Two Views on Multiculturalism

Multiculturalism, an idea that started out in the sixties and early seventies, initially had the reasonable goal of including minority groups in Western societies. Nowadays, however, it is difficult to talk candidly about the idea, since the multicultural project has become nothing but an aggressive ideology against the religious and moral values of Western societies. Multiculturalism is not just the fair understanding of other cultures, but also an ideological project for the deconstruction of Western civilization.

When cultural relativists demand the utilization of public money to indoctrinate homosexuality as a morally acceptable behaviour, the hidden truth about multiculturalism is automatically revealed. According to Irving Kristal, multi-culturalism is currently "...propagated on college campuses by a coalition of nationalist-racist blacks, radical feminists, gays and lesbians, and a handful of aspiring demagogues who claim to represent various ethnic minorities. This coalition's multi-culturalism is an ideology whose educational program is subordinated to a political program, that is, above all, anti-American and Anti-Western. What these radicals blandly call multiculturalism is as much ‘a war against the West‘ as Nazism and Stalinism ever were..."

Rather than a fair debate on the merits of different cultures, radical multiculturalists falsely sustain the completely absurd premise that all cultures are equal in value. In practice, such relativism of values has generated not only the increase of criminal behaviour and pornography in the West, but also a form of apartheid that causes nations to fragment into enclaves of ethnicity.

According to Roger Scruton, people gain nothing from the amorphous atmosphere of multiculturalism "...save bewilderment and the loss of any sense of cultural identity. If they come from immigrant backgrounds that preserve the memory of a religious law, they will often revert to a religious experience of membership, and define themselves in opposition to the territorial jurisdiction by which they are ostensibly governed..."

The pretence of tolerance that is postulated by multiculturalists has existed only for multiculturalists themselves. After all, they are the first to support the suppression of any criticism of culture and moral values. A paradox of multiculturalism is precisely that such tolerance towards different cultures and moral behaviour has completely polluted the democratic environment of Western societies with racial suspicion and ideological closed-mindedness. To be ‘tolerant’ in a so-called ‘multicultural society’ is basically to support anti-democratic legislation against freedom of speech. And so, any serious debate on moral values is automatically censored out of public debate, for the one who does not agree with cultural (and moral) relativism is brought to the judicial system and cowardly accused of ‘racism’, ‘sexism’, ‘homophobia’, and so on.

Multiculturalists who demand respect for all cultures tend to exhibit a blatant disrespect for the Western one. Above all, most multiculturalists are moral relativists who do not admit that culture and religion produce either a democratic society or oppression against minority groups in non-democratic ones; for democracy is as much a cultural achievement as it is a legal one. In brief, democracy cannot be legally imposed; it depends on cultural values transmitted to citizens from generation to generation.

If popular elections were held in certain countries, they could even facilitate the coming to power of fanatical groups appealing to indigenous ethnic and religious loyalties that would be likely be against the rights of women and minority groups. To a greater extent, democracy is nothing but a matter of culture, since it depends on certain values of freedom and equality that may be intolerable to peoples living under cultures that are not able to accept them.

Ultimately, democracy rests on the capacity of a certain culture to recognize basic rights of human beings. In explaining why democracy is not just a matter of legal design, the great liberal John Stuart Mill observed that certain cultures might be incompatible with democracy. As he put it, it would be unrealistic to believe that all cultures agree with democratic values, or that societies might not decide to create ‘insurmountable obstacles’ for the realization of democratic government.

Generally speaking, legal-democratic frameworks do not produce forbearance when cultural patterns of behaviour are too violent to accept the moral implications of democracy. As Lord Bryce commented, "...not less than any other form of government does democracy need to cherish individual liberty. It is like oxygen in the air, a life-giving spirit. Political liberty will have seen one of its fairest fruits wither on the bough if that spirit should decline..." For instance, democracy flourished in the West because the Judeo-Christian culture accepts freedom of choice and allows the legal system to reflect the equality of souls in the eyes of God. Yet even in the West, democracy may not persist if the culture and religion that gave birth to it are abandoned.

