Intelligent Multiculturalism – Survival and the Beauty of Openness

Blind multiculturalism and political correctness seem to be the only things standing in the way of simply adopting what should be commonsense self-defense: Arresting or deporting those who propose the overthrow of our government (which is apparently happening in the majority of mosques) and stopping all concessions to this relentless band of interlopers (orthodox Muslims).

If you've got someone pushing for special concessions regardless of fairness, and who have stated their intentions to usurp the legitimate government, you would think it a no-brainer to stop them.

The two things that prevent most Westerners from even knowing about this issue are political correctness and blind multiculturalism. These two cultural blots prevent politicians from speaking openly and directly about orthodox Islam. They prevent newspapers and television reporters from reporting openly and honestly about it, and they even prevent individual people talking about it among themselves out of fear of making a social blunder and being considered racist or bigoted.

Of the two, I would say blind multiculturalism is the more important one. If that's true, it means the single biggest barrier to being heard by a significant portion of the population of non-Muslims — the one thing stopping a widespread public education about Islam — is blind multiculturalism, so let's deal with it right now.

I thought William Bennett made a good point in Why We Fight: Multiculturalism simply says we might have something to learn from other cultures. For several centuries, Westerners have taken up multiculturalism with a passion, often driven by a reaction to the self-righteous snobbery of Europeans and Americans when they came into contact with "primitive" people.

The openness and willingness to look for value in other cultures is good, and the willingness to consider people from other cultures just as human as people in your own culture — that's good too.

But over time, this idea has streamlined. It simplified into merely: "My own culture stinks. Other cultures are worth respecting and appreciating. Except mine."

Maybe multiculturalism combined with the natural teenage rebellion against the "establishment," I don't know.

But however it morphed from something completely legitimate to something self-destructive, there is no doubt it has morphed, and this simplified, dumbed-down multicultural ethos has permeated two very influential positions: School teachers and journalists. The vast majority of teachers, from kindergarten to graduate school, are dyed-in-the-wool blind multiculturalists. And so are the majority of journalists in the mainstream media.

It's not really multiculturalism that is bad. The original idea is very good. But blind, oversimplified multiculturalism could be our downfall.

Trying to oppose one extreme position (ours is the only culture worth appreciating) with the opposite extreme position (ours is the only culture not worth appreciating) still misses the reality of the situation, which is that not all cultures are equal, not all cultures are the same, not all cultures allow equal amounts of freedom or human rights, not all cultures allow equal amounts of free speech and rights for women, and not all cultures allow for equal opportunity for economic abundance and creative pursuits.

Some cultures are better, in some respects, than others. We should appreciate and be open to other cultures, and here in the West, we are — and we are more open than probably any society has ever been in history, and that's one of the reasons this culture, our own culture, is superior to any other culture in at least this one respect (and there are others).

To take an example, do you think Saudi Arabian culture is more open to other cultural influences than we are?

No, they aren't. Not even close. Which means we are more open than they are. Which means when it comes to this particular value — openness to influence by other cultures — we measure higher. Our own culture is better. (Gasp!)

Our Western culture is not perfect, and we should never become so arrogant as to think so, but it has many fine qualities. So whenever multiculturalism devolves into hating Western culture, it is as limited and ignorant as loving Western culture and willfully finding nothing good in any other culture.

But even here, we have at least two variations within our own culture: One that hates its own culture but is open to other cultures, and one that loves its own culture but is not open to other cultures.

These two variations can also be judged. On the criteria for openness, the first one is better. But what about survival in the face of an aggressive competing culture? Islam is aggressively trying to encroach and ultimately replace our culture. Which of our two variations is better at surviving that kind of encroachment?

In other words, if you have two equal cultures and one hated itself but was open to other cultures, but the other culture loved itself but was closed to other cultures, wouldn't the self-loving culture be more likely to survive if they clashed? I think so.

