Islamic Scholar: It’s Impossible To Integrate Muslims Into The West
Jose Nino
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Dutch sociologist Ruud Koopmans proclaims that Muslims are more difficult to integrate than other migrant groups.
The author of several books such as Contested Citizenship: Immigration and Cultural Diversity in Europe told the Danish newspaper Berlingske that migration groups coming from predominately Islamic cultures have a hard time assimilating into Western cultures when stacked against other immigrants.
According to Koopmans assimilation among Muslims is possible, “the change is much slower.” He attributes a literal interpretation of the Quran, the holy book of Islam, as the main factor preventing Muslims from integrating into Western society.
Koopmans compared Muslim radicalism with Christian radicalism in a study titled “Fundamentalism and out-group hostility”.
The sociologist wrote “Almost 60 percent agree that Muslims should return to the roots of Islam”. Koopmans added that “75 percent think there is only one interpretation of the Qur’an possible to which every Muslim should stick.”
Koopman’s multiple decades of research on Islam has yielded some shocking trends on the nature of Islamic fundamentalism. “65 percent say that religious rules are more important to them than the laws of the country in which they live.”
On the other hand, Koopmans’s research uncovered that fewer than 4 percent of Christians “can be characterized as consistent fundamentalists.”
Koopmans concluded that the “Islamic world is lagging behind rest of the world when it comes to democracy, human rights, and political and economic development.”
In his view, the literal interpretation of the Quran and Sunna lies at fault:
“The main problem is how many Muslims and, globally, how many Muslim countries interpret Islam. Namely, in a way that basically claims that the Qur’an and the Sunna must be taken literally, and that the way the Prophet lived in the 7th century must be the yardstick for how Muslims should live in the 21st century.”
These uncomfortable truths are important to understand in immigration debates.
Open borders has become a dogma among the political class, believing that every immigrant is created equal and must be embraced with open arms.
With presence of a welfare state magnet, mass migration from Islamic countries has created veritable religious ghettoes in European countries, where even the natives dare not walk into.
It would behoove the political class in the West to recognize that not all cultures are the same and that immigration must be fine tuned in a way that promotes economic growth while maintaining social cohesion.
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