Mark Steyn makes an interesting observation about the cultural “bilingualism”:
Years ago, apropos a Spanish-language payphone in Vermont, I said I couldn’t understand why any country would voluntarily become bilingual. If you happen to find yourself in one for historic reasons, you make the best of it. I like anglophones and I like francophones but, if I were designing a jurisdiction from scratch, I wouldn’t include large numbers of both on the same patch of land. Not because they’ll be killing each other but because it’s a significant impediment to civic cohesion – because, for most people, it will mean you can’t share the same jokes, the same cultural allusions. In Quebec, they used to call it the “two solitudes” – which is a good way of putting it: parallel societies.
Islam is bilingualism on steroids. When the community reaches the size it’s now at in Yorkshire or Malmo or Rotterdam, it has the ability to self-segregate and you wind up on the road to “two solitudes”, parallel societies. (That partially explains the second- and third-generation disassimilation Derb references.) For example, we think of Amsterdam-to-Detroit as a flight between two western cities. But if you’re Muslim it’s a flight between two outlying provinces of the dar al Islam – the fast Islamifying Amsterdam and Dearborn, Michigan.
December 29th, 2009 | 9:15 am
As a bilingual French Canadian, I think that the view of bilingualism presented is unduly pessimistic. It IS possible to navigate within two solitudes that share the same cultural base.
The accommodation with Islam is the greater challenge, one posed by demographics and the refusal of Europeans (and Canadians) to bear the next generation. In this instance, it is the more vigorous culture that is replacing the decadent one. There are many bilingualisms within Islam, so the problem is not on that level, but a much deeper one.
December 29th, 2009 | 9:18 am
“Two solitudes” is a fine-sounding way to describe two parallel cultures. But Islam aims at dominance, not self-contained parallelism. The ummah seeks to conquer and absorb all existing “solitudes” or eradicate by violence those who resist absorption.
The realities of Islam are darker than clever terminology. Mark Steyn knows that better than most.
December 29th, 2009 | 9:32 am
Well, one “answer” is to evangelize one’s neighbors. Not on a soap box, perhaps, but evangelize them nonetheless. Offer their women and children friendship and love. Offer their men friendship and a ‘safe’ environment to discuss life, God, religion, politics. Every immigrant family has intergenerational dynamics….the young are open to the new culture, language, beliefs and mores of their new neighborhood. So we ought not ‘pull punches’ or hide our light under bushels of ‘PC’ ‘respect’.
People have a tendency to hang out with likeminded people…. so it’s important to take advantage of every opportunity to express why we are Christians…why God could become Incarnate, why we believe it’s possible for God to be Father and have a co-eternal Son.
Why our faith is not just based on a book or on some clergy telling us to believe out of fear of hell or their own wrath, but because a) the message strikes us as true, good, beautiful, internally consistent, and b) we have miracles, holy people, and the experience of a loving God to give us strength in the face of secularism’s aggressive propaganda (a common enemy they’re also dealing with at home).
When dealing with their Mullahs or Mosque leaders, it’s vital in getting down to metaphysical brass tacks. Dust off your Aristotle and Aquinas. Summa contra Gentiles…. Islam does NOT believe in the triune nature of God or the possibility of the Incarnation. They just believe it’s IMPOSSIBLE, like a square circle or a round line.
On the other hand, it’s important that they at least be exposed to our chief disagreement with the Koran: a book isn’t ‘true’ or divinely inspired just because someone or group says so. There’s too many books out there for this to be so. There’s got to be more reasons for faith than that.
So challenge them on the ‘why’ of their own belief (not aggressively, not meanly, but nicely). Would they believe or practice the same way if apostates weren’t subject to death by the community? Is it fear of harm or abandonment that keeps them ‘in line’ or something else? Does God or Allah need enforcers to keep people in line or submissive or is He so good and love-able that we don’t need such exteriors to obey his commands?
Then there are the practical moral ‘agreements’ or social compacts we can make intra-family or intra-faith….for example, having a talk with the local Muslim’ patriarch or clan chief to discuss how Americans expect our daughters to be treated by their boys. How in recent times we’ve turned a tolerant eye to boys taking liberties with our daughters but no more…. how we’re going to work to instill modesty in them for our part….but we expect boys to behave themselves even IF women or girls don’t cover themselves modestly. It’s no excuse for violence or rape.
Likewise, we treat their women with respect as we do to children too. Let it be known that in this coutnry if a man has a problem with something another man does, he DOESN’T TAKE THIS ANGER OUT ON WOMEN OR CHILDREN. If you’re a man, then deal with other men face to face. It’s simple honor.
Dialogue how all believers are faced with the threat of atheism and secularism, that as believers we must show good example to the atheists and those who would use religion for merely selfish ends. Surely there are issues where we can work together as groups….
But at the same time we believe in individual rights so if individuals want to share their Christian or Muslim faith with each other, that ought not be prescribed by our respective groups. Maybe such activity is outlawed in their home countries…but this…isn’t “the old country”.
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