Do you know that there are 15,000 Muslims serving in the U.S. armed forces? Are you aware that the U.S. military has Muslim Imams?

Following September 11, Captain Abd Al-Rasheed Muhammad, Imam of Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington D.C., asked the North American Islamic Jurisprudence Council if it is permissible for Muslim troops in the U.S. military to fight other Muslims in the war against terrorism.

The Council referred the matter to Muslim clerics abroad, who issued a Fatwa permitting U.S. Muslims to fight if there was "no alternative."

Whew! The chain of command of the U.S. military remained intact. But not for long. The Middle East Media Research Institute reports that the Arab clerics reconsidered and withdrew permission on October 30, issuing a new Fatwa prohibiting U.S. Muslim troops from participating in U.S. attacks on Muslim forces.

Can you see where multiculturalism has brought us? The chain of command in the U.S. Army has Arab clerics at its head.

The idea of a multicultural state is an obvious insanity. The problems of multicultural politics led to the breakup of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. In our own time we have witnessed the breakup of the multicultural Yugoslav state and Russian Empire.

Why do so many educated people believe multiculturalism will work in the U.S.? Or do they believe it?

The political left endorses multiculturalism as an assault on U.S. national identity. Libertarians endorse multiculturalism, because they favor anything that dissolves the state, and there's no better way to dissolve a state than to dissolve national identity.

Neoconservatives endorse multiculturalism, because they see it as endorsement of American values by outsiders. The unending flood of immigrants from different cultures is the neoconservatives' answer to the denigration of American values by the political left.

These positions are understandable if incompatible, but none are legitimate reasons for constructing a political Tower of Babel.

Even under the old rules of the "melting pot," it is doubtful that the U.S. could assimilate the high rate of third world, non-European immigration it has been experiencing for the past three decades. Under the multicultural Balkanization policy in effect, non-assimilation is a guaranteed outcome.

Of all the hyphenated-Americans, Muslims pose the greatest challenge. Islam assimilates neither into a Judeo-Christian civilization, nor into a secular one. Secular Muslim states are experiencing difficulties themselves and have to rely on force to remain in power.

The assimilation of Muslims in the U.S. would be daunting even for a culture aware of the challenge. It became impossible when civil rights policy turned every hyphenated-American into a "preferred minority" and endowed them with special legal privileges.

U.S. civil rights policy not only turned native-born whites into second class citizens, but also prevents the implementation of sensible airport security measures.

WorldNetDaily reports that in 1999 the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission forced Argenbright Security Inc., which provides airport security, to rehire seven fired Muslim non-citizens, five of whom are citizens of countries on the State Department's terrorist blacklist.

According to the EEOC, "preferred minorities" do not have to be U.S. citizens in order to benefit from elevated group rights.

Argenbright was forced by the U.S. government to rehire, make a cash settlement, apologize, and institute a "Muslim-sensitivity training program for all Argenbright employees."

There you have it. Homeland Security, airport security, and in-flight security are all jokes. U.S. civil rights privileges for "preferred minorities" prevent profiling of suspect religious and ethnic populations, even if the suspects are not citizens and hail from terrorist-friendly countries.

The seven Muslims were fired because they refused to stop wearing their telltale head wraps, making U.S. citizens very nervous passing through airport security after the Muslim bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa.

With the help of the EEOC, Muslim non-citizens have established that they must make no concession whatsoever to the Western culture that hosts them.

So much for the claims that the unassimilable are being assimilated. The U.S. has forsaken national identity for a Tower of Babel.

Paul Craig Roberts is the author (with Lawrence M. Stratton) of The New Color Line : How Quotas and Privilege Destroy Democracy

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