Pamela Waechter is the latest victim of multiculturalism, the failed ideology which believes that all cultures are equal and can get along in one country, kumbaya fashion. She was the woman who was shot and killed Friday by the Muslim shooter in Seattle.
Naveed Afzal Haq forced his way into the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle by holding a gun on a 13-year old girl and proceeded to shoot five other women in addition to Pam. Born in America, Haq declared "I am a Muslim American, angry at Israel" as he gunned down the unarmed Jewish women.
Haq had a degree in engineering, was 30 years old, yet had a string of loser jobs. He had been getting psychological treatment for 10 years, but you have to wonder how much his real problem was the near-impossible cultural adjustment for a Muslim growing up in the United States with immigrant parents. Adult immigrants have their cultural and personal identity figured out, so any difficulties are of the exterior navigational variety.
But children growing up in America within immigrant cultures having anti-western values must sort out very conflicted identities, and in so doing necessarily deny a substantial part of who they are. Muslims in particular have a tough task, since they learn in some (many?) mosques that Jews and Christians are enemies, period.
A 2005 Freedomhouse report found teaching materials in geographically diverse US mosques that were very anti-American and anti-Semitic, declaring democracy to be un-Islamic. The study characterized the instruction as urging "when Muslims are in the lands of the unbelievers, they must behave as if on a mission behind enemy lines." That sort of indoctrination makes assimilation psychologically stressful, to say the least.
Neilsen said he thinks Haq's issues with family, his religion and even his social life just compounded. He said he believed his friend wanted desperately to fit into mainstream U.S. society. But he felt like an outcast in his own family. [Shooting suspect was baptized Seattle Post Intelligencer, 7/29/06]
Conflicting interior cultures can make offspring of immigrants dangerously crazy. If academia weren't so beguiled by believing diversity is the highest good, some inquisitive sociologist would have laid out the statistical arguments by now that the offspring of immigrants are more maladjusted than their parents. (Daniel Pipes' thoughts in Sudden Jihad Syndrome are not unrelated; likewise the recent Seeing Today’s Immigrants Straight by Heather MacDonald.)
This murdering scum should not be cut slack because of his internal culture clash; on the contrary, he should face the death penalty. But Americans should realize that some cultures are inappropriate for this society: when the square peg is forced into the round hole, bad things happen.
Like the murder of Pam Waechter because she was a Jew.
