Vital Interests: Rafi, thanks very much for joining us today on the Vital Interests forum. We will be discussing the important topic of multiculturalism which is impacting not only where I am in the United States, but societies in Europe and throughout the world. You have examined multiculturalism for many years and have just published Just, Reasonable Multiculturalism: Liberalism, Culture, and Coercion. The book is a comprehensive study of the relationship between liberalism and multiculturalism. You delve into all the challenges and complementarities between the ideals of liberal democracies and the realities of multiculturalism. 

For many years, multiculturalism seemed to be what everyone wanted. Cities were praised for their diverse populations. Universities sought to select a student community that offered a multicultural experience. Corporations endeavored to demonstrate they supported a multicultural workforce. Diversity was held up to be a cultural influence that should be embraced.

But in recent years concepts of multiculturalism have gradually changed from being something that was thought to be so positive to being something perceived as needing to be controlled and limited because it was threatening the cohesion of communities and nations.  Were we all living in an intellectual and cultural elite bubble where we thought of multiculturalism as a positive contribution when in fact many others in our societies saw it as a challenge to their identity and a problem that must be confronted?

Raphael Cohen-Almagor: I tell you why I decided to write this book and that should provide an answer to your question. There are traditionally two main attacks on multiculturalism that I wrestled with. I reasoned with them and debated the critique. One is that multiculturalism is bad for democracy. Why is that? Because when people speak about democracy, they speak about liberal democracy. In liberalism, everything stems from the individual and everything returns to the individual. The individual is at the center. This is evident in the liberal tradition. This view was developed in the philosophies of Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau, Mill, Bentham and, in our time, Rawls and Dworkin. You see that what their approach tries to do is benefit the individual.

Liberalism holds that people should be able to invest in themselves, develop their autonomy, and then all of us are going to lead society forward. If you focus on group rights, those rights might come at the expense of individual rights. Group rights might trump individual rights. This is the tension. And it's a clear tension. It's understandable. What you need to do is to be cautious about this potential tension, and ensure that while you are giving credit and acknowledgment to group rights, those group rights will not undermine individual rights. I think that individual rights and groups rights are reconcilable, that it can be done. 

The second attack on multiculturalism is the feminist attack. It holds that multiculturalism is bad for women. Feminists argue that when you promote group rights, someone has to pay. Usually, that someone is a woman. Indeed, if you look at problematic multicultural practices in the world, the majority of them have to do with women – murder for family honor, female circumcision, female genital mutilation, suttee (widow burning), infanticide (which usually involves female babies), discrimination of women in education and when it comes to property rights, as well as arranged and forced marriage. All of these practices are problematic.

By giving value to group rights, we might legitimize the infliction of harm on women. This is why it is important to speak about supporting women.

Then, in 2010- 2011, three leaders of the Western world, Angela Merkel, David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy stepped forward, one after the other, and said that multiculturalism has failed. PM Cameron went as far as arguing that multiculturalism had fostered extremist ideology and radicalization among British Muslims.

This is when I said "Hey, hold on here. This is over the top. This is really awful. This is a devastating attack on multiculturalism.” If these national leaders are saying such things either they don't know what they're speaking about or they just want to somehow end multiculturalism. They want to stop immigration. They want to stop the integration of their societies with others. They had lost any appreciation for the richness that pluralism has to offer.

This is when I decided that now it's time to write a book because there is an urgent need to show that multiculturalism is not the enemy. Years of research showed me that it is possible to reconcile multiculturalism and liberalism. I wanted to write a book that shows that liberalism is not only compatible with multiculturalism, but also that demonstrates why multiculturalism is so vital for the growth of a modern democratic state. Of course, multicultural practices have to be within limitations. Not every cultural practice has to be tolerated. We have to acknowledge boundaries. The boundaries need to be just, sensible and reasonable. This task requires painstaking reasoning and analysis. My book outlines just and reasonable theory that anchors the reasoning, showing that it is possible to reconcile between multiculturalism and liberalism.

VI: Let’s investigate the notion that multiculturalism is considered bad for democracy. Within that framework, democracy as a governing methodology is supposed to be a dynamic process. Citizens within a democratic system constantly work together to define the community and the society that they want. The state they form can be as inclusive as they want It to be regarding various religions, racial makeups, and different ethnicities. Why did the idea of the acceptance of difference, of creating a more diverse and dynamic society, become such a negative concept in liberal democracies?

