The Iranian Interest

Multiculturism vs. Diversity

There is a big difference. I am all for diversity of cultures and ideas. Multiculturism is something entirely different.

...Anonymous, thanks. I am thinking of writing a couple of more detailed stuff that are related, but it will take some time. I totally agree with your points on race. I think that comment was meant as a parody by one of these silly typical characters.

NeoNazi convention back in session?

Only ignorant people are affraid of multiculturalism. It sounds exactly like neo nazi's and anti immigrant groups in Europe and US. This is code word for IMMIGRANT TOOK MY JOB. Some group needs to be blamed for evrything. They already tried Jews. This time its blacks and muslims.

intrinsic racial superiority

intrinsic racial superiority of Western peoples over Arabs, Iranians, and Turks. Unfortunately, nothing that we do as Iranians can change this fact. Even if we adopted Western civilization wholesale

There is no such a thing as race. Biologically speaking, we're all one race.

Racke is only a cultural concept.

Read the book by the geneticist Dr. Spencer Wells who follows our genetic pool via the global migration of man, which began with a tribe of Africans who, battered by famine and drought, left their home literally searching for greener pastures some 60,000 years ago. He traces the common genetic thread which connect such varied travelers as the Aborigines of Australia, the Bushmen of Nambia, and the Native Peoples of North America.

In this surprisingly accessible book, British geneticist Wells sets out to answer long-standing anthropological questions of where humans came from, how we migrated and when we arrived in such places as Europe and North America. To trace the migration of human beings from our earliest homes in Africa to the farthest reaches of the globe, Wells calls on recent DNA research for support. Clues in the blood of present groups such as eastern Russia's Chukchi, as well as the biological remnants of long-extinct human clans, allow Wells to follow the Y chromosome as a relatively unaltered marker of human heritage. Eventually, working backward through time, he finds that the earliest common "ingredient" in males' genetic soup was found in a man Wells calls the "Eurasian Adam," who lived in Africa between 31,000 and 79,000 years ago. Each subsequent population, isolated from its fellows, gained new genetic markers, creating a map in time and space. Wells writes that the first modern humans "left Africa only 2,000 generations ago" and quickly fanned out across Asia, into Europe, and across the then-extant land bridge into the Americas. Using the same markers, he debunks the notion that Neanderthals were our ancestors, finds odd links between faraway peoples, and-most startlingly-discovers that all Native Americans can be traced to a group of perhaps a dozen people. By explaining his terminology and methods throughout the book, instead of in a chunk, Wells makes following the branches of the human tree seem easy. 44 color photos, 54 halftones and 3 maps.
//www.amazon.ca/Journey-Man-Genetic-Odyssey/d...

intrinsic racial superiority

intrinsic racial superiority of Western peoples over Arabs, Iranians, and Turks. Unfortunately, nothing that we do as Iranians can change this fact. Even if we adopted Western civilization wholesale

There is no such a thing as race. Biologically speaking, we're all one race.

Racke is only a cultural concept.

Read the book by the geneticist Dr. Spencer Wells who follows our genetic pool via the global migration of man, which began with a tribe of Africans who, battered by famine and drought, left their home literally searching for greener pastures some 60,000 years ago. He traces the common genetic thread which connect such varied travelers as the Aborigines of Australia, the Bushmen of Nambia, and the Native Peoples of North America.

In this surprisingly accessible book, British geneticist Wells sets out to answer long-standing anthropological questions of where humans came from, how we migrated and when we arrived in such places as Europe and North America. To trace the migration of human beings from our earliest homes in Africa to the farthest reaches of the globe, Wells calls on recent DNA research for support. Clues in the blood of present groups such as eastern Russia's Chukchi, as well as the biological remnants of long-extinct human clans, allow Wells to follow the Y chromosome as a relatively unaltered marker of human heritage. Eventually, working backward through time, he finds that the earliest common "ingredient" in males' genetic soup was found in a man Wells calls the "Eurasian Adam," who lived in Africa between 31,000 and 79,000 years ago. Each subsequent population, isolated from its fellows, gained new genetic markers, creating a map in time and space. Wells writes that the first modern humans "left Africa only 2,000 generations ago" and quickly fanned out across Asia, into Europe, and across the then-extant land bridge into the Americas. Using the same markers, he debunks the notion that Neanderthals were our ancestors, finds odd links between faraway peoples, and-most startlingly-discovers that all Native Americans can be traced to a group of perhaps a dozen people. By explaining his terminology and methods throughout the book, instead of in a chunk, Wells makes following the branches of the human tree seem easy. 44 color photos, 54 halftones and 3 maps.
//www.amazon.ca/Journey-Man-Genetic-Odyssey/d...

Western vs Eastern; A superficial division

Zion: Brilliant. Please make your post into a blog if you have time, you might want to expand on your ideas. I like this part:

The main link in the chain is misconception that (willfully) attempts to redefine modern liberal values based on reason to be mere peculiarities of a particular culture, the West. The fact that you need go a few centuries in the past to see very little trace of modern reason-based liberal values in the Western culture itself is ignored. As is the possibility for other individuals living under other cultural norms to also aspire for freedom and rationality, and by rational struggle to change her cultural landscapes into a more modern and liberal one.

Western culture only a few centuries ago resembled the current culture of many societies ruled by the clergy establishment.

What is Multiculturism?

I define Multiculturalism as a basket of fruit that contains different cultures and religions as well as ethnic backgrounds and philosophical ideologies.

But a peaceful basket.

Canada represent great from of Multiculturalism.

USA and Europe tolerate others from different cultural or religious background.

