Yeah people like to ignore Albanians, and also forget that Turks could be argued to be culturally closer to Greeks than they are to Arabs. Albanians are also not really religiously Muslim, but rather culturally. Not so much because of enforced atheism under communist rule but because the whole experience left people with a sour taste for taking religious ideologies (too) seriously. There’s some fun polls for Muslim countries which I can’t find right now asking things such as “is there a god”, “does heaven exist” etc. and it figures that Albania, alongside with Iran of all places, is one of the countries where people who call themselves Muslim aren’t doctrinally Muslim because they don’t accept the full set of core tenets but some eclectic mish-mash. To have a comparison: That’s like Christians who believe in reincarnation.

The main issue I think is that there’s no established European Islam: Albanians aside, which generally aren’t even noticeable among the immigrant population in other European nations, Islam in Europe is dominated by non-European interpretations. Other states are sending Imams here which often have no idea about life in the countries they’re preaching in, and that’s before we get to Salafis, Iranian operatives, and like ilk, who are causing havoc deliberately. Suppose you’re Indonesian and live in Hamburg and want to go to the Mosque, where do you go? To Turks? Arabs? Persians? Neither speak your language, neither are culturally or theologically anywhere close to what you’re used to. A German mosque? You might not be fluent in the language (yet), it might not be anywhere close to what you’re used to, but you’re learning the language anyway and trying to integrate so yeah that’s an obvious choice. The community is headed by a learned Imam who definitely knows better Arabic than you so it can’t be all heresy. The alternative is some Salafist noticing you being lost and trying to radicalise you.

Germany had quite a long discussion about the whole topic, more than a decade at least, and by now there’s the first Imams educated in Germany. I kinda doubt such a thing is easy or even possible in, say, France, which is way too secular for politics to even touch religion with a ten-foot pole (the Muslim communities wanting to build that Imam training centre got state aid to establish it), or on the other end of the spectrum the Nordic countries, which have a single instead of a multitude of state churches.

Also the Serbs were good in committing genocide in Bosnia to wipe out the Muslims from Europe!!! We should have kept supporting them!!!, like some politicians back then, alleged and some people now try to revise the history of the genocide…

Islamophobia is genocidal like Antisemitism and other bigoted ideologies.

It is crazy how now a lot of the same sentiments are nurtured and normalized now against Muslims, that grew into the Holocaust against Jews 80 years ago.

Yeah, fuck the religion of 2 billion people in the world… Also look at our great secularism, that is forbidding women what to wear in places like France and Germany and killing hundreds of thousands of civilians who have the wrong religion or skin colour in the past decades and millions in the past century. What a great civilatory achievement!

I personally don’t see/experience any of that either, but ask some “native brown” (adopted/2nd,3th generation fully integrated/…) whether they have the same experience and you’ll likely get a different answer.

they instead usually talk about migrant crime, low migrant employment and “we don’t have enough for ourselves”.

This is exactly the kind of racist bullshit I am talking about. As if any of these had anything to do with where people come from, and not everything to do with how they are taken care of (or rather not), and how corporations fuck you over.

No population in this world has more or less assholes because of their color of skin, country or origin or religion. Talking about “migrant crime” as a problem, instead of seeing it as a consequence of giving people no chance to live a decent life, and working on the actual fucking problem, that’s a deeply racist talking point.

The whole point of racism is to direct anger of the masses away from those assholes actually responsible for their misery - the megacorps, banks, rich people and establishment politicians - at a convenient out-group, so that the masses do not get any ideas that would indeed change something for the better. And people who think migrants or migration are/is the problem are lacking the education to see through this bullshit and gobble up the lies and end up serving as useful idiots to the powerful.

People who believe this bullshit and regurgitate racist talking points are one of the most powerful tools of the wealthy to prevent the sensible people from driving politics that would actually change things for the better.

Fuck racists, and eat the rich!

There are definitely Europeans who think they and their culture are superior.

