Speigel Online International: Study (on Muslims in Germany) Hints that Mutual Suspicion Is Slowing Integration

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Comment: Here is an interesting story on Speigel Online International that highlights the problem between white Germans and Muslims and one that we should try to avoid in Finland. When looking at immigrants in Germany, we should point out that that country never had the intention of keeping the millions of Turkish workers that migrated there in greater numbers from the 1960s. The expectation was that they’d work for a few years and return back with their children to their home country.

It is pretty clear that with such a widespread attitude very little can happen on the integration front. Chancellor Angela Merkel highlighted the problem by placing the blame squarely on immigrants by stating that Germany’s multicultural society has “utterly failed.” 

A new study by the interior ministry appears to reinforce what Merkel said in October. One of the result of the survey shows that 20% of Muslims in the country are skeptical when it comes to integration.

Fine. But the question should be what has Germany done to make Muslims feel a part of German society. Even the interior ministry survey is one-sided and places blame on Muslims for not wanting to integrate, it fails to look at the host society. 

While Hans-Peter Uhl, the parliamentary spokesman on domestic policy for Mekel’s conservatives, called the study “horrifying,” others take a different view. “I find it surprising that the interior ministry has once again used taxpayer money to finance a study that creates headlines but no insights,” said Serkan Tören, an integration expert for the business-friendly Free Democrats, Merkel’s junior coalition partner.

Volker Beck of the Green Party went further. She said that those that see Muslims solely as a threat should stop telling them that they aren’t a part of our society. “They shouldn’t be surprised when that leads to defensiveness,” she said. 

____________

By Charles Hawley

A new integration study released on Thursday has triggered yet another debate about the role of Islam in Germany. The report found that a surprising number of non-German Muslims are skeptical about integrating into society. But the country’s own doubts about immigration may have muddied the data.

Read whole story.

Finland’s ever-growing cultural diversity is an opportunity to overcome past fears

Posted on by Migrant Tales

By Enrique Tessieri

One of the matters that Finnish academics, politicians, policy makers never mind the general public missed out completely about our ever-growing cultural diversity is that our history and myths are hindering us to see the big picture.  The official and unofficial response to our culturally diverse society appears to be a subtle “no.”

As there are Finns who don’t get it there are others who do. Those that do  build bridges and pathways to our society with mutual acceptance between ourselves and our newest members of our society.

The debate in Finland concerning the big picture about cultural diversity is muddled by our impaired view from inside those trenches that we have dug. Our violent history and the cold war, which kept us geopolitically near-isolated from the rest of the world during 1945-91, are some shovels we have used to dig ourselves in that hole.

We should make an effort to get out of there because the task will take generations.

Debate about our cultural diversity and that big picture of Finnish society in this century should begin first and foremost among ourselves. In that debate, we must make an effort to banish our historical grudges and, most importantly, our fears as a nation of Russia and the outside world.

Any integration program that does not tackle these issue is doomed to failure. Xenophobia and racism will be the most effective weapon of choice used by Finns to keep that “Other” world in its place.

This route is not only a reckless one but very expensive to tax payers. Politicians should be told that integration, inclusion and opportunities will save Finnish tax payers a lot of money as opposed to jumping on the anti-immigration bandwagon and spreading urban tales.

As long as some of us continue to live inside those deep trenches, our society will always be threatened by populists and the far right as we saw in the April election, which reinforced institutional and colorblind racism in Finland.

Matters are in a very critical state at present. So much so in fact, that some Finns don’t even believe that racism and populism aren’t a threat to our society.

Past wars have traumatized our country but isn’t time ripe to attempt to heal those wounds?

Like it or not, our ever-growing culturally diverse society is offering us that opportunity.

Finland's ever-growing cultural diversity is an opportunity to overcome past fears

Posted on by Migrant Tales

By Enrique Tessieri

One of the matters that Finnish academics, politicians, policy makers never mind the general public missed out completely about our ever-growing cultural diversity is that our history and myths are hindering us to see the big picture.  The official and unofficial response to our culturally diverse society appears to be a subtle “no.”

