In our culture today there are many different moral currents, and this radical moral individualism certainly isn't the only one. But it is a major one and, when combined with multiculturalist ideology, it tends to make institutions morally tongue-tied. Because if the individual is properly free to choose according to personal whim, and if all cultures are morally equal, then who has the authority to decide which norms will govern an institution and its many individual and culturally various members?

A striking instance of moral inarticulacy on the part of a British educational institution appears in The Islamist, the autobiography of a former radical Islamist, Ed Husain. In 1993, Husain was spearheading a campaign to "Islamise" public space in Tower Hamlets College — by holding public prayers, plastering the walls with Islamist posters, and encouraging women to wear the hijab. The college authorities grew alarmed and considered how best to combat the growing influence of Muslim radicalism. According to their best liberal lights, they decided to try and divert students by holding raves and discos. The result was telling. As Husain recounts it:

In early 1993, a 33-minute video was handed in to me about the war in Bosnia, the ethnic cleansing of Muslims in the Balkans. I watched it in horror and then decided that it must be shown to our students to raise money for Bosnian Muslims. On Wednesday afternoon we booked a lecture theatre under the title of "The Killing Fields of Bosnia"...That same Wednesday afternoon the youth workers at college organised their second disco...The Islamic society offered a video on the killing of Muslims by Christians. The youth workers offered dance, drugs, and delight. To our astonishment the lecture theatre was packed. The students had voted with their feet.

Radical Islamism had dignified the students with a high moral seriousness. It had addressed them as moral agents with a responsibility for justice. The college authorities, on the other hand, had nothing either humanly or morally serious to offer as an alternative. No doubt acting on what passes for a certain kind of liberal common sense, they had dramatically underestimated the humanity of their students. Consequently, their ability to counter the growing appeal of a political radicalism, which, while misleading was at least humanly dignifying, was hamstrung.

The moral that I draw from this story, from the story of the 7/7 bombers, and from the story of Garton Ash's conversation with young British Muslims is that we cannot afford institutions that are morally tongue-tied. We can't afford institutions that are silent about what's valuable, and about what kinds of behaviour promote and detract from it. We can't afford institutions that are eloquent about skills, but speechless about virtues. 

Now, of course, anyone who has had a part in running an institution knows full well that it simply can't function without common moral norms that its members take seriously. Nevertheless, the individualist and multiculturalist currents in contemporary culture have made it much more difficult for institutions to own and articulate and promote the common moral norms upon which their healthy functioning depends. And without ownership, articulation and promotion, those norms will not hold — whether in British banks, or in Tower Hamlets College, or in Peterhouse.