Raphael Cohen-Almagor: As explained, there is a clash between group rights and individual rights. What we need is to safeguard both, and to make sure that one does not come at the expense of another. Tribes and cultural groups have entitlement to group rights, especially if they have certain traditions, certain history, that put them together for a very long time. People want their tradition to flourish and to be maintained. We need to acknowledge this. At the same time, we need to understand that people live within a certain framework within a country. You noticed from the book’s introduction that I'm not a universalist, I'm not claiming that this theory is for any society, whatever it is. The theory of just, reasonable multiculturalism is suitable only for democracies.

That does not mean that I believe that the principles that I formulate should not be suitable for all societies.  I strongly believe in them. I believe they are just and reasonable. But one needs to distinguish between the ought and the is. Being a realist, I acknowledge that I can endlessly speak about women’s rights, but my endorsement of women’s rights is not going to hold water in places like North Korea or Saudi Arabia. It's not that I think that the principles of just, reasonable multiculturalism are deficient.  I simply don't think they're going to be effective in certain countries. That's why the theory is most effective in liberal democracies. Within democracy, there are certain foundations that underpin society. I argue that the most important ones are respect for others and not harming others.

You can speak about promoting group rights as long as you maintain the principles of respect for others and not harming others. When you start to look at others with disrespect or you want to harm them, then this is when the liberal state should intervene to prevent harm. Then the liberal society may resort to coercion to prevent abuse. That is why the word ‘coercion’ is in the subtitle. 

Now, there is a presumption against coercion, that it is a negative action, but actually, we sometimes have to resort to coercion when we believe that something is right and we wish to promote it and also when we believe that something is wrong and we want to stop it. For example, there's no way that you will be able to convince me that in certain circumstances murder for family honor is justified. I advocate the adoption of coercive means to curtail this cultural practice.

My view on murder for family honor is a principled one. No matter how hard you're going to try to implore me to accept murder for family honor, I'm not going to be convinced, I believe that it's wrong. This is where democracy should step forward and say: not here, you can't do it here. If you want to do this to your women, then you have to leave. We who govern the liberal state are not going to allow you to do this in the confines of a liberal democracy. We should always strike a balance between group rights and individual rights. This balance we have to weigh all the time. We should never ignore individual rights.

VI: What you're saying is that there has to be a consensus on norms. Without a consensus, then this whole model falls apart. This is a real challenge now because in the United States as well as in Europe, what we understood to be established cultural norms, have become undefined. The language we used has taken on different meanings, i.e. in the Trumpian notion of alternative facts. 

We can see this emanating in the rhetoric from populist movements in the US and Europe that view immigration as a threat to the very fabric of their societies.  If you allow in immigrants who are Muslims, who are Hispanic, ory Asians, then that leads to a harmful dilution of their national cultural identity and values. So is coercion by a liberal democratic state to limit the numbers of migrants coming across your borders justified because of this perceived harm?

Raphael Cohen-Almagor: This populism is also widespread in Europe. Here in Britain it was almost laughable if it was not so sad when there was the referendum about Brexit, and people were asked why they supported Brexit, and some answered:  "I don't want these Paki [a derogatory word for people from Pakistan] here. I don't want these people from Bangladesh here." They simply didn't understand that Brexit was about Europe. They thought it's about immigration per se. Some politicians intentionally resorted to disinformation and exploited people’s ignorance. Politicians used racism and anti-immigration for wanton political ends.

VI: You mention immigration as one of the primary reasons many in the UK supported Brexit. In fact, there had been people from India, from Pakistan, from the Caribbean, in Britain for decades. Several generations have successfully integrated and are part of British society. In France there are citizens from families who immigrated from former French colonies in Africa. In Germany there is a large Turkish population whose parents came as guest workers who are now integrated.

What was the turning point when immigration became so feared, when multiculturalism became seen, as you say, as bad for democracy? Was it this connection to terrorism? Did the 9/11 attacks in the United States and attacks in Europe that were tied to Muslim terrorist groups fuel anti-immigration sentiments?  Was this a triggering point where populists could argue that borders needed to be closed to protect the homeland from outsiders?

Raphael Cohen-Almagor: We see this in all countries that are based on immigration. The United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom, and Israel, to some extent. You find these tensions in places that attract many people from all corners of the world. Context is important. Each country has a different history and circumstances. The problem is self-serving populism, populism that is of service to some irresponsible politicians who want to harvest personal gains. They pick easy, vulnerable targets, overlook history and blur particular circumstances. Instead of careful argumentation they offer crude generalizations. Those self-serving politicians hammer certain ideas that hurt minorities, and of course, it's very easy to hurt minorities because they are powerless.

