Why Her Majesty’s government should not seek to assimilate Muslims

Here’s the next stage in the evolution of big-government conservatism: big-government assimilation of the unassimilable. The Telegraph reports:

Up to 150 new Muslim state schools could be created in a move designed to bring the Islamic education of British children under government control in the wake of last month’s London bombings.

Rather than close Britain’s five state-funded Muslim schools, as some critics demand, ministers plan a major expansion of them.

This would bring thousands of Muslim children now taught in independent Islamic schools—many of which operate in poor, back-street conditions—into mainstream education.

So, what’s wrong with this, you may ask. Isn’t this exactly what’s needed—a more serious effort to assimilate Muslims, after decades of multiculturalism? For decades the standard mainstream conservative response to the problem of unassimilating immigrants has been to worry about “ethnic enclaves” and call for more “assimilation.” However, what the mainstream conservatives always failed to see (because, at their philosophical core, they are liberals) is that bringing unassimilables out of their enclaves and into mainstream institutions would only increase their deleterious effects on the society, because, even as we try to assimilate them to our ways, they will assimilate us to their ways. And the more unassimilable they are, the more this will be the case. Every effort on our part to change their deep-seated attitudes and habits will only get us more intimately involved with them, which can only confuse and weaken us, as I explained in my discussion of the “cultural peace process” in part II of “The Search for Moderate Islam.” Of course, allowing Muslim communities to build up their pathological jihadist culture in their own schools and mosques was very bad and could not be allowed to continue. But integrating them into the mainstream society, with the government devoted to their assimilation no less, and, even worse, with the government taking over the direction of Islamic religious schools, is also very bad. There is therefore only one real and permanent solution to the Muslim problem, and that is to transform the immigration of Muslims into an emigration of Muslims.

Also, readers’ comments on this article at the American Renaissance website show the everyone “gets” it.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 09, 2005 12:40 AM | Send