” scene in Monty Python’s Life of Brian. Yes, apart from equality, democracy, religious tolerance and freedom of speech, British morality had done nothing for Hadil. Mr Phillips, chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, described these hard-won and magnificent freedoms as “simple truths which bind us together”. Talking about being British one cannot but adopt a Hugh Grant stumbling modesty, so ill-mannered and jingoistic does it sound to bang a drum, even very softly.
And I felt insufferably pompous even raising these questions with these bright, funny girls. I suggested they were far more British than they thought. They laughed that living in Iran and compelled to wear the hijab they would probably spend their lives trying to break the rule. “I love it here,” said Dunya, 17. “I never feel excluded in London — there are so many different cultures and we mostly get on.” So why don’t citzenship classes teach that when multiculturalism works it is because British tolerance has made it possible? And that the debate, between the West and Islam that will dominate the political agenda throughout Hadil’s lifetime amounts to more than a choice between the hijab and the thong.
Strangely hopeful, though amidst all the “bright, funny girls” who’ll find their own way of being British Muslims, there are those few dimmer, less self-possessed ones who’ll be seduced by the extremists.
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