Assimilation or Auschwitz?

Gireesh / SHAKTHINIVAS

The Parsis who fled from Persia (today’s Iran) ahead of Islamic invasions came by sea to the west coast of India(today’s Gujarat). Legend says that when they reached the Kingdom of Navasari 1200 years ago, the King there was initially reluctant to give them asylum .The King expressed his predicament in the form of a beaker filled to the brim with milk. Any more milk would cause a spill. In reply, the Parsi religious leader asked for some sugar. He then put the sugar into the milk and allowed it dissolve. The beaker did not overflow. The milk became sweeter. A more eloquent assurance of assimilation is yet to be found. True to their promise, the Parsis would continue to enrich the host Nation with their hard work, entrepreneurship and honesty. A miniscule community of 100,000 would make their mark in our national life. The Parsis were fortunate. So has Indian been to have them as Immigrants. Other nations were not so lucky.

Today the question of assimilation is one of the recurring themes in European public discourse. The issue has taken precedence over ‘immigration rights’ or ‘multiculturalism’. The issue of assimilation has been forced upon Europe by the terror on their streets. Cars set alight in ‘socialist’ France by Muslim youth are only the latest manifestation of the growing threat to peace in the Christian lands. Not just France but the whole of Europe is feeling the heat. Belgium, which like France, swears by ‘minority rights’ was rocked by violence. In Spain a series of bombs on commuter trains delivered the message of Islamic arrival. In Holland, Islamic youth shot down the famous filmmaker Theo van Gogh and impaled a note with a call to Jihad on his chest with a knife. In Denmark ‘Muslim youngsters’ declared parts of the city as off limits for Danish police. “The police have to stay away. This is our area. We rule this place” they declared on national television.

I would say that Europe is reaping what it has sown. It is as we Hindus would say ‘karma Bhalam’. Europe has a long history of anti Semitic violence. Though the Genocide of Jews is attributed to Germany under Hitler, the truth is that almost all of Europe, with the honorable exception of Britain, actively participated in the prosecution and massacre of Jews. Occupied France happily handed over its Jewish minority to the tender mercies of the Nazi death squads. Russia had its anti Jewish pogroms long before Hitler. The extermination camp at Auschwitz in Poland is the most conspicuous symbol of Euro collaboration in the genocide.

After the Second World War the victorious allies were burdened by guilt and as an emotional compensation for decimating its Jewish minority, opened their doors to immigrants from Arab and other Muslim nations. Thus the Europeans, who killed six million Jews, because they wanted to prove to themselves that they were cured of the disease of racism, opened their gates to 20 million Muslims. The Muslims did not come empty handed. They brought with them their religious extremism and finally terrorism into the heart of the Christian land. Shut up in the apartments they receive free from the government, the new immigrants planned the murder and destruction of their native hosts. History had come to a full circle since Auschwitz.

While many have resigned themselves to the eventual Islamic domination of Europe (due to the rapid increase in Muslim population due to prolific breeding and immigration) others contend that the assimilation of the minorities into the cultural mainstream of the nation-state is the only way the democratic ‘European value’ system can be sustained. And thus the issue of assimilation has become a matter crucial to the survival of Europe as we know it. No longer is term ‘assimilation’ clubbed along with ‘cultural imperialism’ and ‘fascism’. Assimilation means -to convert into a like substance (according to the chambers twentieth century dictionary).How could one get the 20 million Muslims already inside Europe to bend to the requirement of assimilation? If the resistance from the Muslim Minority to assimilation hardens, would it provoke a robust response from the host nations of Europe? With its very existence threatened by Islamisation will Europe fall back to a ‘final solution’ of the Muslim problem? Without assimilation, is the road leading back to Auschwitz?