Haunted presents: Europeans, Muslim immigrants and the onus of European-Jewish histories

By Amikam Nachmani

Haunted presents: Europeans, Muslim immigrants, and the onus of European Jewish histories is an in-depth analysis of the interrelations between Muslim minority immigrants and local European communities with an accent on Jewish communities and Judaism. The triangular investigation in this work is largely based on media reporting and comment between the years 2005-15. From this basis a solid, informative background to the explosive mass Muslim immigration to Europe and the terror, conflict, racism, religious, social and political clashes of today is framed. No other scholarly work, yet one written in an empirical, attainable style, succeeds in presenting a more comprehensive, coherent and cohesive overview of the elements behind the headline-making news emerging from the tumultuous state which is Europe today.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Release date: May 31, 2017
• ISBN: 9781526117168

Amikam Nachmani

Amikam Nachmani is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Political Studies, Bar-Ilan University, Israel

Book preview

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Hectic times: Europe and its Muslim minorities

Introduction

A good quotation should do the job of introducing the reader to a work’s content, its mood and ambiance. Each one of the quotations in the preceding pages could serve as a motto for a book about Europe and its Muslim migrant minorities; several of them directly concern our work on the ‘triangle’, that is to say, the perceptions held by Europeans, Muslims and Jews about each other and the current encounter between Europeans and Muslim migrants. They indicate that European–Jewish precedents have been mentioned and used, at least implicitly, as possible guidelines for present and future European–Muslim migrant relations. Some of them also allude to the manifestations of discrimination and racism that presently colour relations between Europeans and Muslim communities.

The quotations also indicate that, over time, no substantive improvement has occurred in European majority–minority relations. The five years between the conclusion of the 2006 Pew Global Attitude Project and the quotation from the 2011 report of the Malmö University Institute for Studies of Migration show that nothing has dramatically changed in the mutual images held by Europe’s indigenous majority and its Muslim minority. On the contrary, the growing use of ‘white’ these days to commonly refer to Europeans as distinct from Muslims alludes to colonial jargon, which is not a good omen for the future.¹ The skin colour of many immigrants is no darker than that of many Europeans.

When researching Europe and its Muslim minorities, one is astonished by the alleged discrimination that the topic produces, in particular the expressions embodied in Islamophobia (the term was coined in 1997 in Great Britain),² Europhobia and anti-Semitism. Prejudice, discrimination and even racism are seemingly on the rise nowadays in Europe, especially when the topic of European and Muslim migrant relations arises (on anti-Semitism, see chapter 6). On average, in one year (2008), one third of Muslims migrants (34 per cent of male reporters and 26 per cent of female reporters) stated that they had experienced discrimination. On average, those who suffered discrimination reported eight incidents over the 12-month period prior to being interviewed.³

When the third side is added – the Continent’s Jewish communities and the State of Israel – to Europeans and Muslim migrants and Muslims globally, then the ‘triangle’ is formed. Occasionally this encounter produces vicious and wild expressions. The European–Muslim encounter heavily embraces the fate of European Jewry in World War II, often as an admonition. Both Muslims and European ‘whites’ frequently refer to the annals of the Jews during the War and the Holocaust.

Repeatedly, the topic of Muslim minorities in Europe is described as the continent’s ‘new Jewish problem’. ‘They are the new Jews of Europe: its Muslim minorities’; in France, French Muslims label themselves as the ‘new Jews’.⁴ The quest of Muslim migrants for ‘European values’, namely, democracy, civil rights, equality, representation, etc., equates with the parallel Jewish effort to achieve the same from European states and societies. A discussion entitled ‘Are Muslims the Jews of today?’ found similarities between the way Jews were dehumanised in World War II and the way Muslims are treated today.⁵ There are of course differences, but scholars note that the rhetoric employed against the Jews in the 1930s and 1940s is similar, sometimes even identical to that targeting Muslims today.⁶ Traditionally, in European culture, the Jew was the foreigner, the ultimate ‘other’. The Jew was perceived as threatening, though not necessarily violent, with neither military nor political capabilities and consequences, nor with any real or theoretical desires to Judaise the continent. But the mantra in Europe today is not the Wandering Jew. It is Europeans versus the immigrants; it is Europeans versus a much more serious threat than the Jew: the Muslim migrant.

