Imbecilidade jornalística: Cidadão estrangeiro (sem documentos...) morto a tiro na Póvoa de Varzim

 

 

Ora aí está uma notícia que nem sequer pode ter sido escrita com os pés. No máximo, com dois dedos de um pé. Nessa notícia, do Diário de Notícias, o escriba (Redação do DN...) depois de explicar que um "cidadão estrangeiro" foi morto a tiro, na Póvoa do Varzim, esclarece que "o homem, de nacionalidade estrangeira, embora não tivesse documentos consigo, não resistiu aos ferimentos provocados por vários tiros, e acabou por morrer".

Como é que a Redacção do DN (informada pelas autoridades) descobriu que o homem era "de nacionalidade estrangeira", se não tinha documentos? Parece-me simples: tratava-se de um cidadão cujas características fisionómicas permitiam concluir que se tratava de alguém com estrangeiro, e não de um cidadão português, na generalidade caucasianos ou brancos, para ir direto ao assunto.

E escrevo em princípio porque nada garante que o indivíduo, tendo uma determinada aparência - indostânico, nepalês, chinês, etc - não possa também ter a nacionalidade portuguesa. Mas o exemplo desta imbecilidade jornalística mostra bem o tremor nas pernas que afecta cada jornalista, quando tem que lidar com crimes que envolvem pessoas não-caucasianas - não-brancos, chamando os bois pelo nome - e se vêem frente a frente com aquele horror que a esquerda tem em "criminalizar" os imigrantes, quando são eles que cometem crimes.

The Major Roadblock to Muslim Assimilation in Europe

 

I was having dinner the other day with some European friends who are reasonable center-left types. London riots were in full swing. Anders Breivik had killed more than 80 of his countrymen in an apparent bid to halt the “Islamization” of Europe. Greece’s economy had collapsed. The consensus among my friends was that the next five to 10 years could turn out “very scary” for Europe.

Muslims are only one part — and a small part — of these problems. But, unfortunately, economic collapse tends to fuel racism and intolerance, which is exactly what is happening now. The slow progress made on Muslim integration is likely to unravel as more Europeans find refuge in populism in general and far-right, radical parties in particular.

While dutifully disavowing such groups, my leftish friends, like so many Europeans, asked why European Muslims weren’t doing more to assimilate and respect the culture of their new countries. And this brings us to the issue at hand: there is a clash of values, one which will make it considerably harder to find a path of compromise between Muslims and the rest of Europe.

Secularism, as its understood and practiced in Europe, is not value-neutral. It asks conservative Muslims to be something that they’re likely not. “Secularism,” the thinking goes, allows all groups, including Muslims, to practice their religion as they see fit. This assumes that the practice of religion is fundamentally a personal, private act detached from public, political life. It is here that Islam (how it is understood, if not necessarily practiced by most Muslims) and Europe’s traditional identity and culture find themselves at odds.

It is this expectation or, rather, hope — that Islam will somehow cease to be what it is — that colors so many debates not just in Europe but also in a rapidly changing Middle East.

There is, in fact, something uniquely “uncompromising” about Islam, at least compared to other faiths. This is not a value judgment but rather a descriptive statement about what Islam is today (rather than what it could or should be). Many Muslims take pride in this very fact. It is this unwillingness to compromise in the face of secularizing pressures, they would say, that makes Islam both vibrant and distinctive. Indeed, Islam has proven remarkably resistant to the persistent attempts to relegate it to the private sphere.

The fact that someone like Swiss scholar Tariq Ramadan and tens of thousands his fellow “Euro-Islam” followers are seen in Europe as too conservative is illustrative of the problem. Ramadan’s proposed moratorium on the hadd punishments (for example cutting off the hands of thieves and stoning adulterers) was seen as beyond the pale in secular France. In a memorable debate on French television, Nicholas Sarkozy, then the interior minister, attacked Ramadan for refusing to unequivocally condemn the stoning of women.

In a place like Egypt, however, such a moratorium would likely provoke controversy for the opposite reason — for being too “liberal.” Whether we like it or not, Ramadan’s version of Islam, by the standards of mainstream Islamic thought, is actually quite “progressive,” which is one reason it has, so far, failed to catch on in the Arab world. Consider the findings of a December 2010 Pew poll. In Egypt, 82 percent of respondents supported the stoning of adulterers while 77 percent said they favored cutting off the hands of thieves.

As I note in my recent Foreign Affairs article,”The Rise of the Islamists,” many Western observers made the mistake of thinking that this year’s Arab revolutions were “secular.” There was the naïve view — one almost entirely divorced from the Egyptian reality — that once the yoke of dictatorship was removed, Egyptians, and Arabs more generally, would turn out to be fluffy pro-American liberals. Well, they aren’t and won’t be anytime soon.

