Non-Assimilation, Massive Migration from Radically Different Cultures, and a Nation’s Natural Right to Preserve Its Core Culture
David Barnhizer
I taught Human Rights, Comparative Legal Systems and International Environmental Law at the University of Westminster in London as a Visiting Professor of Law on three different occasions. The first time was 2003, the second 2009, and the final term 2012. During those experiences I witnessed the ongoing and dramatic shifts in the national culture created by the large scale in-migration of a diverse and culturally distinct group of populations into the UK that represented numerous other cultures and was dominated by followers of Islam.
Since the years I lived in London the situation has become far worse. France and the Middle East have also experienced significant deterioration. A part of the change is due to rampant and uncontrolled immigration. This includes pressures to abandon or significantly weaken the fundamental values and institutions that provide the essential foundation blocks of the UK, along with rising social hostility and an increase in violent crime.
This rapid and significant entry of people with a very different set of beliefs and loyalties has had a profound effect on Britain at all levels and particularly in London which, several years ago, John Cleese described as “Londonistan”. The stresses created by the significant in-migration—a great deal of which is wholly illegal in violation of the UK’s immigration laws—have intensified. There are very serious concerns by many Brits at this point about whether it is possible to recreate what had been an essentially harmonious national community in the UK and, assuming that might be achieved, how to go about doing it.
This essay seeks to reveal reasons the challenge is both serious and challenging. If interested, a considerably longer document is published at the Social Science Research Network site. See, Reverse Colonization: Islam, Honor Cultures and the Confrontation between Divine and Quasi-Secular Natural Law. Cleveland-Marshall Legal Studies Paper No. 07-142https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=980687.
The UK, EU, and US
The vast majority of migrants are admirable in their desire to come to a place where freedom and opportunity for themselves and their families were dominant and real. This is an important fact, and it is important to emphasize at the beginning that what Europe and North America now face is being driven by a small but ruthless, fanatical and violent segment of those who seek to undermine and ultimately control the nation of the West.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb describes the fact that destabilizing an existing political regime only requires as few as 3-4 percent of an organized, relentless and ruthless group such as represented by Jihadis and Salafists totally dedicated to doing “whatever it takes” to achieve their ends. And as I discovered with my Muslim associates and friends in London, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia, Russia, the US and elsewhere, they were not vile radicals. They were often fun to be around and well worthy of respect. That evil is found in Hamas, al-Qaeda, ISIS, Boko Haram, and al-Shabaab and other organizations.
But while what I refer to as the 95-98% of migrants are “decent people” who simply want to create new lives, there is another set of deeply radicalized people who want power and control. They have joined in a globalized “theocratic-religious” “Holy War” movement that seeks to dominate everything. This 3-4% theocratic “revolutionary” cabal entirely rejects what in the EU, UK and US is described as “Western Civilization”. That rejection is not something they condemn from afar. It is one where the beliefs of the West are “haram” or forbidden and evil. Their minds, hearts, and souls have been inculcated with a belief system that convinces them they have a sacred duty to destroy Western Civilization.
We witnessed this in the deaths of over 3,000 innocent people in the September 2001 destruction of the “Twin Towers” in New York. Next we saw the London bombings in July 2005 that killed and maimed many others. When living in London I often took the bus that was blown up down Edgware Road on my way to Westminster University. I was amazed at the sight of Muslim men sitting outside hookah bars as they talked and observed the steady stream of traffic going back and forth. That segment of Edgware Road has been described as an:
“historic and major road in London, England. … It is known for its vibrant, multicultural atmosphere, particularly its strong Middle Eastern influence, and features a wide array of shops, restaurants, and bars, with the southern part often nicknamed “Little Cairo” or “Little Beirut” due to its many shisha cafes and restaurants. …. The southern end [in London very near the Marble Arch] is a major destination for Middle Eastern culture, with numerous restaurants, cafes, and shops, and is a significant gathering place for the Middle Eastern diaspora in London.”
When in Bangladesh, a nation whose population is 85 percent Muslim and who had numerous young men fight with the Taliban and other Jihadi groups, I was invited by a friend I was working with on developmental and environmental sustainability issues to attend the country’s Independence Day celebration. The “Will of Allah” fanatics exploded a bomb in the Dhaka city park where I had just been standing with friends. They murdered more than nine innocent young Bangladeshis whose sin was apparently dancing and reacting to music.
A journalist I had been dealing with in Dhaka was killed a week or so after I got back to America when a grenade was tossed into the tuktuk in which he was riding. The intent of such bestial actions is rationalized as serving the will of a loving and benign God, the truth is that such vile and bestial acts are a total offense to Allah. So are the murders, rapes and tortures done in October 2023 where more than 1200 concert goers in Israel were slaughtered.
