Muslim Europe?
Unprecedented mass migration poses long-term challenges
Not since the siege of Vienna in 1683 have so many Muslims tried to make their way to Europe at once.
The difference between that conflict, which pitted the Holy Roman Empire against the Ottoman Turks, and the drama unfolding in Europe today is that this time it is to escape war that hundreds of thousands of Muslims, have flooded the continent, with perhaps hundreds of thousands more to come.
The reception of the influx of refugees and migrants has been an odd patchwork.
Outwardly, at least, they have been warmly embraced in Germany. But they are being received with profoundly mixed feelings in Sweden, Britain and France, and treated with outright hostility by in Denmark, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Serbia.
The tragic images of the corpse of a Syrian Kurdish toddler lying on a Turkish beach outraged Canadians and Europeans alike, and galvanized them to try to help more of the millions of Syrians uprooted by the savagery of the Bashar Assad regime, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and other extremist factions.
But the unprecedented mass migration now underway poses long-term challenges that must be considered. Among the questions: How do you quickly and fairly discern who are actually in extreme peril in Syria and elsewhere, and therefore genuine refugees, and who are economic migrants trying to jump the global queue and get papers to remain in the West forever?
Equally vexing: How and where can you safely and prudently process the applications of people who grew up in the epicentre of global terrorism? And, beyond that, what effect will the emptying out of Syria have if many of those who choose to remain are the fanatically radicalized Sunnis bent on waging jihad against Shias, Israel and the West?
Ultimately, because half of Syria’s 22 million citizens have been displaced — as well as millions more who are fleeing conflicts in Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan, Sudan and Central Africa — what will the staggering presence in the West of so many people from vastly different political and religious cultures have on the countries where they are resettled?
Subtleties such as why German Chancellor Angela Merkel declared her country’s intention to receive hundreds of thousands of refugees must be considered, too. Part of the explanation is Germany’s twisted 20th-century history. But it is more complicated than that. The German welcome must also be seen in the context of depopulation. The country has a massive demographic problem and badly needs lots of immigrants.
But the reality already is that millions of Turkish Muslims who came to Germany in large numbers in the 1960s and 1970s ended up in urban ghettos in Berlin and Frankfurt, and cities in the heavily-industrialized Ruhr Valley, where relations between them and those who have lived there since before the Middle Ages are testy at best.
The same questions about integration of Muslims are long-standing and arguably even more problematic in Britain, France, Belgium and Sweden.
My personal journey into this cauldron of trauma, despair and opportunism began three years ago in the dust and dreariness of the Zaatari Refugee Camp, situated in Jordan but close enough to the Syrian border that it was (and still is) possible sometimes to witness airstrikes and to hear artillery fire.
There was no question those I met there were genuine refugees. They had horrific tales about the barbarities they had seen in Syria and awful new stories about life in the camp, where rape and other crimes were rife and many teenage girls had been kidnapped or sold into mar- riage. They were largely from hardscrabble, war-wrecked cities such as Daraa and Aleppo.
Many of the Syrians I recently encountered in Morocco, Spain’s African enclave of Melilla, the Greek island of Lesbos and southern Sweden could not have been more different. They were much better educated and open about how they were on the move not because their lives were at imminent risk, but because they sought to take advantage of the current upheaval in Syria to improve their lot.
Many acknowledged they were from parts of Damascus that had seen little violence or had been removed from the violence several years ago when they reached refugee camps as well as cities and towns in Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon. Unlike some of those in the camps, they often spoke good English, had top-of-the-line iPhones and could pay smugglers $5,000 a head and more to reach Europe. A surprisingly high number were doctors, nurses, lawyers, teachers and businessmen.
Virtually none of them wanted anything to do with southern or eastern European countries. In effect, they were country shopping.
Please don’t misunderstand: Syria is hell. Who would not grab any chance to escape? But managing this biblical influx is a serious business that requires dispassionate thought if the countries that accept large numbers of these anguished people are to remain as tolerant and equable as they are today.