IWF’s director of international policy Yasmine Rassam has a good article in Human Events today discussing Ayaan Hirsi (the Dutch MP who recently lost her Dutch citizenship), assimilation of Muslim immigrants, and European immigration policy. Here’s a sneak peek:
“The Dutch in particular have strived mightily to welcome their Muslim minorities. They provide all immigrants with subsidized housing in “mixed” neighborhoods (to avoid ghettoization). They apply fairly liberal standards for education and cultural diversity. They provide recent immigrants with free “cultural clubs” that are totally unsupervised by the authorities. And, until recently, they exercised no regulation of extremist mosques and their foreign preachers.
That policy clearly has not worked. Judging by the literature being published and internet-based discussions in Arabic, disaffection and alienation among the Arab and Muslim communities is increasing.
In response to Islamic radicalization, instead of tightening the surveillance of extremists and applying the laws more strictly, the New Left of Europe are engaging in appeasement, hoping that the problem will go away if “we just try to understand them better” and “if we let them exercise their cultural and religious freedoms,” even if this means, in practice, allowing such things as sexual mutilation or abuse by family males of young girls suspected of dating or engaging in sexual activities.”
Check out the full article here.