Canadians Are Right to Question Multiculturalism
Last month, there arose a Twitter controversy that stifled another debate over multiculturalism and Islam.
The Vancouver Sun published an article with the headline, “Ethnic diversity harms a country’s social trust, economic well-being.” The article argued that Canada should rethink the doctrine of “diversity, tolerance, and inclusion,” and adopt one based upon “compatibility, cohesion, and social trust.” As an example it cited Denmark’s immigration policy — -particularly when it came to Islam — -and how it has made these changes to a certain degree of success. It quickly caught the attention of voluble activists, causing an outrage. The result was a supercilious move by the editor-in-chief, Harold Munro. Not able to cope with the deranged barrage, he decided to remove the article and issued a self-immolating apology to his readers.
Now, the article was not void of flaws. The author, for one, did not specify which types of people he was talking about when he posited that certain people should be excluded from our societies. He would have done well to be less vague.
Nevertheless, it only demonstrated how Canada’s multiculturalism is an untouchable subject. And discussions like the ones in which liberal scholars such as Robert Putnam or Arthur Schlesinger engaged are now considered beyond the pale. Someone can’t be critical without being a peddler of “far-right” extremism.
Justin Trudeau’s injurious declaration that Canada is a “post-national state” in which there is no mainstream identity is often casted by conservatives as a uniquely sinister view. It is an outgrowth of his “diversity is our strength” mantra, but it is the logical conclusion of multiculturalism’s premise. Discussing official multiculturalism in 1971, his father Pierre Trudeau claimed that there was “no official culture.” Elaborating, he contended that if national unity between all Canadians should be achieved, it is to be “founded on confidence in one’s own individual identity; out of this can grow respect for that of others and a willingness to share ideas, attitudes, and assumptions.” One of the few to slightly demur, Member of Parliament Real Caouette asserted that if there was no official culture, he did not see how “we could succeed in really becoming a nation while we would be endowed with only a few cultures unable to get on among themselves or at war with another.”
The Multiculturalism Act (officially passed in the 1980s) established institutions that would help allocate millions of dollars toward things like highlighting the contributions historically victimized groups have made to society. This is all, to be sure, noble, but the questions often obscured by such efforts are some of the most important and need to be continually reflected upon: What are the core values that Canada will stand for besides its “diversity”? Where do they come from? Where’s the incentive for newcomers to become “Canadian”? What does this even mean?
To answer these sorts of questions, there must be a clear identity and a set of non-negotiable values that underpin it. We have given up revisiting either of these while we embark on the on-going multiculturalist crusade.
The relationship between newcomers, citizens and the state should be reciprocal. We can accommodate to some extent, but adapting to a host culture is an obligation of anyone seeking citizenship. To say this shouldn’t be controversial but has become so since masochism has become regnant among the political class. Any assertion of Western values is to be denounced as a dog whistle to chauvinists. As Douglas Murray put it in The Strange Death of Europe, once multiculturalism was implemented, “the only culture that couldn’t be celebrated was the culture that had allowed all these cultures to be celebrated in the first place. In order to become multicultural, countries found that they had to do themselves down, particularly focusing on their negatives.”
The irony is that some cultures elevated by multiculturalism are themselves exclusionary and hostile to cultural co-existence. This often affects other minorities, as regional hostilities are imported. One to which many avert their eyes is Muslim anti-Semitism. The same standards rightly applied to white supremacists need not apply to an Islamist. The lack of consistency is seen when repellent views of Jews are espoused by radical imams. Or when a co-founder of Toronto al Quds Day claims Zionists were behind the Christchurch massacre. Or when a collection of flags showing solidarity with Hezbollah is displayed during the annual exhibition of anti-Jewish incitement. What’s more, during one al-Quds Day event, cops capitulated to an Islamic mob when a Jewish counter-protestor waving an Israeli flag was told by police to put it away lest it incited a riot. And only after political pressure did Trudeau and the Liberals condemn and force a Muslim candidate to withdraw because of his anti-Semitic remarks.
In the last few years, Christian groups have been rejected government funds as a consequence of their views on abortion. Meanwhile, controversial Islamic groups such as the Muslim Association of Canada have been approved to receive these funds even though its leaders have supported the Muslim Brotherhood.
The multicultural dream will always require compromising principles and the rule of law to appease the sensibilities of others. Of multiculturalism’s impact on the nation-state, law, and the social fabric, legal scholar Esin Orucu writes:
When multiculturalism becomes the norm and postures as the strong version of cultural pluralism demanding its manifestation in legal pluralism, it becomes a serious issue since this appears to be a threat to the territorial integrity of a state or when nationalism inherent in culture groups is perceived as a threat to the monolithic values or dominant culture within that state.
Take, for instance, the efforts to promote Sharia law in Canada to maintain Islamic customs for gender relations or provincial parties that believe Islam is the “native DEEN of Ontario and Canada.” As it was incisively said by former British Prime Minister David Cameron, passivity when it comes to promoting a shared way of life naturally causes groups to show loyalty only to themselves and their ideologies instead of the country in which they live.
