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Minority religions and secular states : Comments
By Syed Atiq ul Hassan, published 1/2/2006Syed Atiq ul Hassan argues even if a society claims to be secular the majority will dominate: religiously, culturally and socially.
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Quote:
"Also why Christinity (and not multiculturalism) is the bedrock of a liberal democratic form of government."
Interesting. Anyone care to ellaborate?
Posted by YngNLuvnIt, Wednesday, 1 February 2006 4:18:47 PM
Unquote
Multiculturalism is all about the superiority of the cultural group over the individual. That is why so many people from non Anglo-Celtic-Australian culture say that there is no Australian culture.
For these people 'culture' is about a system of belonging to a group with certain prescribed practices: not being an individual in a liberal democratic society. Therefore they cannot see that indivuals can form a culture.
Democracy did not evolve into its present well recognised form in any country that was not predominently protestant Christian.
Even many Catholic countries in the early 20th century went towards Fascism, where the state was more important than the individual, think of Italy, Franco's Spain, Argentina and some other South American countries. The Catholic Church, of pre-Vatican 2 days, provided a great model for non democratic sytems of government where the individual was not allowed to question authority or doctrine.
Other countries are as bad or worse. Whilst India is on the surface a democracy it still has an entrenched caste system, which values a person according to their caste and sex. China still follows a much modified Confucianism, where the elders of the (Capitalist) Communist party have taken over as society's elders.
It is only in Protestant countries where democracy has bloomed, due to the valuing of the individual rather than the survival of a 'culture' being important.
I will repeat, multiculturalism is the encouragement of cultural systems, disregarding the value of the individual within those systems. The classic example being the mention of 'community leaders' This is the antithesis to democracy. In a democracy there are no leaders, only representatives.