Lessons
from Europe's Immigrant Wave: Douglas Murray Cautions America
by Abigail R. Esman
Special to IPT News
July 24, 2017
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 Douglas Murray has
long voiced his concern about the growing influence of Muslim culture on
the West. The associate editor of Britain's Spectator, a
frequent contributor to the Wall Street Journal, and the founder of
the Centre for Social Cohesion, a think tank on radical Islam, he has built
an international reputation for his opposition to the demographic changes
of the West and the threats to its traditions. In his latest book, The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity,
Islam (Bloomsbury, 2017), he attacks all of these subjects as they
relate to the current crisis of migration from the Middle East.
It is a controversial book, particularly for Americans and Jews, but one
which also makes important arguments against the multiculturalist ideal.
That ideal, which once led much of domestic policy across Europe and the
United States, has proven not only a failure, but a threat to the values
and national security of Western civilization.
The Investigative Project on Terrorism recently spoke with Murray about
his book and the concerns that drove him to write it.
Abigail R. Esman: As an American, a Jew, and an immigrant myself
to the Netherlands, there are aspects of your arguments against immigration
and asylum that are troublesome to me. I come from a country where we are
all immigrants, or our parents or grandparents were likely immigrants. You
talk for instance of families where "neither parent speaks English as
a first language," yet my husband is Australian and I am American and
neither of us speaks Dutch as a first language. So naturally, I come at
these arguments with some concern. Are you saying, basically, close the
borders?
Douglas K . Murray: It's only for me to diagnose what's happening
– to see the truth about what is going on. Policy makers will make their
own decisions. I have obviously broad views on it, which is that I think
you can't continue at the rate we have now, and I think you have to be
choosy about the people you bring in. But you are right, and there are two
groups of people who have had trouble with some of the basic things in this
book: one is people of Jewish background, and others who come from nations
of immigrants, like America. But Britain isn't a nation of immigrants – we
have been a static society with all the benefits and ills that this brings.
And I think it is dishonest to say it is the same thing. I realize people
who are predominantly Jewish have a particular sensitivity to it, but I
think that that's a particular issue. And why do we say one migration is
just like the other It's like saying because two vehicles went down the
same road they are the same vehicle.
ARE: How is it different?
DKM: In the UK, when Jewish migration happened more than a
century ago, the main thing was integration, integration into the society,
wanting desperately to be part of British society. Why do synagogues in the
UK have a portrait of the Queen? And after services, they often sing the
British national anthem. It's very moving. It's an effort to demonstrate
this is what we are and this is what we want to be. You'd be hard pressed
to find a mosque with a picture of the queen who sing the anthem.
ARE: That element of integration is crucial, I agree. In America,
in fact, immigrants in the past and often even today are eager to give
their children Anglicized names: "Michael," not
"Moishe," "Henry," not "Heinrich." Yet you do
not see the name changes in Muslims these days. Why do you think that is?
DKM: Because there is less of a feeling to integrate. They want
to stay with the country they've left but not deal with its economics. Some
people find it flattering – that people want to move to your country – they
say well, it shows what a wonderful place we are. No, it shows that your
economics work better.
ARE: You also write about Muslim enclaves in Europe where
"the women all wear some form of head covering and life goes on much
as it would if the people were in Turkey or Morocco." How is that
different than, say, Chinatowns, or Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods in
America and say, Belgium, where women wear wigs and men have peyas, or
sidelocks?
DKM: The example of Chinatown-like places is a good comparison.
These are places that are mini-Chinas, they are enjoyed and liked by people
because they are a different place. Well, if people want to have a
mini-Bangladesh, that's one vision of a society. It's not the vision we
were sold in Europe. It was not meant to be the case that portions of our
cities were meant to become totally different places. In the 1950s the
British and other European authorities said we have to bring people into
our countries and we will get a benefit in labor. But if they had said that
the downside is that large portions of the area would be unrecognizable to
their inhabitants, there would have been an outcry.
And the issue of them being different from Hasidic communities – you're
right, they are similar. You can go to Stamford Hill in North London and
see most of the men in hats and so on and that's because that's an enclave
that wants to keep to itself. That raises questions: one, people don't mind
that, for several reasons – one is the recognition that Orthodox men don't
cause troubles. We don't have cases of Orthodox men going out and cutting
off people's heads. If four Jewish men from Stamford Hill had blown up
buses some years back there would be concern about these enclaves.
And also those enclaves are not growing. If it was the case that these
enclaves were becoming areas where all the city was hat-wearing Orthodox
Jews, then people would say wait, what is that? You can applaud that or
abhor it, but it's important to mention.it.
