Author: Michael Radu
Publication: FrontPageMagazine.com
Date: August 18, 2004
URL: http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=14712
Sooner or later, the de facto mutual
support society of progressives and Islamists had to collapse under the
weight of its own contradictions.
The progressives who have supported
the claims of Islamists in the West have long chosen to disregard the saying
that one cannot be so open minded as to let your brains fall out. Now reality
forces them to wake up and, increasingly in Europe and now in Canada, realize
that the Islamists' goals are incompatible with their own, and that excessive
"tolerance" inevitably leads to intolerance.
The days of the joint anti-American
demonstrations of the Left and Islamists, of the Communists, Socialists
and Muslim radicals in the streets of Paris or in Trafalgar Square may
indeed be coming to an end.
The first and most spectacular sign
that the progressives and the Islamists seek different, contradictory goals
came from the Netherlands -- that most progressive of all countries, the
land of legal drugs, medical assisted suicide and euthanasia, gay marriages
and unionized military. It had a face - Pym Fortuyn, a gay environmentalist
who famously declared that Islam is a reactionary and "stupid" religion,
and that his country is "full."
Blasphemy? Not really. Shortly after
Fortuyn's 2002 assassination by a radical environmentalist, his party came
from nowhere to place second in the general elections that year. While
the party soon collapsed under the weight of its own incompetence, its
radical (by European standards) anti-immigration (read anti- Muslim immigration)
program was largely adopted by the present government in The Hague. Meanwhile,
the same year, the gay Socialist mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoe, was
almost killed by a Muslim who did not like gays. No matter how multiculturalists
may tie themselves in knots over the issue, Islam and homosexuality are
irrevocably incompatible. This is demonstrated by the attitudes of Muslims
everywhere. Muslims condemn homosexuality as much if not more than fundamentalist
Christians. And unlike fundamentalist Christians, they are willing and
ready to kill over it.
Then there is Islam's problem with
feminism, and women in general. Polygamy, which is illegal everywhere in
the West, is quite commonly tolerated, practiced, subsidized in a number
of countries, especially France. Then there is the practice of genital
mutilation of girls -- not an Orthodox Muslim practice, but it happens
nonetheless -- in many Muslim countries. Finally there is the general --
and theologically correct -- Islamic denial of the most basic rights to
women. Put polygamy, genital mutilation, anti-abortion attitudes and the
burqa together and one is likely to drive feminists wild indeed. It is
also a combination that makes all Western women -- and most decent men
for that matter -- question the realism of accepting Islam as just another
religion to be respected and tolerated in their midst.
Now, Canada is becoming the Netherlands
of North America. Its official ideology is "multiculturalism." Canadians
may not like the term, but that is the ruling Liberal Party's entrenched
policy since the premiership of the late Pierre Elliott Trudeau in the
1970s. However, multiculturalism is now facing the limits of "tolerance."
Canadian-style multiculturalism,
the dream of American academics and the enemy of serious Canadians who
care about politics and their own culture, is simple to define: immigrant
ethnic minority groups, virtually all from the Third World, are not only
not required to assimilate, but the taxpayers, in the name of "diversity"
and "tolerance," are required to pay for maintaining their culture. Hence
the plethora of ethnic - Chinese, East and South East Asian, Indian sub-
continent, etc. associations, schools, cultural organizations paid by the
taxpayers of Alberta or British Columbia - via Ottawa, of course, since
the Canadian West is quite hostile to this.
One may ask the key, common sense
question to all pro-immigrant, anti- assimilation groups everywhere: why
would anyone choose to emigrate from the balmy climates of the Third World
to chilly Canada if their culture - political or otherwise - is so worthy
as to be maintained in the new country? Indeed, if Pakistani, Romanian,
Bangladeshi or Jamaican culture are so great, why leave? Or is there no
link - logical and practical - between that culture and the push factors
for emigration?
In the name of tolerance and multiculturalism,
in 1991 the Ontario provincial government passed something called the Arbitration
Act, allowing religious (at the time Christian and Jewish) authorities
to perform certain legal functions, in family and civil law, rather than
having regular courts do it. Of course, as Ontario goes, so goes Canada.
Ontario Muslims demanded that Sharia (Islamic law) "courts" be allowed
to solve family and other civil matters (divorce, child custody and inheritance,
etc.) among Canadian Muslims. And why not? After all, it would be hypocritical
to allow a rabbi to deal with kosher matters while denying an imam the
right to deal with divorce or child custody, wouldn't it? It is a valid
legal point within the moral, cultural and legal universe of Canadian multiculturalism.
As one may expect, supporters of
the sharia as de facto Canadian law for Muslims promise - perhaps sincerely
- that no obligatory sharia punishments such as cutting off the hands of
the thieves, stoning adulterers, etc., associated with strict application
of sharia in Saudi Arabia, would happen in the snowy towns of Ontario.
However sharia is divinely ordained, in its totality, in Muslim eyes. It
is a matter of faith, and choosing and picking among its rules is not for
Canadian (or any other) imams to decide. But that essential issue is not
what has provoked a strong feminist reaction in Ontario and among those
Canadians not in Barbados or Florida at this time; it is the relationship
between sharia and women rights - and feminism.
"It's shocking to see the seeds
of an Islamic republic being sown here in Canada," one young woman shouted
to vociferous applause at a recent Toronto rally, organized to denounce
the practice of sharia in Ontario. "Sharia doesn't work anywhere else in
the world. Why does the government believe it will work here?" [1]
This is a clear case of "tolerance"
gone wild and becoming intolerance - and it is a double one. On the one
hand, Muslims in Canada (at least some of them) claim that, in the name
of Canadian "tolerance" and "multiculturalism," they have a right to live
by their own legal rules (sharia), which is by definition intolerant (to
non- Muslims), "morally conservative" and gives Muslims a legal domination
over all others. On the other hand, the Left - of which feminism, here,
in Europe and in Canada is one of the strongest contingents - believes
in erasing religious moral standards, indiscriminate "equality" between
sexes and to gays, bisexuals, etc. The problem for Western leftist politicians
and their media sidekicks is that, sooner or later, their gay, feminist
and "tolerant" constituencies would rebel and prove that they are still
more numerous at the ballot box than those immigrant Muslims who cannot
adapt.
[1] Susan Bourette , Can tolerant
Canada tolerate sharia?, The Christian Science Monitor, August 10, 2004.
Michael Radu is Senior Fellow and
Co - Chair, Center on Terrorism and Counterterrorism, at the Foreign Policy
Research Institute in Philadelphia.
