The recent riots in France were perhaps the most damaging in a country where over the years, riots and vigorous street protests are accepted as part of the “normal” scenario that defines any political and social crisis. This time, it was also a reflection of what has repeatedly happened in the US following the violent death of black citizens at the hands of police officers. The deployment of social media messages fuelled, as never before, the violence that happened during the French riots.
The reasons that account for the extreme stand-off go deep. To compound matters, many of those who took part in the street battles are still not yet in their youth. They form part of the third, indeed the fourth generation of immigrants.
Once again this confirms how vital it is for a society which welcomes or grants entry to outside communities which then convert it into a multi-cultural entity, to introduce long term policies that promote in a fair manner, the development of the population coming from outside. If such policies are not properly implemented, or if they fail, the outcome will be disastrous.
And as we are seeing, by long term, one has to understand a vision that covers more than just one or two generations.
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EUROPEAN VALUES
We get told so much about “European values” that they have become like a liturgical invocation in a religious ceremony. Obviously, those who invoke them assume that we all will recognize and agree with such values. Indeed, as we did during the Great Siege, all Maltese and Gozitans would mobilise to promote and defend them. Like for instance the so-called rule of law, or freedom of speech and belief.
At last more recently, we discovered that not all European values make sense in our case. Some values we actually consider to be barbaric. Such as the right of a woman to decide what she wants to do with her body. Here apparently a majority disagee that there is such a right. Which has earned for us a warning from the international institutions whose role it is to safeguard European values.
Clearly we do want to practise European values but à la carte.
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SECULAR VALUES
That we know how to be flexible with the values we profess and with how we action them is a conclusion I arrived at when still a student at the University of Malta and got involved in an informal discussion between friends regarding religion and the Maltese constitution. This was a few years after Independence. Did the state have to adopt the position of the Catholic Church and follow its strictures? – or should there be a total separaton between Church and State?
A lecturer, one of the “new generation” priests who had earned a reputation (which in later years continued to increase greatly) as a committed and modern thinker, took part in the conversation. According to him, no matter what the constitution of those days said, the Maltese state was a secular one. Now at that time, civil marriage did not exist, even less divorce...
What about the crucifixes that are placed in government offices and school classrooms? I enquired. He assured me that even there, no contradiction was evident with the secular values that define how a modern state should be run.
On that day I learnt how beyond any flexibility, we know how to interpret the values we profess in elastic mode.