ARE: In the Netherlands, which has some of the toughest
immigration policies in the world, people from certain countries are
required to take "citizenship" courses before they can even enter
Dutch borders. They have to learn the language, they have to learn about
Dutch values, and that no, you can't throw stones at Jews and gay people
and that gay marriage is legal and women wear short dresses. Would you
recommend other countries take on the Dutch policy of citizenship courses?
DKM: I make
this point in the book. You say we could have done more and better, but the
fundamental thing is that none of it was ever expected in the first place.
No one ever thought that we would be in the situation we are now in. We
didn't expect them to stay. That's a very big misunderstanding. Why would
you ask people to become Dutch citizens if you expect them to go home in
five years? Why if you only expect them to stay in Britain for only 10
years? But then we realized they would stay and then we said, "we have
to let them practice their own culture." But for us to have acted as
you suggest we would have had to know [at the time].
So yes, I think it's a bare minimum for Europe to have the Dutch policy,
even at this very late stage. I'm of the inclination that this is too
little too late, but I wish everyone luck with it.
ARE: What about Yazidi women, Syrian Christians?
DKM: Again, it comes down to the Jewish question – because people
think that every refugee is like a Jew from Nazi Germany. But if you were
to think of a group that was facing an attempt to wipe them off the face of
the earth then yes, you'd have the Yazidis. But there are people on all
sides of the Syrian civil war, which are a minority of people coming to
Europe – these are people fleeing sectarian conflict, but none of them are
fleeing an effort to wipe them out as a people. So the lazy view, and it is
quite often pushed by Jewish groups which I think is a mistake – is to suggest
that it is similar to Nazi Germany. And I wish more care were taken in
this.
ARE: Is this in your mind a way of stopping radical Islam?
Because so many of the radicalized Muslims are actually converts. How would
it help?
DKM: We know that people who convert to anything tend to be
fundamentalist. But the important thing is, if you were pliable to be
converted, available to be converted, then it raises the question of what
kind of Islam do we have in these countries? If it were people finding
Sufism, rather than hardcore Salafism, maybe it would be different. I have
a friend who is a Muslim who was on a trip some years ago who told me the
story of introducing a Muslim woman to one of the senior clerics at Al-Azhar and she wouldn't shake his hand. He asked her
why not. She said, "Because I'm Muslim." So he asked her how long
she'd been a Muslim, and she said "Six years." He said,
"I've been a Muslim for eight decades." And then he turned and
said to his friend in Arabic, "What kind of Muslims are you making in
Britain?"
ARE: One thing the American Muslim community seems to have over
its European brethren is its successful integration into society. Yet at
the same time, some of the worst of the radicals are in fact American-born.
We have people like Linda Sarsour, who wears the mantle of feminism, but
who is really a Trojan horse for the Islamists. She has said things like
"Our number one and top priority is to protect and defend our
community. It is not to assimilate and lease any other people in
authority." What are the dangers of that kind of message?
DKM: I once spent an evening with Linda Sarsour. She is a very
unpleasant, very radical girl. Filled with hate. I was the one having to
defend America to Americans in an American audience against an American
opponent. What she told that night was all lies, which you would tell
either because you are dumb, which she isn't, or because you want to spread
propaganda, which she does.
I just think she is of a type. There are various sides to the issue that
are important. There's an "us" question and a "them"
question. The "them" question is, what do people like that
believe, what are they doing and how vile are they? But in a way, the
"us" question is bigger. Why do we let them do this? What is
wrong with America at this time in its history that an obvious demagogue
like her can end up leading a feminist march [the 2017 Women's March]? That's
an illness of America. She's just a symptom of that.
ARE: And similarly, the Rushdie affair was effective in quashing
further expression and criticism related to Islam. And Charlie Hebdo took
that to an extreme. We haven't had anything that severe, but there were the
South Park threats and the attempted attack on the Mohammed cartoon contest
in Garland. You blame European politicians and media for failing to
recognize that those who were shouting "fire" were in fact the
arsonists. This seems to be a global challenge – that any criticism or
critique of Islam gets shouted down as inherently bigoted. In the U.S., the
Southern Poverty Law Center places Maajid Nawaz on a list of
"anti-Muslim extremists" for criticizing some tenets of the faith
and advocating modernization and reform. In Europe the facts are very
pessimism-causing. At the same time, though, there was certainly support
for Charlie Hebdo, though you seem to deny it in your book, after the
shootings. What's the proper response to that form of a heckler's veto?
DKM: I agree with the point. The only ways to reject the
assassin's veto is for civil society to be stronger on the question, for
governments to ensure that people deemed to have 'blasphemed' are protected
(as in the case of Rushdie) and that those who incite violence against them
(such as Cat Stevens during the Rushdie affair) are the ones who find
themselves on the receiving end of prosecutions. That and – obviously –
ensuring that blasphemy laws aren't allowed in through the back door via
new 'hate speech' laws and the like.
