Hans Rustad Christopher Caldwell blir intervjuet av Der Spiegel og sier noen foruroligende ting om Europas manglende religiøsitet og velferdens sabotering av intergrasjon.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Do you think the European mainstream culture is weak because it is secular?
Caldwell: Islam is the second biggest religion in Europe. But that is true only if you’re thinking statistically. If you’re thinking culturally and spiritually, it looks like the first religion of Europe. There are many, many more articles on the front pages of newspapers about what Islam says about this and what the Koran says about that than there are articles about Christian theology. They are full of debates between Muslims and non-Muslims addressing question about what the Koran says about honor killings and the headscarf. What Christianity says is not really a matter of much importance to anyone.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Is that cause for regret?
Caldwell: I don’t want to offer Europe any advice. But it strikes me that a lot of Europeans look at the difficulties of a multicultural society as pitting enlightened Europe against barbarous Islam. It is a mistake to look down on Muslims’ religiosity. There is a richness to the religious way of looking at the world that Europeans lack. That’s also one of the reasons I think the presence of so few Muslims makes many Europeans nervous.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: How would you assess the situation in Germany?
Caldwell: Germany is a very special case in a couple of ways. There’s probably not a single other country in Europe where the Muslim community is such a strong and homogenous one. I’m very fond of Turkish Germany and it reminds me a lot of Chinese America. You have some very successful people, but you have a very low level of integration.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: There are intellectuals like Bassam Tibi and controversial Tariq Ramadan who are calling for a Euro Islam and say that Muslims have no problem adopting European values.
Caldwell: Islam will definitely take on a European cast. That’s exactly what happened to Islam in every place it has ever gone. And Muslims can certainly be good Europeans. But non-Muslim Europeans will be the judge of that, too. The Swiss referendum shows that Muslims arrive at a way of being European and believe that they’ve met the Europeans at the halfway point. But that does not mean non-Muslim Europeans feel the same.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: You have left one major question unanswered in your book: What’s the solution?
Caldwell: I don’t have an answer, and I am often criticized for that. But offering one is not my purpose. Just laying out the conflict is challenging enough, since that has always been obstructed in Europe by taboos and wishful thinking.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: To what extent are your views shaped by the fact that you’re an American?
Caldwell: As an outsider, one has the advantage of seeing parallels between European countries as well as differences. I come from a country that has experience with a multiethnic society, and America’s history has some lessons for Europe. Just because the European Muslim community is a small one does not mean it is uninfluential or that it can be ignored or that the problems surrounding it are trivial and will go away. Blacks have traditionally made up about only about 10 percent of the US population. But we have a horrible history of race conflict that has shaken our country for centuries.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Is America more successful when it comes to integrating immigrants?
Caldwell: For now, yes. I think the first reason is the ruthlessness of the American economy. You either become a part of it or you go home. There are more foreigners in the workplace, and that’s where a lot of integration happens. And because most immigrants are in the workplace, you never hear, as you do in Europe, that immigrants don’t want to work. No American would dream of saying that.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Why do you think that’s the case?
Caldwell: There is no welfare state on the scale of that in Europe, and I think welfare states are a bad fit for large-scale immigration. In an ethnically diverse society, people are less familiar with each other, and they are correspondingly less willing to pay taxes for social benefits. Two-thirds of the imams in France are on welfare. There is nothing wrong with being an imam. But I don’t think the French are very happy about paying what is effectively a state subsidy for religion in that way.
Interview conducted by Mathieu von Rohr
