Multiculturalism

Ridiculous, ringo.As others have said in response to your 'reassess our values' nonsense, there is no need to do so.Our values are demonstrably superior. They create demonstrably better societies with demonstrably happier people living demonstrably longer lives.Do you get the pattern?It's not a matter of weighing 'equal' values. It's a matter of getting rid of inferior ones because they have been demonstrated not to work.It's pretty simple and straight-forward really.You aren't going to convince anyone in this thread that our values on FGM are skewed.Because they aren't.

Of course no one here is really talking about FGM being forced on women, but about FGM being forced on little girls who cannot possibly have the mental faculty to consent or not to something such as FGM.I'm all in favor of a society that lets women mutilate their genitals as much as they please; but I have no tolerance for cultures that let those same women mutilate the genitals of children (regardless of whose children they are) or force it onto anyone else who may not consent (through cultural pressures, for example).And just like women who burn their children with cigarettes or lock them in the basement so they don't misbehave, I am 100% in favor of throwing women who force FGM on their daughters to spend substantial amounts of the remainder of their lives locked in a prison far removed from the free and successful societies that their infectious ideologies threaten to rip to pieces and away from the children they abuse.And this FGM-as-child-abuse is only part of the picture. In general, FGM is nothing but sexism, a discussion we've already had and don't need to have again.There is really no reason to think that allowing people from FGM cultures to continue to practice FGM on their daughters in host nations is anything other than a stupid and dangerous idea. And there is every reason to think that ridding the world of this practice will improve the lives of people the world over and protect children from the barbaric violence and bigotry of their own cultures.FGM has no place in the 21st century. Not in the West. Not in the East. Not anywhere.Edited by Jon, : No reason given.

Of course. At the same time we need to make sure we are not limiting the rights of non-coerced, consenting adults to do as they please to their own bodies.It is definitely a very fine line when it comes to adults.Regarding children, though, I think we can agree that there is little grey area. Forcing FGM on children is simply wrong.

Whatever ringo.You're being so ridiculous that your posts no longer warrant reply.

To be fair, I kind of am.But then again I am absolutely convinced (and, I believe, rightly so) that Western cultural values are superior to FGM cultural values and that as we have been blessed with such great powers that we have a responsibility to use them to advocate for the oppressed, the hungry, the exploited, etc.I think we have a duty to step in and help people who are being enslaved to evil, even if that evil is their own culture.

Really, though, comparing FGM and male circumcision is pretty pointless regardless of the nature of FGM in question.That the genitalia of men and women are evolutionarily analogous to one another means relatively little in light of the fact that they are presently quite different from one another and that any government worth its salt that regulates what parents can and cannot do to their children's genitalia should not treat them as identical.Even when the procedures in question remove/modify evolutionarily analogous parts male circumcision and FGM are completely different things.

Multiculturalism.

What happens when we regard all beliefs and cultures as equal?

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Niall Ferguson in Civilization: The West and the Rest (2011):

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Empire has become a dirty word, despite the benefits conferred on the rest of the world by the European imperialists. All we risk being left with are a vacuous consumer society and a culture of relativism — a culture that says any theory or opinion, no matter how outlandish, is just as good as whatever it was we used to believe in.
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Worse, this spiritual vacuum leaves West European societies vulnerable to the sinister ambitions of a minority of people who do have religious faith — as well as the political ambition to expand the power and influence of that faith in their adopted countries.
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The separation of church and state, the scientific method, the rule of law, and the very idea of a free society — including relatively recent Western principles like the equality of the sexes and the legality of homosexual acts — all these things are openly repudiated by the Islamists.

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Estimates of the Muslim population of West European countries vary widely. According to one, the total population has risen from around 10 million in 1990 to 17 million in 2010. As a share of national populations, Muslim communities range in size from as much as 9.8 per cent in France to as little as 0.2 per cent in Portugal. Such figures seem to belie the warnings of some scholars of a future 'Eurabia' — a continent Islamicized by the end of the twenty-first century. However, if the Muslim population of the UK were to continue growing at an annual rate of 6.7 per cent (as it did between 2004 and 2008), its share of the total UK population would rise from just under 4 per cent in 2008 to 8 per cent in 2020, to 15 per cent in 2030 and to 28 per cent in 2040, finally passing 50 per cent in 2050.