ARE: In the chapter on multiculturalism, you describe interest
groups which "were thrown up that claimed to represent and speak for
all manner of identity groups." These self-appointed voices then
become the go-to groups for government. To keep the money flowing, they
make the problems facing their community appear worse than they really
are." Is that a universal behavior for interest groups? We certainly
see that in the U.S. with CAIR and ISNA.
DKM: Every group is vulnerable to that. With every human rights
achievement, there are always some people left on the barricades. And the
ones who linger on the barricades linger on without any home to go to. And
you get these people who are stranded after it's over and they have to
hustle as if everything was as bad as it once was. Sometimes they are
telling the truth; sometimes they wave a warning flag, but for the moment
it seems particularly in America every group is claiming that this is
basically 1938. It's a tendency of every commune or group that wants
awareness raised.
But it's true, it's especially prevalent of Muslim groups because if you
keep claiming that you are the victim, then you never have to sort out your
own house. And the groups that come to Europe and America, they never have
to get their house in order if they spend all their time claiming they are
victims of genocide and persecution and so on. And this is a familiar
story.
ARE: So what would be your lesson, then, for America, especially
in a book which clearly is about Europe?
DKM: Well, it is about Europe, certainly, but it's connected to
the debate America is now beginning to have. The first is to be careful
with immigration. We've all had the same misunderstanding, the same thought
that our societies are vast, immovable, unchanging things to which you
could keep bringing people of every imaginable stripe and the results will
always be the same. And I think that is just not the case, depending on the
people who are in them. So we must take care with what kind of immigration
we encourage, and at what pace, and that is something America should be
thinking of, as everyone else should.
But America will have a harder time with this, because everyone in
America has this vulnerability we don't have in Europe, which is that we
are all migrants. And you have the sense of 'who am I to keep anyone out?'
ARE: I don't think that's the American view. I think it's more
that we all became part of this fabric, and we expect that the new
immigrants will, too. But not all of them do.
DM: The whole thing actually seems to be unraveling, more than in
Europe. In Europe, we don't like to think in terms of racial terms. But all
anyone in America talks about is race.
ARE: I don't think so....
DKM: Maybe; but your vision of original sin in America seems to
have become all so overwhelming. Your leading cultural figures, like
Ta-Nehisi Coates, have this image of America born in terrible sin. The
Atlantic's front cover recently was all about slavery. You would get the
impression that slavery only ended about 12 months ago. You are going over
and over this in America - this endless sense of original sin. You are
discussing reparations for slavery in 2017. You'd be hard-pressed to find
publications in the UK calling for reparations to our past. Find me a mainstream
publication that runs such a thing in Europe, even of WWII reparations.
So it's symptomatic of something badly wrong at the structure of the
public discussion.
ARE: Which suggests that we should do what?
DKM: What you have to listen out for is very straightforward: are
the people raising such issues raising them because they want America to
improve, or because they want America to end? I think this is a very
central issue. Are you speaking as a critic, or as an enemy of the society
in question? If you think the society can do no good, then you are speaking
as an enemy. If you think there are things that have been done, that are
wrong, that should be righted, campaign for them, speak out for them.
Sometimes if you're lucky you can get a posthumous rectification. But it
sounds to me like a lot of this talk is from people who hate America. They
don't want to improve it. They want to end it.
So the lesson is – be careful about immigration Be choosy. And another
is a pretty straightforward one which is to work on the people who are
there not to fall into the victim narratives of their special interest
groups. And to focus on the "we." I've always felt more
optimistic for America in this regard, for the same reason I feel more
optimistic than others do about France: because I think there is a very
specific identity there, which it is possible to become a part of. I think
it's something other Western European countries, have not accomplished in
the same way. So basically to strengthen their own identity.
ARE: Do you consider yourself a pessimist?
DKM: I think in Europe the facts are very pessimism-causing. I
think it would be a strange person who would look at 12,000 people landing
in Lampedusa, all young men, all without jobs, all without futures, and
think, 'That's going to go really well. These are going to be just like the
Jews of Vienna. These are going to be the receptacles of our culture.' I
don't see it happening.
Abigail R. Esman, the author, most recently, of Radical State: How Jihad Is Winning Over Democracy in
the West (Praeger, 2010), is a freelance writer based in New York
and the Netherlands. Follow her at @radicalstates
Related Topics: Abigail
R. Esman, mass
migration, refugees,
interviews,
multiculturalism,
Douglas
Murray, radical
Islam, Linda
Sarsour, Southern
Poverty Law Center, assassin's
veto, Charlie
Hebdo, Salman
Rushdie
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