It seems someone in Germany has woken up and smelled the coffee

[ProfessorPreciseaBug]

This from Reuters..

www.spiegel.de/international/europe/following-the-path-of-the-paris-terror-weapons-a-1083461.html#ref=nl-international

Germany is proposing to demand that refugees integrate into German life or loose rights of residency.. It appears to include learning Grman and not treating women as second class...If only some of our politicians would do likewise.

Well, France does have a fairly high rate of sexual crime, whether or not that is related to the ethnicity of some of its inhabitants we don't know as this detail wasn't registered. It may just be coincidence, or, in the light of recent events it may not.

On the other hand there are quite a few no go areas in the big cities, just as there are in the UK. When I lived there many moons ago I remember getting off at the wrong stop in one large city and getting stared at and at one point followed. I also noticed a dearth of women, except for coming out of a supermarket. That was 20 years ago, I imagine with the rise of Islamism since the situation in certain banlieues may have got worse. I don't know though, as I say it's been a while.

However, I'm certainly not xenophobic. I can't be or I would be afraid of myself, seeing as I'm a panaché of different nationalities.

Ha! Far too slow with my typing!

I don't think anybody is saying that the far right is not a threat, but that both extremes are breeding a lethal cocktail of violence with many innocent people caught in the middle.

Given that many Muslim migrants choose to live in the same areas where extended families can be in close contact for support it often happens as when I spoke to colleagues who lived in other areas had only passing contact with individual Muslim people. It can be that if you don't go to a certain area you don't have much contact therefore you don't get hassled, cat called or any further problem. In Germany there are reports of women and girls now using alternative routes, avoiding areas they know to be problematic. Could it be similar in France? I know if I experienced problems going through an area I would then avoid it. So essentially problem solved, but it wouldn't be would it? It would just mean I'd had to modify what I did to negate risk from the behaviour of others. It might mean I add an extra 20 mins to a journey, but where does it stop? What happens when the area that becomes a problem expands and then you need to take a taxi? When the corner shop is no longer a safe place to go? When you have to think about everything you do, the way you dress, about where you can work?

It hasn't happened on a large scale yet, it might not. But I want to think it will be safe for every woman, migrant, refugee or western woman to step out of her front door in the knowledge that it's reasonably safe to go to the shops or use the park.

chalalala that's 3 million MENA men who have in the whole grown up in a western culture. There might be pockets of less than savoury attitudes towards women but they are still in the minority and as others have said we don't know what goes on behind closed doors . Although I do actually have an insight.

My DP is the child of immigrants from a NA country - he grew up in France.
He saw his father beat his mother regularly, his mother bloodied and bruised.
His father would go into the bedroom and shout for his mother and she would be expected to go straight away - if she didn't his father would come and drag her there. 15 mins or so later she would come out - her duty done. It was years later that it dawned on DP what that was all about.
She did get a divorce about 15 yrs later - she lived in a pretty mixed area so she got exposed to non-immigrant women and learned about Western attitudes and had no family in France to 'shame' - I guess she was lucky.

And it is still completely different to the current situation .
The newly arrived MENA immigrant men have grown up in countries with very different attitudes - where women are not even equal in law. This is a few years old (2011) but gives you some idea
www.reuters.com/article/us-arab-women-factbox-idUSBRE9AB00I20131112
These men come to Western countries and know that we are more liberal - but their attitudes to what Western women are like come from films and Mylie Cyrus etc videos.
And they have been repressed and had no sexual freedom, they have a very skewed view of sex. I've said this before on a thread but a friend lived in a very strict Muslim country for a while. A bride ended up in hospital on her wedding night with bleeding and tears caused by the violence and force of intercourse. The new husband was proud of himself and was congratulated on his sexual prowess. And sadly that wasn't the only time she heard of events like that.

Now add to that these young men have no ties - their family will never know how they behave, they will not be ostracised by their community. They have no career/future to jeopardise. They can always move to a new town/country. There is a massive gender imbalance. They have nothing to do all day ...

Thanks for the responses, just to be clear I was not making an argument about the migrants situation, I recognize it's really difficult and complicated and I don't have answers for that. I was addressing the handful of posts that stated gross generalizations about all MENA men (not just the current migrants) as if they were absolute fact.

EternalWinter statistics are not xenophobic, of course, but they can be used in a misleading way. Your statement that "Muslim men across Europe are commiting a disproportionately high number of crimes" may well be true, but it doesn't necessarily show a direct link between Islam and criminal behaviour. Correlation is not causation, and in the case of the incarcerated French men, yes they are usually muslims and from north Africa, but they are also part of a largely ghettoised minority with more poverty and less economic and educational opportunities than the average French population. I would argue these are as relevant causes, if not more, as their religion or ethnic background - in fact the usual pattern would rather be to go to jail for a minor drug offence, and then turn to (radical) Islam once in jail.