Exact same thing happening in Canada. Our systems are all strained to the breaking point, no housing, no jobs, no doctors, degrading infrastructure and nobody with the skills to maintain it. Nobody is even developing these skills thanks to a stagnant education system that rewards mediocrity.

And our population continues to skyrocket due to unrestrained immigration, depressing wages and pushing unemployment to historic highs.

Canada was built by immigrants. But I don’t care what colour someone’s skin is, they will not find Canada very welcoming right now. If this country can’t even offer a future to those who were born here, how can it welcome others?

Ask any black soccer player

Not the best example if you want to argue that it’s not about skin color, tbh.

“White” has always been more about fitting a certain narrative than a specific shade of skin.

Replace “White” with “Racism” and you’re on the money.
Whiteness has always been more important in the US that in Europe. People here have always been surrounded by other “white” nationalities and cultures that they could still be racist against.
Of all the things people say about Roma, them not being classified as white is one I have never heard.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_prehistory#Original_homeland_(c._800_BC_–_before_600_AD)

I mean, if we could build some more damn houses, immigration has been unambiguously great for our economy and general demographics, and Anglo Canadian identity was never a real thing to start with.

??? You’re so far off topic I don’t even know if you’re replying to the right comment.

What do you do if - let’s assume- integration is proven to require a generation?

It doesn’t. Provably, so I really don’t get where you’re trying to go with this.

It’s actually often the opposite under certain conditions (which right now aren’t that uncommon): Kids of immigrants are less integrated than their parents. Which btw isn’t a Europe vs. non-Europe thing it also happens with inner-European migration. Heck the basic mechanism also applies to e.g. inner-German migration, kid of a Bavarian couple in Lower Saxony sticks out enough to be “The Bavarian” in class.

You’re seeing the results of that experiment in real time

If the first gen of migrants doesn’t integrate properly. Like be able to speak the languages at a decent level so they can get a job. It will have cascading negative effects to the next generations. It will affect the next generation because they are more likely to grow up in a household that is poor, where they don’t speak the language of the host country which will negatively affect their school performance and where they don’t teach their kids the culture of the host country so these kids will always feel like outsiders.

This basically happened with the wave of migrants from North Africa and Turkey that were brought over to Western Europe as labor after WWII. The first gen didn’t cause much trouble, they just did their job and went home everyday, even though they didn’t integrate well. Since everyone thought including the migrants that they would return home after a few years. But it was the generations after where we see the negative effects of this failed integration. High school dropout , illiteracy, jobless and poverty rates are much higher than other groups including other migrant groups. And as a result crime rates including organized crime are also disproportionately higher among the descendants of those migrants from North Africa and Turkey. And also there is a lower sense of belonging among these migrants.

We basically have to make sure the first gen understands what it takes for their kids to thrive in their new homeland. And that means integrating, learn the language, understand the culture. And the government must prevent enclaves.

I’m a 3rd gen Asian migrant in Europe and went to school with many 2nd gen migrants from Morocco. I’ve seen this first hand. Many of these kids were basically behind in school and mostly because they didn’t speak the language well. And even as adults they still don’t speak it properly. I only know a few of them who went to uni. And the parents of those few spoke the host language at a decent level.

Integration requires a choice, not a generation. If what you mean to say is that hyperconservative religious zealots are unable to wrap their minds around women’s rights and democracy, then that’s their problem. Plenty of people around the world would give their left nut to live in a free democracy. Remember, that’s just 8% of the countries on this planet and basically the only ones with any upward mobility for the masses. The fact that religious fucks can’t be bothered to learn a new language or use basic reasoning to come to the conclusion that democracy is good is their problem.

What does anti-democratic religious fundamentalism have to do with skin color? Have you met American Christians?

Also, the only diversity I care about is intellectual. Why would we base our immigration policy on “race” quotas, which is what you seem to be suggesting, instead of merit? Especially when the bar is so so low. Don’t be a religious shitbag. Easy.