You can hurt them quite easily and you can build on hurting them to your advantage. This is common. And then there are issues that are specific for each and every country. For Britain, one of the repeated claims was that immigrants are taking “our jobs”, which I think is false. Curiously, if you look at where the Brexiters live, where Brexit is powerful, it is in places where there is little immigration. In places where there's a lot of immigration like London, which is one of the most multicultural cities in the world, benefiting from millions of people who come from all over to work in the British capital, there was very little support for Brexit.

VI: So the good and bad of multiculturalism is often a matter of perception? It is important to talk about rights, but maybe the real problem is perception? I am not sure how many people even understand the restrictions that many religious and ethnic groups put upon women or others that might be perceived by liberal standards as bad, or as you have stated, harmful to individual rights.

In Britain and other liberal democracies, there are attempts to accommodate religious groups in areas of family law. Marriages take place within a certain religious context, as does the education of children, inheritance procedures, and other rules not deemed to be harmful. Is it the responsibility of the government to point out that these multicultural groups are a valid and important part of a society, rather than them being the object of political maneuvering? Where should that message come from?

Raphael Cohen-Almagor: I think that it's a very good question and I think that it has many layers of answering. I agree that there is a matter of perception, and I agree that there are unfortunate populist answers, and I agree there's a lot of ignorance. At the same time, I also think that multiculturalism is not only a matter of perception. There are concrete issues that we need to understand, and we need to find a way around them. The logic of my new book is explained in the first four chapters. These chapters provide the underpinning theory for the entire book.

In the first chapter, I discuss what is democracy, what is liberalism, and what is justice. The second chapter explains multiculturalism, and what is reasonable. Chapter three is about compromise and deliberative democracy. Because for me, meaningful democracy is participatory democracy. If people do not participate in democracy, it's a dead democracy. It will be very easy for politicians to manipulate the system and to take the system for a ride, to exploit it for self-partisan advantage. Participation and deliberative democracy are extremely important.

The fourth theoretical chapter concerns coercion. We have a negative knee-jerk reaction to coercion. We don't like coercion. But when you think about it, it's very difficult to find any form of life that is totally free from coercion. Many societies have compulsory education systems. In every society, people pay taxes. The majority of us don't enjoy paying taxes; we would like to pay less taxes, but we understand that we need to pay taxes in order to maintain society. The government needs to rely on a certain income to provide for the social good. We all have an interest in clean streets, lighted roads, a functioning justice system and effective law enforcement.

So actually, coercion is part of life and we accept that sometimes it is necessary. When applying the theory of just, reasonable multiculturalism to the case studies, I first examined the more tangible cases. If I swing my hand and punch your nose, you are going to bleed.  Some cases are easier for convincing even the most stubborn libertarian of the need for state intervention to stop physical harm. Cases in point are murder for family honor or Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). Other cases are more difficult to evaluate, and these are likely to be more controversial. A case in point is male circumcision. 

The discussion on male circumcision was one of the most, if not the most difficult chapter that I've written. I invested a lot of time trying to devise a just and reasonable compromise. I invested a lot of effort because I didn't want to alienate Judaism. I needed to balance between orthodoxy -- Jewish orthodoxy, or Muslim orthodoxy or Christian orthodoxy, on the one hand, and avoiding torture of young children, on the other. How do you do that? The problem is that Jewish law (halacha) objects to anaesthesia by injection and the traditional circumcisers (mohalim) are not qualified nor allowed to perform injections. Research shows, however, that anesthesia is crucial in order to avoid suffering.

I had endless discussions with doctors, rabbis and experts to find a compromise until I was able to find a way. It took me months to investigate a way out of this conundrum.

Then the book discusses cases where there is no physical harm. In this context, I probe issues like arranged and forced marriage, the denial of education to children, denying education to women, and denying property to women when they marry outside their tribe, marry outside their group.

The last part of the book is concerned with two different societies:  France and Israel. I question their liberalism. I think many French and Israelis perceive their respective societies as liberal. I raise serious reservations. 

