Riots in the United Kingdom, arson attacks in the Netherlands on Mosques and Churches, hostage taking and angst for Frenchmen, immigration worries across Europe, rise in Anti-Semitic attacks, dire prognostications over the failure of the European Social Model, Liberalism, Race Relations and multi-culturalism; demonstrations against legal failures to prosecute minority / racist crimes; fatwa's and proclamations galore; lots of hand wringing by politicians and very surprisingly – hard words by European Politicians. What is going on? Why is Europe – the bastion of liberalism and multi-culturalism failing to manage its minorities?
Last week, we discussed how Europe has handled its minorities in the past and we concluded that by and large, in the post war and late 20th century period, it did reasonably well compared to rest of the world, although Christian minorities, Jews, Gypsies, Muslims and Blacks were persecuted over the ages. We talked about how multi-culturalism and liberalism helped in promoting a reasonably good minority relationship, but it seems to be crumbling. In this column, we take a hard look at where the fault lines are coming from within Europe and whether some lessons can be drawn?
The problem with looking at Europe's relationship with minorities from an overall perspective is that it may well warrant an accusation of being too high level. I am conscious of this fact, but I daresay that some broad-based patterns can be detected. After all, with the European integration, ease of immigration, globalisation and similar factors, the level of European integration is rising strongly. Yes, many European countries have factors such as being former colonial powers, so the UK has a bigger relationship with India, Kenya and Jamaica, while France has a closer relationship with Algeria and Vietnam, while the Netherlands have ties with South Africa and Indonesia etc, while other European nations don’t have a colonial past to write home about.
On the other hand, Germany went looking to Turkey for cheap labour, while the UK got them from the Caribbean. Italy and Germany didn’t have that big a colonial hangover as their empires were short lived. So for example, the race relations issue is bigger in the UK for coloured people, compared to say France and Germany in significant ways. But we are looking at minority relations in the last decade or so. Mind you, some communities have integrated reasonably well within their countries such as the Indian and Jewish communities in the UK, Jewish community in France, Ossies (East Germans) in erstwhile West Germany, other ethnic Germans from other countries, Buddhists in Scotland, Chinese in the UK, Vietnamese in France and so on and so forth. Yes, they have had issues (like challenges to temple construction, feelings of insecurity, cases of racism, but overall and compared to some other minorities and some other non-European countries, these minorities have really integrated fairly well).
But the real challenge which Europe is facing is with its Muslim minority. According to one count, 20% of Europe is now Muslim. Another count says that according to 2000 AD estimates, the percentages of Muslims within the total population is 15% in Austria, 7% in France, 4% in Belgium, 3.6% in Sweden, 3.4% in Germany, 3% in Netherlands 3% in the UK , while the rest of the countries have less than 3%. In other words, they are a serious and significant minority within Europe and they are challenging the established order. If we take a snapshot across Europe, there are grave and significant incidents in Sweden, Denmark, Germany, France, Italy, UK and Spain. Some can be related to terror (such as in the UK and 3/11); some can be related to liberalism smacking right up against religious feelings (like in the Netherlands); some can be related to cultural factors such as forced arranged marriages (in Germany and Sweden), some can be related to the clash between secularism and religion (such as in Germany and France with the ban of veil) so on and so forth.
A column of this length is not the right forum to delve deep into these events, but suffice to say that the common element – the religious identity, is again the source of anti-minority Islamophobic feelings in Europe. How does this manifest itself? Unfortunately it does in rather strange and peculiar ways. The strong and very mixed reaction against Turkey's admission to the European Union is one. Second reaction is the slamming shut of immigration gates across Europe. The third reaction is how multi-culturalism is now being looked upon, namely as failed. The fourth reaction is more extreme, with the states actively involving themselves in religious affairs such as with the training of Mullah's in Mosques, setting up of government affiliated bodies to run Muslim affairs, setting up the religious curriculum in schools, targeting specific cultural traditions such as arranged marriages and veiling and the fifth and most violent reaction is to consider repudiating citizenship or deportation.
