Moslem Invasion of Europe.

Relax, this has happened before:

1822: The United States:
The United States is being flooded with people from Ireland, Italy, Greece and other Southern European nations. Based upon the disparity in birth rates in the not to distant future if left unchecked they may be a sizable minority and possibly eventually a majority. Should this be the future for the US Can we expect the cultures to live together in peace or is conflict inevitable?

1972:
The United States is being flooded with people from Mexico and other South American countries.........

Oh, and yes conflict is inevitable and so are a lot of second generation marriages.......

Joe

Well, Europe and Islam have a checkered history. . . but they seem to be coinciding well today. . . the Germans' favorite fast food is after all the Turkish Döner (ooh, I doubt my umlauts will show up).

I agree with Joe. I think they'll manage. . .

I think the key here is assimilation.

Two of my grandparents immigrated from Galicia in eastern Europe about a hundred years ago. Two generations later I only speak a handfull of words in the old language, and I'm about as assimilated as you can get. Tens of millions of Americans could tell the same sort of story.

The question is will the same trend occur with Muslim immigrants - or will their culture preclude it?

Man alive, why the hoopla, au?

The current third and fourth generation Turks in Germany are about evenly divided between assimilationist and seperatist mindsets, from what I have been able to tell. Part of the difficulty lies in that even though they may be third generation born in Germany, they are still classified as Ausslander not as Deutscher. The Turks in Germany don't seem to have the identity problems and social problems of the North Africans in France, though.

When our Muslim brothers decided to visit Tours over 1200 years ago, the reception party was Charles the Hammer and several thousand mounted, armed Franks and Lombards. For all its troubles, i'd say some progress has been made in organizing reception committees. Let us hope the pace of amerliorisation accelerates apace.

Well, bob, Germany's naturalization process is one of the most complicated and anal in the world (I should know), and the Germans have a nasty habit of making EVERYONE not of German blood "Ausländern". . . The assimiliation is by no means complete. But as S reminds us, we've come a long way. . . Crusades and Spanish Inquisition come to mind. . .

I think you have to start somewhere :-)

I think this is a most peculiar question.

We will sooner or later get some millions Moslems more in Europe - especially, if the EU follows the strong wish of the US-administration and Turkey becomes very soon a member.


Actually - from my own experience - I don't think that religion is a real factor of dividing culture.
Nowadays at least, because the differences have led to many religious religious wars in Europe in the last few centuries, especially between Protestants and Catholics.

(And if you insist on these cultural differences, au: yes, those are still to be seen throughout Europe. But almost everyone can live with them.)

Um flooded eh

Jim


Therein lies the question. When I speak of cultural differences I am referring to religion. Islam has not shown a great proclivity in living or even tolerating people of other religions.

Could you please name just one country/state/region/town in Europe, where people live strictly divided by religion???

And why do you think, religion shows the most important cultural difference?

What about all the others? Those, which effect really every-days-life?

Would Ireland/North Ireland fall into that category?

How about Rwanda?

And let's not forget Bosnia-Herzegovina.


Current religiously based civil unrest and warfare

Walter
Don't quite understand your question. However, what I am wondering if the Moslem communities in Europe become large enough will that create a you against us situation. That is what we are seeing in many areas of the world. Religion could play large under those conditions. Islam does not seem to wear well with non believers.

