Most Muslims living in Britain and Australia are neither enemies of Western civilisation nor blameless victims of Islamophobia, a leading public intellectual says.

Mona Siddiqui, the chair of Islamic and Interreligious Studies at the University of Edinburgh, is in Australia to deliver a series of lectures for The Centre for Public and Contextual Theology.

Speaking to RN's Religion and Ethics Report, she issued a call for a more complex understanding of the relationship between Muslims and the liberal democracies they live in.

"I said post-9/11 and the London bombings that what we're seeing is actually the thick end of the wedge," said Professor Siddiqui.

"A lot of things were going on, festering away in these communities that have spilled over into violence.

"But there's also a cultural amnesia in many communities and in much of the media debate that sees this as an isolated thing.

"Why would Muslims want to create havoc in peaceful liberal democracies where they have everything? That is a really profound question which none of us can answer."

The limits of multiculturalism

Once they were living in the West, Muslims felt the only way they could preserve their cultural heritage was "thinking and living only one way", Professor Siddiqui said.

"For decades, nobody interfered with that," she said.

"That's where the problem started, that laissez-faire attitude that the Brits, the Australians and the North Americans have towards multiculturalism: that pluralism is a great thing that everybody knows how to negotiate.

"Actually, it isn't. For it to work, you have to sustain it, you have to negotiate it.

"What does it mean for everybody to be part of the public space? What does it mean to have communities living together?"

Islamic terrorism is Islamic

Professor Siddiqui said there was no denying that ISIS was an Islamic organisation, as their vocabulary was rooted in Islamic terminology.

"Although it's very easy to say any violent jihadist or any ISIS member or anyone who joins ISIS is not a Muslim anymore, simple and simplistic denials of things don't actually move the conversation," she said.

"The problem now is that we're looking at everything from the prism of terror ... so even things that are not linked to violence give off the impression that ultimately they will lead to violence.

"It's become very easy for a lot of Western societies to perceive the Muslim presence as a real threat."

The problem with the veil debate

Professor Siddiqui said her concern about with the veil was that it reduced Islam to a dress code.

"The veil has become this iconic image of everything that the West has struggled against," she said.

"It struggled against segregation, it struggled against inequality. It has tried to create a space of at least some equality where women have autonomy.

"The veil, which was once seen as all the exoticism of the East, is now everything the West detests.

"When my parents came in the 60s, my mother and all her peers never covered their hair. They dressed in cultural clothing. Covering to that extent as a visible sign of piety was not important to them.

"It wasn't until the mid-80s that the hijab took on, and it was in a political context.

"I know these conversations are extremely potent for a lot of people. People are reluctant to politicise them. People [are also reluctant] to see that there are bigger issues in Muslim communities than who covers their head or not."

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