Gustav Bjornstrand wrote:
Belinda, I think your question is a good one because Multiculturalism is one of those words which in the absence of a clear definition can be used variously by different people. The term also conceals a great deal of complexity and this becomes apparent when one attempts to define it and see what it is made up of. The way that you define it seems to me to be, in part (some of your items) a kind of a postwar usage. I would imagine that a philosophy or doctrine of multiculturalism became necessary in the aftermath of the Second War as Europe was being pieced back together.
Children usually are aware of emotional attitudes of grown ups. Pre war , 1930s Scotland, my parents expressed horrified disdain for Mosley's fascists. I remember the incident. My parents despised no other group in society, including Jews, Roman Catholics, Lascars, tinkers, black skinned people, brown skinned people, the poor generally, Irish, mentally ill, or women. This is anecdotal and I have no other records to hand. However for what it's worth my parents and their friends would not been prejudiced against any groups except fascist groups, although they did not like individual blowhards or snobs. I retain my childhood attitudes, of course, and my attitude to ethnic minorities is the same as it was in the 1930s. My father fought in Macedonia during WW1 and he admired the work of the Red Crescent which is the Muslim version of the Red Cross.
I start --- as you well know! --- from a different basic position and my core position is that of Eurocentrism. My first definition, my base-predicate, is that Europe needs to reestablish a clear sense of self-identity. That is a somewhat radical statement in and of itself because, obviously, to state such a thing implies that something-or-other operates against that identity. Therefor, to define identity is just as much a project of defining what stands against or operates against it. And that gets suddenly complex as all likely see.
Again, for what it's worth, I feel European, and my family members feel European. My friends feel European. I do not buy the Daily Mail.I voted to Remain in Europe. We are all educated people who have travelled in and made friends in Europe, traded within Europe. What more could you want from Eurocentrism?
I would have to admit a number of things about my primary definition or my *desired definition*: it is not complete but is tentative, exploratory. You cannot base much on an incomplete ideal. So, the Eurocentristic 'identity project' that attracts me requires better and fuller definitions. Because that is so, because it is incomplete and tentative, it would have trouble in specifying if Islam is an 'enemy' and if it is necessary to 'battle' it (to employ the term used here: 'war'). But right there is some part of the problem. I'll explain. If 'European Identity' were established, strong and understood by all, it seems quite possible to me that the interpenetration of Muslim people, the invitation to them basically, would not ever have opened up. The doors would have remained closed and policies would have been established to make immigration difficult, and too that policies would have been encouraged to promote repatriation.
How to integrate immigrants from exotic cultures. As always the incentive comes from within the immigrant culture which adapts and evolves alongside the host culture which also adapts and evolves. I see your vision as unworkably top-down.
So the question becomes: What is it that produced and led to 'open doors' within some European nations? One would have to seek out and interrogate the people and the groups who defined certain versions of 'multiculturalism' which promoted the circumstances now common in many European cities: Muslim enclaves, economies-within-economies, separate and distinct cultural zones which have little or limited cultural affiliation with the national culture, and last but not least a cultural and also a religious base from which to proselytize Islam, et cetera. Who stood behind this? And what precisely was their motive, their philosophy, their 'anthropology' if you will?
Shall we inform ourselves by googling this question among respectable , impartial, sources such as those with 'ed' or 'ac' in their addresses? Or shall we look at the archives of The Daily Mail and The Telegraph?
You seem to use the word anthropology where I would use 'ethnicity'. 'Anthropology' sounds more weighty and intellectual. Likewise for your usage of 'metaphysics'. You seem to use 'metaphysics' where I would use 'worldview'. Perhaps you are more au fait with academic language than I am, but I'd say that your use of English is occasionally eccentric.
And if now there is activism against these forms of 'multiculturalism', who are those who oppose it, and what is the philosophy and rationale and also the 'anthropology' that defines their opposition?
I don't know of anyone who proselytises Islam , most people would be hard nuts to crack. Most people don't like backward religions or indeed any religions at all. Maybe the proselytisers are keeping a low profile. In fact, the social world is split in two and increasingly so not by religious difference ,or as Gustav might say "metaphysics" , but by the difference between rich and poor.
