Renaud Girard, in an article originally published in Figaro (sadly, the French original is behind Figaro’s paywall) but republished at RealClearWorld, puts his finger on the problem that European countries have had in assimilating its Middle Eastern immigrants:
If you are a young Muslim and you feel ill-at-ease in the world of shopping malls, Disney World, reality television and fast-food chains, and you’re looking for an ideal, what options do you have? Communism? It has failed. Christianity? Most Europeans have abandoned it. What’s left, admittedly for those with little cultural knowledge, is the fantasized Islam of the first Caliphs. The young Muslim immigrant is led into thinking, as the Muslim Brotherhood proclaims, that “Islam is the solution.” The solution to all problems, his own and that of the society around him. Sharia law becomes the only possible way to rule over men. Society needs to return to the customs of our pious ancestors (the Salafs). The infernal machinery is in motion: A jihadist is a Salafist who’s decided to take his commitment to its logical conclusion. How else could you explain the hatred shown in Barcelona by the young Moroccan terrorists that Spain had generously taken in?
However, I think he’s wrong about the United States:
American society also lacks cohesion. It’s never been so divided. Young whites are in open rebellion against the cult of minorities and the globalized economy their academic and media establishments are trying to impose on them. They can no longer accept being despised for who they are and blamed for what their grandparents did. They form such a strong electoral base behind Donald Trump that nobody can seriously claim he can’t be reelected in 2020.
The United States has always lacked social cohesion in the manner of the European ethnic states. In France it was possible for an Algerian immigrant to become sort of French by using the French language and adopting French dress and manners. But he would never be “of French stock” (as they say) and would be subject to discrimination at all sorts of levels. Germany was even worse. Until recently it was quite difficult for its Turkish “guest workers” to be full participants in German society despite their grandfathers having been born in Germany. In European countries other than France there was an illusion of successful assimilation, the consequence of very small numbers.
Here in the United States our divisions are being re-emphasized by changes in transportation and communication and exploited by our political leaders. In many ways Americans have never been so united. We just disagree with our political leadership.
M. Girard is right about this:
The West’s great mistake in this new millennium has been to believe that no violence would result from allowing in so many different cultures, and in the whole world adopting the West’s political principles — the ones it claims are “universal.”
We have mistakenly believed that there are many more universal values than there actually are. We are also doubling down on our mistake by failing to recognize that the different ways that different societies have devised for organizing themselves are equivalent in how they recognize and promote those supposedly universal values.
