Liberal Christianity and immigration:
The Spanish bishops in 1700 weren’t clamoring for their kings to re-admit the Moors. St. Augustine didn’t view the Visigoths as having a claim to Roman hospitality that trumped the preservation of civic order.
No major Christian denomination until the middle 20th century ever advanced the claim that residents of one country had a presumptive right to move into another particular country against its wishes. (…)
This is not real Christianity. It is, indeed, the “slave morality” against which Nietzsche rightly warned. It is puerile, poisonous, and much more evil than almost any form of paganism with which the West is acquainted–except, perhaps, for the cannibalism of the Aztecs. It is the creed of the dhimmis, and it richly deserves to be persecuted. Indeed, its advocates seem to crave persecution, to satisfy a sense of inner martyrdom over which they impotently preen.
RELATED: “Racism”!!! — at the CBC??
Sweden’s minister for integration, the Berundi-born Nyamko Sabuni, is a Muslim herself on her mother’s side and she has been trying to warn about the rise of Islamist extremism there.
But her concerns have been largely ignored by the mainstream and her appointment to cabinet was, in fact, condemned by many Swedish Muslims.
Now, as a result of this week’s senseless suicide, there will likely be even more talk about shutting the doors on newcomers and, specifically, to Muslims. Meanwhile, the Jews of Sweden will continue to leave.
UPDATE — Roger Scruton writes:
So what happens when people whose identity is fixed by creed or kinship immigrate into places settled by Western culture? The multiculturalists say that we must make room for them, and that we do this by relinquishing the space in which their culture can flourish.
Our political class has at last recognized that this is a recipe for disaster, and that we can welcome immigrants only if we welcome them into our culture, and not beside and against it. But that means telling them to accept rules, customs, and procedures that may be alien to their old way of life. Is this an injustice? Surely not.
If immigrants come it is because they gain by doing so. It is therefore reasonable to remind them that there is also a cost. Only now, however, is our political class prepared to say so, and to insist that the cost be paid.
And it may be that this change of heart comes too late.