Multicultural Liberals and the Rushdie Affair: A Critique of Kymlicka, Taylor, and Walzer

Review of Politics

Volumn 61, Issue 2, 1999, Pages 219-250

  O'Neill, Daniel I ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 85009850647     PISSN: 00346705     EISSN: 17486858     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0034670500051986     Document Type: Article

References (117)

1. For chronological overviews, see Lisa Appignanesi and Sara Maitland, eds., The Rushdie File (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1990);
2. and Carmel Bedford, Fiction, Fact and the Fatwa (International Centre Against Censorship, 1994).
3. The Rights of Minority Cultures, ed. Will Kymlicka (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 19.
4. The Rights of Minority Cultures
5. For an overview of the Rushdie Affair in Britain that illustrates the fundamental importance of the book banning issue, see reports from three conferences sponsored by the Commission for Racial Equality: Law, Blasphemy and the Multi-Faith Society; Free Speech; and Britain: A Plural Society (London: CRE, Elliot House, 1990).
6. For academic discussions of the controversy that stress its importance, see Bhikhu Parekh, “The Rushdie Affair: Research Agenda for Political Philosophy,” Political Studies 38, no. 4 (1990): 695-709;
7. Peter Jones, “Respecting Beliefs and Rebuking Rushdie,” British Journal of Political Science 20 (1990): 415-437
8. “Rushdie, Race, and Religion,” Political Studies 38, no. 4 (1990): 687-694;
9. and the essays responding to the controversy in Liberalism, Multiculturalism and Toleration, ed. John Horton (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993).
10. There is a substantial literature on the Rushdie Affair, writ large, including: The Kiss of Judas: Affairs of a Brown Sahib, ed. Munawar A. Anees (Kuala Lumpur: Quill Publishers, 1989);
11. The Salman Rushdie Controversy in Interreligious Perspective, ed. Dan Cohn-Sherbok (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1990);
12. Daniel Easterman, New Jerusalems: Reflections on Islam, Fundamentalism, and the Rushdie Affair (London: HarperCollins, 1992);
13. Daniel Pipes, The Rushdie Affair (New York: Birch Lane Press, 1990);
14. Malise Ruthven, A Satanic Affair (London: Chatto & Windus, 1990);
15. Richard Webster, A Brief History of Blasphemy: Liberalism, Censorship, and ‘The Satanic Verses’ (Suffolk: The Orwell Press, 1990).
16. Esp., Will Kymlicka, Liberalism, Community, and Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989);
17. and Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).
18. Charles Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition,” in Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition, ed. Amy Gutmann (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 25–73.
19. Michael Walzer, “Comment,” in Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition, pp. 99–103.
20. Kymlicka, Liberalism, Community, and Culture, pp. 4, 162.
21. Kymlicka, Liberalism, Community, and Culture, p. 90. See chap. 5, “Taylor's Social Thesis” pp. 74–99, and chap. 11, “Walzer and Minority Rights,” pp. 220–36.
22. Kymlicka, Liberalism, Community, and Culture, pp. 165–167.
23. Rawls, of course, defines “primary goods” as “things that every rational man is presumed to want” in the original position (John Rawls, A Theory of Justice [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971], p. 62).
24. Rawls, of course, defines “primary goods” as “things that every rational man is presumed to want” in the original position (John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, p. 172.
25. Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship, pp. 10–26, 10. Of course, a country can be both multinational and polyethnic.
26. Multicultural Citizenship, pp. 26–31, 96-97.
27. A “societal culture” is one which “provides its members with meaningful ways of life across the full range of human activities” (p. 76). Kymlicka discusses further the distinction between national minorities and immigrants, and what he sees as immigrants' desire for sociocultural integration in two lectures delivered in 1995, available as States, Nations and Cultures (Assen, The Netherlands: Van Gorcum, 1997).
28. Nations and Cultures, p. 96.
29. Nations and Cultures, p. 38.
30. Nations and Cultures, p. 7, pp. 31–33. “Special representation rights” are “guaranteed seats for ethnic or national groups within the central institutions of the larger state” (p. 7).
31. Nations and Cultures, pp. 152, 80-82,158. On the fundamental importance of individual autonomy for Kymlicka, see also pp. 75,154-63; and his
32. “Two Models of Pluralism and Tolerance,” Analyse and Kritik 13 (1992): 33-56, where he specifically contrasts “liberal tolerance” with the Ottoman Muslim group-based form of tolerance known as the “millet system,” and criticizes Rawls's more recent work for retreating from a “comprehensive” liberal doctrine based on the value of individual autonomy.
