THE PROBLEM OF ASSIMILATION OF MINORITIES
The ultimate answer to this question of unassimilated
minorities, Muslim and Chinese, is fairly simple. They must be assimilated – or, more
precisely, integrated – into the national community. The problem is how. The problem is the process.
Whatever shape that process may take, it will take consensus
on a least two points
.
First: on the
part of the national community, an effective willingness not only to accept but
to welcome pluralism. We should make it
perfectly clear to all that in this national community, historically Christian,
there is today, if there was none yesterday, a secure and honored place for Islam. At the same time, we should make it perfectly
clear to ourselves that our indigenous culture has been modified by techniques,
attitudes and insights derived from cultures other and older than our own;
specifically, from the Chinese culture; and that this contribution is truly an
enrichment, not a negation or distortion, of our national values.
Second: on the
part of the minorities, an effective willingness, not only to suffer but to seek integration. They must realize that the only way to win
full acceptance in a national community is to swear allegiance to it, an
allegiance as irreversible as the vows of marriage: “for better or for worse,
for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us
part.” And to make good this oath by deeds. And to be convinced that by this oblation,
they do not diminish but, on the contrary, enhance their particular cultural
personality, since they make it contributory to a culture still in the making;
a civilization that may be (who knows) the equal of that which began as a small
settlement in a fertile bend of the Yellow River and became in due course,
China.
