Behind the face of terror : Hamid, Malkani and multiculturalism after 9/11

The rise of terrorism in the early twenty-first century has been held up as final proof of multiculturalism's failure as an empowering social project. In 2010, German Chancellor Angela Merkel publicly aired her disillusionment with multiculturalist policies, stating that "[t]his approach has failed, utterly failed" ("Chancellor"). But it was British Prime Minister David Cameron who reignited critical debates across Europe in February 2011 by suggesting that multicultural policies had facilitated the rise of global terrorism. Addressing an international group of world leaders and government representatives, Cameron said, "Under the doctrine of state multiculturalism, we have encouraged different cultures to live separate lives, apart from each other and apart from the mainstream. We've failed to provide a vision of society to which they feel they want to belong. We've even tolerated these segregated communities behaving in ways that run completely counter to our values" (Cameron). His comments were echoed the following week by French President Nicholas Sarkozy: "The truth is that in all our democracies we have been too preoccupied with the identity of those who arrived and not enough with the identity of the country that welcomed them" (Hollinger).