Assimilation For Success

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“In the Cold War, the West celebrated dissidents such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Andrei Sakharov, and Vaclav Havel, who had the courage to challenge the Soviet system from within. Today, there are many dissidents who challenge Islam—former Muslims, and reformers—but the West either ignores them or dismisses them as “not representative.” This is a grave mistake…”

Heretic, by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, page 221.

Hello Reader, 

Got Assimilation?

Americans make me smile fondly—you too? Only Americans, via Hollywood, could have come up with a villain like the Borg on Star Trek who say “You will be assimilated” —Americans treasure their individuality: In fact, they compliment each other on being different. (A distressing thing to hear in Japan) 

The Borg say the scary words “Resistance is futile.” —Americans hate feeling futile; they treasure having hope and optimism… Perhaps their trust and hope, in people and the future, is why they believe in democracy, although so many others believe democracy leads to national disorder.

I share optimistic American tastes in culture, especially in their music and science fiction, especially for their written fiction. While a European story about a dark totalitarian society might end on a gloomy note, a U.S. story would have a precious few striving for the light, and changing their society, maybe by managing to blow up a death star. 

When it comes assimilation, a certain U.S. book series, The Cross-time Engineer, by Leo Frankowski, is instructive. Although Frankowski is a regular American, his series hero, Conrad, is from a communist Poland. Conrad accidentally time-travels back to Polish feudal times—and is stuck there. Well. The urgent plot: Remembering history, Conrad knows that in ten more years the Mongol hordes are due to come raging through Poland to pillage, burn and kill all his new friends.

Luckily, Conrad is an engineer. Think of Jules Vern’s novel The Mysterious Island where the castaways arrive without even their pocket knives, yet they end up building windmills and irrigating crops planted in rows. The cross-time engineer resolves to improve the economy, enough to support what the classical republics of Greece and Rome enjoyed: a volunteer unpaid citizen-army. The first thing he does? Invent the crochet hook. 

Later Conrad feels guilty. His problem: Smelting ore into steel is a craft the engineer just doesn’t have. But he needs to mass produce armour and weapons for the new army. After all, the feudal tradition of innocent peasants bringing their farm implements into battle just won’t cut it, not against worldly Mongol warriors. So Conrad brings in some refugee southerners and their families. I forget who, probably Arabs to make Damascus steel. He offers them sanctuary in return for their work. Having majored in engineering, he can’t quite remember the sociological equations, but, suspecting the truth, he feels guilty from knowing: With this much critical mass, the southern families might not assimilate. They might remain separate within Poland for a few generations… or even a few centuries. Of course he feels guilty. 

Would a Pole of today, in this situation, feeling any guilt? No. Evidently not, because Europeans have told Arabs and other Muslims that they can have their own culture, their own voluntary enclaves and even their own schools. (Note: an enclave is chosen, a Jewish ghetto is imposed) They say this guilt-free. In contrast, Americans will bus schoolchildren—both their own and others—right across town if that’s what it takes to get them out of their enclave and assimilated. Americans know in their bones that assimilation starts with society having an intention to do so, and that common schools are a big help.

I don’t know why the Europeans weren’t instructed by the example of America, and warned by the example of Yugoslavia. A Muslim I met in London didn’t know either. In Yugoslavia, as you recall, after generations of failure to set an intention to “melt in” or assimilate, the factions resorted to mass “ethnic cleansing.” I wish I could say, “At least there was a silver lining to all that killing, at least the rest of Europe took heed, and then resolved to assimilate.” But I can’t.

I guess we North Americans, living in some of the oldest continuous democracies on the planet, have an unusual culture. In Canada, specifically, a royal commission reported that Canadians don’t mind someone having a different language, provided he or she also has one of the official languages. Nothing wrong with being bi-lingual, yes indeed, it’s good to be bi-cultural. 

Here in North America, I can imagine a bi-cultural Muslim girl bussing to church and school: On Sunday at church writing, “According to religion…” a woman’s word in court should be legally only half that of a man, and she should be stoned to death for certain offences. On Monday at public school writing, “According to science…” the earth is millions of years old. And then “According to the Constitution…” no one should be denied human rights.

