From the blog Those Who Can See:
At the height of the Trayvon Martin affair, we met a young Afro-Canadian who strongly objected to being racially profiled. Drawing on the pool of data at our disposal, we presented, to the best of our ability, the reasons such profiling exists.
Today, as hundreds of thousands of Muslim migrants pour into Europe to claim asylum, profiling again rears its ugly head. Not racial/ethnic this time, but religious…
At least five European countries have signaled that they prefer to grant
asylum only to Christian refugees flooding the continent from the
Middle East, not to Muslims.
“I think we have a right to decide that we do not want a large number of Muslim people in our country,” Hungarian Prime Minister Orban said. … “Refugees from a completely different cultural background would not be in a good position in the Czech Republic,” said Czech President Milos Zeman.
On what are these fears based? Ignorance, prejudice? We have been told for years that immigration is a gift, an economic boost, an injection of fresh blood, and that our new guests will culturally enrich our lives with their differentness (all while assimilating seamlessly thanks to their sameness). We at TWCS have thus decided to take a deeper look at the data.
But is Islam a religion, a culture, or a civilization? Has it genetically changed its adherents over time like Christianity has (cousin marriage enforced vs. forbidden)? In the absence of any genetic connection, does it culturally push its believers to certain behaviors? Could these beliefs and behaviors really, as the critics charge, prevent their assimilation into the West?
In a word–is this cultural profiling of Muslims based on fact or fantasy?
History has shown again and again that when we migrate, we tend to re-create our old societies wherever we wash ashore. And the more of us there are, the more our little colony tends to resist change. So to know if the beliefs and behaviors of our future co-citizens will line up closely with ours, what better way then to ask them? A slew of polling outfits have done just that. Let’s see what they have to say.
A reminder: The oldest big Muslim groups in the West come from Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Turkey, Lebanon, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.
The last 15-20 years have also seen a big jump in asylum seekers from Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and Syria.
