Further integration efforts need to be stepped up
CAIRO: Muslims in Europe are more likely to be stuck in lower paying jobs, live in poorer neighborhoods and have lower school grades than other Europeans, according to a new report.
Muslims also have disproportionately high unemployment rates and Muslim youth continue to face barriers that will ultimately lead to social dislocation and hopelessness.
The findings were published this month in a report by the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC), which also revealed that Muslims face verbal and physical abuse because of their religious beliefs.
The report “underlines [Muslims’] vulnerability to discrimination and demonstrates that greater efforts need to be made to ensure that all European Muslims enjoy the right to equal treatment and the same quality of life as other Europeans, states Beate Winkler, head of the EUMC.
The authors used statistics from non-governmental organizations, criminal justice statistics and numbers culled from unemployment and housing sources to write the report.
However, according to Mark Sedgwick, a modern Islamic history professor at the American University in Cairo, the “report doesn’t offer any exciting solutions.
“If European policy makers are driven to focus on this question because of this report, then that could only be a good thing. But if you look at the recommendations section, it’s got exactly what one would expect from a bureaucratic organization like this.
Given that many of the statistics deal with recent arrivals to Europe who may have language difficulties, then the findings are “hardly surprising, adds Sedgwick.
He says that similar results would be found with Hispanic immigrants in America or Sudanese refugees in Egypt.
“The real question to ask is, are things moving in the right direction? And is the speed in which they are moving adequate? First generation as we all know, do the jobs the Europeans don’t want to do.
Approximately 13 million Muslims reside in EU member states, making up the region’s second largest religious group, according to conservative estimates published in the report.In 2004, the BBC created six fake identities with either white British, Muslim or African names and sent out job applications to 50 different companies. Whereas white candidates scored an interview 25 percent of the time, the applications with Muslim names only had a success rate of about 9 percent.
In the same year, the University of Paris found that resumes bearing a North African name where five times less likely to get a positive response from a prospective employer.
According to Hisham Hellyer, an expert on Islam in Europe at the American University in Cairo, there are two myths about discrimination: the first is that everything is “okay, and the second is that Muslims are actively persecuted
The truth, he says, is somewhere in the middle.
“These are overblown, but both of them have elements of the truth, he said at a seminar earlier this month. Rather, Muslims in Europe are increasingly isolated from both their local communities and with the culture in their country of origin.
Hellyer also speculates that the roots of Islamophobia stem from secular Europe’s inability to cope with organized spirituality.
“In a crisis, many people look for the easy way out, says Hellyer, who has worked as a consultant with the British government.
“In some ways, you could explain this as growing pains.
