Muslims In Europe: Why Is It So Difficult?

慶應義塾大学外国語教育研究センター AWC2005 年度大学生部門次席受賞論文
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Muslims In Europe
Muslims In Europe: Why Is It So Difficult?
Table of Contents
Introduction……………………………………………………………………………..1
Chapter1: Muslims as the Absolute Other............................................................3
Chapter2: Muslims as the Threat to the Security…………………………………...7
2-(a): As External Enemies………………………………………………………...7
2-(b): As Traditional Internal Enemies…………………………………………….8
2-(c): As Transnational Terrorists…………………………………………………. 9
Chapter3: Europe Needs Muslims as They Are…………………………………...11
Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………….13
Reference……………………………………………………………………………..14
Introduction
Recently, there happen a number of riots in France. These riots are being
raised by immigrants and their offspring who were born in France and a
considerable amount of them are Muslims. They are so unsatisfied with their
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present social situation, that is to say, they are forced directly and indirectly to
live in housing developments built in poor and dangerous areas of suburbs (In
French, called ‘Banlieues’). Also they are in so-called ‘under class’ in the society
and can not go out from the class. There are lots of reasons for that
phenomenon, for instance, many children of immigrants from, for example,
Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco can not adapt themselves to other children in
elementary or junior high schools and eventually they tend to drop out from
schools. In addition, It also brings about the generation of a stereo-typed image
that children of immigrants are inclined to be foolish and dangerous, this is why
lots of parents who are originally French people try to make their children go to
other, safe, and relatively rich schools far from ‘Banlieues.’
Therefore, recent riots by immigrants are not temporal ones, however,
ones which are set up by such kind of social division in France. Furthermore, In
fact, these riots are not staying only in France but now spreading to neighboring
countries like Belgium and Germany. As a result, this problem is absolutely
universal one for people living in so-called developed countries. In Japan also,
there are more than two million legal immigrants at present, and they account for
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about 1.5% of population1. Since the demographic scale of Japan is now getting
smaller and smaller, in the near future, we would not be able to avoid the
problem about immigrants. One of the aims of this paper is in that point. For
proceeding multi-ethnicalization of social construction in Japan and the other
(developed) countries, we have to prepare many appropriate ways and choices.
In following three chapters, I would like to argue about how Muslims have
been perceived in the Christian and European world. Then, at last, I will pose a
hypothesis that Europeans absolutely need Muslims as they are.
Chapter1: Muslims as the Absolute Other
The Islamic world has always been the absolute other to the Christian
world in many senses, and vice versa. First and foremost they have regarded
each other as an absolute evil since each believes different god. For both of
them, there exists only one god, that is, Jesus Christ for Christians and Allah for
Muslims, therefore, they regard each other as pagans and hate each other.
1
In the end of 2004, there were 1,973,747 legal immigrants in Japan who
accounted about 1.55% of the whole population of Japan. There were also
207,299 illegal immigrants. See the website of the Immigration Bureau of Japan.
(http://www.immi-moj.go.jp/index.html)
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Especially Christians have a more marked tendency to regard Muslims as
barbarous, brute, and uncivilized people than Muslims2. At the same time, the
Islamic world and the Christian world, perhaps we can use the European world in
the same meaning here, has always fought battles to determine borders
between two worlds. In fact, when the Ottoman Empire was in its peak, it gained
ground on Vienna, the capital of the European world. The Islamic world has
always been as a big enemy and also as an absolute other both religiously and
politically for the European world, and even now considerable differences
between their cultures and life-styles are left.
On the contrary, now due to the remarkable increase of the number of
immigrants from poor and not-modernized Islamic countries toward rich and
modernized European countries, Europeans and Muslims are forced to live in
the same territory. It should be recognized that people from poor countries, in
other words, so-called third world countries, were needed as labor forces to
revive European countries which were terribly destroyed in the World War II.
For example, plenty of Turks immigrated to Germany and similarly Pakistanis
immigrated to UK. Nonetheless, after two oil-shocks occurred in 1970s, such a
2
The Ottoman Empire allowed Christians and Jews to live in its territory even if
they preserved their own religions other than Islam. See Suzuki Tadashi (1992)
Osuman Teikoku [The Ottoman Empire], Koudansha.
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significance of Muslim immigrants as labor forces were considerably lost, and
rather their existence became to be seen as a big obstacle for European
countries to stand up against the economic crisis. This is why the new racism
was rising in all over Europe, especially in some countries like Austria and
France. In Austria, the Freedom Party whose leader is Joerg Haider gathered a
large number of votes in elections and became a part of the coalition
government. In France also, the National Front whose leader is Jean-Marie Le
Pen firstly rose in the middle of 1980s, then, in the resent presidential election
2002, he proceeded to the second round defeating Lionel Jospin of the Socialist
Party, and got 19 % of all the votes in the second round.
