Valerie Voigt, a respected community religious leader and a good friend of many years, sent me a link to an article from the (UK) Sunday Independent by Johann Hari that begins,

“Do you believe in the rights of women, or do you believe in multiculturalism? A series of verdicts in the German courts in the past month, have shown with hot, hard logic that you can’t back both. You have to choose.”

Facially, this is a very disturbing proposition for residents of the San Francisco Bay Area such as myself. Our pride is in decent treatment of all genders (”both” is too restrictive a term around here) and many cultures. Our reward is a diverse population marked by uncommon talent in many areas, and a myriad of interesting cuisines, events, and exhibits. The idea of moving somewhere that has never heard of tai chi or chai tea is too dreadful for many of us to contemplate. However, the rest of the article reveals that the “multiculturalism” of which Hari speaks is a new, different, and quite scary animal. To distinguish it clearly, I’ll give it a new name - “juridical multiculturalism” - as opposed to “social multiculturalism.”

Juridical multiculturalism is where a court decides that the laws of its jurisdiction apply differently to the instant parties, or may not even apply at all, because of the instant parties’ culture. Hari reports that German judges have been doling out probation or minimum sentences to husbands who brutally batter, and even murder, their wives and daughters when those men are Muslim, because it’s “part of their culture.” One female judge reportedly quoted the Quran verse allowing husbands to corporally punish their wives when denying a divorce to a battered Muslim wife. Hari also reports that Canada is at least considering creating shari’a (Muslim religous law) courts for settling Muslim family disputes, implying that these courts will also condone physical abuse of wives and daughters.

If all this is true, Muslim women in these Western countries are becoming cultural property - which, in some strains of the culture in question, equates to personal property of their husbands and fathers. Hari seems to suggest that the only solution is to jettison “multiculturalism” - most broadly interpreted as “all types of tolerance of different cultures” - from Western nations. As with any upsetting proposition, let’s get some background and do some reality-checking before we throw the baby out with the bathwater, shall we?
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An elder of the Wisconsin Oneida nation, part of the Haudenosaunee, once told me that every traditional Haudenosaunee prayer is a prayer of gratitude. That’s impressive. Would you rather be in charge of people who say “Thank you” all the time, or people who say “Gimme”?

On this Fourth of July, I feel it’s appropriate to say thank you to the Haudenosaunee for providing a model of federalism for the Founding Fathers - an example of how separate sovereignties (like the newly independent colonies) could function as a nation without losing their separate identities and all of their autonomy.

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1. Some images are traditionally classified “eyes only” for certain individuals or subgroups under certain circumstances.
2. The right to display some images traditionally had to be earned rather than bought.
3. Outsiders displaying the images often do not know or care about their meanings or the traditional rules for how they are to be displayed.
4. Some images are traditionally not intended for fixation in some types of media, or for any type of permanent fixation at all.
5. Even if none of the above objections apply and the image may be embodied in a commodity and sold, people who believe they should be entitled to a share of the proceeds aren’t getting any.

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On what is plausibly “their” day, let me play the white/black/yellow/brown devil’s advocate for a moment.

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