#Burka Veiled threat to Canadian Culture

I once supported multiculturalism in Canada because I believed, at the time, it gave us a sense of pluralism, diversity, and a variety of cultural and social customs. However, multiculturism has encouraged a convolution of our culture. One example of that convolution is the Muslim burka -- a garment that covers women from head to toe, including their faces. Some even cover over their eyes with mesh. Over the years, I have appreciated the Canadian system of accommodating people from all corners of the world. At the same time, however, as a social scientist, I have been observing a clear lack of assimilation of newcomers to our culture. As I have asserted many times before in my lectures, assimilation is not the same as integration. Integration means total conversion from one culture to another and complete amalgamation of subcultures into the culture at large. Assimilation, on the other hand, is a process of functional accommodation of various subcultures into the larger culture. In this process of functional accommodation, it is the responsibility of minority groups to functionally assimilate to the majority culture. That is missing in today's Canada. The burka is just one example of the lack of assimilation. It is that trend that creates nations within a nation, and it certainly leads to divided loyalties. It is about time the majority in our society stood up and challenged our government to take a second look at official multiculturism in Canada. We need to remind our government it must pay serious attention to our policy of multiculturism, and to what it has done to our society. For one thing, official multiculturalism has created ethnic ghettos in our major cities, and that has caused a major obstacle to our unity and undivided loyalty to our great nation. In our secular society, we do not mix religion and politics. Hence the question of the burka. Perhaps the most infamous example of the burka is the mother and daughter of the admitted "al-Qaida family" -- the Khadr family. Those two women are some of the most ungrateful "Canadians" who openly support terrorism and their disloyalty to Canada. In my judgment, they should be charged with treason against Canada. Generally, there are two types of Muslim women who wear the burka. There are those who are brainwashed by their cultish male family members, and there are those who are physically abused by their male custodians to wear the burka. It is detailed in my book Journey to Success, fundamentalists are known to intimidate their wives into blindly following their husbands' system of worship. Nevertheless, once those wives are coerced into religious fundamentalism, they become more zealous in their behaviour and actions. I am not going to question the covered women in the Middle East. Women in that region have no choice because they are subjugated. That region is not secular, but Canada is a secular country where semiliterate Mullahs, who have probably never read a book of reason in their dim and miserable lives, intimidate female members of their faith. That should not be allowed in Canada. Most Muslims have been a silent majority within their community. I am seeing signs the silent majority is slowly but surely rising up to challenge these little men with disheveled beards and head wraps. We can certainly look for some guidance from the French solution for this issue. In fact, the French action against the headscarf was supported by many Muslims in France and elsewhere. Muslim French girls have not abandoned schools in droves after the hijab was banned, for a secular public space gives all citizens civil rights and fundamental equalities. While I am not in favour of outlawing people covering their hair, surely it should be outlawed to cover one's face -- the primary form of identifying one another? I believe in Islam very strongly, but not the Islam represented by semi-literate Mullahs and brain-washed Muslim women covered by the burka. I love to be in Canada. I pledge my loyalty to Canada, a secular country, where no religion should be allowed to interfere with our system, be it the social system or the criminal justice system. I want all old and new Canadians to pledge their loyalty to Canada. I am not in favour of ethnic ghettos, and hyphenated Canadians. It does not matter to me how people used to do things or what social customs they followed where they came from. The burka has no place in secular Canada. The burka is one of the symbols of relatively new immigrants. Those immigrants who wear the burka justify their attire on the law of Islam, but the hijab and burka are not mandatory in Islam. Islamic injunctions simply call for Muslim women to guard their private parts, and to act with modesty. They can do this without wearing the body cage. A great majority of the world's Muslim women do not cover their hair or wear a burka except when in a mosque. Multiculturalism in Canada has allowed these, as well as other subcultural symbols and is one of the reasons for me to change my views about multiculturalism. We can no longer let multicultural illusions deface our cultural dress code and convolute our culture in Canada. The burka, in its own terms, turns women into sexual objects to be packed away out of sight. That should be stopped in Canada.