That means that those who have adopted blind multiculturalism (and spread it in schools and the media) are accidentally (or not) making our culture — and all the freedom that goes along with it — vulnerable to invasion and subversion by orthodox Muslims.

Blind multiculturalists must be converted to multiculturalists who appreciate their own culture.

A culture (like ours) that is open to other cultures but also appreciates its own strengths and fine qualities would be the best one to live in and it would survive an invasion by orthodox Islam.

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Are There Many Islams? Or Just One?

The following was written by Traeh Lledew, creator of the two excellent resources, A Chronological Qur'an and Quoting Islam:

Many media discussions nowadays seem to hinge on the answer to the above question.

To support the idea that there is no single Islam, some point to the varied behavior of Muslims and the contradictory aspects of the Qur'an (tolerant verses as against totalitarian verses). Other analysts claim such contradictions are resolved by the Qur'an itself, and point to the Qur'an's own doctrine of abrogation (Qur'an 2:106 and 16:101). Thus many Muslim scholars of Islam teach that the militant and totalitarian verses produced later in Muhammad's career abrogate (cancel) the tolerant verses produced earlier in his career. From that point of view, there are no real contradictions and in the end only one Islam, the totalitarian, final, perfected Islam.

However, Bill Warner, who runs the Center for the Study of Political Islam, balances against the doctrine of abrogation a contrary perspective: many Muslims take everything in the Qur’an as eternally true. Warner concludes that Islam is dualistic, not logically consistent. A Muslim can believe two contradictory things at once, so long as the contradiction is present in the Qur’an. From that point of view, while the doctrine of abrogation does to some extent resolve contradictions, it is simultaneously true that it doesn’t — that the whole Qur'an, including both sides of any contradictions in it, is considered by Muslims eternally true. Allah is so dictatorially all powerful that he is not bound by anything, not even logic.

But having found the Qur'an at least somewhat contradictory and dualistic, does Warner stop there? Does he claim there is no single Islam? No. That would be too imprecise an answer. Warner comes out of a scientific background, and tries to drill down into the details. He takes a statistical approach, and looks at the trilogy of core Islamic texts — Qur'an, Hadith, Sira — quantitatively, asking how much of the trilogy is tolerant and peaceful, versus how much is totalitarian and violent. He finds that the percentage of tolerant statements is quite small, of totalitarian statements quite large. So although he doesn’t say there is one Islam, he does find an overwhelmingly predominant form of Islam. For example, in the most canonical hadith collection, Sahih al-Bukhari, Warner finds that over 98% of jihad hadiths refer to violent jihad. This confirms historian Bernard Lewis’ similar contention that in the core Islamic texts, “jihad” almost always means military jihad to defend or expand Muslim power.

So Warner's view, by getting into specifics, really goes beyond the imprecise alternatives: Islam is One/Islam is Many.

Another perspective that influences the debate about this question is what might be called the "decontructionist" view. Even if you don't know what the philosophy of "deconstruction" is, there's a good chance its claims have seeped to some extent into your consciousness by a sort of cultural osmosis. The deconstructionist viewpoint is that a text can be interpreted in an infinite number of ways and can mean just about anything.

The more one thinks about that claim, however, the more it seems a gross exaggeration. While texts have elasticity of meaning to varying degrees, such elasticity is hardly infinite, and that is even more true with texts that are not largely poetic or mythical in content. The Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira are full of quite literal statements and commands. Because of that, Islam's texts and past history have virtually always steered most interpretation into fairly similar and fairly definite grooves. Islam is not whatever one wants it to be. It is a rather definite historical reality. Many years ago, the eminent historian Bernard Lewis wrote of Islam's inherent totalitarianism.

So we should not go to the deconstructionist extreme of suggesting that anything can mean anything. While Lewis Carroll or some other fantasist might be able to treat Islam's core texts as almost a blank slate on which one could write just about any meaning whatever, the people who most seriously and religiously approach Islam's texts generally go by what the texts actually say. Minor ambiguities of meaning dispersed throughout those texts do not erase their clear overall thrust.