It’s a two way street. Integration needs the full support of the state, as well as strong minority push as well. How did they do it? What did some minorities do to be more integrated than some others? What did the state do to make these minorities feel more welcome or more “at home”? Why is there a rising Islamophobia in Europe? In the immediate nature of things, 9/11 didn’t help. A full report, "Islamophobia in the EU after 11 September, 2001" was released by the Vienna-based European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC), an official agency of the European Union (EU). I quote, "September 11 brought a greater sense of fear across the EU, where anxieties about the perceived threat from potential internal terrorists and reciprocal attacks in Europe became incorporated into those prejudices that were already identifiably existent in numerous nationally constrained manifestations of ethnic xenophobia." (Why don’t governments phrase their reports more clearly? Reading that made my hair hurt!) While it is tough to decipher this gobbledegook, it basically says that Europeans felt threatened by Islamic terrorists of the same ilk as the 9/11 ones and this translated into xenophobia and hate attacks on all Muslims (even the innocent minding-their-own-business ones. Actually, if one digs deeper, the roots of this fear go back to the 1970's rise of Palestinian terrorism (along with the other left and right wing terror campaigns in Europe).
Everything cannot be blamed on 9/11, the issue was there before, even if not in the same magnitude. Perhaps people don’t see this, but several parts of Europe are no-go areas for the state now, such as in Malmo in Sweden, the great urban blocks outside the cities in Paris, some areas of Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Antwerp and Utrecht, some northern towns in England etc. These urban ‘ghettos’ are rats nests of unemployment, religious fanaticism, drugs and crime, disengagement of Muslims from normal society and other dismal indicators. These people are locked into a vicious cycle of unemployment, which sometimes leads away from religion and into the clutches of drugs and crime. Quite a lot of the original inhabitants were brought over as cheap labour such as in Germany and the UK. Many others were the detritus of colonisation such as in France, while many were fleeing political persecution as in Sweden, UK and Norway and then there are many in the economic migrants and family reunion criteria. Be that as it may, many only got the manual and unskilled work and then the industry changed – such as the construction work in Germany or Textiles in the UK, so their lives collapsed, no alternative employment was present, women were very poorly educated and thus ghetto's were formed.
As a reaction and in the absence of any other societal framework of other citizens, they head straight to the mullah's, who give them a skewed, slanted and myopic viewpoint of Islam, as well as how to relate to and consolidate life in a Christian / liberal / secular world and cooperate with fellow citizens. With nothing and nowhere to relate to the European countries / society / ethics or framework, they fall into the trap. Result is disengagement and dark holes where the wretched fall into and only hate and weird ideologies emerge. What ever happened to the verse [109.6] “You shall have your religion and I shall have my religion.” (even if it is secularism and NO religion?) When they are totally disengaged from European Society and thoroughly indoctrinated by the mullahs who give them a frame of reference (be that frame as it may), why would they worry about obtuse and remote concepts such as "freedom of speech"?
Why would the murderer of Van Gogh think of such an esoteric concept such as freedom of speech or liberalism or even the vague concept of expressive art, when his frame of reference is a strange one where freedom of speech is circumcised by a myopic, bigoted reading of Islamic texts? (Anybody remember the Sheikh in Spain encouraging wife beating?) For him, the value of protecting this "freedom of speech" is zero, while the value of protecting his Mullah’s idea of Islamic ideals is worth his life! Hence a disconnect appears. Most of the Muslim population in the Netherlands reacted strongly against the murderer of the late Van Gogh, but the fact remains that there are people coming out of these hell-holes with such a kind of philosophy. Whites and other minorities emigrate out of these hell-holes as fast as possible (which we have seen before in the 1970's and 1980's as inner city flight) and so the isolation of these mislead wretches increases. This description sounds far too pessimistic and gloomy but for doubters, a walk in the ghettos outside Paris and in Malmo; walking down the gloomy streets of Bradford and speaking to these people will show this.
What are the governments doing? I am afraid nothing much, and by any means not enough. The reaction to the "official" Islamophobia report cited above was a screaming deafening silence. Has anybody heard of anything official or any concrete policies or steps which have been taken after this report? The reaction in the Netherlands shows that, instead of going inclusive, they are going exclusive as I explained above. On the other hand, what can the community do about these excluded youth? Perhaps taking a page out of the Indian and Chinese communities would help. Entrepreneurship, self help groups, multi-culturalism, appreciation / understanding of the European way of life, heading into professional ways of life, separation of religion from the Mullahs, a bit more of unobtrusiveness, education (both ways meaning the European ways as well as the ‘correct’ Muslim ways) the solutions are endless. An example comes to mind here, remember what Sheikh Tantawi, the Grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar, said concerning the veil issue in France? He said that the veil was the divine obligation of Muslim women, but added that that this obligation did NOT apply if the women lived in a non-Muslim country (like France). He said Muslim women had to obey the rules of the host country in which they lived, under what he described as dire necessity. So Muslims HAVE to follow the laws of the host state, out from a Sheikh’s mouth. Mind you, these things need the state to help out as well. Two way street, remember? The Catholic – Protestant wars took centuries to settle. I do not think Europe can wait for the Christian – Muslim issues to settle for that long.
