Pluralism Works, Multiculturalism Divides

Canada prides itself on its dedication to cultural diversity, freedom of expression, clarity of vision, equality under the law as a thriving economic engine built on an egalitarian principle of equal opportunities available to all its citizens. Canada particularly wants its immigrant population to enjoy the opportunities living in Canada affords each of them, to celebrate their uniqueness in culture, tradition, ethnic origin and religion.

We place, unfortunately, very little emphasis on the broader culture, prefering to emphasize our culture of inclusiveness-with-diversity. There was a time, not all that long ago, when people emigrated to Canada from their diverse origins elsewhere around the globe to find a better life for themselves and their families with the intention to integrate. Seeing it as an obligation, pay-back for welcome. We pride ourselves on being a nation of immigrants.

But whereas once those immigrants expressed their appreciation for their new country by adapting to its cultural values, by adopting its broad-based social mores, by adhering to its laws and respecting the ethnic backgrounds, traditions, cultures, and religions of others and finally integrating into society, this no longer happens in quite the same way. Where once immigrants held dear vestiges of their culture and traditions of their own fond volition, official sanction now bids them to do so.

Paid for courtesy of the Government of Canada, thanks to tax dollars extracted from each and every Canadian: official multiculturalism. No longer do immigrants seem to feel the same need to adapt and become acculturated into their new environment; they feel free to gather in demographic clutches more or less ignoring the larger culture and social environment. In fact, often while doing so, finding fault with the host country's values.

And realizing that they have the potential for a collective voice in this very accepting and tolerant society raising it high to object to the more colourful values and mores which they identify more with vices and lack of morality. The tail handily wags the dog in Canada. This is a place where people, once victimized in their home countries, having sought refuge elsewhere, plan to retain ingrained values, but are outraged at what they perceive as lack of values here.

May Canadians in response indignantly declare their choices and lifestyles as being of equal value, or criticize the criticizers by recommending that conservative social values are not reflective of the country? Or suggest that it was conservative social values that caused the immigrants to flee their old countries to begin with. And now that they have the freedom to complain, now that they're no longer victims of a repressive social or religious regime, how is it that they find fault with this one?

Not likely; for their indignant response will warrant them charges of racism, and those being confronted will haughtily fling the mantle of victimhood over their proud shoulders, throwing the entire matter into the ugly theatre of discrimination against minorities. A charge not readily embraced in Canadian society; a charge that ensures most Canadians will shun the speaker.

As Neil Bissoondath writes in his "Selling Illusions": "One must be governed by a sense of historical and ethnic injustice...one must be in love with one's own victimhood" to lay these charges of discrimination. "Unfortunately, such silliness - the obsessive desire to seek offence and the obsessive desire to avoid giving it - are rampant, sprouting vigorously in the upturned soil of the multicultural land.

"To be a victim of the past is to be burdened by the sense that history - colonialism, imperialism, racism, sexism - has victimized you, and this sense of historical injustice has become a full and active element of your personality. You are informed by more than just the memory of it; it impels you to view the world in a certain way, to act in a certain way; it hardens you, makes you combative; you claim the moral high ground and live to see your victimhood acknowledged and compensated. But to chain yourself to the injustices and humiliations of the past is to march forward into the future with your gaze fixed firmly behind you."

There is an appeal in victimhood; it means you don't really have to struggle too strenously with yourself to become mature and accepting of the vanished past and the future that beckons. You can wallow in self-pity, flaunt your status as a victim, draw public attention and compassion - instead of getting on with life, and meeting it head on. This works well for little girls given to thespian endeavours - and the attention it engenders.

Which brings to mind young Muslim women who insist on their right as Canadians, in respect of their Islamic zeal to wear the hijab, even the niqab. Even though Islam does not demand this of women; only that they dress modestly. However, in a country like Canada where full Islamic coverings are still an exotic novelty it's a fairly certain way to bring attention to oneself. And then the attention is pushed right back in the onlookers' faces, as unwanted discrimination.

The 11-year-old soccer-playing Asmahan Mansour who was ordered to remove her hijab in a game between her Nepean soccer team and another in Laval received attention she may or may not have sought, and the compassion she required when her entire team and others from the Ottawa area walked out of the tournament in protest. The little girl claimed that this was an insult to her religion; one only wonders why it is that her mother does not herself wear the hijab.

Momin Khawaja of Orleans languishes in jail, awaiting his trial on terrorism charges. Evidence being brought before a court in London, England, unequivocally links him as a key player in a gang of would-be home-grown terrorists planning to explode deadly devices at popular London-area entertainment sites for maximum carnage. His father, Mahboob Khawaja's website revealed the odious racist values of the family; the son fell close to his father's ideals.

A young conservative Muslim born and brought up in Toronto and conflicted about his identify versus his place in Canadian society, trained as a young adult both with the Royal Canadian Army Cadets, and later with an ultra-religious group travelling as Islamic missionaries to India and Pakistan. He later sojourned to Syria for two years of study, and returned to Canada, appreciating anew its laws and freedoms. He offered to act as an intermediary, to infiltrate suspected home-grown jihadists and his efforts paid off in a spectacular group apprehension and arrest. For his troubles, he is ostracized by the Muslim community, receives death threats, but regrets nothing.

A Member of Parliament sits in the House of Commons as an elected representative; a man whose father-in-law was a spokesperson for a now-outlawed Sikh terrorist group set to be interviewed by an RCMP panel of enquiry into the Air India bombing, and there are legitimate reasons to suspect that some members of the Sikh community have offered to deliver block votes in an election to trade off for cancelling key legislation enabling the enquiry.

The president of the Canadian Arab Federation is able to circulate an email to Muslim delegates at a federal political party conference to elect a new leader, informing them that a particular candidate should not be elected because his wife may be a member of a Jewish advocacy group promoting the well-being of "apartheid" Israel, while an elected MP of Arab-Canadian background stands by mutely.

Multiculturalism has produced a fractious, ethnically self-interested, self-serving, sometimes intolerant demographic in this country of tolerance and freedoms. Canada deserves better. Will we remain forever delusional?