The 25–50 million Muslim migrants who now reside in Europe – and the numbers vary enormously, with reports posting as many as 60 million (!) – contribute a lot to the continent’s welfare and economy. In fact, one third of Europe’s economic production comes from immigrants, both Muslim and non-Muslims. About 2 million people migrate to the EU every year, some legally, many illegally (78,000 illegals in 2012)⁷ and others as refugees and asylum seekers. The available numbers for 2008 mention some 31 million EU and non-EU foreigners living in the 27 member states of the EU (6.2 per cent of the population), with no distinction made between Muslims and others.⁸ The wars in Syria and Iraq have brought about a big surge in asylum-seeker numbers. Germany, taking more asylum seekers than any other EU state, expected 200,000 claims in 2014, up from 127,000 in 2013. The human flood of immigrants and refugees that reach Europe from the never-ending Middle Eastern and African wars and crises could easily reach 3 million in the period 2014–17.⁹

Sara Silvestri correctly noted that immigration to most European countries is associated in people’s minds with Islam, and that the term Muslim is synonymous with immigrant because the largest number of immigrants to the EU over the four decades since 1975 have originated from nations where Islam predominates and/or is the official faith, e.g., Algeria, Morocco, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Chechnya and Turkey.¹⁰ Notably, however, the migrants’ religions as such cannot be automatically inferred from the religious composition of the population of their respective countries of origin. One motivation for emigration is the quest for greater religious freedom, whether to pursue a different religious practice than the mainstream or no religion at all.¹¹ Still, the symmetry between immigrants and Islam is particularly discernible in France: 10.4 per cent of the French population are immigrants; and the Muslim community in France is presently 10 per cent of the French population.¹² Andreas Zick, Beate Kupper and Andreas Hovermann also note that in many European countries with large Muslim immigrant populations, the trend is to equate the ‘immigrant’ with ‘Muslim’, and vice versa to perceive all Muslims as immigrants, regardless of their citizenship or place of birth. Therefore, it comes naturally to speak of immigrants and Muslims in the same breath, even though a considerable proportion of immigrant populations come from non-Muslim countries. The negative view is also valid, as is shown by the evidence of an especially strong relationship between anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim attitudes in Europe. Many European respondents who show prejudice against immigrants also exhibit generalised negative attitudes towards Muslims and Islam.¹³

Young immigrants are, in increasing numbers, the work-force that is filling the gap, thus replacing ageing Europeans and dwindling European populations. In the years 2000–15, Europe’s population shrank by 3.5 per cent. Germany’s population alone, according to its last census in 2011, declined by 1.5 million, and it could shrink from 80.3 million today to about 66 million by 2060.¹⁴ More to the point, tax moneys from immigrant wages sustain the growing population of pensioners. New York Times correspondents Suzanne Daley and Nicholas Kulish, reporting on the current drop in Germany’s population, describe abundant overgrown yards, boarded-up windows and concerns about sewage systems too empty to work properly. They mention also that ‘The [European] work force is rapidly greying, and assembly lines are being redesigned to minimise bending and lifting’, to accommodate the ageing European work-force.¹⁵ (Pope Francis: ‘In many quarters we encounter a general impression of weariness and ageing, of a Europe which is now a grandmother, no longer fertile and vibrant.’¹⁶) Daley and Kulish report that the Volkswagen company has redesigned its assembly line to ease stooping down and overhead work. Reclining swivel seats provide back support even for hard-to-reach spots in the automobiles under construction, and the installation of heavy parts like wheels and front ends is now often fully automated. The diminishing population and resultant labour shortage activated plans, in Germany for example, to find ways to keep older workers in their jobs and to postpone retirement. In one decade, 2002–12, the proportion of people aged 55 to 64 in the German work-force rose from 38.9 per cent to 61.5 per cent. It is also planned to get more women into the work-force by expanding day-care and after-school programmes.¹⁷

One fifth of all people in the Western world are aged 65 or over; in Japan the proportion is one quarter. This means less tax revenue from retirees, fewer people from whose income pension deductions are taken and a growing demand for social and medical services for the elderly. ‘We need immigration for our labour market and so that our social system can also function amid a shrinking population of employable age in the future.’¹⁸ Europeans thus urgently need these young foreigners who, among other things, will enable Europeans to give birth to fewer children, shorten their working hours, enjoy longer weekends and vacations and retire earlier. Until recently 50 (!) was considered a legitimate retirement age, especially in Spain and Greece. However, since 2010, Europeans are working longer than they used to, which means many are retiring later.¹⁹

In 2003 less than a third of Germany’s men aged 60 to 64 and one sixth of its women were still working. However, in 2011 half of German men of this age group and one third of the women were working, though it is rare to see 65-year-old Germans who have not yet retired.²⁰ In Greece in 2008, 44 per cent of 60-year-old men were still working; in 2011 this fell to 37.5 per cent because of the nation’s acute financial crisis and because people were encouraged to quit to allow more younger people to find employment. In 2001, among 60-year-old Italians, only 30 per cent of men and 11 per cent of women were still working; a decade later the figures remained identical. The French generally retire before reaching their 60th birthday. Still, in 2011, one fifth of Frenchmen aged 60 to 64, and one sixth of French women of same age group were still working. In five European countries – Slovakia, Belgium, Spain, France and Hungary – less than 10 per cent of men in their late 60s were still employed. In contrast, in four non-European countries – Mexico, Iceland, Chile and South Korea – more than 50 per cent of this age group were still in work.²¹

