An opportunity to join forces and sail to a better place?
So, As I See It
Europe is now at a major crossroad as it contemplates how best to respond to the various challenges and opportunities which could and are emanating from the millions of migrants and refugees who have arrived on and contemplating coming to her shores.
With regards to the challenges facing Europe and her people and her leaders, the responses vary between being compassionate toward the migrants, and being very apprehensive and fearful. While millions of Europeans have used the tragic plight of hundreds of thousands of the migrants to express their basic shared humanity and seek to welcome and help them, millions of their compatriots view the development with great fears about their jobs, their way of life and their societies.
The challenges confronting Europeans include practical ones such as increasing their housing needs and problems, more competition for jobs, more unemployment, and greater demands on their welfare systems, such as education, health and social services. It goes without saying the the job and housing markets will become more competitive, leading to more resentment between members of the host nations and the migrants, and even sometimes resulting in civil strife.
The changes in the ethnic, religious, cultural, political, familial and social demographics of the host countries can be expected to have major impacts over the coming years. The social accommodation and eventual assimilation of the new comers can also be expected to pose major challenges, especially in cases where their ethnic backgrounds and religious persuasion is different from that of the majority host populations. This will be more problematic regarding practising Muslims, especially those of more orthodox and traditional beliefs, as opposed to those Muslims who are more evolutionary and enlightened in their practise of their religion.
The real challenge is likely to come from those Muslims who want to continue to practise Islam 'as a way of life', on both a personal as well as a societal level, which will fundamentally conflict with the secular societal model which the west has evolved into. Some Muslims will have to decide what aspects of their religious and cultural heritage is a fair trade-of for the better life they aspire to having in Europe.
Muslims are not unique, in arguing that Islam is a way of life; Christianity was also, and, in some places, still is, a way of life for Christians, but society has had to evolve and progress to take account of people who do not believe in god and do not want to be oppressed by any religious dogma. Unfortunately, Islam, especially orthodox or traditional Islam, has continued to resist the need to become a more living, evolving and enlightened religion, as firmly embedded itself under the rock of the past.
The challenge for Europe, then, is that of how does it respect the right of Muslims to practise their religions, within the context of the laws of man, and not the religious laws the Muslim clergy and Islamic scholars has ascribed to god; thus allowing all religions to be on a relatively 'equal footing', in that all are subjected to the laws of man.
It would be in nobody's best interest for Islam to be practised in Europe (except for traditionally Muslim European countries such as Bosnia and Kosova), as it being practised in some of the home countries of the migrants, such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, and countries where Sharia laws are practised, and where the state is an Islamic state.
Religion must stay in the background and not the foreground
No attempts to overthrow secularism as the dominant societal model in the west, and to replace it with the oppressive Islamic state (meaning a state where Islamic law and Koranic principles form the foundation of the state; this is not referring to Daesh or "IS") model, should be tolerated.
When considered carefully, it really is the case that the scale of the migration to Europe poses formidable economic, infrastructural, political, demographic and social challenges and threats to the European way of life. These challenges and threats, when considered on a long-term basis, are very real, and it is understandable that many Europeans are looking to the future with a sense of uncertainty and even fear.
To what extent these fears will be realise, will, to a large extent, be dependent on the quality of leadership European politicians are able to give their countries, in taking responsibility for and managing the new situation which they are facing.
It will need some major and fundamental changes in the current social system and order, so as to avoid or lessen the pitfalls of simply resorting to 'add ons' responses to these challenges.
To be continued
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