Limits of Multiculturalism

Kaal

Once again - you are theorizing this way too complicated and then drawing your own self-serving conclusion that multi-culti doesn't work... :)

multi-culti is not that complicated... and it is already working in many parts of the world for decades... it fails only when muslims are involved - that's the point people here are trying to make... let me say that again for you and DM to get this: multi-culti fails only when muslims are involved...

So - you don't have to twist and turn to invalidate the whole concept just because of one group of people find it hard to adapt because of their own tribalistic stupidity...

You and DM are such unapologetic apologist for muslim refuseniks - you guys can't even think straight... :)

mohar11 # 81, :)
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chalta, the US model is definitely far far better than the Canadian model or the British model, but it too is based on value for the individual.

Whether it can survive group processes is not so obvious, to me, at least.

I don't like to focus on specific groups but urstruly had a point, which he was making about his own group (which may or may not be true for others as well): once you play the game, it may already be too late for you. That is because there is a self-imposed limit to the corrective action, for going back, that Western societies can take.

dost m writes "I agree with what you say but would like to ask you why what you complain about is so wrong? "

You are quite confused in the kind of succession I am talking about. The kind you talk about is voluntary, the kind I am talking about is more implicit, insidious and it changes the nature of man, and when that nature changes to accomadate injustice the world over to benefit the few, when it works to break apart human community and relationships it is wrong

Regarding hamid's and tahmed's baseless comments here, I must be quite effective in busting their BS that they cannot resist attacking my person, even when I am absent. I do not need to squat on the railroad tracks, Muslims had indoor plumbing long before the White Man, whose history is marked by not knowing what to do with his filth, developed them, though once I had to squat but not for the business you are suggesting. I was in the middle of my 25000 mile journey across the US and was travelling from South Dakota through Montana in the middle of a snow blizzard, last year. Came to a small town at 2am, whose only gas station was closed, decided to sleep in my car in the parking lot rather than get killed driving on the road and I had to do my business before I dozed off for the night; there were no 24 hour Super Walmarts in sight and the next town was 70 miles away, and when you're in Montana, towns are the size of a rat's fart....By the way why is not the Chowk staff blocking hamid and tahmed for baselessly trying to insult me? Please explain...


Mr. Ahmadmadani, thanks for your support and kind comments, as I have said before and say again, long live the masadi, HP, ahmadmadani friendship for social justice, even though the swines that support colonization detest and oppose it...

Kaal, you say it like it is a bad thing. The individual is to celebrated. It is good that the US is based on the value of the individual. Your supposition is puzzling.

chalta, yaar, what is good or bad is for others to decide. All one can say is that the kind of individualism the West celebrates (and it does celebrate it, despite the complaints) and the kind of multicultism it has blindly followed are mutually nonsustainable.

Just like we need to think of sustainable secularism, we need to also think of sustainable multicultism. How that can be done, I don't know, but we hope it can be done.

Re: DM #67
"...norms of the house need to be clearly defined."
Actually, that is what I was trying to ask.
Where, in your opinion, should lines be drawn?

#74 Posted by dost_mittar on September 21, 2007 9:56:22 am


but the topic here is broader than Islam and Muslims and I hope that you can recognise this.


No it's not...the whole problem of non-assimilation and multi-culturalism is a 99% muslim problem and 1% non-muslim...all across the world, societies that have been tolerant and multi-cultural are asking questions about their own tolerance because of one reason and one reason only...the failure of their muslim populations to assimilate...

masadi: My one reference to you was in post #40 where I advised Hamidm of the word he was looking for. So stop acting like a prima donna.

mohar, chalta, you should look at the unplugged thread on Mullahs and American women to see why multiculturalism is both foolish and impossible. And no, it is not about Islam or authentic Islam, just two completely different ways of thinking, like day and night, or fire and ice.

