Can we trust the loyalty of Islamists?
From 'The Weekly Standard':The nuclear program is just a part of Tehran's larger game. With Saddam gone, there is an opening for someone to wage the fight for the liberation of Jerusalem and hold high the burning banner of anti-Americanism. The fact that a Persian, Shiite state is doing the dirty work of mainstream Sunni Arabism is hugely discomforting to Arab regimes. Egypt's Hosni Mubarak was only the most recent Sunni Arab ruler to vent his grief in sectarian terms, when he told an Arab TV audience last month, "Most of the Shias are loyal to Iran, and not to the countries they are living in."
Here's proof that the West will have very serious problems integrating Islam into Christian-based societies. Even within the supposedly Islam-friendly Islamic states there is a deep sectarianism that maintains strong cross-border tensions and allegiances. Pan-Arabism as a secular progressive movement is all but dead [except that Turkey and Indonesia still maintain non-Arab forms of secularism], though the US in Iraq would like to revive it there and spread it in the Middle East.
It is unrealistic to think that Sunni-loyal and Shi'ite-loyal minorities in Western countries will lose their deep religious allegiances and the political loyalties behind them, if they do not do so even in their historical homelands.
Multiculturalism is at its weakest when religion is involved. Even Northern Ireland proves this point abundantly.
Last night in Melbourne, a very large Greek immigrant city where long-time Australian Greeks have been very well-integrated, there was a large group of fans loyal to the Greek team that played the World Cup-bound Socceroos. One commented 'it was an ambiguous night for a lot of us who did not know who to a support'.
That's fine, and quite innocent. No-one doubts that this form of multiculturalism works.
Would a large group of second or third generation Australian-Arab Islamists hold such an innocent loyalty to two countries in this way? The evidence says that they would not.
posted by Barrie @ 5/25/2006 06:40:00 PM
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