The massacre of innocents in Paris last week by terrorists aggravated an already difficult situation in Europe caused by the massive influx of Syrian and other Muslim refugees over the past year. Even before the Paris attacks, the media, and particularly the Internet, was awash with xenophobic articles and opinions predicting that unless drastic steps were taken, Europe would be overrun by Muslims and succumb within a generation or two to Sharia law.
Of course, there is no shortage of wingnuts and extremist right wing politicians that are ready to spread fear and paranoia by claiming that all of this is part of some big Muslim conspiracy to conquer the world and send civilization back centuries and under the control of reactionary fundamentalist mullahs. Needless to say, there are areas and even countries in the Middle East that are under the ruthless control of reactionary fundamentalist mullahs, but they are no more representative of all Arabs and Muslims than Donald Trump is representative of Western civilization.
In fact, most of the Muslim refugees that are streaming into Europe are doing so to get away from the tyrants and fundamentalists that have ruined their countries and murdered hundreds of thousands of their compatriots. They do not have the remotest desire of bringing that sort of dysfunctional rule to Europe. They want the freedom, the stability, the democracy and the opportunity that Europe has to offer, and are fleeing the medievalist oppression of their native countries.
No doubt, amongst those hundreds of thousands of refugees, there likely are some radicals and revolutionaries with more nefarious aims in mind, but it was ever thus with other mass refugee and immigration movements in the past. The large waves of Ukrainian immigrants that came to Canada in the early part of the last century included a small number of dedicated Bolshevik agitators with world revolution in mind, but Canada’s society, values and political and legal infrastructure was able to withstand and deal with the turmoil they tried to cause. I am sure that European civilization is strong enough and quite capable of dealing in the long run with the kind of anarchistic chaos that this small, though well-armed, organized and financed band of terrorists is trying to inflict.
The reality is that this large influx of Muslim refugees into Europe does not pose a significant long-term threat to European democracy. There are those that make wild predictions that within the next twenty to fifty years, if current trends continue, many European countries will have a majority Muslim population. That too, is highly unlikely. The current crisis is being fed by the dire situation in Syria and several other Arab countries. Regardless of how bad things are there now, they are bound to be resolved over the next few years, and the crush of refugees will diminish significantly.
Further, the fears that the high fertility rates amongst these refugee populations will overwhelm European host countries, is also an unwarranted assumption. Historical experience has shown that, regardless of ethnic and cultural background, whenever third world ethnic groups emigrate to first world countries, inevitably, as their financial and educational level rises, the number of children each family has decreases significantly. Further, as ethnic groups adapt to the society and cultures of their host countries, most of them assimilate into the dominant ethos and take on the values and practices of where they live. They become loyal and productive citizens. Negative historical prejudices and beliefs diminish and eventually disappear.
There is, of course one way to prevent this natural evolutionary path to stability and constructive diversity, and that is to demonize all Muslims as a group, ghettoize them, prevent them from enjoying the same opportunities the rest of us have, and oppress them into believing they are an unjustly persecuted group. That is exactly what the terrorists are trying to do. They are trying to make us fear all Muslims. They are trying to make us believe that all Muslims are terrorists bent on overthrowing our democratic societies. They are trying to make us ostracize all Muslims from our societies. They want us to treat their fellow Muslims with fear and oppression. That way they can polarize the Muslim masses and seize even more political power than they already have.
We must not fall for the Muslim terrorist agenda and provide them with more fertile ground to breed their poisonous aims. The most effective long term way to combat Muslim fundamentalism, is to provide the large Muslim moderate majority with the help and support that they need to become valued and constructive members of our societies. By all means, we should take all stringent security measures to combat the terrorists. But this does not include punishing all Muslims for the sins of the misguided and psychopathic few individuals that mistakenly and sacrilegiously claim to represent the will of Allah.
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