to reach beyond purely Western conceptions*. She covers efforts to thwart its application, initially largely from the Official Communist bloc, a practice China continues in the name of state sovereignty. Moslem countries offered an ‘Islamic’ human rights declaration in 1990 based on the Sharia. This claimed that Islamic community was superior to any other form of civilisation. It skirted around outlawing slavery and denied the right to change religion. Islamic countries have attempted to limit freedom of expression in faith’s name.

It is as if it is Fourest considers that human rights are principally weakened from within the UN rather than in the inability to entrench human rights in the world at large. So, she observes how UN attention to the Palestinian issue has sidelined human rights in Africa and Burma. But could this association of world states resolve political and historical conflicts, as if these were waiting to be settled by applying human rights? Is indeed the UN a suitable forum for ‘cosmopolitan democracy’? It has been powerless to end American abuses in Guantanamo, or its sanction of torture. Could it deal, by peacekeeping or other means, with Central Africa and its multiple conflicts, kept financed by international commercial interests? This question is not raised.

By contrast we can at least see one dead-end. Instead of trying to develop material forms of international democracy a part of the left is stuck in political anti-globalisation. It is prepared to side with any form of resistance to the World Order. Certain forms of third-worldism, Fourest emphasises, are prepared to align with dictatorships and reactionary Islamists in the name of anti-imperialism. Cultural confrontation from this quarter is also backed. The French Indigènes de la République distinguished itself by attacking secular Arab feminists as infected by “post-colonial gangrene”. There are many similar movements in the rest of Europe and North America. They are no doubt at present nerving themselves up to defend the Salafist campaign for moral purity in North Africa and Egypt.

Multiculturalism.

La Dernière Utopie hits hardest when Fourest tackles multiculturalism. The present day use of the principle of ‘diversity’ has legitimised communalist movements. The gay and feminist activist explains how these movements enrich society by creating their own “espaces de liberté”. Cultural associations, for people of a common background, or groups that promote languages or a shared heritage, contribute to human development. They are different, she asserts, not completely convincingly, from ‘communitarian’ groups that promote exclusion. Extreme separatist feminism may well not pass this test. Nor would the activities of many inward-looking religious sects like the Plymouth Brethren. More importantly however separatism is by definition not a programme that anybody wants to impose on the whole of society.

For Fourest the most fundamental attacks on universalism come from elsewhere. She argues that the existing forms of multiculturalism have become a “passoire” (sieve) for radical religious demands that sap equality. Accommodating difference allows for impositions on others. Fourest notes that in 2008 David Toube and his 5-year-old son were excluded from the swimming Baths at Clissold Leisure Centre – reserved at that hour for “Muslim men”. Challenged, only the religious reference was dropped. At present this demand for gender segregation, on religious demand, has become an issue in many countries. It does not just come from Moslems. In Israel at the moment there is a sharp conflict with ultra-Orthodox Jews who wish to extend it to the entire public sphere. The right to difference is in conflict with the right to universal equality.

Nicolas Sarkozy attempted in 2008 to write the word diversity into the French Constitution. This was not accepted. But his concept of “open” laïcité, engaging with religious bodies, continues. Contrary to accepted opinion the French Churches, the Paris Mosque, the Conseil français du culte musulman (CFCM) and the Conseil répresenatif des institutions juives de France (CFIF) have a close relationship with the state. Fourest complains that this weakens the republican principle of equality, and blames the influence of multiculturalism for opening the door to further communitarian influence.

In what Fourest calls the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ model diversity can be extended to the public realm to the extent that people are considered in terms of their ‘race’ or ‘community’. In Britain each group is held to keep its distance (tenir à distance) She remarks that it is easier to be tolerant towards an Other (autre) when nobody seriously considers them as part of the same ‘family’. Polite reserve is the norm between separate communities. It simply ignores potential clashes of values. Only when, she claims, people start making claims to ‘Britishness’ without abandoning their ‘racial’ or religious identity, are feathers ruffled.

In Canada, Fourest observes, multiculturalist policies led to the legalisation of Islamic Courts with legal powers in mediating family disputes. Once the effects on women’s rights became clear their status in law was withdrawn in 2005. In Britain Rowan Williams has envisaged the same move – without referring to the Canadian experience. No doubt the Imperial experience of assigning subject peoples in India to live under their own religious ‘personal law’ played a role in this position. Faced with this the government’s announcement that no decisions made by such courts could be made that went against British law would be valid left open a space for the development of these tribunals.