All this to be taken with a grain of salt!
Last week, we discussed how Europe has handled its minorities in the past and we concluded that by and large, in the post war and late 20th century period, it did reasonably well compared to rest of the world, although Christian minorities, Jews, Gypsies, Muslims and Blacks were persecuted over the ages. We talked about how multi-culturalism and liberalism helped in promoting a reasonably good minority relationship, but it seems to be crumbling. In this column, we take a hard look at where the fault lines are coming from within Europe and whether some lessons can be drawn?
The problem with looking at Europe's relationship with minorities from an overall perspective is that it may well warrant an accusation of being too high level. I am conscious of this fact, but I daresay that some broad-based patterns can be detected. After all, with the European integration, ease of immigration, globalisation and similar factors, the level of European integration is rising strongly. Yes, many European countries have factors such as being former colonial powers, so the UK has a bigger relationship with India, Kenya and Jamaica, while France has a closer relationship with Algeria and Vietnam, while the Netherlands have ties with South Africa and Indonesia etc, while other European nations don’t have a colonial past to write home about.
On the other hand, Germany went looking to Turkey for cheap labour, while the UK got them from the Caribbean. Italy and Germany didn’t have that big a colonial hangover as their empires were short lived. So for example, the race relations issue is bigger in the UK for coloured people, compared to say France and Germany in significant ways. But we are looking at minority relations in the last decade or so. Mind you, some communities have integrated reasonably well within their countries such as the Indian and Jewish communities in the UK, Jewish community in France, Ossies (East Germans) in erstwhile West Germany, other ethnic Germans from other countries, Buddhists in Scotland, Chinese in the UK, Vietnamese in France and so on and so forth. Yes, they have had issues (like challenges to temple construction, feelings of insecurity, cases of racism, but overall and compared to some other minorities and some other non-European countries, these minorities have really integrated fairly well).
But the real challenge which Europe is facing is with its Muslim minority. According to one count, 20% of Europe is now Muslim. Another count says that according to 2000 AD estimates, the percentages of Muslims within the total population is 15% in Austria, 7% in France, 4% in Belgium, 3.6% in Sweden, 3.4% in Germany, 3% in Netherlands 3% in the UK , while the rest of the countries have less than 3%. In other words, they are a serious and significant minority within Europe and they are challenging the established order. If we take a snapshot across Europe, there are grave and significant incidents in Sweden, Denmark, Germany, France, Italy, UK and Spain. Some can be related to terror (such as in the UK and 3/11); some can be related to liberalism smacking right up against religious feelings (like in the Netherlands); some can be related to cultural factors such as forced arranged marriages (in Germany and Sweden), some can be related to the clash between secularism and religion (such as in Germany and France with the ban of veil) so on and so forth.
A column of this length is not the right forum to delve deep into these events, but suffice to say that the common element – the religious identity, is again the source of anti-minority Islamophobic feelings in Europe. How does this manifest itself? Unfortunately it does in rather strange and peculiar ways. The strong and very mixed reaction against Turkey's admission to the European Union is one. Second reaction is the slamming shut of immigration gates across Europe. The third reaction is how multi-culturalism is now being looked upon, namely as failed. The fourth reaction is more extreme, with the states actively involving themselves in religious affairs such as with the training of Mullah's in Mosques, setting up of government affiliated bodies to run Muslim affairs, setting up the religious curriculum in schools, targeting specific cultural traditions such as arranged marriages and veiling and the fifth and most violent reaction is to consider repudiating citizenship or deportation.
It’s a two way street. Integration needs the full support of the state, as well as strong minority push as well. How did they do it? What did some minorities do to be more integrated than some others? What did the state do to make these minorities feel more welcome or more “at home”? Why is there a rising Islamophobia in Europe? In the immediate nature of things, 9/11 didn’t help. A full report, "Islamophobia in the EU after 11 September, 2001" was released by the Vienna-based European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC), an official agency of the European Union (EU). I quote, "September 11 brought a greater sense of fear across the EU, where anxieties about the perceived threat from potential internal terrorists and reciprocal attacks in Europe became incorporated into those prejudices that were already identifiably existent in numerous nationally constrained manifestations of ethnic xenophobia." (Why don’t governments phrase their reports more clearly? Reading that made my hair hurt!) While it is tough to decipher this gobbledegook, it basically says that Europeans felt threatened by Islamic terrorists of the same ilk as the 9/11 ones and this translated into xenophobia and hate attacks on all Muslims (even the innocent minding-their-own-business ones. Actually, if one digs deeper, the roots of this fear go back to the 1970's rise of Palestinian terrorism (along with the other left and right wing terror campaigns in Europe).
