There was a recent scandal that as much as anything else illustrates the intellectual emptiness and moral ennui of the modern liberal man. It occurred in Britain but reflects a wider phenomenon; what can be said about it can be said about happenings in Sweden France Holland Canada or Belgium or the United States.
It was discovered recently that Muslims in seven London schools were indoctrinating children with Islamic propaganda ignoring Western culture and refusing to inculcate the British values" of the moment. The situation was such that all of one schools library books were in Arabic and many students couldnt tell investigators whether they should follow British or Sharia law or which was more important. And one of these schools mind you was a state-run Church of England institution that happens to now be upwards of 80 percent Muslim.
When hearing about the subordination of British law to Sharia and other such Islamic cultural inroads one of my instincts is to say So what?" Cry me a river of multiculturalist tears.
Multiculturalism weve been told dictates that all cultures are morally equal and deserve the same respect and footing within Western" civilization. Never mind that the ideology is self-defeating. After all since different cultures espouse different values not all cultures can be morally" equal unless all values are so. This makes multiculturalism not only a corollary of but also a Trojan horse for moral relativism. And consider the implications. If all values are equal how can showing cultures equal respect be superior to cultural chauvinism? And what if another culture does prescribe the latter? It then follows that the people within it cannot both have their own culture unaltered and accept multiculturalism.
Nonetheless since multiculturalism is considered enlightened by Western pseudo-intellectuals its time for some personal petard hoisting. A
Daily Mail piece on the Londonistan school situation
tells us that some students told inspectors it would be wrong to learn about other religions" and that it was a womans job to cook and clean." The paper furthermore reported that schools were criticized for failure to give girls equal opportunities" narrow curricula not preparing students for life in a diverse British society" not encouraging students to respect other peoples opinions" and for creating a situation in which students understanding of the fundamental British values of democracy the rule of law individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance is underdeveloped."
And the problem is…?
What if these Muslims faith and culture dictate that women should be steered toward domesticity and shouldnt have equal opportunity; that there should be not diversity but Islamic homogeneity; that not all opinions should be respected and that it is wrong to learn about other religions; and that Islamic theocracy is preferable to democracy? And the matter of tolerance" is an interesting one. Since the term implies a perceived negative you wouldnt tolerate a delectable meal or fine car but would have to tolerate a stubborn cold or bad weather the reality is that tolerance is only admirable under two circumstances:
- When something you dislike isnt objectively bad such as when you tolerate a vegetable youre not partial to for health reasons.
- When youre powerless to change something that is objectively bad such as an irremediable crippling condition.
But if something is objectively wrong and can be eliminated it is an abdication of moral responsibility to refuse to do so. And has it occurred to anyone that pious Muslims may instinctively realize this and considering Western culture a misbegotten force (their perspective) view changing it a divine mission?
Be that as it may given that multiculturalism espouses cultural equivalence and its correlative moral relativism by its lights none of the bemoaned Islamic curricula standards and outcomes can be any worse than what secularists prefer. So what gives? Are you liberals denying these Muslim immigrants their culture and creed?
You certainly are. But this hypocrisy is nothing new. Multiculturalism has been used for decades at every turn as a pretext for denuding Western traditions and Christian symbols and messages from our cultural landscape using tolerance" and diversity" as rallying cries. Even as I write this a Washington state high-school senior
faces expulsion from school for sharing his Christian faith the idea being that such expression is offensive." Multiculturalism was always nonsense. Anything goes" as long as its branded culture" could never be a recipe for organizing anything because it doesnt allow for distinguishing between anything and any other thing. A standard of some kind must be applied when devising laws regulations and social codes; and standards by definition involve the upholding and imposition of values.
This is why G.K. Chesterton once noted In truth there are only two kinds of people; those who accept dogma and know it and those who accept dogma and dont know it." Except for leftists possessed of evil genius most are in the latter camp. Multiculturalism certainly felt right when useful for purging an element of tradition contrary to the liberal agenda; it doesnt quite have the same glitter however when it would allow the institution of such an element. Multiculturalism is for use on
other peoples dogmas; its not for use on the Lefts own.
Now one pitfall of being a slave to ones age who unknowingly embraces its dogmas is that you generally make the mistake of mirroring. This is when you project your priorities feelings and basic suppositions onto others; in a nutshell you assume that they take for granted the things you do.
Consider for instance Muslims subordination of host-country law to Sharia law. Outrageous? Impudent? Perhaps.
Shocking?
In reality you should expect nothing less or more.
When pondering this realize that devout Christians (of which Im one) are very similar to Muslims in this regard. This statement may raise eyebrows and even some dander but just consider the recent cases in which Christians have accepted career destruction and punishment rather than be party to same-sex weddings" or homosexual activism. Why are these Christians opposing the law of the land"? And what standard informs them mans law is wrong? What standard are they subordinating the law of the land to?
What they see as the only law that could be and must be above it: Gods law.
This isnt to say Christians and Muslims are the same. They certainly have different conceptions of Gods law. And in keeping with this Christian law generally didnt clash with Western secular" law until secular
ists started holding sway because our secular law reflected Christian morality; it was authored by Christian men such as the Founding Fathers who naturally imbued their system of law with their world view. As an example the Declaration of Independence enunciates the basis for our constitutional rights stating that men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights."
The situation with Sharia is far different. Since the tree of Western secular law wasnt germinated from the seed of Islam it was traditionally and remains today largely incongruent with Muslim principles; thus is a clash in which Islam will ever try to burn that tree root and branch inevitable.
Some moderns will now say that this is why no religious" law should influence society. But not only is this a philosophically unsound position that fails to recognize the basis of just law (Absolute Truth) it also places a person in bad company: The Marxists and Nazis also aimed to neuter the Church and squelch belief in religious law. After all a devout statist wants the states law to be pre-eminent; Thou shalt have no gods before thy government." And this wont happen if people recognize a higher law.
And this recognition is what believing Christians Muslims and Jews all have in common. It is also why it is silly in the extreme to expect Muslims to subordinate Sharia to Western secular law. You are literally asking them to place government ahead of what they see as God. This simply isnt going to happen and no amount of blather about tolerance" diversity" and multiculturalism which is just another way of saying Accept our liberal dogmas" is going to change that. And when the population of believing Muslims becomes great enough in a Western land they
will succeed in Islamizing governmental law.
German chancellor Angela Merkel
announced in 2010 finally that multiculturalism in her country had utterly failed." Talk about being a biblical day late and a budget deficit short. And she and other Western leaders still dont get it. One cant understand ideologies such as multiculturalism if he views them as disconnected social mistakes; they are all part of a deep philosophical/spiritual malaise. It isnt just that the multiculturalist branch needs to be pruned or even cut off. Its that the devout Muslims are right: the liberal-secularist tree that Gramscian mutation must be pulled up and incinerated in the Hell fires whence it came. And it will be. The only question is whether we will return to our roots or allow the complete erasure of Western civilization.