Europeans also live longer. In private conversations with several European demographers the author has heard them say, perhaps in reference to an ageing population, that their countrymen ‘tend not to die’. Life expectancy in most EU countries is around 80 years and above; it was 56 years and lower at the beginning of the twentieth century and 38 years in 1800.²² Presently in the developed world, deductions from four taxed workers support one pensioner, usually aged over 65. The European projection for the decade of 2050–60 is for a much larger retired class for whom deductions from only two job holders will support the average pensioner. In the US the ratio will be slightly higher a one pensioner to 2.5 job holders. In Japan and Italy, however, it will be lower: one pensioner to 1.5 job holders! By 2060 Latvia (68 per cent aged 65 and over), Romania (64.8), Poland (64.6), Slovakia (61.8), Bulgaria (60.3) will have the highest percentages of elderly people in the EU.²³ All this means, particularly in the developed world, growing numbers of retirees, but fewer job holders to sustain them with their pension deductions. More pension deductions from more young working migrants, for more ageing Europeans are thus needed for more retirees, for longer periods. More and more immigrants are therefore being admitted into Europe.

The issue of an ever-increasing elderly and retired population is even more complicated in the poorer parts of Europe, such as Romania, the second-poorest member of the EU. There, as Ioana Patran and Sam Cage note, emigration to better-off states with more employment opportunities in Western Europe and beyond the continent leaves behind the old and the poor. EU membership made emigration easier, and Romania with its 19 million people (2010) is among the hardest hit, with a 12 per cent population drop in one decade. Latvia and Lithuania experienced, respectively, a 13 and 12 per cent loss of people in the same period, mostly due to emigration. Of Romania’s 19 million, fewer than 5 million are workers paying taxes, most of the remainder being pensioners, children, subsistence farmers and illegal workers. Costs for the more than 5 million pensioners amounted to 9 per cent of GDP in 2010.²⁴ Thus, according to Patran and Cage, ‘Marriages in the last years are fewer and fewer, and the number of deaths is double the number of births.’ By contrast, the population of Germany, a top receiving country of intra-European immigration, increased in 2011 for the first time since 2002, and this despite German deaths projected to exceed births.²⁵

Usually, when it comes to immigration the picture is not one sided and not always gloomy, because states with large working diasporas often enjoy various benefits, Romania included. Immigration is a safety valve that releases pressures in the sending country, and young immigrants with jobs in the receiving country contribute to their country of origin through remittances; those who return enrich their countries with skills and know-how. Romania’s huge diaspora sent roughly €2.6 billion ($3.4 billion) home to their families in 2011, some 2 per cent of GDP – in many cases a lifeline for poor communities.²⁶

Immigration to Europe: positive, negative, positive

When you call native-born European professionals, plumbers or builders, they do not return a call.

When you call an immigrant, he arrives immediately, and does a good job.²⁷

Many Europeans fail to see the continent’s need of immigration or the migrants’ constructive contribution to Europe’s culture, economy and standard of living. The contribution of migrants to European demography has been considerable. Migrants comprised 89 per cent of population growth in Europe between 1990 and 2000. Without migration, the continent’s population would have shrunk by 4.4 million within a five-year period.²⁸

In the years 2000–50 Germany will need, annually, some 600,000 immigrant workers; France, 110,000; Britain, 190,000; and the entire EU, 1.6 million. Without these working migrants, the EU will not be able to maintain the current level of welfare and standard of living among the member states. It is indeed onesided to view ‘Fortress Europe’ – already with crowded cities, creaky public transport systems, harder-to-find affordable housing, traffic jams, etc. – as defending itself against poor, dark-skinned, unwanted people, non-taxpayers, from poorer countries, who contribute little to the social benefits they receive, rob and abuse the public welfare and political systems, and who are parties to constant conflicts and intermittent, violent ethnic and religious eruptions. (And ‘they’ use threatening language: ‘By means of your democracy we shall invade you; by means of our religion we shall dominate you.’²⁹) Perhaps more than many other examples, the quotation below (nominated ‘the best joke of the year’, author unknown) shows the way immigrants, Muslims in particular, are perceived in Britain and, by extension, elsewhere in Europe. Apparently, immigration places a heavy yoke on the abused European society, culture and economy, hence a warning that calls for immediate and efficient measures to be taken: ‘If you don’t pass this on to your friends, by tomorrow you will receive three illegal immigrants absolutely free.’

Where are the English?

A Romanian arrives in London as a new immigrant to the United Kingdom. He stops the first person he sees walking down the street and says, ‘Thank you, Mr. Englishman, for letting me come into this country, giving me housing, income support, free medical care, and a free education!’

The passer-by says, ‘You are mistaken, I am Egyptian.’

The man goes on and encounters another passer-by. ‘Thank you for having such a beautiful country here in England.’