World > Europe
from the November 10, 2003 edition

A rising tide of Muslims in Italy puts pressure on Catholic culture

By Sophie Arie | Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor

ROME – In the Italian capital's abandoned Tiburtina railway station, clothes dangle from makeshift washing lines, and families camp out without running water or electricity - many waiting as long as 14 months to see if Italy will accept them as asylum seekers. "I've been here a long time," says John Laki, who is still living on the weed-covered tracks more than five years after arriving from Sudan. "I keep trying to find a job. But it's always complicated. They gave me asylum, but they don't give me any money. How can a human being build their life [this way]?"
The 400 squatters in the station in central Rome - dubbed "Hotel Africa" - are a reminder of Italy's difficulty in taking in the waves of migrants escaping wars and dictatorships or seeking work in Europe.
While immigrants live largely apart from mainstream Italian society - doing manual or factory work or scraping a living peddling trinkets or vegetables on the streets - the influx of foreigners in recent years, many of them Muslim, is rapidly changing the cultural makeup of this Roman Catholic country.
The tension between the two worlds was apparent last month in an uproar over school crucifixes, which echoed cultural struggles in France and Germany, where the wearing of head scarves in schools and the use of ID cards are burning issues.
Italians were outraged when a judge ruled that crosses should be removed from classroom walls out of respect for Muslim pupils. In the normally quiet town of Ofena in central Italy, parents held a "hands off our crucifix" vigil outside the elementary school in question. The Education Ministry managed to win a temporary injunction against taking down the crosses pending a hearing next week.
While Italy is officially secular, more than 80 percent of Italians declare themselves Catholic. Legislation from the 1920s says crucifixes should be in every school, but some argue the subsequent secularization of the state makes the laws defunct.
The order to have them removed - a victory for the media-savvy Muslim, whose children attend the Ofena school - may have opened a legitimate debate, but it offended many Italians who say their national identity was being attacked.
"It is unacceptable that one judge should cancel out millennia of history," says Roberto Maroni, a Northern League labor minister. And many Muslims say that the issue raised unwelcome hostility between them and their Italian hosts.
"This is the last thing we need," says Jamel, a Lebanese immigrant who preferred not to give his full name. "Crucifixes are not the problem. My children are the only Muslims in their class, and they are happy. Finding a job - that is the problem. This kind of conflict will just make it harder."
Islam has become the country's second-largest religion, with the number of Muslims estimated at 700,000 to 1 million among a total population of 57 million. Only 30,000 Muslims have Italian citizenship. The rest are labeled extracomunitari - working on temporary visas or illegally.
Unlike other religious communities, Italy's Muslims have yet to be formally recognized by the state. Other religions, including Judaism and smaller groups such as the Assemblies of God and the Seventh-Day Adventists, have signed agreements with the government, giving them official recognition and a chance to benefit from a national "religion tax."
Talks are under way to establish a formal dialogue, but observers warn that the Muslim community has yet to overcome internal divisions, and right-wing elements in the Italian government are intent on blocking all dialogue.
"There is a kind of resistance to formally recognizing that we are here," says Khalid Chaouki, president of the Young Muslims of Italy, complaining that some right-wing mayors refuse to authorize plans to build mosques and cemeteries. "It is very hard to make people realize we are people, not just Muslims."
"Italians don't want immigrants, but they need them," says sociologist Franco Ferrarotti. "There is a great danger of radical discrimination here against Muslims. Immigrants will not be fully integrated in this country until they are given voting rights - and we are far from that."
In recent weeks, Italy's far-right Alleanza Nazionale has called for immigrants to be given the vote. The call is seen as a major U-turn from a party striving to break clear from its fascist roots to become a moderate mainstream party. But the Muslim vote still faces stiff opposition from parts of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's coalition government.

Actually, Au, they have.

Since you are a Jew -- you should remember that the Muslems were not only tolerant of Jews in Spain during Moorish occupation of that country -- they were actually beneficent.

You really should work to rein in your intolerance of Muslims, Au.

Frank
My religion nor does the "benevolence " of the Moors of the 1300 century have anything to do with my question. It is based strictly on the reality of today. Do you have an opinion?

I was not responding to your "question", Au, I was responding to your comment:



It has -- and I merely pointed that out.

These threads do not follow a strictly linear path -- they often have tangents. This is one of those tangents -- and not only do I think it has a bearing on what is being discussed, it was a direct response to something you introduced.

This statement refers to a very recent phenomenon. Throughout the history of Islam, "infidels" were subject to taxes which were not levied on Muslims, but otherwise, not only suffered few debilities, but were valued because of skills which Arabs and Berbers did not possess--most notably, gold- and silversmithy and pharmacology. Jews in particular were valued among more cosmopolitan Muslim populations, as they did not have religious scruples to prevent them from moving easily between Christian and Muslim cities. Their value as go-betweens in east-west trade was sufficiently crucial that both Venice and Constantinople provided secure areas in which the Jews could live so that they could pursue trade on behalf of their Christian or Muslim masters unmolested. The Berber dynasts, having founded the city of Fez, built a special walled district for Christians and Jews in which they could be protected, because they recognized the value these populations had for them.

One might look at that and suggest that they would not have needed protection if they had not been the target of attacks. Well, duh . . . pogroms were enacted against Jews in Europe and attacks on native Christians and Jews in Muslim countries occurred because it was an advantage to demagogues to demonize such people. This is no different today, and the hostilities we see now playing themselves out unchecked arise from precisely the same venal motives of political demagogues.

I would suggest two books for those who genuinely wish to inform themselves about the Muslim world, and it's relationship with Europe. The first is The Arabs: Journeys Beyond the Mirage, by David Lamb; the other is The Muslim Discovery of Europe, by Bernard Lewis (with the caveat that Mr. Lewis is just as naively uncritical of Muslim historians as he accuses Europeans of being with regard to their own historians).