A recent survey conducted by Freedom House, an organization that promotes democracy and human rights in the world, has shown that the most democratic countries in the world consist of majority-Protestant populations. In contrast, Islam and Marxism, the latter a secular religion, constitute the most serious obstacles to democracy and human rights. In fact, the denial of the broadest range of rights comes exactly from Marxist and majority-Muslim countries. The worst nine violators of human rights are Libya, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Iraq, Turkmenistan, and the one-party Marxist regimes of Cuba and North Korea. If there is not a single democracy amongst Marxist and Islamic nations, there must be something about Islam and Marxism that is clearly anti-democratic.

The survey conducted by Freedom House shows the comparative advantage of Christianity for democracy and the protection of human rights to flourish. However, the same survey goes on to indicate that both these values are rare in the Islamic world. According to Bassam Tibi, a Muslim Professor of Islamic Studies at Geottigen University, ‘human right’ is an utterly strange value for Islam. The individual does not exist in Islam because this religion makes no distinction between individual, society and state. As Lord Bryce put it, Islam is indeed "...a State no less than it is a Church..." Actually, Islam means the absolute submission of the individual to Allah; it is a kind of spiritual surrender that kills human freedom by absorbing the individual spirit into the homogeneity of its totalitarian creed. While Lord Bryce portrayed democracy as demanding "...a spirit of liberty relatively respectful of individuals...", Islam, according to the Saudi's King Fahd, is a "...complete constitution of social and economic laws, and a system of government and justice..."

In contrast to Islam, the Judeo-Christian ethos has democratized political manners in the West. For the French philosopher Montesquieu, "...the Christian religion is a stranger to mere despotic power. The mildness so frequently recommended in the Gospel is ultimately incompatible with despotic rage with which a prince punishes his subjects, and exercises himself in cruelty..." Montesquieu concluded: "...How admirable this religion, which, while it seems only to have in view the felicity of the other life, constitutes its own happiness! ... We owe to Christianity, in government a certain political law, and in war a certain law of nations; benefits which human nature can never sufficiently acknowledge..."

In reality, cultural relativists who enjoy the extraordinary benefits of living in a democratic society based on the religious ethos of Christianity, but cannot recognise the importance of this religious ethos for the protection of their own legal rights, are, in Montesquieu‘s words, "...like savage beasts that growl and bite the chain which prevents them flying at those who come near them..."

Montesquieu, the great philosopher and ‘father’ of modern legal sociology, concluded that one who lives in a Christian society such as Australia but nonetheless hates the religion of Christianity could be compared with a "...terrible animal who perceives his liberty only when he tears this in pieces, and when he devours it..."

...And the fantasy....

Salman Rushdie

In defence of multiculturalism A polycultural society can flourish if all its members play a role in establishing its core values Dec. 15, 2005.

Multiculturalism has always been an embattled idea, but the battle has grown fiercer of late. In this, as in so many other things, it is terrorism that is setting the agenda, goading us and forcing us to respond - terrorism, whose goal it is to turn the differences between us into divisions and then to use those divisions as justifications.

No question about it: It's harder to celebrate the virtues of polyculture when even Belgian women are being persuaded by Belgians of North African descent to blow up themselves and other people.

Comedians, among others, have been trying to defuse - wrong verb - people's fears by facing up to them: "My name's Shazia Mirza, or at least that's what it says on my pilot's licence." But it will take more than comedy to calm things down.

Britain, the most determinedly "multiculturist" of European nations, is at the heart of the debate. According to some opinion polls, the British people avowed their continued support for multiculturalism even in the immediate aftermath of the July 7 bombings. Many commentators, however, have been less affirmative.

David Goodhart, editor of Prospect magazine, asks the old philosophical question "Who is my brother?" and suggests that an overly diverse society may become an unsustainable one. Britain's first black archbishop, the Rt. Rev. John Sentamu, accuses multiculturalism of being bad for English national identity. And the British government has announced that new citizens will have to pass a ‘Britishness test’ from now on.