The person says, ‘I [am] not English, I am Pakistani.’

The new arrival walks further, and the next person he sees he stops, shakes his hand, and says, ‘Thank you for wonderful country, England!’

That person puts up his hand and says, ‘I am from Afghanistan. I am not British.’

He finally sees a nice lady and asks, ‘Are you an Englishwoman?’

She says, ‘No, I am from Africa.’

Puzzled, he asks her, ‘Where are all the English?’

The African lady checks her watch and says, ‘Probably at work.’³⁰

However, as Christina Boswell finds, the hostility towards immigrants appears to be counter-intuitive, given the extent to which European countries have benefited from immigration. The large-scale influx, mainly of low-skilled migrants, many from Muslim countries, who came to Europe in the 1950s and 1960s played a crucial role in the post-war economic reconstruction of Western Europe. Today as well, migrants fill critical gaps in the information and technology sectors, engineering, construction, textiles and sewing, agriculture and food processing, healthcare, teaching, catering, tourism and domestic services.³¹ Immigrants are also consumers; less than a decade ago and before the European economic crisis of 2008, their combined annual purchasing power was estimated at a ‘whopping’ $150 billion: ‘[I]mmigrants contribute more to their host economies – as consumers, investors and workers – than they claw back in social services and public goods.’³² In fact, European businesses have already discerned the potential of this emerging market. ‘Islamic’, i.e., halal bank mortgages (interest-free) are now offered to Muslim borrowers.³³ Take, for instance, an interest-free mortgage: the bank does not loan money to the buyer, but buys the property or object from the seller, then re-sells it to the property buyer at a profit. The latter reimburses the bank in instalments.

More to the point, according to the Global Commission on International Migration, in the year 2000 some 86 million of the world’s migrants were economically active – over half of all migrants. Those in Europe contributed billions of euros to the economic outputs of their host countries.³⁴ It was found in Britain that on balance immigration contributes to the state more than it takes: in 1999–2000 migrants paid about 10 per cent more in taxes than they received in benefits and services – about $4 billion. This phenomenon is not restricted to the UK, it is true for Europe. The International Labour Organization (ILO) found that during their lifetime the average immigrant living in Germany contributes €50,000 more than they take; each highly skilled migrant creates on average 2.5 new jobs in Germany; and the Muslim middle class in Germany is contributing around €39 billion annually to the country’s GNP and billions to the national pension funds.³⁵

Education is another area of gain for Europe: immigration contributes a great deal to the continent’s knowledge and skills. Migrants are relevant in all sectors and make a discernible mark on the growth of productivity. Highly educated migrants positively affect innovation and patent productivity, even if their contribution is smaller than that of educated natives. Highly educated migrants impact heavily in the high-tech sectors, while lesser-educated incomers play a large role in manufacturing.³⁶ ‘The incidence of higher education and skills is greater among Muslim immigrants than in the general population. Europe attracts the best and the brightest away from their destitute, politically dysfunctional and backward homelands.’³⁷

Results in the British education system corroborate these observations. For instance, in the year 2000 there were 5 per cent more university graduates among immigrants than among British-born citizens. The 2005 British Home Office report found that minority ethnic students were well represented on courses in computer science, medicine and dentistry, and law. Their representation was lower in the disciplines of languages, education and the humanities, but the marginalisation of the humanities is currently a discernible phenomenon in many European and American universities.³⁸ As a group, minority ethnic students were more likely to go into further and higher education than were the ‘white’ population, particularly among Indians and black Africans. Pakistani, Bangladeshi and black Caribbean students were found to have lower rates of entry but they were still on par with indigenous populations.³⁹ Also, it was found that on average bilingual pupils – fluent in their native language and fully fluent in English – perform better than English-only speakers.⁴⁰

In Spain too, until recently, the contribution of immigrants has had a positive impact, despite the recession that took hold in 2010. The 3.7 million migrants (about 8 per cent of the population) have played a major role in the country’s development and given more to the nation’s finances than they received. Some 30 per cent of Spain’s growth since 2005, and 50 per cent in five years since 2010, was ascribed to immigrants. Between 2001 and 2015 immigrants have helped to create some 50 per cent of new jobs; in turn, these new jobs have credited the Spanish treasury with $29.4 billion annually. Immigration to Spain accounts for a third of the increase in the rate of female work-force participation: in households with children and no other assistance, both spouses will work if they have a nanny, usually an immigrant, to look after their children. During the years 2000–5, immigration also boosted Spain’s per capita income by an average of 0.3 per cent annually and contributed to the country’s 2005 budget surplus. Overall, immigrants to Spain have produced a positive balance; although they contributed less to the state treasury than their numbers would indicate, they also used fewer services, so the balance is positive.⁴¹ Despite the above, the 2010 economic recession and the consequent dramatic increase in unemployment (close to 25 per cent in 2012) resulted in a government initiative to encourage immigrants to leave Spain through payments and other financial help. The results were disappointing: Madrid expected 87,000 to accept the plan, but only 8,500 left.⁴²

