This essay examines the political and cultural controversy sparked by former British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw's 2006 newspaper article expressing discomfort with full-face veils worn by Muslim women. Using Straw's remarks as a starting point, the paper explores how the incident exposed deeper tensions within multicultural democratic societies, particularly the limits of liberal multiculturalism as a framework for managing cultural difference. The essay argues that simple tolerance is insufficient, that critical multiculturalism must account for power differentials between groups, and that questions of who speaks for whom within a culture are rarely straightforward. It concludes that genuine democratic debate requires acknowledging that cultures amplify some voices more than others.
In October 2006, former British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw did something politically problematic. He said something that many others had thought about saying but had not done so, recognizing it would be highly unpopular to voice what they also believed to be true. Because he said something that many people felt someone — as long as it wasn't them — should say, he received significant criticism. Many of those who criticized him were no doubt authentically convinced they were right and he was wrong. But others surely used their loud criticism of Straw as cover for their own at least ambivalent agreement with his statement.
What was this statement that caused such furore? His own discomfort about meeting with Muslim women who wore full facial veils. In a newspaper article, Straw wrote that full-face veils were "a visible statement of separation and difference," and that when he met with his constituents he felt more comfortable if they did not wear veils. He made it clear that he would never require a woman to remove her veil and that he always had a female co-worker present in the office when a female constituent was there. Straw, who was also the former Leader of the House of Commons, said in a follow-up interview that he felt "wearing the full veil was bound to make better, positive relations between the two communities more difficult."
There were immediate protests against Straw's comments. People attacked him as a bigot. The first female Muslim peer in the House of Lords, Pola Uddin, said that Straw — and by extension the British government — had "attacked those who would be our greatest allies in meeting the current challenges of terrorism and radicalisation… [and had created] a feeling of vulnerability and demonisation of Muslim women" (Edgar, 2006).
Others criticized him not because they thought he was wrong but simply because they would have preferred — or at least claimed — that the matter had not been raised at all. Some, like Labour Member of Parliament Harriet Harman, said that she too wished to see the veil abolished, not because it made her uncomfortable but because she sees it as a symbol and tool of oppression: "The veil is an obstacle to women's participation, on equal terms, in society" (Bunting, 2006).
The initial responses tended to be fierce — a sure sign that what Straw had said, whether he intended it or not, had touched on an issue deeply important to many people. The practice of veiling itself was not irrelevant to the debate, but nor was it central. What was central — or rather what drove the mutual shouting match, since genuine debates tend to be more dignified and less personally venomous — was the question of how tolerant a multicultural democracy must be. It is a shame, for Britain as well as for other multicultural democracies, that there was so much heat and so little light.
How it could have been any other way is difficult to imagine, for the fundamental issues involved are so important. When people fight — with swords, IEDs, missiles, or words — about the things most important to them, there will always be heat. Those who joined the debate were talking about democracy, religion, freedom, gender, and family, and about who has the power to tell each of us who we are — and who gets to say where we may call home.
The debate that Straw instigated is, at its core, a debate about culture. It is also a debate about politics and economics — though a cultural anthropologist would argue that everything is culture, including politics and economics. Culture is difficult to define precisely because it surrounds us like the air: we cannot live without it, and we would immediately notice its absence. But we cannot see it or grab hold of it. Nevertheless, it is impossible to discuss the issues surrounding the wearing of the veil and its centrality to political debates in Europe without arriving at a working definition of culture.
Culture is habit. It is the habitual way we do, think, and feel. It is the clothes we wear and the food we eat, our language, our religion, the shape of our houses and furniture, the kinds of animals we keep as pets, the size of our families. It tells us how to define femininity and masculinity, who we can and cannot marry, and what is considered beautiful or terrible. Culture tunes music, colors painting, weaves fabric, and writes poetry — and nearly everything else. It is both so amorphous and so important that it is easy to become imprecise when we discuss it (Calhoun, 1994).
We tend to speak of "American culture," "British culture," or "Muslim culture," and in some measure such terms make sense. There are things that connect Americans to one another and distinguish them from others: a shared flag, a Constitution, a form of governance. Americans share certain national myths — the Pilgrims and their turkeys (partly true), George Washington and his wooden teeth (not at all true), the courage of Susan B. Anthony and Martin Luther King (entirely true). To some degree, Americans share a language, though this is less uniformly true at certain points in history. There are also some basic beliefs that Americans tend to share — for instance, a belief that effort matters more than birth.
But, as should be quite clear, there are numerous intra-cultural differences among Americans — so many that one might wonder whether it makes sense to speak of a singular American culture at all. The same is true in Britain. What Jack Straw did when he wrote his article and gave his follow-up interviews was to remind people how thin the papering over of cultural differences in Britain really is. The idea of Britain as a single nation in a cultural, as opposed to a political, sense is like a broken egg pieced back together with fragments of tissue paper. The cracks still show.
Citizens of modern democracies who consider themselves liberal tend to think of themselves as supportive of multicultural societies. Multiculturalism is fundamentally a liberal concept — a model that celebrates ethnic and cultural differences and asks each individual and each group to be aware of and celebrate the attributes and contributions of others. This may seem a good and basically harmless ideology. Who can disagree with the idea that everyone has something to contribute to society? Who could reasonably deny that people unlike us are just as important as we are? (Phillips, 2007).
The response to this — and it bears directly on the debate Straw generated — is that there is nothing wrong with appreciating other people and groups, but that multiculturalism simply does not go far enough. Multiculturalism as a model of society, and as a prescription for action, does not recognize the differences in power that exist between different groups, and by failing to acknowledge them, it invalidates the experiences of those with less power in society.
It is easy for even moderately liberal people to develop an appreciation for food from other cultures, to find beauty in a different style of architecture, to enjoy a new form of music, or to take a class to learn a little of a foreign language. None of these things — which are perfectly worthwhile — require one to understand the experiences of another person in any deep way. And they certainly do not require one to understand how privilege operates and how much less power other people may have.
Some of those who spoke against Straw's words addressed precisely this point. It was offensive, they argued, that Straw did not acknowledge how much more power he had than a Muslim woman. When he said he did not want women to veil in his presence, that statement carried the weight of his race, his gender, and his class. Because he held more power, he was obligated to use it carefully. People with power must be responsible, and multiculturalism is too weak a model to compel those with power to be truly accountable. Good people do not use their power to make those with less power feel frightened, diminished, or wrong. Good people do not use the advantages of belonging to a dominant group to make minorities — defined by race, gender, religion, or ethnicity — feel lesser.
Multiculturalism preaches tolerance, and that is a very good first step. But critical multiculturalism teaches tolerance plus the need to be honest with ourselves and others about who, in any relationship or interaction, holds power. Simple, right? Well, not really. One of the striking things about the responses to Straw was that while many of his critics chastised him for siding with Western values against the values of his Muslim constituents, some of those who supported him praised him for doing exactly that — siding with Western values such as freedom and personal autonomy against patriarchy and sexism. When he said veils were not good for a society that includes Muslim women, was he perhaps speaking in their defense?
"Power imbalances within and between cultural groups"
"Muslim women's diverse views and democratic voice"
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