What Britain can teach the West about dealing with Islamism.

 

by Barry Rubin

 

Almost unnoticed in North America, three major victories have been won in the United Kingdom against radical Islamist forces. Collectively, they represent the biggest successes on this front in a decade and may constitute a turning point.

They include: the barring from the country of an extremist Hizballah leader, the government decision to break relations with a radical posing as moderate Muslim group, and the announcing of a new government policy on combating extremism.

First, the Home Office barred Ibrahim Moussawi, Hizballah's propaganda chief, from entering the country to address a conference at the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS).

According to a school representative, ""Had he on any previous occasion indulged in any racist incitement, he would not have been allowed to continue with his presentation, and were he to do so in the future, the same would apply."

Clearly, the school has a rather loose definition of racist incitement since the al-Manar station that he runs claims that the September 11 terror attacks, wars, and the poor state of the economy are all Zionist or Jewish conspiracies. It produced a drama claiming Jews murder children to make matzoh for Passover and Moussawi is quoted as having once said that Jews were "a lesion on the forehead of history." The station also helped channel money to terrorist organizations including Islamic Jihad.

All of this so impressed the U.S. Treasury Department that it gave al-Manar the title of "Specially Designated Global Terrorist Entity" three years ago. France and Germany banned al-Manar due to its incitement to racial hatred and violence.

SOAS must not have been paying attention.

These kinds of victories do not come automatically and, sadly, the massive information- and intelligence gathering apparatuses of governments don't seem sufficient to find out these publicly reported facts. That's why research groups like the Centre for Social Cohesion (CSC), which played the leading role in informing the British government and public in this case, are so important.

Yet the group's second success within a month was even more spectacular. Back on February 12-14, a pro-Hamas "Victory in Gaza" conference was held in Istanbul, organized by two Saudi clerics who had been supporters of Usama bin Ladin. But it produced a declaration urging jihad to destroy Israel, rejecting any peaceful solution to the conflict. In addition, they called for continuing jihad (read: murdering fellow Muslims, killing Western peacekeepers, and imposing extremist Islamist regimes) in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Little notice of the meeting was taken in the West, whose media usually largely focuses on propagandistic declarations aimed at the West, made in English and designed to show a combination of their grievances and purported moderation.

What made the Istanbul declaration important for Britain was the fact that one of the signers was Daud Abdullah. The problem was that Abdullah is deputy general secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain, a group which itself purports to be the leader of British Muslims and which the government has purported to be the proper, moderate interlocutor with that community. He is also a member of the powerful, government-endorsed Mosques and Imams National Advisory Board.

In fact, though, many of its leaders are radical Islamists, which makes the idea of its aiding the British government fight extremism to be rather ironic.

Abdullah's defense of his signing was basically to say that all Muslims must fight Israel and those who support it, but that doesn't mean all Jews. Of course, it does mean the United Kingdom and all its officers and institutions, doesn't it?

This is even clearer in point 8 which states the:

"Obligation of the Islamic Nation to regard the sending of foreign warships into Muslim waters, claiming to control the borders and prevent the smuggling of arms to Gaza, as a declaration of war, a new occupation, sinful aggression, and a clear violation of the sovereignty of the Nation. This must be rejected and fought by all means and ways."

Or, in other words, since the British government supports such action, Abdullah is calling for attacks on his nation's armed services. And we know, from experience, this means the kidnapping and killing of any individual members of the British armed forces.

Abdullah's defense was to say that this was a hypothetical situation.

Pressed by the public exposure of these facts, the British government asked the Council how it felt about Abdullah's statements and whether it would distance itself from them. The Council said it would never support killing British troops but would not criticize Abdullah. In response, the British government — to its credit — showed backbone and cut ties with the Council.

Finally, at the same time, a new policy was announced by Home Secretary Jacqui Smith. The theme was to focus on combating Islamist ideology as well as a call for Muslims to support not violence against the system but rather what she termed "our shared values": democracy, the rule of law, and the rights of women, homosexuals, other religions, and communities. She concluded: "We should all stand up for our shared values and not concede the floor to those who dismiss them."

Up to this point, the government had subsidized groups which might not engage in violence but do propagate radical Islamist ideas which inspire others toward violence. Or, in the words of Policy Exchange, the government has been, "Underwriting the very Islamist ideology which spawns an illiberal, intolerant and anti-Western world view."

The response to the new policy of Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari, the board's secretary-general, is that if Britain wants to combat the causes of terrorism it should condemn Israel for the "barbaric" "war crime" of its war in Gaza (a war begun by Hamas), which the Board supports.

The Board has generally, for eight of the last nine years, boycotted the Holocaust day commemoration because it says that Israel is carrying out "genocide" against Muslims. Its leadership has condemned homosexuality as unacceptable, blamed terrorism in Britain exclusively on the country's involvement in invading Iraq, and advocated a law that would — at least in its interpretation — bar criticism of Islam as religious hatred. This is the group that the British government has entrusted with preparing materials for Muslim schools.

Taken together, the three recent developments are of paramount importance in fostering a more realistic attitude and policy toward the threat of extremism and terrorism by the British government. That this was brought about not by a powerful lobby but by a small number of researchers who merely exposed and publicized the truth is all the more impressive.

 

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, Interdisciplinary Center, and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs. His latest book is "The Truth About Syria".

 

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

 

How and why Muslims riot in liberal democracies.

 

by Caroline B. Glick

Tuesday's violent riots in Umm el Fahm and the debate which accompanied them are emblematic of one of the greatest challenges facing not only Israel, but much of the Western world today. Far right Jewish Israeli political activists held a peaceful demonstration in the radical Arab-Islamist dominated city of Umm el Fahm in the Galilee under heavy police protection. Thousands of Arab Israelis supported by far left Jewish Israeli political activists reacted with violent rioting. And the media blamed the violence on the peaceful Jewish Israeli demonstrators.

