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A Liberal vs. Multiculturalism: An Interview with Salim Mansur

A dissident Muslim confronts the Sharia apologists.

By Phyllis Chesler, March 2, 2012

Recently, PJM sat down with professor and author Salim Mansur, whose latest book I reviewed here.

In this interview, Salim describes himself as a “Muslim dissident” and he challenges all those who describe themselves as “moderate” Muslims. Unlike many “moderate” Muslims, Salim is opposed to a shariah-compliant nation and believes that religion and state must be separate in order for modernity, human rights, scientific inquiry, and democracy to flourish. He says so, below, in his own words. He also has strong words to say about immigration and Canada’s multicultural policy. Born in Calcutta, India, Salim arrived in Canada in the spring of 1974.

Phyllis Chesler: Tell us about what you do.

Salim Mansur: I am a professor of political science at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario. London is mid-way between Toronto and Detroit. I have been at Western since 1990. As you know, I have published two books: Delectable Lie: a liberal repudiation of multiculturalism (2011), and Islam’s Predicament: Perspectives of a Dissident Muslim (2009). I also write as a freelance national columnist for the Sun Media in Canada, and my weekly columns are published in the Toronto Sun and syndicated across Canada.

P: You may note that I did not indicate what your religion was or currently is in my review of your book. I did not do so because the work stands on its own merit, and does not have to be framed as the work of a “Muslim dissident.” But how would you describe yourself in terms of religious identity?

S: I am a Muslim by faith, a Sunni Muslim, and raised by my parents in the mainstream of the majority Hanafi madhab or school of Sunni Islam. But as many of my generation of Muslims, my parents sent me to an English middle school run by Catholic priests, and this upbringing and education taught me to be open to the world around me.

P: And how about your intellectual identity?

S: I am a liberal or, more precisely, I would say a classical liberal. I believe in freedom, individual freedom based on individual rights, and I view the struggle for freedom as the defining element in the making of the modern world.

P: Are you, or have you been, politically active? Which political party do you support, or with which political party are you affiliated?

S: I am not at present politically active. But I was for sometime, and I did stand for a parliamentary seat as an officially nominated candidate in the 2000 Canadian federal election. I was nominated by the Canadian Alliance but I did not win the seat I contested. Canadian Alliance was a center-right conservative party, and at the time of the 2000 election it was the main opposition party in Ottawa. Later the Canadian Alliance merged with the Progressive Conservatives to form the Conservative Party of Canada under the leadership of Stephen Harper, the current prime minister of Canada.

P: How do you reconcile your faith with your politics, or your religious identity with your intellectual identity?

S: I do not carry my faith into my politics. For me faith is a matter of personal belief, it is not a political ideology. As a modern liberal Muslim, or a Muslim modernist, I view the separation of religion and politics as a necessary and essential requirement in order to come to terms with the modern world of science and democracy.

P: Then would it be fair to say you are at odds with a majority of Muslims in the Muslim world?

S: Yes. But I am not alone in holding the view I have expressed. And while we are a minority under great deal of duress in Muslim countries, we are, I believe, significant in numbers.

P: Would you describe yourself as a “moderate” Muslim?

S: I do not care about the term “moderate.” I think the word “moderate” in this instance obscures rather than illuminates what is being described.

P: How?

S: Well, “moderate” is supposedly in contrast to “radical,” or to those Muslims who, since 9/11,  have been labelled as “Islamists.” In other words, those Muslims regardless of whether they publicly support violence or not are committed to the idea and the politics of establishing an Islamic state that fully implements Shariah, or Islamic laws codified in the 9th-10th century. There are many “moderate” Muslims who are in agreement with “Islamists” on this matter of the Shariah-based Islamic state, but who have reservations about the means to bring this about. I am opposed to the Islamists and all that they represent in terms of their faith and politics, and similarly I am opposed to those Muslims viewed as “moderates” who support a Shariah-based Islamic state.

P: Islamists and other Muslims of similar persuasion will then see you and others sharing your  views as heretics, or worse, as apostates from Islam, wouldn’t they?

S: Yes, they do. But no matter. They do not have any monopoly over faith, or possess any divine authority, to state what is Islam and to set its parameters and then banish any Muslim out of Islam who disagrees with them. What they have is the readiness to indulge in violence to intimidate, silence and kill Muslims they disagree with or find unacceptable.

P: Can both Islamists and opponents of Islamists, like yourself, be right when it comes to Islam?

S: No.

P: Then who is right?

S: History, in other words, future generations of Muslims looking back, will judge who is right. I know Islamists are wrong, and worse — they are evil and need to be opposed, their ideas and politics defeated, in order for Muslims to make progress as a people as Christians, Jews, and people of other faiths have done over time in reconciling their religions with the march of science and the advancement of freedom and democracy.

P: Do you really see this happening?

S: I do not believe Muslims are outside of history. Muslims, as are Christians, are ethnically, and by languages and customs, vastly diverse people. And Islam is not monolithic in terms of how it has been understood and practised by Muslims from the earliest years to the present. This is a big complex subject up for discussion and poorly understood by Muslims themselves, and then by others observing them from the outside.

What we are witnessing at present in the world of Islam, and when seen within the larger perspective of history, is an immense convulsion out of which will likely emerge at some future date a Muslim world much different than what it is today. In some sense this convulsion inside the Muslim world is similar to that which gripped Christianity for several centuries, and in the process Europe made its transition from the pre-modern to the modern world. There are commonalities and differences between what occurred in Europe and what is taking place in the Muslim world, but eventually the commonalities are far more important and instructive in explaining the present struggle in which Muslims are engaged in.

P: Let me ask you about honor killings, about the 15 that we know about in Canada and the 12 that have been prosecuted. How does the fact that honor killings occur in Canada reflect the failure of Canada’s multicultural policy? And, on the other hand, the fact that Canada prosecutes those honor killings it knows about – how does that reflect on the multicultural policy?

S: I agree with those individuals in Canada, such as Homa Arjomand (Canadian of Iranian origin) and Tarek Fatah (Pakistani origin), who have said that victims of honor killings in Canada are also victims of Canadian multiculturalism. In other words, were it not for multiculturalism, eventual victims of honor killings would have been provided with protection when they appealed for help fearful of their precarious situation within a patriarchal and/or misogynistic household, as any other female from the mainstream culture would or might immediately receive on the first intimation of potential or actual abuse.

P: What do you think of the honor killings in the Shafia family household, and the jury verdict?

S: The honor killings in the Shafia case underscore the argument about how the institutions of the Canadian society – school, children welfare agency, law enforcement authority – failed the victims (three young girls and an older woman) because of multiculturalism. The three girls, confused and fearful, gave enough indications by their behavior to the authorities they were in mortal danger, but the signs were not urgently heeded. The victims’ behaviour and the Shafia elders’ explanations were filtered through the lens of multiculturalism, and the authorities failed to remove the victims from a situation of abuse that eventually ended in honor killings.

P: Do you know of any shelters that serve Muslim women specifically who are in flight from abusive situation and in fear of honor killing?

S: I am not personally aware of any such shelter. But I believe there are female support networks in cities such as Toronto and Montreal that will arrange shelter. More needs to be done by local authorities in making Muslim women aware of where they can find support.

P: Tell me a little about the recent conference in Quebec which featured Tariq Ramadan for which you and colleagues obtained a counter-protest petition?

S: The Second Conference on World’s Religions was hosted in September 2011 by McGill University in Montreal, and Tariq Ramadan was invited to speak. The concern of many Canadians, both non-Muslims and Muslims, was with the platform provided by McGill to Ramadan who is well known for his role in promoting the Muslim Brotherhood’s (MB’s) politics in the West, who says one thing to a Western audience and another to Muslim audience as the grandson of Hasan al-Banna and founder of MB, and who is a close ally of Sheikh al-Qaradawi, the notorious MB leader based in Qatar.

