Home Important Posts Muslim Multiculturalism and Western Post-Nationalism
Home Important Posts Muslim Multiculturalism and Western Post-Nationalism

Muslim Multiculturalism and Western Post-Nationalism

Responding to the Sydney Mohammed riots featuring bloodied police officers and Muslim children holding beheading signs, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard said, "What we saw in Sydney on the weekend wasn't multiculturalism but extremism."

Muslim extremism is multicultural. It is the essence of their approach to multiculturalism. Only through, what Gillard calls extremism, do an Egyptian, a Pakistani and a Malay have anything at all in common with one another.

Immigrants from different nations can move to a nation and accept a new national identity. Hundreds of millions of Americans and Australians are the result of such an arrangement. The immigrants can meet up at folk culture festivals where they partake of each other's national foods or they can stick to their own foods-- it doesn't make that much of a difference except for when politicians running for office gain 40 pounds eating bratwurst, pizza and bagels and drinking Guinness at campaign events.

When there is a strong national identity, either former or present, there is rarely a conflict between religious identity and national identity. Those conflicts have usually been settled in the past in some uneasy, but final way, that allows everyone to believe what they want to believe without turning that belief into the defining form of national identity. That way one can be a good Englishman without being a member of the Church of England or a good Frenchmen without being a member of the Catholic Church. Arriving at that point was not easy, but it ended the religious wars of Europe.

Muslims do not have a strong national identity. Their nations are a hodgepodge of military dictators, colonial leftovers and tribal alliances. Their societies are "multicultural" in the sense that they are composed of numerous hostile ethnic groups, tribes and families who are united only by a common religion. This unity is fragile, but it is the most common form of unity that they have and they value it far more than national identity.

To the Muslim, his nation is a fleeting thing, a historical accident by a colonial mapmaker digging up ancient names and drawing lines that cut across the lines of ethnic and tribal migrations, but his religion, though he understands very little of it, is a fine and great thing that has long preceded the nation and means far more to him than the nation does.

Even Muslims in moderate countries poll as identifying more with Islam than with a political faction or national identity. That is why what happened when Muslim democracy was unleashed on the Muslim World was completely inevitable. Muslims chose the one form of identity that they could agree on. It was an identity that excluded Christians, but democracy draws a circle around the largest number of people and outside Lebanon and Israel, those people are all Muslims.

Muslims bridge multiculturalism through religion and they do not accept any form of national identity that is not based on religious unity. That is what the Arab Spring really meant.

Syria, the big sticking point in the Arab Spring, is the place where Islamic unity was impossible because of a split between Sunnis and Shiites, leading to a religious civil war. A similar civil war has been burning in Iraq for ages, occasionally suppressed, before flaring to life again. The successes of the Arab Spring were in countries like Egypt, where Sunni Islamists could count on the support of a majority of the population.

Now when those Muslims are shipped to Europe, America, Canada or Australia, they are expected to become Englishmen, Americans or Australians. But they can't become any of those things because they were never really Pakistanis, Moroccans or Egyptians.

The Pakistani immigrant is a Muslim speaking one of Pakistan's 80 languages and belonging to one of its major ethnic groups (unless he's a descendant of the country's African slaves). The facade of his national identity are just that. On the order of things that he loves or will die for, his country ranks well below his family, his ethnic group and his religion. This does not change when he moves to the UK, especially as Britain is several steps below Pakistan in his estimation, and his estimation of that country was already rather poor.

The Muslim immigrant does not trade one national identity for another. What he does is bring along his local ethnic identity and his global religious identity, and unpacks them both in Sydney or London where he is a member of an ethnic community and a religious community. On top of that he may be an Australian, but he is an Australian in the same way that Sunnis and Shiites are Iraqis or Syrians. All that means is that he will pay taxes, fill out forms and curse the local government officials for being incompetent blockheads, instead of the ones back home. And when his religious identity is at odds with his national obligations, he will do exactly what Sunnis in Syria or Shiites in Iraq have done. He will choose religious identity over national identity.

This concept should not be a particularly foreign one to Gillard. It is likely that she feels a similar identification with fellow progressives in Europe and America, that Hassan feels for his fellow Muslims. Like Islam, progressive politics provides a shared transnational identity based on common goals for an ordered world ruled by an ideal system. Gillard may even feel a greater identification with European Socialists than with more conservative Australians.