One reader here replied that European and western cultures far superior than the Persian. I have to disagree. No culture or race is superior than the other. They all have their unique way of looking at things at different angles and perspective. What makes one superior than other is not the race or reliogion bu the deeds and actions. What one can do for the society as a whole.

Multiculturalism is the foundation and the principles for peace and prosperity in such a fast growing globalized world.

Another reader here goes and discusses the growth of Islamic fanatics in a multicultural society.

The growth of hate and fanatic has in the past decade taken different shape and architecture. It comes only from misunderstanding and ignorance. It comes from when one group and society ignores, deprives and oppresses another group, therefore, giving rise to fanatic and fundamentalist ideas and ideologies

Multiculturalism does not feed racism or hate it counterattacks it. Because a multicultural society embraces all these ideas and encourages a discussion and dialogue.

Time to dispense with political correctness

Western peoples are culturally superior to the people of the Middle East. The cultural superiority of the West stems from the intrinsic racial superiority of Western peoples over Arabs, Iranians, and Turks. Unfortunately, nothing that we do as Iranians can change this fact. Even if we adopted Western civilization wholesale, we will always be at a racial disadvantage. One possible solution would be to overthrow the IRI and establish a government that would invite people from Europe and the U.S. to settle in Iran, so that Iran could become like Australia and Canada. Needless to say, Westerners would need large incentives to settle in Iran, so they could be enticed with large grants of land and a cheap labor market in Iran.

Muslims in the West should be made to choose

Muslims living in the U.S. and Europe should be made to choose: either they must renounce the religion of Islam and all its tenets (including prayer, fasting, pilgrimage, abstention from alcohol or pork) or they should have their visas and citizenships revoked and be deported back to their homes countries. They should also be encouraged to study Christianity and make voluntary conversions to Christianity, if they want to stay. The West has to reassert its Christian identity and cleanse itself of the Islamic fifth column. The only groups which are speaking honestly about the Muslim danger are the right-of-center politicians, e.g. BNP in England, Le Pen in France, the Northern League and National Alliance in Italy, Vlaams Blok in Belgium, etc

Old reaction, new clothes

I really liked the quotation from Bruckner, it really goes to the heart of the matter. Multiculturalism is a reaction to reason and modern liberal values, disguised as a reaction to Western culture, disguised as a call for equality of all cultures. The main link in the chain is misconception that (willfully) attempts to redefine modern liberal values based on reason to be mere peculiarities of a particular culture, the West. The fact that you need go a few centuries in the past to see very little trace of modern reason-based liberal values in the Western culture itself is ignored. As is the possibility for other individuals living under other cultural norms to also aspire for freedom and rationality, and by rational struggle to change her cultural landscapes into a more modern and liberal one.
The trick is to redirect attention and use the real historical weaknesses and misgivings of the Western culture, to further the anti-rational and anti-liberal cause. Then there is no need for argumentation. All you have to do is to show that a given dissenting view belongs to the evil culture. Any intellectual opponent in that culture is a racist dominating figure fearing the new `cultural consciousness`, and all dissident in the other cultures are mere Westoxicated tools and stooges of this hidden form of imperialism. Easy.
Just like Marxism: instead of arguing for its claims, it only needed to discover and dispose the`class` origins of any countering argument, and then to demonize it as a fearful class struggle dialectic in disguise to protect its class dominance or something like that . Simple.
Or like Nazism which was more about the demonization of one particular race/culture than anything else. This was then portrayed as lying behind all liberal values of modernity which was the real target of all the hate. So relativity and quantum mechanics are dismissed not on any rational grounds but because they were considered as the kind of physics belonging to that race/culture. You want a newer version of that same fallacy under the holy name of post-modernism, multiculturalism, feminism and post-structuralism? Check here:
//physics.nyu.edu/sokal/transgress_v2/transgr...

(Be sure to read the explanation afterwards:
//physics.nyu.edu/sokal/lingua_franca_v4/ling...)

It is no coincidence of course. The same misguided reaction underlies both attitudes. The parallels are more than meets the eye. Nazisim was also viewed by many progressives in the West as a justifiable cry of an undermined culture after the Treaty of Versailles. The real problem is that ideas like multi-culturism ultimately act only as catalysts for a more self-consistent form of reactionary ideology. Ironically this usually turns out to be supremacist with a vengeance, be it Nazi racial ideology back then or Islamism today.

Multicultrulism feeds Islamism

It seems to me that the concept of Multiculture has passed its "democratic" ethnical sphere and has been extended to a tool for more freedom for Islamists in the West.

This is crystallised for Europe while witnessing an increasing growth of Islamic norms and influence at the very cost of harmony among communities.

Today, the concept is mainly abused by Islamists and their apologists, including some European naive lefts. Multiculturalism in fact bolsters up right-wing Islamists to manipulate Muslim communities to propagate the sharia-based norms and practices in the West.

In actuality, it provokes more social clashes, racism, Islamophobia and ended up with more ghettoisation of Muslims.

Pishroo, where do you get this stuff?

You're taking advice on racism from Bernard Lewis? Is this a joke? Your drawing Rorty into this is premature and weakly linked. I don't think Rorty would agree with a word of this about "multiculturalism" discourse.

Discourse on Multiculturalism, like racism and class consciousness is of course an uncomfortable threat to the dominate culture/race. I'm not surprised there are those who want it silenced for obvious reasons. "Demands" to "drop" it from discourse is nothing more than demands for censorship, which used to in the years past be enforced by violence upon anyone who used to question the dominate cultural and racial narrative.

If it bothers you this much, don't talk about it. Others have a right to carry whatever "discourse" they want.