| | | PAPER: Europe's Muslims hate the West...
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Compared to average living standards in Morocco or Egypt, the average living standard in Molenbeek is comfortably middle-class. Like in any other Western European country, many Belgian institutions and organizations offer support when families need housing, food, education, and health care. Opportunities for success, and to study and become a respected member in society, are countless compared to those that exist in many immigrants’ countries of origin. Still, there is deep resentment among the younger generations of immigrant Moroccan families.
Immigration into the Netherlands from Morocco and Turkey is an expensive phenomenon for the taxpayer: In the modern welfare state immigrants are more dependent on the welfare state than the average citizen. Because of a lack of higher education and the lack of non-skilled jobs, immigrants absorb a higher part of unemployment and social security payments than the average citizen. As a group, they receive more money than they pay in taxes. They also show up much higher in crime statistics than their numbers would justify. There are many success stories, but there are also disappointing trends. Like radicalization. And the situation in Belgium is even worse.
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There is no question that unemployment is much higher among Muslim immigrant communities than among the general public. There are two possible explanations.
The first goes something like this: The Belgian people are terribly xenophobic and anti-Moroccan, and deny their Moroccan neighbors opportunities to succeed in life. But if this were the case, the theory can be applied to every Western European country, as unemployment figures for Moroccan and other Muslim migrants across Europe are remarkably higher than average. This would indicate that European xenophobia has reached unbearable levels. Why would Muslims choose to stay in societies that showed such deep disrespect for their migrant population? Because they realize that an unemployed citizen in a European welfare state run by infidels has a better material life than an employed citizen in pious Morocco?
Life in Belgium is exceptionally good and safe for migrants — if they are willing to integrate into their new cultural environment.
The notion that Moroccan-Belgians suffer from widespread exclusion, discrimination, and suppression is ridiculous — and yet completely acceptable among the politically-correct crowd. Life in Belgium is exceptionally good and safe for migrants — if they are willing to integrate into their new cultural environment, if they are willing to act as individuals, study with passion and openness, and accept the secular system of the West.
My journey through Molenbeek
MATTHEW LEVITT
There is no difference at all in socioeconomic status between youngsters from a low-education, blue-collar Belgian background and youngsters from a Muslim migrant background. Both have to struggle, both have to overcome weak socioeconomic family situations. In Spain, youth unemployment has reached 50 percent and the welfare state is less developed than in Belgium, yet Spanish citizens aren’t blowing themselves up in metro stations.
The other explanation for the high unemployment figures among Muslims in Europe has nothing to do with exclusion and discrimination. A large segment of the migrant population is doing just fine, but a significant number — some say as many as 50 percent — have not rid themselves of the mental and cultural conditions that have kept their home country in its “developing country” status. The denial of equal rights to women, the lack of separation of state and church, bad education, excessive religiosity, patriarchal machismo — these are all on display in areas with a high percentage of migrants, including Molenbeek.
Almost 60 percent of Europe’s Muslims reject homosexuals as friends and 45 percent think that Jews cannot be trusted. More than half believe that the West is out to destroy Islam.
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