In an earlier age—I speak here autobiographically, and not of some vanished world long ago but of the 1960s when I made my way to the United States—the world was altogether different. Mass migration from the Islamic world had not begun. The immigrants who turned up in Western lands were few, and they were keen to put the old lands, and their feuds and attachments, behind them. Islam was then a religion of Afro-Asia; it had not yet put down roots in Western Europe and the New World. Air travel was costly and infrequent.
The new lands, too, made their own claims, and the dominant ideology was one of assimilation. The national borders were real, and reflected deep civilizational differences. It was easy to tell where "the East" ended and Western lands began. Postmodernist ideas had not made their appearance. Western guilt had not become an article of faith in the West itself.
Nowadays the Islamic faith is portable. It is carried by itinerant preachers and imams who transmit its teachings to all corners of the world, and from the safety and plenty of the West they often agitate against the very economic and moral order that sustains them. Satellite television plays its part in this new agitation, and the Islam of the tele-preachers is invariably one of damnation and fire. From tranquil, banal places (Dubai and Qatar), satellite television offers an incendiary version of the faith to younger immigrants unsettled by a modern civilization they can neither master nor reject.
Yet many of our elites do not want to acknowledge the fact that many Muslims view Islam as their ultimate identity; they would rather turn to ridiculous moral equivocating by pointing out that Shahzad, after all, was under much stress because he had to foreclose on his home. Or they dismiss him as a lone extremist, refusing to examine any pattern of homegrown attacks, despite the successful attack of Maj Hassan on a US army base, or Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the unsuccessful underwear bomber. The media seems utterly incapable of harnessing our technological advantages to examine and thoughtfully debate Islamist ideology out in the open, for it undermines their cherished narrative of multiculturalism: that all cultural values are equal and worthy in their own right, and no values need to be promoted over each other, certainly not the white man's values. The result of such thinking is ultimately destructive to the goal of tolerance; for the determined ideologues will fill the vacuum with their own ideology, dominating the apologists who no longer have a philosophical basis for defending their own values. Freedom of speech is muzzled--after all, why provoke an aggrieved minority with your racist outbursts?
Multiculturalism is a step backwards from the values of individual freedom and modernity; it provides a deterministic context to society based on a person’s ethnic or religious origins, or gender. It excuses tribalistic loyalties under the guise of tolerance. The idea that no absolute values should dominate in any one society flies in the face of reason.
A rejection of multiculturalism is not a rejection of cultural diversity or tolerance. On the contrary, recognizing the contributions of different cultures can enrich society and serve as a barrier to racism and xenophobia. Immigrants and different cultural groups in democratic societies are often changed by, and change society for the better. However, it must be done in the context of individual freedom as a cornerstone for the person's relationship to their government and to each other; this individual freedom allows us to chose our own cultural context within the values of our society. These open debates with a strong defense of our values are the only antidote to marginalizing the lure of extremist ideology.
But in the Left's view of multiculturalism, we are a flawed nation no more special than any other; our values are specific to white Anglo-Saxen Protestants and are racist towards other cultures. Christian expression of any sort must be banned from the public square. Our national identity is fragmented, leaving us with an empty quasi-capitialist materialism. And young men like Shahzad will continue to turn to fill that void with a radicalized belief system we dare not critique.
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