I used to think multiculturalism was the bee’s knees. Don’t get me wrong — I’m grateful Australia has an official policy that recognizes cultural diversity under the umbrella of loyalty to our nation. Unlike Europe, which is struggling with how to conceive of the French identity of Algerian-ancestry migrants, or the German identity of Turkish-ancestry migrants, true-blue Aussies have come from many different ethnic backgrounds.

Who could deny the Aussie credentials of singer John Farnham; NSW Governor Marie Bashir; AFL legend Ron Barassi; TV presenter Ernie Dingo; and comedian Magda Szubanski even though they all come from a range of different ethnic ancestries and some (Farnham and Szubanski) were born overseas.

But while multicultural accurately describes Australians, multiculturalism has its share of critics, including Andrew Bolt, who, upon losing his racial vilification case, argued that ‘multiculturalists’ have silenced his critique (Herald Sun 29/9).

The problem with multiculturalism is that it means different things to different people. Opinions on the concept vary from severe criticism on the one hand, to promoting multiculturalism as a substitute for national identity, on the other. For Bolt, it seems, multiculturalism threatens Australia’s social cohesiveness.

This interpretation belongs to what academic Geoffrey Brahm Levey in his paper The Antidote of Multiculturalism calls ‘thick nationalism’. At its extreme, this view trumpets whiteness, Anglo-ancestry and Christianity as essential to Australian identity, although Levey claims there has been a shift in emphasis from the White Australia policy era and today the distinct Anglo-Australian character and identity is a ‘cultural heritage open to all’.

Advocates of thick nationalism might have once preferred excluding cultural diversity, indeed some on the far-right might still openly advocate this. The majority of those who would adhere to thick nationalism however, would advocate assimilation as preferable to multiculturalism, accepting the inevitable reality that Australia has and continues to accept migrants from non-Anglo, non-white and non-Christian backgrounds, not to mention the inconvenient fact that Indigenous Aussies were here long before the White Fella ever sailed into Botany Bay.

Thus, for Aborigines and migrants to avail themselves of this ‘cultural heritage open to all’, they must blend in to the Anglo-Australian culture as far as is possible, excluding those factors which are impossible to change (i.e., skin colour). As Bolt asserts, they should drop ethnic markers of difference for just being ‘Australian’: in other words, they should assimilate.

According to the Oxford Dictionary of Sociology assimilation refers to the expectation that a minority or subordinate group becomes indistinguishable from the dominant host or majority group, particularly in terms of values and culture. Political scientist James Jupp notes in From White Australia to Woomera:

To many [assimilation] meant the disappearance of any characteristics which marked off individuals from each other. On this definition colour or facial features, which were inherited, made non-Europeans and their children unassimilable. This view was officially maintained well into the late 1960s as the basis for admission to Australia. The term also implied the adoption of majority culture, which was assumed to be uniform and self-evident (p22).

Although the language of assimilation fell out of favour with the introduction of Australian multiculturalism, at least at the level of official policy, the expectation that non-Anglos should quickly learn to think, speak and even look like those who already possess a uniformly self-evident Australian-ness still underlies much political and media rhetoric. White immigrants from English-speaking nations can easily assimilate, whereas others should assimilate but are hampered by differences in language, culture and even physical appearance.

Although Bolt was found guilty of vilifying the subjects of his ‘fair-skinned Aboriginal’ articles, Muslim Australians (the minority group I study and to whom I belong) regularly cop it in his columns too. Certainly the majority of commenters on his Herald Sun blog display the belief that Muslims, because of their religion, have difficulty integrating into Western societies such as Australia.

They boldly subscribe to the ‘clash of civilisations’ thesis, most prominently elaborated by Samuel Huntington in the 1990s, which was picked up by both the George W. Bush administration and the Howard government. In the context of Australia, this manifests as a concern with the inability of Muslims to integrate and asserts that Islam is wholly alien and fundamentally incompatible with an ill-defined, culturally-hegemonic, ‘Australian way of life’. It ignores the long history of Islam and Muslims as part of the Australian religious and cultural landscape, and hearkens back to that regressive notion of White Australia.

During the later years of his time as Prime Minister, Howard was quoted as saying the existence of some Muslims who are ‘utterly antagonistic to our kind of society’ is novel to the Islamic community, and ‘not a problem that we have ever faced with other immigrant communities who become easily absorbed by Australia’s mainstream’ (reported in the Age 21/2/06).