This state of affairs is a symptom of the decline of nations. Gillard and Hassan are both consequences of post-nationalism, as are Obama and Morsi, or Hollande and Ahmed in the banlieue. These leaders pay lip service to national identity, but imagine a world without national borders and divisions. That is something they have in common with Muslims, who see nations or borders as abstract entities in the same way that their leftist enablers do.

Gillard subscribes to a post-national identity, and Hassan to a pre-national identity. This is only a technical difference that matters as much as the location of the endpoint of a circle, but in the practical sense they are members of dramatically different identity groups with their own incompatible forms of multiculturalism.

The left's post-national identity is based on a secular political multiculturalism. Islam's post-national identity is based on a religious theocratic multiculturalism. The left has heresies that it prosecutes as hate crimes and Islam has heresies that it prosecutes as blasphemy. Gillard would understand, though condemn, a riot based on some offense to gay rights or aboriginal rights, as an offense against her brand of multiculturalism. The Mohammed riots may be more understandable to her as an offense against Muslim multiculturalism.

The problem with going post-national is that it turns out to be pre-national. Destroy the national identity and you revert to the religious identity, and before you know it, you have a holy war and a theocracy on your hands.

Progressives have been always too stupid to understand that the consequences of their progressivism in undermining the current, more advanced, phase of human society is the restoration of reactionary social and political systems. In Russia, the Bolsheviks toppled an intermediary government and restored a Czar named Stalin and feudalism under the name of collectivism, to the proud cheers of the world's leftists at the progress they were making. In the Arab Spring, they brought back Islamism and they have brought it back in London and Sydney, and Paris and New York as well.

The left destroyed Western national identity and brought back the holy war, but due to Christian and Jewish secularism and Muslim immigration, instead of Catholics and Protestants fighting each other in Paris and London, it's Muslims rioting in the streets and demanding an Islamic theocracy to rule them. And why not? If rule no longer derives from the people or the nation, but panels of judges and rooms of bureaucrats, then the Islamic version is as legitimate as the Socialist version.

Western government that deny both democracy and nationalism are acting as leftist Mullahs, enforcing their beliefs on everyone else. This is their multiculturalism and it is just as backward, reactionary and corrupt as the Islamic version. And why shouldn't Muslims demand that if they are going to be ruled by a philosophy of the way things should be, then it might as well be their own? The only counterargument that can be offered to is that they are foreigners, but it is not an argument that the progressive left can make after championing immigration and the death of nations.

The West was made post-national and then filled with pre-national peoples. Those pre-national peoples are competing to carve it up into tribal fiefdoms and into a theocracy. What Muslims are doing is extremism, in the same way that advocates of a united Italy or Germany were extremist. They are trying to assemble the tribal fiefdoms into a common Muslim multicultural identity in the same way that they tried to do across the Middle East, Asia and parts of Europe.

Extremism is not the issue. Not unless Gillard were to admit that transforming Australia into a Caliphate where women and non-Muslims have no rights is moderate when done politically, but extreme when done by force. The issue, as in so many conflicts, is identity and organization.

The multicultural Muslim world has imported its own competing form of multiculturalism to Europe, Australia, America and Canada. So far its multiculturalism appears to be more potent than the local secular variety because despite being a third-rate bastardized version of Christianity and Judaism, with some tribal customs and pagan elements mixed in, it's still more vital than the thin gruel that the progressives feed their people to keep them occupied while they dig deeper into positions of power.

Most people, Muslim or non-Muslim, do not find an identity based on celebrating every possible identity particularly meaningful or rewarding. Western multiculturalism is a tourist identity that has no content of its own. It is self-nullifying void, the jaded palate of a decadent society constantly searching for novel experiences and exotic flavors. The native elites find touring cultures and sexual identities to be a rewarding experience, but the immigrants are not so bored and jaded, so decadent and comfortable, that they want to play tourist. What they want is a multiculturalism that is based on one similarity and Islam gives them that.

The West can return to national identity or it can fight a holy war between Islamist Multiculturalism and Progressive Multiculturalism. What it cannot do is avoid the conflict. That is a lesson that Gillard and all the Gillards of the West still haven't learned and by the time they do realize it, it may be too late.

