More confusion on Multiculturalism in Sweden

It looks like the backlash trend against multiculturalism in Europe continues, as is evident from these comments Selimovic, a liberal candidate for Parliament. He argues that multiculturalism, as a political ideology, cements identities and encourages differences, leading to extremists becoming seen as the "proper" spokespersons for different ethnic communities (he's actually thinking about Muslims here). Thus, moderate forces are marginalized, he concludes. The critique is very similar to Neil Bissoondath's critique of Canadian multiculturalism in the mid -90s.

But I feel that Selimovic is a series of incorrect assumptions that finally leads him to flawed to conclusions. First of all, the reason that moderate forces within ethnic communities (in this case Muslims) have been marginalized, is not because of multiculturalism as a political ideology, but rather because who the gatekeepers to access to public space are. In this case, we're talking about the Swedish media and the Swedish political parties, both of which are dominated, in the higher echelons, but ethnic Swedish middle class people who know very little about the ethnic communities around them. I would hypothesize that they have invited whomever they think fits their own stereotypes about the ethnic "others", people who can be visibly easily identified as not ethnic Swedes and (preferably) have opinons that also come across as fairly foreign. To what extent such people actually represent the points of view of the people they are supposed to represent is never investigated properly, at least this is my impression.

I'm also kind of curious about how multiculturalism forms a coherent "political ideology". While it is true that many in public space, both politicians, scholars and others, too often engage in essentialist assumptions about identity, there is really nothing in multiculturalism itself that makes this a requirement, as far as I can tell. Rather, it simply recognizes that contemporary societies are ethnically diverse, and that this matters in politics.

I'm also kind of curious about what policy alternative Selimovic and his Liberal party sees to multiculturalism? The article speaks about emphasizing "commonalities, dialogue and expectations", but say little about any practical policies. And why areethnic differences seen as so problematic? They exist, why shouldn't they be acknowledged and accepted?