As there are Finns who don’t get it there are others who do. Those that do  build bridges and pathways to our society with mutual acceptance between ourselves and our newest members of our society.

The debate in Finland concerning the big picture about cultural diversity is muddled by our impaired view from inside those trenches that we have dug. Our violent history and the cold war, which kept us geopolitically near-isolated from the rest of the world during 1945-91, are some shovels we have used to dig ourselves in that hole.

We should make an effort to get out of there because the task will take generations.

Debate about our cultural diversity and that big picture of Finnish society in this century should begin first and foremost among ourselves. In that debate, we must make an effort to banish our historical grudges and, most importantly, our fears as a nation of Russia and the outside world.

Any integration program that does not tackle these issue is doomed to failure. Xenophobia and racism will be the most effective weapon of choice used by Finns to keep that “Other” world in its place.

This route is not only a reckless one but very expensive to tax payers. Politicians should be told that integration, inclusion and opportunities will save Finnish tax payers a lot of money as opposed to jumping on the anti-immigration bandwagon and spreading urban tales.

As long as some of us continue to live inside those deep trenches, our society will always be threatened by populists and the far right as we saw in the April election, which reinforced institutional and colorblind racism in Finland.

Matters are in a very critical state at present. So much so in fact, that some Finns don’t even believe that racism and populism aren’t a threat to our society.

Past wars have traumatized our country but isn’t time ripe to attempt to heal those wounds?

Like it or not, our ever-growing culturally diverse society is offering us that opportunity.

Multiculturalism is dead – long live multiculturalism

Posted on by Mark
Warning: this article quotes racist profanity by way of illustration. Apologies in advance if you find it offensive.

The King is dead – long live the King! So runs the traditional proclamation when the monarch dies, only to be reborn magically through the next heir. The irony of listening to politicians line up to proclaim that ‘multiculturalism is dead’ is that even after a million such proclamations, Europe moves forward in the very next moment being just as much multicultural and multiethnic as it was before. Not one whit has changed. Except that somebody has clearly been trying to ascend to the throne….

The thing that disappoints me most about politicians that say things like ‘there isn’t a racism problem in Finland’, or ‘multiculturalism is dead’ is that as leaders, they give permission to other people to say and believe the same, even when it clearly isn’t true.

When they say racism isn’t a problem, what they mean is that it isn’t perceived as a big enough problem among the electorate for them to start getting caught up in the emotive and moral minefield that is trying to explain and tackle racism.

When they say that ‘multiculturalism is dead’, what they mean is that populist arguments that immigration is bad have started to convince enough of the electorate that if they were to come out and argue against racism, it is going to lose them votes, crucially amongst their own support.

It has in recent decades become the case that if you start to seriously lose ground on an ideological point in politics, you simply abandon the stance temporarily or permanently or suffer the risk of never getting into power – i.e. leave the job of trying to win the argument to idealists and sociologists. Politicians are pragmatic, at the best of times.

The problem is though that it’s not just political ground they give up, it’s moral ground. The chances are that the silent suffering of immigrants subject to daily, weekly or monthly racist abuse goes on, and even increases. Meanwhile, racists take their propaganda to new levels, with a blatant denial of ALL racism, because if you deny that something is racist, then you cannot be accused of racism when you do it.

To give you some idea of how far this rationale can be stretched, I want to share a discussion I had recently with someone who said one footballer calling another footballer a black c*nt was not racist, because, ‘well, he’s black isn’t he?’ They think that because they find a ‘fact’ to hide behind, they are stating something that is merely true, and so how can it possibly be racist? This same kind of vacuous argument and hiding behind ‘facts’ is put forth again and again by those defending their prejudices on Migrant Tales.

