Maintaining A Cultural Identity

With the recent furor over the Muslim cartoons in Denmark and the calls for death in Afghanistan for conversion to Christianity, many have wondered what would happen in the United States if U.S. Muslims started demanding that some of the more radical components of Sharia law (Islamic law) trump our Western legal system.

I agree with Richard John Neuhaus of First Things, that the following outlook would probably best suit the situation:

In the course of his remarks, Mr. Steyn cites one of my favorite stories about the limits of multiculturalism.

In a more culturally confident age, the British in India were faced with the practice of “suttee”–the tradition of burning widows on the funeral pyres of their husbands. Gen. Sir Charles Napier was impeccably multicultural: “You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: When men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks, and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”