Controversial Views:
Gaza and the End of Germany’s Willkommenskultur
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/hamas-attack-changed-german-public-opinion-immigration-by-michael-broning-2023-10
Concerns over migration were already on the rise in Germany, owing to a dramatic increase in asylum seekers, a looming recession, and strained resources. But Hamas’s attack on Israel, the resulting war, and a surge in anti-Semitism across the country have hardened German sentiment on immigration policy.
Gaza and the End of Germany’s Willkommenskultur
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/hamas-attack-changed-german-public-opinion-immigration-by-michael-broning-2023-10
Concerns over migration were already on the rise in Germany, owing to a dramatic increase in asylum seekers, a looming recession, and strained resources. But Hamas’s attack on Israel, the resulting war, and a surge in anti-Semitism across the country have hardened German sentiment on immigration policy.
British society will pay a terrible price for indulging extremism
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/10/29/british-society-will-pay-a-terrible-price-for-indulging-ext/
Nick Timothy notes:
Meanwhile Islamist radicals, and organisations often set up and supported by foreign governments, have learned to exploit the absurdities of our modern politics. They operate the mechanics of our identity corporatism and competitive victimhood with skill. The Crown Prosecution Service, which helped to decide not to prosecute those chanting “jihad” last week, is advised on hate crime by the chair of Finsbury Park Mosque, who has praised Hamas as “martyrs of the resistance”. From the military to the prison service, the public sector is full of such examples.
This extremism, and the radical diversity of our society, with its ethnic tensions and imported hatreds, means the assumptions that informed traditional British policy – pragmatic, informal, light-touch – no longer hold. The diminished commitment to shared norms and our weaker common identity means there is less social trust to sustain our freedoms in the conventional way. The sooner we realise this, the less painful will be the changes we face.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/10/29/british-society-will-pay-a-terrible-price-for-indulging-ext/
Nick Timothy notes:
Meanwhile Islamist radicals, and organisations often set up and supported by foreign governments, have learned to exploit the absurdities of our modern politics. They operate the mechanics of our identity corporatism and competitive victimhood with skill. The Crown Prosecution Service, which helped to decide not to prosecute those chanting “jihad” last week, is advised on hate crime by the chair of Finsbury Park Mosque, who has praised Hamas as “martyrs of the resistance”. From the military to the prison service, the public sector is full of such examples.
This extremism, and the radical diversity of our society, with its ethnic tensions and imported hatreds, means the assumptions that informed traditional British policy – pragmatic, informal, light-touch – no longer hold. The diminished commitment to shared norms and our weaker common identity means there is less social trust to sustain our freedoms in the conventional way. The sooner we realise this, the less painful will be the changes we face.
Janet Daley asks:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/10/28/isnt-hubristic-to-think-western-civilisation-can-be-saved/
We are facing a challenge now, from a (very small) faction within our own society, for which liberalism and tolerance cannot be an answer because liberalism and tolerance are themselves the enemy. How do nations whose political and social systems are based on the principle of inclusion and equality deal with a minority which explicitly rejects those principles?
This is the liberal dilemma: because we advocate tolerance, must we also tolerate openly professed intolerance? And if we do tolerate it, do we permit it to prevail only within its own community, or should it be allowed to influence the attitudes and language of the nation (and its public media) at large?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/10/28/isnt-hubristic-to-think-western-civilisation-can-be-saved/
We are facing a challenge now, from a (very small) faction within our own society, for which liberalism and tolerance cannot be an answer because liberalism and tolerance are themselves the enemy. How do nations whose political and social systems are based on the principle of inclusion and equality deal with a minority which explicitly rejects those principles?
This is the liberal dilemma: because we advocate tolerance, must we also tolerate openly professed intolerance? And if we do tolerate it, do we permit it to prevail only within its own community, or should it be allowed to influence the attitudes and language of the nation (and its public media) at large?
Civilisational conflict defines our age. It mustn’t play out on our streets
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/10/15/civilisational-conflict-defines-our-age/
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/10/15/civilisational-conflict-defines-our-age/
Cracks in the Melting Pot? Religiosity and Assimilation among the Diverse Muslim Population in France
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/712804
Abstract
The maintenance of high religiosity levels among Muslim youths in Western Europe constitutes a puzzle in need of an explanation. Focusing on France and using a new empirical strategy for the quantitative study of cultural differences between heterogeneous populations, this study first demonstrates that French Muslims form a diverse group yet one with a consistent and sizable “religiosity differential” resisting intergenerational assimilation to native levels. It then formulates and tests five hypotheses to explain the second generation’s delayed religious assimilation. Material insecurity, the perception and self-report of discrimination, parental religious socialization, transnational ties with the origin country, and neighborhood ethnic segregation are all influential but with an uneven impact across subgroups within native and Muslim populations. Together, results suggest that the religiosity differential stems from a mixture of cultural transmission from the context of origin and blocked acculturation due to stratification and social closure in the context of destination.
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/712804
Abstract
The maintenance of high religiosity levels among Muslim youths in Western Europe constitutes a puzzle in need of an explanation. Focusing on France and using a new empirical strategy for the quantitative study of cultural differences between heterogeneous populations, this study first demonstrates that French Muslims form a diverse group yet one with a consistent and sizable “religiosity differential” resisting intergenerational assimilation to native levels. It then formulates and tests five hypotheses to explain the second generation’s delayed religious assimilation. Material insecurity, the perception and self-report of discrimination, parental religious socialization, transnational ties with the origin country, and neighborhood ethnic segregation are all influential but with an uneven impact across subgroups within native and Muslim populations. Together, results suggest that the religiosity differential stems from a mixture of cultural transmission from the context of origin and blocked acculturation due to stratification and social closure in the context of destination.