For example, if it’s something that insults and denigrates an entire immigrant group, it’s not racism if they can claim it is as fact, regardless of how shaky or questionable that fact is, or whether it’s absolutely clear that the trait in question can NEVER be a group trait, but only an individual trait. At times, they deny there is even a racial element even when one is blatantly obvious (ergo: “black – but he is black, it’s a fact, it’s not being ‘racial’ to recognise it as a fact,” and said with no hint of intellectual uncertainty). By hiding behind these ‘facts’ and only accepting the validity of race when it suits to denigrate ethnic groups, they can tell us, with a completely straight face – “there is no racism in Finland!”

Of course, there are many nuances to the denial of racism, and these are just a few.

There is one word that springs to my mind when it comes to some politicians and their attitudes to racism – spineless! It’s easy to play the denial game if you know that half the population is also playing it, and most of the other half cannot be bothered to argue about it, even if they know it for what it is. That’s my cynical streak talking.

At the end of the day, the argument about what multiculturalism actually is will rumble on. I would urge you not to buy into the idea that politicians are the best custodians of our culture, simply because they are too concerned with whether it will have any vote value. Alternatively, I urge you to recognise that multicultural is the acceptance that there are many different ways to do culture in legitimate and peaceful ways. In protecting the freedom of those that are different to us, we are protecting our own freedom to be different.

My grateful thanks to Enrique and Migrant Tales for the opportunity to contribute on a regular basis.

Have a nice weekend.

Mark

Three anti-immigration PS MPs will pay Hirvisaari’s fine for hate speech

Posted on by Migrant Tales

By Enrique Tessieri

Three far-right anti-immigration Perussuomalaiset (PS) MPs, Juho Eerola, Jussi Halla-aho and Olli Immonen, announced today  in a statement that they will pay PS MP James Hirvisaari’s 1,424-euro fine slapped  for hate speech by a Kouvola court in December. The statement, which was signed the three PS MPs, states that the fine was politically motivated. 

Instead of arguing the absurd defense line of the three PS MPs, let’s see who these three far-right anti-immigration politicians are. Starting with Jussi Halla-aho, he was fined for defaming a religion in 2009. Halla-aho is a Counter-Jihadist who has written on blogs like the Gates of Vienna, warning us about how Muslims are taking over Europe.

Juho Eerola is another anti-immigration politician who praises fascism and Mussolini’s corporatist economic system because it had no unemployment. Certainly he expresses such opinions carefully and in a hush-hush fashion. When his aide, Ulla Pyysalo’s name came up on a neo-Nazi membership list of the Suomen Kansalinen Vastarinta, Eerola did not consider this enough grounds to sack her.

Olli Immonen has warned on a number of occasions about an ensuing war between Christian white Europe and Islam. Immonen has been remarkably quiet after the cold-blooded killings in Oulu that saw a naturalized Finn of Moroccan background gunned down by a white Finn.

The three, including Hirvisaari, are members of the Nazi-spirited Suomen Sisu association, which strongly discourages white Finns marrying non-Finns.

Of all the three, the eeriest has got to be former Finnish Railways (VR) employee MP Hirvisaari. After the tragedy that struck Norway on July 22 when Anders Breivik went on the rampage, Hirvisaari blamed the “100% rapes” committed by immigrants on Norwegians and that country’s loose immigration policy for the killings.

Three anti-immigration PS MPs will pay Hirvisaari's fine for hate speech

Posted on by Migrant Tales

By Enrique Tessieri

Three far-right anti-immigration Perussuomalaiset (PS) MPs, Juho Eerola, Jussi Halla-aho and Olli Immonen, announced today  in a statement that they will pay PS MP James Hirvisaari’s 1,424-euro fine slapped  for hate speech by a Kouvola court in December. The statement, which was signed the three PS MPs, states that the fine was politically motivated. 

Instead of arguing the absurd defense line of the three PS MPs, let’s see who these three far-right anti-immigration politicians are. Starting with Jussi Halla-aho, he was fined for defaming a religion in 2009. Halla-aho is a Counter-Jihadist who has written on blogs like the Gates of Vienna, warning us about how Muslims are taking over Europe.

