In case you missed it . . .

Just passing along another item I think worthy of your attention. This from one of the people who has most successfully cleared his head of fuzzy multicultural pieties, Mark Steyn.

Not Swimming but Drowning
Mark Steyn
National Review Online -- March 6, 2008

A while back I mentioned Harvard's decision to ban men from its pool and fitness center six times a week in the interests of "accommodating" Muslim women. Our pal Michael Graham picks up the theme:

In the old days, Harvard would have laughed if some Catholic or evangelical mother urged “girls-only” campus workouts in the name of modesty. Today, Harvard happily implements Sharia swim times in the name of Mohammed.

At Harvard, that’s called progress.

Well put. And thus "progress" comes full circle. In Minneapolis last year, the airport licensing authority, faced with a mainly Muslim crew of cab drivers refusing to carry the blind, persons with six-packs of Bud, slatternly women, etc, proposed instituting two types of taxis with differently colored lights, one of which would indicate the driver was prepared to carry members of identity groups that offend Islam. Forty years ago, advocating separate drinking fountains made you a racist. Today, advocating separate taxi cabs or separate swimming sessions makes you a multiculturalist.

Every society has culturally self-segregating groups - the Amish and whatnot. But they're usually in small numbers somewhere out on the edge of the map. In Europe and Canada, the self-segregating group happens to be the principal source of population growth, which presents a profound challenge to societal cohesion. America does not face the same scale of problem, but nevertheless "sharia creep" ought to be resisted before it becomes remorseless. The rest of Michael's column goes on to explain why that doesn't happen: at Harvard and elsewhere, bigshot Saudi princes waving gazillion-dollar checks are in effect buying silence about one of the central questions of the day - Islam's relationship with the west.