Non-Western immigrants see us, we don’t see them

KPA writes from Canada:

Commenting on your post about Newt Gingrich’s speech, N.’s writes that “Hirsi Ali makes the point in her Reason interview that the sheer material success of the West blinds us to its weaknesses.” At the expense of sounding like a hypocrite, since I’m a non-Westerner by birth, although all of my upbringing, education, career choice, cultural associations etc., are with the West, I’d like to make the following observations.

Hirsi Ali has the attitude common to most non-Western groups, who are very discerning about their relationship with the West. For example, she has known all along about the incompatibility of Islam with the West, that there is no moderate Islam, and that a reformed Islam is impossible. Yet a large part of her commentary on Islam (based, I believe on her feminist ideology aimed to helping Muslim women improve their circumstances) has been to argue for this possibility. She never told us what she really knew about Islam, until her recent Reason interview. And the fact that she did finally speak out now may have been due to her personal situation, not to any obligation she may have felt to reveal the truth.

I think non-Westerners are much more aware of their relationship with the West than Westerners are of their relationships with non-Westerners. Primarily it is because the non-Westerners come to the West to get things,—jobs, new homes, etc.—NOT to assimilate, so they have to assess the situation carefully. Westerners, on the other hand, have no pressing need to assess their new “neighbors” so closely, until the time comes when jobs, homes, and land start becoming competitive. I think that is beginning to happen now.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 02, 2007 06:18 PM | Send