The State of European Muslims

Check this recent latest and greatest pronouncement from the grad poo-bah's of the Great European Project. A spectacularly important sounding title


Directorate General Internal Policies of the Union
Policy Department Structural and Cohesion Policies
CULTURE AND EDUCATION
ISLAM IN THE EUROPEAN UNION: WHAT’S AT STAKE IN THE FUTURE?


This report presents the current stakes concerning the Muslim presence in Europe. It adresses four main areas: organizational processes underway within Muslim communities; the questions of education and leadership; the juridical profiles and political management of Muslim’s; cohabitation as a decision to live together. Based on the findings of the study, proposals are made.

I sometime get angry when I read this kind of report, because sure as hell, this is the thin edge of the wedge which pushes into this gigantic furball of government action which never achieves anything. Europe has been having minorities for the past six thousand years.

It has managed to successfully integrate minorities, it has managed to commit genocide on minorities, and it has also managed to produce the Renaissance, Enlightenment and most of the world's intellectual ideas ranging from human rights to economic rights to what have you and all without the dead hand fo the state.

Think about the USA, despite 9/11, they have a better muslim integration story, despite the same kind of huge variation of muslim communities, histories and cultures. And yes, they do have an imperial background as well from Palestine, Lebanon, Philippines, etc.

But reading these recommendations immediately makes me suspect these Parliamentarians, who will come up with some typically heavy handed stuff which will make the situation worse.

See this recommendation: Only about a third out of 15 million Muslims have, so to speak, made their self-reference to the Islamic faith active. In the current state of affairs nothing allows us to say that this portion will or will not become larger. It is certain that the popular desire for Islamic religion has remained strong, and has indeed grown stronger during the last thirty years, but it is not at all certain that this will continue.

I mean, you dont know what's happening with respect to their active faith but if the EU does go bumbling into this sensitive situation, it will raise the bar and push many into the fundamentalist camp.

Here's another one, Islam is undergoing a transformation process from an immigrants’ religion into a religion that by full right is part of the European reality. This process should be accompanied, in legal terms, by appropriate actions that will allow Muslim communities to fully integrate themselves into the European model of relations between States and religions.

In other words, they want to have a nice document, with some quango's overseeing the process, nicely arranged into nice tower blocks, nicely slotted into a bureacrat's dream population classification system.

HOW STUPID!, do not do anything of that sort, let the Muslims be, do not get involved, they are human beings and they are perfectly able to establish themselves as a minority and as Europeans. Its this pandering to the silly element (See my post on Tarek Ramadan) and the bureacratic element which causes issues and will invariably lead to another genocide. See here for my previous view on what a government can do for its minorities. But if these reports are what will be done by the governments, then heaven help us.



All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!