DIVERSITY, MULTICULTURALISM AND JIHAD

On January 7, 2015, at about 11:30 local time, two brothers, Said and Cherif Kouachi, forced their way into the offices of the French satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris and killed 11 people. During the following two days four more attacks took place resulting in 20 deaths, which included three perpetrators. During the evening of November 13, 2015 a series of coordinated terrorist attacks in Paris killed more than 130, and wounded hundreds. Eighty-nine were massacred while attending an Eagles of Death Metal concert in the Bataclan Concert Hall in the 11th arrondisement near the Place de la Republique. The attacks at the Zaventem Airport and the Maalbeck Metro Station in Brussels on March 22 of this year killed 32 and wounded 300. No wonder Europe is on edge. Many blame the increased flow of immigrants from North Africa and the E.U.'s open border policy. However, in reality almost all of the perpetrators were born and raised in or close to the communities they attacked. Europeans are searching for answers. While the handwriting has been on the wall for a long time, many have only recently begun to acknowledge that their institutionalized response to increased diversity, usually referred to as "multiculturalism," created during the 1970's, may be the cause of, not the answer to social problems resulting from what some would consider a policy of allowing excessive immigration.

The core issue is the extent to which immigrants have assimilated, or were allowed to assimilate into their host country's dominant culture. Prior to World War II new-comers to European countries migrated mostly from within the European continent. They brought traits similar to those prevalent in the countries they came to adopt. Hence, they assimilated easily. During the years immediately following World War II many European countries attracted "guest workers" from Spain, Italy, Greece and Turkey to compensate for an immense labor shortage. The idea was that, when no longer needed, these migrant workers would return to their native countries. During that same time period countries like France, Great Britain, and to some extent Belgium, attracted a flow of immigrants from their rapidly dwindling colonial possessions - the Caribbean, Pakistan and India for the U.K., and North Africa for France and Belgium. After the 1974 recession governments began to try to get rid of their foreign workers, many of whom had transitioned from a temporary necessity into a permanent presence. By then 30% of the migrant population was under 25 years old, and were born into their parents' "adopted" country. Fearing that these immigrants would dilute the national identity of their countries, governments encouraged them to preserve their own culture, language and lifestyle. The concept of multiculturalism was born and embraced. This did not represent a respect for diversity so much as a convenient means of avoiding the issue of how to create a common, inclusive culture. This policy ultimately resulted in the emergence of segregated communities.

Over time, immigrant neighborhoods developed into cohesive communities, using resources supplied by local governments, but separated from the national culture, and increasingly identifiable by race, religion, language, lifestyle and geographical concentration. The influx of new, predominantly Muslim, immigrants, often shunned by the lopcal population, grew, reinforced, and consolidated the identity of these communities. Second and third-generation youth growing up in this environment were confronted  with an identity crisis. Although they grew up in the country they lived in, they regularly encountered significant discrimination outside of their neighborhoods. (In France, in 2012, the unem ployment rate for youth of African descent under 25 was 42%). Aside from lacking affinity for their home cultrure, they had difficulty identifying with their parents' background. Kenan Malik, a columnist for the International New York Times, in "The Failure of Multiculturalism," suggests: " Many in France view its citizens of North African origin not as French but as Arab or Muslim. But second-generation North Africans are often as estranged from their parents' culture and mores - and from mainstream Islam - as they are from wider French society. They are caught not between two cultures, but without one." While searching for an identity of their own, many of these young people turned to radical Islam.

The very islolation of these separate communities obscured their inner workings, allowing mujahideen to fundraise, prepare and recruit for jihad with a freedom available in few Muslim countries. Michael Nazir-Ali, former bishop of Rochester, writes: "One of the results of multiculturalism has been to further alienate the young from the nation in which they were growing up, and also to turn already separate communities into areas where adherence to Islamic extremism has become a mark of acceptability." The arguments about the purported "failure of multiculturalism" and the development of so-called "no-go zones" have recently entered the political discourse on both sides of the Atlantic. Irrespective of semantics, many of these segregated areas have become Muslim enclaves in which the enforcement of European laws is at best spotty. French Prime Minister Manuel Valls, after the Charlie Hebdo attacks, acknowledged that a form of apartheid exists in France. In fact, France lists 751 "sensitive urban zones," most of which developed as a consequence of multiculturalist policies. Molenbeek, the municipality in the Brussels-Capital region, where most of the perpetrators of the attacks in Paris and Brussels and Paris grew up, is one of these in Belgium. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that these enclaves have become incubators for jihad. However, identifying the problem and assigning blame is only part of the process. European governments need to move beyond claiming that the problem does not exist, and develop solutions short of the drastic measures suggested by increasingly powerful populist parties. We should all hope that they have the capacity to do this.