Why can such far-right parties gather plenty of votes in Europe which
represents several universal values like human rights. Some intellectuals
adequately pointed out that there is the rearrangement of the racist theory. To
say more concretely, it means that new racism is based upon the cultural
essentialism differing from traditional racism which is based upon the biological
inheritance3. This is why new racism claims the right to difference, as black
people and women once did, and defines itself as a protector of differences
3
Balibar, Etienne & Wallerstein, Immanuel (1990) Race, Nation, Classe: Les
Identités ambiguës, Editions La Découverte, pp37-38.
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between various cultures. Therefore, through inventing such a new theory, they
can define the universalism, like the French republicanism, as a destroyer of
important and precious value of differences of cultures, and as a real racism.
This theory has helped the people to give up controlling their racist feelings
toward Muslim immigrants who look pretty different in many terms, and to accept
radical far-right discourses which populist leaders show4. The table below clearly
Table: Most important issues in first round of the 2002 French presidential
election (%)
Issues ranked 1st, 2nd or
3rd
Le Pen
All
Difference Le Pen/All
7
16
-9
Unemployment
52
61
-9
Immigration
68
23
+45
Social inequalities
21
36
-15
Political scandals
6
9
-3
68
60
+8
9
15
-6
23
28
-5
3
9
-6
Fight against terrorism
16
16
0
Sovereignty of France
9
5
+4
20
19
+1
Pollution
Criminality
School
Retirement funds
European Union
construction
Tax reductions
Reference: Mayer (2002), pp456.
4
You can find it clearly in Le Pen’s propositions. For example, He is claiming
that “Mettre fin à toute immigration.” [Putting the end to the whole immigration.]
(http://www.frontnational.com/doc_prop_identite.php)
慶應義塾大学外国語教育研究センター AWC2005 年度大学生部門次席受賞論文
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tells us that voters for Le Pen in 2002 French Presidential Election focused on
the immigration problem more than voters for Chirac and Jospin. European
people once attempted to live together with the absolute other named Muslims,
however, with help of the far-right populists and following mainstream statesmen,
some of European people now seem to abandon such a tough and difficult
project, and rather took advantage of the absoluteness of the otherness of
Muslims, and try to exclude them from their land.
Chapter2: Muslims as the Threat to the Security
Muslims are, however, not only the absolute other toward the European
world, but also one of the biggest threats to it. Muslims have been regarded as
enemies in the European world in the three aspects. In summary, the European
world has seen Muslims firstly as external enemies, secondly as internal
enemies, and finally as transnational terrorists.
2-(a): As External Enemies
Muslims are firstly regarded as external enemies who were trying to invade
慶應義塾大学外国語教育研究センター AWC2005 年度大学生部門次席受賞論文
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the sacred Christian and European world. As I mentioned above in chapter1, the
Ottoman Empire overhung even Vienna. Also some Arab states are regarded as
especially arrogant and dangerous enemies, for instance, Iran and Iraq.
However, European countries apparently have tried to abandon this kind of
antagonistic attitude these days, and in addition, even if when troubles or conflict
break out, they seem to attempt to deal with them through peaceful and
multilateral policies. Accordingly there is almost no seriously perilous affair
between European countries and Islamic countries unlike between US and
Islamic countries.
2-(b): As Internal Enemies
Since Muslim immigrants firstly came to European countries as cheap and
easy-to-hire-and-fire labors, they have naturally stayed in the underclass of cities.
Therefore, their educational levels are lower than ordinal French or German
people, and they tend to commit crimes to represent their dissatisfaction to
societies which are so hard toward them. They made small ethnic communities
inside and outside city areas, and then are feared as hotbeds of potential crimes.
For the security of majority people in society, they have been often arrested
慶應義塾大学外国語教育研究センター AWC2005 年度大学生部門次席受賞論文
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without arrest warrants.
In 1980’s Black people (some of them were Muslims) caused many big
riots and fought against policemen. Similarly in France and Germany, there
happened lots of uprisings and illegal punishments by groups led by both
immigrants and originally French or German citizens. Ongoing riots in France,
Belgium and Germany are, therefore, unusual not due to their occurrence itself,
but due to their intensiveness in this very short period.
