THE TECH (MIT): Amal Dorai G mischaracterizes my letter from last week. Far from saying that we should accommodate the intolerance of other cultures, I was posing a question — how do we reconcile our liberal society (here I use “liberal” in its classical sense) with respect for multicultural diversity, when some of our own values, such as respect for the rights of homosexuals, conflict with those of other cultures? Do we dare to assert the superiority of civilized Western liberalism over the medieval puritanism which still persists in some parts of the world today? Dorai seems to think so, and his letter suggests that it is ridiculous to think otherwise — he believes it is “ludicrous” to accommodate another culture’s bigotry.
However, appropriate limits to multiculturalism are not as obvious to our friends in Europe and Canada. According to the BBC, the Canadian government, flouting free speech rights, brought writer Mark Steyn before a human rights tribunal for writings which were critical of Islam (as if boorishness is on par with, say, genocide). In the UK, Islamic Sharia law courts, where the laws of evidence are more lenient, now operate as an alternative to the legitimate courts of the British government, according to The Telegraph, undoubtedly encouraged by the climate fostered by idealists such as the ruling Labour Party, which had insisted for many years that their country is “multicultural.” In Germany, the judge of a German court cited the Koran in rejecting a Moroccan woman’s petition for an accelerated divorce due to domestic violence and death threats from her husband, according to the International Herald Tribune. While mainstream Muslim leaders, to their credit, swiftly condemned the ruling, the apparent alacrity with which the judge subordinated German legal principles to the Koran illustrates the paralysis of justice which could result from permitting cultural accommodation to become too ingrained. In France, philosopher Jean-Francois Revel has commented that the institutional reluctance to teach French to immigrant children in French schools has stunted the upward mobility of these immigrants, causing resentment which sometimes boils over into the youth riots we have witnessed in recent years. Homosexuals, in particular, comprise one group which has much to fear from the growing Islamization of Europe. In the Netherlands, attacks on gays have increased in recent years, mostly perpetrated by Moroccan youths, according to Radio Netherlands. In Iran, Sharia law calls for the execution of homosexuals. It may be ridiculous now to think that something like that could happen in western Europe, but such changes do not occur suddenly, and we only notice too late when things have gone too far, just as a frog submerged in a pot of cold water does not jump out of the pot if the water is brought gradually to a boil. Multiculturalism May Erode Strength Of Western Values >>> By Justin Wong | April 29, 2008
The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback - UK)
The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Hardback - UK)
