Is Multiculturalism The Answer?

The sensation-seekers are amply satisfied, and every day leaves the betting man guessing whether the number of people who tried to blow up Manhattan will match, or exceed, the number of prostitutes murdered by Joel Rifkin. Of course, there are precedents for both crimes—massacres in the pursuit of jihad are historically commonplace, and the penchant of Bluebeards to eliminate the current woman to make way for her successor is a familiar legend in most cultures.

But suddenly we are up against something we have no cultural training for. When during Reconstruction the Ku Klux Klan emerged, we were so to speak ready to contend with it. Whatever the laxities of the law in the South during Reconstruction, there was never that condition of anarchy that authorized lynching Negro dissenters or flogging white suspects. Moreover, there was the ultimate appeal to the Southerner, namely the word of the Christian God: the sanctions of the culture of the South were available to the critics of such behavior. A century later Martin Luther King Jr. appealed to the higher law of Americans when he invoked the teachings of Christ as dispositive.

But we are dealing now with that creature, the Muslim fundamentalist, which we have all along thought comfortably to be a problem of—other cultures. We knew recently that the Algerians decided to forgo democracy for a spell, when a democratic exercise brought in Muslim fundamentalists in a general election. We knew that the assassination of Anwar Sadat in Cairo was the act of Muslim fundamentalists who were protesting his civilized attitude toward Israel; and, again, we reasoned that this was a regional problem. When the Ayatollah locked up American diplomats, the suggestion was made in this space that an appeal to the Ayatollah using Koranic language having to do with justice might be the best available weapon; and such an attempt was made, but Khomeini wasn’t somebody to whom it was easy to lecture on the more benevolent strictures of the Koran.

We are after all face to face with something very different from the religion common to our own culture. Even in the most theocratic of times, St. Thomas Aquinas rejected the idea that the state is obliged to tailor its laws exactly to those of the Divine. But that is not so in Islam, where The Law as put forth in Scripture (the Koran) and Tradition (Sunnah) is to be reflected exactly not only in the personal lives of believers, but in the laws of the state as well. The word “islam” means “submission.” The government of Muslim states is explicitly an institution of God. Moreover, the governments are to irradiate Islam not merely by the example of the rulers, but by the institution of jihad.

Again, that word literally means “struggle,” or endeavor, and can be used to describe self-discipline. But it is most notoriously known as the fountainhead of the holy war which enjoins Islam to expand its reach over the world. There was a period in Christian history when the same impulses were felt, but it has been centuries since Christians excused spreading the word by shedding blood. Chapter 2, Verse 193 of the Koran enjoins the faithful to “fight in the way of God against those who fight against you, but do not commit aggression. Fight against them until sedition is no more and allegiance is rendered to God alone; but if they make an end, then make no aggression except against evil doers.” That seems to say that there is no need to blow up Manhattan after Manhattanites all pay allegiance to Islam.

The current enthusiasm in academic circles for multiculturalism has got to face some difficult problems. The Koran (Chapter 2, Verse 228), for instance, informs us that “The husband is one degree higher than the wife, because he earns by his strength and expends on his wife.” The institutional implications of this we are all familiar with: From all appearances, the only time men and women get together socially in Islam is when they copulate. Somewhere along the line, the feminist movement in America is going to have to give up either feminism, or multiculturalism.

So we are going to have to take explicit notice of the incompatibility of our own culture and that of the fundamentalist Muhammadan, and we need to organize our immigration laws with some reference to this problem. The idea of welcoming the alien doesn’t call for inviting him to blow up Ellis Island en route to citizenship.