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19.07.2017. In 2014, when waves of refugees began flooding into western Europe, citizens and officials alike responded with generosity and openness. Exhausted refugees spilled out of trains and buses to be met by crowds bearing gifts of clothing and food, and holding up placards that read "Welcome Refugees." This was a honeymoon that could not last. Some of the upcoming difficulties had been anticipated: that the newcomers did not speak the local languages, might be traumatized, would probably take a long time to find their footing, and had brought their ethnic, religious and sectarian conflicts with them, causing them to get into battles with each other. All of these things happened but—as Angela Merkel promised—were manageable. "Wir schaffen das." Thus begins Dr. Cheryl Benard her article I've Worked with Refugees for Decades. Europe's Afghan Crime Wave Is Mind-Boggling. She continues:

But there was one development that had not been expected, and was not tolerable: the large and growing incidence of sexual assaults committed by refugees against local women. These were not of the cultural-misunderstanding-date-rape sort, but were vicious, no-preamble attacks on random girls and women, often committed by gangs or packs of young men. At first, the incidents were downplayed or hushed up—no one wanted to provide the right wing with fodder for nationalist agitation, and the hope was that these were isolated instances caused by a small problem group of outliers. As the incidents increased, and because many of them took place in public or because the public became involved either in stopping the attack or in aiding the victim afterwards, and because the courts began issuing sentences as the cases came to trial, the matter could no longer be swept under the carpet of political correctness. And with the official acknowledgment and public reporting, a weird and puzzling footnote emerged. Most of the assaults were being committed by refugees of one particular nationality: by Afghans.

[...]

This brings us to a third, more compelling and quite disturbing theory—the one that my Afghan friend, the court translator, puts forward. On the basis of his hundreds of interactions with these young men in his professional capacity over the past several years, he believes to have discovered that they are motivated by a deep and abiding contempt for Western civilization. To them, Europeans are the enemy, and their women are legitimate spoils, as are all the other things one can take from them: housing, money, passports. Their laws don't matter, their culture is uninteresting and, ultimately, their civilization is going to fall anyway to the horde of which one is the spearhead. No need to assimilate, or work hard, or try to build a decent life here for yourself—these Europeans are too soft to seriously punish you for a transgression, and their days are numbered.

[...]

But we are still left with a mystery. Welfare fraud is one thing: it makes a certain kind of sense, if you have no regard for rule of law or fairness and you are lazy. But why is this current cohort of Afghans making its mark as sexual predators . . . and inept, stupid ones at that? In search of an answer, perhaps we should take a closer look at the victims. We have eliminated improper attire and an unwittingly seductive manner, but might they have any other traits in common to shed light on why they became the targets of such madness? Reviewing them, one word comes to mind: fulfillment. A Turkish exchange student, happy to be advancing her education in industrial design at a good university in Vienna. A girl in a park, enjoying the sunshine. Two friends, taking their babies for a walk. A mother, enjoying a summer stroll with her two children. A contented old lady, out with her pet. Attractive, accomplished, happy, normal people . . . an unbearable sight, perhaps, to—and here I must agree with President Trump—losers. That is what he proposed we should call terrorists, and he is right. These young men, even minus a suicide vest, are losers, which has inspired them to become social terrorists.

The young Afghan attackers are saying, yes, that they have no impulse control, that their hormones are raging, and that they hate themselves and the world—but most especially, that they will not tolerate women who are happy, confident and feeling safe in public spaces. They are saying that they have no intention of respecting law, custom, public opinion, local values or common decency, all of which they hate so much that they are ready to put their own lives, their constructive futures and their freedom on the line for the satisfaction of inflicting damage.

[...]

Which brings me to a final theory being vented in Austria: that these destructive, crazed young men are being intentionally infiltrated into western Europe to wreak havoc: to take away the freedom and security of women; change patterns of behavior; deepen the rifts between liberals, who continue to defend and find excuses, and a right wing that calls for harsh measures and violent responses; to inflict high costs and aggravation on courts and judicial systems and generally make a mess of things.

For the record, I am not convinced that there is a deliberate plan behind this, but I do agree that angry and unstable young men are susceptible to destructive paths. Those paths can lead to ideological extremism and terrorism, or to the formation of gangs and packs that attack, harm and destroy. As we have seen, presently many of their attacks are inept and easily blocked by random civilian passersby. But they will get more skillful over time, and Europe had best develop a defense against them.

What to do? The necessary measures, I think, are obvious.

Anyone convicted of a felony or any kind of sexual crime should be immediately deported, and that consequence should be made known to new arrivals as part of their initial orientation. This is the only way to stop the accelerating problem. (Doing so will, of course, require changes to European law.)

Read the entire article in The National Interest.

