The Belgian Curtain: Europe after CommunismVaknin, Samuel
History
The Belgian Curtain: Europe after Communism
Vaknin, Samuel
Europe -- Politics and government -- 1989-; Post-communism -- Europe
Muslims - especially Arab youths from North Africa - are, indeed,
disproportionately represented in crime, including hate crime, mainly
against the Jews. Exclusively Muslim al-Qaida cells have been
discovered in many West European countries. But this can be safely
attributed to ubiquitous and trenchant long-term unemployment and to
stunted upward mobility, both social and economic due largely to latent
or expressed racism.
Moreover, the stereotype is wrong. The incidence of higher education
and skills is greater among Muslim immigrants than in the general
population - a phenomenon known as "brain drain". Europe attracts the
best and the brightest - students, scholars, scientists, engineers and
intellectuals - away from their destitute, politically dysfunctional
and backward homelands.
The Economist surveys the landscape of friction and withdrawal:
"Indifference to Islam has turned first to disdain, then to suspicion
and more recently to hostility ... (due to images of) petro-powered
sheikhs, Palestinian terrorists, Iranian ayatollahs, mass immigration
and then the attacks of September 11th, executed if not planned by
western-based Muslims and succored by an odious regime in Afghanistan
... Muslims tend to come from poor, rural areas; most are ill-educated,
many are brown. They often encounter xenophobia and discrimination,
sometimes made worse by racist politicians. They speak the language of
the wider society either poorly or not at all, so they find it hard to
get jobs. Their children struggle at school. They huddle in poor
districts, often in state-supplied housing ... They tend to withdraw
into their own world, (forming a) self-sufficient, self-contained
community."
This self-imposed segregation has multiple dimensions. Clannish
behavior persists for decades. Marriages are still arranged - reluctant
brides and grooms are imported from the motherland to wed immigrants
from the same region or village. The "parallel society", in the words
of a British government report following the Oldham riots two years
ago, extends to cultural habits, religious practices and social norms.
Assimilation and integration has many enemies.
Remittances from abroad are an important part of the gross national
product and budgetary revenues of countries such as Bangladesh and
Pakistan. Hence their frantic efforts to maintain the cohesive national
and cultural identity of the expats.
DITIB is an arm of the Turkish government's office for religious
affairs. It discourages the assimilation or social integration of Turks
in Germany. Turkish businesses - newspapers, satellite TV, foods,
clothing, travel agents, publishers - thrive on ghettoization.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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