How Widespread is this Point of View?

[Occhidiangela]

They are a good example and that's one of the things that makes the article so distasteful.  Consider the similarities - some Muslims wear Burkas; some Jews wear skullcaps.  British-born Muslim suicide bombers killed commuters in London.  British-born Zionist terrorists killed British troops in Palestine.

Is the suggestion that immigrants should shed their religion any different from the mentality that led the Inquisition to forced conversion of Jews and burning recusants at the stake?

Assimilation does not mean you abandon your religion, just that you adopt the host country's culture.  Most Jews are assimilated.  Most Muslim immigrants are too, at least here.  But they keep their own religion just as other immigrants mostly do.
[Edit: corrected 2 typos]
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I think you underestimate the importance religion makes culturally. I have done that myself, and probably still do without realizing it sometimes. :blush:

Well made point on two sorts of Semites (taking the Arab Muslim rather than the Turk Muslim, Indian or Pakistani Muslim, Indonesian or Malaysian Muslim . . .) showing variable adherence to religious norms that spill into society at large. I don't think your extrapolation to the Inquisition stands up, however, in Europe, since the Church has lost the majority of its secular influence.

What is the variable potential to assimilate into another cultural base? In most cases, as Ghostiger suggested, the thesis-antithesis-synthesis interaction between cultural norms leads to a blend, which means a change to the base "culture." The blend is not always inert, it is sometimes explosive. The rate of change is what gets people's emotions in an uproar, and the direction of change likewise spawns an "antithesis" to the change as "thesis." (OK, enough Hegel for one morning!) The cultural pendulum swing in the US in re abortion from 1965 to the present is a modest example. (Maybe Newton's Laws rather than Hegel? Action <-> Reaction?)

I'll assert (though I can't prove it at the moment) that religion is a foundational element to more cultures than it is not. (Thought: Maybe the European culture the author wants to preserve is one where it is not.) It is inextricably woven into the fabric of culture, as is the more secular approach when it is adopted as a norm or belief. Deification of the state as the extreme, the preeminence of the State as a practical approach. As cultures run into one another more frequently in this ever shrinking globe, the problem becomes degree of compatibility.

This gets back to "what are your common cultural assumptions?" Are they compatible, and in a secular society, can you balance varied sets of common cultural assumptions into a harmonious whole?

I offer you the idiotic protest a Muslim woman made in Florida last year that she get her driver's license picture taken while wearing a mask/veil. That is an imcompatible behavior compared to the cultural/legal standard. Everyone else accepts the rubric that persons not conceal their identity for official ID. That case was a test of how far the idiots at HSC would take political directions not to "profile."

If you get too many "cultures" in one bag, (and how many is too many?) must that society perforce devolve into more manageable sub sets? The Austrian, Russian/USSR/TUrkish/Roman empires all devolved thanks to healthy doses of multiculturalism, among other factions, that provided underlying tension outward versus inward. India was split once on cultural grounds (to make India, Pakistan and East Pakistan/Bangladesh) and India may see yet another devolution thanks to Muslim/Hindu demographic shifts over the next generation or two. Or can they reconcile?

There was once distinction made between the terms "nation" and "nation state." Do people still make that distinction? The modern "multicultural" nation state (pre-1992 Yugoslavia, US, England, France(?), China, USSR) has the continual challenge of blending a variety of sub-groups/subcultures into a harmonious whole, while the nation as nation state, of which UAE, Korea, or Japan would be excellent examples, has a greater element of cultural cohesion as a foundation.

If one considers the nation, rather than a nation state, language leaps out as a critical binding element, and religion or philosophy (the Tao for example) a source of a common sense of "how the world should work." This idea of cultural sovereignty was central to Wilson's 14 Points, though his focus was Eurocentric rather than global. (Ho Chi Minh, among others, Wilson blew off). As it stands right now, the EU is not a nation, and its attempt to weld together a nation state out of differing nations seems to have a practical limit.

Thought: would Charlamagne recognize the secular "Holy Roman Empire" that the EU's architects are trying to form? :lol:

What is European, in that case, other than a geographic descriptive? What are the common cultural assumptions of a European?

Outside entities attempting to influence events within a given nation state, or extranational players, add to the challenge. How, for example, does the King of Suadi Arabia or the leadership of China deal with the 24/7 impact of the Information age spreading foreign "common cultural messages" via TV, Radio, and the Internet?

Flymo, I don't think the core problem is one of race, as in genetic race, but rather of "race" as some 19th century commentators used it in describing "the Spanish race" or "The French race" or "The Russian race." That connotation seems to have passed from general usage, but it captures the combination of general genetic mixing (or not) at a point in time, culture, religion, and language all rolled into one. I don't think that meets a modern definition of "culture" unless one confines the culture to some small or moderate sized nations or nation states.

My head hurts. And the violence in Paris continues.

EDIT: From the New Zealand Herald

The clashes in the Paris down-at-heel suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois spread into nearby towns with high immigrant populations, an indication of growing unrest among immigrant communities.

The trigger was the accidental death of two teenage immigrants, electrocuted after scaling a wall of an electricity relay station to flee a police identity check.

A man of Turkish origin was also badly injured. Police have denied chasing them into the station.

The last time violence erupted on such a scale in French cities was in 1990 in the Lyons suburb of Vaulx-en-Velin, also touched off by a controversial death involving the police.

This time, though, the rioting carries an edgy post-September 11 fear that Islamists may be radicalising jobless young Arabs.

Occhi