WHERE MULTICULTURALISM ENDS

 

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.