My position, even though my core defintions are somewhat indistinct and remain to be better defined, is that 1) European self-identity needs to be tremendously increased. This is a radical act which turns against many 'received ideas' and a general ease in the face of cultural conflict, and 2) Islam needs to be defined in a clear sense as an 'enemy'. That means of course a concerted effort to expose it, to define why it is 'bad' or dangerous to Europe and within Europe, and to present these perspectives to other people in such a way that they can make them their own. As you likely see this is a problematic project because it involves making hard definitions, becoming decisive. The 'Islamic invasion' therefor must be turned back, resisted, stopped, and the numbers of Muslims must be reduced as a conscious and rational choice. It is a hard definition to make, and yet it is one that is not unintelligible and certainly not irrational.
I try to integrate with Muslims by being pleasant when I meet Muslims. What would you have?
'Enemy' is an emotive word for indigenous people and immigrants alike. This is not a war, it's large movement of people and ideas in a fast changing world of international travel, improved education for all, and electronic media.
Obviously (!) I am aware that making a statement such as this in the climate of today tends to inspire a great condemnation (of the idea, what stands behind the idea, and the action it requires) and I accept this. I accept it because I think it can be morally and ethically defended. And I am fairly sure I can confront and also defeat other moral and ethical arguments that oppose it.
The essence is, of course, precisely in the moral and ethical core.
Your ideas about Muslims and Islam are not entirely wrong but your fact -finding is unbalanced.
PS: A 'European Identiy project', according to my own tentative definitions, must involve a profound reencounter with exactly what it is in and about Europe that made Europe Europe. Sorry for that strange way of putting it. In my view, the encounter-with-self that must be at the core of European identity is bound up with metaphysics and also with religious view. To define a cultural renewal that opens the door to 'metaphysical regeneration' is in no sense an impossibility because I suggest an intellectual renewal and intellectual effort as the core method of discovery. I oppose this 'intellectuality' to emotionalism, religious fanaticism, passing appetite, 'evangelical sentiment' and a great deal that is based in feminized relationship to idea and to ideals. (My antifeminism is thus intense and problematic!)
I agree that man's story about himself has profound effects on individuals' identity. However unlike you I support the what you call "feminized" which I would call rational and sympathetic. I don't think that political reaction is masculine it's rather less than masculine present company excepted.
I absolutely see the need for spiritual regeneration and a strengthening of specific Christian forms. To be even more precise I see Christian regeneration as a necessity and I mean this in the metaphysical sense. I know that none of this is at all popular, and I also know that such definitions and propositions are fought against tooth and claw, but it would be dishonest if I did not reveal this aspect. Therefor, what I propose is a fundamental redefinition of a European Catechism. And you will also have noted that everything I write tends toward such a 'catechism'.
I too see the need for spiritual regeneration. I wonder at you that you talk about "specific Christian forms" as if those were homogenous. Even if you had read much among the posts on these discussions you would know that Christians are a heterogeneous lot.
I gather that there is a European catechism sort of. Any immigrant knows full well that there are laws and customs wherever they go. European morality is historically Christian with some Greek and Judiac in the mix. It's a matter of history that Europe and its cultural descendents have been the conqueror and imperial force for a considerable time , and so the " European catechism" is well established . It's also dynamic . If it were not dynamic there would be no possibility of learning from experience. Political reaction is Conservative, against change not simply because of some attachment to the good old days when knights of the Cross went out to fight the Saracens, but because of the ruling elite's attachment to its money.you are a Romantic, aren't you! You must be a Romantic unless you are yourself one of the rich elite who naturally wants to hang on to their money and power.
PPS: The concept of 'intellect' is core to my understanding and must be fully defined. The following is simply cut and pasted from a Wiki page on 'intellect' to provide a pointer to what I mean:
- "Intellect and nous in philosophy. In philosophy, especially in classical and medieval philosophy the intellect or nous is an important subject connected to the question of how humans can know things. Especially during late antiquity and the middle ages, the intellect was often proposed as a concept which could reconcile philosophical and scientific understandings of nature with monotheistic religious understandings, by making the intellect a link between each human soul, and the divine intellect (or intellects) of the cosmos itself. (During the Latin Middle Ages a distinction developed whereby the term "intelligence" was typically used to refer to the incorporeal beings which governed the celestial spheres in many of these accounts.) Also see: passive intellect and active intellect".
But intellect is ability to adapt and change. The age of faith the old certainty is passed away. Genies, bottles.