Multiculturalism and the left

A while back now, German Chancellor Merkel caused no small amount of consternation within the liberal-left everywhere with her announcement that the German experiment with "multikulti" was a failure (e.g., Yahoo News: "Merkel says German multi-cultural society has failed"). Now, partly this failure is just a result of some short-sighted labor policies that Europe in general, Germany in particular, has followed for years after WW2, of using immigrant labor to first rebuild, and now maintain, their societies (a policy that the US is having trouble with now as well). But little or no effort was made to assimilate these workers into the Western societies, and, whether out of necessity or a naive idealism, an ideology of "multiculturalism" was used to justify this, the idea being that "tolerance" will allow all the world's cultures to mingle freely while still preserving intact their distinct customs, beliefs, values, and practices. In Canada, this ideology underlay the use of a new metaphor for this mingling -- the idea of a cultural "mosaic" as opposed to the supposedly less tolerant American notion of the "melting pot". As a mosaic, however, it's a facade that's crumbling here as  everywhere.

One reason for this failure, which one would think would have been obvious, is that mixing cultures in this way changes them -- not a bad or insupportable thing in itself, but there is a rate of change beyond which people everywhere begin to feel that they are foreigners or aliens in their own land, and they resist this. But there's a larger and much more significant reason as well -- it can be seen in an essay by a self-described liberal, Susan Jacoby, entitled "Multiculturalism and Its Discontents": "I am an atheist," she writes, "with an affinity for non-fundamentalist religious believers whose faith has made room for secular knowledge. I am also a political liberal. I am not, however, a multiculturalist who believes that all cultures and religions are equally worthy of respect."  After quoting Ayaan Hirsi Ali to the effect that "'All human beings are equal, but all cultures and religions are not. . . . The culture of the Western Enlightenment is better.' (italics in the original)", Jacoby goes on to lament the fact that so many of her fellow liberals have failed to grasp this about what's supposed to be their own cultural heritage.Worse, it's as though they're unnerved by such a clear and frank statement and are driven to a perverse sort of relativism that forces them to disavow it as a result. And this leads Jacoby to make some observations that, perhaps unwittingly, also say much about the relative positions of the political left and right in the contemporary world:

Finally, it is a politically strategic error as well as a form of moral blindness for liberals to push people like Hirsi Ali into the eager arms of the political Right. ...

This muddled thinking allows the American religious and political Right to misrepresent itself as the chief defender of Enlightenment values. More important, reflexive liberal multiculturalism fails every child being denied, in the name of faith and family, full access to the promise of this nation.

 At some point, it may be possible for Jacoby and many others like her to come to a realization that perhaps the American right today is representing itself accurately as the chief defender of Enlightenment values. And at that point a choice will be necessary -- between continued allegiance to an old but now reactionary political label, or to the values they thought that label stood for.

Just how moderate is "moderate" Islam?

That's the question that Lawrence Wright raises, no doubt inadvertently, in yet another piece on the variously named Ground Zero Mosque/Park51/Cordoba House, titled, with bludgeoning simplicity, "Intolerance". After a dubious comparison with the Danish cartoon uproar -- how many people opposed to the project have called for beheading the Imam and his followers so far? -- Wright goes on to to argue not for tolerance as a virtue in itself, but rather for "tolerance" lest we alienate the great masses of "moderate" Muslims, who apparently are always just on the edge of regarding America as their enemy, and hence turning into those extremist Muslims (who aren't supposed to be real or true Muslims at all, but apparently that doesn't cut much ice with these unstable "moderates"):

The most worrisome development in the evolution of Al Qaeda’s influence since 9/11 is the growth of pockets of Islamist radicalism in Western populations. Until recently, America had been largely immune to the extremism that has placed some European nations in peril. America’s Muslim community is more ethnically diverse than that of any other major religion in the country. Its members hold more college and graduate degrees than the national average. They also have a higher employment rate and more jobs in the professional sector. (Compare that with England and France, where education and employment rates among Muslims fall below the national averages.) These factors have allowed American Muslims and non-Muslims to live together with a degree of harmony that any other Western nation would envy.