Marc Lebuis, a Montreal resident and activist against radical Islam, spear-headed an effort to protest McGill’s invitation to Tariq Ramadan. Lebuis runs the web magazine www.pointdebasculecanada.ca, and I joined his effort by signing a petition that was widely circulated to let the media and authorities know about Tariq Ramadan and his activities subversive of liberal democracy.

I must say: These efforts in opposing and exposing the politics of people like Tariq Ramadan are merely pin pricks against the immense petrodollar resources supportive of the MB, and the extent to which the Western governments and societies are engaged in appeasing the MB and Islamists in the Middle East, and their agents, supporters, apologists and fellow-travellers in the West.

P: What do you think Canada’s immigration policy should be? Doyou envision deportation for serious crimes after sentences are served? Do you envision limiting immigration until full integration/assimilation has been achieved?

S: This is a vast and complicated subject. I have discussed this to some extent in Delectable Lie. My own view is there should be some sort of moratorium on immigration from the Muslim world given the nature of politics and culture exported from there to the West. I do not foresee, however, any limits being put in place to control or curtail immigration given the wide disconnect that exists between the political-media-intellectual elite’s support for immigration and the general public deeply apprehensive about its negative effects.

P: Do you envision legally overturning Canada’s multicultural policy?

I would support any effort launched to overturn Canada’s official multicultural policy written into the Canadian statutes and recognized in the Constitution. But I do not foresee this happening any time soon, nor do I see any indication or inclination in the ruling Conservative Party of overturning this policy. Unlike government leaders in Germany, Britain,France and Netherlands who have publicly indicated the failure of multiculturalism in their respective countries and the need to revoke it, political leaders in Canada remain publicly wedded to the absurd ideology of multiculturalism.

P: What should be demanded of Third World immigrants to Canada?

S: Simple. Leave your cultural baggage behind when you arrive inCanada.

P: Salim, thank you for sharing your thoughts with me.

S: And to you, Phyllis, thanks for inviting me to have this conversation.

Dr. Phyllis Chesler is the author of 14 books and an emerita professor of Psychology and Women’s Studies. She once lived in Kabul, Afghanistan. She may be reached through her website www.phyllis-chesler.com.

 

Why Multiculturalism Is Racism

By Phyllis Chesler, PJ Media, February 17, 2012 (link to original article)

Dr. Salim Mansur’s new book Delectable Lie: A Liberal Repudiation of Multiculturalism has been positively reviewed and endorsed by a handful of mainly conservative reviewers and distinguished intellectuals.

In my opinion, the book has been underestimated. It is a real gem. And, despite a recent spate of other important books on this subject, including Ibn Warraq’s Why the West Is Best, Mansur’s work is unique. Mansur gives us very valuable information about the history of multiculturalism in Canada, which is important because Canada — where Mansur lives, writes, and teaches — may well be the very first Western democracy to have legally enshrined this policy. We learn, up close, what that policy has done.

In 1971, in an era of “identity politics” rising, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau passed the multiculturalism policy. In 1988 it was further enshrined as the Canadian Multiculturalism Act. Mansur observes:

Explicit in this idea of multiculturalism was the officially sanctioned view that all cultures are of equal merit and deserving of equal respect.

In addition, Mansur explains and connects a number of important things that no one has previously done — at least, not all in one place.

Mansur teaches us that, historically, the nineteenth and twentieth century Third World and European immigrants who came to North America were very different from late 20th and 21st century immigrants. In the past, an immigrant undertook a long and sometimes perilous voyage to the New World. In order to plan and execute this transition, such immigrants usually began to cut their ties to their native customs, even to their families; they wanted to assimilate and become “Canadians” or “Americans” or “Englishmen.” Visits back home were not easy or even possible. Ties were painfully cut — or new lives, far from persecution, were begun.

This is no longer true. What may have taken weeks or months in terms of travel can now be accomplished in a matter of hours. Modern wide-body aircraft means that someone can have their breakfast in central Asia and a late-night dinner in the New World. Satellite television means that an immigrant can continue to watch the news and be entertained in their home country’s language.

In the past, assimilation meant that a new immigrant would learn English as well as American or Canadian history and values. Not so today. The well-intentioned policy of multiculturalism now permits, even insists, that an immigrant learn mainly about the customs of the country she has left — and not about the customs of her new home. She or he may spend their entire lives speaking their home country language and socializing mainly with others just like themselves.

How could this have come about?

Mansur explains that Canadians were already sensitized to the demands of the Quebecois who wanted to secede and who ultimately became a bilingual (French and English speaking) province of Canada. Canadians were also so guilty about their own history vis-a-vis the indigenous peoples of Canada and horrified at the Nazi-era racism that led to the genocidal extermination of six million Jews. Thus Canadian leaders vowed to avoid the stench, the heartbreak, and the atrocity of persecuting anyone because they were “different,” especially if their skin color was dark, their features not Caucasian, their religion other than Christian, especially if their country of origin had been previously colonized.

According to Mansur, by the mid 1990s, Canadian youth no longer knew much about the history of Canada.

As Mansur puts it: To correct the West’s past racism, academics dismissed the Western narrative as essentially “white history” which had to be replaced by “non-white people’s history.” This led to the so-called academic “historical wars,” heavily influenced by the biased but still lionized work of Edward Said. White guilt, balkanization, and the glorification of barbarism began. Tribalism trumped citizenship, group rights trumped individual rights. “Primitive” tribes did not feel any responsibility to reciprocate the interest or respect shown to them by humbled white folk. As Mansur notes, anti-Western peoples did not “respect the individualist-oriented secular values of liberal democracy… the people of minority cultures did most of the demanding for equal respect of their cultural norms.”

While this was going on, the same modern communication and transportation that allowed Third World immigrants to never have to leave home also made it possible to internationalize what might have remained a local dispute in an earlier era. For example, the “Palestinians” turned a local dispute about the existence of one small Jewish state into an international matter; they hijacked aircraft, universities, human rights groups, and the United Nations itself. Similarly, Mansur reminds us of a horrifying Sikh terrorist attack upon an Air India flight in 1985 which blew up 329 Indian-Canadians and crew who were returning to Canada.

Mansur is describing the export of Third World religious and territorial wars to the New World. Multicultural Canada did not convict but rather acquitted the prime suspects in the terrorist attack. In Mansur’s words:

The terrible story of the Air India bombing…cannot be blamed on multiculturalism. It also cannot be denied, however, that multiculturalism provided the political environment in which the bloody conflict of a distant land, India, found the soil to flourish with deadly consequences.

Mansur understands that, at bottom, multiculturalism is ironically, paradoxically, a racist doctrine. He quotes author Kim Bolan, who believes that Canadians may have underplayed the significance of this crime because “it primarily affected people who weren’t perceived to be our own—brown people with accents who we didn’t accept as Canadians….But they are our own. Our own victims. Our own terrorists.”

Mansur understands full well that politically correct multicultural societies — and societies founded upon “identity politics” — ultimately “chill free speech” and “insist upon conformity of opinion.” Mansur then lists the many names of Muslim and ex-Muslim dissidents as well as infidels who have been murdered, death threatened, censored, and exiled because they have offended primarily Muslim sensibilities.

Some of these names are well known (Salman Rushdie, Theo van Gogh, Ayaan Hirsi Ali), but he carefully lists the names of those who are not known, e.g., Rushdie’s Japanese translator, Hitoshi Igarashi, who was stabbed to death; Rushdie’s Italian and Norwegian translators, Ettore Capriolo and William Nygaard, who were both seriously wounded in knife attacks. A Turkish mob, in search of Rushdie’s Turkish translator, Aziz Nesin, set a building on fire and murdered 37 people.

