“One day millions of men will leave the southern hemisphere of this planet to burst into the northern one. But not as friends, because they will burst in to conquer, and they will conquer it by populating with their children. Victory will come to us from the wombs of our women.” These words of the former Algerian President Houari Boumeddiene, which were put in records at the UN General Assembly in 1974, simply popped up in our minds when we see the recent French riots, which happened due to the shoot-out of Nahel M, a 17-year-old teenager of Algerian-Moroccan heritage at a Parisian suburb of Nanterre. This requires a critical analysis of the French police’s work and should be scrutinised well from a civilian rights perspective. In a democracy, protesting or agitating for an issue or demand is allowed. But that manifestation of demand through protest must be done in a democratic way.
While protesting abiding by the law of the land is a must condition. But making that protest a mask for a shed covering violence is unacceptable in a democracy. The burning cars raised buildings and arsonned and looted shops were the current city picture of Paris. Maintenance of law and order is one aspect of the Paris riots, but a deep message not only for France but for the whole of Europe is there in the Paris riots. The aforementioned quote of Boumeddiene has that message. Today Europe is facing a civilisational war that will decide whether it will remain Europe or not. The mass immigration into Europe from the Middle Eastern and African countries has started questioning the civilisational identity of Europe. However, it is not wrong to state that Europe is witnessing a “civilisational tiredness” towards the problem of illegal immigration and the changing demographic scenario of its land. The Paris riots serve as a catalyst for undertaking a comprehensive study and in-depth analysis of the current situation in Europe.
Early Warning Signals
In the post-Second World War era, Britain required a large labour force to fill particular gaps in the labour market, mainly created in the transport sector and a newly formed National Health Service. The British Nationality Act of 1948 was introduced to allow immigration from the former British colonies. Due to this, Britain witnessed a vast majority of arrivals into its land from countries like the West Indies, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. The immigration was for factory work only, but later on, these workers started to suggest the name of their relatives for work in factories. However, Britain, at the same time, didn’t focus on the cultural integration of the immigrants into its own culture, although now this problem of integration is not only limited to Britain but has become the problem of all of Europe. The culmination of all this can be experienced in the Notting Hill riots of 1958. Later on, a more horrific case occurred in Britain, the Rotherham case, in which during the period of 1997-2014, a number of non-white girls were sexually assaulted, and the youngest victim was of the age of 11 years. The official inquiry found that the accused were mostly of Pakistani origin and were operating in gangs. Even the judge who was hearing the case noted in unambiguous terms that girls were chosen because they belonged to a different community and were regarded as ‘easy meat’. Even the government commission, which was working under Louis Casey to probe into this case, has accepted that some immigrants carry specific cultural ideas and attitudes which shape their views about women, specifically non-Muslim women, other religions, races and sexual minorities, and these views were pre-medieval in their thinking.
Earlier in the first decade of the 21st century, Europe was thundered with a serious ‘cartoon crisis’ in its land, in which creating cartoons of Prophet Mohammed has become a costly affair. Starting with the case of the Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten’s cartoon over Prophet Mohammed led to widespread protests and riots by Muslims worldwide and throughout Europe. In London, outside the Danish embassy, slogans like “Freedom go to hell”, “Behead those who insult Islam”, etc were raised. Ironically, the land of Europe, which claimed itself to be the birthplace of freedom of expression, faced this type of situation to express its view on a particular theme. Later on, in 2007, a Swedish artist, Lars Vilks, had to go into hiding because he drew a picture of Mohammed. The firebombing of Charlie Hebdo’s office in 2011 still haunts the memory of Europe and the whole world. In 2013, Danish journalist and historian Lars Hedegaard was attacked by an assailant. However, Hedegaard survived the attack. Hedegaard is known for his criticism of Islamic thoughts and values. What happened to Salman Rushdie was another testimony to this fact.
In 1985, Jeans Raspail, along with famous demographic expert Gerard Francois Dummont, wrote an article in the “Le Figaro” magazine and questioned “Will France still be French in 2015 ?” the magazine carried the cover image of Marianne, the national symbol of France, covered with a Muslim veil. In their article Raspail and Dummont, with reference to the demographic projections, have argued that ongoing immigration and the disproportionate population growth among existing immigrant communities meant that France’s non-European population would soon grow to endanger the country’s values and culture.
Leaders like former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister David Cameron have carried the world’s attention towards the European policy of accepting mass immigration from the world in the name of “multiculturalism”, put forward by the liberal scholars and thinkers of Europe. In her Potsdam speech in 2010, Merkel explicitly stated, “Of course, the approach to build a multicultural society and to live side by side and to enjoy each other has failed, utterly failed.” In his speech, which he delivered at the Munich Security Conference in 2011, Cameron stated unambiguously that “Under the doctrine of a state multiculturalism we have encouraged different cultures to live separate lives, apart from each other and apart from the mainstream. We have failed to provide a vision of society to which they feel they want to belong. We’ve even tolerated these segregated communities behaving in ways that run completely counter to our values.” A few days after Cameron’s speech at the Munich Security Conference, the then French President Nicholas Sarkozy declared multiculturalism to be a ‘failure’ and said, “The truth is that in all our democracies we have been too preoccupied with the identity of those who arrived and not enough with the identity of the country that welcomed them.”
Today Europe is facing an alarming situation. The emergence of Parallel Societies in the European land has threatened its values, cultures and civilisation. The argument of multiculturalism has seemed to fail in favour of mass immigration. Preserving European values and civilisation requires proactive measures, international cooperation, and inclusive dialogue.