33. Analyse and Kritik, p. 6.
34. Analyse and Kritik, pp. 31,114-15,114.
35. Analyse and Kritik, pp. 7, 35-3.
36. Analyse and Kritik, p. 43.
37. Kymlicka, “Two Models of Pluralism and Tolerance,” p. 39.
38. Tariq Modood, “Kymlicka on British Muslims,” Analyse and Kritik 15 (1993): 87-91;
39. This was followed by Kymlicka's “Reply to Modood,” pp. 92-96, and Modood's “Rejoinder,” pp. 97–99.
40. Shabbir Akhtar, Be Careful with Muhammad The Salman Rushdie Affair (London: Bellew Publishing, 1989).
41. Be Careful with Muhammad The Salman Rushdie Affair, pp. 49, 58.
42. chap. 3, “The Liberal Inquisition,” pp. 37–63.
43. “The Liberal Inquisition,”, p. 131.
44. “The Liberal Inquisition,”, p. 114.
45. Ziauddin Sardar and Merryl Wyn Davies, Distorted Imagination: Lessons from the Rushdie Affair (London: Grey Seal Books, 1990).
46. Distorted Imagination: Lessons from the Rushdie Affair, p. 268.
47. Distorted Imagination: Lessons from the Rushdie Affair, pp. 239, 3, 238-66.
48. M. M. Ahsan and A. R. Kidwai, eds., Sacrilege versus Civility: Muslim Perspectives on the Satanic Verses Affair (Leicester, United Kingdom: The Islamic Foundation, revised and enlarged edition, 1993). The terms most frequently used to describe The Satanic Verses in these pages are blasphemous, sacrilegious, offensive, insulting, abusive, hurtful, obscene, libelous, vilificatory,foul, and filthy.
49. For these arguments, see Sacrilege versus Civility: Muslim Perspectives on the Satanic Verses Affair, pp. 36, 38-40, 53-58,147,165-71,176-78, 181,186-88,192,194-98,204-205,207,209,210-28,234-35,238-2, 245,261, 26768, 274-76, 323, 327-33 (esp.), 335, 337, 348-49, 353-54, 360-61, 372, 382, 384, 386-87, 394-02.
50. Kymlicka, “Reply to Modood,” pp. 93–94.
51. Parekh, “The Rushdie Affair,” pp. 698–701;
52. Modood, “Kymlicka on British Muslims: A Rejoinder,” p. 97.
53. Webster, A Brief History of Blasphemy, pp. 38-310.
54. Appignanesi and Maitland, The Rushdie File, p. viii. See also, Leonard W. Levy, Blasphemy: Verbal Offenses Against the Sacred from Moses to Salman Rushdie (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993)
55. esp. chap. 27, “The Rushdie Affair: Should All Religions Be Protected or None” pp. 551–79; and Anees, The Kiss of Judas.
56. Modood, “Rejoinder,” p. 98.
57. Modood, “Kymlicka on British Muslims” p. 90.
58. Parekh, “The Rushdie Affair,” pp. 701–702, 701.
59. Muslim commentators consistently rejected “equality before the law” if it meant abolishing the blasphemy law entirely. The UK Action Committee on Islamic Affairs referred to this option as “equality in indignity” and dismissed it outright, while Akhtar called it “cold comfort,” leaving Muslims as unprotected as before. See Ahsan and Kidwai, Sacrilege versus Civility, pp. 349, 256.
60. I draw on the following: Jonathan Chaplin, “How Much Cultural and Religious Pluralism can Liberalism Tolerate” in Horton, Liberalism, Multiculturalism and Toleration, pp. 32-A9;
61. Moshe Halbertal, “Autonomy, Toleration, and Group Rights: A Response to Will Kymlicka,” in Toleration, ed. David Heyd (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), pp. 106–113;
62. Chandran Kukathas, “Are There Any Cultural Rights” Political Theory 20, no. 1 (1992): 105-139
63. “Cultural Rights Again: Rejoinder to Kymlicka,” Political Theory 20, no. 4 (1992): 674-680
64. “Cultural Toleration,” in Ethnicity and Group Rights, ed. Ian Shapiro and Will Kymlicka (New York: New York University Press, 1997), pp. 69–104
65. “Multiculturalism as Fairness: Will Kymlicka's Multicultural Citizenship,” The Journal of Political Philosophy 5, no. 4 (1997): 406-427;
66. Don Lenihan, “Liberalism and the Problem of Cultural Membership: A Critical Study of Kymlicka,” Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence 4, no. 2 (1991): 401-419, and in the same number, Michael McDonald, “Should Communities Have Rights Reflections on Liberal Individualism,” pp. 217–37;
67. Geoffrey Brahm Levey, “Equality, Autonomy, and Cultural Rights,” Political Theory 25, no. 2 (1997): 215-218;
68. Avishai Margalit and Moshe Halbertal, “Liberalism and the Right to Culture,” Social Research 61, no. 3 (1994): 491-510;
69. Charles Taylor, “Can Liberalism Be Communitarian” Critical Review 8, no. 2 (1994): 257-262;
70. John Tornasi, “Kymlicka, Liberalism, and Respect for Cultural Minorities,” Ethics 105 (1995): 580-603;
71. Brian Walker, “Plural Cultures, Contested Territories: A Critique of Kymlicka,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 30, no. 2 (1997): 211-234;
72. Melissa Williams, “Group Inequality and the Public Culture of Justice,” in Group Rights, ed. Judith Baker (Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1994), pp. 34–65
73. and in the same volume, Leslie Green, “Internal Minorities and Their Rights,” pp. 100–117.