Mansur’s list goes on and on — and what is important is that he — but not the Western mainstream media —  is focusing upon the high price being paid for truth telling, especially when Muslim and ex-Muslim dissidents are paying it in Muslim-majority countries.

Mansur does this so that he can set the stage for the very high-profile cases in Canada of “offended” Canadian Muslims Syed Soharwardy and Mohamed Elmasry. Soharwardy filed complaints with three separate Canadian human rights commissions against Canadian publisher and writer Ezra Levant, who had dared to reproduce the Danish “Mohammed” cartoons, and against writer Mark Steyn.

For two years, Levant was embroiled in “defending his constitutionally guaranteed right of freedom of expression.” The investigation cost the Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission $500,000.00 and it cost Levant nearly $100,000.00. Elmasry, of the Canadian Islamic Congress, also filed his complaints with three separate Canadian groups. He was “offended” by an article Steyn had published in Maclean’s. Ultimately, all six complaints were dismissed.

Imagine the self-censorship that must exist among lower-profile truth-tellers who know they cannot afford to fund a battle against the Canadian state.

Mansur’s conclusions? That multiculturalism really amounts to a form of “soft bigotry,” or as Pascal Bruckner has phrased it: “A racism of the anti-racists; it chains people to their roots.” Immigrants are kept confined to their “group” and not encouraged or expected to become “individuals” and “citizens” of a modern democracy.

Even as Canadians are busy patting themselves on the back for having created a fair, just, tolerant, and multicultural society — guess what? After more than 40 years of a multicultural policy, Canadians recently voted their still existing prejudices. While “72 percent of Canadians thought favourably of Christianity, only 28 percent viewed Islam favourably. Only 30 percent viewed Sikhism favorably (the figures for Hinduism. Buddhism, and Judaism were, respectively, 41 percent, 57 percent, and 53 percent).” From 62 percent to 74 percent of the Canadian population now believes that “laws and norms should not be modified to accommodate minorities.”

Mansur rejects multiculturalism, not only because it has failed to work but because it has — and can only — lead to a “tyranny of the majority” which will threaten the freedom and “security” of the “individual.” Mansur views the “individual” as the “ultimate minority of one against the majority that can turn into a mob.” This freedom and security is what defines a “liberal democracy” and should not be relinquished. He closes:

“The worm inside the doctrine of multiculturalism is the lie that all cultures are worthy of equal respect and equally embracing of individual freedom and democracy. The concerted assault by the Islamists on the essential and life-affirming values based on individual rights and freedom is proof of this lie.”

European and North American governments should be consulting with Mansur and with other Muslims, ex-Muslims, and infidels who share his views. They will soon have no other choice.

Dr. Phyllis Chesler is the author of 14 books and an emerita professor of Psychology and Women’s Studies. She once lived in Kabul, Afghanistan. She may be reached through her website www.phyllis-chesler.com.

 

Author argues multiculturalism not suitable in a democracy

By Lisa Goudy, Leader-Post, November 29, 2011 (link to original article)

Canadian author and Professor Salim Mansur loves Canada, but he argues that multiculturalism does not support democracy.

A political science professor at the University of Western Ontario, Mansur spoke in Regina Monday night about why multiculturalism goes against liberal democracy and the values outlined in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

“Canada was and aspires to remain a liberal democratic society and a liberal democratic culture and multiculturalism is completely contrary to those values,” said Mansur, the author of Delectable Lie: A Liberal Repudiation of Multiculturalism. “(Multiculturalism) suggests that all cultures are equal and deserve to be equally treated – It is an absolute absurdity.”

Mansur immigrated to Canada from India as a war refugee and he said he is grateful for the beautiful country that provided a home for him.

But he said what he wants is to “save this country from the dangers of what multiculturalism is.” Mansur said Canadians are fighting in places under the Taliban rule to “help the country move forward.” In those places, he said misogyny is practiced; women are mistreated and not treated as equals to men. He said it is impossible to argue that those cultures are equal to a culture in a liberal democracy.

“It is a nice sounding word, multiculturalism, but it is, as I say, a delectable lie – What it ends up is a tolerance for the intolerant,” said Mansur. “A culture that puts a man on the moon is not equal to a culture that values the inequalities of gender, that discriminates against minorities – On and on, we can put up all the arguments.”

Mansur said that an ideal liberal democracy allows individuals to live to their highest potential, protecting individual rights and freedoms.

“When Canada says we’re a multicultural society, we’re putting up the argument that, instead of looking at individuals, we’re going to look at group identity and collective identity,” said Mansur. “The two things cannot go together and that’s exactly the problem we are facing today.”

He said discussion is taking place in the Canadian government about a private member’s bill that seeks to repeal section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, which is the hate speech law.

He said he is in favour of abolishing the law.

“Our freedom of speech has been under attack by people who are trying to push hate speech laws against discussion that should take place openly in a liberal democracy,” said Mansur. “The very fundamental core principle of a liberal democracy is freedom of speech.”

Mansur added that elected leaders in Germany, Britain and France have announced publicly that multiculturalism has failed. He said Canada needs to become aware of why multiculturalism does not work and the only solution is to abandon multiculturalism.

“A time will come when Canada will have to stand up to (multiculturalism),” said Mansur. “Canadians will wake up. The question is: Will Canadians wake up before we pay too much cost?”

The export that smears freedom – multiculturalism

By Licia Corbella, Calgary Herald November 15, 2011 (link to original article)

One of Canada’s top exports has fallen into disrepute of late. No, we’re not talking about Alberta’s so called “dirty oil,” which, in fact, is some of the world’s cleanest when you consider what it fuels – a society based on human rights, equality, generosity, rule of law, high wages, workers’ rights, freedom and environmental accountability.

No, this export is an insidious idea that has seeped into Canada’s very cultural fabric and has since spread into western Europe, Australia and New Zealand, where it is now being questioned by the elite thinkers of those very societies that embraced it. The idea is official multiculturalism, something author Salim Mansur describes as a “Delectable Lie” in his new book by that title.

This past October marked the 40th anniversary of the advent of official multiculturalism being embraced by Pierre Trudeau’s Liberal government back in 1971. It would take another 11 years before multiculturalism would be enshrined into Section 27 of Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Mansur, who was in Calgary on Monday to promote his book, spoke at the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy and it sounded very much like he was issuing an urgent warning. “My point is that although multiculturalism once seemed a very good idea, at least to politicians and others smitten with the ambition for unity, it is increasingly shown to be a lie – a delectable lie, perhaps, yet a lie nevertheless – that is destructive of the West’s liberal democratic heritage, tradition and values based on individual rights and freedoms,” writes Mansur in his book.

On one level, multiculturalism is simply a fact in Canada. This is, after all, a pluralistic society, and most Canadians celebrate the richness that pluralism has brought to Canada. But because the term multiculturalism has been officially enshrined into law as a set of ideas “that all cultures are equal and deserving of equal treatment in a liberal democracy such as Canada” – Mansur prefers to name that reality as multi-ethnic.

It’s simply not true that all cultures are of equal value, points out Mansur.

Established criteria makes it possible to judge which cultures and ideologies are superior and lead to better outcomes, says Mansur, “whether in the arts and literature, religion, philosophy, technology, modes of governance or science: but the primary criterion that makes possible all human achievement is freedom.”

Mansur says great western thinkers like John Locke, John Stuart Mill, Karl Popper, Friedrich Hayek, among others, warned us against the temptation to “abridge freedom in pursuit of equality. ”

Mansur, a professor of political science at the University of Western Ontario in London, says Trudeau’s decision to bring in official multiculturalism was made in bad faith – an attempt to unify a diverse populace behind officially accepting French as an equal partner and an official language. It was also a way for Trudeau to ensure the new immigrant vote for the Liberal Party of Canada for decades.

