Sarfraz Manzoor

I have been in Berlin since Wednesday to attend a conference organised by the British Embassy in Germany on the issues facing Muslims in Europe. I was in the fortunate position to not actually have to do anything at the conference except listen and learn. What was most interesting about listening to the participants was to compare and contrast the experiences of Muslims in Germany and those in Britain. Some of the fundamental questions that are facing both countries and communities are the same- how to negotiate competing identities, how to communicate to the wider community- but British Muslims seem to be much further down the road than German Muslims. I think part of the reason for this is that Germany is only recently adjusting to the concept that its Muslim community will not be returning to the countries of their origin; the assumption that underlined German identity was that the immigrants from Turkey were simply guests who would return back. The Muslims in Britain did not entertain the idea of returning seriously even if they had ambivalent views about the country they had moved to.

Multiculturalism seems to encourage culinary metaphors. The United States is often described as a melting pot, Canada is depicted as a salad where each group is seperate but adds to create something different. One of the speakers at the conference suggested that the ideal for Britain could be inspired by a Lancashire hotpot where each vegetable retained its individual identity but each was also changed by all the other vegetables. That seems a rather appealing metaphor to me and if we could work towards the hotpot model it might save us from getting into a stew.