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Mass immigration is not necessarily the solvent of a civilization, if the migrants embrace, and are encouraged to embrace, the values of the civilization to which they are moving. But in cases where immigrant communities are not successfully assimilated and then become prey to radical ideologues, the consequences can be profoundly destabilizing. The crucial thing is not sheer numbers so much as the extent to which some Muslim communities have been penetrated by Islamist organizations like the Arab Muslim Brotherhood, the Pakistani Jama'at-i Islami, the Saudi-financed Muslim World League and the World Assembly of Muslim Youth. In Britain, to take perhaps the most troubling example, there is an active Muslim Brotherhood offshoot called the Muslim Association of Britain, two Jama'at-i Islami spin-offs, the Islamic Society of Britain and its youth wing, Young Muslims UK, as well as an organization called Hizb ut-Tahrir ('Party of Liberation'). Hizb ut-Tahrir openly proclaims its intention to make 'Britain . . . an Islamit state by the year 2020!' (pp. 288—290)

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As the number of people who wish to practice FGMjust as an examplein the West increases, what will be the result? It is crucial that the prosperous nations of the earth defend the cultural practices that have made their nations prosperous and not relax their enforcement in the name of Multiculturalism and cultural relativism.The fate of the world depends on it.Edited by Jon, : No reason given.

I did. His character is quite questionable.What does that have to do with the information?

The quote is just a bunch of percentages and lists of Islamic organizations. If you think there's something amiss with any of it, bring in some percentages and lists to counter.But nitpicking on someone's character doesn't accomplish anything. As I said myself, I also think rather lowly of him, but I'm willing to trust he knows how to make a list.

His sources? For the percentages he gives the following in the endnote:Just looking at Wiki (Islam in the UK), I see a roughly 4% increase between 2001 and 2011. I'm not inclined to dig through the nearly-impossible-to-navigate UK statistics site. The figures seem to check, though, and I doubt the ONS will disagree with his 2004—2008 figures.That's the percentages. As far as the organizations listed, are you questioning the existence of any of them?

I find that hard to believe. The Abrahamic religions have a history of being pretty violent. Early Christianity, however, wasn't violent until it got entwined in the administration of the Roman Empire.There are plenty of peaceful religions. Your atheist-centered, Multiculturalism view that religions are inherently violent and only become non-violent through tempering by irreligion and secularism is not supported by any evidence. It isn't a matter of secularism vs. religion because not all secular philosophies are equal and neither are all religions equal.You have to look at the specific beliefs.Edited by Jon, : No reason given.

Okay. You probably should have said so to begin with. Your statement in Message 1018: "Left to their own devices, religion would be as primitive and destructive as extreem Islam is today." seemed very general to me. When you do start that thread, you might want to consider that the reverse of your opinion is possibly true regarding Christianity: It became violent only when it started concerning itself with the very secular matter of running an empire.Edited by Jon, : No reason given.

You said you wanted to start a thread on this topic. If you do, I'll participate. Otherwise I don't have much more to say on the matter here.

Multiculturalists put cultural sensitivities before individual liberties; elevate the radical beliefs of a backwards religion above the principles of freedom and democracy.

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Wikipedia on List of newspapers that reprinted Jyllands-Posten's Muhammad cartoons:

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The University of Prince Edward Island's student newspaper The Cadre was removed from circulation by university authorities after reprinting some of the cartoons. The issue was subsequently pulled and destroyed by the UPEI Student Union, who publishes the student paper.

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Staff of the New York Press walked out in protest after management disallowed them to reproduce the cartoons as part of their reporting. Two editors of the University of Illinois' student paper, the Daily Illini, were suspended (one later fired) after reprinting the cartoons.

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"Fears prompt withdrawal of Van Gogh film" from The Guardian:

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The Rotterdam international film festival has pulled the last contentious work by Dutch film-maker Theo Van Gogh at the eleventh hour, amid fears that the screening might trigger further acts of religious violence. The short film, Submission Part One, was due to form the centrepiece of a debate on freedom of speech on Sunday night. It will now not be shown.

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"Salman Rushdie: Fighting Words on a Knighthood" from The New York Times:

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But it's instructive to return to the fatwa period, when some important literary and political voices were critical of Rushdie.

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Among them was Jimmy Carter. In a March 1989 Op-Ed article in The New York Times titled "Rushdie's Book Is an Insult," Carter argued that "The Satanic Verses" was guilty of "vilifying" Muhammad and "defaming" the Koran. "The author, a well-versed analyst of Moslem beliefs, must have anticipated a horrified reaction throughout the Islamic world," Carter wrote. While condemning the death sentence and affirming Rushdie's right to free speech, the former president argued that "we have tended to promote him and his book with little acknowledgment that it is a direct insult to those millions of Moslems whose sacred beliefs have been violated and are suffering in restrained silence the added embarrassment of the Ayatollah's irresponsibility."

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