“Multiculturalism worked wonderfully in the urban centres of Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal to lock in the vote of the new immigrants that were arriving in Canada behind Pierre Trudeau and the Liberal party,” explains Mansur.

Initially, anyway, it looked like multiculturalism was a good idea in that it seemed little more than an opportunity to take in the diet, dance and dress of diverse cultures. But soon the moral relativism started to occur, wherein newcomers wanted Canada to accommodate their less enlightened cultural practices rather than the other way around.

Mansur told of an interesting anecdote when, in the mid-1990s, Trudeau made a rare visit to Parliament. Initially reported by Chris Cobb in the Ottawa Citizen, former Liberal MP John Bryden remembered asking Trudeau during an invitation-only lunch, “Mr. Trudeau, you were one of the key architects of multiculturalism and now we are in a situation where many newcomers to Canada consider their ethnicity before being Canadian. Is this the outcome you wanted?”

There was silence around the table as Trudeau pondered the question. “No, this is not what I wanted,” admitted Trudeau.

Mansur, a devout Muslim, says individual rights and rule of law are aspects of our Canadian identity that should never be watered down.

“The core issue is we cannot have multiculturalism without our liberal democracy being hollowed out.”

Mansur points to Valley Park Middle School in Toronto, which caved in to Muslim demands to allow Islamic prayers to be conducted in the school cafeteria every Friday at noon that exclude all non-Muslims and force the girls to sit at the back of the room. Menstruating girls are forced to sit on a bench at the very back of the room.

“We cannot have the Lord’s Prayer in schools,” he says. “You cannot hang a cross in the schools. We do not recognize the Hindu, or Buddhist or Jewish rights, but we caved in to the muscular power and demands of the Muslim faith, ” says Mansur, adding that Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty very nearly allowed sharia law to govern Muslims in family court situations in that province.

It’s long past time, urges Mansur, to stand up and say: “If the law is an ass, we have to get rid of the ass. ”

“We have to repudiate multiculturalism on the grounds of the values that we cherish, that built this country, that built the West – which is superior and better, that’s why immigrants want to move here.”

Official multiculturalism once seemed such a great export. It has proven to be a lie that threatens our very way of life, and that no longer looks so delectable.

 

The Multicultural Lie, By Bruce Bawer

November 10, 2011 FrontPageMagazine.com (link to original article)

A number of books have criticized multiculturalism, but even if you’ve already read a bunch of them, Salim Mansur’s Delectable Lie: A Liberal Repudiation of Multiculturalism is still very much worth your attention.  Mansur, a syndicated columnist who teaches political science at the University of Western Ontario and whose previous books include Islam’s Predicament: Perspectives of a Dissident Muslim, approaches multiculturalism from the distinctive viewpoint of a naturalized Canadian citizen who is also a secular Muslim born on the Indian subcontinent.  At once very knowledgeable about the history of multiculturalism and richly steeped in the long tradition of Western ideas about individual liberty (of which he rightly recognizes multiculturalism as a profound philosophical violation), Mansur is also a highly effective polemicist.  Although awash in learned references to thinkers ranging from Plato and Aristotle to Karl Popper and Friedrich Hayek, Mansur’s book is eminently accessible, and should be of interest to any reader who is concerned about the threat that multiculturalism poses to the Western heritage of freedom.

It’s significant that Mansur is Canadian, because Canada, as he puts it, was “the first major democracy to experiment with designing a society on the basis of multiculturalism.”  He recounts the origins of this policy, which took shape largely as a response to growing pressure for Quebec’s independence (or, at the very least, for radical revision of its position in the Canadian confederation).  This pressure led to Prime Minister Lester Pearson’s 1963 establishment of a Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, which in turn eventuated in the formulation of an official multicultural policy in 1968 by the government of Pierre Trudeau.  Thus began Canada’s shift from a liberal democratic society that supported individual rights to a nation that placed the rights of the group above those of the individual – a process that reached its culmination under Brian Mulroney, during whose prime ministership, Mansur maintains, “Canada became the first western liberal democracy to adopt multiculturalism as the defining characteristic of the country.”

Multiculturalism, Mansur reminds us, was born in a time when the nature of immigration to North America had changed radically.  A century ago, relocating from the Old World to the New was an expensive proposition; people left the lands of their birth “with some certainty of never returning”; they put the past behind them and began a new life, grateful to receive opportunities not offered to them back home.  Yet all that changed, changed utterly – and a big reason for the change, as Mansur shrewdly points out, was “the arrival of wide-body aircraft,” which ended up “blurr[ing] the difference between immigrants and migrant workers.”  All too many of today’s so-called immigrants to the West, after all, are not truly immigrants in the traditional sense but are, rather, people “situated in two countries…only a few short hours removed from their native lands.”  They don’t break their ties to the old country, don’t undergo a dramatic psychological adjustment of the sort that was once a natural part of the immigrant experience.  Nor do the countries to which they “immigrate” expect of them what they used to expect of newcomers from abroad: today’s “immigrants” can become citizens of a Western country even if they utterly despise its core values and spend much of their time back in the places they “immigrated” from.

If Mansur is so exasperated at “immigrants” who fail to embrace their new Western homelands, it is because he himself has a profound – and often eloquently articulated – appreciation for the West.  Indeed this book is, among other things, a love letter to Western civilization, a civilization unique for its emancipation of the individual from the “collectivist hold of tribe, caste, church, nation, class and any ideology that made of him a mere cog in a wheel.”  Mansur – who (admirably) despises collectivism, and has no wish to be a cog in any wheel – reminds us that the idea of individualism is alien to every other civilization on the planet, and that it was “only through prolonged and sustained contact with the West” that the idea took root in non-Western societies.

If Delectable Lie is a love letter to the West, it is especially a love letter to Canada from a refugee who witnessed “terror and savage killings” back in his native country and will forever be thankful to the Great White North for providing him with a refuge and “the opportunity to begin a new life.”  His Canadian identity is so important to Mansur, indeed, that he eventually “came to feel uncomfortable with the notion of being a hyphenated Canadian.”  For if his Indian identity was something he had “inherited at birth without any effort on my part,” his Canadian identity was the product of “choice and conscious effort.”  Being Canadian meant “embrac[ing] the West and freely assimilat[ing] its distinctive culture”; it meant “recogniz[ing], as I did with a mixture of awe and gratitude, that the West represents the idea of a civilization nurtured by the values of the Enlightenment….its politics shaped by the democratic impulse of revolutions against hereditary rule, its philosophy influenced by the development of the scientific method of controlled experiments and tests, its culture open and embracing of new ideas.”

Moving sentiments; stirring words.  In Mansur’s view, it is a matter of deep moral urgency that a new immigrant to the West completely and sincerely embrace his new national identity.  Mansur meditates sensitively and at length on the importance of being a citizen, noting that “while other cultures have borrowed this idea, it is only in the West that citizenship is vested in a free individual with rights and responsibilities,” and lamenting that Western passports are now so freely handed out to “immigrants” who have little or no emotional attachment to their new countries and no real concept of the deeper meanings – and obligations – attached to the idea of citizenship.  In the Western world, as Mansur sees it, one’s identity as citizen is, or should be, paramount; and one of the deleterious aspects of multiculturalism is that it “works to weaken or dissolve citizenship identity by suggesting that the cultural identities which immigrants bring with them deserve to be recognized and treated with equal respect.”  This destructive tendency, he urges, must be countered as fervently as possible: “the principle of citizenship with its rights and responsibilities needs to be reaffirmed and protected.  People need to be reminded repeatedly what it means to be a citizen in a modern secular state.”

