Roger Griffin is professor in Modern History at Oxford Brookes University. He is the author of over 100 publications — and is considered one of the world’s leading authorities on Fascism. Read more about him on Wikipedia. Video on "The dangerous dream of reshaping a clean, original civilization" As long as the uniqueness of a culture is asserted in an integrative spirit as just one of an individual’s sources of belonging—and the principle of multiple identities is recognized and promoted throughout society in education, jobs, the media, and institutions—then multi-culturalism can be a source of newness and mutual enrichment. Everyone can celebrate having a ‘hyphenated’ identity with plural belongings and self-descriptions. But this means actively combating identificatory relationships with one’s home culture or one particular identity—that lessen the humanity of the other. Book by Roger Griffin Terrorist's Creed: Fanatical Violence and the Human Need for Meaning For information on ordering through Amazon, PLEASE CLICK HERE. Terrorist's Creed casts a penetrating beam of understanding into the disturbing and murky psychological world of fanatical violence, explaining how the fanaticism it demands stems from the profoundly human need to imbue existence with meaning and transcendence.

The United Nations, Amnesty International, Oxfam, Médecins sans Frontières, interfaith and intercultural groups such as the Dialogue Society; the continuous work of liberal newspapers, TV stations, educationalists, and social workers in many societies—to oppose racism and social exclusion for many ‘out-groups’. These are just a few of the more conspicuous expressions of the countervailing Velvet Revolution of transcultural humanism.

Mixed marriages are becoming increasingly common throughout the democratic world; moderate forms of Christianity and Islam vastly outweigh exclusive fanatical and fundamentalist forms statistically, no matter how hidden by the headlines.

The fusion of cultures through sport, music, cooking and ethnic groups is becoming more powerful throughout the non-totalitarian world. Multilinguism is soaring, and social contacts between those of different faiths—form an irresistible force for humanistic change defying all those who try to crush otherness in the name of Tradition or Purity.

When the same news bulletin reports both on the advance of Isis in Syria and on the departure of NHS and British army volunteers from the UK to fight the Ebola epidemic, we see the double helix of belonging at work. In fact, the modern age has brought more and more scientific refutation of the assumption that human beings are by nature aggressive, violent and territorial.

Social scientists such as Robert Lifton in The Protean Self have refuted naïve premises about the incapacity of human beings to accommodate plural cultural identities and ‘selves’, an ability which lies at the basis of integrative multiculturalism, multi-nationalities, multi-lingualism, and transcultural or transfaith intercultural relations and families. History has unearthed numerous societies which were already melting-pots of different races and cultures, notably Baghdad, Alexandria, and Southern Spain in the Middle Ages.

Modern genetics and DNA research has systematically deconstructed and refuted the notion of biologically separate or pure races and emphasized the extraordinary intermingling of racial groups that has occurred in prehistorical times mixing and merging genetic material, even in countries allegedly of ‘pure’ race such as Japan.

Three individuals who suffered persecution by a military regime, a communist state, and Jihadist fanaticism respectively have become brilliant advocates for a transcultural humanism. In her speech to Oxford University made during the ceremony which conferred on her an Honorary Degree, Aung San Suu Kyi stressed the humanizing impact of her time there as a student through its revelation of the best of human beings, namely their capacity to transcend culture and gender:

The most important thing for me about Oxford was not what I learnt there in terms of set texts and set books we had to read, but in terms of a respect for the best in human civilisation. And the best in human civilisation comes from all parts of the world. It is not limited to Oxford; it is not limited to Burma; it is not limited to any other country. But the fact that in Oxford I had learned to respect all that is the best in human civilisation helped me to cope with what was not quite the best. [14]

Vaclav Havel, once prisoner of the Czechoslovak Soviet Puppet State for his dissident activities as agitator and playwright, and eventually the president of the Czech Republic formed from the dissolution of Czechoslovakia, wrote the following about identity for the New York Review of Books:

What a person perceives as his home can be compared to a set of concentric circles, with his ‘I' at the centre. My home is the room I live in, the room I've grown accustomed to. Even my prison cell was, in a sense, my home, and I felt very put out whenever I was suddenly required to move to another. My home is the house I live in, the village or town where I spend most of my time. My home is my family, the world of my friends, the social and intellectual milieu in which I live, my profession, my company, my work place.

