Brussels: Cardinal warns against alienating immigrants

Second and third generation Muslim immigrants in Europe risk serious alienation from the societies in which they live, France's Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard told a conference in Brussels on Tuesday. The youngsters suffer "a lack of success at school, unemployment, the feeling of not truly belonging or having a stake in the future," said Ricard, whose diocese covers the southwestern French city of Bordeaux.


Ricard argued that Islam may appear to offer young Muslims an identity and pride that their societies do not. He said the anger and violence they feel towards what they perceive as an unjust 'police state' (photo) can drive them into the arms of extremists.


"They risk being attracted by most conservative and anti-Western strands (of Islam), and Muslim communities can be tempted to form an anti-society," he said.


This can lead to "a radical rejection" of the West by Muslims and the resulting rejection of Muslims by non-Muslims in Europe, Ricard warned.


He called for communities and politicians to work together to prevent situations that can spark violence and to integrate young Muslims in the countries in which they live.


France has one of the largest Muslim populations in Europe - five to six million out of a population of 62.3 million people or 8 to 9.6 percent.

French-born descendents of African and Arab immigrants complain of being marginalised, denied educational opportunities and forced to live in grim high-rise tower-block 'ghettos' on the outskirts of towns and cities.


Relations between young people and police are traditionally tense in some high-immigrant suburbs of Paris and other major French cities. Less than a year ago, the deaths of two teenage boys, whose motorbike collided with a police car last November, sparked riots in a northern Paris suburb.


The accidental death by electrocution of two immigrant youths in 2005, allegedly while they were hiding from police in the Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois, sparked several weeks of rioting in cities across France - the worst it has seen.


Source: AKI (English)

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