For Americans, this is an illuminating book in many ways.  Some of us tend to think of Canada (when we think of it at all) as a country pretty much like our own, where the only real difference is that the people pronounce “out” and “about” differently; but of course Canadians not only have their own history but also their own distinctive ways of thinking about politics, culture, and value – many of which, indeed, have taken shape in reaction to American ways of thinking.  So it was with multiculturalism, which in the beginning was viewed as an effective way of distinguishing Canada from the United States, of whose “melting pot” philosophy many bien pensant Canadians heartily disapproved.  Canada, they insisted, would not be a “melting pot” but a beautiful mosaic, a melange, a smorgasbord – yet instead of sharpening Canada’s profile vis-à-vis its neighbor to the south, the new policy, Mansur complains, only served to make a “weak national identity….even weaker.”

Still, he suggests, it was not until 9/11 that it became fully clear just how much of a threat multiculturalism poses to free societies.  For multiculturalism, he explains, turns out to be nothing less than “the slippery slope that leads to the acceptance or appeasement of the politics of jihad within a liberal democracy.”  The kind of liberty we have enjoyed in countries like the U.S. and Canada, Mansur reminds us, is a glorious exception in human history: in most times and places – and certainly in Communist and Islamic societies – the human individual has been “a cog in a machine…a means to an end as defined by the collective.  This is the politics of jihad, which has been the normal condition for humankind in history, and only for brief tantalizing moments in history has the promise of history, as what ought to be the condition for humankind, appeared on history’s stage.”

While the phenomenon of creeping jihad has quite clearly exposed the danger of multiculturalism, however, Western politicians and multiculturalist ideologues have decided perversely – “like dope addicts” – that the answer “is more multiculturalism,” including gradually giving in to demands for parallel systems of sharia law, in the absurd hope that if Islamic demands are met, “Muslims will respond by respecting European values.”  Yet as Mansur underscores, Islamists “are not ideologically motivated to seek coexistence on terms set by others; for them, coexistence means setting the terms for others on the basis of shari’ah values that are incompatible with liberal values.”  Indeed.

“The world is naturally diverse,” Mansur observes.  “But the moral strength of liberalism comes from its refusal to make a fetish of this diversity.  The liberal vision sees above and beyond diversity in respecting individual rights, and by defending liberty on the basis of securing individual rights liberalism acknowledges that the naturally given diversity finds its best unfettered expression through the lives of individuals as free agents in history.”  Delectable Lie is the testimony of a man who has seen the world from both sides – the free and the unfree – and who, after doing some very serious and responsible thinking about liberty and identity, has come to understand exactly why Western freedom and multiculturalism are mutually incompatible.  It would behoove those of us who have been fortunate enough to live our entire lives in the free West to heed his wisdom, and defend our liberties as zealously as he does in the pages of this invaluable book.

 

Multiculturalism hardly ‘an insidious assault’

Political scientist and author Salim Mansur brings his controversial views to Vancouver next week

By Barbara Yaffe, Vancouver Sun, November 4, 2011 (link to original article)

Salim Mansur has written the mother of all politically incorrect books – slamming multiculturalism, a policy that has become so integral to Western societies such as Canada.

The Calcutta-born political scientist, who teaches at the University of Western Ontario in London, says what few others will: All cultures are not equal, and immigration from Islamic countries has been harmful to the West.

Official multiculturalism, Mansur contends, was embraced back in the 1970s by governments eager to lay claim to the so-called ethnic vote.

Mansur, a Sunni Muslim who immigrated to Canada some 40 years ago, contends that multiculturalism “is destructive of the West’s liberal democratic heritage, tradition and values based on individual rights and freedoms.”

Mansur will sign copies of his justpublished book, Delectable Lie, a Liberal Repudiation of Multiculturalism, on Monday at the Vancouver Club.

The book was published by Mantua Books, a Vancouver publisher of works that “rise above political correctness and restrictive ideologies.”

Mansur’s book deals overwhelmingly with Muslim immigration. Muslims make up five per cent of Europe’s population, one per cent in Canada and the U.S., and growing.

Mansur, who also writes a Toronto newspaper column, is well aware how controversial his views are. A news release about his book states he has been the subject of two fatwas, but he refuses to provide details.

On the other hand, he received an award in 2006 from the American Jewish Congress.

Last year he called Israel “a robust and inclusive democracy … at the leading edge of science and technology.

“What hypocrites demand of Israelis and the scrutiny Israel is subjected to by them, they would not dare make of any other nation.”

Mansur ran unsuccessfully in the 2000 federal election in London West as a Canadian Alliance candidate and in 2008 criticized the late NDP leader Jack Layton for having “gone to bed with Islamists,” because the party had run candidates identified with the push for Shariah law.

In his book, Mansur disputes the multiculturalist doctrine that claims that all cultures are of equal merit and deserve equal respect.

He points to the intolerance exhibited by some followers of Islam – as evidenced in the Danish cartoon kerfuffle in 2005, and the inferior place of women in Islamic culture.

He says provincial human rights commissions have been used by newcomers to try to squelch free speech in Canada.

“Increasingly, multiculturalism … has turned out to be an insidious assault on freedom in the West.”

But it has also become an ingrained and irreversible policy, one that plays both on Westerners’ generosity and a sense of guilt arising out of a history of imperialism and colonialism.

Mansur draws a worthy and valid distinction between immigration from postwar Europe, when migrants made an arduous journey by ship, cutting ties to their past, eager to build new lives in their adopted homeland; and the immigration that ensued after air travel became commonplace.

These “second wave” immigrants were mainly people seeking economic opportunity.

They included Sri Lankan Tamils, Palestinians, Lebanese, Algerians and other Arabs from the Middle East, Somalis and Rwandans, bringing to Canada their quarrels and grievances and personal baggage.

If there is a flaw in Mansur’s book, it is that it fails to document any of the more positive aspects of widespread immigration.

Immigration, after all, has helped the world become a global village, enhancing trade and travel opportunities.

And in Vancouver, where the city’s fabric has become kaleidoscopically beautiful thanks to newcomers from all over the world, few would wish to turn back the clock.

 

 PajamasMedia.com, Sunday, September 18, 2011

 

Praise for Salim Mansur’s Delectable Lie:

A Delectable Lie

Original post by David Solway on Sep 7th, 2011 – Read more HERE

I begin with a disclosure. Salim Mansur is a friend of mine, so if I were in any way skeptical of his deposition I would not have consented to write this review. Friendship is too precious a value to risk giving needless offense, either by being too brutally honest or by producing a piece of dishonest puffery. And since even the best of us have written problematic books (including yours truly), it is best in such cases to say nothing adverse in print and leave it to others to dissect the writer’s efforts.

That I write a review of a friend’s book, then, means that I suffer no crisis of conscience in praising it for its many virtues: clarity, painstaking research, intellectual scrupulousness, a surfeit of historical and juridical information, and a powerful argument backed by strict evidence and leading to a set of forceful conclusions.
Mansur presents his thesis with lucid precision in his Introduction: “The idea of an ‘official’ multiculturalism program to be sponsored by the state, supported by tax-payers, and monitored and enforced by thought-police (human rights commissions) was at best dubious, and at worst by its very nature poised against Western liberalism. Moreover…it was based on the false idea—another official lie, really—that all cultures are equal.”

The result of this pernicious fantasy was a reversal of cultural norms and the scuttling of reasonable expectations. If all cultures are equal, the heritage culture has no priority and no legitimate claim upon foreign minorities to adapt to the social usages and conventions already in place. “As immigration changes the demographic profile of a liberal democracy,” Mansur writes, “multiculturalism empowers immigrants from non-Western societies to demand that their host country adapt to the cultural requirements of immigrants instead of the other way round.” And this is plainly what has happened. “[I]f the ride continues unchecked,” he concludes, “the end then is predictable.”