Kaalchakra: The very term "multiculturism" stems from the post-segregation era Afro-American cultural issues. So, an examination of the black experience would be relevant to your concerns of whether multiculturism means the death of individuality. In short, the answer is obviously no. While in its heydey, multiculturism placed "groupthink" above individual freedom - with blacks daring to hold individual opinions being derided as Uncle Toms - that stage is over now. This is reflected in changed voting patterns: blacks now tend to vote on individuals, rather than based on race. This is also reflected in blacks becoming prominent in "mainstream" activities (e.g. in the military, with Powell rising to the top) as opposed to traditional "black" concerns.
So, taking the black experience with multiculturism as guide, it seems safe to say that individual freedom is alive and well in the US, and will remain that way. Indeed, older immigrants (e.g. arabs in michigan, who came in large numbers in the 1920's due to Henry Ford's links with them, as attested by the fact that the Ford Meuseum in Dearborn Michigan (?) has a factory sign from that era that is written in 5 different languages, of which Arabic is one.

tahmed writes "This is also reflected in blacks becoming prominent in "mainstream" activities (e.g. in the military, with Powell rising to the top)"

Leave it to a peon of the US elite to try to justify the current-day racism of US society by throwing out the name of Colin Powell- who looks more white than black by the way- Black are extremely underrepresented in all top positions in the economic, military as well as political domains in the US, they are highly overrepresented (as a percent of their population) in janitorial jobs, as prison inmates, being below the poverty line and in those that die almost a decade before the US life expectancy level. Now when a person like tahmed tries to justify all of that by throwing out a name Colin Powell, or when hamid tries to justify the hunger (lack of proper food, food insecurity) of over 40 million Americans by throwing out the 'case' of his sprinkler guy, and I call them criminals and a-holes for doing that, why should I be sanctioned, and what wrong have I done?

to complete #90 where the last sentence is incomplete: These older Arab immigrants are far better assimilated than the more recent arrivals. Thus, ironically, even as some (by no means all or even most) first generation Pakistani females in the US copy Arabs by putting on the hijab, the majority of Arab and Persian women in the US who dont have the hijab or any other visible announcement that they are ....drum roll...muslims.

In fact, a Saudi Arabian once told me how, when walking along a beach in the US, he was surprised to hear one sun-bathing female suddenly say "ya fatima" to the other sunbather next to her and he realized they were in fact visiting the US from Saudi Arabia.

dm-ji is wrong (or being pointlessly PC) in not coming right out and saying that the vast majority of problems of adjustment come from Muslim immigrants in the West. But he is quite right in suggesting that the principles underlying the operation of Western societies need to be spelled out unambiguously for the benefit of new arrivals and others.

Here is my first cut at a set of underlying principles (some abstract and general, others concrete and specific):

(1) Logic and empiricism are considered viable methods for arriving at provable truth or testable provisionally accepted fact. Alleged ‘divine revelation’ is not.

(2) Freedom of thought, speech and expression is a fundamental right that cannot be curtailed to accommodate someone’s religious or cultural sensitivities.

(3) Laws are made by democratically elected representatives of the people and are intended to be applicable to the whole population with no exceptions. They need not make any concessions whatsoever to someone’s religious sensibilities.

(4) Adult are regarded as autonomous individuals who are expected to make their own decisions about how to conduct of their personal lives, for good or bad, no matter what their family or community may think. Children become majors at eighteen (or whatever the statutory age is) and thereafter are legal adults not subject to parental authority.

(5) Complete gender equality (minus minor adjustments to accommodate differences in biology) prevails both in the home and in the society and polity outside.

Feel free to add, subtract, refine, debate, etc.

#91 masadi: I didnt read your post. you are such a bloody bore, all you can do is repeat your usual insults. That is how stupid you are. If I really hated someone on chowk, I would at least try to get creative!!

Kaal, US doesn't follow multiculturalism. When you say west, leave the US out of it. Multiculturalism and Individualism are at odds, I agree. They would never reconcile. And Islam and individualism will never reconcile either..that is why you have Bradfords in the UK and the exurbs of Paris which resemble tiny khalifates rather than a composite of the adopted land where they are. This would never happen in the US. Those theat place primacy of Islam over America or American culture, they will either lose their burkha or go back to motherland defeated..ala Masadi

chaltahai #95 What do you mean by Allah Masadi?