Official multiculturalism can drift towards communalism. Promoting ‘diversity’ as a form of social justice is a mask for rising inequality. But intolerance of difference is a major problem. Fourest does not shy away from criticising “authoritarian secularism” – the complete refusal to accept any religious manifestation, individual or collective. Riposte laïque, the secularist ‘ultras’ demand that the Islamic veil, in any form, should be banned.

This is a thorny problem. On the one hand Fourest asserts that the veil is more than an item of clothing. This is not a purely cultural demand but a political one. It is a symbol of female submission. Moreover it is forced upon women in many countries. “Le jour où le voile ne sera plus le porte-drapeau de l’Islam politique réactionnaire et anti-féministe, il trouvera peut-être une signification spiritualle” (The day when the veil is no longer the badge of reactionary and anti-feminist political Islam will perhaps be when it can have a spiritual meaning). On the other hand, a secularism that rests on a state that carries out an emancipatory role cannot be concerned with every detail of people’s private lives. While the Burka, promoted by the most reactionary Islamists, has, she argues, present a range of other difficulties (making recognition hard) is this the case for all forms of the veil? The hijab included? These come in many shapes and colours. Few would recognise them all as signs of support for Political islam.

In the public domain, where people are treated equally, a special religious sign that separates the pure from the impure is unwelcome. Its use to spread religious division creates problems. But is everybody wearing a veil proclaiming her solidarity with regimes that punish the unveiled? Many have absorbed John Stuart Mill’s liberal principle that any behaviour that is purely ‘self-regarding’ – that causes no harm to others – should not be prohibited. It is up to feminists to find ways of explaining their critical message, and not the public authorities.

The Secular Alternative.

La Dernière Utopie sees no future for human rights in “mono-culturalism”. But Fourest is attached to one state model that she thinks serves them best. She argues that the French “universaliste et laïque” tradition offers a channel for emancipation through a different, tolerant, approach to cultural difference. For her the French paradigm does not demand assimilation but, attempts, ideally, to transcend “les differences en favourisant les convergences, la mixité, et le mélange” (differences by encouraging coming together, coexistence and blending). This then is the balanced way, between assimilation, communitarianism, tolerant republicanism and a reasonable form of multiculturalism. This is the “integration laïque” which might serve as a “laboratory” for a better – utopian? – future.

Creeping towards distopia is the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ model of multiculturalism. Fourest rehearses a number of features of American society, the history of slavery, positive discrimination and its social policies and politics inflected by ‘race’. Nobody who is the slightest bit acquainted with this – and Fourest is – can ignore the deep injustices at stake here. She explains the way race is an important political and cultural marker in the country. In what sense, apart from a debt to ‘negative’ (individual based) liberalism does Britain share in this structure of policies that have been developed in the US to deal with this legacy? She notes that Britain has been shaped by a similar post-colonial immigration as France. That its multiculturalism is a result of this. Neither then has a history of domestic slavery. Both have an imperial past. America has never had a formal empire. This might be a good point to begin to disentangle the ‘special relationship’ and look at similarities between the Isles and the Hexagon. But instead she concludes by referring to “le multiculturalisme anglo-saxon”.

Britain, unlike America, and like France, has a real, that is, social democratic and socialist, left. It, like France, and unlike the US, has a large welfare state, which plays an ideological unifying role not dissimilar to the Republic in France. Multiculturalism has established itself as liberal orthodoxy, and, in a modified form, as state policy. Its supporters are more numerous and its institutional weight is greater than in France. But it has its critics, from the right – on nationalist ‘mono-cultural’ grounds – and the left, from a Universalist and class position. As does France.

Fourest’s critique could be culled from any number of English language articles and studies, but particularly from those produced in the United Kingdom. From Southall Black Sisters to other anti-racists people have attacked state sponsored ‘community’ leaderships, and the tolerance of Islamist intolerance. Accepting violence against women, in the name of religious cultural norms has drawn great attention. On the wider picture Kenan Malik’s From Fatwa to Jihad. The Rushdie Affair and its Legacy. (2009) might be a good place to start. From there, the role of class in overdetermining multiculturalism, would be an essential reference for anyone looking at the issue in Britain.

Looking at these writings we find that there are far fewer dissimilarities between Britain and France than she asserts. Community organisations may not be as officially recognised in France, but nobody would deny the role of the Jewish and Muslim associations in the country’s politics. Nor is its model without similar faults. As the report in Le Monde, Banlieues de la République indicated, Islamist identity has grown in the bleak French suburbs abandoned by the French state (5.10.11). Gilles Kepel notes that despite some political integration, secularism (laïcité) is seen as an “external constraint” without real presence in everyday life. This position has obvious British inner-city and Northern town parallels, with the Mosque playing a role beyond the practice of worship in many Moslem communities. But one should be aware of other religious minorities in ‘ communities that have come from post-war immigration, such as Hindus and Sikhs. Black identity, Caribbean and African, has also a more than cultural significance. The Stephen Lawrence case illustrates its political reach. Despite a large black population in France, both Christian, secular and Moslem, it does not figure in the present work. There is also the importance of mixed background. Fourest does not discuss these parts of the cultural mosaic.

