Chattanooga, Tennessee, Sabbath afternoon – Samir Selmanović, founder of the interfaith nonprofit Faith House Manhattan, and author of It’s Really All About God, was Sabbath afternoon’s featured speaker at the Adventist Forum Conference.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel declared that in Germany, multiculturalism has “utterly failed.” Both Australia’s ex-prime minister John Howard and Spain’s ex-prime minister Jose Maria Aznar reached the same conclusion about multiculturalism in their countries.
British Prime Minister David Cameron has warned that multiculturalism is fostering extremist ideology and directly contributing to homegrown Islamic terrorism. UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage said the United Kingdom’s push for multiculturalism has not united Britons but pushed them apart. It has allowed for Islam to emerge despite Britain’s Judeo-Christian culture.
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair said the roots of violent Islamism are not “superficial but deep” and can be found “in the extremist minority that now, in every European city, preach hatred of the West and our way of life.”
The bottom line is that much of the Muslim world is at war with Western civilization. There’s no question that the West has the military might to thwart radical Islam’s agenda. The question up for grabs is whether we have the intelligence to recognize the attack and the will to defend ourselves from annihilation.
Multiculturalism is Islamists’ foot in the door. At the heart of multiculturalism is an attack on Western and Christian values. Much of that attack has its roots on college campuses among the intellectual elite who see their mission as indoctrinating our youth. In past columns, I’ve documented professorial hate-America teaching, such as a UCLA economics professor’s telling his class, “The United States of America, backed by facts, is the greediest and most selfish country in the world.” A history professor told her class: “Capitalism isn’t a lie on purpose. It’s just a lie.” She also said: “(Capitalists) are swine. … They’re bastard people.” Students sit through lectures listening to professorial rants about topics such as globalism and Western exploitation of the Middle East and Third World peoples.
Some public school boards have banned songs and music containing references to Santa Claus, Jesus or other religious Christmas symbols. The New York City school system permits displays of Jewish menorahs and the Muslim star and crescent, but not the Christian Nativity scene. One school district banned a teacher from using excerpts from historical documents in his classroom because they contained references to God and Christianity. The historical documents in question were the Declaration of Independence and “The Rights of the Colonists,” by Samuel Adams.
The U.S. is a nation of many races, ethnicities, religions and cultures. Since our inception, people from all over the world have immigrated here to become Americans. They have learned English and American history and celebrated American traditions and values. They have become Americans while also respecting and adapting some of the traditions of the countries they left behind. By contrast, many of today’s immigrants demand that classes be taught — and official documents be printed — in their native language. Other immigrants demand the use of Shariah, practices that permit honor killing and female genital mutilation.
Multiculturalists argue that different cultural values are morally equivalent. That’s nonsense. Western culture and values are superior. For those who’d accuse me of Eurocentrism, I’d ask: Is forcible female genital mutilation, as practiced in nearly 30 sub-Saharan African and Middle Eastern countries, a morally equivalent cultural value? Slavery is practiced in Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad and Sudan; is it morally equivalent?
In most of the Middle East, there are numerous limits placed on women, such as prohibitions on driving, employment and education. Under Islamic law, in some countries, female adulterers face death by stoning, and thieves face the punishment of having their hand severed. In some countries, homosexuality is a crime punishable by death. Are these cultural values morally equivalent, superior or inferior to Western values?
Multiculturalism has not yet done the damage in the U.S. that it has in western European countries — such as England, France and Germany — but it’s on its way. By the way, one need not be a Westerner to hold Western values. Mainly, you just have to accept the supremacy of the individual above all else.
Fortner-
In my view I agree that multiculturalism is destructive and is now doing untold damage to the values of the USA. I see it as a myth which originated in academia when academics had nothing better to do!
All cultures equal? Not at all.
The Diversity Myth by Sachs and Thiel is a good study of so called diversity.
“Since our inception, people from all over the world have immigrated here to become Americans.”
Who were the Americans at our inception? I find that claims such as this & your citing exclusively of extreme examples detract from the credibility of your conclusions. To be convincing, you need to remove all indications of prejudice & fear mongering, which I suspect you’d protest are present. They are there, perhaps stronger for your inability to recognize them.
In a nation like America, the acceptance of Multiculturalism leads to a kind of slow rot, as the distinctive ideas at the root our culture — the Enlightenment ideals of our Founding Fathers — slowly die from neglect. But such a nation can ride on its previous cultural momentum for generations, taking many years to collapses from within — and that gives us a long time to fight Multiculturalism before it is too late. A nation like France, which finds itself host to a large minority of religiously strident Muslim immigrants thoroughly untouched by Enlightenment intellectual and political traditions, will not be allowed the luxury of a death by slow rot. It must act much more quickly to save itself.
If you believe that cultures are not equal, what cultures would you determine to be inferior and what cultures would you determine to be superior?
The Maya practiced human sacrifice to an extent. In some Maya rituals people were killed by having their arms and legs held while a priest cut the person’s chest open and tore out his heart as an offering. This is depicted on ancient objects such as pictorial texts, known as codices
Human sacrifice was a religious practice characteristic of pre-Columbian Aztec civilization, as well as of other Mesoamerican civilizations like the Maya and the Zapotec.
Why the Incas offered up child sacrifices
Cannibalism has recently been both practiced and fiercely condemned in several wars, especially in Liberia and Congo.
Stalin’s Russia
Mao’s China
Pol Pot’s Cambodia
If it isn’t obvious than I doubt my appraisal would convince you.
In The Grip of Truth
No, it is not obvious! Your previous comment was against multi-culturalism, which infers that all cultures are not equal. Thus, to make sense of this discrimination one would be clear on the particulars of cultures that could not be accepted.
Please recall that in a public forum where the general reader has not the ‘history’ of interchanges between you and @bronwynreid a forthright answer is much more enlightening. And please, …
Trust God.
Wasn’t there an effort in Europe, in the 1940s, made to eliminate multiculturalism in a certain country? How did that go?
I believe that those people who are against multiculturalism would also love to see the elimination of multireligionism, having only one religion enforced globally - their own, of course…
History records the tragic outcome of the Nazi genocide against the social, religious and cultural groups that it demonised and systematically tortured and murdered. There are many dictators who have used racism and intolerance to slaughter their tribal and ethnic minorities. Rwanda and Syria are recent examples of racist fuelled mass genocide. No one who takes the name Christian can condone this hatred as racism has no place in God’s Kingdom.