As the quotation below indicates, for the ageing British population – and by extension perhaps for other European pensioners – immigration is a blessing, not so much in disguise. Pensioned retirees and those who see their doctors should be particularly thankful. In the early 2000s almost a third (32 per cent) of the British population – 18.6 million people – were aged over 50, and the number was expected to rise to 23.8 million by the end of 2012.⁴³ In October 2015, this class of elderly people should be grateful to 17,645 physicians who gained their medical qualifications in Asian and Middle Eastern Muslim countries (out of 276,000 physicians in the UK’s National Health Service).⁴⁴ Forty per cent of the country’s active doctors at that date were foreigners who had graduated in medical schools outside Britain:⁴⁵

While there are some communities where immigrants remain unsuccessful, resentful and resented, the more striking phenomenon is how well immigration has worked for Britain. The UK’s National Health Service [NHS] would screech to a halt without foreign staff (in 2000, 27 per cent of health professionals were foreign); the humming economy is sucking in migrants from all over the world, many of them highly skilled with the government’s active encouragement. Nearly two-thirds of immigrants arriving between 1994 and 2003 who were employed before coming to the UK had worked in professional and managerial jobs. In the late 1990s, non-British nationals made up 12.5 per cent of the country’s academic staff.

This is not to say that Britain’s immigration policies are perfect, or that all anti-immigration arguments are baseless myths. But cool-eyed analysis suggests that on balance, immigration is good for the UK – and, by extension, Europe.⁴⁶

Seven years later (December 2012) another observation clearly strengthened the argument that immigration brings genuine gains for host countries. A proper ‘selling’ of immigrants to constituencies and public opinion should ease objections, because ‘not everything is bad in immigration’:

Countries should reduce their resistance to immigrants, because not everything is bad in immigration. They [the immigrants] create demands in the receiving countries, for example demand for accommodation; they produce jobs; they give a push to the economy. The discussion should show how immigrants could contribute to the economy [of the receiving country], and be able to weaken the national resistance against them. The immigrants are a work-force that set the economy in motion; because of this, immigration could become a force to overcome the national objection to immigrants, or at least be presented as ‘a hard currency’ that would enable us to say that, thanks to it, we are interested in having more immigrants.⁴⁷

As the above quotation suggests, there is room for improvement by authorities and migrants alike. The Report of the Commission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain (chaired by Bhikhu Parekh, also known as ‘The Parekh Report’) makes a specific reference to black and Asian nurses employed by the NHS. The quotation describes the year 1995; two decades later one might wish for different descriptions. Assuming and hoping that reality has indeed changed for the better, the following could serve as a comparative reference:

In 1995 the Policy Studies Institute discovered that the two-thirds of black and Asian nurses reported racist harassment from patients and from their white colleagues. The Manufacturing, Science and Finance (MSF) Union maintained that ‘racial discrimination operates at all levels in the NHS, right from the processing of application forms through to top jobs. It presents a concrete ceiling, which keeps talented and qualified ethnic minority staff from the positions they could be filling. Racism operates also at other levels, be it racial harassment or abuse from patients, or unequal disciplinary measures applied to ethnic minority staff.’⁴⁸

What emerges here is a mixed picture, that is, one of failure and success as regards the integration and contribution of immigrants. So what is the answer to the allegation that immigrants depress wages, take jobs and leave no money for welfare benefits for the locals? European governments need to explain to their nationals why they let migrants in, a population that seemingly lives on the dole and consumes public money. Governments could point to the immigrants’ contribution to European economies and societies, but they are concerned that by facilitating the entry of foreigners they will offend public opinion and lose electoral support.⁴⁹

Balanced analyses are not so easily achieved. As mentioned above, the current mantra across Europe blames immigrants for robbing welfare systems. For example, in 2005 the Dutch welfare establishment, sustained some 40 per cent of the 1.7 million immigrants who reside in the Netherlands.⁵⁰ In Britain, white working-class Britons, often unemployed, are adamant that it is their colour that is responsible for their poor status and for their sons’ failures at school. The reason: the authorities give everything to the Asians, who are mainly Muslims. Had the colour of these Britons been non-white, they would have been among the authorities’ beneficiaries.⁵¹ As recently as 2015 the mantra repeated ‘[A] lot of poor white people think you are coming to steal their jobs, reduce their wages and destroy their culture.’⁵² Clearly, this causes a surge in anti-immigrant feeling and boosts support for right-wing parties and politicians (more below).

