Europe’s identity crisis

In future an immigrant arriving in Germany and wishing to stay may have to sign an “integration contract”. That is the idea of the Integration Minister, Maria Boehmer.

The contract would set out basic German “values,” including “freedom of speech” and “equal rights for women”. The idea behind this is the club: if you join you have to accept the rules. “Anyone who wants to live here for a long time,” says the minister, “and who wants to work has to say ‘yes’ to our country”.

In different forms ideas like this are surfacing across Europe. The concern is that significant parts of European cities exist as “parallel societies”. There is not a shared identity and so there is not a common citizenship. Politicians are concerned that if communities do not relate to each other it is easy for rumour and prejudice to flourish.

Identity has been a subject that politicians have been wary of but now, as a subject, it has become mainstream. Across Europe they detect voter unease and they want to head off that concern finding expression with extreme parties.

In Switzerland this weekend voters will be asked to decide whether to ban the construction of minarets. There are only about 300,000 Muslims in the country and many of them are from the Balkans and so do not practise Islam. But a handful of minarets has become an issue. As has happened before in Switzerland, the debate is surrounded by controversial posters, including one showing a woman in a burka standing by a Swiss flag flanked by minarets which look like missiles.

Full article here. Source