16.02.2006The transformation of European identity
The problem of European identity is as old the European civilization. And it has always had different answers. Today this request and answer have become the primary issue of European agenda.
European nations have never considered the European united identity to be an integrate spiritual community. The characterization of this identity is limited within “European” hypotheses, beginning from Homer’s “Iliad” and ending with EU worded bare principles.
During the past fifty years by saying the European identity was understood the total of EU adopted principles shared by almost all the nations of the continent: democracy, freedom, human rights, tolerance and peace among the European nations.
By the way, the processes of European integration were realized on the ground of securing national identity, under the slogan of “integrity in variety”. The EU architectures aspire to create an integrate Europe, where the individual will be free not to be limited within the boundaries of his country at the same time remaining closely related to his nation’s identity.
However the problem is that the above mentioned All-European values are shared by the peoples of the continent to different extent. The main value integrating them all was Christianity, though in the form of different churches, the fundamental principals of which are at present buried in oblivion. Still at the period of framing the European constitution, the issue whether the fact of Europe’s Christian heritage should be reminded in the text was the subject of intensified contradictions. At the end only an indistinct phrase reminding about the continent’s historical heritage remained.
Denial from Christian values is equipollent to rejection of its own history and ancestors. Let’s remember that the concept “Europeans” was first reminded in the chronology of VIII century in connection with the Christians resisting the Muslim Arabs invading Europe. Even Vatican insists that “whether Europe is Christian or it is not Europe”. That’s to say the Christian values are considered to be a core of All-European identity integrating the countries with different histories and traditions.
Yet, in the present epoch, Christianity, as faith and civilization system inherent to Europe, has appeared in a deep crisis, which is established as a fact even by the Pope. He speaks about a big threat to Christian system of values - hedonistic society, the main aim of which is to enjoy life by all possible means. Steady decrease in birth rate, perversion of ideas of traditional family, strengthening of homosexuality’s influence are the showings of this society and crisis in Christianity.
In parallel with all these, some “cases” occurred in the continent, rise alarm signals for European Elite and nations. The experts, journalist and simple citizens began speaking about Europe being evaded by strangers and about Europe’s failure in general when more then a year ago a famous film director Theo Van Gogh was assassinated in the Netherlands as a film about violence resorted in Islam was shot, on June 2005 the children of emigrants organized terracts in London and in November the emigrants from the Arabic world and Africa staged violation acts in Paris.
For about twenty-thirty years ago the Europeans received the Muslim emigrants with outstretched arms as cheap labor. However when the European’s birth rate reduced to the lowest, the Europeans found themselves depending on the emigrants. Today 10% of Europe’s population is born beyond its boarders and 20% is born in the emigrants’ families.
In the continent for about 15-20 million Muslims live constituting 4-5% of its population. According to some predictions, by 2025 the Muslim population in Europe will double. By 2015 most of the population inhabited in the biggest cities of Great Britain, the Netherlands and Belgium will be foreigners.
The newly arrived don’t want to integrate with the European identity. They live in France, Poland, and England without being French, English or Polish. The position of Europe, which has undergone through two World Wars in the 20th century, remains tolerance, aversion to nationalism, search of the reasons of pogroms and terract in lack of attention to emigrants, and their level of upgrading. However the West-European principle of “mild integration” didn’t justify itself as it sees the after-effects of disease passing round the reasons. The political correctness carrying to an absurdity is no longer able to veil the realities Europe confronts with.
Social trajectory of vandalism in many European countries’ social life passes along ethnic and religious “trenches”, which at the same time are also cultural. The great ideal of French revolution, to make the nation a community of citizens with equal rights and responsibilities (irrespective of religion and the place of birth), gave way to highly explosive idea of “peaceful coexistence” with close enclaves. The enclaves, which endeavor to self-affirm, try to live by their own autonomous laws. It hasn’t been taken into account that cultural differences are liable to changes less then social or political realities. Right can become left as well as poor may become reach, but a Muslim or an Arab may hardly become a Christian or French. As a result the Dutch, English and French found themselves in front of the ruins of their multicultural system. Today the clash in Europe and on its boarders is not between Christian and Muslim civilizations, it is a clash between Post-Christian secular-liberal values and the Muslims’ traditional system of values. “If the present rate of birth remains the same, writes the British journalist Tony Blankley in his book “The West’s Last Chance: Will We Win the Clash of Civilizations?”, if the EU peruses the same policy line, if it remains tolerant towards the intolerant ones, if Europe doesn’t change its way of thinking (to some extent America too) then the western values and mode of life will be forced out of Europe by the values of radical Islam”.