The Psychology of Fanatics
People raised in the cultures of the West have a hard time understanding the psychology of fanatics. The truth, however, is simple. No amount of talking or negotiation with the religious fanatics will ever achieve a peaceful resolution of the conflict we are experiencing. Somehow, because they have been raised in a culture of tolerance, helping those in need, valuing human life, and interacting through the use of reason and honest thought, far too many Western liberals and politicians simply can’t figure out or accept that a God that created universe after universe is quite capable of imposing His will and doesn’t need the “holy” assistance of a bunch of murderous fanatics. The Islamic radicals are NOT serving the “Will of Allah”. Allah is fully capable of doing what He considers to be needed and could do so with the tiny movement of His little finger.
The fanaticism found in religious “true believers” is not limited to those who control and twist the strings of Islam. Centuries ago, the Roman Catholic Church’s Grand Inquisitor ultimately figured out that burning people at the stake probably wasn’t working to make things better and stopped doing it. So did Protestants in Salem Massachusetts who finally came to understand that seeing if Satan would intercede to save the “Witch” they were drowning didn’t make a lot of sense.
I do want to emphasize that those doing this are essentially mindless puppets brainwashed by fanatical leaders and propagandists. They represent only a small portion of Muslims, but given the intensity, mindlessness and hate characterizing the number of actors, even if that involves the direct and indirect as little as one percent of people, it still adds up to an insane fanatical movement. To understand the depth of the fanaticism and religiously driven insanity just think of Hamas. They are responsible for using what are supposedly their “own people” and hide beneath hospitals, mosques, schools, within refugee camps, and scuttle around in tunnels like rats all the while using the children of Allah as human shields. They say, “OK, we murdered, raped and tortured, and now we hide behind the shield of innocent children you wouldn’t dare harm. Nah, Nah, Na na Nah”! The “Will of Allah”? Sure it is!
When We Say “Assimilation” and Creedal Values What Do We Mean?
This brings us to the question of whether a nation or its people have the right to protect its sense of what comprises its national creeds. If so, is it proper to take actions to inculcate the tenets of that cultural system and even decide to deny admission to people who reject those values? The proposal that former Prime Minister Tony Blair made following the July 2005 London bombings was that immigrants be required to learn and understand the conditions of “Britishness” as part of the social compact they are agreeing to when living in Great Britain reflects that belief. Blair was asserting the UK does have the right to ask citizens and permanent residents to accept British creedal values.
Blair’s perspective is represented in the London Daily Telegraph’s listing of Ten Core Values that it argues makes up the British system of cultural beliefs. This approach offers an intriguing perspective on what might be done. The London Daily Telegraph published in July 2005 a description of what it labeled “Ten Core Values of the British Identity.”
The London Daily Telegraph’s listing of Ten Core Values
These were:
I. The rule of law. Our society is based on the idea that we all abide by the
same rules, whatever our wealth or status. No one is above the law - not even
the government.
II. The sovereignty of the Crown in Parliament. The Lords, the Commons and
the monarch constitute the supreme authority in the land. There is no appeal to
any higher jurisdiction, spiritual or temporal.
III. The pluralist state. Equality before the law implies that no one should be
treated differently on the basis of belonging to a particular group. Conversely,
all parties, sects, faiths and ideologies must tolerate the existence of their
rivals.
IV. Personal freedom. There should be a presumption, always and everywhere,
against state coercion. We should tolerate eccentricity in others, almost to the
point of lunacy, provided no one else is harmed.
V. Private property. Freedom must include the freedom to buy and sell without
fear of confiscation, to transfer ownership, to sign contracts and have them
enforced. Britain was quicker than most countries to recognise this and
became, in consequence, one of the happiest and most prosperous nations on
Earth.
VI. Institutions. British freedom and British character are immanent in British
institutions. These are not, mostly, statutory bodies, but spring from the way
free individuals regulate each other’s conduct, and provide for their needs,
without recourse to coercion.
VII. The family. Civic society depends on values being passed from generation to
generation. Stable families are the essential ingredient of a stable society.
VIII. History. British children inherit a political culture, a set of specific legal
rights and obligations, and a stupendous series of national achievements. They
should be taught about these things.20
IX. The English-speaking world. The atrocities of September 11, 2001, were not
simply an attack on a foreign nation; they were an attack on the anglosphere -
on all of us who believe in freedom, justice and the rule of law.