The best ally in the struggle against violent Islamism is moderate Islam. The unfounded attacks on the backers of Park51 and others, along with such sideshows as a pastor calling for the burning of Korans, give substance to the Al Qaeda argument that the U.S. is waging a war against Islam, rather than against the terrorists’ misshapen effigy of that religion. Those stirring the pot in this debate are casting a spell that is far more dangerous than they may imagine.

Of course, if we're talking about the interpretation of signs, many ordinary people would point out that flying planes into buildings, blowing up trains, subways, nightclubs, sawing off the heads of Westerners on video, and mass demonstrations of screaming hordes calling for the death of Western writers, cartoonists, or film-makers -- these little things might actually give substance to the argument that Islam is waging a war against the U.S. and the Western world generally.

But I'm not one of them. Yet. No, I'm one who still believes that moderate Muslims really are moderate and are, at worst, intimidated by the violent extremists among them who are a real enough threat that outspoken critics need armed guards. Not Wright, though, who exudes a nervous apprehension that the mass of Muslims are merely quiescent for now, but are always looking for some passing excuse to launch into anti-West jihad. Unlike Wright, in other words, I think truly moderate Muslims have the same sort of awareness of possible sources and causes of conflict that everyone else does, and have no more wish to give unnecessary offense than most non-Muslims. Here, for example, is Irshad Manji, a Muslim reformist, making better use of the same comparison with the Danish cartoons that Wright did:

Let me be blunt about my own emotions: I am offended by its proximity to the site of 9/11. I am also disappointed that Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf—who is not an Islamist—has nonetheless played crass politics unbecoming of a man of dialogue.

So far, the imam has rebuffed accusations of insensitivity. Yet he made those very accusations about the Danish cartoons of Prophet Muhammad. In a February 2006 press release, Imam Rauf announced that he was "appalled" by the drawings. He called it "willful fomentation" and "gratuitous" to republish them throughout Europe. In the following weeks, almost no U.S. newspaper printed the caricatures.

So the question comes back to just how moderate so-called "moderate Islam" actually is. If we actually believe, contrary to Wright, that the extremists are alien to Islam, then how is it supporting the likes of Manji to cave in on this issue, as we caved on the cartoons or on other cultural issues? (As far as I know, by the way, Manji still requires bodyguards to move about.)  But even if you're as frightened concerned as Wright and fellow liberals about the violence lurking in the "moderate" Islamic masses, what would make you believe that appeasement is an effective response?

Thanks to Itzik at BasmanRoseLaw for the link to the Wright article

Islam and fear

Robert Fulford: Lessons of 9/11

Note that the title of this post says "Islam and fear", not Islamism. Fulford, in the link above, finally makes an excellent point exposing how some so-called "moderate" Muslims make use of the murderous violence of their more extreme co-believers:

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, who is responsible for the building [the Ground Zero mosque], moved the issue to a more ominous level when he said on television on Wednesday night the results will be dire if the controversy causes the centre to be located elsewhere.

“The headlines in the Muslim world will be that Islam is under attack,” Rauf predicted.

He said it would threaten U.S. troops and otherwise undermine U.S. security.

“This crisis could become much bigger than the Danish cartoon crisis,” he warned.

About two-thirds of Americans, according to a Washington Post-ABC poll, oppose building a mosque near Ground Zero. Rauf believes fear of violence should change the public’s attitude.

No one argues he is an Islamist, but he’s clearly playing Islamist violence as a political card.

It feels like a test case. If that threat silences opposition this time, the number of future uses of the same strategy is infinite. Rauf says his goal is to build a bridge among faiths but in this case his strategy sounds more like coercion:

“National security now hinges on how we negotiate this,” he said.

Burning books in Gainesville is ugly and mean-spirited but no more than that; Rauf is trying something more serious, eliminating free discussion by threatening violence.

Fulford is exactly right, and if before people had viewed the issue as a test of their tolerance and open-mindedness, they should now view it as a test of their courage and resolve not to be cowed by the rage-boys and worse of Islam. It's not just national security that "now hinges on how we negotiate this" -- national character does as well.