So is there one Islam? Are there many Islams? The answer is much closer to the first alternative, though the second has some validity. The bottom line is that, despite real diversity among Muslims globally, there are also overwhelming commonalities of interpretation worldwide, as numerous international polls of Muslim opinion have shown. While there are many liberal Muslims, totalitarianism, to one degree or another, is and always has been the majority interpretation. It is no accident that the core Islamic region of the world has the worst human rights record of any region on the globe: Islam's core texts, despite some vagaries, at bottom teach an expansionist theocratic totalitarian program.

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Raising Public Awareness of Islam Using Art

We thought this was an interesting and, at least under certain conditions, possibly an effective way to get through to people without saying a word. An artist travels around Germany to photograph beautiful public statues of women, then veils them and photographs them again. This creates a simple and elegant communication.

We found it sad and disturbing to see these beautiful statues veiled. And something else: When the statue is veiled it becomes painfully clear that it obliterates the individuality of the woman. It blanks her out. She becomes a cipher. So much of our unique personalities is revealed in our faces. The veil hides it from the world.

Follow the links below to watch Rosato's two videos (slide shows really):

Rosato - Part 1 

Rosato - Part 2

You can also see Rosato's photographs on Facebook here. In a short post about this, LastDaysNews writes:

Repression leads to resistance. Censoring speech leads to more covert forms of messaging. Political correctness gives birth to more sophisticated forms of protest. A mysterious German artist calling himself Rosato has begun putting Burkas over the heads of female statues in the park to warn about the impact of Islamization on Europe.

A picture says a thousand words and these pictures communicate even more than that without violating a single law. 

One of the qualities free people have in more abundance than those enslaved by restrictive ideologies is creativity. Let's use it to our advantage. Think now: What creative action can you take to get people to take a second look at Islam and stop blindly accepting the comforting lie that Islam is really a religion of peace?

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The Penalty For Creating Open Conversations is Death

the Saudi blogger

Follow the link below and read and participate in an open conversation about a Saudi blogger facing the death penalty for trying to create open conversations:

Saudi Blogger Faces Death

Many people are having a lively conversation on that post. Please add your comments. Here's what the post says:

Saudi blogger faces death penalty for creating web site where people can have open conversations.

The creator of a Saudi Arabian web site called Free Saudi Liberals faces a charge of "apostasy," which comes with an automatic death sentence.

The charge stems from comments made on his site by users that criticized senior Saudi religious leaders.

He had initially been charged with "insulting Islam through electronic channels," but that charge was upgraded to apostasy by a judge.

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Peace On Earth

Serge Trifkovic said most of the conflicts in the world involve Muslims, and if you took away conflicts involving Muslims, the world would be a pretty peaceful place.

Muslims, both orthodox and heterodox, are always quick to point out that Islam is a religion of peace. But this statement by Trifkovic made me curious, so I searched Google for a map of world conflicts, and which ones involved Muslims. I didn't find what I was looking for, but I found two maps (on two different web sites that have nothing to do with each other) that are interesting when you see them together.

The first map is by Freedom House, an organization that tracks democracies around the world. It shows their map of world freedom. The purple countries are the least free:


A few clicks later, I found the map below of populations of Muslims. It shows by color where the densest population of Muslims live in the world (the highest population of Muslims is darkest blue):

There isn't much of a difference between the two maps. The only big difference is that China is not Islamic but still ranks low on the freedom scale.

So a practical way to attain more peace on earth is to work to awaken the non-Muslims of the world to the reality that Islam is not a religion of peace. When that is clear to a large number of people, we will no longer be bamboozled by their rhetoric, no longer allow the concessions they push for, no longer lavish Islamic regimes with money, and no longer trust orthodox Muslims in negotiations. The result will be more peace on earth.

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