Wednesday, November 01, 2006
The intersection of welfare subsidies and Islamic rage
Ian Buruma's Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance
One of those involves the intersection of the social democratic welfare state and the anger of young Muslims. Painting with an extremely broad brush, Phillips emphasizes bureaucratic multiculturalism (which she argues promotes the self-imposed segregation, or non-integration, of Muslims in the United Kingdom), and Steyn discusses the welfare state's unsustainability in light of collapsing birth rates among white Europeans (and the welfare state as a cause of those declining birth rates). Buruma drills in on the ideals of the welfare state, and the various ways in which it promotes the anger of immigrants by at once raising their expectations and absolving them of the responsibility of actually fending for themselves. Two passages from Buruma's book weave together Phillips' indictment of multiculturalism with the emasculating dependency many young Muslims feel:
[Ayaan Hirsi Ali's] dream of liberation for the Muslims in the West is sabotaged, she believes, "by the Western cultural relativists with their anti-racism offices, who say: 'If you're critical of Islam you're a racist, or an Islamophobe, or an Enlightenment fundamentalist.' Or: 'It's part of their culture, so you musn't take it away.' This way, the cage will never be broken. Westerners who live off dispensing public welfare, or development aid, or representing minority interests, have made a satanic pact with Muslims who have an interest in preserving the cage."
Some pages on, Buruma discusses the cycle of resentment that grows from the interdependence of the welfare state bureaucracy -- which is huge in Western Europe compared to the United States -- and the immigrants. The taxpayers want gratitude, and all they get in return is the rage of defeated expectations:
The Dutch feel, in Ayaan's words, that since they "have been so kind" to the foreigners, the foreigners should behave as the Dutch do. Then there is the other kind of resentment, of the recipients of Dutch government largesse, who feel that it is never enough. Dubravka described the behavior of people from the Balkan countries. "They develop a criminal mentality in Holland," she said. "They think a country is a soft touch." A bit like those "easy" women.
Europeans are proud of their welfare states, but they were not designed to absorb large numbers of immigrants. Immigrants appear to fare better in the harsher system of the United States, where there is less temptation to milk the state. The necessity to fend for oneself encourages a kind of tough integration. It is for this reason, perhaps, that immigrants from Africa or the Caribbean often express a contempt for African-Americans, who feel, for understandable historic reasons, that the state owes them something. Immigrants cannot afford to feel that kind of entitlement in the U.S. But in Europe at least some of them do.
There is an additional point that Buruma does not make. Europe may be attracting a different sort of immigrant -- and by this I do not mean Muslim vs. non-Muslim. Perhaps people who come to Europe are attracted in part because they know there is a welfare state, whereas immigrants to the United States, legal and otherwise, know that their only real safety net is their family and their own wits.
MORE: Glenn Reynolds has related links.
4 Comments:
By 
Jason Pappas, at
Wed Nov 01, 08:47:00 AM:
There’s certainly truth to the notion that the welfare state compounds the problem – any problem. But I worry that this compounding factor may help some deny the root cause.
TH, you’re almost old enough to remember how the civil riots in the 1960s were blamed on poverty and the “institutional barriers” that hindered the poor. But being hungry doesn’t determine whether one works hard or steals – character does. One’s ideas and habits of character are the key. It’s the factor that determines how one will act in a crisis or challenging environment.
Back in the 1960s, radical leftist ideas of entitlement and the resultant sentiment of belligerence created an atmosphere where civil disturbances became acceptable to some. I vividly remember how these riots were considered America’s shame by some newspaper editorialists. The rioters were excused. LBJ’s attorney general (Ramsey Clark) chaired a study … you can imagine the findings.
That’s why I’m in solidarity with Europeans despite their hobbled economies. It’s a question of Islamic culture – the disposition of character of this particular religious/political ideology. Vietnamese immigrants aren’t burning buses in the Paris suburbs. These “youths” may not be studying the ideology (just like rioters in the 60s seldom read Marx) but they absorb the attitude. It results in a mindset that responds poorly under stress.
Secondary factors are compounding but the core of the problem is always cultural: ideas, habits, dispositions, and traditions.
Oh, yes, thanks for the book reports ... so much to read, so little time.
By Solomon2, at
Wed Nov 01, 03:55:00 PM:
Gaza is probably the worst example of this - joblessness is high, it seems everyone is on welfare, so young men have no way other than combat to prove themselves...
By Assistant Village Idiot, at
Wed Nov 01, 06:46:00 PM:
Sorry to repeat this at every chance you drop me, but it is a fact of human nature that the more you give people, the less grateful they are. There are individual exceptions to this, but as a group, that's who we are. It is not confined to Muslims, or welfare recipients, or whoever our baddie-of-the-moment is. It's us.
But though this might make us less judgemental of Those Others, it should not blind us to that practical reality. It is good for all of us to do as much as we can for ourselves, and it is good to encourage that in others. Only at extremity should we be rescuing, else we kill with kindness.
By 
, at
Thu Jan 11, 05:40:00 PM:
I've found that Islamophobia is the least legitimate form of "prejudice" of all. For one, there is no such thing as "Christiphobia" or "Buddhiphobia" or "Taophobia" or "Shintophobia" or any other religon with "phobia" put on the end. The people who invented Islamophobia are, of course, playing to the Western idea of tolerance, combining homophobia and Islam.
IT IS OKAY TO BE AGAINST A RELIGON BECAUSE A RELIGON IS NOTHING MORE THAN A HUMAN CONSTRUCTION OF PHILOSOPHIES AND BELIEFS THAT REVOLVE AROUND THE WORSHIP OF A HIGHER BEING. It's okay to be against an idea, right?
