[Reader-list] Gary Yonge on Pre-Muslim Utopia in Europe

[Naeem Mohaiemen]

To believe in a European utopia before Muslims arrived is delusional
Gary Younge
Monday December 10, 2007
The Guardian

<<It is pernicious to regard prejudiced views within migrant
communities as exclusive to either them or their cultures>>

In October, a promising young Iranian-German footballer, Ashkan
Dejagah, refused to go to Israel to play for the German under-21 team
in a European qualifier. Dejagah, who was born in Iran and came to
Germany as a child, claimed if he went to Israel he might be denied
entry into Iran. His decision not to go sparked accusations of
antisemitism from German Jewish groups alongside calls from some
politicians that he be dropped from the team (after some deliberation,
German officials decided to keep him on the team).

The debate that followed shed light on how much you have to know, and
how much you have to forget, to become German in some eyes, and laid
some ground rules for Dejagah's inclusion and integration. "Whoever
represents Germany, whether a native German or an immigrant, has to
identify with the history and culture of our society," said Ronald
Pofalla, the general secretary of the conservative Christian
Democrats. "If he does not want to do so out of personal political
reasons, then that national jersey should be removed."

There are at least six million reasons why Dejagah would be better off
not identifying with German history and culture when it comes to
contemplating a visit to Israel. But, for the time being, here are
just two. First, he will find a far less murderous recent history of
antisemitism in his Iranian heritage than he will in his German.
Second, if any nation exemplifies the limits of integration without a
vigorous culture of anti-racism it is Germany - the European nation
where Jews were most assimilated and almost found themselves wiped
out.

The point is not to handcuff the likes of Pofalla to their history but
to liberate them from self-delusion. No competition between Iran and
Germany to see who has hated Jews least can produce a winner anyone
can be proud of. But in Pofalla's case it illustrates that when you
live in a street full of glass houses everybody should think twice
about what they throw and who they throw it at.

This is not a lesson confined to Germany. It has become a Europe-wide
habit to refer to Muslims in particular and migrants in general as
though they are barbarians who must either be civilised or banished,
before they pollute the egalitarian societies in which they were
either born or now live. Lacking all sense of humility, self-awareness
and historical literacy, Europe's political class acts as though these
communities not only manifest homophobia, sexism, antisemitism,
political violence and social unrest, but also as though they invented
them and introduced them to an otherwise utopian continent.

Take France. Following the recent riots there, Jacques Myard, a
nationalist deputy, explained the disturbances thus. "The problem is
not economic. The reality is not economic. The reality is that an
anti-French ethno-cultural bias from a foreign society has taken root
on French soil and it is feeding on basic anti-French racism even if
the rioters have French nationality."

The French may need to import many things - from trashy popular films
to fast food - but the one thing they have long produced themselves is
a culture of riotous assembly. I have seen farmers hurl livestock at
police, and ducked as students converted street furniture into
missiles. There is nothing foreign about rioting in France.

In Britain, the emergence of "home-grown bombers" is mentioned as
though this is a new development, when in fact we have been growing
our own bombers for years. We have a whole evening dedicated to
burning one - it's called Guy Fawkes night.

Then there was the late gay Dutch anti-immigration activist, Pim
Fortuyn. "I have gay friends who have been beaten up by young
Moroccans in Rotterdam," he said. "In Rotterdam we have
third-generation Moroccans who still don't speak Dutch, oppress women
and won't live by our values." There was, it seems, no gay-bashing or
sexism in Rotterdam before the Moroccans came.

One need not be in denial about the existence of prejudice in migrant
and Muslim communities to grasp how pernicious it is to regard those
views as exclusive to those communities or to be the result of their
cultures. Nor need we be squeamish about challenging prejudice,
regardless of where it comes from. The notion that bigotry in Muslim
and migrant communities presents a multicultural conundrum is just one
more straw man among many. You enforce the law, without fear or
favour. You promote equality to all and for all. There is no conflict
between this and racial equality - it is a prerequisite for it. If an
imam doesn't like women walking past his mosque in a bikini, that's
too bad for him. If an MP doesn't like women walking into his surgery
in a niqab, that's too bad for him, too. Both have the right to say
what they think - provided it doesn't promote violence - but women
have the right to wear what they like.

Nor should we be in denial about the idea that certain prejudices may
be more prevalent in certain communities. The issue is what we make of
that and whether we are prepared to apply those conclusions with equal
rigour across the board. The prevalence of child sex abuse in the
Catholic church was not, primarily, about Catholicism but single men
having exclusive authority over and access to young children and
taking advantage of it. No one who wants to be taken seriously has
tried to hold each Catholic collectively responsible for these abuses
or claim Catholics are inherently predisposed to child abuse, or that
the abuse was essentially religious. Even as these scandals have run
parallel with the war on terror, no one is claiming that Catholicism
represents a threat to our civilisation.

On February 15 last year, the European commission president, José
Manuel Barroso, said Europe had to stand up for its core values and
express its solidarity with the Danish people after widespread unrest
over the cartoons of Muhammad in a Danish newspaper. "If not, we are
accepting fear in our society," he said. "I understand that it
offended many peoplein the Muslim world, but is it better to have a
system where some excesses are allowed or be in some countries where
they don't even have the right to say this?"

That same day, in the Commons, the government voted to expand
counterterrorism laws by making "glorification" of terrorism a
criminal offence. Speaking after the vote, Tony Blair said the new law
"will allow us to deal with those people and say: look, we have free
speech in this country, but don't abuse it".

Herein lies the problem with Enlightenment values, as they have been
promoted in recent years. The values are fine. But those who champion
them most fervently also do so most selectively. They embrace Muslim
women campaigning against sexism, but ignore those fighting racism,
Islamophobia or war. They attack Muslim fundamentalist homophobes on
housing estates, but align themselves with Christian fundamentalist
homophobes in the White House. They demand secularism and
assimilation, but view every action by Muslims and immigrants as
essentially foreign or religious. In short, they see their own
attributes and others' flaws through a magnifying glass. No wonder
their vision of the world is so distorted.