74. Kymlicka, Liberalism, Community, and Culture, pp. 168–169.
75. This is not to say, of course, that Muslims were unanimously in favor of banning the book. A small number of intellectuals, in particular, came to Rushdie's defense. (See For Rushdie: Essays by Arab and Muslim Writers in Defense of Free Speech [New York: George Braziller, 1994]). This is not surprising, since absolute agreement on free speech criteria does not exist in any culture, whereas broad consensus clearly does. If The Satanic Verses (a book written by a Muslim immigrant) is a sign of cultural hybridity and a reminder to those who would create a monolithic version of Islam, the overwhelmingly negative reaction by Muslims to the novel is a clear indication that we should be still more wary of the current postmodern academic tendency to dismiss attempts at pointing out broad patterns of cultural belief as oppressive exercises in essentialism. On this point, see Jonathan Friedman, “Global Crises, the Struggle for Cultural Identity and Intellectual Porkbarrelling: Cosmopolitans versus Locals, Ethnics and Nationals in an Era of De-hegemonisation” in Debating Cultural Hybridity, ed. Pnina Weber and Tariq Modood (London: Zed Books, 1997), pp. 70–89;
76. and in the same volume, Peter van der Veer, ‘“The Enigma of Arrival': Hybridity and Authenticity in the Global Space,” pp. 90–105, esp. pp. 102–104.
77. Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship, chap. 8, esp. pp. 164–165.
78. Kymlicka, Liberalism, Community, and Culture, pp. 170–171.
79. Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship, pp. 94–95.
80. Consider the following: “Cases involving newly arriving immigrant groups are very different. In these cases, it is more legitimate to compel respect for liberal principles. … I do not think it is wrong for liberal states to insist that immigration entails accepting the legitimacy of state enforcement of liberal principles, so long as immigrants know this in advance, and none the less voluntarily choose to come” (Multicultural Citizenship, p. 170).
81. This remark is repeated, almost verbatim, in Kymlicka, “The Good, the Bad, and the Intolerable,” Dissent (Summer 1996): 22-30, 29.
82. On this theme, see Amelie Oksenberg Rorty, “The Hidden Politics of Cultural Identification,” Political Theory 22, no. 1 (1994): 152-166.
83. Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition,” p. 61.
84. “The Politics of Recognition,”, pp. 62–63.
85. “The Politics of Recognition,”, p. 59.
86. Charles Taylor, “The Rushdie Controversy,” Public Culture 2, no. 1 (1989): 118-122, 118.
87. Public Culture, p. 120.
88. Public Culture, p. 121.
89. See also, “The Politics of Recognition,” p. 62.
90. Taylor, “The Rushdie Controversy,” p. 121.
91. See most recently Taylor's “A World Consensus on Human Rights” Dissent (Summer 1996): 15-21.
92. See esp., “Understanding and Ethnocentricity,” Philosophical Papers 2: Philosophy and the Human Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 116–134;
93. and “Explanation and Practical Reason,” Philosophical Arguments (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), pp. 34–60.
94. For a discussion of Taylor's cultural relativism that stresses its possibilities as a vehicle for intercultural critique, see Hartmut Rosa, “Cultural Relativism and Social Criticism from a Taylorian Perspective,” Constellations 3, no. 1 (1996): 39-60.
95. Taylor, “Understanding and Ethnocentricity,” pp. 125–126;
96. “The Politics of Recognition,” p. 67.
97. Michael Walzer, “Comment,” in Multiculturalism, pp. 99–103, 99.
98. Multiculturalism, pp. 100–101.
99. See also, “Pluralism: A Political Perspective,” in Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups, ed. Stephen Thernstrom (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980), pp. 781–787. As Kymlicka argues, the fact that Walzer fails to clearly extend his logic to the case of Native Americans and other peoples subject to U.S. expansionism is more than a little curious. See Liberalism, Community, and Culture, n. 2, pp. 235–36;
100. and Multicultural Citizenship, pp. 20–21.
