Pointing Fingers

"Sure, there are excuses. Unemployment [in Europe] is high, growth low or nonexistent. Freeloading on European welfare by those who have not paid for it stirs anger. But these are not reasons for closing doors. The migrant numbers, while large, are absorbable by a community of more than half a billion people. What is needed is a co-ordinated policy that offers a legal route for migrants -- and the political determination to reimagine a can-do Europe. The current European failure is one of imagination and will. The euro crisis cannot be an alibi for inaction, both internally and in countries like Libya, where European responsibility is clearly engaged. The European idea must recover its lustre."
Roger Cohen, The New York Times

Two migrants pull an overcrowded dinghy with Syrian and Afghan refugees arriving from the Turkish coasts to the Greek island of Lesbos. Photograph: Santi Palacios/AP

So, Europe, which has already absorbed a huge number of Muslim migrants fleeing oppression, economic stagnation, religious sectarian strife, dictatorships, to find opportunity elsewhere, must further extend itself, according to an American journalist of some repute. His own country, the United States, has long been engaged in Middle East and South-East Asian affairs through its outreach for fossil fuel resources, in the process engaging in political and military manoeuvres to consolidate its interests.

Where is the call for the United States to upset the equilibrium of its society, its culture, its politics, its economy through the absorption of a greater numbers of refugees? It is Europe that is bearing the brunt of Muslim countries warring within and among themselves, of oppressive regimes making life miserable for their citizens, of religious zealots whose humanity has been compromised beyond dispute wreaking havoc through mass atrocities, causing great hordes of refugees streaming toward Europe.

Europe's absorption of Muslims both through the process of immigration and absorption of refugees has reached saturation point. European nations have witnessed with growing horror the gradual and too-swift burial of their heritage cultures, spurning of their social values, demands for Sharia law to supersede the laws of their lands, overturning all that is dear and familiar to them. They have been hospitable to their Muslim newcomer-guests and in turn have experienced a cultural shift, a social disintegration, a growing entitlement to set aside their own values and aspirations.

"Denmark, Sweden, and Norway used to be a united front in terms of supporting international development. It is very clear that Denmark has left the Nordic club, particularly in terms of asylum and immigration", disparagingly commented Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen, director of research at the Danish Institute for Human Rights. In a response to what has occurred in Denmark, a backlash has resulted with rules demanding that permanent residence applicants have a work history, Danish language skills, savings, and debtless financial independence.

It is no longer so easy to bring into Denmark overseas family members; family reunification conditions have been tightened, new points-based eligibility criteria imposed, and a foreign spouse eligibility criteria heightened. Benefits for asylum seekers this past July were cut in half. "Things have changed now. The new government is trying to say to every potential refugee that they are not welcome. We are worried which new rules they may introduce. It makes life a bit stressful", said Fateh, a 27-year-old refugee who arrived in Denmark last year from Syria.

Greek and Italian cities whose economies are already strained now also struggle with thousands of newcomers requiring basic sustenance and guidance. Authorities are often too overburdened to check their status. Hungary is busily building a fence along its southern border in order to stop the influx of new migrants, and in Calais, France, a shanty town now exists, holding 5,000 stranded people living in degraded conditions awaiting the opportunity to reach the UK.

Graffiti reading ‘France is dog life, England good life’ is seen on a wall close to a makeshift camp near Calais. Photograph: Rob Stothard/Getty Images

In the 28 EU member countries, asylum applications increased to over 600,000 in 2014 from about 400,000 two years earlier. The civil war in Syria served to exponentially increase the number of migrants chancing a crossing of the Mediterranean Sea to about 140,000 in the first six months of 2015. At least 479 of those seaborne migrants have died or vanished, from January to March, according to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees.

European leaders are struggling with their consciences, trying desperately to do the right thing for hapless, helpless people whom circumstances beyond endurance have made homeless and desperate for haven. Italy has been left desperate for relief from the burden imposed upon it by a relentless rush of migrants it has little option but to welcome and aid, as much as it can, pleading with the rest of Europe to come to its aid, no longer capable of coping with the overload.

And the wealthy countries of the oil-rich Middle East which are themselves aloof from the agony of other nations in their midst turning themselves inside out and their soil boiling-red with bloodshed, shrug, knowing that they have the funding power to keep themselves intact, unwilling to absorb the human flotsam of the failed nations; fearful of taking in among themselves the same kind of sectarian dysfunction leading to hatred and violence they will be incapable of controlling as they do their own.

The millions of refugees sprawling in refugee camps in Pakistan, Jordan, Turkey, Egypt and elsewhere in Africa, and wherever else the desperate Muslim victims of 12th Century Islamist fanatics with their 21st Century propaganda and weaponry, represent the outcome of Islamic calls to the faithful. A religion replete with injunctions to respect and honour and peace, interspersed with hate-filled messages of the 'other' and rejection of contamination by non-Muslims, along with incitements to jihad.

The creation of hordes of miserable migrants is this century's Islamist triumph. The compassionate non-Muslim West attempts accommodation of their needs, and in so doing the other Koranic injunctions to proselytize, to convince those not in the Islamic fold to surrender to Islam is proceeding by means possible through the straitened circumstances of those fleeing Islam, only to do their part in its export and its spread.

The caliphate by any conceivable means, achievable through terrorizing faithful Muslims to send them into the receiving arms of non-Muslims concerned for the well-being of all human beings. Does Islam, the religion of peace surrender its collective conscience in favour of achieving the long-term goal of global conversion?