And it is still completely different to the current situation .

Yes! That's actually my point. It's not right to make blanket negative statements about "MENA men", because they're not a single homogeneous block. Lots of different countries, different cultures, different histories, different situations.

If you're talking about the rapists in Calais, that's one thing, they're clearly horrible people. But you can't generalise to an entire, really varied population. I grew up in a mixed environment, went to school with Muslim North Africans (both first and second generation), I was friends with them, I argued with them, I even dated a few. Do they tend to be more sexist than your average French man? Yes, I would say so. Are they all future rapists and wife-beaters? Absolutely not. All I'm asking for here is some nuance.

Chalala. I think you are missing the point. The majority of the recent migrants into Europe believe that daughters, sisters and wives need to be chastised. All from different cultures, as you say, but strongly linked by misogyny and the low status of women in all of the countries of MENA and Pakistan. That is an undeniable fact and is well-documented.

The word ‘chastise’ in this context means to slap and to beat, and sometimes – depending on the man involved – to lock in a room and keep without food. Re-read unlucky’s account above of what her mother-in-law went through when her husband wanted his marital oats. That was a NA living in France.

“different countries, different cultures, different histories, different situations” Yes, but that part of the world is actually very alike. Just as all the countries in Europe are alike, in terms of women’s rights, ability to work and social, ability to live alone if they want to, ability to mix with men who are not related to you. Do you see? A large swathe of countries in the East are very similar to each other. A large swathe of countries in Europe are also very similar to each other. The similarities vastly outweigh differences. And in both cases the same religion tends to be another link.

I am talking about newly-arrived men who are plonked into a civilisation totally foreign to them, where – to their eyes – the women are disobedient, 30 yr old attractive women still single, talking so freely in cafes and bars. This is haram to a man from MENA. It is very offensive to these men and it makes them angry, but at the same time it is like a playground where they possibly could get sex; afterall European women are easy, they think. They want to create an atmosphere in Europe whereby women become too scared to venture out in the evenings to socialise; they want women off the streets, unless accompanied by a husband or relative.

My father is Pakistani, my aunts and cousins too. I know the culture of the East very well.

CutTheWaffle I don't doubt your knowledge of Pakistani and Eastern culture, or that your description of the horrendous treatment of women is accurate. But it doesn't quite tally with my experience of North African immigrants. There are similarities, yes. But what you describe sounds a lot more extreme. Which is not entirely surprising - Morocco is over 4,000 miles away from Pakistan! With an entirely different language and ethnicity, and a lot more historical and geographical links to Europe.

Exactly - that is precisely what some of us have been discussing. You may have dated a few NA but you never married one, so will never know the reality of being a wife to an NA living in Europe. Attitudes travel with the individual, though of course they can become muted over the years.

Morocco has exposure to European ways partly because they have tourism (until recently), but many of the recent immigrants do not. People that entered Europe last summer and continue to do so are from Middle East countries plus Somalia, Sudan, Pakistan, Nigeria, Eritrea - Somalia and Sudan being particularly lawless and brutal places in which to live, esp. for women. And they are all Muslim (Nigeria having a muslim president and the majority now appear to be muslim) and share the same beliefs and attitudes towards the rights and abilities of women.

I read that the Dutch and the Americans are having far more difficulties with Somali arrivals than any other group thus far. The women are not allowed to speak to Dutch or American women - which afterall is the first step in getting to know your neighbours wouldn't you agree - and the menfolk are aggressive to shopkeepers and anyone who tries to engage with them. It is not their fault, this is how tribal life back home is and they must be bewildered at being in the midst of foreigners where women interact with strangers and everyone conducts themselves in ways that are not understandable to the recently-arrived.

Exactly - that is precisely what some of us have been discussing. You may have dated a few NA but you never married one, so will never know the reality of being a wife to an NA living in Europe.
If they did marry a western (non-muslim) woman they are less likely to get away with certain behaviours.
I'm not married but been with DP 20+yrs (and he isn't muslim - his family were non practising from arriving in France) - and still he has had his moments...said some jaw dropping things - but I don't take any nonsense.
Eg He once told me I should have 'asked his permission' to take on a job - (it was part-time, work from home, school hours only - I would have mentioned applying for it but as it makes very little difference to his life probably not in detail.)
When he does/says things like that I laugh at him ...and he realises he is being an arse. But I can laugh at him. I do sometimes wonder what it would be like to be with him and not be a strong independent woman - or if I had been brought up in a culture even in the EU where I am not considered his equal and my family wouldn't support me. (I'm not saying he would be abusive for a second - just quite controlling and he definitely wouldn't lift a finger around the house...)

that's also the experience of my friends and family members who married NA men, unlucky. Luckily, NA girls brought up in France also increasingly refuse to take that sort of nonsense - it's more difficult for them because as you say, family support is important, but it's very noticeable. My brother married a Tunisian girl whose brother was all stroppy about her marrying a white non-muslim, but she told him to shove it and went on with it. He got over it.

this is going back to previous discussions about integration, but this is where schooling and shared societal values are really important. Muslim girls in France have been quick to see that education was their way out of controlling sexist households, and by and large they are doing a lot better than their male counterparts at integrating.

posters who clearly believe that the rights and desires of the men trumps the existing population.

