Friday, February 11, 2011

Multiculturalism is Not a Failure in General

In the recent times, a lot many National Leaders in the West have expressed concern over non-integration of immigrants with their societies. The oft repeated statement is: “Multiculturalism has failed”. I think Nicolas Sarkozy of France was the most recent one to say this to the world. You can news about his statements at:
 
Or
 
Among the other World Leaders who have said exactly the same about “failure of multiculturalism” include:
 
·         British Prime Minister David Cameron

·         German Chancellor Angela Merkel

·         Australia’s ex-prime minister John Howard and

·         Spanish ex-premier Jose Maria Aznar
 
These leaders have said that their respective nations have not been able to effectively integrate the immigrants and hence “Multiculturalism has failed”. While reading through all their statements and all the news about them, I want to correct what should be the tag. They should have said: “Multiculturalism with Muslims has failed”.
 
In each of these nations, the Muslims no matter from where they migrated from have lived a life in reclusive pockets. We see the same thing in India. Muslims world over have shown the tendency to start taking part in terrorist activities, as all the biggest terror attacks have involved participants from many nationalities and colors but with a common religion. And if we read all these news, we realize that all these leaders are indeed speaking about non-integration of Muslims in the Western societies, and not about others!
 
Being an Indian, I would like these world leaders to know that even India, a country which celebrates “multiculturalism”, has by and large failed to make”integration” with Muslims. In India, there are two separate penal codes – one for the Hindus and one for the Muslims. Due to different penal codes, Muslims are legally allowed to have so many “privileges” in personal lives, which would be called criminal for Hindus.
 
In fact while reading a summary of the book “Tea with Terrorists”, I realized that such “failures” are neither failures of multiculturalism as a concept, nor failure of these world nations, but these failures are failures of the Islamic world to keep up with the times…

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