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Star Tribune - November 25, 2005
U.S. outdoes Europe at helping
Muslims into the mainstream
By Omar Jamal
The recent deaths of two teenagers in a Paris suburb, and the subsequent string of riots and carnage, sparked debates about whether similar riots could happen in the United States.
Most of the people involved in the riots were of Muslim background, and therefore everyone had doubts about the real cause of the unrest. Almost 6 million French Muslims and Arabs are concentrated in the Paris suburbs.
I am afraid that, considering the current political climate and lack of international political astuteness, it is possible that people with the same ethnicity and religious background would take to the streets in the major cities of both Europe and the United States.
But there is a difference between immigrants in the United States and those in Europe. Past riots in the United States and the more recent ones in Europe have virtually the same cause: years of resentment and discrimination. But in the United States, immigrants in general, and Muslim immigrants particularly, are far more integrated than any immigrants in Europe, not to mention France. This crucial difference is deeply rooted in the history and psychologies of the communities on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.
Some people have called the French riots a European intefadeh, and also allege some element of terrorism, although there has not been any shred of evidence for that.
The highest numbers of immigrants in France arrived in the 1950s and 1960s. As the economy of France advanced, so did the contemptuous policy and temperament of France toward immigrants. In the United States, however, immigrants have already entered the mainstream of the society, and thus are part of the overall mind-set of the country. The immigrant riots in France, the bombings in London and the religiously motivated assassination of a filmmaker in the Netherlands, coupled with the insufficiency of both social and political programs geared toward immigrant populations, are clear indicators of a European political nightmare.
There is no better country in the world than the United States to address issues of diversity within its populace with individual rights encoded in its Constitution. Even so, in the post-9/11 era many Muslims have worried that they lack the same constitutional protections that the rest of the population enjoys.
A feeling of detachment, arising from inequitable practice of the law, can lead to despair and distrust of the criminal justice system. The longer this practice continues, the more the community becomes isolated and therefore vulnerable to thoughts of riot and defiance.
Omar Jamal is executive director of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center in St. Paul.
http://www.startribune.com/stories/562/5744703.html
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