Some Australian Muslims have contributed to the ‘clash of civilisations’ perception through intemperate language; duplicity and hypocrisy in saying one thing to Muslims and another to the wider Australian public; and/or by advocating an exclusivist vision of Islam. Their stories and statements have been splashed across television and print media confirming the discourse that Muslims in Australia are alien and threatening.

Shaykh Taj El-Din Hilali has courted controversy throughout much of his public career as imam of the Lakemba mosque and former Australian Federation of Islamic Councils (AFIC) appointed mufti. Among the various inflammatory statements he has been accused of making, are denial of the extent of the Holocaust as a `Zionist lie’, for which he was ejected from the (now defunct) Muslim Community Reference Group (as reported in the Australian 18/7/06), and suggesting that female rape victims invite attack by dressing immodestly. In 2006, as part of an Arabic-language Ramadan sermon, Hilali said: ‘If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street, or in the garden or in the park, or in the backyard without a cover, and the cats come and eat it, whose fault is it, the cats or the uncovered meat?’ (The Australian 26/10/06). Sustained negative public opinion eventually resulted in Hilali retiring from his position as mufti the following year.

But these are two extremes of a spectrum of attitudes about Islam and Muslims in Australia. By and large, Muslim Australians feel connected to their Australian identity, despite the exclusivity regularly displayed by some segments of the media and some of our politicians and community leaders.

In research I’ve conducted as part of my work at the Centre for Islam and the Modern World, I have helped survey 600 Muslims living in New South Wales and Victoria. The vast majority of Muslims who filled in a lengthy questionnaire asking about their thoughts about life in Australia indicated they placed a high level of importance on preserving their Australian identity. As one bloke wrote: ‘I am a Muslim and an Australian; they are completely different concepts and for me work greatly together. I love being a Muslim Australian and an Australian Muslim.’

But getting back to multiculturalism, advocates of thick nationalism presume that the policy denies, or downplays, the existence and value of an Anglo-Australian dominant culture. It is this second presumption that is the preserve of what Levey calls post-nationalism.

Advocates at this end of the multiculturalism spectrum argue Australia should take a neutral position in regards to culture and national identity, or even describe multiculturalism itself as the foundation of national identity. However, they fail to recognise that for practical reasons states have to endorse at least some cultural aspects, in the choice of a national language; public holidays; histories taught and official insignia. Furthermore, values — whichever are chosen — are not derived from a cultural vacuum. Multiculturalism cannot be taken for those symbols themselves, as it is really a set of policies and programs that support the national identity.

This brings us to Levey’s ‘thin nationalism’, which recognises the state’s playing at least a minimal role in defining national identity, in the realms of language and social institutions, as well as the right of diverse cultures to manifest themselves in society in the realms of religion, family customs, and personal lifestyles.

But I don’t like the term ‘multiculturalism’ anymore. It carries too much baggage and as I hope I’ve pointed out, can mean different things to different people. I never imagined I’d say this, but I hope we drop it.

Instead, I like what the American academic Bruce B. Lawrence in New faiths, old Fears, calls kaleidoculture. Where the best interpretation of multiculturalism merely implies the existence of a number of cultures co-existing, kaleidoculture suggests a creative interplay between cultures. Beauty — the good society — is produced not from a single culture or even the existence of a number of cultures, but from the interaction between many different cultural facets.

In his book Lawrence describes kaleidoculture as evoking ‘a changing spectrum of cultural values and experiences, each set of which is bright and scintillating, worthy of attention, examination, and appreciation as well as debate, critique, and transformation’.

Kaleidoculture answers the criticisms of thick nationalists who fear multiculturalism a) diminishes the value of Anglo-Australian culture, and b) prevents criticism of particular undesirable cultural traits and practices (e.g., caste-based discrimination, female genital cutting, homophobia, child beauty pageants).

The Australia I love and cherish is one built upon the idea that difference isn’t bad. Our cultures are not to be feared, hidden, or assimilated, but to be remembered and celebrated where they are good, and challenged and changed where they are not. From this we build a common future for ourselves, and our children.

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Rachel Woodlock is a researcher at the Centre for Islam and the Modern World, Monash University. She has a website at: www.rachelwoodlock.com and can be found on Twitter @rachmw

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