X. The British character. Shaped by and in turn shaping our national
institutions is our character as a people: stubborn, stoical, indignant at
injustice. “The Saxon,” wrote Kipling, “never means anything seriously till he
talks about justice and right.”
How to Deal With People Who Have Not “Lived” the Culture
The call for the articulation of such core creedal values is understandable and important for nations to confront in a time where it is being claimed that no one has the right to prefer one’s culture. But, if we are honest, we must understand that it is difficult, and sometimes even impossible, to know how to instill such principles within people who have not actually “lived” the culture. Historically, in a nation such as the United States, that didn’t matter because virtually everyone who came to the country as a free person by their own choice was striving to learn the values and to become a part of the system.
It does matter, however, when the values become so attenuated and diffused within a fragmented culture where the desire and duty to assimilate is rejected. This describes many people within the democracies of the West. The matter is further undermined when the key institutions of cultural understanding such as schools and universities decide that they not only have no desire to teach things such as the duties of what have been called “civic virtue”, but that it a discriminatory evil to do so.
I totally condemn that perspective as it applies to America, Canada, Western Europe, Australia and other nations that seek to live in reasonable harmony even though many of their residents practice different cultural behaviors. To be a nation, a system must have a shared creedal belief system that accepts a set of governing creedal beliefs that limit certain kinds of behaviors while encouraging, or requiring, others. Whether we call this mindset of responsibility and accountability “creedal” or “civic virtue” the open-textured national communities to which we are referring must possess a set of creeds. And these creeds must create and sustain the “connective tissue” that is essential in allowing a healthy community to exist.
How Do We Learn Our Basic Creeds and Values?
It may sound strange in this cynical age, but I can identify a set of stories, statements, codes of belief and action, and so forth that shaped my value system to the point I can neither escape them or want to. The list includes the Pledge of Allegiance, the Preamble to the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address. It contains the stories of Horatio at the Bridge, the Three Hundred Spartans, the Chanson de Roland and the bravery, sacrifice and betrayal of Joan of Arc. It even includes the Boy Scout Oath and the stories of Abraham Lincoln walking miles as a boy to return an overpayment to a storekeeper, and George Washington telling the truth about chopping down the cherry tree.
To this, I admit somewhat hesitantly, can be added a little boy’s understanding of the medieval Code of Chivalry as the proper way a woman should be treated by a gentleman (I apologize to my feminist friends for the rampant chauvinism of my youth), and the Athenian creed of “a perfect mind in a perfect body” (neither of which I have managed to achieve). Of course, there was more, and the lessons involved subconscious and implicit messages. For example, Nathan Hale’s statement when he was to be hanged by the British that “I regret I have only one life to give to my country,” along with Vermont’s motto, “Don’t Tread on Me” are also parts of my experience. From all these sources I took not only rational but deeper intuitive lessons involving the values of truth, integrity, loyalty, duty, racial and gender equality, love of country and much more.
My point is that values of the kind we are considering as core to Britain or France or the United States are not something that can be delivered on a fixed template or simply through reading words. Such belief systems are constructed of an unpredictable and complex diversity of experience within the culture itself,. They are not reproducible at will, or fully achievable through formal educational processes. The call for the articulation of such core values is understandable and important for nations to confront in a time where it is being claimed that no one has the right to prefer one’s culture.
“Globalism” is either a meaningless and incoherent system, or a statement that a there is only one legitimate system and, guess what? The Islamic fanatics cannot accept that system unless that one creedal system of belief is the one to which they have been enslaved.
Unfocused Immigration and The Dilemma of Britain’s “Home Grown” Islamic Fanatics
The call for core cultural values can easily become an exclusionary mechanism that justifies denial of entry into our society to people from cultures lacking such traditions. While I am obviously saying that nations—even in the West—have the right to require and expect those admitted into their specific Social Contract to respect and adhere to the core values and terms of that implicit agreement, I won’t pretend that I know how to do this in a diverse world.
Certainly, given that the July 7 and 21 UK bombers in 2005 were “homegrown” Muslims, as were a number of the Paris attackers in the Charlie Hebdo massacre and the November 13, 2015 mass murders, at least in theory we might expect that the murderers of innocent humans would have received an infusion of the Ten Core Values and the French equivalent—but they obviously did not or it was far less than even being superficial. The next paragraph contains a number of sources published following the July 2005 London bombings.