Tuesday's demonstration, which was led by former followers of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane MK Michael Ben-Ari, Baruch Marzel and Itamar Ben Gvir was supposed to take place last December after the Supreme Court upheld the activists' legal right to march through the city. But the police blocked the it, claiming they could not guarantee the marchers' security. Only after again being ordered by the Supreme Court to the let demonstration to go forward did the police relent. But they limited the march to the outskirts of the city.

In accordance with the police guidelines, Tuesday the marchers were transported to the outskirts of the town in bullet-proof buses. 2,500 policemen deployed along Wadi Ara highway, and throughout the town to protect them. They were allowed to march holding flags and singing folksongs for a half an hour and then returned to their bullet proof buses. In the meantime, thousands of local residents standing on rooftops and crowding into the streets began rioting. They threw volley after volley of rocks at the Jewish marchers and the police protecting them. They cursed them. They cursed the police. In the end, some 15 policemen were wounded by the projectiles - including Inspector General Shahar Ayalon, the Deputy Superintendent of the National Police.

As far as the media were concerned, the fact that thousands of Arabs attacked the police and the lawful demonstrators was a non-story. The fact that these Israeli Arab citizens claimed to be personally insulted and injured because the demonstration "forced" them to set their eyes on their national flag was seemingly understandable. The fact that these Israeli citizens rejected Israel's flag while waving Palestinian and Islamic flags was neither newsworthy nor controversial. No one in the media asked the Arab rioters whom they felt threatened by. No one asked them why seeing Jews marching with the flag of Israel should provoke them to attack.

To the extent the media found a culprit, it was the Israeli demonstrators. They were "provocateurs" who forced taxpayers to spend millions of shekels to deploy 2,500 policemen armed with riot gear to the city. It never occurred to the media that Ben Ari, Marzel and Ben Gvir were not the cause of the enormous police presence. They were a danger to no one. The reason the police were forced to deploy so massively was because they believed that the Arabs would violently attack the Jewish demonstrators. It was the Arabs, not the Jews whom the police feared would break the law. And as it works out, they were right.

The media's coverage of the Umm el Fahm riot fits into an ongoing patter. Over the years, the local media have developed a code for reporting on Arabs - whether Palestinian or Israeli or foreign. And it is a bigoted code.

As far as Israel's media are concerned, Arabs cannot be expected to act like responsible citizens. They cannot be required to abide by the law like the rest of the country's citizens. As far as Israel's media and the rest of the political Left are concerned, Arabs are either victims or objects. They cannot be culprits or independent actors. Their will -- to the extent they have one -- is collective. No individual can be held accountable for his or her actions. And their will is reactive. All Arab actions are but reactions to Jewish provocations. Many in the US and Europe have expressed surprise and indeed mystification about Avigdor Lieberman and his Yisrael Beitenu party's strong third place showing in last month's elections. And there is good reason for their confusion. Lieberman is not an easy candidate to swallow for either rightists or leftists. Right wingers find his plan to make the Galilee and parts of the Negev part of a future Palestinian state absurd and wrong. Leftists find his call for all Israelis, including Arab Israelis -- to declare their loyalty to the state as a condition for keeping their citizenship absurd and wrong. And yet, due to the 15 Knesset seats he won from both right and left wing voters, Lieberman will serve as the foreign minister in the incoming Netanyahu government.

The Israel Left has demonized Lieberman as a racist for his positions on the Arabs. The anti-Israel lobby in Washington is already using their attacks to discredit the incoming government. But the fact is that fundamentally, Lieberman is little different from the Left which demonizes him.

Lieberman is a populist. He owes his popularity to the fact that he properly identified the political radicalization and increasing lawlessness among Israel's Arab citizens as the major domestic issue of our times. Lieberman is unique among politicians from both the Left and the Right in that he is the only one who is willing to confront the issue head on. And it is due to his readiness to discuss this issue that the public rewarded him with fifteen Knesset seats.

Like most populists, Lieberman is not a deep thinker. As a consequence, he adopted the bigoted framework of the Left for contending with the challenge posed today by Israel's Arabs. His idea of removing the Galilee from sovereign Israel and attaching it to a Palestinian state in Judea, Samaria and Gaza is based on the Left's bigoted assumption that Israeli Arabs cannot be expected to be loyal to the country or act as law abiding citizens. Lieberman's adoption of the Left's prejudiced perspective on Israeli Arabs has engendered a dismal situation where while the debate has now been joined on the issue of how to contend with Israeli Arab disloyalty and crime, the debate that has developed is nothing more than a dialogue of the deaf.

No one talks about the need to inculcate Israeli values of liberal democracy among our Arab citizens. No one talks about blunting the power of radical leaders like Sheikh Ra'ad Salah, who heads the Islamic Movement's Northern Branch or Arab parliamentarians who openly treat with Hizbullah and Hamas and side with Israel's enemies in time of war. No one talks about empowering Israeli Arabs who are loyal to Israel. That is, no one talks about adopting policies that could actually improve the situation.

And this is a tragedy because the situation is truly grave. Early this week a Hizbullah-controlled Israeli Arab terror group which calls itself the Free People of the Galilee claimed responsibility for the attempted car bombing at Haifa's largest shopping mall Saturday night. That bomb, planted in a car trunk outside the mall, was large enough to have toppled the three story mall and kill hundreds of people. Mercifully, it was discovered before it was detonated.

Since 2001, the same group has claimed responsibility for a string of murderous attacks - mainly centered in Jerusalem. It claimed responsibility for the massacre of eight students at Mercaz Harav Yeshiva last year. It claimed responsibility for the first bulldozer attack in Jerusalem last year in which three people were murdered. And it claimed responsibility for the murder of several individual Jews around the Old City in Jerusalem since August 2001.

