Multiculturalism and Islam

Every time I turn around, someone is telling me that George Orwell was right, words do matter, and we have to agree on what the important words mean. Right now there is a significant disagreement on what the word “multicultural” means. It is in a category of words that have been drained of meaning and turned into clubs. “Fascist” is another word in that category.

Samuel Huntington, Ibn Warraq, Richard Rorty and John Rawls have all written penetrating, and sometimes wrong, comment on the subject.

For example, David Sapsted writes in The National of 5/10/09:

LONDON // A Muslim chef is suing Britain’s largest police force, claiming he suffered religious discrimination because he was expected to cook bacon and pork sausages for breakfast.

Hasanali Khoja is due to put his case against the Metropolitan Police to an employment tribunal, which starts a 10-day hearing in London tomorrow.

The case has caused outrage in the British press and has been seized on by far right political parties, being branded “the madness of multiculturalism” by the British National Party.

I am pretty sure the BNP is not objecting to the presence of another culture in Britain. The British peoples have absorbed cultures since the Romans. My guess is that the BNP is objecting to an attempted hostile take over of British culture.

The explanation of why this should not be labeled as multiculturalism comes in two parts, Occidentalism and cultural relativism.

Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit write on page five of their book Occidentalism about the potent mix of ideas that have combined to oppose Western culture.

“The loathing of everything people associate with the Western world, exemplified by America[…]” is attractive to Islamists, anti-capitalists and socialists who see the capitalist West as the roadblock in their path to dominance. David Sapsted probably agrees with most of the political left in their assessment of Islam as just another religion, no threat to the West. The left wing sees Islamists as allies against capitalism and look no further than that.

The reason the Muslim chef makes his demands and the reason they will be met is cultural relativism.

Pope Benedict, writing while he was still Cardinal Ratzinger, speaks of an epidemic of relativism in Without Roots: The West, Relativism, Christianity, Islam, 2006:
Europe is infected by an epidemic of relativism. It believes that all cultures are equivalent. It refuses to judge them, thinking that to accept and defend one’s own culture would be an act of hegemony, of intolerance, that betrayed the anti-democratic, anti-liberal, disrespectful attitude toward the autonomy of other populations and individuals. Pp.85-86.

If I am right, the BNP is protesting the imposition of Islamic law—a cultural artifact dedicated to the downfall of Western culture.

The basic assumption of multiculturalism is correct—many cultures and religions can share one nation in justice and harmony—Western nations have been doing it for a long time. But Islamic nations have not. There is a long historical record supporting that truth, and the stronger Islam is in a nation, the more true it is.

Islamic culture cannot qualify for inclusion in multicultural nations. All cultures are not equal in that sense. The culture of traditional Islam is one that cannot qualify because Islamic law has not been reformed to allow the acceptance of other cultures and religions as equals.

Originally posted on 5/10/09