Birth-rate or natural reproduction falling indeed becomes the Western civilization’s most serious problem. It is well known the expression of mullah Omar’s from Bordeaux: “we will fight the Christians just by our women’s prolificacy. The Frenchwomen don’t want to have babies to remain free, you see. We will make them nurse our children”.
As a result of all these in Europe will appear some areas out of the Central government’s control, such as French “Kosovo” or British “The Sunny triangle”. In such a way it is quite possible that in the coming 20-30 years Europe will really become “EurArabia” if…
No tendency lasts forever in history. This tendency also may be interrupted. Europe steps into a phase of its identity’s transformation urging to take certain measures.
This challenge will make it necessary for Europe to put forward a new policy bringing to light leaders with new quality, fundamentally differing from today’s European leaders, who are not able to think about tomorrow and only think about tactic problems of little importance. The political forces calling for returning to traditional-Christian system of values and resisting “the strangers” expansions will little by little become powerful. Today many Europeans already openly say “we were too temperate. The days of tee-drinking have gone”. Some right-wing politicians call political correctness and tolerance Europe’s Achilles’ heel and the Muslim emigrants-Grecian horse.
First of all the European countries will make the process of emigration difficult, sharply cutting down the Muslims’ inflow. It is possible that most of the emigrants will also be expelled. The problem of labor will be settled on the account of emigrants from Central or East Europe. It is quite expectable that in the near future France, Holland, Germany will open their borders before the emigrants from Poland, Ukraine, Rumania, that’s to say for the ones who don’t deny Western values and but organically supplement them.
The most important thing is that the idea of “Europe’s core” has over the centuries been bound up with such countries as Italy, France, Holland and Great Britain. However now, at this period of developments, the transformation of the European identity is quite possible. It will transfer “the European core” to the East and German, Poland, Ukraine, Czech Republic, Hungary, Baltic States will become the new carriers of “Europeism” (Even Armenia and Georgia have all chances to become a part of the new Europe). These countries don’t face the problem of losing their European identity; on the contrary they may breathe a new life into the European civilization. In exactly the same way as in its time the carriers of the concept “Europe” were Greece, then Rome, but when the barbarians invaded and destroyed the old culture, “the baton” was handed to France, Italy, and Spain. Rome and Greece today enjoy they antiquity turning into the centers of tourism. Paris, London. Amsterdam will maybe suffer the same fate.
Paradoxically, while defending itself from “the new barbarians” Europe may find a way out in the face of those considered to be foreigners in European world down the centuries- Serbs, Ukrainians, and Russians. In the same way Roman Empire turned to Goths from the East for help defending itself from dreadful Asian Huns. Later on the same barbarian Huns (Hungarians) and Lithuanians defended Europe from Mongols and Ottomans.
It is not by chance that today Central and East European countries show a more dynamic economic progress then the West-European ones. Besides the first ones have a higher level of national identity and strict attitude to the foreigners.
However there are serious obstacles for this version of development of European history. The Central and East European countries also didn’t keep off the post-Christian community’s symptom-birth rate fall, the spread of Hedonistic culture. Almost all the countries of “New Europe”, such as Bulgaria, Rumania, and Ukraine will face birth rate fall during the coming twenty years and at the same time a considerable part of their population will immigrate to West European countries. Yet, we shouldn’t forget that “the new Europeans” have been in the rise of national identity since 1989, the energy of which will nourish them for quite a long time and it is still not possible to imagine homosexual marriages in Georgia or Poland.
As a matter of fact we may become the witnesses of cultural, historical, religious rebirth of Europe’s new community.
We can stand on one thing for sure: in five years we will deal with a truly new Europe. The matter is who will be this “new” Europe’s leader – the newly arrived from the North Africa, Near East, South Asia or Central and East European countries?
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