I should start with a short disclaimer: This post is motivated by various discussions I had in Egypt about the West, especially after the recent killing of  an Egyptian woman in a German court. This is not an academic post in any sense. I basically threw together some thoughts and ideas. If I hope to do anything with this text, then it is an objectification of a currently very emotional debate –and be that only in the case of the two people who take the time reading it. If you have no idea who Marwa is, well start by having a look on Bikya Masr. They also report on the reactions in the Middle East.

The story of Marwa al-Schirbini has raised a number of questions, in the West as well as the Arab world. Most of these questions are legitimate, but the problem is, that the issues need to be disentangled. The issues at stake, as far as I understand it, are: Immigration in Europe and the failure of the multi-cultural society, the challenge of liberal societies how to react to non-liberal and anti-liberal currents within those societies, the new islamophobic currents and the old extreme right, popular ignorance and tendencies of reporting in modern media. Each of these issues is distinct, even if the boundaries at times may be illusive and overlapping.

Immigration in Europe and the failure of multi-cultural societies: Immigration in Europe has a long history and grave mistakes have been made by all involved. Furthermore immigration in Europe is different to immigration in the US, Australia and Canada. Lastly the concept of immigration and the ability to transform immigrants into citizens is different in Europe compared to the US and others. The United States is a country which is based on immigration. If one discounts the minor remaining Amerindian population, all Americans are immigrants of sorts. Therefore there is at least the concept that immigration is positive, that immigrants can make the US a better place and that immigrants can become full Americans. Of course, as we know, this has not always worked out perfectly. One only has to remember the case of the Japanese living in the US during WWII or the debates led over Mexican immigration today. Nevertheless generally speaking, the US have a comparatively high integrative capability.

Additionally the US have for a long time taken in immigrants based on their abilities. If you have a special qualification which is needed in the US, you can immigrate there without major problems. This has resulted in the US, but also Canada and Australia taking the best emigrants from around the world. Europe which never had a proper immigration policy remained with the ones you could not send back for one reason or the other. In consequence, immigrants in the US are in average higher qualified, start working in the US on a higher salary and are quicker part of a mixed work environment than in Europe. This of course strengthens the integrative capacity of the US versus Europe. But this is only part of the story.

The other part is the failure of integration in Europe due to bad policies of the state, as well as wrong expectations of the immigrants themselves. Our governments were caught up somewhere in the middle of two beliefs: Firstly the immigrants would eventually return to their home countries and secondly that immigration would practically happen automatically. Immigrants themselves in many cases believed as well, that they would eventually return home and therefore did not invest as much effort as would have been necessary in learning the language and finding local mixed networks. To look at Germany in specific, we today have a whole generation of immigrants from Turkey, mostly eastern Anatolia, who have very limited language skills, mostly have no German friends and live in a family structure and according to traditions, as they were usual in Eastern Anatolia at the time of their emigration, that is in many cases 40 or 50 years ago. Without being able to become recognised as German (I mean identity, not nationality) people stuck to their old identities, which of course, being away from home, did not go through eventual changes which happened all over Turkey.

The idea of politicians, that integration is an individual task, which will eventually happen anyway, has of course not made this any better. And only in the last ten years reforms are slowly put in place. However it will be an extremely difficult task to integrate these people and their children today, as they have already and successfully created parallel societies; societies which function according to their own rules and traditions and in many cases according to their own laws. This is the background on which all other discussions are happening.

The challenge of liberal societies how to react to non-liberal and anti-liberal currents within those societies: The European societies aim to liberal, individual, secular and egalitarian. Everyone should be able to become happy according to their own wishes and ideas. Secondly European societies are individual as they do not or only rarely recognise any right but individual rights. Lastly European societies want to be egalitarian, as they try to give everyone the same chances in life. This is very well as long as their is a general consensus that this should be the case. And of course, all of that is theory. No society is ever perfectly liberal or individual or egalitarian or secular. Besides the debate on these issues led within the German society on these issues, there is an individual and a systemic challenge to this by some immigrants in our societies.

The systemic challenge is an easier one to handle, as it constitutes a crime in most of our societies, no matter if presented by a local or an immigrant. Left and right extremists which want to topple democracy, are as clearly outlawed as movements which want to create an Islamic state. But it is on the basis of the systemic challenge on which the individual challenge is debated. The individual challenge can be a born-again Christian who does not ant to send his kids to a government school, it can be a teacher who wants to have a cross in a class room, but it also includes the whole European debate on head scarfs, forced marriages and honour killings. The argument relating to the head scarf in the Middle East is usually that if Europe has Freedom of Religion people should be allowed to wear head scarfs. Yes, this is of course true – but the issue is not as easy as that. The problem of our societies is that you should have the right to wear a head scarf, but you also should have the right not to. How do you tell if a woman wears the head scarf because she wants to or because her family forces her to do so? Any answer to this question is an approximation at best and in result you end up with individual cases where a law applies, although it probably should not. We do not know family or group rights. The right to do or not do something is individual and it is the individual right which the European states try to enforce. It is generally the same problem related to all issues of equality of women. A woman should be able to chose to work or not to. But if someone goes back to his home town to marry a girl and comes back to Europe with her, which choice does she have, not being able to speak the language or understand the society –the husband being the only mediator between her and this society.

