香港的通識教育一直都強調訓練學生的多元文化視野, 英國倫敦的槍殺案後, "多元文化" 卻被視為意識型態, 令到社會的區隔越來越嚴重, 公共知識份子紛紛對保守的多元文化政策作出批判, Tariq Modood 則提出以equal respect重塑多元文化, 並把多元他者納入國體. 他所提出的, 可說正中英國右派下懷:
This equal-respect approach to
multiculturalism has two important aspects. First, it takes race, sex
and sexuality beyond being merely ascriptive sources of identity,
merely categories. Race is of interest to liberal citizenship only
because no one can choose their race and so should not be discriminated
against over something over which they have no control. But if equality
is about respecting previously demeaned identities (for example, taking
pride in one’s blackness rather than in accepting it merely as a
“private” matter), then what is being addressed in anti-discrimination
or promoted as a public identity is a chosen response to one’s ascription.
Exactly the same applies to sex and
sexuality. We may not choose our sex or sexual orientation but we
choose how politically to live with it: do we keep it private or do we
make it the basis of a social movement and seek public resources and
representation for it?
The second aspect of this approach is
that it undermines a frequently-made distinction: that being a woman,
black or gay person is an ascribed, unchosen identity while being a
Muslim is about chosen beliefs, and that Muslims therefore need or
ought to have less legal protection than these other kinds of
identities. Rather, the position of Muslims in Britain today parallels
other identities of “difference” as Muslims catch up and engage with
the contemporary concept of equality....
In this light, multiculturalism can be
defined as the challenging, the dismantling, the remaking of public
identities in order to achieve an equality of citizenship that is
neither merely individualistic nor premised on assimilation.
....Perhaps one of the lessons of the current
crisis is that multiculturalists, and the left in general, have been
too hesitant about embracing our national identity and allying it with
progressive politics. The reaffirming of a plural, changing, inclusive
British identity, which can be as emotionally and politically
meaningful to British Muslims as the appeal of jihadi sentiments, is critical to isolating and defeating extremism...
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