continued

It is true as the article says that “The love for the place you were born, the trust of the people who surround you, and the fear of what strangers could do to you and your community is a basic human feeling.” However, until the 19th century these feelings did not form into nationalism. Just as ethnic nationalism appeared on the scene in the nineteenth century it can disappear. The European Union is an attempt to override the nationalism which has bred the nineteenth and twentieth century wars. Nationalism exists and is powerful. However, there are sign that it is breaking up – both to create a super unity in the form of a European community and a separateness in the various movements of smaller entities to break away from the nation-states. Examples of the latter are the independence movements of the Welch, Basques, Catalonians and Scots.

I see the Tea Party movement as a similar type of devolution as is the Muslim actions which are fueled by a feeling of separateness from the surrounding cultures. They are both a revolt against modernity as is the Jewish fundamentalists in Israel who think of God as a real estate dealer and the fundamentalist Christians in the US who additionally to their involvement in the Tea Party blow up abortion clinics and murder the people in them.

When you get down to the nity-grity of it all, to integrate Muslims into society then first the Koran must be integrated.

Best of luck, World.

Dear Banjo,

Thanks again for the info. Integration into a prevalent culture and moving into a country are not the same thing. After 1989 many Jews came to Germany with their families from the former USSR (I think that was a condition for allowing reunification). Nobody speaks about integration problems here: the religion their culture was based on was already “integrated” into Europe; the same with ethnic Germans, former Soviet citizens (as a consequence of these two, Russian is the third most spoken language at homes in Germany, after German and Turkish). I also agree that the banlieue problem preexisted the cartoons, but they certainly did not contribute to a solution, whatever it might be.

By the way, that is an interesting link to the Guardian article, showing that some people manage to alienate in one hit two of their minorities, Catholics and Muslims. Unfortunately, in Africa, where there are not many atheists, it is the Christians who had to pay with their lives, so that some European cartoonists could enjoy the luxury of what they regard as free speech.

The article ends with reference to “scurrilous outriders like Charlie Hebdo (who) can keep mocking church and mosque.” Well, the Pope certainly did not object to “mocking church and mosque” and probably most imams also see the difference between mocking the mosque and mocking Muhammad. “One can understand a satire about a priest, but not about God. … As for Islam, we could have an understanding for satires about their customs or behaviour but not about Koran, Allah or the Prophet. (Cardinal Achille Silvestrini in 2006).

Dear david f,

Sorry, but I did not spot a contradiction between the quote from Freedman and your elaboration on the theme. Freedman is not dealing with history but contemporary situation. Nationalism is indeed a complicated problem, with a different tradition in Western and Eastern Europe. Hans Kohn’s (The Idea of Nationalism, Macmillan 1944) distinction between ‘voluntary, civic’ (West) and ‘organic ethnic’ (East) nationalism might be a simplification, but I think he has a point.

>>Nationalism exists and is powerful. However, there are sign that it is breaking up – both to create a super unity in the form of a European community and a separateness in the various movements of smaller entities to break away from the nation-states. Examples of the latter are the independence movements of the Welch, Basques, Catalonians and Scots.<<

Yes, but. EU is still a nice ideal, but it is loosing on popularity both by those who would prefer to cling to their nation state (Western or political nationalists) and those who would like to break away from their nation state (ethnic nationalists) also because they do not protect them sufficiently from the Brussels bureaucrats. Both these trends are feeding on the euro and general economic crisis, mainly in the South, and the pressure from the US to wage an economic (and many fear that more) war on Russia, rather than concentrate on the Islamists problem.

Tea Party and Jewish fundamentalists grew out of the prevailing culture in those countries, Islam came to post-Christian Europe from a culture hitherto seen as alien.

Dear George,

You wrote: "Islam came to post-Christian Europe from a culture hitherto seen as alien."

I don't think that matters. Jews had been living in the bounds of what became Germany since the days of the Roman Empire. The hostility of the Nazis towards the Jews could not have been greater if they had come from outside the bounds of Germany.

Dear david f,

I agree, however the intensity of hostilities towards parts of population - and history probably doesn’t know of a greater “hostility” than that of the Nazis towards Jews - does not depend on whether the targeted group can or wants to be integrated. Of all the things Jews were accused of, inability or unwillingness to integrate was not among them (actually I think the word in this sense did not exist then).