Also this week, the Jerusalem District Attorney's office announced that four Israeli Arabs have been indicted for the attempted murder of an American Hebrew University student last month. The four attacked the student as he walked through the Jerusalem Forest on the way to his dormitory. They beat him, stabbed him in the cheek, and tried to slash his throat before fleeing the scene. And earlier this month, the police announced the arrest last month of another Israeli Arab on charges of spying for Hizbullah. The arrest of 27-year-old Ismail Sulaiman from a village in the Jezreel Valley is the latest in a string of arrests of Israeli Arabs on charges of spying for Hizbullah. Last September IDF Sgt. Maj. Louai Balut from the Western Galilee, who served as a tracker along the Lebanese border was sentenced to 11 years in prison for spying for Hizbullah. And of course, former MK and Balad Party leader Azmi Bishara remains on the lam after he fled the country just before being charged with spying for Hizbullah during the 2006 war.

Israel of course is not alone in contending with this challenge. Throughout Europe governments are forced to contend with the fact that increasingly, the greatest threat to the security of their general citizenry comes from their Muslim and Arab citizens. The only difference is that Israel alone is castigated as a racist state simply for suffering from the problem of Muslim extremism.

On Sunday Phillip Johnston published a column in the Sunday Telegraph critiquing the British government's new strategy for defending against Islamic terror. Johnston bemoaned the fact that the new plan pays no attention to the fact that most of the terrorists sitting in British jails as well as the perpetrators of the July7, 2005 bombings are British. Whereas the new strategy concentrates on the need to fight terrorists in places like Afghanistan, as Johnston put it, "There was not a single mention of the undeniable truth that the extremists who will actually carry out atrocities live among us and need to be confronted here and now."

Johnston argued that rather than ignore the problem of increased extremism among Britain's Muslims "in the interests of 'community harmony'," the British government should actively engage in "an unequivocal and enthusiastic espousal of British values of tolerance and liberal democracy."

That is, to contend with the growing radicalization of British Muslims, the government in London should end its current policy of appeasement of radical Muslim groups which is based on the bigoted assumption that Muslims cannot be expected to either abide by the laws or to integrate into wider society. Britain should instead embrace its own identity as a liberal democracy and require its citizens to abide by liberal democratic norms.

In Britain as in Israel and indeed throughout the free world, those norms are based on the understanding that the ability of a society to remain a free society is contingent on its citizenry's recognition that there can be no civil rights without civic duties. The Umm el Fahm riots serve as yet another warning of this fundamental truth.

Here in Israel we face the same choice. Either we encourage our Arab citizens to fully accept both the rights and duties of citizenship or we continue - through either populism of cowardice - to facilitate their rejection of our society. If we embark on the first path, we will safeguard our national identity as a Jewish liberal democracy. If we remain on the second path, we will imperil our lives, our way of life and our national existence.

 

Caroline B. Glick is the senior Middle East Fellow at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC and the deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post.

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

 

Western civilization and Islam.

 

 

 

The West has build up its worst enemy.

 

So we fed a small worm called Islam with undeserved honor, gave it weapons – then, Lo and Behold, it grew into a man-eating dragon. Now it demands that it be fed a diet of human flesh as if it deserved to be fed. Once fed the dragon of Muslims may sleep for a day, or a week but then it is back again, blowing up trains, markets and, if it can, whole cities with Russian suitcase nukes yet to come.  What can we expect from Islam ? Islam claims : "Islam was the first institution ever to advocate and implement human rights as universal equality. In fact, Islam promoted the universality of the human experience over 1300 years before the United Nations." The Dragon of Islam cannot be pacified and only a Dragon Slayer can solve the problem. Discover the Islam "Human Rights" with Wafa Sultan Just open :

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?

 

 

 

"Dialogue" with Islam and its Backlash.

 

by Raphael Israeli

 

This Pessach eve, of the year 2009, we are faced by announcements of the British government, to the effect that it has ceased its dealings with the major Muslim  Council of Britain  (MCB) , and by the Jewish organizations of France that they discontinued their “dialogue” with  French Muslims. In both instances, the reasons cited were the same.

 

Namely, the double game the Muslim groups were playing: on the one hand seeking “dialogue” with their partners, as a means of coexistence and of smoothing over difficulties in communications; but on the other hand supporting Hamas, which wants no dialogue with Israel. The non-Muslim parties in these “dialogues” were late in awakening to the reality, that Muslim culture understood “dialogue” not as way to facilitate rapprochement and understanding, by way of negotiation and clarification, but as a means to lend legitimacy to the monologue it wishes its partners to hear and to heed. When, after a few years of vain encounters, the non-Muslim participants finally understood, they withdrew  from that exercise of goodwill once they realized that  the other party did not respond in kind.

 

Some naïve minds in the West have come to believe that dialogue and negotiations with Muslim radicals can and will alter those attitudes and lead to coexistence between Muslims and their rivals. The problem is that dialogue has been treated in the West as if it were a real policy, whereas it is in fact a non-policy, designed only to fill an awkward vacuum and to make royalties like Prince Charles, and legislators, feel virtuous for “doing something.” But while Europeans have regularly entered a “dialogue” with Muslims in good faith, fully intending to find common ground with their often unruly Muslim interlocutors—for the Muslims, “dialogue” means something else entirely. For them, it signifies the submission of a lesser culture and religion to their own superior one, which they seek to impose on the others. Muslims hope to inspire in the Westerners and Israelis, conversion to an Islamic view of the world. Anything short of that is regarded by them as an abject “failure of dialogue,” and a signal to resort to threats of violence or acts of terrorism. They are well practiced at both, while the Westerners have literally become pushovers at this stage in their history. Except for the U.S., they hardly believe that anything is worth fighting over. Nor do they have a stomach for a fight of unlimited duration. They would rather capitulate than investigate in depth the meaning of tolerance, understanding, dialogue, and peace to the Islamists.

