The Veil of Multiculturalism

A few days ago, dear reader, we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” first saw a picture of Nancy Pelosi (D-Surrenderville) wearing a scarf over her head in Muslim fashion. The reason, of course, is that Congresswoman Pelosi was on her official Middle East Capitulation Tour, and thus was soon to chat cordially with the odious Syrian dictator who’s doing so much to kill American soldiers in Iraq. (What, we ask, is a better cause than that?)

Now, the picture of Congresswoman Pelosi immediately struck us as revealing. Not, thank merciful Allah, in the visual sense. Rather, we mean, strictly in the intellectual sense.

Naturally, Ms. Pelosi donned a hair-covering scarf as a bit of cultural genuflection. She was, after all, in a Muslim country, and it struck her as appropriate to follow local decorum, so as not to bother the natives, who are busy piously reflecting on the essential truth of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Fine, fine, we say. Ms. Pelosi presumably cares deeply about the delicate sensibilities of our fanatically murderous Syrian friends, and thus slaps a scarf on her face. When in Damascus, do as the genocidal nutters do, you might put it.

But wait: When radical Muslims come to the West, oftentimes they don’t seem interested in following suit. As Jack Straw—who, along with the bigwigs in the Labor Party, curiously found his backbone last year—mentioned, many Britons feel uncomfortable with women who wear full face veils. There is, it seems, something genuinely un-Western about such restrictive garb.

Yet some of our ever-sensitive radical Muslim pals, it appears, aren’t as interested in getting in good with the locals as is the charming Ms. Pelosi. Heck no: They’d sooner sue the pants off you than take off their burqas. And, in fact, sue you they will.

Here, we think, we find the sordid end result of Western fascination for so-called multiculturalism: The West shows unceasing regard for non-Western cultures, and non-Western cultures show essentially no regard in return. Toleration is strictly a one-way street.

We don’t mean to sound like a passel of doom-and-gloomers, but we think this doesn’t bode well for Western cultural health. Naturally, we should be respectful of other peoples; there’s no reason to offend folks gratuitously. (Except, of course, the Norwegians. Those tossers.)

But we ought to start treating others as we expect ourselves to be treated. Just as we take in countless criticisms of the West, it’s high time we allow earnest criticism of the Muslim world. We must stop treating Muslims with kid gloves. This merely leads to odious pandering of non-Westerners and, even worse, amounts to a cultural suicide pact.

If Nancy Pelosi—no radical Muslim, she—can put a veil on her head in deference to Syrian sensibilities, certainly we can ask our Islamist pals in the West to act with a modicum of deference to our ways. Is this really too much to ask?