From an American perspective, the rapid rise of Egypt’s Salafis — conservative Islamists who advocate a strict, uncompromising view of Islamic law — is indeed troubling. That said, it is undemocratic, as well as illiberal, to ask millions of Salafis to stop being Salafis once they enter the public sphere, as some Egyptian liberals seem to be demanding. Similarly, it is undemocratic and illiberal to ask European Muslims to be as religious as they want at home but to keep their Islam out of public view. For many, if not most religious Muslims, such a distinction is as odd as it is inconceivable. Yet asking Muslims to respect such distinctions is also entirely understandable in the troubled, bloody context of European history. In the pre-Enlightenment period, mixing religion with politics brought Europe close to the brink of destruction, with the Thirty Years’ War being only the most obvious example. The French Revolution was, in part, about correcting this “imbalance.” For Europe to prosper, religion would have to be controlled and constrained by the state. And so French laïcité was born. Laïcité, in turn, became central to France’s social fabric and to French national identity. To be French is, in some sense, to believe in this constructed secular ideal.

The French national ideal, then, and the beliefs of a large number of French Muslims are in tension, if not contradiction. French Muslims much more strongly identify with their religion than the French population at large. According to a 2009 Gallup poll, 52 percent of French Muslims either “very strongly” or “extremely strongly” identify with their religion — compared to only 23 percent of the French public. The numbers for Britain are even starker — 75 percent versus 23 percent. Other poll results underline this clash in values. Remarkably, zero percent — yes, zero percent — of British Muslims believe homosexuality is morally acceptable. Inevitably, such views, informed by religion, are not simply a matter of private concern. They have an effect on public policy (just as the anti-gay attitudes of conservative Christians shape Republican policy in America).

It doesn’t have to be this way, but that’s the way it is now. In times of economic distress — and with the euro zone inching toward collapse — Europeans may increasingly take refuge in anti-Muslim scapegoating. This, in turn, will hurt the already dim job prospects of the European Muslim underclass. For their part, European Muslims who face heightened discrimination may very well find refuge in an increasingly rigid construction of their Muslim identity. Unemployment, immigration fears, the ascendance of the far right — along with a very real clash of religious and cultural values — make for a potent combination.

If there was a strong, confident left in Europe, then perhaps this dangerous mix could be effectively fought and opposed. For now, though, we may just have to hope – and pray – that cooler heads prevail.

Shadi Hamid 

Senior Fellow - Foreign Policy, Center for Middle East Policy

August 18, 2011

Multiculturalism, Islam and assimilation in Western countries

Criticism of multiculturalism questions the ideal of the hegemonic maintenance of distinct ethnic cultures within a country. Multiculturalism is a particular subject of debate in certain European nations that are associated with the idea of a nation state. 

Critics of multiculturalism may argue against cultural integration of different ethnic and cultural groups to the existing laws and values of the country. Alternatively critics may argue for assimilation of different ethnic and cultural groups to a single national identity.

In an article in the Hudson Review, Bruce Bawer writes about what he sees as a developing distaste toward the idea and policies of multiculturalism in Europe, especially, as stated earlier, in the Netherlands, Denmark, United Kingdom, Norway, Sweden, Austria and Germany. The belief behind this backlash on multiculturalism is that it creates friction within society.

Rifts within Australian society, right through history, whether between the continent's Indigenous people and the European settler population or, in recent times, inter-ethnic tension manifest in the form of riots, street violence and ethnic gangs pose major challenges to multiculturalism in the country.

The response to multiculturalism in Australia has been varied. A nationalist, anti-mass immigration party, the One Nation Party, was formed by Pauline Hanson in the late 1990s. The party enjoyed brief electoral success, most notably in its home state of Queensland, but became electorally marginalized until its resurgence in 2016. 

In the late 1990s, One Nation called for the abolition of multiculturalism alleging that it represented "a threat to the very basis of the Australian culture, identity and shared values", arguing that there was "no reason why migrant cultures should be maintained at the expense of our shared, national culture."

An Australian Federal Government proposal in 2006 to introduce a compulsory citizenship test, which would assess English skills and knowledge of Australian values, sparked renewed debate over the future of multiculturalism in Australia. 

Andrew Robb, then Parliamentary Secretary for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, told a conference in November 2006 that some Australians worried the term "multicultural" had been transformed by interest groups into a philosophy that put "allegiances to original culture ahead of national loyalty, a philosophy which fosters separate development, a federation of ethnic cultures, not one community". 

He added: "A community of separate cultures fosters a rights mentality, rather than a responsibilities mentality. It is divisive. It works against quick and effective integration." The Australian citizenship test commenced in October 2007 for all new citizens between the ages of 18 and 60.

In January 2007, the Howard Government removed the word "multicultural" from the name of the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, changing its name to the Department of Immigration and Citizenship.