And to his great credit and courage, Fulford goes on to raise questions about the very nature of Islam in the modern world:

In the climate that was created by 9/11 the fear of Islamophobia has created another threat, more serious in the long run: It inhibits the serious discussion of Islam.

Of all the great religions, Islam is unique in believing it should not be analyzed or criticized. The key point is the divine nature of the Koran. Because Muslims believe it is unalterably holy, any discussion of it is an affront.

In this sense Islam remains medieval. In 15th-century Europe, before Martin Luther, criticism of the Gospels and the Christian church was forbidden. In the year 2010 Islam still maintains that principle.

The Koran has never been scrutinized in the way the Bible has been studied since the 17th century. Ibn Warraq, a brilliant, Muslim-raised scholar whose books bring standard scholarly principles to the Koran, finds it necessary to travel with security guards.

Why should both practitioners and scholars not argue about Islam with the same frankness we bring to other world religions? Islamist violence subverts free speech and threatens to eliminate it altogether.

For the same reason, the possibility of separating religion from politics rarely gets even cursory discussion in the Islamic world.

Much in our life has changed since 9/11, as a visit to any airport in the world will demonstrate. But in the timorous way we think about Islam, far too much remains just as it was when we saw planes fly into the Twin Towers.

 Note that this is not denying the reality, nor the great preponderance, of genuinely moderate Muslims -- as opposed to the opportunistically so, like Rauf. It does, however, point out that such moderates live with much greater fear of extremist violence than do even so-called infidels, so much so that the very brave few who dare to raise their voice in criticism must have armed guards to protect their lives. We owe it to these people not just to protect them and help them spread their critique, but also to summon our own nerve and resist our own impulse to stifle and censor ourselves. We owe Islam tolerance and respect, certainly, as we do any widespread belief system -- but we owe it to both ourselves and the brave critics within Islam not to let  "tolerance" and "respect" be simply a mask for our fear.

The mosque and the question of tolerance, redux

Ross Douthat:

Imam Rauf and Moderate Islam

Finally, some moral clarity amid the howls. After making a thoughtful distinction between devout, non-Enlightenment-embracing Muslims and terrorist-backing extremists, Douthat goes on:

But making these kind of distinctions doesn’t require us to suspend all judgment where would-be Islamic moderates are concerned. Instead, dialogue needs to coexist with pressure: Figures like Ramadan and now Rauf should be held to a high standard by their non-Muslim interlocutors, and their forays into more dubious territory should be greeted with swift pushback, rather than simply being accepted as a necessary part of the moderate Muslim package. (This is particularly true because Westerners have a long record of seeing what they want to see in self-proclaimed Islamic reformers, from the Ayatollah Khomeini down to Anwar Al Awlaki, and failing to recognize extremism when it’s staring them in the face.) And what’s troubling about some of the liberal reaction to the Cordoba Initiative controversy is that it seems to regard this kind of pressure as illegitimate and dangerous in and of itself — as though the First Amendment protects the right of Rauf and Co. to build their mosque and cultural center, but not the right of critics to scrutinize Rauf’s moderate bona fides, parse some of his more disturbing comments, and raise doubts about the benefits (to American Islam as well as to America) of having him set up shop as an arbiter of Muslim-Western dialogue in what used to be the shadow of the World Trade Center.

On the mosque, tolerance, and war

This issue is one of the few where I'll admit I tend to vacillate. On the one hand, I certainly understand that most muslims are as non-violent and peaceful as most other people of whatever faith or non-faith. Moreover, I also understand that a relatively small number of very brave Muslims have taken strong public stands against the violence that's been perpetrated in their name, very many of whom are women. I would want to extend the same kind of tolerance toward the first group that I would to any other modes of belief, and I have great respect and admiration toward the second group. But on the other hand, I understand very clearly that what requires such bravery on the part of those who stand against Islamist violence is precisely the extraordinary willingness of a significant minority of Muslims to resort to the most brutal slaughter; I understand how that willingness creates a fear that permeates the culture of the modern world, as we've seen in numerous instances of self-censorship in anything to do with Islam, skewing the treatment of that one belief system alone; and I understand that the minority of Muslims willing to engage in actual violence is supplemented by much larger numbers around the world who sympathize with them in whole or in part. I understand, in other words -- as many simple-minded and self-deluding liberals do not -- that we really are at war with a global ideology, however unusual that war may be by historical standards.

