July 2, 2007
by Brian Trent

The standard of multiculturalism has long been accepted as the preferred avenue for our world and future. After all, the Earth is covered with multitudes of different customs and races, religions and philosophies. Fascism tried to steamroll into civilization through the Nazis, was defeated, and then fled into cellars and KKK newsletters. Ethnic cleansing still wracks Africa, the Balkans, the Middle East, but the larger world frowns upon it (when the News Gods see fit to bring it to our attention) and passes resolutions to render aid.

The War on Terror has given new fuel to those who question the Age of Tolerance, however. After all, how does one tolerate jihadists whose all-consuming purpose is to destroy everyone who is not them?

Others staunchly defend the precept of tolerance. We must try to tolerate everyone, and through tolerance show that tolerating is the way for a tolerant world.

As usual, these cowardly polarities are the lingua franca of today's media, dominating political sites, channels, and commentaries. As is typical with the Death of American Debate, the public is herded quickly into one of these two camps which can be summarized this way:

1. The Far Right wishes to root out and destroy anything that's different, fueling this intolerant society with militant nationalism and resulting in everything becoming a calcified ant colony. The grand total is fascist, fundamentalist, jingoist conformity.
2. The Far Left wishes to tolerate everything, and claims that we have no right to judge other cultures. A great example of this is Della Sentilles, the co-author of a feminist blog at Yale, who insisted, after former deputy foreign secretary of the Taliban Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi was inducted into Yale as a student, that, "As a white American feminist, I do not feel comfortable making statements or judgments about other cultures, especially statements that suggest one culture is more sexist and repressive than another."

(Ms. Sentilles should try living in Afghanistan before she suggests that America's sexual issues can be uttered in the same breath as those which the Afghan women have been forced to suffer under.)

Again, extremism seems to rule the media, trickles down to the population and infects it.

The correct stance is one of moderation. And aside from a small percentage afflicted with the fanatic's pathology, most people agree with the moderate stance.

Consider the Dutch, who have been very tolerant of other cultures but have finally been forced into a hostile defense against radical Islamists. Their parliament just legislated a countrywide ban on wearing the burqa in public.

Says Jan Wolter Wabeke, High Court Judge in The Hague: "We require that [Muslim men] send their daughters to school, and we demand they stop bringing in young brides from the desert and locking them up in third-floor apartments."

This clash of civilizations in Europe reached a boiling point when a Danish paper published a cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, deemed offensive by radicals. And did the radicals protest peaceably? Did they argue publicly? Did they perhaps publish their own cartoons making fun of Jesus or Moses? No: the radicals' answer was to burn and destroy, resulting in over 100 dead.

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The truth is that multiculturalism isn't an absolute. If someone's trying to kill you, you have an obligation to survive. If someone's culture teaches them to incinerate your neighbors, then you have an obligation to not tolerate them.

I've pointed out before that this clash of civilizations isn't between Islam and the West. Not really, and not in the final iteration. It's about the fundamentalist and the progressive. Certainly, there are Christian, Jewish, and even Hindu leaders who are infected with the fundamentalist mindset. And it is this mindset which must not be tolerated. Religious freedom and religious fundamentalism are not equal; the latter is opposed to the former. If we value the former, we must deal with the latter. Multiculturalism is a noble thing. But if radicals don't like freedom of speech, they must change. They must accept it. In the end, they won't be given a choice.

In a very real way, the modern problem with Islamic radicals is a very real fault of Western Christendom. But the time has come to stop the backwards finger-pointing and move ahead, into a world which recognizes both the variety of cultures and the humanistic principles of freedom, politically, scientifically, artistically, and individually.

Multiculturalism is not unique in history. There are plenty of examples where two or more cultures came together peacefully and in a spirit of cross-pollination which bequeathed to history its greatest golden ages. Greece and Egypt, lovers from afar until Alexander the Great brought about a marriage of cultures which saw a campaign of glorious fusion, evident in more than just the pairing of Egyptian obelisks and Ionic colonnades. The Great Library of Alexandria came out of this, linking Greek philosophy and literature with Egyptian medicine and architecture.

In the year 1100 A.D. in Toledo, Spain, Jews, Christians, and Muslims enjoyed a bizarre and rarely seen plurality. . . all the more remarkable considering that outside the walls of Toledo's universities, other representatives of these same religious groups were slaughtering one another on the Crusader battlefield.

And American and Japan stand as testament to a modern example of cross-pollination. The latter scooped up Western styles of dress, movies, and music (to this day, the infinitely popular Japanese pastime of karaoke revolves largely around American music,) while Hollywood has an easy market in the Land of the Rising Sun. But America has eagerly embraced Japanese culture in virtually every area of life. Modern youth flock to the latest anime films; the video game industry is largely propelled by Sony and Nintendo. The mystique of the samurai culture, of martial arts, of the cult of the katana, of bushido, of the cinematic influences of Kurosawa and Miyazaki, of the literary influences of Murakami or Akutagawa.

Multiculturalism does indeed have a present and future, if implemented in accord with sound secular-humanistic principles (despite the rabid foaming protestations of jingoist apologist Bill O'Reilly and company.) But the jihadist and fundamentalist (of any faith) does not fall underneath that banner. It falls, and should ultimately be crushed, under the wheels of progressive civilization.

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Brian Trent [send him email] is a professional essayist, screenwriter, and novelist; he is the author of "Remembering Hypatia" and the just-released "Never Grow Old: the Novel of Gilgamesh."  Brian is a contributor to American Chronicle and The Humanist Magazine.  Visit his website at www.rememberinghypatia.com.

Copyright 2007 Brian Trent