E/CN.4/2004/18 page 6 A. Isolationism and the rejection of ethnic and cultural diversity 5. Discrimination, racism and xenophobia by definition constitute a rejection of or a failure to recognize difference. In the history of nation States, this rejection has led to the development, through historical writings and education, of a national identity founded on a particular ethnic group, race, culture or religion. This ghetto-identity, over the longer term, has thrived on the twin forces of opposition to and demonization of others and the heightening of that identity. Political domination has often been defended on the grounds of a deep-seated belief in cultural superiority. Throughout history, this ideology has provided an intellectual prop for all imperial ventures, especially slavery and colonization. But the civilizing mission that was the moral justification for this ideology gave way to a determination to impose a cultural, aesthetic and religious paradigm. According to this approach, the signs, symbols and cultural manifestations pertaining to others, particularly those under domination, must always be denied, ignored or, at best, reduced to folklore. Cultural contempt, bred on ignorance and on the silence or lack of visibility of others, of those who are different, has thus provided the deep and long-lasting root of discrimination and racism. 6. Through its encouragement of uniformity, present-day globalization further accentuates confinement and isolationism. The multicultural dynamic paradoxically provides a common factor for imperial expansion, slavery, colonization and immigration. This dynamic, which is embodied in the three-sided cultural and civilizing process of movement, meeting and interaction between different peoples and cultures, leads in the longer term to an identity crisis. The old ghetto-identity garb splits apart under the pressure of multiculturalism. The identity crisis then develops around the dilemma of whether to preserve an ethnic-centred identity or instead to recognize the reality of cultural and inter-religious pluralism. Seeking political gain from this identity crisis, extreme right wing parties, in a climate of economic and social unrest, then foster the resurgence of xenophobia, racism and intolerance. By deploying their usual ideological weapon, the culture of fear, nowadays strengthened by the spectre of terrorism, these parties can literally impose a political agenda of xenophobia on the traditionally democratic parties, thereby turning the discourse and practice of xenophobia and intolerance into a familiar occurrence. 7. Belief in the theory that conflict is inevitable between different cultures and civilizations, combined with the refusal to recognize their interaction and cross-fertilization, and hence the rejection of diversity and pluralism in this context, provides an intellectual justification for the isolationist approach to culture, religion and civilization. This ideological climate has coloured the debate on secularity currently taking place in France, through its negative connotations with regard to discrimination; whatever the intentions were behind the bill forbidding the wearing of ostensible religious signs in schools, it has been seen as essentially aimed at the Islamic headscarf, and therefore as a form of stigmatization of Islam. Preference has been given in this case to the solution of imposing a legal ban at the expense of dialogue on religious beliefs and their external expressions, to the exclusion of faith from the republican system of public education as a fundamental meeting ground for interaction, transformation and the learning of diversity, and especially, from a symbolic point of view, to the rejection of the expression of diversity.