So, given that, here are some tentative generalizations: first, wartime conditions justify -- and often enough require -- restrictions or actions that wouldn't be justifiable at all otherwise. And second, the ideological component of this struggle needs to be recognized and managed -- but we shouldn't be complacent that, in the fight with this particular enemy, our notion of civil rights and religious tolerance will be seen as a strength rather than a sign of decadent weakness. In the end, then, I come down on the side of those who say we should recognize the constitutional right of the mosque proponents to go ahead, but that we should make every effort to persuade/pressure them not to do so. This is a position shared by at least some moderate Muslims too, as this article indicates: "Ground Zero Mosque Splits Muslims", and they'll need the support of non-Muslims so they're not further isolated.

We have met the enemy and he is -- who?

Charles Krauthammer brings up the Obama Administration's extreme squeamishness in saying who the enemy is in the world today, as though they hope or would like to hope that if they can avoid naming it the enemy might magically go away. He alludes to a comical video clip of the Attorney General bobbing and ducking like a boxer on the ropes to avoid saying "radical Islam".

I once shocked a friend in a discussion by saying quite casually that of course some cultures were better or worse than others -- he felt, I think, that that was like saying some races were better than others. But it's not, of course, since cultures are not only changeable, both on an individual and social level, but, more importantly, they manifest values and practices that have real moral dimensions about them. This was brought home with great force from another item today, stemming from just one of the many sources of radical Islam in the world  -- it shows in a sickening way the extreme cultural evil of today's global enemy, and makes clear why it's important to see that evil for the slime that it is, and to say its name. This is a report on CNN (via Ann Althouse):

Sakineh Mohammadie Ashtiani, a mother of two, is waiting to die in Iran by a method of execution described by her lawyer as "barbaric" -- stoning.

She will be buried up to her chest, deeper than a man would be, and the stones that will be hurled at her will be large enough to cause pain but not so large as to kill her immediately, according to an Amnesty International report that cited the Iranian penal code.

...

Ashtiani was forced to confess after being subjected to 99 lashes, Mostafaei said Thursday in a telephone interview from Tehran.

She later retracted that confession and has denied wrongdoing.

Lest you think this is some isolated, backwater village practice, the report goes on:

The circumstances of Ashtiani's case make it not an exception but the rule in Iran, according to Amnesty International, which tracks death penalty cases around the world.

"The majority of those sentenced to death by stoning are women, who suffer disproportionately from such punishment," the human rights group said in a 2008 report.

Now, Amnesty International isn't always reliable, and if this report is wrong in a significant way I'll certainly correct this post. But AI tends to go wrong particularly when trying to ingratiate itself with the relativist left, and this is in line with too many other reports for that to be likely. In any case, here's part of Krauthammer's summation:

There's a final reason the administration's cowardice about identifying those trying to kill us cannot be allowed to pass. It is demoralizing. It trivializes the war between jihadi barbarism and Western decency, and diminishes the memory of those (including thousands of brave Muslims -- Iraqi, Pakistani, Afghan and Western) who have died fighting it.

Totten on Berman: rare sighting of the "reality-based" liberal

Great, wide-ranging interview on intellectuals, liberals, liberal guilt, Israel, Islam, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Tariq Ramadan, and "the sixteenth minute", among many, many other things.

"The whole intellectual atmosphere of right now has become a little strange on points like these. That's the meaning of my title, The Flight of the Intellectuals. Too many very intelligent people are running away from looking at some very influential and pernicious doctrines of our own time. They don't want to look. They prefer to shut their eyes and hope for the best."