A passport will be a kind of driver's licence proving that you've learned the new rules of the nationalist road.

At the other end of the spectrum, Karen Chouhan of the 1990 Trust, a ‘black-led’ human-rights organization, insists "We need to move forward with a serious debate about how far we have to go in tackling race discrimination in every corner of society, not move it back by forcing everyone to be more (white) British."

And professor Bhikhu Parekh redefines multiculturalism as the belief that "no culture is perfect or represents the best life, and that it can therefore benefit from a critical dialogue with other cultures ... Britain is and should remain a vibrant and democratic multicultural society that must combine respect for diversity with shared common values."

It's impossible for someone like me, whose life was transformed by an act of migration, to be entirely objective about the value of such acts. I have spent much of my writing life celebrating the potential for creativity and renewal of the cultural encounters and frictions that have become commonplace in our much-transplanted world.

Then again, as people keep pointing out, I have a second axe to grind, because the Satanic Verses controversy was a pivotal moment in the forging of a British Muslim identity and political agenda.

I did not fail to note the ironies: a secular work of art energized powerful communalist, anti-secularist forces, ‘Muslim’ instead of ‘Asian.’ And, yes, as a result the argument about multiculturalism, for me, has become an internal debate, a quarrel in the self.

Nor am I alone. The melange of culture is in us all, with its irreconcilable contradictions. In our swollen, polyglot cities we are all cultural mestizos, and the argument within rages to some degree in us all.

So it is important to make a distinction between multifaceted culture and multiculturalism.

In the age of mass migration and the Internet, cultural plurality is an irreversible fact, like globalization. Like it or dislike it, it's where we live, and the dream of a pure monoculture is at best an unattainable, nostalgic fantasy, and at worst a life-threatening menace - when ideas of racial purity, religious purity or cultural purity turn into programs of ‘ethnic cleansing,’ for example, or when Hindu fanatics in India attack the ‘inauthenticity’ of Indian Muslim experience, or when Islamic ideologues drive young people to die in the service of ‘pure’ faith, unadulterated by compassion or doubt.

‘Purity’ is a slogan that leads to segregations and explosions. Let us have no more of it. A little more impurity, please, a little less cleanliness, a little more dirt. We'll all sleep easier in our beds.

Multiculturalism, however, has all too often become mere cultural relativism, a much less defensible proposition, under cover of which much that is reactionary and oppressive - of women, for example - can be justified.

The British multiculturalist idea of different cultures peacefully coexisting under the umbrella of a vaguely defined pax Britannica was seriously undermined by the July bombers and the disaffected ghetto culture from which they sprang.

Of the other available social models, the one-size-fits-all homogenizing of ‘full assimilation’ seems not only undesirable but unachievable. What remains is the ‘core values’ approach to which Parekh alludes, and of which the ‘Britishness test’ is, at least as currently proposed, a grotesque comic parody.

When we, as individuals, pick and mix cultural elements for ourselves, we do not do so indiscriminately, but according to our natures. Societies, too, must retain the ability to discriminate, to reject as well as to accept, to value some things above others, and to insist on the acceptance of those values by all their members.

This is the question of our time: How does a fractured community of multiple cultures decide what values it must share in order to cohere, and how can it insist on those values even when they clash with some citizens' traditions and beliefs?

The beginnings of an answer may be found by asking the question the other way around: What does a society owe to its citizens?

The French riots demonstrate a stark truth. If people do not feel included in the national idea, their alienation will eventually turn to rage.

Chouhan and others are right to insist that issues of social justice, racism and deprivation need urgently to be addressed. If we are to build a plural society on the foundation of what unites us, we must face up to what divides.

But the questions of core freedoms and primary loyalties can‘t be ducked.

No society, no matter how tolerant, can expect to thrive if its citizens don't prize what their citizenship means - if, when asked what they stand for as Frenchmen, as Indians, as Americans, as Britons, they cannot give a clear reply.

Source - The Star No longer available at: http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1134559791563&call_pageid=968256290204&col=968350116795