This debate is complicated, often relates to symbols in stead of actual issues and sometimes in result we end up with laws which are less than satisfactory. But this is part of a democratic process in which you haggle out the rules for a next generation. In many cases it is trial and error. In theory every citizen, and many people in Europe with an immigration background are today citizens, has the same right to influence these democratic processes and make their voice heard. But of course there is always a difference between the right to do something and the ability –and how would someone who barely speaks the language really participate in a complex process as this? But even that being said, we have numerous parliamentarians in most European countries, which have an immigration background in their family (e.g. for Germany you can google Cem Özdemir, Lale Akgün, Hakki Keskin, Omid Nouripour, Josip Juratowic or the new wunderkind of the greens, Tarek Al-Wazir) . And it is important to note, that they are often the most outspoken, when it comes to implementing rules, which are afterwards criticised in the Middle East.

The new islamophobic currents and the old extreme right: There is a new islamophobic movement in Europe and they are not identical with the former extreme right. Before saying anything more about this, I should point out, that extreme right wing and islamophobic groups are a small minority in Europe. While in some countries they enjoy momentarily a high popularity, as in the Netherlands, these movements are not represented or only very small in parliaments of many other European countries, as Germany or Britain. However these movements exist and one has to watch them clearly. Currently they are a weird mix of members of the lower-middleclass who are disillusioned with the traditional parties, a mix of various types of individuals, often old people, who mainly care about local issues (i.e. they don’t ant to live besides a mosque), some former members of the extreme right who believe to have found a path to carry their ideology into mainstream society and a small number of conservative intellectuals who for one reason or the other seem to sympathise with this new current.

Most of the people who could be counted into this current are mere followers, who do not care too much about the actual ideas, but are afraid their regions or countries may lose their “authentic identities”. But there is a core group of actual islamophobes. This core group is without question very small, but at the same time they are very active online, be it on their own websites or commenting on other sites and posting on YouTube, etc. The central problem with this group is not so much its existence. Idiots live in every country of this earth. The problem is that they more or less successfully hijack any discussion about Islam, immigration and integration and because of that it is even more difficult to have the discussion I outlined in the beginning. By hijack I do not mean that they win the debate, but that they yell so loudly, that a debate for everyone else is not possible anymore. It is in a way a similar phenomenon as the Islamists on the web. They are so predominant and loud, that the voices of the majority of Muslims are drowned in the noise.

Popular ignorance and tendencies of reporting in modern media: There is without question widespread ignorance in the western world when it comes to Islam. I would believe that a majority by now would know that Muhammad is the prophet of Islam (yes I know that Islam recognises many more prophets, but I wouldn’t think that most people know that) and that Qur’an is the holy book of Islam. But I guess this is about as much as people know. I don’t think a majority could explain Ramadan or Hajj or the relevance of Mecca. But of course people know other things, the things which are widely reported, such as terrorist attacks, al-Qaeda and maybe even the Somali Islamic Courts. Many Middle Easterners believe that this is due to an ideological, racist or anti-Muslim bias of our media. But I do not think that is true –or at least this is not the central factor.

Our media outlets today report what is considered as news worthy and what is considered to increase readership or number of viewers. Newsworthy is anything which hits home, anything which affects the lives of the readers or viewers directly and anything which is extreme. Earthquakes are extreme, terrorist attacks are extreme, famines and crises are extreme. Nobody reports on steady economic growth in Ghana or the state of the Korean car manufacturers in Europe, because Europeans don’t care. But if thousands of people lose their money due to a stock market crash in Ghana, I am sure this would be reported. In consequence bad news, crises and bad people are over-represented in our news. This is no problem when it comes to France, as most people have been in France and know how to balance that out, but it is a problem when it comes to Africa or the Middle East, because the only source of knowledge people have, is what they consume in media. But the picture is not that bad in the end. Our governments spend millions on anti-racism programs to educate people. Government owned radio and TV channels have programs are tasked with educating people about the world, not selling news or increasing viewers. In consequence they can show things others can’t. Sometimes they are good in doing this and sometimes they are not.

Yes our media could be better and there is still a lot of work to do, but at the same time one must point out that the Muslim world does not always do itself a favour. Going on the street and demonstrating against racist Germany, attacking German embassies and calling for Germany being kicked out of the UN, did not make a great impression on people. These are not the balanced and educated voices people should hear and must hear to get a better understanding of Muslim societies around the world. Lastly it is easy to criticise the West for its ignorance of the Muslim world, but I think this criticism is only valid when this ignorance is not returned and in many cases the ignorance of things happening in the West in the Middle East is as large as vice versa.

To come to a conclusion: Yes there is extreme right wing movements and islamophobes in Europe, but these movements are a small minority. Europe in general is not anti-Muslim and our governments are not fighting Islam in our societies. After all, Muslim voters already are far too important to be ignored. At the same time if you want to have a positive effect on this whole debate, you will not have this effect by going on rampage in the Middle East, but only by encouraging Muslims living in Europe taking more influence in the societies they live in by participating in political debates and parties. But as I said in my disclaimer, this is only a quick collection of thoughts and ideas and I am open to debate.

The image shows an anti-German demonstration in Turkey which is a reaction ot the Marwa killing. Image credits go to Bikya Masr.