Comments

  1. Anonymous Coward23/9/12

    Its not extremism its who they are.They are all fanatical killing machines

    ReplyDelete

  2. That is a lesson that Gillard and all the Gillards of the West still haven't learned and by the time they do realize it, it may be too late.


    I'm waiting for Hillary's turn to be "carried to the hospital" by some friendly natives to come up.

    ReplyDelete
  3. parchellan23/9/12

    This is an excellent, thought-provoking post. I have long wondered why progressives who preen themselves on their feminism, their open embrace of homosexuality, make league with Islamists who want to subjugate women -- AND KILL GAYS. The only thing I can come up with -- and yes, it is thin gruel, is that both progressives and Islamists want to undermine the philosophical hypostasis of the West, with the former giving no heed at all to the consequences of their acts.

    Seen in this way, progressives are far worse than Islamists, which indeed they are: one can respect enemies -- even as one fights them; traitors, however, can only be despised.

    parchellan

    ReplyDelete
  4. Exterminate all those who besmirch The Enlightenment.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Mike in CANADA23/9/12

    Wow.
    And here I thought that people immigrated for a better life, a new start, opportunity, etc. I thought that they were trying to leave behind the unpleasant aspects, and seeking more positive ones. Stupid me, I guess it really is the case that they just bring it all with them, since they cannot seem to leave it behind.
    If that's the reality, then why leave in the first place? This concept of making us like them because they refuse to assimilate and insist on calling us racist when we object,won't work. Too many of us know about this, and we won't allow it to continue.
    Thanks for the thoughts.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Read this written by a Pakistani in Australia after the Cronulla riots. He notes how the various Muslims are broken by ethnicity, with unbreachable walls. It would be unacceptable for a Lebanese Muslim to marry a Pakistani,

    http://www.patheos.com/blogs/altmuslim/2005/12/thoughts_on_the_sydney_riots/

    ReplyDelete
  7. Anonymous23/9/12

    There is no way around it, the West must separate from Islam, using legal approaches restrict immigration with stricter rules ie employability education wealth, limit family immigration, preachers, followers of Sharia Law. Also they must start deporting muslims from the West using similar rules.

    ReplyDelete
  8. More info on Australia. Approx 467,000 Muslims in population of 22 million. Half in Sydney. About half are non-practicing. About 1,000 are trying to introduce Western concepts such as equality for women (we could call them "progressives"). But at 1 per 467 Muslims, they don't have much support!

    http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/city-of-imams/story-e6frezz0-1226479395793

    ReplyDelete
  9. "What they want is a multiculturalism that is based on one similarity and Islam gives them that."

    This is a confusing way of putting it. What they want, as all religious thinking wants, is to discover the unity that is the source and guarantor of their diversity.

    The problem with Western multiculturalism is that it rejects "origin stories" and thus forgoes any any way of conceiving the originary, hence singular, basis of the equality and diversity that it champions. Into this vacuum come those with a strong (if ultimately absurd, Gnostic) sense of the guarantor of human diversity.

    Or, as you say, we can return to the Judeo-Christian anthropology that founds Western nationhood and the greater diversity its source of unity allows. But one cannot deny that nationhood is ultimately a Jewish concept, so its defense does not necessarily allow us to obviate religious wars. Peace comes from recognizing that one anthropology/ religion has a more unifying vision of humanity than does another, i.e. the vision that allows for people and nations to rule themselves, rather that require imperial overseers who get to define multiculturalism.

    ReplyDelete
  10. mehere23/9/12

    You are unlikely to have to have any loyalty to a nation when it is a land of mostly sand, rocks, hovels and backward institutions.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Anonymous23/9/12

    I hope a native will send her (Julia Gillard) your article. And the same to her colleagues in other countries. The question remains, though: Are the 'elite' able to learn, after they have left university?

    Michael Laudahn

    ReplyDelete
  12. "Responding to the Sydney Mohammed riots featuring bloodied police officers and Muslim children holding beheading signs, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard said, "What we saw in Sydney on the weekend wasn't multiculturalism but extremism."


    :( anything to avoid the use of the T word--terrorism

    ReplyDelete
  13. Boy has the phrase multiculturalism been tipped on its head. This isn't about embracing the best in various cultures but giving the thumbs up to a single, violent culture.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Linda Rivera23/9/12

    Muslim children holding beheading signs, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard said, "What we saw in Sydney on the weekend wasn't multiculturalism but extremism."