The upshot in Britain, as elsewhere in Europe, is not conclusive. If low-paying jobs taken by migrants affect national wages, then the effect is very modest. Moreover, by countering labour shortfalls and generating economic activity, migrants add to, not just take from, the economy. The British building industry estimates that it could use another 24,000 workers – partly to build houses that newcomers might eventually be able to buy. Europe as a whole will need many more immigrants to fill the gap caused by the 20-million drop in its working population that is projected by 2030. Immigrants – here, specifically, in a report about Chinese-born immigrants – outperform native British workers on many levels, including self-employment, education and housing. ‘In general, immigrants come to work. It’s very difficult to leave everything behind and start over again. It’s more motivated people who do that.’⁵³ In short, immigration – that of Muslims being no exception – is no different than any other issue. When it is debated and analysed, immigration deserves a balanced, objective and less emotional approach. Indeed, immigration has its drawbacks, but at the same time it is also good for all concerned.

Nevertheless, aspects of discrimination, even racism and Islamophobia, have negative influences. The result, says Jocelyne Cesari, is that ‘[m]ore than any other religious group, … Muslims seem not to be the masters of their own identity in their adopted countries’.⁵⁴ Accordingly, a majority of Europeans believe Islam to be a religion of intolerance.⁵⁵ In the US, Attorney General John Ashcroft in the George W. Bush administration (2001–5) reportedly described Islam (later denied) as ‘a religion in which God requires you to send your son to die for Him. Christianity is a faith in which God sends His son to die for you.’ The attorney general contrasted ‘the way of God and the way of the terrorists’ and cast the US Government’s War on Terrorism (WOT) in religious terms, arguing that the campaign is rooted in faith in God, hence Christians, Jews and Muslims should unite in the WOT effort.⁵⁶ A decade later the Iraqi columnist and writer Khalid Kishtainy compared the scientists of a Western space project planning a one-way trip to Mars with Middle Eastern suicide bombers. The former plan to sacrifice their lives for science and humanity, intending to land on Mars and build a colony there by 2027; the latter throw away their lives for the sake of ignorance while killing dozens of others. Death by suicide occurs in both examples, but in his article ‘There’s suicide, and there’s suicide’, Kishtainy writes,

While most of the backward countries are preoccupied with nonsense, atrocities and ISIS, in the West 100 scientists with the highest academic degrees are being trained with the purpose of selecting five of them, men and women, for an impressive space journey. [On this journey] they will travel among the stars, meteors and comets of the heavens, and after six months they will arrive at Mars and land on it. They will be equipped with the most advanced scientific instruments in order to perform a variety of experiments … Their spacecraft will use up all its fuel in carrying them to this remote destination, so they will not be able to return to Earth. They will die there and thus establish the first human cemetery on Mars. […]

This choice group of prominent scientists will take off on a suicide [mission], knowing they will never return to Earth. […]

Yes, we too have suicide-seekers. You will find them everywhere: in Somalia, Iraq, Syria, Egypt and Libya, strapping explosive belts to their bellies and then detonating them, sacrificing their lives and their youth. And for what? For ignorance and illiteracy. […]

Both [the scientists and the terrorists] commit suicide! But how vast the difference between the two and between what they do!⁵⁷

Generally speaking, immigration to Europe is presently perceived as a problem, and not as advancing European culture and economic growth, unlike immigration to Canada or the US. Rather, it is portrayed as a threat, an obstacle to future harmony and EU unity, a cause of the further fragmentation of Europe’s collective identity, a spur to cultural divisions and alienation. It is said that Muslims coming to Europe remain different and strangers;⁵⁸ they do not become Europeans, but prefer to establish their ‘mini-sending-countries’ on European soil (‘Mini-Turkey’ in Germany, ‘Mini-Algeria’ in France, etc.). This is counter to the popular notion in the US that immigrants come to America to become Americans, even though simultaneously living in China Town or Little Ireland and preserving their ethnicity. But Europe objects, especially to Muslim immigration. ‘The foreigners are slowly suffocating our lovely country. They have all these children and raise them so badly.’⁵⁹ The demographic threat perceived to reside in the migrants’ children caused the radical rightist German National Democratic Party (NPD) to mail thousands of condoms to German organisations and members of parliament who support the immigrants.⁶⁰ Concern for European demography in the face of the Muslim influx of immigrant children produced the following rather off-colour (British) illustration:

British schools today:

registry on the first day back at school in Birmingham, England

The teacher began calling out the names of the pupils:

‘Mustafa Al Eih Zeri?’ – ‘Here.’

‘Achmed El Kabul?’ – ‘Here.’

‘Fatima Al Hayek? ‘ – ‘Here.’

‘Ali Abdul Olmi?’ – ‘Here.’

‘Mohammed Bin Kadir?’ – ‘Here’

‘Ali Son al En?’– silence in the classroom.

‘Ali Son al En?’ – continued silence as everyone looked around the room.

The teacher repeated the call.

A girl stood up and said, ‘Sorry, teacher. I think that’s me. It’s pronounced Alison Allen’.

