Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Multiculturalism, R.I.P. (1982-2007)
National Post ^ | 2007-04-24 | Jonathan Kay

Posted on 04/24/2007 2:34:13 AM PDT by Clive

This month marks the 25th anniversary of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which also makes it the 25th anniversary of official multiculturalism. (It is Section 27 of the Charter that informs us the document must be interpreted "in a manner consistent with the preservation and enhancement of the multicultural heritage of Canadians.") The doctrine has not aged well. What started as harmless Trudeau-era feel-goodery now reeks of cranky political correctness and hypocrisy. Three recent events in three Canadian cities help show why:

- First to Montreal, where 40-year-old refugee claimant Desire Munyaneza stands on trial for his alleged role in the 1994 Rwandan genocide. On April 10, the court heard testimony from a Tutsi woman who described a horrific marathon of slaughter, enslavement and rape by machete- and club-wielding Hutu militia. "Those who were dead were lucky," she testified. "My biggest problem was that they kept putting off killing me."

- On to Surrey, B.C., where an April 7 Sikh parade included floats honouring Talwinder Parmar --leader of the 1985 Air India bombing plot --among its list of revered Sikh saints and martyrs. Sudager Singh Sandhu, president of the Sikh temple that organized the parade, later told CBC News that Parmar is a "great man."

- And finally, to Edmonton, where 33- year-old Muslim peace activist Farhan Mujahid Chak has been named the Liberal party candidate in the federal riding of Edmonton-Mill Woods-Beaumont. As Steve Janke first reported on his Angry in the Great White North blog, Chak has published a variety of provocative political views on issues of the day. He claimed, for instance, that Israel's policy toward Palestinians is one of "murdering children, raping women and torturing an entire populace" --and so Palestinian violence must be understood as being defensive. India, Chak claimed, is a sham democracy in which people are "pummel[ed] into stupor" by Brahmins. A book review he published gives sympathetic treatment to the theory that the Islamist terror campaign against Algeria and France in the 1990s was part of a conspiracy engineered by Algiers and Paris.

When multiculturalism came into vogue a generation ago, it was powered by the conceit that group hatred is primarily a Western pathology -- an outgrowth of our warmongering, colonialist past. That's why from the 1980s onward, multicultural agitprop in schools, workplaces and government agencies has invariably focused not on assimilating immigrants and stripping them of their old-world prejudices, but on eliminating any vestige of white bigotry.

The reason multiculturalism now seems like such a fraud is that experience has taught us that old-school racism has nothing on the sort of hatreds brought into this country by the immigrants themselves: hatred toward homosexuals, toward heretics, toward "loose" women and, most importantly, toward each other.

It's hard to get too riled up about Don Imus or alleged "racial profiling" by cops, for instance, when I see Canada becoming home to African blacks who have been charged with murdering other blacks by the villageful for the crime of belonging to the wrong tribe. Ditto when I watch Canadian Sikhs who are so proud that one of their coreligionists murdered another group of South Asian Canadians that they hold a parade partly in his honour. And then there's the Liberal candidate in Edmonton- Mill Woods-Beaumont, who will have to explain to his constituents what he meant with his attacks on Israel, India and France.

Chak isn't a Muslim extremist: During a phone conversation yesterday, he came across more as a naive left-wing sloganeer than a fiery hatemonger. The only reason I'm singling him out is because he happens to be a political candidate. Go to any run-of-the-mill Englishlanguage Islamic Web site and you'll find lots of folks just like him.

But that's exactly the point: Chak, like all the rest of us, is a product of his cultural mix -- which in his case includes a global Muslim culture that has become suffused with terror apologism, conspiracy theories and anti-Western animus. To the extent multiculturalism is supposed to preach "tolerance," this unappetizing stew is what we're being asked to tolerate. Twenty-five years after the Charter, is it any wonder most of us think the whole idea is nonsense?


TOPICS: Canada; Culture/Society; Editorial; Extended News; News/Current Events; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: canada; india; israel; multiculturalism; uk

1 posted on 04/24/2007 2:34:14 AM PDT by Clive
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: Alberta's Child; albertabound; AntiKev; backhoe; Byron_the_Aussie; Cannoneer No. 4; ...

-


2 posted on 04/24/2007 2:34:52 AM PDT by Clive
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Clive
I wonder what heaven will look like? Everybody keeping their national & ethnic characteristics, their violent prejudices, their foods & tastes, their strange ethnocentrism? Or does that go out with the trash? Forget heaven, in Canada you have to obey the laws. The old culture required it and there is nothing wrong with it being that way.
3 posted on 04/24/2007 4:18:45 AM PDT by Blind Eye Jones
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Clive; GMMAC; Pikamax; Former Proud Canadian; Alberta's Child; headsonpikes; Ryle; albertabound; ...
Canada ping.

Please send me a FReepmail to get on or off this Canada ping list.

4 posted on 04/24/2007 4:28:47 AM PDT by fanfan ("We don't start fights my friends, but we finish them, and never leave until our work is done."PMSH)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: Clive

The moslems are in canada to kill you, not for any other purpose. Keep that in mind.


5 posted on 04/24/2007 5:48:48 AM PDT by twonie (RUDY FOR PRESIDENT '08. THERE - A COMMITMENT OUT LOUD.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: fanfan
The CHARTER CARD:

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket
... don't enter public life without it !!!

6 posted on 04/24/2007 5:52:55 AM PDT by GMMAC (Discover Canada governed by Conservatives: www.CanadianAlly.com)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: Blind Eye Jones

I’ll give you a hint: Heaven only has purified, Christian souls. All that stuff is burnt away, “like one passing through fire.” (yes, the bible actually does say that.)


7 posted on 04/24/2007 5:59:43 AM PDT by dangus
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: GMMAC
Hmmm... a white kid... the card's lavendar... So the kid will claim a "gay identity"?
8 posted on 04/24/2007 6:01:08 AM PDT by dangus
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies]

To: dangus

Worthless book if you ask me...but then, clubs are clubs...they all have exclusive membership criteria and perks.


9 posted on 04/24/2007 6:54:34 AM PDT by USMMA_83 (Tantra is my fetish ;))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 7 | View Replies]

To: Clive

“multiculturalism”

is a misnomer.

it’s actually,

multifascism.

si.


10 posted on 04/24/2007 6:57:11 AM PDT by ken21 (it takes a village to brainwash your child + to steal your property! /s)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Clive

I for one would like to let the “diversity” speak in its own voice as to what they think of me and my country that my ancestors founded.


11 posted on 04/24/2007 7:30:41 AM PDT by junta (It's Jihad stupid! It's the borders stupid! It's Political Correctness stupid!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: dangus; fanfan
White, yes, but doubtless - as a liberal - thoroughly guilt-driven about it.

Plus, in yet another of political correctness's bizarre paradoxes, if he embraces his "gay identity", he'd then be compelled to forsake at least a substantial portion of that afore mentioned guilt.
What to do ???

Although, among the many inherent leftist conundrums, it's not a dilemma that's exactly up there with feminists attempting to rationalize their support for Islamofascists, eh?
12 posted on 04/24/2007 9:26:59 AM PDT by GMMAC (Discover Canada governed by Conservatives: www.CanadianAlly.com)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies]

To: Clive

Multiculturalism is like building a chair without glue. There’s nothing to hold it together.


13 posted on 04/24/2007 10:02:53 AM PDT by styky (All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom; justice; honor)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: allen

Ping!


14 posted on 04/24/2007 12:55:52 PM PDT by Gengis Khan
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Clive

Like Freddy and Jason it’s dead.


15 posted on 04/24/2007 8:14:22 PM PDT by jordan8
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson