No doubt the usual suspects will be hugely enjoying the claim by Austria’s hard-right interior minister Elisabeth (Liesl) Prokop that 45 per cent of Muslims are “unwilling to integrate”. In fact, it’s more than a claim – as well as rhetoric, she’s got a “study” to support her election positioning. Unfortunately, the study still isn’t complete – its leader, one Prof. Matthias Rohe, has yet to draw conclusions from the data. Not only that, there are some serious concerns regarding the methodology – at the link, it turns out that the study included, as well as a mixture of questionnaires and focus groups, a “consideration of media reports”.
Ah. I think I get it. Someone like the emetic FPÖ goon Andreas Mölzer has his pet newspaper (Zur Zeit) rant about TEH TERRORISTS, and this is duly marked off by the responsible minister’s pet academics as evidence for Mölzer’s policy. But there is much, much worse.
According to her spokesman, “20 per cent of Muslims had difficulties with integration for religious reasons and 25 per cent with the cultural background”. So, obviously 45 per cent of them REFUSE TO INTEGRATE AND MUST BE ELIMINATED! Errr..well. Perhaps if religious and cultural differences were mutually exclusive, that might approach the truth or something akin to it.
But of course they are not. In fact, I’d argue that in this case they are barely distinguishable, which implies epic double counting and a truly mendacious misuse of statistics. After all, I suspect that not far off 100 per cent of them agree with me that the current Austrian government is a bunch of racists and cheap-arsed hacks with their fingers in the till, and using the same class of mathematics, we can therefore conclude that 145 per cent of Muslims in Austria are dangerous non-integrators.
Updated: Well, the study was eventually presented, and it doesn’t contain either the phrase “unwilling to integrate” or the figure of 45 per cent. How strange. It’s almost as if someone was lying.
replace Muslims with Jews as the demagogues did some time ago, and you get the picture.
So that all your readers don’t get the impression that all Austrians are like that, it might be an idea to also post some positive stuff like this article in Die Presse: http://www.diepresse.at/Artikel.aspx?channel=p&ressort=pk&id=559155 “Österreich muss sich endlich dazu bekennen, was es ist: ein (schlecht gemanagtes) Einwanderungsland.”
Oh for crying out loud! I have difficulties integrating in Belgium for philosophical reasons and cultural background. That’s not even unwillingness to integrate. Consider, Austrians like their beer and they like their pork. Practicing Muslims take a dim view of both. So, their coworkers don’t invite them out to pubs and restaurants so much after work. This is a barrier to integration. Should immigrants to Austria be required to swill a stein along with a plate of pork ribs before an immigration officer?
I suspect that integration to Prokop means just that, Scott, and what used to be a joke about Wolfgang Schlüssel – österreich ist Mozartkugeln, Lippizaner und Neutralität.
It is me or is anyone else just plain sick of all these Muslim related news stories? I left Europe 10 years ago at the age of 12. If you had told me back then that we would be inundated daily with various scare stories on Muslims, suicide bombings in London, honour killings, dead film makers, violent cartoons, Dutch(!) liberal politicians running on far right platforms…I would have laughed in your face. Going by these trends, I bet 10 years from now there will be an influx of Buddhists or something and Europe won’t be able to deal with it either.
I personally think the Austrian interior minister has absolutely no proof to her claims and is being ridiculous. But what kind of social climate has the world created where even mainstream politicians are saying such things??
Muslims are keen on integration. They would like to integrate Europe into the Dar ul-Islam.
They will eventually succeed with the help of silly lefties.
Seriously, do you really believe that actual real Muslims, average ones, are really really scheming in every waking moment to convert Europe into Teh Caliphate? Rather than doing things like working, running small businesses, and complaining about the traffic? These tend to be what immigrant communities actually do, whether they be Pakistanis in London, Chinese in San Francisco, Indians in east Africa or Mexicans in LA.
I’d like to see one example, just one, of a society where the enemy within really existed. Because it strikes me that, for a political pathology that always seems to be with us, the enemy within seems remarkably rare. Pretty much every period in history has seen violent rhetoric, and sometimes real violence, directed to target groups that are supposedly going to subvert or overwhelm the host community.
But it’s never, to the best of my knowledge, actually happened. In a sense, this should be more obvious than it is – people move towards the good stuff, after all. That a society is attracting immigrants is a good sign – there are no people trekking across the desert to immigrate to Iraq, after all, and places that export people are generally doing so because they are poor, priest-ridden or violent. Think about it: Sicily is not benefiting from negative net migration. Neither is Somalia.
Alex, I can offer you one big counterexample of the enemy within really existing. Texas, California and a big chunk of the American west used to be part of Mexico. Then, the newly independent Mexican government in the 1820s cut a deal to resettle a few hundred American families in Texas. This backfired because several thousand American settlers and their slaves entered Mexico illegally and set up homesteads, ultimately shifting the demographic balance sharply. When Mexico decided to crack down on the illegals, abolish slavery, and require cultural and religious integration of migrants, the Anglo-Texans and some sympathetic Hispanic Texans declared independence. They waged a guerilla campaign, with the assistance of sympathizers in the US, against Mexico. After winning recognition as independents, albeit with disputed borders, the Anglos convinced the US to annex the territory, rather than maintain the independence preferred by most of the Hispanic Texans. They then proceeded to ethnically cleanse the territory of Native Americans and Hispanics.
That’s what I find so ironic about American fears of “Mexican irredentism” and “dhimmitude”. The only people I know of to have ever acted that way are Americans.
The Boer republic, various foederati of the late roman empire.
This may out me as a closet British imperialist, but there wouldn’t have been much of a Boer republic without all the non-Boer mining and railways engineers and all the black workers.