See, e.g., Jason Burke, “The violence that lies in every ideology: Like most beliefs, Islam is a religion of peace that has to accept it can also breed terror,” The Observer [online], Sunday, July 17, 05; Patrick Barkham, “Journey through Britain’s Muslim divide: On the bombers’ route between London and Leeds, Patrick Barkham finds communities riven by a generation gap,” Guardian, July 16, 05; Vikram Dodd, “Crackdown on elusive extremists: Even with new measures, it will not be easy to root out those who back terrorism,” Guardian, July 15, 05; James Brandon, “A defiant Islam rises among young Britons,” Christian Science Monitor, July 28, 05; Anthony King, “One in four Muslims sympathises with motives of terrorists,” News.telegraph, July 28, 05; Ziauddin Sardar, “The struggle for Islam’s soul: While most Muslims abhor violence, some terrorists are a product of a specific mindset with deep roots in Islamic history. If Muslims everywhere refuse to confront this, we will all be prey to more terror,” Toronto Star (Star.com) July 22, 05; Mundher al-Adhami, “Not hate, vengeance,” Guardian, July 16, 05; Salma Yaqoob, “Our leaders must speak up: Failure to oppose the official line creates extremists,” Guardian, July 15, 05; Dan Murphy, “Can Islam’s leaders reach its radicals?” Christian Science Monitor, July 14, 05. 37
The “Death of God” in the West
This failure or refusal to accept and internalize the values of their new host country forces us to understand that it is a daunting task to instill the value systems of Western democracies in new immigrants from radically disparate cultures than our own. This challenge becomes even more difficult when leaders and educators in our own cultures decide it is “insensitive” to suggest that we have vital core values that we expect others to accept and respect if they are to live in our communities. Over time, abandonment of our core values leads to a drifting pseudo-community without any principled integrity.
In the UK, the added lesson we now face is that the increasingly weakened and tenuous creeds reflecting what Western political systems stand for are not being accepted by a violent and alienated portion of second generation Muslim youth. Elements among that population segment are for a variety of reasons being radicalized into a cult of death. The radicalization is made easy because we no longer offer a strong system of values and beliefs. The result, as happens with many humans of all sorts who have an inner drive for meaning they are willing to follow those who offer the certainty and meaning they need and seek. The radical “prophets” capture the souls of the weak, the lost and the emotionally needy and are more easily able to convert them into disciples, fascists, and fanatics.
The seemingly odd but irrelevant fact is that when we are speaking of the situation among younger Muslims seeking meaning g and faith, regardless of their laments, they received far more opportunities than they would have had in virtually any Islamic-controlled country in the Middle East and North Africa. The “Death of God” in the West has created a system in which those who have a special need for that certainty are easily manipulated into otherwise insane behavior by leaders filled with hate. This is occurring to the point they are manifestations of the worst aspects of being human but empowered by their vision to present a powerful messianic persona to their converts. This generates an aura of holiness that attracts those who need emotional fulfillment and meaning.
Decades of overwhelmingly blind tolerance in Europe and the United Kingdom during which an unscreened core of fundamentally intolerant immigrants was admitted has created a support system for Islamic fanatics. This has harmed those nations and supplied the West’s enemies with cadres of sophisticated attackers and planners capable of operating in the world outside the Muslim-dominated countries. Strategically this failure is one of the most idiotic tragedies in history. It is one where the “wolf” was welcomed into a tent filled with raw meat and expected not to bite. Now the only realistic option is to answer violence with overwhelming violence that hunts down and kills all who profess allegiance to or offer material support to groups such as ISIS, Hamas and similar groups.
Olivier Roy argues that:
“The Islam with which such young people [the London bombers and radicalized second-generation young Muslim residents] identify is not the cultural Islam of their parents or home countries. It is both Salafist and jihadist. Salafists seek to purge Islam of all outside influences, starting with the cultures and traditions of Muslim societies, and restore it to the letter of the Qur’an and the tradition of the Prophet. Salafism is fundamentally opposed to all cultural or national forms of Islam.”
The “Reverse Colonists” Have Arrived in Full Force
Europeans in virtually every nation we think of as Western European find themselves on a psychological and cultural “new frontier” created by a wave of “reverse colonialism” in which people from areas of the world once occupied by the European colonial powers have thrust themselves and their social and religious cultures into the West. The “new colonists” have demanded rights, respect and the opportunity to participate meaningfully in the Western system.
Many have demanded that the UK and other Western European countries “assimilate” to the “colonists” systems of belief and behavior rather than the traditional duty of new entrants to a host nation to adapt or “assimilate” into the political and social value systems of the host where they reside. The refusal by many of the migrants to seek to become part of the newly entered general culture has created an extremely troubling moral and psychological dilemma for individuals raised in the value systems of Western society. John Fonte writes about this dilemma and how it has unfolded with the assistance of Western “elites” and academics in “Upstream”.
