The dream of multiculturalism is over
The dream of multiculturalism is over
By David Rieff, The New York Times
(The New York Times, no less. Can you believe it?)
NEW YORK The attacks on the London Underground last month have compelled Europeans of all faiths to think with new urgency about the Continent's Muslim minority. Such a reckoning was long overdue.
Some left-wing politicians, like London's mayor, Ken Livingstone, have chosen to emphasize the proximate causes of Muslim anger, focusing on the outrage widely felt in Islamic immigrant communities over the war in Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But the harsh reality is that the crisis in relations between the European mainstream and the Islamic diaspora has far deeper roots.
Indeed, the news could scarcely be worse. What Europeans are waking up to is a difficult truth: The immigrants who began coming to Europe in the 1950s because European governments and businesses encouraged their mass migration, are profoundly alienated from European society for reasons that have little to do with the Middle East and everything to do with Europe.
This alienation is cultural, historical and above all religious, as much if not more than it is political. Immigrants who were drawn to Europe because of the Continent's economic success are in rebellion against the cultural, social and even psychological sources of that success.
Many immigrant Muslims and their children remain unreconciled to their situation in Europe. Some find their traditional religious values scorned, while others find themselves alienated by the independence of women, with all its implications for the future of the "traditional" Muslim family. In response, many have turned to the most obscurantist interpretation of the Islamic faith as a salve. At the fringes of the diaspora, some have turned to violence.
Politicians talk of tighter immigration controls. Yet the reality is that a Europe in demographic freefall needs more, not fewer, immigrants if it is to maintain its prosperity.
Prime Minister Tony Blair has just proposed new British laws allowing the deportation of radical mullahs and the shutting of mosques and other sites associated with Islamic extremism. But given the size of the Muslim population in Britain and the rest of Europe, security services are always going to be playing catch-up.
At the same time, it is difficult to see how extremists' grievances can ever be placated by conciliatory gestures. It is doubtful that Blair's proposed ban on blasphemy will have a demonstrable effect. (What would have happened to Salman Rushdie had such a ban been in force when "The Satanic Verses" was published?)
Meanwhile, the French government has tried to create a state-sanctioned French Islam, but its chances of success are uncertain. It will require the enthusiastic participation of an Islamic religious establishment whose influence over disaffected youth is unclear.
What seems clearer is that European governments have little time and scant knowledge about which members of the Islamic community really are "preachers of hate" and which, however unpalatable their views, are part of the immigrant mainstream.
The multicultural fantasy in Europe - its eclipse can be seen most poignantly in the Netherlands, that most self-definedly liberal of all European countries - was that, in due course, Islamic and other immigrants would eventually come to "accept" the values of their new countries.
It was never clear how this vision was supposed to coexist with multiculturalism's other main assumption, that group identity should be maintained. But by now that question is largely academic: The European vision of multiculturalism, in all its simultaneous good will and self-congratulation, is no longer sustainable. And most Europeans know it.
What they don't know is what to do next.
If the anti-Muslim discourse of Jean-Marie Le Pen's National Front in France or the Vlaams Belang Party in Belgium entered the political mainstream, it would only turn the Islamic diaspora in Europe into the fifth column that, for the moment, it certainly is not.
But Europeans can hardly accept an immigrant veto over their own mores, whether those mores involve women's rights or, for that matter, the right to blaspheme, which the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh so bravely asserted - and died for.
Figuring out how to prevent Europe's multicultural reality from becoming a war of all against all is the challenge that confronts the Continent. It makes all of Europe's other problems seem trivial by comparison.
(David Rieff, a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, is the author of ''At the Point of a Gun: Democratic Dreams and Armed Intervention.'' )
Posted by Ted Belman at September 3, 2005 03:53 PM
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BobW
said:
Only the New York Times can publish this nonsense.
Re the "some have turned to violence."; the violence is not cloak and dagger styles of violence and Europe knows more about violence than any area of Arabia.
Prepare a business plan. Determine the cost to field a terorist team and its reserves with a global operations capability. A two figure US dollar number with two commas is not enough. The security apparatus within the European governments is far from small. The Basques learned this and Northern Ireland once billeted 5 divisions and augmented units from Scotland Yard. The Arabs in Europe have larger funding and its traced to their petrodollar wealth. Otherwise .... .... violence by Arabs in Europe would be cloak and dagger.
The NYT's David Rieff is just another employed typist. Europe is not experiencing prosperity. They are propping up huge social support systems to prevent domestic insurrections. The Arab worker allows for this.
The "traditional religious values" of eg a Spanish Catholic are scorned in some areas of Germany. The violence isn't coming from Spanish expatriates.
