Let sleeping dogs lie
Incapable of telling the truth —
And though every dog has his day
We know he’d prefer a bone….
From Koothey Ki Mowth (Ed. Bachchoo)
On New Year’s Eve in Germany, notably in Cologne, Munich, Hamburg, Frankfurt and 10 other cities, there were reports of widespread attacks on young women revellers. The Frauleins had come out for a bit of fun and possibly a bout of drunken cheer to see in the New Year. They were, the reports go, attacked, groped in sexual ways, robbed and, in the rare instance, dragged off and raped.
In Cologne, in the square outside the main railway station, a venue for hordes of celebrating people, several hundred women reported assaults to the police. They, and women from other cities, testified that it was large gangs of Arab men who had gathered as though by plan, to carry out the assaults. In Cologne, the victims said there were perhaps a thousand attackers and very few police to inhibit them.
This is bad news by any accounts and in any country, but particularly bad news for Chancellor Angela Merkel and the German government. Poor, well-intentioned and image-conscious Ms Merkel has over the last few months made magnanimous promises to allow a million-and-a-half refugees from Syria and other war-torn countries to enter Germany and settle there.
Under this policy, a few hundred thousand Syrians, Afghans and some Somalis and Eritreans fleeing terror in their countries, and seeking refuge in Europe, have already entered Germany. There is no way of knowing whether any of these asylum seekers participated in the New Year’s Eve assaults, or whether the contingent of colluding perpetrators were earlier settled migrants, confident of getting away with this form of behaviour.
Nevertheless, the episode, which couldn’t have been planned in any sense, except through a network of villainous intent being spread through anti-social media, is a setback for Ms Merkel. The German public and Opposition, including a neo-fascist group, are vociferously demanding that she think again about her generous policy towards asylum seekers.
The cynical may, and will, say that the Merkel policy towards these asylum seekers is not so much an altruistic gesture from a country with a bad record, in the last 100 years, in human kindness, but a conduit to import cheap labour. I don’t agree with the cynics. Ms Merkel’s government is, with this policy, attempting to put down a historical marker of humane consideration, which may be a global or at least European public relations stunt, but is one whose cost and impact other European countries, including France and Britain, have avoided.
There is no equivocation possible on the fact that Europe is now a multi-cultural continent. By which I don’t simply mean that Latin countries are different from the colder north, but that Asians, Africans, Caribbeans, Middle Easterns, Chinese and South East Asians, live, work and give rise to future generations here. The New Year Eve’s assaults are not the only indication that the immigrants, after several generations of being Europeans, or holding European passports, have not assumed the values that have evolved in Christian Europe.
Looking back on the last century and the slaughter of the two world wars, on the Holocaust and on the painful decolonisation of some countries, some may say that these “European” values are not very valuable. And yet one may confidently assert that gangs of Arab men assaulting German women, or gangs of Pakistani immigrant males in Manchester grooming hundreds of poor, vulnerable, underage white girls, is certainly not a sign of integration into European society.
Neither is the possibly tiny, but by no means negligible, leakage of young men and women from Europe leaving to join the “Death Cult” (DC is more accurate than ISIS, because DC is neither Islamic nor a State) in Syria. One needn’t even mention the murder in the offices of Charlie Hebdo or the murder of people at a music venue and café in Paris.
The Syrian refugees are not going to be turned away from Europe. Neither are the Africans who brave the seas to cross to the continent in rubber dinghies and leaking boats. They may be kept in holding camps for months or even years, but eventually Europe will integrate them.
I am conscious here of using an ambivalent word. “Integrate” could mean that they, and succeeding generations, adopt the general values of European society which, apart from a very few fanatics, doesn’t believe in killing people for drawing cartoons or watching pop groups.
A section of Britain has for the last half-century believed that “integrate” should mean fitting into the society with one’s traditions, values and even prejudices intact so that eventually there is a harmonious, if diverse, “multicultural” society.
This may be a laudable aim, but Britain has not evolved any social, political or educational strategies to convincingly bring it about.
Last Christmas and before, several city councils and hundreds of schools in Britain declared that they would not celebrate Christmas as it would disturb the sensibility of the non-Christian populations of the city or pupils of the school and their families. Instead, they would celebrate “Winterval” or some such concocted festival which would coincide with the Christian world’s belief that Jesus was born on December 25. It would be a secular celebration, with no story of a messiah being born.
There are no statistics which record the overflowing appreciation of the non-Christian populations for this smug gesture and no indication that it helped the non-Christians to “integrate”. I know of several non-Christian families (very many of them Muslims) who ignored the liberal caveat and caution, ate turkey, sang carols and gave each other presents in imitation of the Zoroastrian Magi bringing gold, frankincense and myrrh to the infant Jesus.
It will take more than renaming Christmas to enforce a non-aggressive multicultural diversity on a Europe which can’t now turn back from having internationalised its workforce and hence its citizenry.
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