The link I posted a couple of pages back gives a good example of a practical approach,
Rutita1 : Nira Yuval-Davis and Sukhwant Dhaliwal, women actively campaigning against fundamentalism within ethnic minority groups, at the same time as challenging racism. Real anti-fundamentalist anti-racist feminism, with a robust critique of top-down multiculturism.
25 years: women working against fundamentalism in the UK
"In London, Ken Livingstone's Greater London Council created resources for a whole new wave of secular, left, anti-racist and feminist projects that opened out political possibilities. But at the same time,
Livingstone was bolstering right wing religious groups that slipped through funding streams by projecting themselves as 'cultural projects'."
"The issues that we had raised in our critique of multiculturalism became accentuated as the number of 'religious leaders' and representatives increased exponentially. They became a critical part of New Labour's neo liberal instrumentalisation of 'community' and they were given additional spaces within which to manoeuvre."
"...we also opposed the way in which the
Stop the War Coalition responded to this new security state by building an alliance with factions of right wing Muslim Brotherhood and Jamaat-e-Islami networks in Britain. At the time, there was little scrutiny of global fundamentalist networks by either anti-racist or feminist academics and activists."
"However,
there has been an entrenchment of religious identity politics – something we spent decades contesting.
Asserting that rights need not be justified by religious texts or frameworks, but
must simply be available to everyone, requires new struggles."
Their book, which I have in front of me, is full of chapters discussing their struggle to critique and challenge top-down multiculturalism, the reactionary misogynist fundamentalism it fostered, and racism. It does this in a way that challenges identity politics. (NYD describes in her chapter how she was rejected as a 'bona fide' anti-racist activist by some groups because she fell foul of a narrow definition of "Black"). The writers also critique the limitations of their organisation (WAF), so it's a useful read not merely a hagiography.
But such approaches are ways of combating what went wrong, and showing how struggles must underline that the goals are for everyone.