The Muslims’ visibility seems to arouse resistance and revulsion, and even worse, ugly and cruel reactions: the immigrants are ‘shitting and pissing’ everywhere. The ‘yellow streaks of urine’ of the ‘sons of Allah’ profane the Italian marble (‘How could they succeed in hitting so well that target protected by a balcony and more than two yards distant from their urinary apparatus?’). And according to the Italian Oriana Fallaci, they are ‘breeding like rats’:

They breed too much. Italians don’t produce babies anymore, the idiots. For decades they have had and still have the lowest birth rate in the West. Our ‘foreign workers’, instead, breed and multiply gloriously. At least half of the Muslim women you see in our streets are pregnant or surrounded by streams of children. Yesterday, in Rome, three of them delivered in public. One on a bus, one in a taxi, one along the street.⁶¹

These hideous and repugnant descriptions notwithstanding, the presence of millions of Muslim immigrants has become a fact of life in Europe. Past and future genuine European needs (mentioned above) have prompted the arrival of the immigrants, many of them from Muslim countries. As already mentioned, one third of European production stems from the young immigrant work-force imported into the ageing continent. The absorption of these millions is among the most important challenges that Europe faces in the twenty-first century. A by-product of this absorption is the European and Christian hope to bring about better conditions for non-Muslim minorities living in Muslim countries. A demand for reciprocity has become an integral part of the encounter between European countries and Muslim immigrants.

Reciprocity

Immigrants are resented for turning churches where Christianity is no longer practised into mosques. Muslims demand to pray in present-day active churches which once were mosques (‘without any reciprocity in Muslim countries!’), for example, the cathedral in Córdoba.⁶² In 1236, during the Reconquista of the Iberian Peninsula (from the eighth to the fifteenth century), the Córdoba mosque was consecrated as a Catholic church, and has remained so ever since. Córdoba’s cathedral was originally a Christian church, the Visigoth Church of San Vicente, built in 590, when the Visigoth kingdom ruled the Iberian Peninsula prior to the Muslim invasion. In the early eighth century the Muslims captured Córdoba and converted the church into a mosque (786), but they allowed Christians to continue praying there. Between 1236 and 2004 the cathedral was used only by Christians. However, in January 2004, al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden encouraged Muslims to reconquer Spain for Islam, and titled the Iberian Peninsula ‘The Lost Al-Andalus’. In a speech titled ‘Message to the Muslim people’, bin Laden insisted that ‘No Muslim territory should ever become non-Muslim. … Let the whole world know that we shall never accept the tragedy of Andalusia.’ His deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, instructed (September 2007) that ‘re-conquering Al-Andalus is the duty of the Islamic nation in general and of you [the al-Qaeda fighters] in particular’.⁶³

Indeed, as from the early 2000s Muslims in Spain lobbied the Roman Catholic Church and petitioned the Holy See and Pope John Paul II to allow them to pray in Córdoba cathedral. They requested that space be allocated for Muslim worship and mentioned that in the past believers of both religions had worshipped there, a precedent for peaceful coexistence that was worth repeating. They sought to restore the ‘spirit of Al-Andalus, where Muslims, Christians and Jews co-existed in relative harmony’. ‘The Córdoba monument is a lesson in universalism, in how cultures and religions can meet and co-exist … It would be an exemplary gesture,’ they wrote. Concurrently, they vowed not to forget that ‘Al-Andalus will continue being Al-Andalus for Muslims of all ages. It is there; we have created it. Here we have our dead, who remain alive, awaiting Resurrection Day.’⁶⁴

The Arab League endorsed the request to make the cathedral available to Muslims, but its secretary general at the time, Amr Moussa, could not promise reciprocity. Christianity and Judaism forbid prayer in mosques, therefore, the great mosque in Damascus (formerly a church) or the Dome of the Rock mosque in Jerusalem (built on the Jewish Temple Mount) are off limits. Also, several Muslim countries prohibit the building of churches.⁶⁵ An exception, though imposed by military force, is that since the June 1967 Six Day War Muslims and Jews pray regularly, each in their own parts and at their own times, in the Machpelah Cave/Ibrahimi Mosque (Tomb of the Patriarchs) in the West Bank town of Hebron/Al-Khalil.