Delectable Lie is a detailed exfoliation of this root argument, examining how multiculturalism—and, of course, its corollary, political correctness, which discriminates against the expression of dissent—have inexorably sedimented themselves in the political process, “twisting our history” as they did so, “tearing apart” national identities and invidiously replacing them with “even older identities of a pre-modern past,” thus effectively eroding the “idea of nation as a people…identified on the basis of kinship relations or language.”
One has only to look at the importation of Sharia law into Europe and the proliferation of no-go zones, in effect Islamic mini-emirates, in European cities to see how cultural civility and national coherence can be subverted. In the U.S. Islamic advocacy proceeds apace, terror attacks are a constant menace, mosques pepper the landscape, the President appoints Muslim Brotherhood sympathizers to influential posts, and the Shariate relentlessly advances. In Canada—Mansur’s chief concern—Islamic organizations flex their muscles, terror plots are hatched, mosques and religious schools indoctrinate the young, and our human rights commissions see to it that criticism of Islam is muted, punished and all but ruled out.

One recalls Ottoman thinker Said Nursi who prophesied nearly a century ago, in his famous Damascus Sermon, that “Europe and America are pregnant with Islam. One day they will give birth to an Islamic state.” The way things are going, he may have been right. And it is via what Mansur calls the “delectable lie”—the idea of cultural parity, the raising of the concept of “diversity” (which really means “conformity of opinion”) to the status of a social paradigm, the practice of accommodation to the sensitivities of immiscible groups in the fatuous conviction that the favor will be reciprocated, the untenable belief that the desire for freedom, prosperity and electoral democracy reigns in every human heart, in short, the diktats of multiculturalism—that Nursi’s vision would be realized.

Mansur writes with authority both as a professor of political science imbrued in his discipline and as a Muslim who understands how the more extreme elements in his community pose a serious threat to the durability of the society in which they have refused to integrate. These Islamic elements—along with certain disruptive and sectarian portions of the South Asian shame-honor demographic—braid the rope with which we will hang ourselves. Mansur clearly reveals how multiculturalism has failed to establish a viable and harmonious pluralism and has instead created an anarchic and retrograde situation in which old-world identities take precedence over modern, secular and liberal values. He shows how the Western political elites have collaborated in their own eventual dissolution by refusing to control or monitor the flow of tribally oriented immigrants who bring the hatreds, conflicts, social patterns, ancestral traditions and cultural practices of Third World communities into their new home, sowing inevitable discord as a consequence.

At the same time, the patrician class does everything it can to avoid confrontation and, in an access of misplaced solicitude, even strives to facilitate what is nothing less than a “hostile takeover” by stifling opposition to such destructive policies and pandering to the grievance networks set up by these foreign implants. In so doing, our “progressive” beau monde empowers radical immigrant organizations in their quest to impose upon their hosts the standards, customs, rituals and codes of the “old country.” What we are observing is a kind of cultural pleaching, the creation of new structures by interlacing the existing features of the social and political landscape with alternate modes and configurations. The terrain we have long taken for granted slowly becomes unrecognizable.

The casualties of the multicultural delirium are readily discernible to anyone who cares to pay attention. Freedom of speech, the bedrock principle of Western liberalism, has been legislatively curtailed. Freedom of assembly is under threat as well—what we might designate as the Malmo syndrome. The notion of citizenship, as Mansur warns, that “brings people together in liberal democracy and binds them in a relationship of mutual obligation” has also been crucially weakened. “The problem arises,” he continues, “when multiculturalism demands that liberal democracy recognize in law cultural practices that are not merely different, but contrary…to its core values of citizenship rights and responsibilities.”

In order to oppose the growing menace of “tribal and collectivist values” which undermine the social and national consensus, liberal democracy must be defended, Mansur argues, through education in the historical achievements of the Enlightenment and the concept of universal values. The doctrinal lie that “all cultures are worthy of equal respect and equally embracing of individual freedom” must be strenuously countered by affirming a unifying national culture “embedded in the values of the West and shaped by the Enlightenment.”

It must be acknowledged, however, that such education as Mansur recommends does not begin in the schools and universities, or in religious institutions and the media, which have, by and large, been corrupted by “the worm inside the doctrine of multiculturalism.” As he notes in a recent Sun Media column, our “universities, churches and mainstream media…have assumed the role of spinmeisters for Islamists and Islamism.” Genuine education begins with voices like Mansur’s and those of his conservative peers and colleagues—many of whom are mentioned in his book—who speak out resonantly and bravely against the plague of self-doubt, debased creeds and degrading ideologies, unmoored theories and the temptation to cultural and political appeasement that afflicts the West.

These heralds of sound judgment understand that, in effect, multiculturalism is like a horticultural experiment gone wrong, attempting to graft an unsuitable cutting onto a pre-existing stock and producing only a vascular deformity in the process. Subsequent pruning rarely works though it may at least contain the aberration. What is ultimately required is a strong rootstock, the right shoot, and the appropriate conditions to ensure that the insertion “takes”—failing which, we have a disaster rather than a garden.

Mansur’s book tells a bitter truth about a delectable lie. It needs to be read.

 

A delectable lie

By David Warren, Ottawa Citizen September 7, 2011

Read more HERE

From time to time I recommend political books – which usually fall stillborn from the press – but which, if read and digested, would contribute to the recovery of a sane outlook. These are usually books that shine light into some dark swamp of political activity, so that we may catch a glimpse of all the slimy little creatures wiggling there.

Today’s recommendation will be Salim Mansur’s Delectable Lie: A Liberal Repudiation of Multiculturalism. For full disclosure’s sake, let me admit that I know this man; he is a dear friend. Let me add that he wouldn’t be, if I didn’t greatly admire him; that I’ve long been impressed with his courage and clarity as journalist and academic; and that I sincerely think his book is useful.

It is being launched in Ottawa this weekend, and has already garnered some press notice; it has a chance of forming a blotch on the radar. I doubt any of the exponents or beneficiaries of the state’s “multicultural policies” will argue with it, however, for debating is not their style. If the book makes enough of a splash, they will skunk its author, with their usual epithets.

Salim is a Muslim, I am a Christian, both of us believers. He is a thoroughgoing liberal, in the best old-fashioned English sense; I am by contrast a Tory of the old school (Homer’s). He has heroes (like John Stuart Mill) who are not heroes of mine; and vice versa. I am of English-speaking Canadian parentage, he of Urdu-speaking Bengali. Gentle reader will see that we are just two peas in a pod.

And while I wrote that last sentence facetiously, there is truth in it. And as we would both note, it is the truth that puts the lie to multiculturalism. For the two of us are on a conversational wavelength – through agreements and disagreements – because of what we have in common. Our lingua franca, our shared culture, relies upon the universal conception of reason, brought to fruition in the West. There are no divisions in universal.

Multiculturalism. The very word is like a bell, to toll me back. (Apologies to Keats.) Like so much of the jargon of the Left, it is mired in hamartia (the Greek pre-Christian word for “sin,” carefully analyzed by Aristotle in the Poetics). There is a self-contradiction, a fatal flaw. By adding the prefix “multi” to “culture,” we no longer have a culture. We have, instead, cultural disintegration.

That there is good in every culture I know; in my travels I have seen much good (and much evil, too). So far so glib. But as Salim asserts, at the centre of his book, cultures are not interchangeable, and, get right down to it, they are not equal.

The paradox here – what makes the lie of multiculturalism “delectable” – is in its source. It is such a western lie. Only the culture that carried anthropology into the field, as a free-ranging inquiry into culture itself, could conceive of the fatuously abstract idea that “all cultures are equal,” and that social unity could possibly be achieved by having the state patronize every one, except its own.

Only in western-style representative democracies could politicians see the use of maintaining this absurdity, as a way to capture various ethnic groups as voting blocks. For it is so much harder to carry an election one voter at a time.

To my mind, though not to Salim’s, this is the reductio ad absurdum of the western Enlightenment. That is to say, it brings the original ideals of the Enlightenment into question. To Salim’s mind, which honours the Enlightenment, it is the perversion of those ideals. What begins in an affirmation of human dignity, and demands liberty for the individual, ends by abandoning this for “group rights.”

