Multiculturalism at the crossroads

Read this piece by Tony Parkinson in The Age today. It has observations consonant with what I said yesterday regarding two faces of liberalism:

The compact under multiculturalism is that each community within a society must have the freedom to sustain its own identity, traditions and culture. But there is a quid pro quo and that involves universal acceptance of a broad system of shared values.

Hence, multiculturalism, in this country and elsewhere, is at a moment of truth. The drift from melting-pot altruism into salad-bowl separatism has morphed into something more sinister: the existence within Western cultures of a hostile religious sect that renounces absolutely the principles on which our societies are structured.
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As the great French humanist Jean Francois Revel once warned during the struggle against Soviet totalitarianism, it is corrosive and dangerous to allow extremists to frame the debate in anti-Western terms: "Clearly, a civilisation that feels guilty for everything it is and does will lack the energy and conviction to defend itself."

Parkinson also identifies a critical moment on the path to where we now are:

In hindsight, the British should have seen it coming long ago. It is almost 20 years since Salman Rushdie first published The Satanic Verses, an event that brought into full public glare the undercurrents of zealotry at work among some of Britain's Muslims.
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Was anyone prosecuted for inciting violence against Rushdie and his publishers? No. Governments reacted with forbearance. This was not only wrong in principle, but it gave a lot of people the wrong idea about the willingness of Western societies to defend their core values.

The mistake was noticed by some of us at the time. And let's hope Tony Parkinson is right in saying that it gave the 'wrong idea' about attitudes within Western societies. Sometimes, one can get to wondering about this. (Hat tip: Jim.)