 

The problem today lies in the juxtaposition of a resurgent Islam on the one hand, and a self-deprecating West on the other, unsure of itself, its values, or even what it stands for. Its people have made a virtue of instant self-gratification, and therefore they invest next to nothing in the future—hence they have stopped having children. Their preferred way of life amounts to a “credit card culture.” They want everything, and they want it instantly. Never mind that their governments no longer raise sufficient funds from taxation to cover exorbitant welfare entitlements, or that a bleak financial future awaits tomorrow’s pensioners. In short, the West has become a disgrace to its own heritage in sharp reversal of its fortunes when at the turn of the twentieth century the Muslim Ottoman Empire was considered the “sick man of Europe,” and was therefore no match for a confident West. Former U.S. Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, was onto something apart from the obvious when he distinguished between “old” and “new” Europe—except that in their eagerness to grab some (necessarily short-term) economic benefits after emerging from Soviet control, the headlong rush of “new” Europe to join the EU, will inevitably contaminate them with the prevalent Western disease.

 

There is another drawback to this constant resort to “dialogue.” It lulls the  Western populations into believing that their governments are doing something constructive to avert violence, or threats of violence, in the future. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth, for this non-policy simply serves to embolden and concomitantly empower those Muslims whom Western governments have chosen to act as intermediaries with the wider Muslim community. Invariably, Western governments have elected these Muslims largely because they are the activists, and therefore are prominent in the community, while the governments comfort themselves with the injudicious belief that these figures represent “moderate” Islam. However, these Muslims have been living in Europe long enough to have learned to tailor their vocabulary precisely according to whom they are facing across the table. They speak the language of peace, reconciliation, and goodwill to Westerners, and reserve their true thoughts and beliefs for fellow Muslims. In other words, they have learned to “work the system,” admirably so. In effect, these “moderate” Muslim leaders gradually extract one concession after another from Western policymakers, rendering “dialogue” a one-way street. They enter each session with the full intention of testing the limits of the concessions they can extract, and it is a rare government minister who would risk disappointing them—or else the headlines in the papers the following day would be sure to inflame the Muslim community.

 

Herein lies the value of the worldwide Muslim penchant for overreacting to every perceived slight, real or imagined, by demonstrating their “rage” loudly and violently. Temperament comes into play here too, for unlike other peoples who experience anger or humiliation, many Muslims are either unable or unwilling to contain those sentiments. One has only to recall the Arafat-orchestrated “days of

rage” in the early days of the Intifadah against Israel, in order to understand that,

in sharp contrast to Westerners, Muslims make a fetish of celebrating their anger. Such an uncontrolled behavior is unthinkable in the West, but not because of lack of provocation, particularly since September 11. Funerals too are manipulated to vent wrath and fury, emotion, general mayhem, and impromptu rifle-shooting. The total and shameless lack of dignity, even at what should be a somber occasion, is jarring to western eyes. Bodies are held aloft and bounced along the route, in a manner that would be regarded as disrespectful to the deceased in other cultures. Bodies have been known to fall off the stretcher amid the melee, and other processions turning chaotic as was recorded for posterity in the case of Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini’s funeral.

 

The explosion of the Cartoon Affair in Europe and the Middle East in 2006, which occasioned many deaths, boycotts, rage and world-wide demonstrations by Muslims, because some obscure artist dared to depict, in an obscure journal,  Muhammed in derogatory terms, in itself not only points to the pathological sensitivities of Muslims, but also  to their obtuse attitude to others in their “dialogues”. When the President of Iran vows to eliminate the Jewish people and to wipe Israel off the map, none of those dialoguing Muslim organizations raises its voice in protest; none also protested when Christian churches were torched, as a matter of course,  throughout the Muslim world, or when the Joseph Tomb and the Jericho synagogues were burned and destroyed by Palestinians during the Intifadah. Only hurting the reputation of Muhammed matters, and justifies the use of violence, while the very notion of respect for other religions, simply does not exist. Therefore, dialogue is only made to instill into western minds the respect of Islam and its values, as the resolution of the Human Rights Commission, just adopted in Geneva, plainly attests. As more and more western and Jewish organizations are finally grasping  the meaning of “dialogue” for their Muslim partners,  they may also try, at long last, to make it  more egalitarian, reciprocal, and perhaps also efficacious.

 

 

Raphael Israeli

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

 

Europe's Shifting Immigration Dynamic Part I

 

by Esther Ben-David

 

1^st part of 2

Western Europe has gone through two major stages in its recent immigration history. In the first stage, European leaders misjudged the effects of immigration and, in the second, they miscalculated how hard it would be to stop an immigration dynamic.

Beginning in the mid-twentieth century, European countries have changed from net sources of emigration to attractive destinations for immigration. Today Muslims, many from rural traditional areas, comprise the bulk of non-European immigrants to Europe. Even those who have settled in cities retain a village mentality and are seen as backward by the business and cultural elites in their home countries. Moroccans who settled in the Netherlands and Belgium, for example, are mostly Berbers from the Rif mountains, not the Arab cultural elite[1] from Casablanca, Rabat, or Fez. These immigrants came to Europe in order to build railroads, work in the coal mines, clean streets, and do the jobs that Europeans did not want to do.[2] Both "push" and "pull" factors affect immigration. Push factors are those that lead the immigrant to leave his homeland while pull factors are those which attract him to a different country. Europe and other Western liberal countries exert a strong pull on immigrants. However, stopping immigration is not easy, if at all possible, since the same European liberal laws that attract immigrants also prevent states from acting to stop them from coming or, later, to deport them.

 

Background.

After World War II, countries such as France, Belgium, and Germany started to allow and even entice foreign workers to come. The economic boom in those countries attracted immigrants, first from poor southern European countries such as Italy and Spain, and then from the far shores of the Mediterranean, North Africa, and the Middle East. The United Kingdom attracted immigrants from throughout the British empire: Indians and Pakistanis came to Britain from the 1950s on, Bangladeshis from the 1970s. France, Germany, and the Netherlands also attracted immigrants from their former colonies. The host European governments understood these migrants to be temporary guest workers as did many of the migrants themselves.

The economic downturn in the early 1970s led European policymakers to realize that immigration was not always a positive phenomenon. Many immigrants were suddenly unemployed, but they did not go back to their home countries. As fears grew that foreign workers sought permanent residence, between 1973 and 1975, Western European governments instituted an "immigration stop," introducing restrictive measures to deter immigration and to put a stop to recruiting foreign labor.

