I have been thinking about the French riots from last year, and the disaffected Muslim youths in many European countries. The pressures are still there.
   The west only has itself to blame.
   In the 1960s, with technology improving to a point where the middle classes were growing, Europe found itself short of a working class. So it decided to import “guest workers”, often from Muslim nations.
   These workers were often denied rights and were the subject of prejudice, something that continues today.
   Whenever a lower economic class is created and denied rights, then there are pressures of revolution. It happened in China during the Ching Dynasty, when rich foreigners in Beijing and Shanghai hung up signs reading, ‘No dogs or Chinese allowed’. My culture is the only lens through which I can look at these issues—and I can see parallels.
   So what can these kids hang on to? The governments have provided nothing. They have, instead, their religion to fall back on, and through which they find fellowship.
   These are angry kids. Many of them have seen the suffering of their parents or even grandparents. With nothing to defuse the anger, they have to find an outlet.
   In China, the republican movement was helmed by inspirational leaders like Sun Yat-sen. But among these youths, who is their leader?
   There is no single unifying figure if we look at the peaceful exponents of Islam through the European continent.
   The solution is not to persecute further, but to admit there is a problem.
   And if governments do not want a single figure to emerge to inspire these kids, they need to create an alternative now.
   It is hard to unlearn generations of prejudice, but that has to happen, for starters. Dialogue is one key, and I still believe in the power of blogs on that front. Yet more needs to be done.
   A classless society should be an aim—and like John Major I do not mean a single class, but that anyone from any class has the same opportunities open to them. Right now, that is not the case in so many districts in Europe. If you are from the wrong side of the tracks, you can forget anything that might further your lot in life.
   A conscious effort to change, take responsibility for the earlier encouragement of immigration, and an admission of past ill treatment would be a start.
   The comments will probably come at this point. Someone will ask the following: while most of the youths are not motivated by fundamentalism, which is a stereotype given by the media, how can you confront the few that are?
   I believe that addressing the majority will see to the irrelevance of the minority.
   Of course, I have the luxury of sitting in a nation where there has been no terrorist threat and I don’t have to deal with the administrative reality of these ideas.
   But they are a beginning, and the best solutions are often the simplest.

Del.icio.us tags: Muslim Islam riots human rights prejudice fairness opportunity history Posted by Jack Yan, 03:53  permalink

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