The following is an article I read earlier. I think it provides an interesting perspective.
European minorities torn between worlds
By JAMEY KEATEN and PALMA BENCZENLEITNER, Associated Press Writers
Sat Nov 25, 11:35 AM ETPARIS - Nacera Berrouba, a young Algerian in Paris, says she couldn't get the job she dreamed of until she dyed her hair blond.
Karima Ramani, who calls herself "addicted to freedom," says the Dutch love her hip black jeans and bright red nails but can't accept her Moroccan mind.
Straight-A student Gokboru Ozturk was born in Germany and waved the German flag during last summer's soccer World Cup tournament, but wants to be buried in Turkey because "as much as I feel German, I cannot be buried here." Meanwhile, his mother jokes he should change his name to Schmidt to boost his job prospects.
As Europe goes through a wrenching debate over integrating immigrant populations — and at a deeper level about what it means to be European in a globalized age — the children of those immigrants also find themselves grappling with issues of identity in an environment where tensions are complicated by the scarcity of jobs and distorted by the fear of terrorism.
The wave of riots that engulfed impoverished, largely Muslim French suburbs around this time last year awakened many people to the reality that something was fundamentally broken in one prominent European model of assimilation.
Terror attacks in Madrid and London, the slaying of filmmaker Theo van Gogh in Amsterdam, menacing protests over cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad — a series of crises since Sept. 11, 2001, involving young homegrown Muslims has given urgency to the debate on integration.
The effort to assimilate the younger generation and separate it from the terrorist minority in its midst is one of Europe's biggest 21st century challenges. But how deep and widespread is the disaffection? How do minority youths cope with the sometimes conflicting expectations of society and family? What safety valves kick in when the stresses become too intense?
Interviews with more than four dozen minority youths in six European capitals — Paris, Berlin, London, Amsterdam, Madrid and Rome — present a multifaceted picture of dynamic young people dreaming of success and love, and finding ingenious ways to cope with the double lives many feel they are leading.
There is one recurrent theme: A sense of "otherness."
"I am a stranger in Turkey and also in Germany," said Ozturk, an 18-year-old living in Berlin. "I am trapped in a hole in between two cultures."
Ramani, the "freedom addict," put it bluntly: "Sometimes I feel like ripping myself apart."
Many of the tensions spring from family life — when the tight-knit network brought from their ancestral homelands conflicts with the looser family structures of the West.
Hema Bhatt, the 21-year-old daughter of a Hindu priest, is amazed at how wildly those structures can differ.
"I come from quite a large family," said Bhatt, who grew up in Manchester, England, and studies in London. "My aunt and uncle are seen like my mum and dad, and my cousins are brothers and sisters. I remember at school, friends who were not Asian found that type of relationship weird. In high school, I remember my friend turned 16 and said she was going to start paying her mum and dad rent. I found that really weird."
Many youths said that deep down their strongest attachments were to their family homeland.
Amira Tellissi, a 21-year-old Tunisian university student, grew up in the countryside outside Rome where her mother works at a riding stable. She is thinking about applying for Italian citizenship, has never mastered reading and writing Arabic, and says that if she ever left Italy she would miss mozzarella cheese and the subway.
But her heart is in Tunisia.
In Italy, "I can explain my thoughts; in Tunisia I can explain my feelings. Here I have friends; there I have brothers," she said.
"We don't have the same perspectives. They don't think of marriage, they live day by day," she said. "Westerners want to live their lives, have fun. I see having a family like something more immediate."
Mohammed Mazahaf, a 23-year-old Moroccan student who runs a youth center in Amsterdam, feels deep discomfort with Europe's abundance of choice.
"I don't want the freedom of Europe — to drink, tell my sister to go out and have free sex before marriage. I want to have rules," he said. "I accept the rules of democracy, but I'm living the rules of Islam."
One Muslim Dutchman, Mohammed Bouyeri, had a warped interpretation of Islam's rules: Angered by Van Gogh's criticism of his faith, he murdered the filmmaker in a busy Amsterdam street, slitting his throat and leaving a letter threatening jihad, or holy war.
Most young Muslims may have no connection with that kind of extremism, but they often have strict views on Islam and have grown up more devout than their parents, perhaps rebelling against the West's unkept promise of equal opportunity.
Others are completely at home in Western culture.
"I consider myself a coconut: brown on the outside, and white on the inside," said Shereen Sally, a 19-year-old university student from Greenhithe, southeast of London, whose parents are Sri Lankan. "I never have been typically Asian."
With a Catholic mother and Muslim father, Sally navigates her cultures with agility. "I have been baptized and had Holy Communion, but I do Ramadan as well," she said.
Still, she says, most of her friends are South Asian like her.
"I used to think it was bad the way Asians segregated themselves but coming to university has opened my eyes. You go to your own kind because you feel comfortable with them," she said.
Ramani, 20, has platinum blond curly hair, big silver earrings, and a revealingly tight top. She smokes, dates a Moroccan man and frequents discos.
And yet she expresses an almost painful longing for her family's Islamic traditions, a sense that life in the West has deprived her of something more spiritual.
"I wish I had been born into a strict family of Muslims who made me wear the scarf and had a father who took me to the mosque once a week," she said. "I'm jealous of girls who have that."