This immigration stop had unforeseen consequences. Migration of foreign workers dwindled, but the migration dynamic nevertheless continued. Migrants residing in Europe could continue to sponsor their extended family's immigration and, indeed, relaxation of restrictions on family reunification encouraged further immigration. The time between the first proposals for a halt and their implementation exacerbated the problem as immigrants hurried to bring over their families, fearful that the doors to Europe would soon close forever.

Ironically, in the decades that have passed since the halt to immigration, more immigrants have come to Europe than in preceding decades. Indeed, by looking at the number of immigrants in various countries, it would be difficult to determine how far back the block had been implemented in practice. In the Netherlands, for example, the number of first- and second-generation Moroccan and Turkish immigrants has increased almost tenfold  since the 1974 halt.

Researchers have long sought to chart the immigration dynamic and to predict future trends. When Poland joined the European Union, forecasts of the number of Polish workers who would immigrate to the United Kingdom underestimated reality. The British government expected 15,000 immigrants a year from the newly-admitted European Union countries but instead approved close to 430,000 applications in two years, a figure that does not include self-employed immigrants who could resettle without applying for a work permit.[3]

Even when the trend is known, forecasts tend to miscalculate reality. A Dutch study from 1994, for example, thought marriage immigration had already peaked.[4] However, a study from 2005 by a Dutch government agency, Statistics Netherlands, shows that between 1995 and 2003, marriage immigration of Turks almost doubled, increasing from slightly less than 2,000 per year to close to 4,000. Marriage immigration of Moroccans in the same period tripled, increasing from slightly over 1,000 a year to about 3,000. This same study expects marriage immigration to peak by the mid 2020s, as second generation immigrants age.[5]

In Germany, while the Turkish population stabilized briefly in the 1980s,[6] it later increased steadily despite the 1973 check on immigration.

And a 1997 study by the Norwegian Statistical Bureau found that 50 percent of immigrants had arrived since 1989, and that 30 percent of the total immigrant community had arrived in just the past five years.[7]

And, according to the lowest available estimates, the number of North Africans in France tripled since the government started restricting immigration in 1974.

 

An Immigration Dynamic.

While North African and Middle Eastern immigrants to Europe initially focused on filling the labor market for short periods of time before returning home after a few years, after the immigration stop the new immigrants were whole families—husbands, wives, and children—who left their homeland behind to settle permanently in Europe. The arrival of families both changed the scale of immigration and the entire character of the immigrant communities. Immigrants now grew concerned about schooling, health care, and proper housing.

Families also changed the immigrants' attitudes towards religious and cultural values. Whereas single workers either isolated themselves or sought to experience the more liberal lifestyle of Europe, the arrival of families led immigrants to transport their honor culture and modesty standards to the West and to put into practice their attitudes toward women. And while temporary workers accepted basement mosques as a temporary solution to their communal prayer needs, with increasing numbers and the presence of families, these were no longer adequate. Immigrant parents brought their children to the West to give them new opportunities, but they did not want them to fall prey to Western temptations.

Immigration is a personal decision. However, once many people make the decision to leave their home country, the flow of immigrants takes on a life of its own. This immigration dynamic is hard, if not impossible, to stop. Immigrants choose to go to destinations with which they are acquainted and about which they have heard from friends and relatives who immigrated previously. Such destinations provide informal support structures and social networks. This leads to a situation where immigrants from a certain home area all congregate in a certain area in the host country, thereby leading to immigrant ghettoes. In the United States, for example, Minneapolis-St. Paul has become an unlikely immigrant ghetto for Somalis, and Los Angeles—"Tehrangeles"—is an immigrant destination for Iranians.

In Belgium, similarly, immigrants from the Turkish city of Emirdağ and its vicinity settled in Brussels and Ghent. [8] According to one emigrant from Emirdağ, it is common knowledge that family and friends live on the same street or neighborhood in Belgium as they do "back home."[9] In the Netherlands, many of the Moroccans come from the Rif mountain town of al-Hoceima; Bangladeshis, mostly coming from the northeastern Sylhet area, came to the United Kingdom and settled in the East London boroughs, particularly in Tower Hamlets. Pakistanis, mostly from Kashmir and the Punjab, settled in Birmingham, with another large concentration in Bradford. The immigrants who first came to the country set the way for their compatriots to follow. Pakistanis, Vietnamese, and more recently, Iraqis, are the largest groups of non-European immigrants in Norway. North Africans and Albanians make up the largest groups in Italy.

The more people emigrate from a certain town or village, the more likely it becomes that their neighbors or their neighbors' children will follow in their path. The immigration dynamic means that entire generations of children in villages and towns across the Third World grow up knowing that they are likely to immigrate in the future, either by marrying a cousin or by other means.

Europe today offers unique possibilities. It is much closer to North Africa and Turkey than other immigration countries such as the United States, Canada, or Australia and can be reached without air travel. Additionally, freedom of travel within Europe enables immigrants to start in the most accessible country and later make their way to their true destination. This is especially true with asylum seekers, who may arrive in Greece or Italy, for example, but then try to make their way to "easier" countries like Sweden or Norway.[10]

Technological advances have also changed immigration. Travel accessibility has transformed journeys of months or years into hours or days. Major European air carriers offer direct flights connecting Europe to the Middle East and Asia. Even after the immigrant has arrived, he can keep in constant contact with his home country: by phone and the Internet or via satellite television.[11] He can also return for summer vacations. Whereas immigrants of the past had little choice but to assimilate into their host countries, today, they can retain their native identities to the exclusion of the national identity of their new home.

In many cases, the immigrant "sojourns,"[12] living in both countries, setting up two residences and splitting his time between his new country and his homeland. Sojourning not only retards integration but also ensures continuation of the immigration dynamic since the immigrant's countrymen back home are continuously in touch and reminded of the wealth that immigration offers.

