Retreating from the Mirage of Multi-Culturalism?: The Cases of Holland, Britain, and Israel

Government strategies for immigration in the Western world are changing. This follows decades in which the West enthusiastically embraced a policy of multiculturalism, hoping to integrate the critical mass of Muslim immigrants arriving in Europe. Some have come in search of economic opportunity; others are legitimate political refugees fleeing tyranny, oppression, and persecution.

Multiculturalism, however, became an ideology so deeply and wholly adopted by certain Western governments, as to trigger processes of separatism instead of integration, while efforts to accord citizenship and facilitate assimilation have instead created undercurrents of revivalist Islam. The resulting policy has deteriorated into anger and frustration, leading some new immigrants to support terrorism against their host countries, and to participate in planning and initiating acts of violence in Britain, Spain, France, Germany, and Belgium.

In view of this, some host countries have begun to rethink the benefits of multi-culturalism, adjusting to a new policy seeking the integration of Muslim minorities, not through recognizing and cultivating their separate identities, but through imposing the dominating culture of the adopted country. Case studies include Holland, Britain, and Israel.

Born in Fes, Morocco, Raphael Israeli currently teaches Islamic, Chinese, and Middle Eastern history at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. A graduate of Hebrew University in history and Arabic literature, he earned a Ph.D. in Chinese and Islamic history from the University of California, Berkeley in 1974. The author has been both a lecturer and professor of Islamic and Chinese history at Hebrew University. A Fellow of the Jerusalem Center since the 1970s, Professor Israeli is the author of over 50 research books, a dozen edited books, and 100 scholarly articles about Islam.