Ramani's friend Halima Sakkali, 21, is more conservative, and considers herself more of "a real Muslim." Sakkali considers herself well integrated, but at times feels pressure to hide her religious identity in a Dutch society that is increasingly adamant about assimilation.
"I do my best to be Dutch," she said. "I say I just have another religion, but they don't accept it. They keep saying it's freedom, and you can choose what you choose. ... They don't let me wear a scarf."
"If they didn't look at me as a terrorist I'd wear one," she said.
Indeed, Europe's soul-searching runs from discussions about how to change mind-sets to the question of what Muslims should be allowed to wear or eat. After 20 years of eagerly promoting multiculturalism, some prominent Europeans have swung the other way.
Former British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw recently created a stir when he said he wants Muslim women to abandon their veils — a viewpoint that was backed by Prime Minister Tony Blair. The Dutch government announced plans this month for a law banning the all-encompassing burqa.
And a debate has erupted in Holland over Islamic halal meat after a major supermarket chain introduced it in their stores. Animal rights activists complained the animals are slaughtered inhumanely.
Perceptions that Muslim Europeans are halfhearted in condemning terrorism — or even try to justify it — have swung much of public opinion against the Islamic minority and caused people to question whether its values are compatible with the West's. The fact most of the perpetrators of last year's London transit attacks were homegrown Muslims has fueled the backlash against cultural tolerance.
Many views once limited to the far-right have become mainstream. In the Netherlands, a strict new immigration law requires people seeking citizenship to undergo assimilation training and pass a test on Dutch culture and language. In France, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, the center-right's leading presidential candidate, seemed to echo the extreme-right National Front's love-it-or-leave-it rhetoric last month when he declared his country "doesn't want those who don't love it."
A Dutch poll released in June found that half of Dutch people dislike Muslims, though the numbers shrink sharply when the questions get specific — only 10 percent consider themselves smarter than immigrants, while 17 percent said immigrants tend to be criminals, rude and lazy.
Experiences of racism were widespread among the young people interviewed for this story — and the strategy of most is stoicism.
"It doesn't happen frequently, but when it does, I shut my mouth — I don't answer back," said Shen Li, a 24-year-old Chinese law student in Madrid who arrived in Spain a decade ago.
Meantime, many minority youths complain of discrimination in the job market. Berrouba, 26, recalled being rejected for a hairstylist's job when she was 17.
"The owner said, 'I don't want to hire you, because we're looking for someone who doesn't look like a North African,'" she said. "He was very apologetic, upset, and asked me for a thousand pardons. But that's just the way it was."
When a bit older, she applied at a more luxurious hair salon.
"My hair was too long and looked too Arab, so I cut it and dyed it blond — and I got the job!" It was a new lease on life. "Even for nightclubs, I was able to get in everywhere," she said.
Ozturk said his job prospects are uncertain in Germany despite his excellent grades.
"My father wants me to go abroad, to America or England. He says I have a better chance if I'm an Oxford or a Harvard graduate," he said.
In France, an upcoming report from a newly created anti-discrimination agency says that for young jobseekers, "It's better to be named Alain than Mohamed." Other official reports in France have made the astonishing observation that some temporary jobs agencies classify white applicants as "BBR" — a French acronym for the Blue, White and Red colors of the national flag.
The fact that such policies are illegal, and that an anti-discrimination agency exists, demonstrates that France is taking at least some measures, as have other European countries.
In Germany, a law took effect in August outlawing discrimination based on gender, age and religious affiliation in the workplace.
Paris' elite Sciences Po political university is actively recruiting immigrant youths while Sarkozy, despite his hard-line stance on illegal immigration, has implemented a pilot affirmative-action program in the police force.
Across the European Union, several countries have been working to implement EU guidelines against discrimination.
Europeans say their societies are not a U.S.-style melting pot, and their citizenships are inherited and not easily acquired by naturalization. And most of the young people interviewed didn't seem keen on the melting-pot idea either, expressing a preference for marrying within their own ethnic background and religion.
Ozturk, a Muslim, recently broke up with a Catholic Peruvian girlfriend; he is now dating a Muslim Turk.
"I always thought it wouldn't matter what religion one has when you're in love, but ... I think that if I was married to a non-Turkish woman, we could have problems raising our kids," he said.
Many Muslims said the terror threat has put them under scrutiny they find stifling.
"When I'm asked what my ethnicity is on an application form, I say Egypt," said Ali el Hamamy, a 19-year-old student of Egyptian origin at London's City University. "Before, I used to say Arab. Arab now is a term used for terrorism. Egypt is a holiday destination."
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Jamey Keaten reported from Paris and Palma Benczenleitner from Berlin. Contributing are AP correspondents Tariq Panja in London, Maria Sanminiatelli in Rome, Bruce Mutsvairo and Scheherezade Faramarzi in Amsterdam, and Mar Roman in Madrid
---end of article---Deedee, do you suppose there is the possiblity that tensions are higher in Europe because of Europes history... whereas Canada's relatively easy assimilation process resulted from the fact that we are ALL minorities? I refuse to attribute it simply to
"Canadians are just nicer & far more civilized" (even though we are)