My home, obviously, is also the country I live in, the language I speak, and the intellectual and spiritual climate of my country expressed in the language spoken there. The Czech language, the Czech way of perceiving the world, Czech historical experience, the Czech modes of courage and cowardice, Czech humor ... all these are inseparable from that circle of my home.

Ultimately my home is Europe and my Europeanness; finally it is this planet and its present civilization, and, understandably, the whole world. I certainly do not want to deny the national dimension of a person's identity. I merely reject the kind of political notions that attempt, in the name of nationality, to suppress other aspects of the human home, other aspects of humanity and human rights. [15]

Finally the comments of Salman Rushdie, written while still in hiding from those keen to carry out the fatwah on his life. He observed that standing—at the centre of the novel Satanic Verses—was a group of British Muslims, or ‘not particularly religious persons of Muslim background’, struggling with issues of identity, community and belonging. Rejecting ‘identificatory’ Islamist and Salafist notions of Muslim identity, he affirmed that

The Satanic Verses celebrates hybridity, impurity, intermingling, and the transformation that comes of new and unexpected combination of human beings, cultures, ideas, politics, movies, songs. It rejoices in mongrelisation and fears the absolutism of the Pure. Mélange, hotchpotch, a bit of this and a bit of that, is how newness enters the world.

Throughout human history, the apostles of purity, those who have claimed to possess a total explanation, have wrought, havoc among mere mixed up human beings. Like many millions of people, I am a bastard child of history. Perhaps we all are, black and brown and white, leaking into one another, as a character of mine once said, like flavors when you cook. [16]

The argument developed in this essay has a number of implications for discussions of inter-community dialogue in contemporary Britain. First, postulating the capacity of human communities of different religions and non-religions to coexist and enrich each other’s worlds through their interaction—is not wishy-washy idealism, but a historical and genetic fact. Pseudo-scientific assertions that human beings are naturally aggressive, territorial, exclusive—and that cultures cannot mix—are empirically wrong.

Second, as long as the uniqueness of a culture is asserted in an integrative spirit as just one of an individual’s sources of belonging—and the principle of multiple identities is recognized and promoted throughout society in education, jobs, the media, and institutions—then multi-culturalism can be a source of newness and mutual enrichment.

Everyone can celebrate having a ‘hyphenated’ identity with plural belongings and self-descriptions. But this means actively combating identificatory relationships with one’s home culture or one particular identity—that lessen the humanity of the other.

Third, the spirit to be aimed for in all attempts at ‘dialogue’ should not be one of mutual caution and fear—like the dialogue between a divorcing couple—but one of curiosity, celebration and openness, like the conversation of two people fascinated with each other. A society fostering multiple identities can be a source not of confusion and insecurity, but of a heightened sense of vitality and humanistic love.

In a modern age posing a permanent threat to identity and belonging, especially to the descendants of immigrant communities, it is vital that the integrative transcultural humanism latent in religious and secular society prevails over fixed, single, identificatory identities. Otherwise, Europe, exposed to mounting demographic and ecological pressures from outside, might well degenerate into a Fortress in its response to the developing world, while hosting degenerating ethnic, sectarian and communal tensions from within the citadel.

For the British context for integrative belonging to remain in the ascendancy means not just fostering more dialogue between communities, but encouraging greater shared knowledge of each other, and deliberately intensifying the resources of pluralistic humanism whether secular or religious, within the various communities—so that it becomes associated with the strong sense of belonging, meaning and identity that so many crave.