Multicultural Issues

Multicultural include a wide range of claims involving culture, religion, language, ethnicity, nationality, and race. Culture is the most important element for recognition and is related to multicultural education which is a demand not only for an immigrants group's actual culture but also for the history of group subordination (Gooding-Williams 1998). Different ethnic groups ask from state authorities to have special treatment, exemptions from generally applicable law and assistance to do different things than the majority of inhabitants do. Usually these are religious exemptions, amendments of state school books; funding minority language schools, facilitate ethnic associations and celebrations, representation in government bodies, recognition

According to Huntington , religion is argued to play a crucial role in cultural diversity and is highly dangerous to the stability of the state. Earlier concerns about social cohesion and security in multicultural societies have, in many ways, coalesced with concerns around countering religious radicalism and/or religious extremism. It is a fact that in areas where there is an indigenous white and historically Christian population alongside religious minority groups there exist a kind of parallel living without meaningful interaction between them . These led gradually to ghettoization and exacerbate racist behavior which disrupts the cohesion and puts the State in a constant turmoil. Representative example is ethnic and religious diversity of former Yugoslavia where multicultural diversities weren’t able to maintain the coherence of the scattered ethnic and religious region groups and led in war conflicts, secession and autonomy at areas where natives had common religion, language and national

This political attitude favors immigration and makes the racial and cultural identity of immigrants an important factor at least for voting exploitation. Due to the huge number of immigrants settled in western societies the last decade, States are forced to implement policies for a gradual racial and political convergence and affiliation . According to the European Consortium for Political Research workshops in 2007 at Helsinki about Political Representation of Immigrants and Minorities, liberal democracies must be emphasized in a strategic perspective toward minority representation, from voter preferences to parliamentary behavior. More specifically it focus on the growing politicization of ethnicity in these democracies, which they explain as “the emergence of ethnic minorities as political actors – as community activists, voters, candidates, and increasingly, as elected representatives – who at least to some extent express their ethnicity through their political projects.” Subsequently the different policy objectives of minorities strengthens pluralism and diversity and undermines state unity. Each ethnic minority group serves selfish interests which do not promote the assimilation and the acceptance of the new national identity of the host