Muslims In Europe: Everyone's Favorite Scapegoat

The problem in Europe is not "Islamofascism" - a term Christopher Hitchens continues to use without any embarrassment. The problem is fascism. The problem in Europe is not radical hordes of Muslims threatening to take over - the problem is xenophobia, racism, marginalization and unemployment faced by Muslim men and women who far from living in expectations of "Eurabia", are more realistically living in expectation of the penal colony - a very large one with no fences in which they exist as an underclass.

A small percentage of Muslim youth is radicalized along the lines of the British tabloid stereotype. A larger number of Muslim youth is sufficiently marginalized and angry to resort to delinquent behavior, including rioting. However the vast majority of European Muslims consist of families struggling to get by in societies that stigmatize them, however subtly, and relegate them to the fringes.

When I say that fascism, not "Islamofascism", is on the rise I'm not engaging in hyperbole. This is a political reality in modern Europe. Fascists can be found in local councils and parliaments. The percentage of their vote share has been steadily increasing. In Norway for example 22%, in Switzerland 29%. They have played a role in government in both Italy and Austria.

Jean-Marie Le Pen, who pulled in a third of the French vote not so long ago calls the gas chambers "a detail of history". These reactionary elements have long been waiting in the wings hoping for much needed oxygen to bring them back to life. The oxygen fix began to happen after 9/11 with the terror scare and the polarization caused by the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. Right-wing extremists along with the scribes and advocates who are helping to facilitate their rise, are back in business.

You don't need to listen to the rhetoric of the right to realize that there is a new mood of intolerance that is trickling down. Recently the English novelist, Martin Amis, felt comfortable enough to say:

"There's a definite urge--don't you have it?--to say, 'the Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order.' What sort of suffering? Not letting them travel. Deportation--further down the road. Curtailing of freedoms. Strip-searching people who look like they're from the Middle East or from Pakistan.... Discriminatory stuff, until it hurts the whole community and they start getting tough with their children."

Ronan Bennet took on the Amis' comments in an article in the Guardian. He did an excellent job of showing just how wrong headed Martin Amis' reactionary views really are when considered in the light of the reality faced by Muslims in the UK.

Discrimination against Muslims is particularly bad in France where being named Ali or Mohammad could render you permanently unemployable. The Union's European Monitoring Center on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC), released a report not so long ago. It pointed out that the chance of people with a Maghrebi name getting a job interview is five times less than people with a purely French name.

The discrimination faced by Muslims in France, especially when it comes to employment opportunities is so extreme, many of the young take work in the UK where skills and qualifications for the most part trump ethnic and or religious considerations. Right wing commentators in N. America often say European Muslims should do more to "integrate" with the host societies. How the heck do you integrate with a society that refuses to interview you for a job and views you as a potential problem or a walking time bomb? Answer - you don't even try. You get more marginalized, more angry and more defiant.

In France it isn't just a question of Muslim immigrants as a block, but of a post-colonial mentality that still clings to old perceptions. The secular organization Les Indigenes de la Republic makes a direct connection between the way France treated "natives" in its colonial lands, and the way Muslim immigrants are treated in France. The situation in France is extremely complex. What appears on the surface to be a "Muslim issue" more often relates to Algerian, Tunisian or Moroccan concerns.

In N. Ireland, the Catholic minority was ghettoized in a similar fashion. Citizens with Catholic names were often discriminated against when they went for jobs. Protestant hardliners demonized Catholics along religious lines using terms such as "papists" and "pope lovers", whereas in actual fact a percentage of Sinn Fein members back in the day tended to be more inspired by Marxist or socialist thinking than religious considerations.

We all know what happened over the decades in N. Ireland. So really it is remarkable that given the discrimination European Muslims have and are experiencing, they haven't moved in the direction of more militant action, not on behalf of jihad but in a demand for a fair shake. Frankly the forbearance and patience of European Muslims in the face of the underdog status that has been hung on them, speaks more to the civilized nature of their culture than to their alleged fanaticism.

According to a Pew Research Center survey, the principal concerns of Muslims in France, Germany and Spain are unemployment and Islamic extremism. Let me repeat ... "Islamic extremism".