Dr. Cheryl Benard was program director of the Initiative for Middle Eastern Youth and the Alternative Strategies Initiative within the RAND Corporation's National Security Research Division.


Suffers from «Suspended Communities»

04.07.2017. The imperative of integrating immigrant communities in Europe into their host nation's cultures has taken on a new urgency. Thus begins Andrew A. Michta his article Europe's "Suspended Communities":

The deepening public anxiety in the wake of the escalating wave of terror attacks across Europe is only the most visible manifestation of immigration policies gone wrong. Along with the worry has come a crisis of public confidence in elites' ability to govern, which has fueled the rejection of establishment political parties and the liberal elite consensus. At the core, the public anger is driven by a justifiable fear that unless governments undertake an urgent course correction on immigration policy the most rudimentary security of European societies will be compromised. With each jihadist attack, the official reassurances that governments are doing their best to stop the violence ring more and more hollow, as do the hair-splitting debates over what constitutes "extremist ideology."

The root causes of the accelerating jihadist terror wave across Europe are not economic inequality, racism, or Islamophobia—the usual shibboleths invoked after a terrorist attack. But while radical Islam provides the ideological rationale for jihadist terror, another important enabler is the emergence of an increasingly permanent chain of "suspended communities" nesting within nations throughout the West. As these ethnic and cultural enclaves consolidate, they also grow more and more disconnected from the national community, with daily business transactions often being the dominant form of contact maintained with the larger host nation.

The ethnic and religious diasporas that are to varying degrees the norm across Western Europe today—be they in the suburbs of Paris, the districts of Hamburg, or in towns such as Luton in the United Kingdom. These communities are in essence a petrified version of the once-temporary way stations for migrants, from which the inhabitants eventually ventured forth to become French, German, British, and so on. In contrast, today's suspended communities freeze the immigration process part way, demanding only a partial uprooting from the original culture and marginal acculturation into the host society. The current immigration pattern into Western Europe, reinforced by decades of misguided multicultural ideology and elite disavowal of the nation-state, lacks a key ingredient of past immigration policies: the finality of acculturation and societal absorption.

[...]

Today, the debates over immigration into Europe reflect the lack of consensus on the fundamental question of what comes next: Will the new immigrants continue to create insular diaspora settlements, or will they integrate into their host nations, accepting their values and embracing the attributes of democratic citizenship? The intensity of the argument is underscored by a deepening disconnect on immigration policy between Europe's West, where five decades of Muslim immigration has significantly changed the ethnic make-up of societies, and newer EU members from largely mono-ethnic post-communist Europe, which has all but rejected the idea that EU solidarity should entail "adapting" to the patterns established in Western Europe. Hence, Europe has yet to come to grips with the consequences of accepting millions of immigrants without a policy in place to ensure that they become not just fully integrated in society, but engaged citizens of their adopted nations.

European democracies urgently need a new set of clearly defined guidelines on immigration, ones that ensure the preservation of their nation-states and the transmission of core principles of mutuality and engaged democratic citizenship. New policies must include civic education as a precondition for citizenship, lessons on the nation's history rather than the group identity politics that currently dominates school curricula, and the insistence that immigrants assimilate into the mainstream national culture.

Read the entire article in The American Interest.

Andrew A. Michta is the dean of the College of International and Security Studies at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies. Views expressed here are his own.

 


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HonestThinking is dedicated and committed to the art of thinking honestly. Yet honest thinking is not the same as true thinking, for it is possible to think honestly, but be mistaken. For the same reason, honest thinking is not identical with objective thinking either. Honest thinking is striving to get things right. This involves being truthful about whatever one publishes, but just as importantly, it involves an uncompromising dedication never to suppress relevant data, even when data collides with dearly held prejudices. Such an approach may sometimes cause hurtful revisions in one’s belief system. That’s what HonestThinking is all about! Read the entire manifesto.



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The current European immigration and integration policy is profoundly disrespectful of both Muslims and Islam, because it is built on the tacit assumption that the Muslims will become like us. One claims to have respect for Islam and for Muslims, but one also expects Muslims to give up their orthodox faith when they come here. At the same time one is assuming that Islam will be reformed and modernized as soon as the Muslims become integrated and understand and appreciate how superior our Western culture is compared to their own. This is cultural shauvinism and arrogance indeed! The unspoken premise for this scenario is that Western socities are superior to Islam. Read more.

 


 

 

Human rights and democracy are under pressure. One threat comes from the Western world, in the form of lack of or dishonest thinking. There exists a peculiar Western "tolerance" which is so "tolerant" that it even tolerates totalitarian or anti-democratic ideologies. A tacit assumption underlying such an attitude is that all cultures, world views, and religions are really equally good. As a consequence of this assumption one is cut off from the possibility of critically examining the above mentioned ideologies. Read more.