“Radicalisation of migrants and diaspora communities in Europe”

Mr. SIRAKAYA

Dear President,
Dear Colleagues,

I would like to thank you for giving me the opportunity to take a stand on this platform.

First of all, Europe still continues to see migrants and diaspora communities different from ordinary citizens, even if they lived in Europe for their entire life. Europe must treat them as equals and peers and not marginalize them. This starts for example already in school: non-Christians are not admitted to confessional schools like in Germany.

Furthermore, migrants are categorised as a single category without taking their diverse roots into account. On the contrary, migrants come from different countries, religious practices and cultural attitudes. Therefore, each community needs to be evaluated individually.

When it comes to tackling radicalization in Europe, we need to put an effort to understand the culture of immigrants. They must be given more possibilities to integrate and include. In this connection, accepting their identities is crucial.

By just looking at the European value study from 2009, 32% of the questioned people said that they don’t want to have Muslims as their neighbors. In 1999 it was just 15 %.

Not covering the racist mosque attacks in Germany by the western media is very unfortunate – there were at least 950 mosque attacks alone in 2017!

Intolerance and racism against migrants led Europeans to vote for extremist parties. Without understanding Islamic history and not cooperating with Muslim immigrants from diverse backgrounds and with organizations established by them, the only one who will benefit will be the radical groups.

The spread of propaganda, hate, fear and smear campaigns against Islam and Muslim immigrants will not benefit anyone but the extremists. In Europe, many political parties started employing islamophobic populism to gain votes.
The ideology of Nationalism will further divide the society and create the concept of “The Other” which may eventually endorse future conflicts.

To eradicate migrant-phobic attitudes and stigmatisation of migrants, it is vital to provide European people with accurate knowledge and perception about migrants, and Islam in particular. To do this, the curriculums in the education system must include the comprehensive information about Islam, and focus on the positive gains brought to Europe by the migrants.