Immigrants tend to invest back in their home country, building palatial residences to show their success in Europe. There are entire neighborhoods in some countries that were built by emigrants who rarely live there: "Little Norway" in Gujarat, Pakistan,[13] or the "Belgian Neighborhood" in Tangier.[14] These neighborhoods usually only come to life in the summer when the immigrants return for annual vacations.

Investing in the home country also means less money to invest in day-to-day life in their new country. Immigrants might still be living in squalid conditions in Paris or Amsterdam, but their relatives in Morocco and Turkey can be satisfied with their success. Among Turkish immigrants in Belgium, there are those who borrow money to buy an expensive car for the summer trip to Turkey in order to show that they have succeeded in Europe. They then sell the car upon their return to Europe.[15] The "Belgian neighborhood" in Tangier was supposedly built with the savings and child benefits of the immigrants. [16]

 

Current Immigration: Family Reunification.

Currently, immigration to Europe is possible through several channels: through an employment or student permit for skilled workers, by marriage immigration and family reunification, or asylum and illegal immigration. Skilled foreign workers and students are considered the ideal immigrants though this immigration has a negative effect on their home countries. Third World countries need trained doctors, engineers, and academics to push their economy forward. The "brain drain" encourages further immigration and retards progress.

Family reunification is one of the most common ways to immigrate to Europe today. This means that immigration laws in host countries have transformed immigrant youth into virtual human visas. The commonality of cousin marriages to aid the extended family or to keep resources within the family encourages marriages between immigrants and family members back in the host country. The Western legal system reinforces tribal marriage patterns by giving families incentives to use marriage to work around the European immigration system. In Norway, for example, the proportion of cousin-marriages within the Pakistani immigrant community is greater than in Pakistan itself.[17]

Marriage immigration also perpetuates itself. Studies show that the age at which an immigrant woman first becomes a mother increases and the number of children decreases the longer her family is in Europe.[18] That is, a first generation immigrant would exhibit behavior closer to her native country while a second and third generation immigrant would tend to be more similar to the local population. Marriage immigration therefore ensures a continued high level of fertility among the immigrant population.

Many forecasts regarding the Muslim immigration to Europe expect that immigrant Muslims will eventually integrate into society. However, marriage immigration ensures that the immigrant population never progresses past the stage of first and second generation immigrants, frustrating integration. Also hampering demographic forecasts is the fact that many second generation immigrants prefer to marry spouses from their parents' home country. Studies among Moroccan and Turkish youth in Belgium show that they often prefer to marry spouses from "back home" rather than marrying a fellow second generation immigrant like themselves.[19] Boys, dissatisfied with what they see as the Westernization of immigrant women, opt for more traditional women from the home country. Moroccan immigrant youth visiting their home country are often accosted with offers of sex and money in exchange for a visa by local girls desperate to get to the "Promised Land."[20]

Girls, on the other hand, are dissatisfied with what they see as the lower-class behaviors of many immigrant men and their attitudes towards marriage and women and, therefore, opt for a more "open," gentlemanly, and educated man, also from back home. The market value of legal immigrant women is especially high.[21] In Norway, marriageable Muslim girls are sometimes called "gilded paper" or "visa."[22] Marrying a husband from the home country has the additional benefit that the wife can be quite sure her new in-laws will not interfere in her marriage. This is important as it is traditional among immigrants for the new couple to live in the house of the husband's parents and under their authority until they have children.

Esther Ben-David                 

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.                       ./..

 

Europe's Shifting Immigration Dynamic Part II

 

by Esther Ben-David

 

2^nd  part of 2

Current Immigration: Asylum Seekers.

Traditionally, asylum was reserved for those who fled persecution. Before the immigration stop, some asylum seekers came as economic migrants without bothering to go through the official process of being recognized as refugees. After the immigration stop, the process changed and many economic migrants started posing as refugees as a "consciously planned act of subversion."[23] Asylum seekers enter the country as illegal immigrants, destroying their papers and lying as much as necessary to achieve their objective—a new life in Europe. Today, those who cannot immigrate through marriage often choose the asylum process regardless of their situation back home. Only a minority of asylum seekers are quota refugees for whom the United Nations has recognized their status during a stay in refugee camps ahead of their travel to Europe. Most refugees enter Europe illegally, which requires paying smugglers and sometimes obtaining fake documents. These refugees make their way to the country most likely to accept their application. In recent years, Iraqi and Afghan refugees crossed several European states in order to claim asylum in Sweden and Norway, countries which have more liberal asylum laws. And many of those seeking asylum exaggerate or fabricate persecution claims creating an absurd situation whereby asylum seekers, claiming shelter in Europe, spend holidays on vacation in their countries of origin.[24]

Still, there are real cases of political persecution. Beginning in the 1950s, many Muslim students arrived in Germany not only to take advantage of the technical education in German universities but also to escape political persecution by secular, military leaders such as Gamal Abdel Nasser, bent on eradicating Islamist groups back home.[25] One of these exiles was Said Ramadan, son-in-law of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna, and father of Tariq Ramadan. Said Ramadan was granted asylum in Switzerland where he continued working for Muslim Brotherhood interests. The trend has accelerated into the 1980s and 1990s as Islamist activists fled intensified domestic crackdowns in Syria, North Africa, and Egypt. However, unlike many asylum seekers who sought to flee oppression, these refugees sought to replicate it, plotting the replacement of secular dictatorships with religious dictatorships. They cared little for the values of liberal democracy even as they sought to utilize it for their own purposes. European officials, perhaps for reasons of moral equivalency, granted such activists asylum without regard to what caused the persecution against them in the first place. Using their new European base, many of these Islamist activists continued in their struggle for regime change in their homelands, creating networks that at times became the basis for today's European Muslim terrorist networks. As one Egyptian official said, "European countries like Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, England and others, which give sanctuary to these terrorists should now understand it will come back to haunt them where they live."[26] The idea of "refugee" has degenerated so much that, during the war in Afghanistan, British officials granted asylum to Taliban fighters.[27]