“Muslims believe that every action of their life in every aspect of their life, they must obey the Islamic law and govern themselves accordingly,” once said the Muslim lawyer Syed Mumtaz Ali. The then Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty opposed Sharia law and urged “one law for all Ontarians,” but such opposition isn’t often shown in the age of political correctness. One could argue that allowing Sharia to solve marriage problems wouldn’t undermine Canadian society given their private nature; however, the totalizing ideals that form Islamic law haven’t only remained in the domestic and private. Examples of which being the efforts to silence religious criticism — -Mark Steyn’s case, for example — -under the guise of standing against “hatred.”
In addition to this is the treatment of women. If there weren’t a need to avoid being culturally insensitive, there would be many more sights trained upon its religious and cultural source. Bill S-7 (otherwise known as Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act), which was put through Parliament under the Harper government to clamp down on practices such as forced marriage, caused much anxiety due to its temerity to describe some cultural practices as barbaric. Introducing a bill to remove such descriptions shortly after Trudeau was elected, Liberal senator Mobina Jaffer said the problem was that it was “implying that these practices are part of cultures and that these cultures are barbaric.”
This statement encapsulates the illusions multiculturalists have to maintain: that all cultures are equal and none of them could ever contain ideas or practices that would be at odds with our own. They must be portrayed as just typical acts of violence or vulgarity — -there is no cultural cause that may make for repeated offences due to it being customary.
The South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario has reported that, when it comes to forced marriage, most cases have concerned those affiliated with Islam followed by Hinduism. In Islam’s case, it said that the overrepresentation could be attributed to the larger representation of countries in which Islam is practiced. So from where does this derive? Anyone who has done a cursory reading of the Quran and other religious texts would be aware of how Islam handles “guardianship,” which makes women completely subordinate to their male guardian and religious authority.
Another phenomenon informed by this is honour killing. The case of Mohammad Shafia and the murder of his daughters and wife because of their embrace of Western life is perhaps the most infamous, but only a microcosm of a deeper problem.
A report published by the Department of Justice indicated that there were “at least a dozen” cases between 1999–2009 in which the motive for murder “appeared to be in the name of honour.” For example, in his 2006 appeal to the Supreme Court of his murder conviction for killing his wife, Adi Abdul Humaid claimed he lost control “because of the significance of female infidelity in Islamic culture and religion.” The motives are stated plainly, but the debate around them remains frivolous. Writing for the Globe and Mail, Reyhana Patel opines that the factors often contributing to honour-killings include “migration-related trauma, social alienation and the pressures of collectivist community-morality.” Though she offers some worthwhile observations, she seems to suggest that the source could be something that manifested itself upon the perpetrator’s arrival to Canada, rather than a remnant they never foreswore due to failed integration. After all, there are many Muslim-majority countries in which honour killings are justified and murderers are rarely ever prosecuted.
To understand gender relations under Islamic law, the feminist multiculturalist need only read about the dispute resolution plan to settle marital disputes. Omar Subedar, a theologian who has met with Andrew Scheer and Trudeau, elaborates on its effectiveness in an article entitled, “Maintaining a Marriage.” The third point is of interest. “Strike them” (the wife): “If the problem still does not get resolved then as a final resort Allah has permitted the husband to discipline his wife by striking her,” he advises. Quick to offer the tedious caveat that Allah does not recommend brutality, he goes on to say that the objective is to strike her “lightly” to “make her realize what she is doing is unwarranted.” In his other writings, Subedar has, with citations of the hadith, justified gender segregation during prayer. In a rational environment, it’d be considered repulsive to fraternize with someone like Subedar; but the type of politics the current ethos creates causes politicians to feel the need to pander. This is what such a policy has wrought.
Multiculturalism has been a source of pride, yet everywhere it’s been implemented has proved it to be little more than institutionalized daydreaming. It hasn’t facilitated or increased individual sovereignty or harmony; rather, it has allowed scattered identity factions to remain unmoored to any common principle, inclination, or goal. Worse yet, it has made it a virtue to do so.
Islamism, it has been said, is the multicultural age’s kryptonite as discarding the idea of assimilation will prove dangerous in the face of inconsonant creeds. If Trudeau was to be granted a mandate to pursue his immigration goals (with which most Canadians disagree) without any clear plan for integration, efforts towards cohesion would only become more difficult and the seeds of discord will continually be sown. This is why Canadians shouldn’t ignore these issues, for their political health as well as for the sake of reformist Muslims whose efforts to offer a more compatible interpretation of their faith are threatened by Islamists.
There is much to say of his imperfections, but Bernier’s opposition to official multiculturalism is a realization of the obvious. Reinvigorating a unifying and patriotic Canadian identity is the most reliable way to define who we are and the kind of society we’d like to live in going forward. And yes, this may require renouncing cultural relativism and identifying forces that don’t belong in a liberal democratic society. One of the steps, then, is reconsidering our faith in a rudderless multiculturalism.
