“Denouncing multiculturalism has become a gate to reviving the tradition of cultural essentialism, with its belief in the superiority of European culture and myths of the white man’s burden and his civilising mission.

“In this context, the intensely rich and complex Islamic culture, which had fostered some of the most cosmopolitan and open societies in history, in Baghdad, Damascus, Cordoba, or Istanbul, has found itself reduced to a narrow set of vulgar stereotypes. These range from the subordination of women and arranged marriage to fanaticism and religious despotism. Such arguments bespeak much ignorance and prejudice.

“Above all, they overlook the fact that all cultures are subject to different modes of interpretation, and that no culture is homogenous or absolute. To reduce the Islamic culture to these phenomena is akin to identifying ‘Britishness’ with Victorian military expansion and the British massacres of natives in Kenya, Sudan, and Malawi, or seeing Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay and the burning of the corpses of so-called enemy combatants as representative of American culture.”

Soumaya Ghannoushi at Aljazeera, 11 January 2006