Francis Fukyama uses the current riots in France as a springboard for comments on the state of Muslim discontent in Europe in general. Here are some excerpts from his essay:
We have tended to see jihadist terrorism as something produced in dysfunctional parts of the world, such as Afghanistan, Pakistan or the Middle East, and exported to Western countries. Protecting ourselves is a matter either of walling ourselves off, or, for the Bush administration, going "over there" and trying to fix the problem at its source by promoting democracy.
There is good reason for thinking, however, that a critical source of contemporary radical Islamism lies not in the Middle East, but in Western Europe. In addition to Bouyeri and the London bombers, the March 11 Madrid bombers and ringleaders of the September 11 attacks such as Mohamed Atta were radicalized in Europe. In the Netherlands, where upwards of 6% of the population is Muslim, there is plenty of radicalism despite the fact that Holland is both modern and democratic. And there exists no option for walling the Netherlands off from this problem.
....the Dutch, Germans, French and others all retain a strong sense of their national identity, and, to differing degrees, it is one that is not accessible to people coming from Turkey, Morocco or Pakistan. Integration is further inhibited by the fact that rigid European labor laws have made low-skill jobs hard to find for recent immigrants or their children. A significant proportion of immigrants are on welfare, meaning that they do not have the dignity of contributing through their labor to the surrounding society. They and their children understand themselves as outsiders.
It is in this context that someone like Osama bin Laden appears, offering young converts a universalistic, pure version of Islam that has been stripped of its local saints, customs and traditions.
Two things need to happen: First, countries like Holland and Britain need to reverse the counterproductive multiculturalist policies that sheltered radicalism, and crack down on extremists. But second, they also need to reformulate their definitions of national identity to be more accepting of people from non-Western backgrounds.
Fukyama's article suggests rather obliquely that in order to avoid future ethnic conflagrations either the Europeans must abandon their national distinctives and allow the Muslims to form semi-autonomous Islamic enclaves or the Muslim immigrant communities must abandon their Islamic distinctives and dissolve into the larger European culture.
Fukyama doesn't say this but the former seems a lot more likely than the latter. Muslims have no wish to assimilate into the larger culture. Their goal is to turn Europe, through immigration, into North Africa. The riots are ostensibly the result of disaffected Arabs feeling like they're second class citizens, but that feeling is a natural consequence of rejecting the culture of the land in which they find themselves. If they truly do want to be accepted by the French, Dutch, and German people they have to act as if they wish to belong. As long as they keep themselves culturally isolated they have no one to blame for their alienation but themselves.
The problem is that the harder Europe tries to accommodate Muslim sensibilities the more untenable Muslim demands will become and the more fractious will be the relationships between ethnic Europeans and the Islamic immigrants in their midst. The only satisfactory long term solution is assimilation, and it's very doubtful that that will happen. Unless it does, however, it seems almost inevitable that there will be, before too many years have passed, a low grade civil war in at least a couple of European countries.