In April 2010, on Good Friday, a confrontation erupted between Muslim tourists and the guards of Córdoba cathedral; a group of Austrian Muslims demanded prayer rights in the cathedral, citing its history as once the world’s second-largest mosque. The guards invited the tourists to visit the 24,000-square metre cathedral but forbade them to pray. Notwithstanding the warning, the tourists unrolled their prayer rugs, kneeled on the floor and began praying. A large brawl developed between the group and the guards and police, and eight tourists were arrested and charged with disturbing the peace and violent conduct. In early 2013 the criminal court of Córdoba acquitted them. Among other reasons, the court ruled that a conviction would ‘do a disservice to freedom of religious thought and respect for the plurality of religions’.⁶⁶

The bishop of Córdoba, Demetrio Fernandez, decreed it impossible to share a house of worship: ‘It would be like sharing a wife between two husbands.’ The bishop mentioned that the Basilica of San Juan in Damascus was an example of a Christian site that had been converted into a mosque. An Umayyad mosque was built in the eighth century over a fourth-century church said to contain the remains of John the Baptist: ‘We wouldn’t think of asking for the Damascus mosque, because it belongs to the Muslims and for them it is an emblematic place. … We understand that history doesn’t go back. It only goes forward. So, it doesn’t make sense to ask for the Córdoba [cathedral] to convert it into a mosque, it doesn’t make sense because history is irreversible.’⁶⁷ The bishop portrayed the gloomy scenario that develops the moment a place turns into a joint ‘mosque-cathedral’ (street signs in Córdoba already direct people to the ‘mosque-cathedral’; the place has been defined by UNESCO as World Heritage Site):⁶⁸

[A]ny ‘joint use’ of the Catholic cathedral is ‘a euphemism that means: Catholics, get out!’ To this, [Bishop] Fernandez replies: ‘We will not leave, except if we are kicked out, since for sixteen centuries there has been Christian worship here … while the Muslims have been here but four and a half centuries.’ He explained in more details: [T]he [B]ishop pointed out that it is important ‘to know, that where Muslims pray, no one else may pray, which is to say, if I permit Muslims to pray in the Córdoba Cathedral, we could go [out] the day after tomorrow [pasado manana]; then, to permit the Muslims to pray in the Cathedral is equivalent to telling Catholics to saying goodbye and good night, and that would be irresponsible’ [equivale para los católicos a decir adiós, buenas noches, y eso sería una irresponsabilidad]. Bishop Fernandez averred that ‘some things may be shared and others are not; and the Cathedral of Córdoba is not to be shared with Muslims.’⁶⁹

The bishop of Córdoba rejected reciprocity and preferred no change in the mosque in Damascus, formerly the Basilica of John the Baptist, lest there might be detrimental repercussions, like Muslim demands for Muslim worship at Córdoba cathedral. But revival of previous religious worship in places once founded or owned by other religions is not confined to Christianity or Islam, nor to Córdoba or Damascus, nor to the demand for direct reciprocity (i.e., you let me pray in your place, I will let you pray in mine). It also involves sites in third countries. Byzantium’s Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom) in Constantinople, now Istanbul, was seat of the Patriarchate of Constantinople and the largest cathedral of Eastern Orthodox Christianity (537–1453); it was then converted into a mosque (1453–1931), and since 1935 has been a museum – the second most-visited museum in Turkey after Istanbul’s Top Kapi Palace in 2014. The Bir Seb’a mosque in the Israeli southern town of Be’er Sheva (Beersheba), in Israeli hands since 1948, is now the Museum of Muslim Culture; the site is no longer a place of active Muslim worship since Israel’s Supreme Court ruled on the issue in June 2011. Both the above sites are examples of abortive attempts where faiths clashed and demanded to revive the past.

The Bir Seb’a mosque’s history is somewhat similar to Hagia Sophia’s: a mosque that became a museum.⁷⁰ But at the end of 2012 the Turkish government and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) protested, successfully, over a planned wine and beer festival that was to take place in the yard of the Be’er Sheva Museum of Muslim Culture, formerly a 1906 Ottoman-era mosque. The Muslim demand for services to be conducted at Córdoba cathedral was countered by requests to renew Christian worship in Hagia Sophia.⁷¹ The demand of Jews to pray at the premises of Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem’s Old City, built on the remains of the Jewish Temple on the Temple Mount, the holiest site of Judaism, has been rejected by the Jerusalem Muslim Wakf trust (administrators of the mortmain property).

The Vatican apparently attempts to make reciprocity the cornerstone of its relations with Muslims, as well as claiming human and religious rights for Christians living in Muslim and Arab countries.⁷² Globally speaking, the present Christian–Muslim encounter is far from peaceful. ‘Enough now with this turning the other cheek! It’s our duty to protect ourselves … The West has had relations with the Arab countries for half a century … and has not been able to get the slightest concession on human rights,’ was the reaction of Monsignor Velasio De Paolis, the then Secretary of the Vatican’s Supreme Court.⁷³ Christians living outside Europe are being massacred (in Nigeria, Egypt, the Gaza Strip, Syria and Iraq, for instance), consequently Europeans want all inter-faith relations to be conducted through ‘positive tit for tat’: ‘Christians must love immigrants and Muslims must treat the Christians among them well.’ Or, ‘Just as Muslims can build their houses of prayer anywhere in the world the faithful of other religions should be able to do so as well.’⁷⁴

European writers have compared the rights granted to Muslims in the West with the restrictions imposed on an estimated 40 million Christians in Muslim countries, who, they find, are ‘an