Would Europe be
Justified in Forcibly Expelling Muslims?Would Europe be Justified in Forcibly Expelling Muslims?
"Attacks on religious freedoms are going
mainstream...
...Perhaps it is fitting that it was French President Nicolas Sarkozy who came
to the defence of the Swiss, who voted in November to ban the construction of
new minarets in their country. Sarkozy's father was an immigrant to France, and
his mother's ancestors included Ottoman Sephardic Jews from Thessalonica.
Sarkozy's father abandoned his family and refused to help them financially.
Sarkozy grew up poorer than his peers and resented it. "What made me who I am
now is the sum of all the humiliations suffered during childhood."
He was, in other words, something of an outsider. It wouldn't be a stretch to
imagine that he might be predisposed to sympathy toward the millions of other
outsiders now trying to find their place in Europe -- the continent's growing
Muslim population. Yet Sarkozy reacted to the Swiss vote by urging that it be
respected. "Instead of condemning the Swiss out of hand, we should try to
understand what they meant to express and what so many people in Europe feel,
including people in France," he wrote in the French newspaper Le Monde. "Nothing
would be worse than denial." He urged French Muslims, who make up four per cent
of France's population and are more numerous than in any other country in
Europe, not to challenge France's Christian heritage and republican values.
Sarkozy, a populist politician, was simply reflecting widespread popular
discomfort about Islam in Europe. A 2008 survey funded by the Germany Marshall
Fund of the United States found that more than 50 per cent of respondents in
Germany, Italy, Holland, and France believe that "Western and Muslim ways of
life are irreconcilable." Another study, by the Pew Research Center, revealed an
increase in negative views toward Muslims and Jews in Europe from 2004 to 2008.
(Attitudes towards Muslims and Jews in the United States improved during the
same time period...)
...Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss author and
academic, blamed the minaret ban partly on his compatriots' fear of Islam.
"While European countries are going through a real and deep identity crisis, the
new visibility of Muslims is problematic -- and it's scary," he wrote in the
wake of the vote. But Ramadan also blamed his fellow Swiss Muslims for their
passive role in the debate, for not engaging with their countrymen. "I have been
repeating for years to Muslim people that they have to be positively visible,
active and proactive within their respective Western societies," he said.
Integration won't be easy. And there are many European Muslims and non-Muslims
who don't appear to want it. But it's difficult to imagine a stable and
harmonious continent unless this occurs. Those who want to ban minarets might
not want to acknowledge it, but Islam is now a European religion."
EUROPE'S WAR AGAINST ISLAM Works Cited:
Petrou, Michael. "EUROPE'S WAR AGAINST ISLAM." Maclean's 123.1 (2010): 22-24.
Would Europe be
Justified in Forcibly Expelling Muslims?