Conversely, Islamic countries can also produce refugees who flee strict application of Islamic law, individuals such as homosexuals, converts from Islam to other religions, or members of persecuted minorities, such as the Ahmadiyya in Pakistan, or the Jews in Yemen who may face capital punishment for their beliefs or actions.[28] However, such a trend can encourage fraud. For example, after the Norwegian government granted automatic residence permits to persecuted homosexuals, fifty Iranian asylum seekers claimed to be persecuted homosexuals. At least one married in Iran and after receiving asylum proceeded to request family reunification. Several others reported doubtful stories but were given asylum anyway.[29]

Likewise, the decision to grant automatic residence permits to converts from Islam—even those who converted after arriving in Europe—encourages more abuse.[30] In Norway, one hundred Afghan refugees converted to Christianity after the rejection of their initial asylum claims.[31]

While European governments do reject the applications of many asylum seekers, this does not mean the individuals leave or are deported. Perhaps 80 percent of asylum seekers stay in Europe after the rejection of their application.[32]

There are many reasons why asylum seekers are not immediately deported. The West's liberal court systems allow for appeals and for further review after a decision by the first instance of justice. Death sentences in the home country, seen as inhumane by the Europeans, or refusal by the home country to accept its own citizens back can also prevent deportation. Others simply disappear, continuing to live in the country as undocumented illegal immigrants. The result is that those detained in camps for months or years before the completion of court processes are removed from productivity and learn to live at public expense.

In the years of legal battles, prospective asylum seekers are willing to do everything in order to ensure their stays. Children are kept as virtual hostages without knowing their own family abroad, without learning their original mother tongue, and without being able to integrate in their original homelands as a last resort for a residence permit on grounds of humane consideration should the asylum battle fail.[33]

Those who live illegally do not pay taxes and cannot enjoy the full benefits of a welfare society. However, as more illegal immigrants arrive in a country, pressure grows to regularize them by awarding them amnesty and residence permits. Though regularization deals with the humanitarian aspects of the illegal immigrant's situation, it also gives incentives for illegal behavior and further immigration. In Belgium, for example, illegal immigrants have protested in recent years for regularization. Such protests have involved squatting in churches and climbing high-rise cranes. This creates an irony in which state attempts to stop immigration are thwarted by institutions—such as churches—that are subsidized by the state itself. The Belgian protests are aided by pro-immigrant groups, many of which the state also subsidizes.

 

The Challenge of Stopping Immigration

European governments are aware of the problem. Since the immigration stop of the 1970s, there have been several attempts to halt or slow down the immigration flow. Some European governments seek to discourage emigration by improving the life conditions of the prospective emigrant in his home country or by trying to scare prospective immigrants through ad campaigns that show the horrors of life as an illegal immigrant. In 2007, Spain ran an ad campaign in West Africa warning Africans not to risk their lives in futile illegal immigration.[34]

Ignorance contributes to immigration. Researchers studying Turkish marriage immigrants who immigrated to Belgium found that children and adults growing up in Turkey in an emigration town, that is, a town where most of the residents either emigrated or wanted to emigrate, were unaware of the basic facts of European life. They knew about the high unemployment benefits but were not aware that basic necessities were much more expensive. One marriage-migrant interviewee admitted frankly that life in Belgium was not what he had expected. However, when he tried warning the youth in his hometown of the hardships of immigration, he was accused of wanting to keep new-found wealth to himself.[35]

The problem with both methods is that a European lifestyle is based not only on material wealth but also on the rights and privileges of a liberal democracy. Even if it were easy to try to create jobs and affluence in countries such as Tunisia—which it is not—it would be harder to change the fabric of the legal system in a liberalizing direction.

Several countries have also tried unsuccessfully to convince immigrants to leave their new homes by offering incentives and continued welfare support for those who return to their native countries. Two such programs in France, the first in 1977 and the second in 2005, ended in failure. Creating incentives for departure might also backfire by encouraging migration for the purpose of collecting the offered benefits and by convincing those in the home country that Europe is drowning in cash, ready to be exploited.

As many countries become aware that the long-term effects of a brain drain outweigh any short-term benefits from remittances, some have themselves begun to discourage emigration. The Algerian Ministry of Religious Affairs, for example, issued a fatwa (religious edict) decreeing that illegal immigrants who die at sea have committed suicide, a sin in Islam.[36]

Tightening immigration laws is an obvious strategy but one that is undercut by inconsistent regulations among EU states. Sweden, long the destination of choice for Iraqi asylum seekers, saw claims drop after it tightened its regulations although there was an increase in asylum claims in neighboring Norway during the same period. Tough marriage immigration laws in the Netherlands likewise encouraged the creation of the "Belgian Route," in which the non-EU spouse first comes to Belgium, using that country's laxer marriage-immigration laws. After the couple stay in the country for the minimum amount of time required by EU law, they move to the Netherlands. A recent EU Court decision, however, scrapped the requirement for a minimum stay and rejected any national restrictions on free movement.[37] Judicial activism compounds the problem when courts create new legislation by imposing their own opinions on elected lawmakers.

In two such recent cases, for example, courts struck down laws intended to prevent immigration. A court in Amsterdam rejected a requirement for immigrants from certain countries to undergo integration testing and to prove their knowledge of Dutch language and culture in their home countries before receiving a visa to the Netherlands for marriage immigration.[38] The high court in Belgium struck down a law preventing the children of polygamous marriages from immigrating to Belgium in order to reunite with their father and, thereby, opened the option for the polygamous spouse to do the same.[39]

As these countries are EU members, they also subordinate national law to European Union directives and to the decisions of the European Court. For example, in recent years, both Denmark and the Netherlands have passed laws limiting family reunification. In both cases, marriage immigration dropped significantly from about 60 to 38 percent in four years, 2001-05, for Denmark,[40] and from 56 to 27 percent for Dutch Turks and 57 to 23 percent for Dutch Moroccans over a five year period beginning in 2001.[41] However, in July 2008, the European Court prohibited member states from denying residence permits to non-EU spouses of EU citizens or residents.[42] This ruling caused a political crisis in Denmark, but it holds for all other countries as well, and in practice prevents them from stopping marriage immigration.