Fonte writes about sweeping attacks on the liberal-democratic concept of civic assimilation.
“Ten years ago Sidney Hook forcefully restated the liberal-democratic concept of civic assimilation, declaring that “precisely because” American liberal democracy is a “pluralistic, multiethnic, and uncoordinated society” all citizens need a “prolonged schooling in the history of our free society, its martyrology, and its national tradition.” Today, however, the traditional idea of assimilating immigrants into a national identity is officially rejected by the governments of Canada and Australia, and is under constant attack by elites in the United States.
A leading organization of American civic educators declared that national assimilation is often “neither democratic nor humane.” Suggestions that liberal-democratic regimes should limit immigration to levels consistent with steady civic assimilation are fiercely denounced as both impossible and immoral. Put bluntly, cultural democrats are saying that traditional liberal democracies do not have the moral right to reproduce themselves, either by fostering civic assimilation, by limiting immigration, or by some combination of the two.”
It is quite difficult to write about these issues because at each stage one finds your inner moral system checking for “illiberal” bias, prejudice, bigotry and racism. A British colleague who teaches law in London read a draft of an earlier essay and remarked that while she agreed with the analysis it made her “uncomfortable” about her own feelings to the extent she felt compelled to examine her values and attitudes.
Many in the West, particularly those committed to liberal views about the necessity of tolerance, fairness, compassion and social justice in society are finding it difficult to sort out the limits of law and state power in the face of the entry into their cultures of immigrants who neither understand, share, nor respect the Western system of values. The process of trying to figure out this situation has involved the same types of self-examination for me as it stimulated for my colleague and will continue to do so.
Western Societies “Watershed Moment”.
While it would be far easier and prudent to ignore examining these issues they are far too important to run away from. Western society faces a watershed moment in which it either defines its essential identity or is possessed by cultures with radically different values and traditions. While the societies of Western Europe and North America have many deficiencies, I confess there is no other social system I would prefer.
Obviously my preference is produced in large part by the fact that I was raised in America according to its values. One’s cultural context to a significant extent produces the sense of comfort and values that provide the core of how we see and value things in the world. As I write these words any reader would be likely to agree immediately that I am somewhat locked within the ethos of my “home” system and unable to fully appreciate the special values of others cultures. To some extent they would be correct but in other aspects quite in error.
My colleague teaches at Westminster University School of Law in London. She indicated this feeling was something that took some time to bring to the surface. When she was able to confront it, she offered that many Brits are still locked into a feeling of cultural superiority linked in many instances with paternalism, and concerns about being racist or perceived as racist (although the two are not mutually exclusive). She added:
“The more I think about this, the more I think that paternalism is not quite right, although that is the essence. It is a little more complex than that. People on different sides of the multicultural-integrationist-assimilation debate believe that there is a need to protect minority interests, but for different reasons. Some believe that we need to protect cultural minorities because they are less well equipped to protect themselves and that “the British” are culturally more adept at protecting their own interests (even though many who form part of the culturally distinctive groups are British). Others believe that protection is necessary for minority groups, simply because majorities tend to impose their will on minorities by virtue of democratic majoritarianism. Others do not trust the average Brit to behave in a way that will tolerate difference, and consider that protection is the only way to reduce or eliminate aspects of institutional racism.”
She added:
“Finally, there is guilt in some quarters associated with our colonial heritage and the fact that the English have imposed their culture on the world through the former Empire. When people from former colonies now come to the UK, this group of Brits finds it difficult to impose cultural norms on immigrants because to do so would appear to them to be hypocritical given our relatively recent history. There is also some confusion about what being British actually means in terms of culture, religion and values. Taken together, these four broad rationales may explain why the British, particularly those committed to liberal views about the necessity of tolerance, fairness, compassion and social justice in society, are finding it difficult to sort out the limits of law and state power in the face of the entry into their cultures of immigrants who neither understand, share, nor respect the Western system of values. The process of trying to figure out this situation has involved the same types of self-examination for me as it stimulated for my colleague and will continue to do so.”
In any event, the admission that I am to some degree bound by and created in the image of my culture is a two-edged sword that helps prove the point of the essay. If that is so for me it is reasonable to assume the same conclusion applies to those from other cultures. Certainly I would not “fit” very well in a traditional Islamic culture, not only because I do not share the religious views that are a vital part of the system, but because I believe in individual rights, fair treatment of women in terms consistent with Western society, and am opposed to excessive conformism, theocracy, and the incessant public display of religious piety. I do have religious faith but it is of a personal and informal kind that would be anathema in, for example, both a fundamentalist Islamic system and a conservative Christian system.