Societal (or Multicultural) Death Knell

"We have been too concerned about the identity of the person who was arriving and not enough about the identity of the country that was receiving him." French Prime Minister Nicolas Sarkozy

That great civil exercise in expressing understanding, compassion, solidarity and equality among cultures, ethnicities, religions and heritage has come to a thudding halt. Not that all those generous extensions of civility are to be halted, no longer to be honoured. But not at the expense of the expectation that when people of diverse backgrounds migrate to a country other than that of their origins, they must value the prevailing culture, social mores and values, and their laws, and take steps to integrate into the welcoming social system.

That is not too onerous an expectation. When people seek shelter, refuge, a place for themselves in countries not their original ones because of social or political unrest, or unjust conditions, or endemic poverty, they must be prepared to pay some dutiful homage to the welcoming country. The most effective way to do that is to recognize the national values and the social contract that others within the country honour and practise.

The bright idea of multiculturalism, having due regard for other cultures' diverse practises as a way to help people adjust to a new social environment might have sounded like a good idea, and made the welcoming parties feel generous to a fault, but there was an unforeseen fault that resulted in the incoming immigrants and refugees deducing from that generosity that it was no longer incumbent upon them to make any kind of obligatory overtures, to 'fit in'.

Multiculturalism resulted in people feeling confident about retaining all their old cultural practises, of living in the social comfort of a familiar language, social customs and religious practises that were often divisive, and which certainly led them to keep themselves physically apart from those whose society they joined. Ignorance of the welcoming society's values and priorities resulted, as well as an ongoing and growing sense of undeserved entitlement to ever-increasing demands for special treatment.

Which led inevitably to feelings on both sides of the cultural/values divide that were antagonistic in nature; that far too great an accommodation was being made for immigrant communities, effectively diluting the importance of the prevailing society - and the reverse, that the prevailing society's expectations of the immigrant community were unfair, insensitive and intrusive.

The rise of disaffected first- and second-generation youth from immigrant families who felt outside both experiences, belonging securely to none, led invariably to those youth feeling aggressively aggrieved against the prevalent, majority society, particularly in the case of the Muslim demographic. For whom the vision of their adopted homeland's response to an emerging, violence-based Islamic jihad was interpreted as "Islamophobia", and toward which the disaffected homeland youth responded as new recruits for violent jihad.

"The French national community cannot accept a change in its lifestyle, equality between men and women ... freedom for little girls to go to school", said Nicolas Sarkozy, choosing to focus on that aspect of Islamic cultural differences at odds with France's, rather than addressing the more incendiary problems of youth violence in France's infamous Muslim ghettos rife with restless, unemployed and resentful youth ripe for jihad.

"If you come to France, you accept to melt into a single community, which is the national community, and if you do not want to accept that, you cannot be welcome to France". As to the question of whether multiculturalism has succeeded or failed: "My answer is clearly yes, it is a failure", he said during a television interview. Fairly well echoing the statements of British Prime Minister David Cameron, German chancellor Angela Merkel, Australia's ex-prime minister John Howard and Spanish ex-premier Jose Maria Aznar.

Multiculturalism has encouraged immigrants to retain far too much of their singular and often-oppositional cultural mores that set them apart from those of the prevailing culture. Integration became an unachievable dream, far from reality. Prime Minister Cameron's vision of a "more active, muscular liberalism", where equal rights, rule of law, freedom of speech and democracy are actively promoted has overtaken the misguided multiculturalism ideology.

Although other countries in Europe have not yet pronounced themselves completely fed up with the strains that 'accommodation' has placed on their patience, on the remarkable changes that have taken place in their nations' consciousness, and their countries' physical and social landscapes, many have taken steps to indicate their displeasure with prevailing Islamic stealthy infiltration, undermining their valued historical European roots.

The United States, in attempting to come to terms with, and to acquire a deeper understanding of the emerging violence among home-grown Islamists exercising their options to join al-Qaeda derivatives and enacting atrocities there, has turned to Canada and to Australia. To try to emulate those two countries in their attempts through their national security agencies to defuse palpable dissatisfaction and arrest the potential for fanatic-jihad violence. By liaising at the community level with organized Islamic elites.

Which would be akin to the halt aiding the blind. America's melting pot society, that absorbs immigrants with the expectation that they will readily adopt and adapt to prevailing social values has hardly been less disappointing than that of multiculturalism. Call it a melting pot, call it a cultural mosaic; when an adverse ideology or religion has the strength and determination to be interpreted as adversarial to prevailing values, its result is akin to multiculturalism, by default.

If the organized face of Western-based immigrant communities dedicated to their Eastern-based religions, ideologies, politics and cultural mores continue to preach and teach and support differences rather than exhort the acceptance of the adopting countries' nurturing social values, what point is there of liaising with them? It is from the crucible of the fundamentalist, organized mosques and clerics that impressionable young Muslims are encouraged to surrender to militant, political Islam.

This is one of the many results of multiculturalism, along with emigrant-acceptance policies incapable of distinguishing which immigration-seeking applicants based on background and assessable criteria present as reasonable candidates for immersion in and acceptance of Western society.