Why are they not liberal? Because they take very seriously the issue of security, the claim that multiculturalism contributes to terrorism. Here you have two societies that implement policies that override multiculturalism in the name of security. Both see themselves as justified in doing this. France vis-a-vis its Muslim community, and Israel vis-a-vis the 21% Palestinian minority. I argue that if France and Israel want to be liberal, if they want to be just societies, they have to change their attitude to minority cultures.

VI: Let’s discuss the diversity and accommodation that exists in every country. Early in your book you talked about the poly-national and multiethnic characteristics of different societies. Many nations are made up of people who live in different parts of a country whose clans or ethnic groups have lived there for generations although they may have come from other places. They may speak a different language or dialect and have unique religious practices. They may be engaged in different kinds of work - fishing, farming, mining. But there is a sense of acceptance of their customs and practices within a national identity. Is the problem with current multicultural accommodation not so much a group’s religion or customs but rather the fact that they are the newcomers, the outsiders, and their acceptance takes a number of generations to be achieved?

Raphael Cohen-Almagor: I think it's different from one society to another. You see cultural groups like the Amish. I don't think they are going to change. They wish to be closed. The same can be said about Orthodox Judaism and Orthodox Islam. The Chinese people establish their own communities when they immigrate. The same is true, at least to some extent, with regard to Italian immigrants. In many big cities in Europe and the US you'll find Chinatowns and Little Italy. The Chinese and the Italian like to maintain a sense of community. 

Certainly, religion can be a barrier. If religion was not a barrier, we would have only one religion. If you say that Judaism is like Christianity, and Buddhism is like Islam, religions would lose their uniqueness. If every religion is the same, and there is nothing special about it, people would find it very easy to leave their religion and to join different religions in accordance with, say, geography, where people reside. To maintain a sense of identity, each and every religion sets boundaries, distinguishes itself from others, and provides precepts designed to enable the development of significant bonds. Religions invest in developing and maintaining a specific and separate identity. It's important to them.

If you take religion very, very seriously, then the boundaries are going to be maintained. If you think that they are penetrable and people can move around, then the sense of a close tribe is going to evaporate. People then become part of the larger society. Liberalism believes that it is the individual who should be making this judgment call about religious participation. As a liberal, for me, it is important that you as an individual will make the decision that best works for you. The group should not be making the decision for you. Freedom from religion is as important as freedom of religion. Freedom to change one’s religion is as important as the freedom to keep one’s religion.

VI: Today we have ubiquitous social and mass media. In previous times, with the development of radio, television, and popular newspapers and magazines people were exposed to how others lived.  Language became more homogenized and national identities became reinforced. But what we see today is social media/mass media being used to divide rather than unite societies. Suspicion of immigrants and fears of Muslim terrorism stoke negative attitudes about multiculturalism and erode the norms that holds liberal democracies together. So rather than making progress toward integration of other cultures into our societies, we see it's going backwards to nativism and isolation. Isn’t this the stark reality we face?

Raphael Cohen-Almagor: Yes, I totally agree with you. And this is unfortunate. I, on the other hand, am always looking for bridges rather than walls. I believe that the way that you can penetrate walls is through communication, through education, through means of persuasion, through a genuine effort of trying to understand each other. I think it's quite natural for us to be afraid of what is foreign to us. It's natural. It's about self-preservation. If you don't know something, you'll be afraid. We always look for the familiar. Consider the following. You go to a different city, you travel abroad and you come to Stockholm. You've never been to Stockholm before. You'd be hesitant where to go. Travelers know that they need to read something about their new destination before they travel. They need to know where not to go. If you find yourself in a place where people look totally different from you, you'll be hesitant. You might feel unsafe because they don't look like you. You might feel strange.

People have a natural inclination to be cautious when we encounter the unfamiliar. But once you become acquainted with the new experiences, you strive to understand the others’ way of life, you are willing to open up to different reasoning, then bridges are created. Then people are able to overcome their initial fears and hesitations. Then they may realize that the color of the skin, or the color of the hair, or the color of the eyes are of no concern. Then we learn to appreciate and even like differences. What matters is what kind of human you are. It is the heart that matters. This realization takes some sort of investment. You need to overcome your own inhibitions, and then you understand that all those barriers are just artifacts. They're not really that important.

The essence is in the inside. The essence is humanity. To fathom humanity takes work. Here, education and communication, including social media, can break the barriers. They can make something that is foreign understandable. Once we start understanding differences, it becomes more natural to us and then we may conclude, "Well, they're like us." 