Juho Eerola is another anti-immigration politician who praises fascism and Mussolini’s corporatist economic system because it had no unemployment. Certainly he expresses such opinions carefully and in a hush-hush fashion. When his aide, Ulla Pyysalo’s name came up on a neo-Nazi membership list of the Suomen Kansalinen Vastarinta, Eerola did not consider this enough grounds to sack her.

Olli Immonen has warned on a number of occasions about an ensuing war between Christian white Europe and Islam. Immonen has been remarkably quiet after the cold-blooded killings in Oulu that saw a naturalized Finn of Moroccan background gunned down by a white Finn.

The three, including Hirvisaari, are members of the Nazi-spirited Suomen Sisu association, which strongly discourages white Finns marrying non-Finns.

Of all the three, the eeriest has got to be former Finnish Railways (VR) employee MP Hirvisaari. After the tragedy that struck Norway on July 22 when Anders Breivik went on the rampage, Hirvisaari blamed the “100% rapes” committed by immigrants on Norwegians and that country’s loose immigration policy for the killings.

Your story – the story of who you are!

Posted on by Mark

Migrant Tales implies just that, stories about migrants. Stories go a long way in defining who we are. We tell the story of our life, our journey, our relationships, our belonging, and our struggles, hopes and triumphs. Through sharing, we can achieve also belonging. By properly hearing a story, we learn of the world and indeed, we learn more about ourselves.

We often though not always tell that story through language, and not always our first language, as a way to share with others in our community. Indeed, a living community is in many ways built with ‘shared stories’. Everyone has a right to tell their own story, and to hold many versions of the same story. No one story will capture all the truth of who we are.

Stories tell us many things. They tell about things that have happened, they tell about how people have treated each other, how we have treated other people, they tell about changes in our lives, they tell about our search for meaning, for purpose, and for belonging. We often find these things through work, through friendship and love, through families and through testing the world we live in, to see what gives.

For a migrant, a big chunk of their story is likely to remain untold or even untellable, especially in the public space. The cultural, geographical and embodied references that help to place others into our own story are just not easy to communicate. Likewise, a new language can blunt our expression to the point of making us appear quite simple or slow. The avenues through which we can share our story may appear dark and forbidding. Not only that, while we struggle to find the tools to tell our stories, others are busy telling a different story about us, and with all the ease and narrative force that comes with having native use of the language.

When someone is telling a story about someone else, one of the key things to disappear is nuance. What I mean is the complexity and texture of human experience, which defies any box or any stereotype. Ideas about the person become simplified, usually by putting them into a group. In the absence of real and lived experience emanating from the immigrant’s life, the native storyteller relies instead on creating a collective story, about a group, constructed with broad strokes and bold phrases. Not only do these particular natives seek to construct the story according to their own rules, but they in turn ‘give’ this story back to the immigrant and ask them to take it as their own. Immigrants are literally told what their story is to be.

There is only one way out of this sorry situation, and that is to encourage people to seize back their stories. Each story told identifies an individual and it’s only this direct knowledge and information put into the public storehouse of stories, that will counter the oversimplified ‘group’ picture that some seek to write on behalf of immigrants. People do want real knowledge of other people, especially strangers.

In the absence of knowledge about strangers, we tend to make things up, things that reflect our fears and our prejudices. But given the opportunity to hear another’s story told in an honest and heartfelt way, then most of us will rejoice and be happy that uncertainty has given way to empathy and a real sense of another.

We all have a story. Don’t let anyone take it away from you.

Another scandal is brewing thanks to the Perussuomalaiset

Posted on by Migrant Tales

By Enrique Tessieri

Another scandal involving the Perussuomalaisete (PS) party is brewing  after what happened to councilman Tommi Rautio and MP Teuvo Hakkarainen. At the eye of the latest scandal is Jani Viinikainen, a PS Pirkanmaa region board member, who founded an anti-Roma Facebook page called, Mannat kuriin (Let’s put Gypsies in line)! 

