This is an overly long piece by Greg Sheridan, foreign affairs correspondent for The Australian explaining how the realization has dawned on him that Australian multiculturalism is failing for one primary reason—Muslim immigrants.
I found myself annoyed as if I was reading the confessions of a liberal who got mugged. However, it seems Sheridan isn’t liberal in the George Soros sort of way. I was further annoyed by his assumption (that he gets from the mainstream media) that America is successfully assimilating its immigrants—Not!
Anyway, here is a bit of Sheridan’s ‘How I lost faith in multiculturalism‘ from The Australian:
IN 1993, my family and I moved into Belmore in southwest Sydney. It is the next suburb to Lakemba. When I first moved there I loved it.
We bought a house just behind Belmore Sports Ground, in those days the home of my beloved Bulldogs rugby league team. Transport was great, 20 minutes to the city in the train, 20 minutes to the airport.
On the other side of Belmore, away from Lakemba, there were lots of Chinese, plenty of Koreans, growing numbers of Indians, and on the Lakemba side lots of Lebanese and other Arabs.
That was an attraction, too. I like Middle Eastern food. I like Middle Eastern people. The suburb still had the remnants of its once big Greek community and a commanding Greek Orthodox church.
But in the nearly 15 years we lived there the suburb changed, and much for the worse.
Three dynamics interacted in a noxious fashion: the growth of a macho, misogynist culture among young men that often found expression in extremely violent crime; a pervasive atmosphere of anti-social behaviour in the streets; and the simultaneous growth of Islamist extremism and jihadi culture.
This is my story, our story and the story of a failed policy.
Gee, I realized after spending time in Europe that the problem wasn’t European multiculturalism that went awry (or never existed in the first place) but it was the large Muslim population most of whom are not like us and have no interest in assimilating.
So this must, logically, lead to one extremely inconvenient, politically incorrect and desperately fraught question. Could it be that the main difference between Europe, with its seething immigration problems, and the US, Canada and Australia, with their success, is not actually a difference based on some footling interpretation of multiculturalism?
There is one other variable that is consistent with the results. The US, Canada and Australia have far smaller Muslim migrant communities as a percentage of their total populations than do most of the troubled nations of Europe. Could this be the explanation?
All immigrants are not the same:
No one in Europe, 25 years ago, thought they would be in the mess they’re in today.
Australia has been a successful immigration country. But the truth is not all immigrants are the same. And it may be much easier than people think to turn success into failure.
So, now what the hell will Australia, or Canada, or for that matter the US, do to stop the inevitable? After all, the writing is on the wall and it’s unfortunate that those who might have led us—‘intellectuals’ of all stripes—can’t see it (or, like Sheridan, are seeing it too late).