Food for Thought: Islam in Europe

[Lestat]

Two interesting articles from the Economist
The West and Islam - Tales from Eurabia
Special report: Islam, America and Europe - Look out, Europe, they say

[Fiona]

Does this article address colonial history at all? I didn't see it, if it did. But I do think that is a very important difference between America and at least some parts of Europe, in relation to immigrants.

[Lestat]

It might be for France & the UK, and to a lesser extent for Spain & Holland. But a large part of immigrants (and I'm speaking for Belgium, and to a lesser extent Holland and Germany) came as "guestworkers", mainly Moroccans & Turks. Those countries have no colonial history there but problems are remarkably similar.

I think that colonial history only plays a role as far as it determines to a certain extent the origin of the migrants, but apart from that, especially where Islam is concerned. Belgium has no colonial history in the Arab world but has many of the same problems as France, though to a lesser extent (when it rains in Paris, it drizzles in Brussels as the proverb goes).

Also, part of the whole animosity (though to a lesser extent) towards immigrants existed priviously in Belgium to such currently non-suspect nationalities as the Italians.

It is really a cultural & migration problem, and in as far as colonialism has some effect on that, it plays a role, but I don't believe a core role.

[Chimaera182]

Many European terrorists were either relatively well-off or apparently well-integrated. The Muslims who torched France's suburbs last year were the ones who seldom attend mosques. First-generation immigrants (with the strongest ties to the Muslim world) seem to be less radical than their European-educated sons and daughters.

Yeah, um, something about that piqued my interest, but I dunno what it was anymore. Something about how those so-called "radical Muslims" aren't exactly adhereing to the teachings of Muhammad.

Anyway, I think Europe's stance--as indicated in those articles--might be one more of strained patience than anything else. Who is the U.S. to tell Europeans what to do about anything? The U.S. is so busy telling Europe what it's doing wrong--like the Soviet issue, as one example one of those articles listed--that it's just causing friction. If all your boss ever did was tell you what you were doing wrong (don't misconstrue, I'm not saying the U.S. is boss, just making an example), wouldn't you be pretty annoyed, too?

[C Elegans]

I am not sure what in the articles you'd like us to comment on, Lestat. Did you have something specific in mind?
I skimmed through both of them, and as far as I could see, they seemed to deal with what is a general difference between the EU and the US in immigration policy. The articles were focused at muslims, but the issues are more or less the same for any group of immigrants from another culture. Generally I think it's not so good to view "muslims" as a group, since a muslim from Somalia usually differs radically from a muslim from Malaysia. The regional differences are so large, so when it comes to integration into Western society "muslims" should not be viewed as a homogenous group. I could not find anything special in the articles that motivivated a view of muslims as a homogenous group, but maybe there was something I missed.