> Unless you have a strong civic identity that aggressively assimilates and ensures respect of those civic norms, you have an inevitable clash that just becomes a question of scale.
I'd like to suggest multicultural cities such as Toronto as an example that preserving cultural backgrounds and integrating with the rest of society aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. You have a broad mix of people from (among others) European, East Asian, South Asian and Middle Eastern backgrounds here and while all of the usual discussions are alive and well (left vs. right, urban vs. suburban, immigration vs. bubbling), people's cultures are just not the main issue dividing people. You'd think that with a lot of Muslim immigrants, Canada would have larger problems with value differences, but guess what, most people are just people and want a good life for themselves and their families. Nothing new here, move along.
The point is that full-on assimilation isn't necessary. Celebrate shared values. Celebrate diverse backgrounds and differences, too. I don't have to tell a Muslim woman that she can't wear religious clothing, just like I don't like it if her husband tells her the opposite. I can just grab food with the two of them and discuss tech, ethics, religion and whatever, just like with regular people, because they are regular people. The kids just see a lot of different ways of people living their lives and learn that it's okay to be different.
> In your hypothetical, how exactly would this situation [Islamic Law / autocratic dictatorship] come about?
Recent history suggests that there is a template: a politician gets voted into office, gets drunk on power, finds a common enemy and sells it to the people, changes elections and eventually the constitution to remain in power, kills the independent press, persecutes opposition leaders and intellectuals with dangerous ideas.
Turkey and Hungary are well on their way. Russia has arrived. Iran and China went the revolution route, that works too, although probably requires more of a flawed system to begin with.