Salim is a very reasonable man; to my mind his arguments (and you must read the book, I have no space here) are understated. He sees so clearly the benefits of this “delectable lie” to political power, that he does not expect multicultural policies to disappear. He only hopes they will be relaxed or ignored. Whereas, I want them disowned and eliminated, root and branch.

Our arguments are different, but we are rowing in the same direction.

Cultures clash, and have done throughout history. This is because they contradict each other. The hard truth is that, for centuries, “Western Civ” prevailed in every encounter, because of its broad range of strengths. In the age of Imperialism, it became the global norm.

Even those who reject the western heritage, have been transformed or twisted by it; all depend upon western inventions.

Herein, to my mind, lies the deeper “delectable lie.” We are according formal recognition of difference to simulacra; to various distorted pictures of ourselves. This is a form of schizophrenia.

David Warren’s column runs Sunday, Wednesday and Saturday.

© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen

 

One big, Delectable Lie

Author compellingly argues that multiculturalism wasn’t meant to unite us
By LORRIE GOLDSTEIN, QMI AGENCY

Original post here

Official multiculturalism as practiced in Canada and by other Western democracies is destructive to the liberal ideals of individual rights and freedoms.

By replacing the core liberal value that individuals are entitled to equal rights with the false notion that all cultures are of equal value and deserve equal treatment, official multiculturalism undermines the principles of Western democracy.

Worse, it is being used by adherents of Islamism to undermine liberal democracies from within, by attacking such key principles as freedom of speech and the separation of church and state.

These are the foundational arguments of a bracing new book by Sun Media columnist Salim Mansur — Delectable Lie: A liberal repudiation of multiculturalism.

As Mansur explains: “My point is that although multiculturalism once seemed a very good idea, at least to politicians and others smitten with the ambition for unity, it is increasingly shown to be a lie — a delectable lie perhaps, yet a lie nevertheless — that is destructive of the West’s liberal democratic heritage, tradition and values based on individual rights and freedoms.”

Mansur, a Muslim, warns that as we approach the tenth anniversary of 9/11: “The events of September 11, 2001, showed, I believe, how multiculturalism has become an instrument of extremist political ideology such as Islamism, and can work against the values and interests of liberal democracies.”

A political science professor at the University of Western Ontario, Mansur traces the origins of classical liberalism with its focus on liberty — “the freedom of the individual from any untoward coercion by the collective in society” — through the writings of John Locke, David Hume, Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, Friedrich Hayek and others.

He explains that classical liberalism bears no resemblance to the popular definition of “liberalism” today.

To the contrary, modern-day “liberals” attack any critical questioning of the sacred cow of official multiculturalism — which originated in Canada under Pierre Trudeau in 1971 — as racist and divisive.

Mansur, by contrast, sees official multiculturalism as dangerous because, contrary to its stated goal of helping immigrants integrate into Canadian society and to adopt liberal, democratic values, it has the opposite effect.

It encourages immigrants not only to remain outside the mainstream, but to try and force society to accept and accommodate such anti-democratic values as sharia law.

To Mansur, human rights commissions that have sprouted up across Canada in concert with official multiculturalism, have become instruments of state oppression — “thought police” — used by Islamists and others to try to stifle free speech and legitimate criticism of their anti-democratic ideas.

This entire state-imposed superstructure, Mansur argues, is “based on the false idea — another official lie, really — that all cultures are equal,” when there are in fact, “established criteria making it possible to judge the achievements of all cultures, whether in the arts and literature, religion, philosophy, technology, modes of governance, or science.”

And “the primary criterion that makes possible all human achievement,” Mansur writes, “is freedom.”

Unlike in Europe, where political leaders publicly acknowledge official multiculturalism has been a failure, the silence from our own political leaders has been deafening.

Delectable Lie, published by Mantua Books, will be available online and in bookstores shortly at a cost of $22.

It’s a vital and compelling read for anyone who values freedom.

Book repudiates Canadian Multiculturalism

Published on Tuesday, 23 August 2011 06:59
Written by John Draper

Original post here

Salim Mansur is a Muslim and immigrated to Canada in 1974 so he has first-hand experience. He is also a professor of political science at the University of Western Ontario and a columnist for the Toronto Sun. Many of his columns have been republished (with permission) on this site since although he is a Muslim, he is moderate and is an ongoing critic of Islamism – or radical aggressive Islam. You might say that he has adopted Canadian values! He has just published a book titled Delectable Lie which he classifies as “a liberal repudiation of multiculturalism”. Herman Goodden of the London Free Press has published a review of his book which summarizes some of Salim’s key points.

Herman says that the central contention of Delectable Lie is that, “although multiculturalism once seemed a very good idea, at least to politicians and others smitten with the ambition for unity, it is increasingly shown to be a lie — a delectable lie, perhaps, yet a lie nevertheless — that is destructive of the West’s liberal democratic heritage, tradition and values based on individual rights and freedoms.”

Mansur summarizes his case in the book’s introduction:

“In our time the ideology of multiculturalism ? the set of ideas that all cultures are equal and deserving of equal treatment in a liberal democracy such as Canada ? is linked to the pressing demand for equality in Western societies as these become increasingly multi-ethnic due to immigration and open borders.

“When first proposed, the idea of an “official” multiculturalism program to be sponsored by the state, supported by tax-payers, and monitored and enforced by thought-police (human rights commissions) was at best dubious, and at worst is by its very nature poised against Western liberalism. Moreover … it was based on the false idea ? another official lie, really ? that all cultures are equal. However, that is an orthodoxy of the last century increasingly dismissed by serious thinkers. That is because there are established criteria making it possible to judge the achievements of all cultures, whether in the arts and literature, religion, philosophy, technology, modes of governance, or science; but the primary criterion that makes possible all human achievement is freedom.

“My point is that although multiculturalism once seemed a very good idea, at least to politicians and others smitten with the ambition for unity, it is increasingly shown to be a lie ? a delectable lie, perhaps, yet a lie nevertheless ? that is destructive of the West’s liberal democratic heritage, tradition, and values based on individual rights and freedoms. This could have been foretold, as indeed those philosophers and historians of ideas who viewed freedom as immeasurably more important than equality in the development of the West did foretell. They admonished people against the temptation to abridge freedom in pursuit of equality.”

Herman Goodden’s review adds:

In one of the most fascinating chapters in Delectable Lie, Mansur contrasts the modern experience of immigrating to the West with the old. Prior to the mid-20th century, it was primarily Europeans who settled in Canada, the U.S. and Australia and, Mansur writes, such movement “involved considerable expense for travel by way of trains and ships over many weeks. The decision to make the journey required psychological preparation on the part of immigrants in both leaving their native land with some certainty of never returning, and of anticipating the new country with challenges ahead of settlement and assimilation. An immigrant was mostly brimming with gratitude on arriving in the country of his choice and grateful for the opportunities open to him that did not exist or were denied him in the land of his birth.”

Today those life-altering journeys, increasingly drawn from Third World countries that may not share fundamental Canadian values regarding freedom of speech and worship and the equality of women, can often be made in a day at much less expense — financially, psychically, emotionally. And thanks to developments in global communication, many new Canadians no longer feel the same compulsion once they get here to take up residence in any sense except the physical.

Salim is kinder than I would be. He attributes the failure to assimilate to circumstance, the fact that communication and travel is now easier. While this may be true to some extent, I think a large part of the current problem is that immigrants from Muslim countries are less willing to assimilate than earlier European or Chinese immigrants. Salim calls the main source of our recent immigrants “Third World countries” but current Indian (mostly Hindu) and Eastern Europeans assimilate better so it’s more accurate to describe the problem countries as Muslim.

