I read your post, and I say to myself, "where do I start?"
Bill,
I have much the same problem. We are further apart on these issues than any others I recall.
For me measuring the effects of something called Muslim culture (and I genuinely have no idea what that means--I understand the term Muslim religion--which then gets one into a discussion of various theological interpretations of this and that and the degree to which different populations subscribe to different parts of the interpreted creed) by its worst instances (Islamist varieties such as Al Q) is of the same genre as measuring the effects of Protestantism by fundamentalists who, at least the males, insist women stay "barefoot and pregnant" and at home, or who oppose the teaching of evolution, or the militia groups, or the guy who killed the pro choice doctor around Buffalo, etc.
The other assumption you bring to the table, I've commented about this before so I'll make it short, is that something called "cultures" are wholistic creatures which can and should be judged in their totality. I'm not on that boat and don't tend to get on it.
But that assumption then leads you to accept the right wing political charge that folk who think multiculturalism is, generally, a good idea, cannot judge abhorrent practices in other societies. So far as I know, that's not a tenet of multiculturalism, certainly not a tenet I would accept. Just one of those many convenient charges that right wing opponents make against it.
Multiculturalism, in its most basic form, is an attempt to stop the hasty, categorical judgments that are rendered against "others." To ask that their "otherness" be understood. It does not ask that abhorrent practices within one's own group or the groups of "others" be accepted.
Can't say this any clearer. You simply misunderstand, persist in misunderstanding, and then, from your misunderstanding, throw charges.
Straw people. |