Everything cannot be blamed on 9/11, the issue was there before, even if not in the same magnitude. Perhaps people don’t see this, but several parts of Europe are no-go areas for the state now, such as in Malmo in Sweden, the great urban blocks outside the cities in Paris, some areas of Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Antwerp and Utrecht, some northern towns in England etc. These urban ‘ghettos’ are rats nests of unemployment, religious fanaticism, drugs and crime, disengagement of Muslims from normal society and other dismal indicators. These people are locked into a vicious cycle of unemployment, which sometimes leads away from religion and into the clutches of drugs and crime. Quite a lot of the original inhabitants were brought over as cheap labour such as in Germany and the UK. Many others were the detritus of colonisation such as in France, while many were fleeing political persecution as in Sweden, UK and Norway and then there are many in the economic migrants and family reunion criteria. Be that as it may, many only got the manual and unskilled work and then the industry changed – such as the construction work in Germany or Textiles in the UK, so their lives collapsed, no alternative employment was present, women were very poorly educated and thus ghetto's were formed.
As a reaction and in the absence of any other societal framework of other citizens, they head straight to the mullah's, who give them a skewed, slanted and myopic viewpoint of Islam, as well as how to relate to and consolidate life in a Christian / liberal / secular world and cooperate with fellow citizens. With nothing and nowhere to relate to the European countries / society / ethics or framework, they fall into the trap. Result is disengagement and dark holes where the wretched fall into and only hate and weird ideologies emerge. What ever happened to the verse [109.6] “You shall have your religion and I shall have my religion.” (even if it is secularism and NO religion?) When they are totally disengaged from European Society and thoroughly indoctrinated by the mullahs who give them a frame of reference (be that frame as it may), why would they worry about obtuse and remote concepts such as "freedom of speech"?
Why would the murderer of Van Gogh think of such an esoteric concept such as freedom of speech or liberalism or even the vague concept of expressive art, when his frame of reference is a strange one where freedom of speech is circumcised by a myopic, bigoted reading of Islamic texts? (Anybody remember the Sheikh in Spain encouraging wife beating?) For him, the value of protecting this "freedom of speech" is zero, while the value of protecting his Mullah’s idea of Islamic ideals is worth his life! Hence a disconnect appears. Most of the Muslim population in the Netherlands reacted strongly against the murderer of the late Van Gogh, but the fact remains that there are people coming out of these hell-holes with such a kind of philosophy. Whites and other minorities emigrate out of these hell-holes as fast as possible (which we have seen before in the 1970's and 1980's as inner city flight) and so the isolation of these mislead wretches increases. This description sounds far too pessimistic and gloomy but for doubters, a walk in the ghettos outside Paris and in Malmo; walking down the gloomy streets of Bradford and speaking to these people will show this.
What are the governments doing? I am afraid nothing much, and by any means not enough. The reaction to the "official" Islamophobia report cited above was a screaming deafening silence. Has anybody heard of anything official or any concrete policies or steps which have been taken after this report? The reaction in the Netherlands shows that, instead of going inclusive, they are going exclusive as I explained above. On the other hand, what can the community do about these excluded youth? Perhaps taking a page out of the Indian and Chinese communities would help. Entrepreneurship, self help groups, multi-culturalism, appreciation / understanding of the European way of life, heading into professional ways of life, separation of religion from the Mullahs, a bit more of unobtrusiveness, education (both ways meaning the European ways as well as the ‘correct’ Muslim ways) the solutions are endless. An example comes to mind here, remember what Sheikh Tantawi, the Grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar, said concerning the veil issue in France? He said that the veil was the divine obligation of Muslim women, but added that that this obligation did NOT apply if the women lived in a non-Muslim country (like France). He said Muslim women had to obey the rules of the host country in which they lived, under what he described as dire necessity. So Muslims HAVE to follow the laws of the host state, out from a Sheikh’s mouth. Mind you, these things need the state to help out as well. Two way street, remember? The Catholic – Protestant wars took centuries to settle. I do not think Europe can wait for the Christian – Muslim issues to settle for that long.
All this to be taken with a grain of salt!
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