By: Nasrin Parvaz

Multiculturalism

What is meant by multicultural society? What does culture mean in this context? Is culture the way people talk? Are their tone and accent or high or low pitches of sound part of culture? Or is it to do with how people eat? That some people eat with a fork, some with a spoon, some uses different kinds and sizes of fork and spoon for each, meal and some use chopsticks whatever they eat. But the way people eat depends on their social status or position. Or perhaps culture is something to do with the way that people make love. Or is it something about people’s understanding of love? Perhaps culture is the way that people laugh. Everyone has their own unique laugh. People of different colour and gender, regardless were they are born, laugh. Some laugh shyly, some loudly, some with low pitch, some laugh like birds, some laugh from the heart, some from noise. But everybody laughs, though in some countries laughing in the streets by women is considered bad.

Perhaps culture is the way people sleep and snore. Or the way people walk. Some people walk hurriedly, some with leisure, never in a rush. Perhaps culture is the way women do their make up. Sometimes one can say which woman is from which country by looking at her make up. That is why women with the most make up and definite facial foundation and outstanding lipsticks are recognized as Iranian. Because in Iran women are forbidden to wear make up. If the culture of multiculturalism fits with one of the above definitions then multiculturalism is a beautiful thing. It is like walking in a garden with flowers of all colour, shape, size and scent.

I’m thinking about multicultural society and walking in a London street, when a person who looks like hezbollah passes me while his gaze provokes me to look at him and his steps, while thinking that they all look the same. Don’t they? They have the same beard, the same hungry eyes when looking at women. From Iran to London and from Iraq to Lebanon they all look the same. They have the same gaze and think the same about women. They all share the same jargon and the same attitude. It’s like they all are versions of one person, the mohammad. No matter how many million they are, they all look and think the same! As I pass him thinking about his type and distracted from my original thought of multiculturalism, I can see a small girl is following him like a shadow. She too gazes at me, but with a different expression from her father. I wonder what is in her eyes, a plea? I look back again to see her back, and see that she is doing the same. She must be ten years old. She has a scarf on her head and a dress on, which shapes her like a nun. I wonder if I could read her eyes. Did she wish to be as free as me? Doesn’t she wish to loose her hair in the wind and play like a bird? I bet she does. Her gaze on my back was saying that.

I can say that the eyes of that girl told me a lot about multiculturalism. That it means we must stop merely criticising each other’s practices which we believe are wrong. That multiculturalism is the name of this era for the ban on freedom of expression; the ban on condemning the medieval treatment of women. That it is an excuse for closing our eyes on girl children abuse. It is a safeguard for abusive men to exercise their power over women and children on the plea that they are his wife and children. It is a new term for some men’s exercise of slavery, sexual slavery of other women and other children. As long as they are not European, it is fine, because it is their culture and we live in a multicultural society. So accepting a multicultural society means living in a neighbourhood in which women are beaten and children are forced to observe Islamic dress code and grow up with depression. Yet not only do they think it is fine, but someone like Blair may feel pride of living amidst multiculturalism. I wonder what he would do if he hears a woman’s cries of pain from number 11, and he looks out of window and sees the man is beating his wife!

Multiculturalism at home means it is not your business that some people act like apes, and in the global terms it means it is not your business that your government helps the dictatorial regimes. Multiculturalism means keeping quiet about your objections.

2005