101. Walzer, “Comment,” p. 103.
102. Walzer, “Pluralism: A Political Perspective,” p. 784.
103. In his most recent book, On Toleration (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), Walzer seems to recognize that his earlier characterization of the intentions of immigrants was inaccurate, at least to the extent it was meant to apply to recent non-Western immigrants. In his discussion of French multicultural issues, Walzer notes of these new groups (especially Muslims): “They have cultures of their own that they want to preserve and reproduce…. They want to be recognized as a group and to be allowed to act out their group identity in public…. The new immigrants, or many of them, seek some version of multiculturalism, though they are mostly not ready for the American version” (p. 40). It seems also, in conjunction with this recognition, that Walzer, like Kymlicka, is willing to make some allowance for cultural rights for these groups, but only in quite limited cases. While head scarves for French schoolgirls are acceptable (as long as the girls are uncoerced by their parents into wearing them) clitoridectomy (or female genital mutilation) of young African girls is forbidden under all circumstances. At the same time, however, Walzer believes the “subordination of women–manifest in seclusion, bodily concealment, or actual mutilation–is not aimed solely at the enforcement of patriarchal property rights. It also has to do with cultural or religious reproduction” (p. 64). Therefore, “traditionalists” will argue that toleration in multicultural societies requires tolerating different communities' social practices, i.e., that toleration implies a right to communal reproduction. But, Walzer contends: “This right, if it exists, comes into conflict with the rights of individual citizens–which were once confined to men and were therefore not so dangerous, but are now extended to women. It seems inevitable that individual rights will win out in the long run. … Communal reproduction will then be less certain or, at least, it will be realized through processes that yield less uniform results. Traditionalists will have to learn a toleration of their own–for different versions of their own culture or religion” (p. 65). What Walzer fails to mention is the specific character of these new versions of old cultures–they will be liberal or, to use Kymlicka's terms, they will have become “liberalized.” This poses a serious problem for Walzer, given his understanding of justice, as I argue below. The question I am posing is not whether Walzer personally finds particular cultural practices repugnant, but the extent to which his theory of justice provides adequate grounds for criticizing them.
104. Michael Walzer, “The Sins of Salman,” The New Republic, 10 April 1989, pp. 13–15, 14.
105. The New Republic
106. Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality (Oxford: Martin Robinson, 1983), pp. 314, 313.
107. Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality, p. 314.
108. Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality
109. Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality, p. 312.
110. Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality, pp. 26, 315.
111. Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality, p. 247.
112. Brian Barry, “Spherical Justice and Global Injustice,” in Pluralism, Justice, and Equality, ed. David Miller and Michael Walzer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 67–80.
113. This conclusion is not altered by Walzer's numerous attempts to defend the viability of social criticism from within the framework set forth in Spheres of Justice (see esp., Interpretation and Social Criticism [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987];
114. The Company of Critics [New York: Basic Books, 1988];
115. “Objectivity and Social Meaning,” in The Quality of Life, ed. Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993], pp. 165–177;
116. Thick and Thin [Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994]). Responding to heavy criticism, Walzer has attempted to show how (a) social criticism is most effective when it is internal, or intra-community and (b) a “thin moral minimum,” or set of precepts actually shared across cultures, can provide a universal standard of justice. This only goes a small way toward extricating Walzer from the consequences of his conventionalism. As far as (a) is concerned, the role of the social critic for Walzer is to demonstrate how his/her society fails to live up to its “true” values. This means the “real” social consensus inevitably defines the horizon of legitimate dissent, with predictably conservative results. Moreover, the mere existence of a small number of internal social critics in an “illiberal” culture, the moral justness of which Walzer has already accepted, is of little consequence. If the relevant culture in question is not committed to the liberal version of individual autonomy, why should it listen to its internal social critics Walzer has not provided a convincing response to this question. As concerns (b), I have shown above how a reading of the Muslim literature on the Rushdie affair makes clear that the lack of a “thin” consensus was not the cause of the controversy. Muslims accepted free speech, as an abstract principle, but disagreed completely with Western liberals on its interpretation. What the Rushdie controversy makes evident is that “thin” consensus on abstract principles means little in the absence of “thick” cultural agreement about the meaning of those principles in practice. Absent this “thick” agreement, Walzer is led, ineluctably, back to his original conventionalist position. In short, in cases like the Rushdie affair where cultures actually conflict, Walzer is poorly positioned to take a critical stance on the debate, and his denial of minority cultural rights claims can only seem morally unjust on the basis of his own prior arguments.
117. Walzer, Spheres of Justice, pp. 31–63, 39.