2-(c): As Transnational Terrorists
Especially after the 9.11 Attack occurred in US, Muslims became to apt to
be thoughtlessly regarded as reservists to be terrorists. People became to see
them not only reserves of crimes, but also terrorist activities which would kill
many people at a moment. Olivier Roy, a French researcher of the Islamism,
named Islamic societies in European countries which show unique evolution as
‘EuroIslam’, and warned their radicalization 5 . Furthermore, since terroristsnetwork is worldwide the problem assumes a global aspect. Robert Leiken
cautioned in his recent paper that some radical Muslims in Europe could easily
5
See, Roy, Olivier (2003) EuroIslam: the Jihad within? The National Interest, 71,
(Spring), pp63-73.
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enter US and other developed countries with no need to getting visas6. As a
result, now Europe is seemed to be a fertile soil for terrorists and a place to
launch them to US, Middle East, Africa, and of course within Europe itself.
Within Europe, although it is clear that terrorist-looking people, that is,
immigrants from Middle East, Africa, and South Asia are much weaker and much
more vulnerable than French or German origins in reality, French or German
origins are now feeling too much fear toward terrorist-looking people. There
exists, Sakai Takashi pointed out, ‘Imaginary Inversion7.’
One policy and its unfortunate but expectable consequence proved that his
indication is true. That is to say, it is a problem about ‘Shooting to Kill’ policy in
UK and its innocent victim who was an legal immigrant from Brazil. He was shot
by plainclothes policeman in a subway, with no warning because of just one
reason that he looked like a terrorist and nearly trying to explode his bombs
around his torso. But now we know his complete innocence and completely
normal behavior in a train at that time. This event itself and not so scathing
reaction of people following such grievous happenings bitterly showed that
6
See, Leiken, Robert (2005) Europe’s Angry Muslims Foreign Affairs
(July/August), pp120-135.
7 See, Sakai Takashi (2004) Bouryoku no Tetsugaku [Philosophy of Violence],
Kawadesyobousinnsya, pp112.
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Imaginary Inversion’s existence.
Chapter3: Europe Needs Muslims as They Are
If European countries and people there could see Muslims in more realistic
point of view, then would it be much easier for Muslims to live in Europe? If
Europeans could accept Muslim immigrants with much more generosity and
tolerance, then would this situation change to better one? Perhaps the answer
would still be negative one. That is simply because Europe needs Muslims to
identify itself as Europe. This is one big paradox. Europe has really hated
Muslims historically and still now, however, at the same time Europe itself has
needed Muslims.
Now Turkey is attempting to join in the European Union by its main force,
however, it is not so difficult for us to predict that this attempt would certainly take
pretty much time and effort. Rather the question whether Turkey could really
participate in EU still remains uncertainly. Symbolicaly, Valery Giscard d’Estaing
who was the former president of France and the chairperson of the European
Commission at present, said that ‘Turkey is not Europe’, and ‘the enlargement of
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the EU to Turkey means the end of Europe.’ Turkey’s entrance to the EU would
make the border which is lying between the European world and the Islamic
world obscure in two aspects. The first aspect is that one big Islamic country
would be included in Europe. The second aspect is that many Muslims could
move from Turkey to whole other parts of Europe. Therefore, for conservative
people like Giscard d’Estaing, who are now increasing as we saw in Chapter1, it
would be more and more difficult to identify themselves as Europeans.
Through using the same theory, proceeding assimilation or integration of
Muslim immigrants into existent societies in several European countries means
that now it becomes more and more complicated to define what is France, what
is Germany, and what is Europe. Therefore, for European origins, Muslims
should not be completely assimilated into societies, and should not be
completely wiped out from the earth but should be Muslims as they have been.
Paradoxically, in order to preserve Muslims’ otherness and antagonism toward
the European world, which are two significant elements for Europeans for their
own identification, Muslims should be still as external enemies, internal enemies,
and transnational terrorists.
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Conclusion
Europe experienced a devastating tragedy brought about by Hitler and his
Third Reich, and it was one of the most important reasons to make a decision to
eliminate all kinds of discriminations in Europe and rather all over the world. At
present, however, in the face of so many Muslims, it seems that it is now giving
up such a difficult but at the same time so significant attempt. Rather it seems
that Muslims are now made use of for the reunification of modern nation-states
which are losing its importance in people’s daily life 8 Do we have to just
watching this situation proceeding? Do we have to admit that it is impossible to
accept Muslims to be real Europeans without losing French, German, and
European identities simultaneously?
On the other hand, now we can find tiny but a very significant trigger in
campaigns against recent riots in France, Belgium and Germany which are
organized by both French or German origins and Muslim immigrants. They
cooperatively criticize riots, clear up, for example, burned cars and shops, and
8
One of UK newspapers, Telegraph carried one article that shows ten core
values of English identity to unite.
(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2005/07/27/dl2701
.xml)
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take to the streets together. Here we may see the germ of the real partnership
among them. Even so, we should not forget, however, the future of Muslims in
Europe would still be uncertain and obscure same as now.
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