    Gillard LIED and DECEIVED for totalitarian, colonizing, expansionist Islam. The Quran teaches hate, violence and murder of non-Muslims and commands Muslims to wage jihad against non-Muslims and conquer all nations.

    Despicable Western leaders are HUGE TRAITORS. They are deliberately aiding and abetting jihad and Muslim conquest. And even immorally forcing taxpayers to finance the Muslim invaders.

    In all of history there was never such a betrayal by nations' leaders.

    ReplyDelete
  15. @ Linda Rivera. Sultan knows it, you know it and I know it, and probably many more but what do we do? Do we get a gun and start a civil war? No we don't we just sit, write and wonder how so many intelligent western educated people, who should love freedom, can be so completely blinded to what is about to happen for a large part due to their own complicity.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Anonymous23/9/12

    This is all very good, but what about their accomodation in America? Under Barack Hussein the Fort Hood shooter is deemed to have acted under job stress, despite reports that he shouted " Allah akbar" while shooting his fellow troops. And how about our top millitary leaders, trying to get marginal figures and nut-jobs from commiting "blasphamy" of islam? Can you imagine Patton or Eisenhower ever lowering themselves to do that crap? I would worry less about Australia and more about the Islam-first America of Obama.

    ReplyDelete
  17. I got an insight into the mind of these people when I was speculating to a progressive about the consequences of Muslim political power to her political ideas. To her dismissive wave of the hand, I queried "and whose going to stop them, YOU!" She noted rather condesceningly that there were way to many gun and religion clinging rednecks to allow such a thing.

    Listening to her depraved sneering at the very people she banks on to preserve her, I realized SHE was the problem. That an accomodation with the bearded mullah, however precarious and riddled with rifle barrels was so much more possible without her.

    ReplyDelete
  18. Anonymous23/9/12

    Great post Sultan.

    The so-called clash of civilizations is coming, if its not already here. I get the sense that, even reading some of the comments above, a "choice" of some kind will have to be made at some stage.

    Many in the west have forsaken the religion of their forefathers, replacing it with atheism, agnosticism or some kind of hybrid spiritual pantheism - which compliments your idea of post-nationalism. The need for progressives to be inclusive at all costs has blinded them to this widening faith vacuum, for which those with an extremist agenda are prepared to fill. The fact the Islamic faith is also associated with an array of barbaric political and social laws that undermine the rights of the individual and other minority groups is lost on them. "Western multiculturalism is a tourist identity"(as you so rightly put it)- a little something for everyone at every price. Unfortunately, I think shaking the West out of this reverie is going to take some earth-shattering events. By which time, yes, it will probably be too late.

    ReplyDelete
  19. mags of qld23/9/12

    Unfortunately for many of us in Australia, we don't get to decide who comes to our country and under what circumstances. Our former Prime Minister, John Howard, was castigated by the " progressives" for daring to voice the wishes of the majority of Australians. We could see the changes as early as the 1980's when a Labor government allowed muslims fleeing civil war in Lebanon to come here as refugees. Never mind that the muslims, who were displaced persons from Palestine that other Arab nations didn't want, were the cause of the war in the first place. It has gone pear shaped since then with critics called racists when Islam is not a race. All the little enclaves can't get along with each other. How any thinking person would believe that they would fit in with the rest of us is a pipe dream. All we want is for them to go back where they came from.

    ReplyDelete
  20. mehere said...

    "You are unlikely to have to have any loyalty to a nation when it is a land of mostly sand, rocks, hovels and backward institutions."

    Oh come on, Australia isn't that bad! ;P

    ReplyDelete
  21. Anonymous25/9/12

    Im must say Im sick of everyone beating around the bush about muslims and islam. This is as black and white as I can make it. If you are a Jew or a non-muslim you are 100% and totally considered to be lower than a dog in the eyes of muslims.

    So when you have people with that kind of thinking do you really thing they would blend into Australian life. Muslims will take over and the plan is to populate, it will take time but that's their thinking on how to take over.

    What Australia really needs is politicians with strength and guts that will not put up with muslims and their riots and holding posters up calling for beheadings....really how dare they....and in our streets.

