Immigratiom/demographics

Ancient Grudge

Its all in this life
Joined
Jun 28, 2002
Messages
2,306
Location
(S)hatfield,England
the Telegraph said:
France, wrote Luigi Barzini, wouldn't be the great and endearing country that it is, la lumière du monde, if its quarrelsome people had not been "moulded down the centuries by antagonisms and tensions between tribes, clans, cliques, classes, coteries, guilds, camarillas, sects, parties, factions, regions..." The French are ever at the barricades.

Last week the barricades were at the prime minister's office, the Matignon, where the government was discussing the awkward business of France's proposed new law designed to ban the Muslim headscarf from schools. The Bill, portentously named "Application of the Principle of Secularity", will go to the National Assembly on Wednesday, with a peppy addition to ban beards from schools as well.

Dominique de Villepin, the foreign minister, gravely explained that the law is not aimed at any particular minority, community or religion, though there is, he said, some difficulty in making the essential tolerance of it clear to Arab countries.

Domenica Perben, the justice minister, felt the whole thrust of the issue revolved around the equality of men and women - which clears up why the French may be forcibly shaving prematurely mature Sikh schoolboys: they are a gender offset for de-scarfed female Muslims.

France is facing the problem that dare not speak its name. Though French law prohibits the census from any reference to ethnic background or religion, many demographers estimate that as much as 20-30 per cent of the population under 25 is now Muslim. The streets, the traditional haunt of younger people, now belong to Muslim youths. In France, the phrase "les jeunes" is a politically correct way of referring to young Muslims.

Given current birth rates, it is not impossible that in 25 years France will have a Muslim majority. The consequences are dynamic: is it possible that secular France might become an Islamic state?

The situation is not dissimilar elsewhere in the EU. Europeans may at some young point in the 21st century have to decide whether they wish to retain the diluted but traditional Judaeo-Christian culture of their minority or have it replaced by the Islamic culture of the majority.

In theory, the cultural and legal assimilation of Europe's Muslims would be the ideal. This was supposed to be the notion behind the vision of the French interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, of a "French church of Islam" with homegrown imams.

But knowledgeable observers say his "moderate" Council of Muslims has made radical Islam the government-sanctioned norm for all Muslims.

For Islamists, assimilation is contamination since, in Professor Bernard Lewis's words, "Muslims must not sojourn in the land of the infidel". Intermarriage should be another route to assimilation, though in France this usually involves an Islamic male and often the wife converts to Islam.

Meanwhile, the state of Christendom in France is perilous. Catholics may not have reached the secular nirvana of the Church of England's working party that declared the Sunday Sabbath redundant, but French Catholicism, except for little pools of the faithful, is taken with the notion that their Church will be borne forward only if the next Pope is ready to "dialogue" with Islam - a code word that augurs dilution of the faith.

Currently, Islamists are only a fraction of France's Muslim population. In last week's demonstrations against the headscarf law, only 20,000 people turned out. But as in all radical movements, the young are the driving force. As their numbers increase, the militancy of Islam is likely to increase as well.

Europe's chickens are coming home to roost. The Great Powers used the Commonwealth or La Francophonie to continue the fiction of Empire. Large numbers of people were admitted mainly from North Africa.

The borders of mainland France seemed extended to include Algeria. Guest workers arrived to satisfy needs for cheap labour. Unloved by their host country, they were marginalised in shabby living conditions, with no attempt made to assimilate them. Political refugees and asylum seekers moved in.

Early arrivals, such as the White Russians or the Ayatollah Khomeini and his supporters, never intended to assimilate. They were sitting out bad weather before returning home. More recent ones, who arrived because of Nato policies in the Balkans, have been greeted with hostility and distrust.

European countries are not organically immigrant societies. The groups that went to America in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries did so specifically to become Americans. They wanted to shed their past and, within a generation, they did. America's emphasis today on faith and God is just an echo of the founding Pilgrims for whom Christianity was central.

Their beliefs were reinforced by many Christian groups, from Baptists to Mennonites, all in search of religious freedom. These founding fathers decreed separation of church and state, not to make sure the nation was secular, as in France, but to make sure no state religion could interfere with religious freedom.

European countries have none of this melting-pot principle. You cannot become German or Italian with the same ease with which you become American. Also, into this very different European environment came a very different sort of immigrant - people who had no interest in assimilation at all.

They came as settlers, wanting to establish their own communities; at best they favoured a merger - at worst, a takeover. Their approach was nurtured by notions of multiculturalism, a creed appealing to intellectuals, administrators and enforcers, but having almost zero appeal to the home population.

The cultural abrasions that developed, especially between the rapidly growing Muslim community and the French, became the problem that could not be talked about. All respectable political parties, journalists and academics felt it too volatile and far too politically incorrect. The field was abandoned to extreme Right-wingers and nativists who, by default, established the unpleasant tone of the debate and became exclusive owners of a subject affecting the whole nation.

In the absence of openness, the government's response was a cover-up - or, rather, an uncovering: to outlaw Muslim headscarves, shave beards worn for reasons of faith, or ban crucifixes if too large. In Britain, some school Nativity plays were forbidden.

There seemed to be a genuine belief among governments that they could solve this problem by violating Western traditions of religious freedom and by outlawing their own cultural traditions. Far from alleviating the situation, this only aggravated it. Worse, it gave fodder to the extreme Right.

Tribal friction has only two solutions: groups will either unite in the manner of Normans and Saxons, melding into a society that may have different religious practices but subscribes to the same laws and values - in which case headscarves, beards and demographics don't matter a fig. Or they will follow the pattern of warring tribes throughout history.