That said there are important distinctions between our lands. There is no ‘école laïque’ in the UK. There is indeed a House of Lords, and an established Church, though I would find it hard to notice its influence on my life, or be more than indirectly affected by the aristocratic culture she claims pervades our society. The present government indeed encourages religious enthusiasts to indoctrinate the young, and to take an important role in state policy. But it may well have laid the basis for a secular push from the ‘new atheist’ lobby that they will come to regret. It is not easy to think of a French equivalent to Bob Lambert. This political policeman is now an academic who cultivates Islamists and is honoured on anti-racist platforms, after a past infiltrating, undercover, the left. But perhaps his exposure may encourage others not to follow in his footsteps.

Fourest has written an important book. It is plainly and lucidly written. It travels through a range of contemporary controversies without becoming bogged down in theory. But some philosophical questions are inevitable.   The introductory discussion reveals a gap. If universal human rights are not a ‘secular religion’ what are they? La Dernière Utopie has no account of what Robin Blackburn has described as thirty years of human rights discourse in France (On Human Rights New Left Review. 69. 2011) This would not doubt imply looking at how the terms have been misused, in the way Richard Gott desribes, for other ends than the cause of humanity. Reviewing Samuel Moyn’s Last Utopia: Human Rights in History Blackburn raises the wider issue of what human rights are. They are not created by Saints or Founding Documents, or always embodied in laws and treaties. Nor are they just about protecting “free agency” (Michael Ignatieff). They are borne by human aspirations and forged in political fights. Blackburn suggests that Marx, despite disparaging “phrases” about rights and duties, offered a basis in human “species being” for human rights as part of the struggle against oppressions and destruction. If this is a utopia, it is a hope rooted in history.

Fourest places hope in mobilising the best side of the French Republic. Yet the fundamental role of the state is left unpondered. Is a liberal state needed to entrench human rights? Or can they be located in a cosmopolitan democracy – a development on the foundations of the UN that reaches out to civil societies across the globe? Would there ever be a sense in which states would wither away in the face of self-organised communities, a true ‘universalism’ which knows no national boundaries? For a believer in universalism the Kantian problem of how a world-wide ‘republic’ of right (as law) is compatible with the existence of separate political republics remains unresolved. This perhaps, remains the hardest issue of them all.

*A striking feature of the debates was this effort to rise above differing cultural traditions, as described in her main source – Mary Ann Glendon. A World Made New. Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 2001.

Appendix.

Brother Tariq.

Caroline Fourest is best known in the English-speaking world for Frère Tariq (2004). This exposed the Islamic thinker Tariq Ramadan’s ‘double language’. Cassette recordings of his speeches revealed another side to the humanist Islam he preaches to Western audiences. Ramadan’s “reformist Salafism” was a strategy of alliances to win a less than reformed Islamic influence. He had a prude’s obsessions – feeling repelled by mixed bathing, hostile to homosexuality, and finding it immoral that unmarried men and women have sexual relations. In La Dernière Utopie she cites how Ramadan was sacked from a post as an adviser in integration and multiculturalism to Rotterdam Council. His broadcasts on the Iranian state financed Press TV – during the repression of protests at electoral fraud in 2009, which he failed to mention – was the final straw.

Such writing has earned Fourest the reputation of building a media career out of “stigmatising Islam” in the name of secularism (laïcité). She signed the petition, Together Facing the New Totalitarianism. (2010) This defended secular values and freedom of speech during the Jyllands-Posten Mohammed cartoons controversy. Far from limiting herself to Islam or Islamism, Fourest has written a series of book attacking Christian fundamentalism, defending abortion rights, gay rights, and, from her first publication to her latest, the French far-right, above all the Front National. (FN) Her biography of Marine Le Pen (2011), co-written with her partner, Fiammetta Venner, questions the far-right leader’s conversion to ‘secularism’. To her this is a form of ‘mono-culturalism’ hiding the FN’s deeper Catholicism not to mention forces hostile to the French Revolution and the Republic. This book has only increased the number of Fourest’s enemies.

Her weekly column in Le Monde and her Blog  is where people can catch up with her latest reflections. She is active in the feminist and gay movement, and edits the magazine Pro-Choix.

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