However, he does make a strong case that multiculturalism is no longer working as well as it did.

Salim describes his own experience:

“In Canada I found safety, support and the opportunity to begin a new life with all the promise my adopted home held forth for me. In time I came to feel uncomfortable with the notion of being a hyphenated Canadian. The part of me that belonged to the wider Indian culture I inherited at birth without any effort on my part. But the part of me, the much greater part, through the university education I acquired and the air I breathed as I mingled with the people around me at school, in work, and in politics, became by choice and conscious effort Canadian.”

More immigrants to Canada – especially Muslims – should make a conscious effort to become Canadian.

Salim Mansur’s book is scheduled for release August 31, 2011

 

Mansur skewers multiculturalism but does it with fairness

by HERMAN GOODDEN

Original at London Free Press August 20, 2011

UWO professor of political science and Sun Media columnist Salim Mansur has written a challenging new book, Delectable Lie, which he classifies as “a liberal repudiation of multiculturalism”. The central contention of Delectable Lie is that, “although multiculturalism once seemed a very good idea, at least to politicians and others smitten with the ambition for unity, it is increasingly shown to be a lie — a delectable lie, perhaps, yet a lie nevertheless — that is destructive of the West’s liberal democratic heritage, tradition and values based on individual rights and freedoms.”

In a bid to be inclusive and welcoming to new citizens, Mansur argues, the liberal democracies of the West have developed multiculturalism programs which are founded on the proposition of another lie, that all cultures are equal and readily compatible with one another. It is Mansur’s contention that the various multicultural initiatives put in place in the 1970s as a means by which to minimize the hardships of immigrants by making the break with their country of origin less total — too often leave us not with new committed citizens but with dual citizens, migrant workers and spongers who have no intention of assimilating with the Canadian way of life and sometimes even hold it in contempt and work toward its destruction.

In one of the most fascinating chapters in Delectable Lie, Mansur contrasts the modern experience of immigrating to the West with the old. Prior to the mid-20th century, it was primarily Europeans who settled in Canada, the U.S. and Australia and, Mansur writes, such movement “involved considerable expense for travel by way of trains and ships over many weeks. The decision to make the journey required psychological preparation on the part of immigrants in both leaving their native land with some certainty of never returning, and of anticipating the new country with challenges ahead of settlement and assimilation. An immigrant was mostly brimming with gratitude on arriving in the country of his choice and grateful for the opportunities open to him that did not exist or were denied him in the land of his birth.”

Today those life-altering journeys, increasingly drawn from Third World countries that may not share fundamental Canadian values regarding freedom of speech and worship and the equality of women, can often be made in a day at much less expense — financially, psychically, emotionally. And thanks to developments in global communication, many new Canadians no longer feel the same compulsion once they get here to take up residence in any sense except the physical.

At 173 well-researched and carefully reasoned pages, this is an explosive expose that might have been rejected out of hand as an xenophobic rant if it hadn’t been written by a Muslim who himself emigrated to Canada from “war torn South Asia” in 1974. “In Canada I found safety, support and the opportunity to begin a new life with all the promise my adopted home held forth for me. In time I came to feel uncomfortable with the notion of being a hyphenated Canadian.

The part of me that belonged to the wider Indian culture I inherited at birth without any effort on my part. But the part of me, the much greater part, through the university education I acquired and the air I breathed as I mingled with the people around me at school, in work, and in politics, became by choice and conscious effort Canadian.”

Unlike some commentators who take on these hotly contested issues, Mansur never resorts to cheap shots or dismissive slurs. However wrongheaded he believes the architects of multiculturalism to be, he takes them at their word and respectfully presents their claims before politely and convincingly repudiating them. Mansur does not eviscerate his opponents with the intoxicating glee of a Mark Steyn. And an occasional professorial clunker of a sentence requires a few readings to extract the sense, ie: “This deprecates the consequence that liberal democracy’s core principle of individual freedom is undermined by extending recognition to groups defined through collective identity opposed culturally to it.” But you also don’t set this book down with an uneasy sense that the author has been less than fair to those he disagrees with.

There will be a London book launch for Delectable Lie on Thursday, Sept. 8 at 7 p.m. at the Lamplighter Inn.

 

Clear thinkers are rare, and so are powerful polemicists. Courageous human beings are rarer still, but the rarest of all is to find the three combined in one person. Meet Salim Mansur.

– George Jonas

A brilliant academic and thought-provoking journalist, Salim Mansur explains what liberal democracy really means, and why the protection of individual rights that lies at its heart is under constant assault from the ‘group think’ mentality of state-imposed multiculturalism.

– Lorrie Goldstein, Senior Associate Editor, Toronto Sun

Professor Salim Mansur is a man of exceptional courage, powerful insight, and possessed of both a delightful and energetic prose style

– Rex Murphy, “The Point of View” on CBC The National, and host of CBC Radio One, Cross Country Checkup

In an age of ideological conformity such as ours, it takes courage to speak against the prevailing orthodoxy. This is a courageous book. Professor Mansur exposes how multiculturalism corrodes the values and traditions that sustain Canada as a liberal democratic order. The result is a book to galvanize Canadians against the apostles of extremist progressivism.

– Robert Sibley, Ottawa Citizen and adjunct professor in political science at Carleton University

Salim Mansur has the courage to state clearly and openly what many have chosen to ignore: that the multiculturalism project is flawed at its very core. We would all benefit in reading him carefully.

– Richard Bastien, editor-in-chief of the Canadian Observer

Canada led the Western world into the multicultural mire in 1988, ironically under a Conservative government. Salim Mansur’s deep and scintillating analysis should help the country out of this illiberal and unfortunate policy.

– Daniel Pipes, PhD, president of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University

Don’t wait for the movie. All the elements needed to entertain and instruct are already present in Mansur’s book: incisive rendering, a great ‘plot,’ a host of interesting ‘characters,’ sharp ideas and important revelations. Only the book can do justice to itself. Salim Mansur is one of the few, reliable go-to Muslim scholars in the field of Islamic studies.

– David Solway, essayist and author of 20 books including Chess Pieces and The Big Lie: On Terror, Antisemitism and Identity

As a Muslim exponent of freedom and democracy who immigrated to Canada from war-torn South Asia in 1974, Prof. Salim Mansur is uniquely well qualified to evaluate multiculturalism. Western policy makers would do well to heed his timely warning that this misguided policy could lead over time ‘to the unravelling of a liberal democracy, such as Canada, and the ultimate meltdown of its own historically evolved identity.’

– Rory Leishman, author of Against Judicial Activism: The Decline of Freedom and Democracy in Canada

With this important book, Professor Mansur, himself an immigrant to Canada (‘a brown guy’ as he puts it), has fired a daring and resounding shot across the bow of the Canadian ship of public opinion by explaining, in crystal clear prose, why multicultural policy has brought discord instead of unity to our once-peaceable kingdom. Public debate over a whole range of official orthodoxies has been increasingly impoverished in recent decades, and we can only hope that this book, so unafraid and stimulating, will plant us firmly on the road back to the open society we once enjoyed.

– W.D. Gairdner, author of The Trouble with Canada…Still!

Salim Mansur presents a devastating critique of multiculturalism that is unusual in two big ways. The first is that he is surprisingly sympathetic with many of the intentions behind it, and charitable even when he cannot be sympathetic. The second is the way he goes beyond the conventions and platitudes of a ‘policy wonk’ survey, with sharp, organizing insights of the kind we might expect from a fine historian, or even novelist. He does not merely analyse. He has lived the implications of ‘multicultural policy,’ and he has looked people who have experienced real dislocation, in the eye. He has thought and felt his way into radically ‘other’ points of view. There is a sincerity and genuineness in his account that holds one’s attention, and makes one care.

– David Warren, Ottawa Citizen