Traditional multicultural attributes were acceptable. The Ukraine once had road signs also in Italian to assist the many craftsmen from Italy developing the area. Multilinqual signs at railway stations and airports are common aspects of multiculturalism. Not making sales calls on a national holiday is an example of quality multiculturalism. There are many other examples.
Typist Rieff scribbles "European governments have ...scant knowledge...". Those governments have substantial knowledge and as soon as ready, the public will learn what is already going on. Rieff probably does not realize this same "problem" also affected Saudi Arabia. It was France's GIGN invited into Saudi Arabia to end a 2 week seige of the Grand Mosque in Mecca in 1979. Saudi Arabia invited the French in even though they were infidels.
The Europeans know what to do. They are following the Americans - slowly reduce living standards and move away from Arab oil.
Kol tuv,
BobW
Posted by: BobW on September 4, 2005 05:04 AM
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The dream of multiculturalism is over
By David Rieff, The New York Times
(The New York Times, no less. Can you believe it?)
NEW YORK The attacks on the London Underground last month have compelled Europeans of all faiths to think with new urgency about the Continent's Muslim minority. Such a reckoning was long overdue.
Some left-wing politicians, like London's mayor, Ken Livingstone, have chosen to emphasize the proximate causes of Muslim anger, focusing on the outrage widely felt in Islamic immigrant communities over the war in Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But the harsh reality is that the crisis in relations between the European mainstream and the Islamic diaspora has far deeper roots.
Indeed, the news could scarcely be worse. What Europeans are waking up to is a difficult truth: The immigrants who began coming to Europe in the 1950s because European governments and businesses encouraged their mass migration, are profoundly alienated from European society for reasons that have little to do with the Middle East and everything to do with Europe.
This alienation is cultural, historical and above all religious, as much if not more than it is political. Immigrants who were drawn to Europe because of the Continent's economic success are in rebellion against the cultural, social and even psychological sources of that success.
Many immigrant Muslims and their children remain unreconciled to their situation in Europe. Some find their traditional religious values scorned, while others find themselves alienated by the independence of women, with all its implications for the future of the "traditional" Muslim family. In response, many have turned to the most obscurantist interpretation of the Islamic faith as a salve. At the fringes of the diaspora, some have turned to violence.
Politicians talk of tighter immigration controls. Yet the reality is that a Europe in demographic freefall needs more, not fewer, immigrants if it is to maintain its prosperity.
Prime Minister Tony Blair has just proposed new British laws allowing the deportation of radical mullahs and the shutting of mosques and other sites associated with Islamic extremism. But given the size of the Muslim population in Britain and the rest of Europe, security services are always going to be playing catch-up.
At the same time, it is difficult to see how extremists' grievances can ever be placated by conciliatory gestures. It is doubtful that Blair's proposed ban on blasphemy will have a demonstrable effect. (What would have happened to Salman Rushdie had such a ban been in force when "The Satanic Verses" was published?)
Meanwhile, the French government has tried to create a state-sanctioned French Islam, but its chances of success are uncertain. It will require the enthusiastic participation of an Islamic religious establishment whose influence over disaffected youth is unclear.
What seems clearer is that European governments have little time and scant knowledge about which members of the Islamic community really are "preachers of hate" and which, however unpalatable their views, are part of the immigrant mainstream.
The multicultural fantasy in Europe - its eclipse can be seen most poignantly in the Netherlands, that most self-definedly liberal of all European countries - was that, in due course, Islamic and other immigrants would eventually come to "accept" the values of their new countries.
It was never clear how this vision was supposed to coexist with multiculturalism's other main assumption, that group identity should be maintained. But by now that question is largely academic: The European vision of multiculturalism, in all its simultaneous good will and self-congratulation, is no longer sustainable. And most Europeans know it.
What they don't know is what to do next.
If the anti-Muslim discourse of Jean-Marie Le Pen's National Front in France or the Vlaams Belang Party in Belgium entered the political mainstream, it would only turn the Islamic diaspora in Europe into the fifth column that, for the moment, it certainly is not.
But Europeans can hardly accept an immigrant veto over their own mores, whether those mores involve women's rights or, for that matter, the right to blaspheme, which the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh so bravely asserted - and died for.
Figuring out how to prevent Europe's multicultural reality from becoming a war of all against all is the challenge that confronts the Continent. It makes all of Europe's other problems seem trivial by comparison.
(David Rieff, a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, is the author of ''At the Point of a Gun: Democratic Dreams and Armed Intervention.'' )
Posted by Ted Belman at September 3, 2005 03:53 PM