I was never afraid of multiculturalism. I actually celebrate it. I think it's wonderful. I think it's empowering. I think that the world would be extremely boring for all of us without the rich diversity of colors, tastes, sounds, and movement that multiculturalism contributes to all societies.

VI: Do you think the younger generations now coming into their own are more accepting of others, more open to the idea that society benefits from a pluralistic, multicultural population? 

Raphael Cohen-Almagor: Yes. I think the message is positive, and I think that the younger generation in Western democracies is decidedly more open. There is a significant inter-generational dialogue going on about these issues. I have discussions with my children that I never had with my parents. Not only that, I don't think that I could have had such a discussion with my parents. Now people are demanding that we should stop asking people for their gender. Until not long ago, such a proposition was unthinkable. The fact that some people call themselves “they” and refuse to be narrowly identified as either male or female is an important step forward in societal freedom. This flux in social norms supports more positive attitudes regarding multicultural contributions.

VI: All this goes back to the title of your book Just, Reasonable Multiculturalism which is a goal liberal democracies can strive for. We shouldn't be too pessimistic about the rhetoric we hear from those opposed to multiculturalism if we accept that any viable future for the global community lies in cooperation and acceptance of our common humanity.

Raphael Cohen-Almagor: This is the message I would like my book to convey. I would like to mention the book’s cover that I selected. 

It shows the Old City of Jerusalem at dusk which for me is a very moving sight. I chose this photo because you see a formidable tall wall and inside the wall there are bright lights. This is symbolic. Jerusalem is sacred to Jews, Muslims and Christians. It is a Biblical city, with rich history and multi layers of cultures. We have to break the walls between people in order for us to embrace multiculturalism, and then we can see the light. There's so much light inside the walls. 

If I may, I would also like to mention three individuals to whom I dedicate this book. These three people influenced my multiculturalism research more than any others. The first is Yehuda Elkana. Yehuda was the president of the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, a well-known think-tank in Israel. Yehuda embraced me when I returned to Israel after four years at Oxford. He gave me my first job and introduced me to the European Project. That was quite a unique group of people because it included Israeli-Jews, Israeli-Palestinians, and Germans. There were not many forums in which Israeli-Jews and Israeli-Palestinians regularly met on equal basis. The idea behind the European Project was to examine to what extent Europe influenced the Middle East and to what extent the Middle East influenced Europe. This was my ticket to multiculturalism and Yehuda was responsible for that ticket. Yehuda died in 2012. He was a brilliant intellectual. 

The second influential person is Will Kymlicka who also graduated from Oxford and quickly made a name for himself in the field of multiculturalism. I found his writings thoughtful and inspiring. Kymlicka’s thinking has influenced my writing and it continues to stimulate me. The third person is my good friend Bhikhu Parekh who is one of the major world authorities on multiculturalism. Bhikhu graciously and attentively read each and every book chapter and commented on it. I cannot thank him enough. 

VI: Thank you, Rafi, for this engaging conversation on your important new book. I am sure those who read it will appreciate the challenges liberal democracies face balancing individual and group rights but will also learn the vital role pluralism plays in enriching our societies.

Raphael Cohen-Almagor: Thank you - it has been my pleasure. 

Raphael Cohen-Almagor completed his DPhil in Political Theory at St. Catherine’s College, University of Oxford, where he worked with Geoffrey Marshall, Wilfrid Knapp and Isaiah Berlin. He is now Professor and Chair of Politics, University of Hull. Raphael taught, inter alia, at Oxford (UK), Jerusalem, Haifa (Israel), UCLA, Johns Hopkins (USA) and Nirma University (India). He was also Senior Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington DC, and Distinguished Visiting Professor, Faculty of Laws, University College London. He is the founder of Israel’s “Second Generation to the Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance” Organization, The University of Haifa Center for Democratic Studies, The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute Medical Ethics Think-tank, and The University of Hull Middle East Study Group. Raphael has published extensively in the fields of politics, philosophy, media ethics, medical ethics, law, sociology and history. His main books are: The Boundaries of Liberty and Tolerance (1994), The Right to Die with Dignity (2001), Speech, Media and Ethics (2001, 2005), Euthanasia in The Netherlands (2004), The Scope of Tolerance (2006, 2007), The Democratic Catch (2007), Confronting the Internet's Dark Side (2015), and Just, Reasonable Multiculturalism (2021). He Is now working on Resolving the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: A Critical Study of Peace Mediation, Facilitation and Negotiations between Israel and the PLO (forthcoming 2023).