The freedom of religion is explicitly within a Western cultural and political framework.
For example, there is a long history of Islamic jurisprudence that also allows for freedom of religion - as long as Islam remains the 'established' religion, and other religions remain on a lesser footing. This is not obviously compatible with the level of separation of church and state in the West - but Muslim immigrants who might prefer a more theocratic system are obviously in the minority.
> have the Chinese population in Sunnybank abandoned their culture because they aren't clashing with the Anglo-australian population
Chinese civilization has had a markedly non-democratic political tradition for a couple thousand years, and many mainland immigrants lack a strong preference for democratic society. Similarly, Thailand has strong lese-majeste laws to protect the dignity of the king and royal family. These political traditions are pretty alien to the modern West, even though Westerners three hundred years ago would have found them utterly normal.
Culture is not just what you eat or where you worship, but encompass habits like 'How do we treat other groups?', 'How should we be ruled?', or even 'Is it morally acceptable to break laws (like evading taxes)?'
Immigrants are only allowed to act out certain cultural beliefs—the ones that don't threaten or conflict with the dominant culture.
I appreciate the comment, but I'm not sold at all. It's a stretch to say you can't have two cultures in a lawful society unless they have different laws or one of them is breaking them.
This is the first time I've really seen this argument, and it still feels like it depends on a particularly hard-line definition of culture if it asserts that a community has no culture if they aren't attempting to disrupt the equilibrium and establish their own nation-state.
While I can definitely see how political and legal structures can be informed by culture, necessarily including them as essential requirements is definitely not how culture or multicultural societies have been defined in any other interaction I've ever had.
Actually, the historical Millet system under the Ottoman empire went quite a bit further towards 'multiculturalism' under some dimensions, with different communities literally getting their own systems of laws.
But this strongly conflicted with the nascent notion of the unitary nation-state, much to the Ottoman (and Austrian) Empires' later detriment.
To be clear, I'm not claiming that there aren't multiple cultures in the West - just look at Amish or Hasidic communities as examples - just that they are still forced to abide by majority rules, which necessarily means that their cultures are somewhat abridged and shorn of their full representation. And note how small these communities are compared to the majority.
It's a rather different story in countries with multiple cultural groups with comparable demographic power, such as the former Yugoslavia, which was torn apart by these divisions.
Put under a different perspective, you can make a rather strong case that cities and rural areas are now different cultural zones in the US, and the intractable political conflicts over abortion, marriage, and even tax policy are byproducts.
The freedom of religion is explicitly within a Western cultural and political framework.
For example, there is a long history of Islamic jurisprudence that also allows for freedom of religion - as long as Islam remains the 'established' religion, and other religions remain on a lesser footing. This is not obviously compatible with the level of separation of church and state in the West - but Muslim immigrants who might prefer a more theocratic system are obviously in the minority.
> have the Chinese population in Sunnybank abandoned their culture because they aren't clashing with the Anglo-australian population
Chinese civilization has had a markedly non-democratic political tradition for a couple thousand years, and many mainland immigrants lack a strong preference for democratic society. Similarly, Thailand has strong lese-majeste laws to protect the dignity of the king and royal family. These political traditions are pretty alien to the modern West, even though Westerners three hundred years ago would have found them utterly normal.
Culture is not just what you eat or where you worship, but encompass habits like 'How do we treat other groups?', 'How should we be ruled?', or even 'Is it morally acceptable to break laws (like evading taxes)?'
Immigrants are only allowed to act out certain cultural beliefs—the ones that don't threaten or conflict with the dominant culture.