Interview – Tariq Modood |
*Originally published in 2021 and preserved as part of our archive project. E-International Relations is free to read. We rely on reader support to make this possible.
Professor Tariq Modood is the founding Director of the Bristol University Research Centre for the Study of Ethnicity and Citizenship. He has held numerous grants, consultancies, and written many publications on political philosophy, sociology and public policy. He is the co-founding editor of the international journal Ethnicities and his work is frequently cited by policymakers and practitioners. Prof. Modood has served in various capacities in public policy, including being an Adviser to the Muslim Council of Britain. He was elected as a Fellow of the British Academy in 2017 and is currently a Visiting Fellow at Cumberland Lodge, Windsor. Over the last 25 years he has worked on: theory and politics of racism, racial equality, multiculturalism and secularism, with especial reference to British Asian Muslims; ethnic identities, national identities and the 'second generation'; ethnic disadvantage and progress in employment and education; comparisons within and between Western Europe and North America; the politics of being Muslim in the West. The topics he is currently most focused on are the political theory and sociology of multiculturalism, interculturalism, and secularism.
How has the way you understand the world changed over time, and what (or who) prompted the most significant shifts in your thinking?
There are two significant changes that have very much influenced my thinking about multiculturalism in a country like Britain. Firstly, it's the emergence of religion or religious identity as very important to some minority groups, especially groups of South Asian origin (e.g. Sikhs, Hindus, and Muslims) like my own family. If you look at theories of multiculturalism, as they emerged in the 1980s, they actually didn't have very much to say about religion. It was assumed that multiculturalism was more about race, ethnicity, and related culture - the latter keeping religion more or less in the margins. I also think that politically, very few politicians wanted religion to have the profile and centrality that it has come to have in what one might call majority-minority relations in Western Europe but perhaps also in other parts of the world, like Canada which in many ways has started off the idea of state multiculturalism.
I started working on these issues of racial equality, ethnic minorities, and identities; I, too, wasn't expecting religion to come to have the salience that it did. Everything shifted for me in relation to a particular controversy, namely on the novel by Salman Rushdie called The Satanic Verses which was published in late 1988. There was a lot of anger from some Muslims, demonstrations, and a lot of controversy both in Britain and internationally. It made me realize how important Muslim identity was to Muslims and that multiculturalism would have to take that on board.
The second shift for me is that prior to the importance of religion was the importance of identity. This goes back to the new social movements of the 1960s and 70s which include feminism, gay pride, and - especially coming from the US - the struggle for Black dignity. I was very influenced by that and by political theorists like Bhikhu Parekh, Charles Taylor, and Iris Marion Young in thinking about these issues of identity as issues that were not reducible to the more classical arguments about equality which tended to have an economic character. Identity seemed to be something that people valued for itself, not because of its relation to economic equality, for instance. When I read the book Justice and the Politics of Difference by American political theorist Iris Marion Young in particular, I realized that these identities were identities that people should be able to assert into the general politics of their country. They weren't simply for what one might call one’s own community, they were identities that were part of arguments about equality. It's because if people didn't respect that identity of yours that was important to you and that identity historically had been the basis for racism or inferiorization, they weren't really respecting you as an equal citizen. Those are the two important changes and shifts in the world for me: the emphasis both from politics and from theorists on minorities being able to assert their identity in the public space and secondly, what I saw as a Muslim assertiveness which indicated to me that religion and religious identity had to be central to multiculturalism.
Where do you see the most exciting research/debates happening in your field?
One of the frontiers of multiculturalism has to do with the place of religion in public life. This connects us to the topic of political secularism. I don't interpret secularism to mean a complete separation of church and state or of religion and politics. But, clearly, secularism assumes there are two modes of authority - religion and politics - and that political authority, reasoning, and purposes, have some kind of autonomy and independent character of their own and are not reducible to—or should not be governed by—religious authority. That kind of secularism is a very common idea and political practice in so many parts of the world, as long as we don't assume that it means an absolute separation of church and state because that hardly exists anywhere. The relationship between religion, especially minority religious identities, and political secularism is one of the exciting areas for me.
Another exciting area is that over some years, I've come to the view that........