The question is not whether French and Muslims can co-exist with each other so long as Muslim schoolgirls are bareheaded. Rather, it is the fundamental question of whether Muslim groups will become part of the French nation. This is not one of those old "querelles gauloises" that Barzini so loved. It is the fundamental dilemma of the new century.

Other countries such as Belgium, Holland and Germany have this 'problem' as well. What do you think will happen? A spate of Kosovo's? Nothing?

If you think that there is an issue, what do you think the governments of these countries will do, if anything? Will the local population radicalise and turn to the extreme right wing parties (Which although small are growing and gaining more influence)? Would we see an increased level of migration by the locals, for instance in the UK people heading to Australia, Canada, America and New Zealand?

If you think that this is a non issue? Why? What do you think will happen?
 
Wonderful topic. My only regret is because this board has already tackled the issue, that some really intelligent people might be no longer willing to fully articulate what they think.

Boiled down, France's cultural future is uncertain. It's going to change, yes, but where and how and when is a mystery. What makes the immigration problem unique for Europe however, is that it's the young people who want to separate themseleves instead of their parents. Regularly we're used to it being the other way around: the parents' not wanting to integrate while the second generation is becoming nationalized out from under them and the third generation completing the process (because the first generation) no longer has any say. But looking at everything, right now we're seeing a second generation seperation away what we often called the model of immigration. Its' the youths who are becoming "Islamist" while the parents' kept silent just trying to be make money and survive.

Seriously? Based on the American White-African American model, I would just say that European countries' interaction with their Muslim youth for the most part depends on their education, their jobs, their dependence on the majority, whom they become friends with as they are growing up, culture sharing, and on their perceived social mobility. With an absense of those things, what will probably happen is the group beginning to act militant. It's a post-1960s world and cultural / religion emphasis and subsequent discrimination will become inevitable. Nothing in particular is seriously certain for the future yet though. Often times ones' social mobility changes through various events like world wars, nationalisms, patriotisms, France abandoning its sole concept of being french by believing in one secular agenda, genocides, hitler-isms (x-x ), minority politicians, and so forth. I might not even be adding anything substantial. The future all depends on how the two main cultural groups interact with each other, and how YOU interact with them might not make a difference.

(The point is this isn't anything new. It's happened a bunch of times before. But just because it happened before doesn't mean it will repeat itself in exactly the same way..) edit: I want to point out that I also might be over simplifying things. For every potential islamist neighborhood, I'm sure there are French young Muslims that are really really trying to be nice and integrate with everyone. What that means is even if 25 per cent of youth under 25 are Muslim, it doesn't mean 25 per cent of youth under the age of 25 want the caliphate maximus..

ps: banning beards is a wonderful idea. Making religious teenagers quit school and staying dumb and religious. Smart!
 
Europe will undergo another set of cultural cleansing sometime down the line... they'll either be assimilated and Christianized or they'll be expelled/killed; people, despite their best efforts at multiculturalism, still tend to view certain people as outsiders and will eject them if they become too threatening.
 
I'm appalled at how far this is going, and the fact that these measures are receiving any support at all. It's a tall order religious persecution, with a side dish of fascism for everyone. The headscarf thing is touchy enough, assuming they went so far as to ban all crosses and symbols of other religions. But banning beards, really? I'm not even going to try to come up with an analogy out of outrage because it may be dismissed as trite, so I'll just downright say that is a horribly unjust proposition.
 
...banning beards?
 
The Antipodes won't be letting the French in. Dirty immigrants.
 
Other countries such as Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany have this 'problem' as well. What do you think will happen? A spate of Kosovo's? Nothing?

If you think that there is an issue, what do you think the governments of these countries will do, if anything? Will the local population radicalise and turn to the extreme right wing parties (Which although small are growing and gaining more influence)? Would we see an increased level of migration by the locals, for instance in the UK people heading to Australia, Canada, America and New Zealand?

If you think that this is a non issue? Why? What do you think will happen?

I tend to think that the Muslim issue is greatly exaggerated by those who put this issue big on their political agendas, and used to win votes through fearmongering. As some people in the Netherlands fail to understand, not every Muslim is a radical Muslim.

I don't hold the main proponents of these issues in very high regard either.
 
6% of the Dutch population is Muslim. "at best they favoured a merger - at worst, a takeover."

Yeah, I'm shaking in my boots :coffee:
 
Ziggy Stardust said:
6% of the Dutch population is Muslim. "at best they favoured a merger - at worst, a takeover."

What percentage of the population were the Bolsheviks? :p
 
Ziggy Stardust said:
14 million point 5!

When your residing under the Commie boot then you'll come crawling back to us!
 
I hope you didn't just call me English, we definitely don't want anymore of those! Hopefully this should answer where I'm from:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antipodes

In the British Isles, "the Antipodes" is often used to refer to Australia and New Zealand, and occasionally South Africa and Zimbabwe, and "Antipodeans" to their inhabitants
 
Europe will undergo another set of cultural cleansing sometime down the line... they'll either be assimilated and Christianized or they'll be expelled/killed;

Oh yeah, that would definitely help :crazyeye: Gods no, if they want to fit in, they should better throw away religion and don't look back.

people, despite their best efforts at multiculturalism, still tend to view certain people as outsiders and will eject them if they become too threatening.

Yes - if you don't have a multikulti regime in place which threatens people who expect cultural assimilation from the immigrants (*cough* Britain, Netherlands *cough*).
 
France becoming Muslim majority.... what crackpot stuff

Agreed. It's the same stupid extrapolation of present-day trends into a distant future. Many things could change along the line, and I am fairly certain that Muslims won't overrun Europe simply by having more babies :)

Which doesn't mean Western Europe doesn't need to wake up and see the problem with unassimilated radicalized Islamic minorities.
 
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