 

Conclusion

It will be far more difficult to stop immigration than it was to initiate the immigration flow. A unified European approach, slashing the time to process requests and achieve final adjudication might help to decrease immigration. Immigration to Europe might have developed differently with tougher, more restrictive immigration policies, but as long as Europe offers opportunities for work, education, and personal safety, and as long as it offers a liberal democracy with the rights and privileges such a lifestyle entails, it will continue to attract mass immigration.

The West has always been proud of its moral standard of protecting human rights and giving refuge to persecuted individuals. Referral to human rights has catalyzed immigration. For example, the right to marry is recognized as a fundamental right that in many European countries brings conveyance of citizenship. However, in a society where arranged marriages are the norm and forced marriages are common, the right to marry can easily place the law on the side of the aggressor who coerces somebody else to marry rather than the victim. Redefining refugee status by creating so many categories that fulfil it renders that status meaningless. Not only does it encourage economic immigration, it actually hurts those who truly need refuge.

 

Esther Ben-David is an independent researcher of Islam in Europe.

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

 

[1] Anja van Heelsum, "Moroccan Berbers in Europe, the US and Africa and the Concept of Diaspora," Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies, University of Amsterdam, June 20, 2003.
[2] Ural Manço, "Turks in Europe: From a Garbled Image to the Complexity of Migrant Social Reality," Centre d'Etudes Sociologiques, Facultes Universitaires Saint-Louis, Brussels, Belgium, accessed Dec. 30, 2008.
[3] BBC News, Aug. 22, 2006.
[4] Hans Van Amersfoort and Rinus Penninx, "Regulating Migration in Europe: The Dutch Experience, 1960-92," Strategies for Immigration Control: An International Comparison [Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science] (London: Sage Publications, 1994), pp. 133-46.
[5] Maarten Alders, "Prognose van gezinsvormende migratie van Turken en Marokkanen," Bevolkingstrends, 2nd quarter, 2005, pp. 46-9.
[6] Jorgen S. Nielsen, Muslims in Western Europe: Islamic Surveys (New York: Columbia University Press, Oct.1992), pp. 25-6.
[7] Unni Wikan, Generous Betrayal: Politics of Culture in the New Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), pp. 234, ftnt. 24.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid., p. 201-2.
[10] The Local (Stockholm), Nov. 29, 2007.
[11] BBC News, Aug. 16, 2006.
[12] Wikan, Generous Betrayal, p. 194.
[13] Ibid., p. 242, ftnt. 76.
[14] Hind Fraihi, Undercover in Klein-Marokko, Achter de Gesloten Duren van de Radicale Islam (Leuven: Uitgeverij Van Halewyck, 2006), p. 78.
[15] Hilâl Yalçin, Ina Lodewyckx, Rudy Marynissen, and Rut Van Caudenberg, Verliefd verloofd..gemigreerd. Een onderzoek naar Turkse huwelijksmigratie in Vlaanderen, (Antwerp: Steunpunt Gelijkekansenbeleid, University of Antwerp-University of Hasselt, 2006), p. 186-91.
[16] Fraihi, Undercover in Klein-Marokko, p. 78.
[17] Dagens Medisin (Oslo), Mar. 8, 2007.
[18] Joop Garssen and Han Nicolaas, "Fertility of Turkish and Moroccan Women in the Netherlands: Adjustment to native level within one generation," Demographic Research, July 18, 2008, pp. 1249-80.
[19] Ina Lodewyckx, Johan Geets, and Christiane Timmerman, reds., Aspecten van Marokkaanse huwelijksmigratie en Marokkaans familierecht (Antwerp: Steunpunt Gelijkekansenbeleid, University of Antwerp-University of Hasselt, 2006); Yalçin, et. al., Verliefd verloofd..gemigreerd. Een onderzoek naar Turkse huwelijksmigratie in Vlaanderen, p. 160.
[20] Fraihi, Undercover in Klein-Marokko, p. 54.
[21] Van Amersfoort and Penninx, "Regulating Migration in Europe: The Dutch Experience, 1960-92," pp. 133-46.
[22] Wikan, Generous Betrayal, p. 216.
[23] Ibid., pp. 39-41.
[24] Aftenposten (Oslo), May 15, 2007.
[25] Lorenzo Vidino, "The Muslim Brotherhood's Conquest of Europe," Middle East Quarterly, Winter 2005, pp. 25-34.
[26] The Houston Chronicle, Sept. 24, 1995.
[27] Lorenzo Vidino, Al Qaeda in Europe: The New Battleground of International Jihad (Amherst: Prometheus Books, 2006), pp. 46-7.
[28] See, for example, Andrew Hollin, "Dissident Watch: Mehdi Kazemi," Middle East Quarterly, Fall 2008, p. 96.
[29] VG Nett (Oslo), June 6, 2006.
[30] Nederlands Dagblad (Barneveld), July 4, 2008.
[31] Dagbladet (Oslo), July 18, 2008.
[32] Wikan, Generous Betrayal, pp. 39-41.
[33] Aftenposten, July 27, 2007.
[34] BBC News, Sept. 20, 2007.
[35] Yalçin, et. al., Verliefd verloofd..gemigreerd. Een onderzoek naar Turkse huwelijksmigratie in Vlaanderen, pp. 186-91.
[36] Adnkronos International News, Apr. 29, 2008.
[37] Metock and Others, Case C127/08, The Court of Justice of the European Communities, July 25, 2008.
[38] De Telegraaf (Amsterdam), July 15, 2008.
[39] HLN, July 10, 2008.
[40] The Copenhagen Post, Nov. 7, 2007.
[41] "Minder migratiehuwelijken Turken en Marokkanen," Netherlands Statistics, The Hague and Heerlen, Jan. 7, 2008, accessed Jan. 16, 2008.
[42] Metock and Others, Case C‑127/08.        ../..