Suzanne Fields:
...The great contemporary fault line of multiculturalism is the tolerance of Islamist barbarity that passes for understanding. This has led to the conspicuous inability to recognize the dark side of Islam that politicizes authentic religious faith and produces the terrorism that stalks the civilized world. Though only a small number of Muslims actually perceive murder as a religious duty, millions of Muslims support those who do, and many millions more conspicuously refrain from criticizing the evil-doers, either from fear or from a desire to see their faith became dominant across the world.
As a result, "multiculturalism" has become ideology that menaces a culture unable to defend itself. This multiculturalism undercuts assimilation and fosters an anti-American bias in favor of cultures determined to destroy our own. The British example says it all. Multiculturalism in England was shaped not only by academicians, but by civil servants, think tanks, minority pressure groups, center-left politicians, and what John O'Sullivan calls with irony "the Great and the Good." In The New Criterion magazine, he argues that certain government institutions, together with the popular media, created an ideology of "institutional correctness" of condescending anthropology. The British government, unrestrained by constitutional guarantees of separation of church and state, subsidized ethnic, religious, and linguistic ghettoes by supporting "faith schools," where minority children were encouraged to maintain the cultures their parents fled. In the interest of tolerance, men and women who knew better rationalized the suppression of women, genital mutilation and even "honor killings" by Muslims. Better to let the natives keep their quaint customs rather than impose common values that smack of "Britishness."
The bombings in London, however, changed the debate. When the British learned that their suicide bombers were home-grown, recruited from minorities who were not marginalized -- the bombers had grown up playing cricket -- multiculturalism as a guiding ideology was suddenly suspect. The Dutch before them had begun to rethink multiculturalism as well, when a radical Muslim murdered the filmmaker Theo Van Gogh in Amsterdam for his criticism of Islamic suppression of women. The killer left an Islamist manifesto spiked to his breast.
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Multiculturalism has become both masochistic and condescending. Born of good and generous intentions, it inevitably led to cultural amnesia, sapping the strength of the common bond. "An unintended and beneficial consequence of the London bombings," writes John O'Sullivan, "is the transformation of the debate in Britain over multiculturalism." The clock is ticking here, too.
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