Last week I took a ride home to Freiburg from Köln with a guy who offered to share his car for a few bananas. On that day, there was a huge demonstration organised by the right wing “Pro Köln” movement against the construction of the great new mosque in one of the more traditional districts of the city. I was not even properly seated when my driver started off a discussion that should last for nearly the entire distance:
“Don’t get me wrong – I am not xenophobic or anything – but I have to admit that I am happy to see these people protesting. Even if I do not share most of their political views, in this point they are just completely right: This mosque is preposterous, a grotesque expression of our uprooted society with its utterly ruined cultural self-awareness. The people for which it is built don’t belong here, their presence creates a constant unrest. Multiculturalism is just not working, for simple biological reasons that are evident from many experiments [showing that people will always mistrust each other if they grew up in different social contexts, while cultural values acquired in early childhood are practically impossible to change]. So if this mosque is built, it will further disintegrate our society. This must be prevented.”
– “Maybe”, I replied, “but even if that is so, what do you want to do with these people? Because apparently you don’t want to kick them out (which would be an act of xenophobia). And just ignoring them and their obvious cultural needs is not a solution. In migration, we are facing a factual challenge and we have to deal with it.”
My driver did not hesitate one second: “If they want to live here, they have to commit to the rules of those that lived here before. It is as simple as that. Otherwise our society will implode, and this is exactly what you can observe here on a daily basis. And actually most of these people come here voluntarily, in order to benefit from our welfare state. Which I don’t condemn, but in this case they have to follow the rules, and not colonise our cities with their mosques and bazaars…”
I disagreed, I still disagree, and I believe that in AEGEE we must all disagree. And now I don’t mean the specific question of mosque or no mosque, but the underlying attitude that demands from newcomers complete assimilation. Unfortunately, this attitude is widely spread, and even though this good man didn’t want to call it xenophobia, in fact it is xenophobia: ‘the fear of (or hostility towards) what is unknown’. Yes, this fear is “biological” as my driver said. But are we humans really so driven by our instincts? Are we not gifted with reason exactly to guide us in situations where our instincts mislead us? Just following our fears will not solve anything, but lead to war and destruction (cf. my dear namesake Thomas Hobbes et al.). Suppressing cultural diversity by force will only perpetuate the problem and foster mistrust and hostility. (And moreover, cultural diversity is an enrichment, but I am aware that this is my – our – subjective position.)
Assimilation does not work because it forces people to sacrifice their identity, something that is unachievable for exactly the same biological reasons that were mentioned before. If we want a society in the future that adheres to common values, the first thing we must do in the present is ensure peaceful coexistence and safeguard the same rights for everybody, including the right to build a mosque. Only full participation in every aspect of society will bring about the effective integration of those that we in our lacklustre attitude refer to as strangers. And for many people in our society (not only migrants), the first and foremost condition for this full participation has a name:
SOCIAL INCLUSION
I am glad that we have chosen a new Flagship Topic that reflects one of the most important challenges of today’s European society. I am looking forward to the new Flagship Project that will be developed this summer, and I hope that it will find the support it deserves!
At this Agora, our President emphasised that we still have a mission in AEGEE. He could have added that we should be aware of the fact that our mission will never finish. Because we are fighting for European values and identity, and every child that is born has to learn these from the start. In other words, every year anew we are at the beginning, just one year later in the endless dimension of time. So let’s take it with a cheer – at least we’ll never get bored. :-)