    ReplyDelete
  22. Get used to the muslim riots we saw in Sydney recently. As the percentage of muslims in the population grow expodentially due to increased migration and high birth rates, so to will the demands for them to live outside the general community, with their own laws and rights. Conflict is inevitable, the muslims will not take a backward step.

    Watch some European countries, eventually and not too far in the future, the natives of these countries are going to have to decide whether they preserve their culture or have it completely subverted by the ballooning number of aggressive muslims living there - this means civil war. History is replete with examples of this scenario having taken place, and it still taking place right now in some countries

    ReplyDelete
  23. Anonymous25/9/12

    Go and watch the movie The Third Jihad you can find it on youtube. This movie will scare you and has many news footage clips of peace loving muslims protesting. This movie should be shown on television networks so people can better understand the massive problem the world is facing.

    Go watch The Third Jihad it well really open your eyes...but one strange thing is, it was made by a muslim guy.

    ReplyDelete
  24. Anonymous27/9/12

    Of course, since WW2, socialists (progressives) can only adopt a transnational/post-national political identity because being a national socialist ie. Nazi is no longer politically correct, to say the least.

    ReplyDelete
  25. Ausprepper27/9/12

    Fantasic article. I was not fond of nationalism before I read this. Of course, the Australia of the past was mostly dead by the time I reached adulthood.
    Funny thing is that the older folks have just given up trying to explain to the younger ones just how badly this country has fallen into the crapper. Who'd have though that just a scant ten years after the gun "buyback" that it would be unthinkable in mainstream culture that someone had the right to own a gun for self defence?
    I believe that the disarmament of our people functionally neutered our national pride and emasculated our menfolk to the point that they just bent over and prepared to take what was coming for the forseeable future.

    ReplyDelete
  26. Anonymous26/11/13

    Muslims will always be the most strongly united force in this country. Westeners label Muslims as being extreme, but what about those so called Australian soldiers fighting in Afghanistan and kissling hundreds of innocent civilians. What reason do they have to invade other countries and killl for reasons they do not understand. Those aren't heros, they are extremists. So excuse me if Muslims ever seem angry at the West. They're facing injustice because of the ignorant west.

    ReplyDelete
  27. Anonymous26/11/13

    *killing

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I prefer "kissling." Closer to the truth.

      Delete
  28. What makes me sad is how the fight between Muslim and nonmuslim is going about in this world. I hate those Muslims who spoil the name of the religion. I hate those who are making harsh presumptions of the Muslim community. Now you see this hate is what I was born to, and many innocent ones too. What is our fault that we innocent ones are following the peace that had taught us in our studies in Islam, while the illiterate fight like mad bulls. Whoever doubts that Islam teaches peace please come to Dubai and see how Islam is being preached here. In some nations people change many things just to bring about hate. Now I see some of you telling that we Muslims should be kick from the west, I am not against that. But why deport those who have mend family and friendship with other people of other religions. By separating the Muslims from the west don't you realize for your own concern u will separate a husband and a wife, a son from his father and mother, don't you think that will just increase the risk of you being hated for it and, thus lead to a civil war? What relief do you get from war with Muslims? And you extremist Muslims you are definitely not a part of us, instead of the non Muslims, it is you who should be hanged for the hate you spread.

    Now I just wanted to make my point on how hurt I am to see that Muslims and non Muslims as equal, ironically love separating each other by insulting each other. And really, don't start judging first and see how the calm nations like UAE are teaching the lesson of Islam and the true meaning of jihad, and I guarantee you will not find any hate here as it is where you are. Arguing now will just bring the black day nearer, so help me bring love to these religions, and this will simultaneously cure many political problems and financial problems many Muslims and non Muslims are facing. If you are a good human being treat others well, and no I'm not addressing only one party, I'm addressing everyone present in the world...

    ReplyDelete
  29. I'm sorry that would be the UAE-Dubai where rape victims get sent to jail?

    ReplyDelete
  30. Anonymous4/10/15

    Share and spread the real truth about this global movement. Arm your children intellectually with questions they might have for those who would recruit them. Make sure they know. Plaster it on the fridge door if you have to, just stop this madness. Don't employ them as security that is like putting a fox in the chicken hoop. You are the chicken by the way! In fact don't employ, house nor feed them.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

You May Also Like