It is not. Enter "multiculturalism" in the search window above and you will find numerous articles on the subject proving that the premise is wrong and reporting the results of the disastrous experiment in One-Worldism and the attempt to force human persons to love one another. You'll also find links to a number of videos which have been scrubbed from YouTube by the wokesters who refuse, like the Three Wise Monkeys, to see the truth which is there to be seen.
Today we present yet another article on the failure of multiculturalism, this one by London-based journalist Michael Murphy. Mr Murphy created a fine documentary entitled "Ireland is full! Anti-immigration backlash in Ireland", which we suggest you watch ASAP, before it too disappears. Mr Murphy writes:
Now we know what globalizing the intifada looks like. In Manchester last week, a rabbi addressed his congregation in a robe stained with blood. Hours earlier, on Yom Kippur, Judaism’s holiest day, a jihadi terrorist rammed a car into worshippers at the gates of a synagogue before going on a stabbing spree. By the time officers shot the attacker, two were dead and four more injured, some from accidental police fire.
To show they would not be cowed by violence, the congregation resumed their prayers as Britain’s Special Air Service (SAS) forces patrolled outside. Underneath the defiant posture, though, many of them will likely have wondered whether Britain remains a safe home for Jews. For the first time in centuries, the answer is not straightforward. Neither are the solutions to this predicament.
Britain’s multicultural project rested on assumptions that have not survived contact with reality. We told ourselves immigrants would assimilate, or at least bring only harmless aspects of their cultures with them. Diversity was held up as our greatest strength. It has been apparent for some time that this was a monumental act of self-delusion. While many immigrants do share our values and become productive members of society, the people who don’t are more numerous than we have long cared to admit, and are wreaking havoc.
Consider the Manchester killer. Jihad al-Shamie was born in Syria and brought to the United Kindgom as a child, attaining citizenship in the mid-2000s. With that passport he was thenceforth regarded by our institutions as British. The problem is that when a bearded man in a suicide vest begins murdering Jews “in the name of the Islamic State,” as he put it, what once seemed like a harmless accommodation becomes an affront to the British people themselves.
Al-Shamie was less an example of diversity being our strength than a life-long liability. He dropped out of university, spent his life unemployed and housed at public expense, and was earlier this year arrested for rape. His online footprint is limited to a 2012 death threat against a parliamentarian who had defended Israel.
What kind of society not only tolerates but subsidizes such a man? The same country that, when the Islamist refugee Salman Abedi murdered 22 people at a Manchester concert in 2017, consoled itself with the pop lyric “don’t look back in anger.” The same country that for decades ignored the rape of thousands of white girls by mostly Pakistani grooming gangs to avoid accusations of racism. A country that insisted Islam is simply a “religion of peace,” even as Islamism continued to inspire atrocities on its soil.
This posture is clearly self-destructive. It breeds resentment among the native population, and cynicism among immigrants, including those who have fully embraced British society, culture and norms, and who now see Britain as unwilling to defend itself. It has now also made life unsafe for other minorities.
Britain spent centuries dissolving its own tribal rivalries to unite under the banner of one nation. But it has since managed within two generations to begin to re-tribalize. Its melting pot has proved too lukewarm. Take al-Shamie’s father, Faraj, a trauma surgeon who publicly denounced his son’s killings. He seemed at first to be the model immigrant, until his own views were unearthed: he had called on social media for Israel’s destruction, also praising Hamas and even Hitler. The rot in this case, as with many others, was inter-generational.
The authorities may have missed a window in 2012 to flag al-Shamie. But they arguably missed a greater opportunity to prevent his family coming to the U.K. in the first place. It has long been a matter of liberal etiquette to pretend that all immigrants arrive with only superficial differences and are, in the round, a net bonus to Britain.
This mantra has helped the establishment dismiss calls for a more selective admissions system. Yet, too many migrants arrive with the prejudices and ideological baggage one might expect. Polling by the Henry Jackson Society, for instance, found that 53% of British Muslim men believe Jews have too much power, while fewer than a quarter think enforcing Sharia law would be undesirable.
Al-Shamie senior’s admiration for Hamas is also far from unusual. While most British Muslims would no doubt abhor the murder of Jews, there is a dissonance in the fact that many of them are supportive of Hamas, which is dedicated to killing Jews. Clearly, immigrants need to be more thoroughly screened before they are admitted.
This reality undermines a central pillar of Britain’s immigration mythology. We convinced ourselves that the great danger was native prejudice against newcomers, despite the country’s exemplary tolerance. The far greater threat has been importing hatreds we had long tamed within our own society.
At core, Britain’s multicultural experiment is failing because we insisted on seeing the world in our own image. Rather than admit it, our leaders have constructed an alternative reality in which failures are repackaged as opportunities for cohesion, with the leaders of otherwise siloed communities uniting briefly to denounce extremists. But the problem is far more daunting, and possibly intractable, than our politicians are willing to admit.
This post is a shortened version of "British multiculturalism has failed", which appeared in Canada's National Post, 11/10/25.
Further reading: "'Allahu akbar!' in Texas - Hostage-taker was British Muslim" WWW 16/1/22.
Worth watching: "Douglas Murray discusses 'The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam' with Mark Steyn", WWW 31/10/17.
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