These Values Are Not British-Owned

Schahrazade Halfaoui fails to see the Union Jack painted through core ‘British values’.

The birth of my son made me nervous. As a young Muslim mother I was hugely proud of my baby boy, and of course I wanted him to follow the path of Islam – as I still do. But as well as my duty of care to my son, I also felt a sense of duty to the nation – Britain – which has enabled me to make a home here. Would the two cultures clash, I wondered. Would I find myself neglecting one set of loyalties in order not to betray the other? Little did I know, there was no need to worry on this score.

This was before I found out what British values supposedly mean.  According to prime minister David Cameron, British values are defined as freedom, tolerance, respect for the rule of law and promoting democracy. Thankfully, each one of these is something that, as a Muslim, I was already at home with. So there was no need for me to experience conflicting loyalties or undergo a steep learning curve: problem solved; sighs of relief all round.

Ironically, however, this solution only presents another problem. I’m fairly sure that almost every religion promotes such values – not least my own Islam. In which case, how are these values particularly ‘British’?

Now I find myself disagreeing with the prime minister even more that I feared. It’s not to do with the importance of such values, since we both share them; it’s because he wants to identify them as exclusively ‘British’. Sounds to me like creeping colonisation all over again, this time of taking over moral ground rather than geographical territory.

I’m sorry, David Cameron, but there’s nothing uniquely British about these values. So either you admit that they are shared across the world, or tell us something else that is exclusively British.

P.S. So far none of your crowd has come up with anything extra.

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