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Failed integration and the fall of multiculturalism

 

For decades, the debate in Denmark around  problems with mass immigration was stuck in a self-loathing blame game of "failed integration". That somehow, if the Danes had just tried harder, been less prejudice, offered more opportunities, the many foreigners with radically different cultures would have been able to integrate successfully. If not in the first generation, then the second. For much of this time, I thought that was a reasonable thesis. But reality has proved it wrong.

If literally every country in Europe has struggled in the same ways, and for decades on end, to produce the fabled "successful integration", it's not a compelling explanation that it's just because the Danes, Swedes, Norweigans, Germans, French, Brits, or Belgians just didn't try hard enough. It's that the mission, on the grand and statistical scale, was impossible in many cases.

As Thomas Sowell tells us, this is because there are no solutions to intractable, hard problems like cultural integration between wildly different ways of living. Only trade offs. Many of which are unfavorable to all parties.

But by the same token, just because the overall project of integrating many of the most divergent cultures from mass immigrations has failed, there are many individual cases of great success. Much of the Danish press, for example, has for years propped up the hope of broad integration success by sharing hopeful, heartwarming stories of highly successful integration. And you love to see it.

Heartwarming anecdotes don't settle trade offs, though. They don't prove a solution or offer a conclusion either.

I think the conclusion at this point is clear. First, cultural integration, let alone assimilation, is incredibly difficult. The more divergent the cultures, the more difficult the integration. And for some combinations, it's outright impossible.

Second, the compromise of multiculturalism has been an abject failure in Europe. Allowing parallel cultures to underpin parallel societies is poison for the national unity and trust.

Which brings us to another bad social thesis from the last thirty-some years: That national unity, character, and belonging not only isn't important, but actively harmful. That national pride in history, traditions, and culture is primarily an engine of bigotry.

What a tragic thesis with catastrophic consequences.

But at this point, there's a lot of political capital invested into all these bad ideas. In sticking with the tired blame game. Thinking that what hasn't worked for fifty years will surely start working if we give it five more. 

Now, I actually have a nostalgic appreciation for the beautiful ideals behind such hope for humanity, but I also think that at this point it is as delusional as it is dangerous.

And I think it's directly responsible for the rise of so-called populist movements all over Europe. They're directly downstream from the original theses of success in cultural integration going through just-try-harder efforts as well as the multicultural compromise. A pair of ideas that had buy-in across much of the European board until reality simply became too intolerable for too many who had to live with the consequences.

Such widespread realization doesn't automatically correct the course of a societal ship that's been sailing in the wrong direction for decades, of course. The playbook that took DEI and wokeness to blitzkrieg success in the States, by labeling any dissent to those ideologies racist or bigoted, have also worked to hold the line on the question of mass immigration in Europe until very recently. 

But I think the line is breaking in Europe, just as it recently did in America. The old accusations have finally lost their power from years of excessive use, and suppressing the reality that many people can see with their own eyes is getting harder.

I completely understand why that makes people anxious, though. History is full of examples of combative nationalism leading us to dark edges. And, especially in Germany, I can understand the historical hesitation when there's even a hint of something that sounds like what they heard in the 30s.

But you can hold both considerations in your head at the same time without losing your wits. Mass immigration to Europe has been a failure, and the old thesis of naive hope has to get replaced by a new strategy that deals with reality. AND that not all proposed fixes by those who diagnosed the situation early are either sound or palatable.

World history is full of people who've had the correct diagnosis but a terrible prescription. And I think it's fair to say that it's not even obvious what the right prescription is at this point!

Vibrant, strong societies surely benefit from some degree of immigration. Especially from culturally-compatible regions based on national and economic benefit. But whatever the specific trade-offs taken from here, it seems clear that for much of Europe, they're going to look radically different than they've done in the past three decades or so.

Best get started then

Imigração: Portugal terá 10,6 milhões de imigrantes em 2035

 

O Tribunal Constitucional alegou, na argumentação para chumbar a nova Lei dos Estrangeiros, que os imigrantes têm direito a ter família, através do reagrupamento familiar. Mas para isso, de acordo com a actual lei têm de provar que têm habitação adequada para o agregado familiar que pretendem trazer para Portugal. Também têm que provar um rendimento mínimo de 1.350 euros. Há centenas de milhar de famílias portuguesas que não conseguem atingir estes "mínimos".

Como é que os 10 mil imigrantes(*), a ganhar o ordenado mínimo nacional, podem declarar que cumprem estas duas condições? Falsificando-as, claro. Graças à "boa intenção" dos juízes do Tribunal Constitucional e do Presidente da República- os grandes pirómanos da imigração, em Portugal - a nova Lei dos Estrangeiros foi ao ar. 

