This is the definition, as presented by Wikipedia.org
The term multiculturalism generally refers to an applied ideology of racial, cultural and ethnic diversity within the demographics of a specified place, usually at the scale of an organization such as a school, business, neighbourhood, city or nation.
Some countries have official, or de jure policies of multiculturalism aimed at recognizing, celebrating and maintaining the different cultures or cultural identities within that society to promote social cohesion. In this context, multiculturalism advocates a society that extends equitable status to distinct cultural and religious groups, with no one culture predominating.
Note the part about no one culture predominating.
Multiculturalism and Islam in the West:
From the late 1990s multiculturalism came under sustained intellectual attack in Western Europe largely, but not exclusively, from the political right.[citation needed] The reaction was more vehement than in North America, since it was associated with several other factors such as the return of explicit nationalism as a political force, the revival of national identity, the rise of euroscepticism, and concerns about Islam in Europe. The period saw the rise of anti-immigrant populism in Europe, which was uniformly, sometimes fanatically, hostile to multiculturalism. The debate became increasingly polarised, and increasingly associated with Islam and terrorism. The multiculturalism issue merged with the immigration policy issue. The most extreme rejection of multiculturalism comes from supporters of the Eurabia concept.
Recent history in Western societies
As a philosophy, multiculturalism began as part of the pragmatism movement at the end of the nineteenth century in Europe and the United States, then as political and cultural pluralism at the turn of the twentieth. It was partly in response to a new wave of European imperialism in sub-Saharan Africa and the massive immigration of Southern and Eastern Europeans to the United States and Latin America. Philosophers, psychologists and historians and early sociologists such as Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, George Santayana, Horace Kallen, John Dewey, W.E.B. Du Bois and Alain Locke developed concepts of cultural pluralism, from which emerged what we understand today as multiculturalism. In Pluralistic Universe (1909), William James espoused the idea of a “plural society.” James saw pluralism as “crucial to the formation of philosophical and social humanism to help build a better, more egalitarian society.
In the Western English-speaking countries, multiculturalism as an official national policy started in Canada in 1971, followed by Australia in 1973. It was quickly adopted as official policy by most member-states of the European Union. Recently, right-of-center governments in several European states—notably the Netherlands and Denmark— have reversed the national policy and returned to an official monoculturalism. A similar reversal is the subject of debate in the United Kingdom, among others, due to evidence of incipient segregation and anxieties over “home-grown” terrorism.
In the United States, multiculturalism is not clearly established in policy at the federal level. Muslim immigration to the U.S. is rising and in 2005 more people from Muslim countries became legal permanent U.S. residents — nearly 96,000 — than in any year in the previous two decades.
A prominent criticism in the US, later echoed in Europe, Canada and Australia, was that multiculturalism undermined national unity, hindered social integration and cultural assimilation, and led to the fragmentation of society into several ethnic factions.
Polarization
Although such policies often have the stated aim of reviving national unity, one result has been an increased polarization. Muslims in Britain or the Netherlands may occasionally hear that their culture is backward, that Western culture is superior, and that they are obliged to adopt it. In turn, overly-defensive reactions include an increased self-identification as “Muslims”, and adoption of Islamic dress by women and “Islamic” beards by men. Part of the Muslim minority is now hostile to the society they live in, and sympathetic to terrorism. In Amsterdam’s secondary schools, about half the Moroccan minority does not identify with the Netherlands: they see their identity as “Muslim”, and regularly express anti-Western views but, nevertheless, do not want to return to their historical homeland.
In turn society is increasingly hostile to Muslims: a survey showed that 18% in Britain think that “a large proportion of British Muslims feel no sense of loyalty to this country and are prepared to condone or even carry out acts of terrorism”. A TNS/Global poll showed that 79% in Britain would feel “uncomfortable living next to a Muslim”. There have also been notable tensions in Britain between established Muslim communities and newly-arrived Eastern European immigrants. A major attitude survey of teenagers in Flanders showed that 75% refuse to have a relationship with a black person, a Muslim, or an immigrant. Half want all immigration stopped, and 41% say they distrust anyone from another ethnic background.
