Multiculturalism: the good, the bad and the ugly (Part 2)
When is multiculturalism bad?
Many immigrants to the West are seeking freedom from the cultures left behind. Their willingness and that of their offspring to assimilate with their new homeland bodes well for the future.
For example, while crossing a busy street in downtown Toronto recently, I noticed an older east Asian woman in the crosswalk pulling a cart carrying two heavy stacked containers. She was struggling to get across because the cart’s small wheels were jamming in the streetcar tracks. Just then, a turbaned Sikh going the opposite way stopped, turned around, and helped her get across.
When immigrants refuse to fully integrate with the new culture but seek instead to occupy parallel cultures, societal cohesion can be jeopardized.
By contrast, when immigrants refuse to fully integrate with the new culture but seek instead to occupy parallel cultures, societal cohesion can be jeopardized. Refusal to integrate covers a spectrum of behaviors including not learning the language of their new home country, usually involving older immigrants surrounded on arrival by others speaking their first language. Much more problematic, some immigrants retain and act upon beliefs from their culture of birth that strongly conflict with the core values of their new homeland.
For example, I just read the following story in the April 24th edition of The Epoch Times. “A U.S. District Court sentenced a Chinese national to nine months in prison, three years of supervised release, and deportation afterward for cyberstalking and threatening a fellow student in Boston. He will self-surrender to a designated jail on June 7. Wu Xiaolei was found guilty on both counts three months ago. …’Today, Xiaolei Wu learned there are serious consequences for harassing, threatening, stalking, and infringing on a fellow student’s constitutional rights solely because she was critical of the ruling Communist Party of China,’ Jodi Cohen, special agent in Charge of the FBI’s Boston Division said in a press statement of the Department of Justice.”
Both victim and defendant in this case were ethnic Chinese but each had adopted values that were completely incompatible. While membership of the Communist Party of China is only about seven percent of the Chinese population, the absolute number of members is almost 100 million, or 250% of the population of Canada! Clearly, if western countries were to be swamped by immigrants adhering to the beliefs and values of the CPC, their way of life would be threatened.
Another example of toxic multiculturalism is the clash between the Islamic worldview and the customs of countries like Canada that are heavily influenced by their Judeo-Christian history. The issue is conflicting worldviews, not individual identity. Many immigrants want to free themselves from the ideology of Islam (political, military and religious) but continue to see themselves as Muslims because of their birth identity.
Alternatively, many individuals today who continue to live in Muslim-majority countries like the Islamic Republic of Iran are denouncing Islamic ideology. In fact, thousands of Iranians are having encounters with the person of Jesus and, risk notwithstanding, are surrendering their lives to him.
In Canada, one manifestation of toxic multiculturalism is the rising level of virulent antisemitism. As it happens, a major source of this deplorable conduct is Islamic ideology, which embraces Jew hatred as a core value.
Next, I will further develop this latter example of multiculturalism gone bad followed by an exploration of the unique culture of God’s earthly kingdom.
Photo by Levi Meir Clancy on Unsplash
