Friday, July 29, 2011

Europe's Homegrown Terrorists

[In the U.S. the anti-immigrant fanatics rail against Latino immigrants for their supposed refusal to assimilate and claim that Mexicans are planning a "reconquest" of the Southwest. In Europe the rightwingers rail against Muslim immigrants for their supposed refusal to assimilate and claim that Muslims are planning to conquer "Christian Europe." In both cases the claims have no basis in the facts. In Europe these ideas inspired the Oslo terrorist.--Blog editor]

Gary Younge, The Nation
July 25, 2011

...The general framing goes like this. Europe is being overrun by Muslims and other non-white immigrants, who are outbreeding non-Muslims at a terrifying rate. Unwilling to integrate culturally and unable to compete intellectually, Muslim populations have become hotbeds of terrorist sympathy and activity. Their presence threatens not only security but the liberal consensus regarding women’s rights and gay rights that Western Europe has so painstakingly established; and overall, this state of affairs represents a fracturing of society that is losing its common values. This has been allowed to happen in the name of not offending specific ethnic groups, otherwise known as multiculturalism.

One could spend all day ripping these arguments to shreds, but for now let’s just deal with the facts. [...]

Read the full article:
http://www.thenation.com/article/162270/europes-homegrown-terrorists

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