Johnathan... I don't agree with that idea one little bit... Indeed, I will argue for the exact opposite..

Cutthewaffle - I can tell you that there are known crime problems in my city (Seattle) in the Somali community, especially teenage Somali boys in gangs. I don't think we have closed off communities anything like the type we are all now aware of in France and Belgium etc...

One reason I think immigrants integrate a little better in the USA is a combination of factors, for one thing the overall population here is large enough that new immigrant numbers are relatively tiny and easily absorbed, as a minority the onus is on the immigrant to adapt to American society rather than American society adapting to the immigrant. Then also American society is generally more conservative than Europe, welfare benefits are much less generous and government provided healthcare (Medicaid) is pretty crappy, many many doctors refuse to accept Medicaid in fact. So if you want any kind of decent life or health then you need to get employment which means immigrants have to mix with other Americans by default. Last but not least, if you want to become an American citizen you have to pass an English exam (not very hard though from what I've heard) and an American civics test (which amusingly many of my American born and bred friends couldn't pass...)

i should think we could do with a lesson on british law and society - it could cover the laws and the ethical arguments and history behind them and draw comparisons to countries or times where those laws do/did not exist and the impact of that. it would allow the covering of equality laws around gender, sexuality etc and the consequences of not following these laws or fully understanding and applying them in terms of employability, citizenship, criminal charges etc.

it creates room to talk about freedom of religion and the limits upon that freedom in british law and there are plenty of case studies to study for example the catholic adoption agency who wanted to be excused from the duty to give equal rights to gay people. kids would learn about law, culture, social history, how conflict is resolved and what individal rights and responsibilities they have.

even as a former religious studies teacher i would happily see RS removed from the timetable and this done in it's place. most modern RS is about promoting tolerance and understanding and exploring ethical issues anyway which could still be covered obviously but from a more outright secular approach.

But there are still those who insist on a religious education for their kids - whether it's a separate school or weekend/earning classes. Some of these are quite hellfire and brimstone, racist, sexist and follow what we would say is 'anti- Western' sentiment. More likely to be a 'non native' religion than the salvation army.

But then we can't say it's not allowed as it's their 'right' to fill their kids with nonsense.

"If only some of our politicians would do likewise." - what learn German?

indeed original but at least the demarcation would be clear - re: what they learn there in the mosque/church etc is what is taught 'there' in an enclave but they know from what they learn in school that it is not appropriate for public space, the workplace etc.

i would personally close religious schools.

I'd like to see the end of faith schools as well. But if that is asking too much, would it at least be possible to insist that any institution teaching children, including Saturday or evening schools, should be approved and inspected to make sure that what they are teaching is not in conflict with the law of the land?
That's probably asking a bit too much... :(

for me they can teach them what they like on saturday/friday/sunday SO LONG AS the education they get in school mon-fri full time makes the law and culture totally clear and draws the lines between personal faith and living in society.

i was raised as a catholic and learned all sorts of a sunday and during first communion prep classes etc BUT i also got a school education and plenty of exposure to others and spoke the language, had access to tv etc.

Faith schools should be outlawed on principle. What the hell TB thought he was doing when he brought them in is anyone's guess. The very idea is offensive.

HOWEVER, if we are talking about religious segregation, faith schools are the least of our issues. The most segregated schools are regular state schools. They are segregated due to the nature of their areas. Perhaps we need to consider caps for schools and social housing, like SIngapore?

Faith schools should be outlawed on principle. What the hell TB thought he was doing when he brought them in is anyone's guess
Cui bono! Since he got a education for his own in them, safely away from the hoi polloi, pretty obvious. Ditto Clegg, Cameron, Gove...

I teach in lots of schools (supply teacher) and it is very obvious what parents think they are getting, and do get. At catholic school near me, the HT openly boasts that it is 'private school without the fees' Can see why particlualry for someone like Cherie Blair the 'free' bit resonates.

(Just to clarify: I don't think private religious schools should be banned, obviously...! I just think that state money should not be spent on faith schools....)

it's the private religious ones I have more concerns over.

There are problems in state schools too

"deliberate attempt to convert secular state schools into exclusive faith schools in all but name" (extremist infiltration of Birmingham schools)

and Trojan Horse 'just the tip of the iceberg’

Indeed. Relgion has no place in politics or education (except RS of course as a subject).