(*) Segundo a AIMA, estão a ser processados, com carácter de urgência, os pedidos de reagrupamento familiar de 10 mil pessoas. Entre 2017 e 2024, o número de imigrantes em Portugal aumentou 19%, em termos de média anual. Se estes valores continuarem a verificar-se, em 2035 Portugal terá 10,6 milhões de imigrantes.  

Um presidente sem espinha, sem orgulho e sem sentido de estado

 

 

Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, vergonhosamente ajoelhado, numa visita à mesquita de Lisboa. A atitude do Presidente da República é difícil de classificar. Do seu lado esquerdo vemos o lobo em pele de cordeiro, o xeque Munir. 

Nunca vimos uma visita do xeque Munir a uma igreja, o que nos traria uma prova insofismável de que o ecumenismo não dá só para um lado. A isto chama-se, em português, cobardia. 

Em árabe, designa-se por Dhimmi, a submissão dos não muçulmanos, mediante o pagamento de uma taxa. Desta forma, os muçulmanos poupavam a vida aos cristãos e judeus, que, no entanto viviam com direitos cerceados, reduzidos em relação aos muçulmanos.

Never saw young muslim children doing the same in a church..

 

Lei de estrangeiros: vice-presidente do TC sugere que decisão baseou-se em convicções pessoais

 

Também outros votos de vencido de magistrados dão a entender que houve maior ponderação política do que jurídica na decisão de considerar normas inconstitucionais. 

O vice-presidente do Tribunal Constitucional (TC) criticou esta sexta-feira, 8 de agosto, a declaração de inconstitucionalidade da lei de estrangeiros, considerando que as medidas do decreto são “perfeitamente razoáveis”, e sugeriu que a decisão baseou-se em convicções pessoais.

Numa declaração de voto conjunta anexa ao acórdão do TC que declarou inconstitucional cinco normas da lei de estrangeiros, o vice-presidente do tribunal, Gonçalo Almeida Ribeiro, e o juiz conselheiro José António Teles Pereira dizem ter discordado dessa decisão.

Para os dois juízes, apesar de algumas das normas constantes no decreto “serem polémicas e discutíveis”, são “perfeitamente razoáveis e legítimas”, constituindo “uma expressão normal da arbitragem democrática do dissenso político”.

“A legislação numa democracia constitucional não deve ser produto de uma transação entre as preferências políticas da maioria parlamentar e da maioria dos membros da jurisdição constitucional, mas um exercício de liberdade programática limitado pelo respeito pelos direitos fundamentais e princípios estruturantes de uma república de pessoas livres e iguais”, defendem.

Gonçalo Almeida Ribeiro e José António Teles Pereira consideram que, “para que um juízo constitucional informado por valores tão abstratos e elásticos se revele um exemplo de razão jurídica, em vez de uma escolha ideológica, deve satisfazer um ónus exigente de fundamentação”, considerando que isso não se verificou nos argumentos do acórdão hoje divulgado.

Os dois juízes reconhecem que as opções do legislador relativamente ao direito dos estrangeiros deve “merecer um escrutínio severo ou um controlo intensificado por parte do juiz constitucional”.

“Só que um escrutínio judicial intenso não pode ser um pretexto para os juízes transportarem para o plano constitucional as convicções que legitimamente têm enquanto cidadãos – violando a igualdade democrática –, antes constituindo-os num dever acrescido de se inteirarem dos factos pertinentes, examinarem os textos aplicáveis, consultarem doutrina autorizada e articularem argumentos consistentes, cuidadosos, ponderados e persuasivos”, referem.

Gonçalo Almeida Ribeiro e José António Teles Pereira reconhecem que isso não é “verdadeiramente viável” neste caso, uma vez que o Presidente da República pediu que o TC se pronunciasse em 15 dias, mas frisam que, perante a urgência desse pedido, “o melhor que se poderia fazer, com sentido de responsabilidade institucional, seria procurar respaldo noutras jurisdições”, como o Tribunal Europeu dos Direitos Humanos ou o Tribunal de Justiça da União Europeia.

“Em vez disso, profere-se um acórdão em que se fazem exigências constitucionais inéditas e se desenha o esboço de um caderno de encargos”, criticam.

À semelhança de Gonçalo Almeida Ribeiro e José António Teles Pereira, a juíza conselheira Maria Benedita Urbano também discordou da decisão da maioria relativamente à declaração de inconstitucionalidade das cinco normas.

Numa declaração de voto, a juíza considera que o chumbo do diploma “tem como consequência a manutenção de uma política de fronteiras abertas” e a decisão “mostrar-se alheada (ou não tem na devida consideração)” a “realidade socioeconómica atual do país, com setores vitais, como a saúde, a habitação e o ensino, em risco de colapsar”.

“Basta viver em Portugal e ter em atenção e, mais do que isso, sentir a realidade que nos rodeia para ter a certeza de que a situação catastrófica que presentemente presenciamos no nosso país, não entra na categoria das ‘fake news’”, aponta.

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