On the list of “like” supporters you’ll  find convicted far-right blogger Seppo Lehto, a few members of the  Finnish Defense League, PS members and the usual crowd of  interculturally challenged Finns.

The recent scandals that have hit the PS fan happen less than a week before the party’s national executive board meet on Saturday, March 4.

Is this what PS chairman Timo Soini meant when he stated in October that the party does hate anyone?

Last year Viinikainen founded a homophobic Facebook forum.   The PS Prikanmaa regional board was planning to sack him but decided the contrary in December. Viinikainen got off the hook with a warning.

While some Finns and PS members may consider these types of Facebook pages “funny,” they show a more sinister side of the the party we have all learned to know:  Immigrants and Muslims are not the only political scapegoats of the party.

It has been less than a year since the PS won their historical election victory in April.

Every month the PS produces a scandal. What will be March’s?

PS red faces (again) after MP Hakkarainen's latest scandal

Posted on by Migrant Tales

By Enrique Tessieri

The latest scandal caused by none other than Perussuomalaiset (PS) party MP Teuvo Hakkarainen has caused agan a number of red faces in Timo Soini’s party. Hakkarainen was in such a drunken state, according to Nelonen, that he ended up at the premises of the Bandidos Motorbike Club and gave a prostitute 100 euros out of pity.  

The woman whom Hakkarainen had offered money has a different account of what happened, according to tabloid Iltalehti. She claimed that the PS MP wanted to have sex with her and another woman.

“I don’t know how I ended up there,” he was quoted as saying. “We were at a bar [didn’t remember the name of the establishment] and a bit too drunk and then there were these  people with whom I went with. And I went there and then I noticed and asked [myself] who were these people wearing [motorbike gang leather] vests. I stayed there a little while and left.”

The Helsinki Distric Court sentenced in 2005 two Bandidos MC members for taking part in a shooting, Helsingin Sanomat reported. The Bandidos Motorbike Club is an organized crime syndicate with membership worldwide.

Hakkarainen flatly denied that he is a member of the motorbike club.

He said that the latest scandal would not hurt him politically.

When PS parliamentary leader Pirkko Ruohonen-Lerner was asked to comment on what happened, she gave to the media the party’s standard response. According to her, she had not heard about the incident until Helsingin Sanomat approached her. Ruohonen-Lerner did not want to comment and said Hakkarainen could explain what happened.

The PS appears to have given up patching up Hakkarinen’s scandals as we have seen on other occasions.

Is the PS the party that aims to lead us out of the euro morass and into the twenty-first century? Imagine the suffering and ignorance we’d see thrown at Finland’s   and  immigrants’ faces if Soini ever became prime minister.

That would be a very unfortunate day for Finland.

The Finnish media and Länsiväylä should follow Migrant Tales

Posted on by Migrant Tales

By Enrique Tessieri

Migrant Tales was way ahead of the Finnish media when it was the first to reveal the ethnic backgrounds of the violent killing that occurred on Friday February 17 after a naturalized Finn who was born in Somalia went to a high school prom. Länsiväylä claims incorrectly that the police have now confirmed the ethnic backgrounds of the victim  and the suspect, who is a white Finn.   

The police confirmed to Migrant Tales the ethnic background of the victim three days later after the killing.

Migrant Tales was first before the Finnish the media in another tragic death that took place earlier involving a Somali in Oulu.

What was tragic about both deaths was the reaction of some bloggers. Some of these were wild fabrications with one matter in mind: To erase shame by pinning the crime on a suspect, whom some claimed was Somali.  D4R and Migrant Tales were right on the ball all along. We knew the real facts behind the killing.

Our motto is a very simple one:  “To be a voice for those whose views and situation are understood poorly and heard faintly by the media, politicians and public.”