In the 1800’s, British
governors in India faced a difficult decision about a social convention that
they found abhorrent. It seems that there was a practice in India, in vogue for
centuries, in which a widow would willingly throw herself upon the funeral pyre
of her recently deceased husband so that the two would die together. The
practice, known as Sati, was relatively widespread, with statistics in the
early 1800’s recording some 500-600 culturally approved suicides per year. The
British decided to outlaw it. It took decades to make it a crime throughout the
Indian provinces but so they did. I can
only imagine how such a practice evolved in the first place. It sounds like one
part romanticism, one part grief, one part misogyny, and seven parts “this is
how we take care of a widow whose sole financial support is now gone.” Whatever
it was, the British approach was culture be damned—Sati is barbaric and we’re
going to do our best to eliminate it from a world in serious need of
modernization.
Over the past several
decades, multiculturalism as an idea or social philosophy has grown in
popularity. The idea that western European white culture should somehow take
precedence over every other culture, or that no other culture is worth
preserving or even studying, is no longer taken seriously. There has been an
explosion of academic departments on campuses both in North America and Europe that
have welcomed the study and promotion of cultures vastly different from the
western European one familiar to us all. This expansion of the university’s
fields of study has brought a color and diversity, a richness to new
generations of thinkers that should make for greater tolerance, if not
appreciation, for the vast diversity of cultural expressions that make up
society.
But as the world grows
smaller, the value placed on multiculturalism will be challenged. The almost
total and embrace of multiculturalism should bring us to the uncomfortable and
politically incorrect question of whether there is a limit to our tolerance of
what the other culture offers. That we must simply accept what the other
culture defines as normal or good should be regarded as unreasonable and
anti-intellectual. Intelligence, in part, is being able to critique an idea,
comparing it with what we know to be true or good and then coming up with some
compelling argument as to whether it’s appropriate to either pomote the idea or
reject it. That would be the opposite of multi-culturalism, or at least place a
definitive limitation upon it.
Social media has played a
dramatic role in shrinking the earth for us and today, vastly different
cultures from around the world are bumping into each other in rude and shocking
ways. Cultures in which religion and politics occupy separate domains rub up
against cultures where the two are hopelessly entangled. Cultures that allow
for homosexual unions are bumping into cultures where there is no homosexuality
(remember Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad telling his Columbia University
audience that “In Iran we don’t have homosexuals like in your country.” The
auditorium erupted in laughter). Cultures that allow women to be visible, if
not seductively exposed, are staring wide-eyed at cultures that kill daughters
for suspected infidelity. Cultures that allow for security and safety of its
citizens are starkly contrasted with cultures where violence is a common tool in
controlling political enemies. As long as we didn’t have to face these cultures,
we could idealistically claim that the world is a tapestry of different ideas
and innocuous conceptions of what it means to be human. But now that social
media has thrown us all into the same chat room, we may just end up like the
British in the 1800’s expressing horror over what we see, and seeking ways to
stop it.
The Islamic world has
given us suicide bombers, young men and women who hope to advance their cause
by turning themselves into living bombs and thus killing as many innocent
by-standers as possible. And though we should hold no regard for them, our
greater sense of outrage should be directed against the elderly cowards,
whether religious or secular leaders, who have so encouraged young people to
sacrifice their lives in this ineffective and counterproductive tactic. These
young people have been promised riches in the world to come as if they were a
guarantee from the local department store. It’s outrageous.
Reading through the Hamas Charter of 1988, I came across Article
eight which stipulates the slogan of Hamas. The slogan is: “Allah is its goal,
the Prophet its model, the Qur’an its Constitution, Jihad its path and death
for the case of Allah its most sublime belief.” Death for the case of Allah its
most sublime belief? The passage almost immediately gave rise to a memory of
the movie Patton, when the great and utterly driven American general of World War
II addressed his troops in his flagrantly vulgar style: “Now I want you to
remember that no bastard ever won a war dying for his country. He won it by
making the other poor bastard die for his country.” Patton, no saint by any
stretch of the imagination, was not one to promote death. No leader of any
moral stature would. But the culture of life and the culture of death have
finally met face to face; surely they will never be able to live side by side.
Multiculturalism is useful, but only as a basis for creating an
openness to explore each other’s cultures. But having explored and having
witnessed what the other culture offers is not to say we must accept it. To the
contrary, we may just find something worthy of damnation. And should we find it
impossible in our hearts, should we lack the courage to actually damn what is
damnable, then we become complicit in the burning of widows, the objectives of
the suicide bombers, and all other behaviors that should be considered an
affront to both God and humanity. Unless we are willing sacrifice our own
culture, we must conclude that there are limits to multiculturalism. May we all
be blessed to recognize the superiority of the Culture of Life and do our best
to make the other universally illegal.