An exception, anyway, that proves the rule. The Boer population being tiny and hugely overentitled by comparison with the majority population, the Boerness of the republic was a really artificial construct.
The nearest modern analogy is probably Saudi Arabia, or better, Dubai, where according to our sister blog Aqoul, the expats make up 85 per cent of the population. Dubai deals with this by letting them do all the work but not letting them vote.
It’s interesting that both our counterexamples occurred in the context of a small white-settler population surrounded by a lot of indigenous folk whose opinion wasn’t canvassed by either side. If the Boer republic had kept its indigenous identity, it would have been called the Zulu Kingdom. What happened was that two bunches of honky immigrants fell out with each other..
Sri Lanka, Fiji, Malaysian insurrection, …
Fiji: no-one ever argued that Indians were trying to turn it into a Hindu monarchy. The problem is the clash between a (largely) Indian bourgeoisie (and for that matter, agrarian proletariat) and a Fijian aristocratic/landed-military elite. Think English civil war.
SL: Are the Tamils immigrants in any reasonable sense of the word (i.e. in the last 50 years)?
Malaya: arguably the impression of an ethnic conflict was imposed on a class/colonial one by the British as a way of defeating the Communists.
Has anyone else noticed that they’re still all colonial? Perhaps it’s the colonialism, stupid.
Medieval Austria, or indeed much of that territory that depending on whose view of history you listen to, is either east German or western Slav.
Palestine in the interwar period, Kosovo and the classic case: Hawai’i
You invite the missionaries and are happy to see them and only sixty years later you get a revolution of settlers.
SL: Are the Tamils immigrants in any reasonable sense of the word (i.e. in the last 50 years)?
And this matters how? A civil war delayed is still a civil war.
Has anyone else noticed that they’re still all colonial?
Mexico, Hawai’i?
And it should be noted that under the Empire Ceylon was quiet.
Texan settlers and US missionaries in Hawaii certainly are colonial. The Americans enjoy the delusion that colonialism is something other people did, but it doesn’t make it any less of a delusion.
“The Americans enjoy the delusion that colonialism is something other people did, but it doesn’t make it any less of a delusion”
I’d rephrase this as “The Americans enjoy the delusion that colonialism is something other people do …”
Both Texas and Hawai’i formed republics. And what is the difference? Things would not be different today. We just call it selfdetermination. The Americans conquered a continent by private enterprise imperialism. And it should be noted that India did not invade Ceylon in the 19th century. The movement of population was economic in nature, not settlers for conquest.
That’s what I find so ironic about American fears of “Mexican irredentism” and “dhimmitude”. The only people I know of to have ever acted that way are Americans.
Then you don’t know much. Mexico itself has been acting this way ever since the Conquistadores set forth on the continent. That’s the real irony. To say nothing of the fact that illegal immigration in Mexico is a felony.
Of course. Who can forget the sufferings of the deported on the Trail of Tears at the hands of the Mexican Federales, Santa Ana’s crushing victory at Little Bighorn…hold on a second.
Hold on for what? No one has denied those events or their purpose. Your babble is irrelevant to what I said.
Point is that Mexico is at the least as grevious an offender of native poulations as the US, hence the hilarious absurdity of Martens ignorant comments or the Mexican governments for that matter.
Bob, you nitwit, you have missed the entire point. The world’s full of places where people invaded and slaughtered everyone they found. Texas, Hawaii, California – those are places where a combination of legal and illegal immigrants moved into a country, ostensibly in peace, agreed to live under its laws and sovereignty, and then overthrew and displaced the original inhabitants. Mexicans have not, so far I know, crossed borders and, having established themselves as immigrants, declared independence and demanded to be annexed by Mexico. That was the parallel. God, can’t you read?
Of course God can read.
Look, your statements are patently absurd. The whole history of Mexico is one of ‘crossing borders as immigrants’ and declaring ‘independence’, covertly or otherwise. Ask the Chiapas:
When Central America achieved its independence from Mexico in 1823, western Chiapas was annexed to Mexico. More of current day Chiapas was transferred after the disintegration of the Central American Federation in 1842, and the remainder of the current state taken from Guatemala in the early 1880s by President Porfirio DÃaz.
So yes I can read, but as usual, you put your ignorance on display for the sake of a cheapshot at America.
So which part of that quote actually supports you?
And why do you leave links to CNN?
All of that quote supports what I’ve said. Furthermore, Scott’s narrative of Texas history is wrong.
At the time of Mexico’s independence from Spain, Texas was Spanish territory, and sparsely populated at that. The Spanish government granted the first Anglo permits for Texas, not Mexico, via Moses Austin. At the time of Mexican independence, Mexico was also granting permits for settlers to Texas, because no Mexican wanted to move there. So began a competition for land and resources. Mexico lost. It’s that simple.
The idea that a Mexican populated Texas was covertly invaded by Americans and stolen is false, as is Scott’s whole ‘The enemy within’ blather. But leave it up to him to interject into a European argument about immigration with an example that villifies America. Hell, he’d of been better off using Canada as a counter example.
Bob:
But leave it up to him to interject into a European argument about immigration with an example that villifies America.
Wasn’t the Mexican state the successor state to New Spain?
In any case, what Mexico’s experience proves–losing California, Texas, and New Mexico in the north, gaining Chiapas in the south–is that unclear and undefedned borders tend to be mobile, especially when motivated immigrants supported by powerful states are involved. Surprise, surprise.
Look, it is pretty easy: you have to be catholic, to be member of this government, you don’t neccessarily have to be literate – as I found out, when I downloaded the “original” study, and what Liesl stated, could by no means be confirmed by it.
Let’s face it: Austria has become a banana republic, held hostage by clerico-fascists and real ones.
BTW: Did you read this weekend’s “Standard”? Petzi Westenthaler (A.K.A. Hojac) is at it again…