When the tough get going

I look forward to John Lloyd's columns in the Financial Times magazine every Saturday with a sense of anticipation which is rarely disappointed. The column is called 'The Ideas Department' although a better title might be 'The One Idea Department'.

For Lloyd, former Communist, former industrial editor of the FT, is obsessed with one question: the fight against Islamic fundamentalism and the defence of liberalism. So obsessed is he that virtually every week he returns to the theme, abandoning in the process old liberal concepts of multiculturalism and defence of civil liberties in favour of the new robust liberalism which demands that those who come to this country have to live by 'our rules' _whatever they are.

Perhaps a good editor would tell him to give it a rest and write about something else, but in this case Lloyd is the editor.

He was at it again this week. In response to a new book by an American conservative which seems in synopsis to suggest that the Muslims/ Mexicans _generously allowed in as immigrants _ are about to take over Europe/ the US, Lloyd argues for a third way.

But that will require liberals to get some backbone, to 'end the sloppy equation of being liberal with always saying yes'. The battle is to win over the hearts and minds of those who see themselves as primarily religious. 'The struggle will be _is now_at times a military or police matter', says Lloyd without missing a beat.

Let's look at these military or police struggles. Are we supposed to accept that the mayhem in Iraq, Afghanistan or Lebanon in recent years will be tolerated by the people there because it is part of the wider argument for pluralistic liberal societies? Does anyone believe they will be grateful for being invaded and occupied? Does Lloyd think that the rounding up of young Muslim men in London, the taking apart of their houses and the fear instilled in their families is leading to more dialogue and civilised behaviour?

Or could it be that the military and police matters are alienating people around the world? That they may not see integration into a society which treats them like this as desirable or possible?

Lloyd castigates separatism in all its forms, citing the black power movement of the late 1960s in the US which did not want to integrate into US society. Hardly the same as second generation Muslims _the ancestors of US blacks arrived in slave ships hundreds of years before and had suffered slavery and discrimination ever since, so they had rather a strong point.

But look why integration was right: Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell, according to Lloyd. If that's all they can expect in 40 years time, no wonder most young Muslims aren't looking to his model of integration.

Perhaps another way of looking it is that liberal society has failed. It has brought us war, racism, inequality on scales that few would have expected maybe 30 years ago.But instead of looking at its own faults, it is turning on some of the people who have gained least.

Hence liberals who support war and attacks on mulitculturalism. As John Lloyd says, 'tolerance has to be tough _ on the causes of intolerance.'

Which means it isn't really tolerance any more.