Is the Immigrant the new anti-Christ for the West

The West is under the grip of a fear. From the recent political success of the far-right politician Geert Wilders in the Netherlands to the banning of minarets in Switzerland and the Hejab in France; from the statement by British Prime Minister David Cameron that “multi-culturalism has failed” to an obscure pastor from Florida coming to the forefront of the public attention by burning out the copies of Qurans, the student of history can draw a clear pattern that is the continents of Europe and America are under the grip of an uncanny feeling of fear , the fear of losing its identity to an alien entity that is the immigrant.

The newest nemesis to the continent of Enlightment

The European soul had always stood for homogeneity. It has been a continent that has prided itself upon its culture, its civilizational achievements and how it has defined its own worldview and has implanted its ideas through conquests and colonization all over the globe. Europe as a civilization can certainly consider itself proud because after all it is the continent which has given to the World the fruits of Enlightment in terms of concepts like nation state and freedom of thought. However throughout History Europe has showed one unique quality, a sense of fear from what it considers “the Barbarians at the gate”, a sense of terror that sudden calamities from outside which no one has ever thought of may come and destroy everything that the continent has built over so long with so much blood and tears. This could be a legacy from a continent which saw its existence repeatedly threatened by the ravaging armies of Attila and Alaric from the ancient times or it could well be the legacy of the dark reign of the “Black death” over the dark ages, that has created a permanent impression of fear of anything unknown in the minds of Europe. Because of this mindset Europe has always been fearful and suspicious of anything that it considers alien to its own parameters.

Europe also needed an enemy, the image of a powerful “other” to unite its own house and create the necessary fighting zeal to defeat and destroy the “other”. Thus when the Popes called for crusades they were not only calling the Christendom to destroy its opponents but at the same time they were trying to unite the disparate fighting tribes that made most of the Europe at that time. Closer to our times whenever the Western Empires needed to rally their population they would define an enemy in terms of backwardness and depravity as in the case of the British wartime slogan of “halt the Hun” which talked about Germans as the modern day successors of ancient Huns who wrote destruction to the Roman Empire thereby urging Britons to rally around the flag.

After the devastation of the two World Wars, Europe needed to allow people outside Europe to come into it and take part in the reconstruction. The economic immigrants were expected to come and work in Europe and get better paychecks but they were also expected to either not bring their own cultural beliefs with themselves or restrict those cultural beliefs to the peripheries of their tiny communities or for better to assimilate themselves into the civilizational mainstream of Europe by giving up their existing identities. Thus was born the concept of “Guest Worker”. In short Europe welcomed the immigrants from the developing World because it needed them for its economic purposes but at the same time expected those immigrants not to bring with them any cultural or civilizational ideas of their own to Europe itself.

This worked well for the first generation of immigrants who mainly immigrated to Europe from the 1950-s to the 1970-s. It was a time when European countries were strong in manufacturing thereby they needed the cheap labor from the developing World including West Asia and North Africa. The immigrants got the jobs they were looking for and were thereby happy to oblige to the demands of European mainstream to keep their cultural traits and beliefs to themselves. But as Europe slowly decided to shift its economic focus from manufacturing to services starting in the 1980-s. things started to change for the immigrant communities. They lost the jobs as manufacturing factories started to gradually close down and they found themselves lacking the needed skills to integrate themselves to the new European economies. Although some European immigrant communities for example the Indian communities in Britain did adopt themselves to the new realities and were able to get back the material benefits they were looking for. But for most of the West Asian and North African immigrant communities in Europe this was the beginning of the troubled times. They had lost the jobs that they were brought into doing in the first place and for most of the host societies they could never be completely assimilated to become complete Europeans. This was the case for the Turkish communities in Germany, Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities in Britain and North African communities in France. These communities also found their cultural practices and religious beliefs sharply rebuked and ridiculed by the most extreme elements in the host societies such La Pen in France, Pim Fortyun in the Netherlands and the British National Party in the UK.

Thus the immigrant communities felt themselves under the position of an acute identity crisis and they sought solace in their faiths to make senses of themselves and find a new identity for themselves. Thus came into prominence groups like “Hizb-ur-tahrir” or “Al-Qaida” who talked about creating a holistic identity that resembled closely to the cultural beliefs for the disaffected and increasingly ghettoized youth in the immigrant communities.

In the aftermath of 9/11, the “war on terror” and the economic stagnation in many prominent European nations, the European mainstream turned more inwards and it saw a large immigrant population, alienated and demanding its rights, thus it suddenly felt the same fear that it has experienced throughout its existence , a fear of losing its own identity to outsiders. Undoubtedly, the lower demographic credentials of the native European populations Vis a Vis the comparatively healthy demographic credentials of the immigrant communities added to the feeling of anxiety and fear in the European communities of being numerically overwhelmed by what the European mainstream considered as “aliens”.

Thus the European mindset now sees itself largely in a position whereby it is under severe financial difficulties and fighting to preserve its sense of cultural uniqueness intact from what it considers “illegal aliens”. This is the reason behind the rise of so-many ultra-right, nativist political movements in Europe and unlike in good times the European mainstream is largely acquiescing to these movements.

Overall, in the European context, it is very important for the immigrant communities in places like UK, France, Netherlands and Germany to actively present practically implementable solutions to the myriad economic, social and political problems the native communities in these countries are facing. It is also the responsibility of the host communities to listen carefully and if possible implement the solutions the immigrant communities are willing to present to the host communities. Stigmatizing or creating ethnically biased attitudes about the host or immigrant communities are not going to help neither the host nor the immigrant communities.