If you want to send American media into a frenzy, nothing does it quite as well as breaking precedent. Every time a person of racial, religious, ethnic or some other type of minority becomes the first of their kind to fill some position, be it political, corporate or otherwise, our media goes into a tailspin.
Despite all this hubub, the election of a Muslim to head a Western capital is a testament to the strength of our values rather than weakness. The usual suspects amongst the left parade out the same tired metaphors every time. They extol how this newest accomplishment is breaking barriers or smashing a ceiling.
Predictably, conservative media engage in the usual hand wringing about whether or not western society will survive this latest test of integration.
Media of both ideologies inflicted this upon their readership with London’s recent election results, where for the first time in modern history a major Western capital elected a Muslim mayor, Sadiq Khan.
Breitbart and Drudge, representing the right, chose to run articles with headlines like “LondonisKhan,” and statements like Khan being “the first mayor of Londonistan,” all which fret about the implications of this election for the good people of England and Europe.
Left-leaning media could not resist the urge to pat themselves and Londoners on the back for proving London’s diversity and tolerance.
Reading the coverage, my mind goes to the hypothetical debate between a libertarian and a communist occasionally heard in philosophical circles, which is meant to showcase the benefits of a non-coercive social order.
The example is the libertarian makes the point to the communist that communists would be free to exist and practice their ideology in a libertarian society, but that the inverse would never be tolerated. Libertarians could not live as they wish within a society built around Marx’s words.
Western society seems willing to accommodate and accept Muslims into the greater body politic. Western institutions have evolved to protect minorities and groups without power whereas Sharia law attempts to enforce homogeneity of thought and action.
The election of Sadiq Khan is just the latest example of this. The right to practice one’s religion and follow one’s conscience have been key tenets of Western thought for centuries.
Anti-discrimination laws protect minorities from the racist whims of employers and businesses in the market. Hate crime laws attempt to eliminate violence motivated by protected statuses whenever it might occur.
Even the token outrage from the right is emblematic of the strength of these values, as free expression is critical to freedom of conscience.
It would be hard to argue that the inverse is true in this situation. Much like a libertarian in a communist world, it appears it would be much more difficult to follow one’s individual beliefs as a European in countries where thought is codified by Sharia law.
Accommodation is given to the sons of other nations in the Western world that would never be given in their home countries. The sort of society this creates is indeed a large part of the draw for generations of immigrants that have landed on European and American shores.
The election of Khan is more indication of the strength of these very values. Khan is able to make something of himself in England, and everyone is better for it.
zaochamb@indiana.edu