An American “bleeding heart” might cry out in alarm, saying surely my London Muslim friend and I are mistaken about the situation over there. Not so. It was a Dutch member of parliament, a Muslim herself, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who described Europeans as encouraging “enclaves.” It was an Australian, John Birmingham, who described Germany on page 411 of the trade paperback novel After America (Titan Books 2010)

QUOTE …”But I see nothing good coming of this, Caitlin. Back in 2001, well before the Disappearance, the Islamic Federation of Berlin, after twenty years of trying, finally succeeded in getting the city to allow purely Islamic schools to take in Muslim children. The city no longer controls those lessons, which are more often in Arabic than German and usually are held behind closed doors, especially for girls. Not long after that, the hijab became much more common. Girls began leaving school as early as possible. Groups of male students formed associations that now lobby for their schools to become fully fledged madrassas. It is a disaster for these children, and for Germany…” UNQUOTE

A disaster. Well. Call me an optimistic “can-do” North American, but I am convinced Europeans could still set their intention to change. 

After all, cultures change. Didn’t my grandparents see America change from extended families to nuclear families? My parents watched Japan and West Germany transform from devoutly believing in fascism to intently embracing democracy. I myself, born when Dwight Eisenhower was president, my favourite decade, saw my world change into the exciting, new improved culture we have today. As well, we in Canada went from believing Eskimos and Indians should and could assimilate, despite the critical mass of people on the isolated Indian reservations, to saying they should remain separate from the space-age culture of the non-aboriginal population, a dynamic population where today Chinese have replaced Ukrainians as the third largest ethnic group (after British and French). And believe me, that is a 180 degree turn around. Cultures change. 

When Ali troubled herself to warn Europeans about their enclaves, it was because she thought they could change. In her latest book, an international bestseller, she describes five ways in which Muslim culture should change, not only in Holland and Europe, but overseas, and in America too. It’s called Heretic subtitled Why Islam needs a reformation now. Well researched, full of examples. With 22 pages of references.

While the engineer, Conrad, is a loyal communist, I have to wonder: If a modern Pole traveled across time to the feudal age, or back to communist times, then what could he say to describe democracy?

He might say democracy requires an optimistic view of the people, a faith that the public doesn’t need to shrug off their burden of freedom and responsibility, certainly not through bowing down in admiration and submission to a king or a Central Committee. Democracy is the belief the public is the safest, although maybe not always the wisest, holder of power. Democracy means faith that most of the people, most of the time, will do the right thing, provided they have the information. 

Information must be thought about, processed, not blindly taken in. Democracy, then, means people must have permission to think. Nothing should ever be a “thought crime,” there should be no Nineteen Eighty-Four style Thought Police — And to support the required freedom of thought, to make sure they “have the information,” people must be legally free to speak, publish and distribute information… It’s no wonder, then, that no Arab public anywhere in the world, from the sparkling Atlantic to the wine red Arabian sea, has ever managed to stay free: Their religion doesn’t allow political free speech. 

It would be nice if Muslims could decide to separate the legal powers of church and state, but I see no sign of them doing so at present… while the optimistic North American in me remains ever hopeful.

Sean Crawford

Calgary

December 2017

Footnotes:

~I quoted how Muslim culture had changed within an Asian Soviet republic in my essay As Epilogue a Feminist Regards Muslim Uzbekistan archived October 2017, from a book I found at the London Tate Museum gift shop.

~My essay I Met a Muslim in London is archived September 2017.

~To document how Australians believe in North American-style  assimilation, not European enclaves, here is a blog by typical Australian Muslim who, needless to say, has no use for Arab-extremist. His second post is by a Muslim who ran for parliament.

~I still think of reading The Cross-Time Engineer whenever I take the electric trolley bus down Broadway past a certain pancake restaurant, where I read it on vacation years ago. 

~Will idealistic “can-do” American Muslims lead the rest of the Muslim world? Teach Muslims about reform? Like how the New York bishop taught the visiting Italian pope that in the “Big Apple” it’s OK for homosexuals to be catholic? Maybe. 

Or maybe not. From what little I can see, U.S. Muslims seem to have let all the air out of their tires. It’s as if they are in victim mode, but I don’t know enough to say for sure. Does anyone else know?

~I wrote of Ali being dis-invited to speak at a university graduation in my essay Acid Blog, Stupid Yankee University archived May 2014, where I quoted CBC’s Rex Murphy saying, “Is this a university or a day care?”