Time Immortal

Are women in America already on a downward arc because of misogynous immigration and multiculturalism? I think so. But there’s no recognition of the problem, much less help in the offing, either from Washington or from Establishment feminists, who remain strangely attached to multiculturalism in spite of the ideology’s innate conflict with women’s rights.

One official feminist who should know better is Katha Pollitt, an opinion writer at The Nation. On one hand, she wrote a sensible response to Susan Okin’s question (later an anthology), “Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?” Pollitt directly criticized cultural relativism: “You could say that multiculturalism demands respect for all cultural traditions, while feminism respects only traditions that indeed deserve respect.” Yet Pollitt recently endorsed Obama, giving as one reason being his support for illegal aliens receiving driver’s licenses, and she criticized David Horowitz for his interest in women’s rights in Islamic countries. She dogmatically refused to believe a conservative would care: e.g. “David Horowitz, Feminist?”, The Nation, Nov 1, 2007. (See JihadWatch.org’s Robert Spencer commenting on YouTube about this matter.)

However, given the precious little attention given to the issue of Third World brutality against women in general, why didn’t Pollitt welcome any publicity, no matter the source? (Ask her at kpollitt@thenation.com)

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Not only is immigration the new way of war, it is also the spearpoint of the attack on Western civilization’s tradition of liberty and individual freedom.

Geography is a lovely antidote to diversity. If members of backward cultures would stay put we would all be better off, but they don’t. The worst of the worst are headed this way due to the multicultural ideology underpinning US Immigration policy as well as the Refugee Industrial Complex maintaining itself.

In fact, diversity is so extreme that Washington doesn’t even bar criminal cultures like that of Somalia, where 98 percent of residents practice a form of child torture which is a crime in this country — female genital mutilation (FGM).

The State Department supposedly endeavors to keep out individual criminal refugees, but entire societies that normally brutalize children are welcomed. Go figure.

One of the most worrying trends is how quickly women’s rights are discarded by host First World societies in the name of multiculturalism. The recent British dust-up when the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams urged implementation of Islamic Sharia law in order to “maintain social cohesion” in Britain’s rapidly diversifying society is a sad example of the willingness of Establishment elites to eliminate western legal protections for women in order to appease Muslim immigrants.

For all the weakness in Britain’s cultural resolve in recent years, however, the reaction to the Archbishop has been surprisingly intense and widespread. Perhaps the slumbering British people have finally awakened to the threat within. We can hope.

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In 2001, Oslo professor Unni Wikan lectured her fellow Norwegian women that the “Muslim rape wave” against them was their fault. She said that “Norwegian women must take their share of responsibility for these rapes”. The professor did not call for violent criminal aliens to shape up. Instead, she said that “Norwegian women must realize that we live in a Multicultural society and adapt themselves to it”.

(Honest observation reveals the burqa is a cloth prison designed to erase the individual personhood of women. If the all-encompassing garments were designed merely to enforce an extreme level of modesty, burquas would not need to be identical. And the lack of an opening for the mouth suggests disapproval of speech and eating.)

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And Islamic scripture approves of abusing women. As Jihad Watch’s Robert Spencer observed in his online Blogging the [Koran], “Wife-beating exists in all cultures, but only in Islam does it enjoy divine sanction.”

Add the failure of Muslim societies to achieve anything of value in the modern world — such as the famously sparse level of books published in Arab countries — and social frustration can become personal. Muslim culture around the world may appear pitiful. But in the castle of the home, a Muslim man can beat the tar out of his wives and feel both powerful and virtuous.

Is this the kind of diversity we should welcome?

In a word? No. No, it definitely is not.

When it comes right down to it, Canada needs to take a long, hard look at inbound immigrants and understand that the degree to which those immigrants profess a desire to live according to the tenets of sharia law is the degree to which they are unsuitable candidates for citizenship in this country. People of any culture wanting to live under sharia are more than welcome, I think, to go to a country like Iran or Saudi Arabia (where sharia is law) and live there. The fact that many such countries are Third World hellholes shouldn’t give us pause when we tell such people that they are, simply put, not welcome here. Because it must be made true that they are not welcome here: their barbaric, backward, misogynistic, 7th century system of rules is incompatible with the rights and freedoms that all Canadians have, even (yes) Canadian women.

(In Soviet Russia, hat tips you: Kathy Shaidle)

Update: Welcome, Steynians! Binks is too unfortunately correct — in Islam, the women of the conquered people are “gifted” to the “brave” jihadist “warriors”. Is this perhaps what we are now seeing take place in Europe?

The Update Strikes Back: Welcome, Dinosaur fans!

In various other ways, Shariah is being recognized, semi-formally. For instance, although bigamy remains nominally a crime in Britain, the Labour government has approved new social provisions by which extra welfare payments, council housing privileges, and tax benefits may be claimed by polygamous households, and the cash benefits to which the extra wives are now entitled may be paid directly into the account of their husband.

At another level, the (Anglican) Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, publicly called this week for the recognition of “some form of” Shariah law for Muslims in Britain, and said it should be given equal status with Parliamentary law. While Dr Williams has a long history of muddled pronouncements, and is widely observed to be emotionally unstable, the strength of his office is now engaged on the Islamist side.

Muslim groups such as the responded luke-warmly, welcoming the proposal but criticizing the Archbishop for having failed to punish his Bishop of Rochester, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, who is under police protection after recently suggesting that various Muslim districts in Britain had become “no-go areas” for people who are not Muslim. (The Anglican Archbishop of York is also under concentrated fire, for making remarks critical of radical Islam.)

The saddest part of this, is that so many reasonable Muslims emigrated to Britain (as to Canada) expressly to escape from societies in which Shariah law is normative. And what they are learning now, is that, thanks to the triumph of multiculturalism in the West, “you can run but you can’t hide.”

One recalls Chesterton’s admonishment to the anarchists: “if they will not have rules, they will have rulers.” It would seem to me that much the same could be observed as regards the atheist desire to push Christianity fully out of the view of the West…the West which owes so much of its existence, and indeed the freedoms its people enjoy to one extend or another, to its Judeo-Christian heritage. If they will not have Christendom, with its rules and morals informed equally by both reason and by faith, then it seems the only alternative they will find is in Sharia. If they will not have elective morality, they will have compulsory morality, as slowly but surely the demographics of Western nations shift in favour of Islam.

Boy, isn’t that just the way the world works, eh?

Dr Rowan Williams, head of the Anglican Church, caused uproar last week with his suggestion that the incorporation of aspects of Sharia into UK law might be “unavoidable”, and could aid social cohesion. Cardinal [Cormac] Murphy-O’Connor, leader of the 4.5? million Catholics in England and Wales, begs to differ. He is adamant that such a move would only make segregation even more entrenched.

“I don’t believe in a multicultural society,” he says firmly. “When people come into this country they have to obey the laws of the land*. [...] It seems to me a government and a country has a right to make sure that those laws are kept. [...] Of course you can keep the variety of traditions, but when you enter this country there are common values which are part of its heritage, which should be embraced by everybody.” [...]

Have we had an English Pope yet? Or…well, I guess O’Connor would be Irish. Have we had an Irish Pope yet? No? Maybe it’s about time…

(In Soviet Russia, hat tips you: Kathy Shaidle)