I have been taken aback by the views expressed by some cultured and intelligent friends about the supposed threat posed to Europe (and specifically Malta) from having Muslims living in our midst. While I can fully understand the fears engendered by the horrific escalation of jihadist brutality triggered by the quest to create a caliphate across Iraq and Syria, it is vitally important to retain a sense of perspective and not to tar all Muslims with the same brush.
The Muslim diaspora in the EU consists of roughly 14 million people (out of 507 million). France leads the way with about five million, or 7.5 per cent. Germany comes next with about four million (four per cent). Britain hosts about 3.5 million (3.5 per cent). Spain, The Netherlands and Italy each have about 700,000 but, in proportion to their populations, these equate to about 1.8 per cent, 4.5 per cent and 1.2 per cent respectively. The Scandinavian countries account for about 400,000 (1.5 per cent).
Europe is not about to be engulfed by Muslims, nor is our way of life under threat. Many may find Muslim customs and practice alien: the wearing of the niqab, a full veil with only a slit for the eyes, or the hijab by women; the conservative treatment of women; sharia law. Religious freedom is one of the fundamental pillars of all western democracies. In a free society we sometimes have to accept that other people’s choices will be different from our own. But this should not be a cause for fear or hatred. Muslims in general are not, as somebody misguidedly said to me, “the enemy within”.
For their part, Muslims in Europe also feel a sense of exclusion and inferiority. Most are young and are more likely than their non-Muslim peers to be jobless. Many have lost touch with the lands of their parents, yet feel shunned by their countries of adoption or birth.
It is understandable that young Muslims should turn to Islam as a badge of identity. Many have suffered a sense of alienation which has tipped them – as we have seen in Britain, France, Belgium and elsewhere – towards violence. But not all Muslims are jihadists and most definitely not all Muslims in Europe are being radicalised, though this remains the heart of the problem.
It is important to remember how diverse are the Muslims in Europe and how this diversity has been shaped by different countries’ histories.
The majority of Muslims in Germany are Turks (originally invited as “guest workers”), mostly now born in Germany. France, because of its colonial dominance of North Africa, has a much longer history of Muslim immigration, attracted there by France’s need for cheap labour. Britain’s experience with Pakistanis and Bangladeshis is similar.
Spain’s and Malta’s experience of Islam is much longer and more complex. Most Spanish prefer to stress their European identity and to play down their Moorish past. Colouring everything is the fact that the Arabs – “the Moors” – invaded Spain and the Mediterranean in the eighth century and were dominant there for centuries. It is a legacy which still shapes attitudes to this day. This is the position in Malta, too. It may account here for the anti-Muslim prejudices which I have recently heard. The fact that it is also a highlight of Malta’s history – which was itself Muslim and under Arab domination for over 200 years – and that Catholic Malta, “heroically alone”, withstood the Turkish Muslim threat to Europe in the pivotal first Great Siege of these islands feeds into the national psyche.
A stateless caliphate whose currencyis the indiscriminate beheading of westerners cannot be allowed to poison our minds against all Muslims
However, with 6,000 Muslims in Malta, just over one per cent of the population – and these an integrated part of the community – and only about 150 Maltese-born, what is it that so upsets perfectly reasonable and respectable people into paroxysms of racist hatred and fear?
It is time to take a more objective look at the situation.
This is not to underplay the threats of terrorism being made by hundreds of jihadist fighters from Islamic State (Isis) and any number of other Islamist terrorist groups. Nor to minimise the brutal and mind-numbing beheadings appearing on our screens and the blood-curdling threats that these terror groups are uttering. The jihadists have learnt the shock value of horrifying acts of violence.
But it is necessary to accept that this is the nature of terror, part of the psychological warfare to which we are being subjected. The extremists of Isis are “professionals in terror”.
We shall continue to be subjected to this threat for another generation until these groups have been eliminated.
However, to deduce from what is happening that all Muslims are to blame – and that they are to be feared, despised and removed from Europe, including Malta – is not only unfair but also irrational and wrong-headed. It is to fall into the trap which Isis is setting of provoking “a Holy War” with the West.
The crucial backdrop to the Isis crisis is not only the power struggle between two predominant terrorist groups – Al Qaeda and Isis – and their associates, but also the over-arching conflict between Sunnis and Shias. This reverberates across the Middle East, down into Africa (Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad and Sudan) up into the Russian Islamic Republics of Dagestan and Chechnya, and even to Indonesia and the Uighur population of China.
This is what makes the barbaric actions of Isis so potentially explosive. Thedanger is that the West will get drawn into this conflict on the Sunni side of this divide (Saudi Arabia, some Gulf States), while Russia is drawn into the Shia side (Syria, Iran), which would lead to a regional war with global consequences. The need for the West to seek a wider coalition that includes the Russians is vital.
Ultimately, it is Muslim engagement and Muslim coalition-building between the major Sunni and Shia countries in the fight against terror, not American, French or British air power, which can eliminate Isis and other terror groups in the Middle East. It is in the West’s self-interest to ensure Muslim countries are supported in their endeavour.
For Malta, the concerns are more limited, as befits a tiny country on the periphery of Europe but placed by geography uncomfortably on the front line with a number of Muslim countries.
It is vital that our relationship with these countries consists of friendly and enlightened self-interest.
Naturally, we should be vigilant. Our borders need to be secure. The checks by the police on asylum-seekers arriving in Malta should be more robust. The need to step up our intelligence-sharing with the United States, Britain and France to fill the capability gaps in our own Security Service is crucial.
Above all, we should recognise that we are subject to the battle of minds that Isis is waging. A stateless caliphate whose currency is the indiscriminate beheading of westerners cannot be allowed to poison our minds against all Muslims. This would be to play into their hands.
On the contrary, it should encourage us to understand that the only way Isis can be defeated is by the building of genuine international and regional partnerships with Muslim countries which stand to lose if they fail to suppress the evil cancer in their midst. It is not by developing a visceral hatred of all Muslims.