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The UAE has set a sublime model in terms of religious, civil and personal freedoms as a host country of hundreds of thousands of foreign workers with diverse faiths, creeds and nationalities, a Swiss researcher has acknowledged.
Speaking at a lecture hosted by Emirates Centre for Strategic Studies and Research (ECSSR) yesterday on ’’Europe’s Muslims Between Marginalization and Integration’’, Hasni Abidi, Director of the Geneva-based CERMAM, Study and Research Center for the Arab and Mediterranean World, said all those workers are living under one roof guaranteeing religious freedoms, religious and legal tolerance, equality and equal opportunities.
The lecturer noted that some of those foreigners are holding prominent positions in senstive insititutions in the UAE unlike France where an Arab or a Muslim wishing to to be a taxi driver should first get a security clearance from the intelligence service.
He said :’’Some political parties and a large number of intellectuals have warned against the political use of the subject of identity, especially since the issue of Arab and Muslim immigration can be exploited politically. Indeed, former Prime Minister Alain Jupp , strongly warned against the danger of the growing hostility to Islam and Muslims on the future of France, and calls for the problems of third generation Arab and Muslim immigrants to be addressed in terms of employment, equality of opportunities and political participation to ensure positive integration.
The fact that the majority of Swiss voters supported a ban on the construction of minarets has increased the resolve of supporters of the debate over identity; so much so that the debate has moved to many other European countries where several political parties have launched initiatives that aim to limit some of the rights of Muslims, thereby marginalizing further the Muslim presence and weakening their integration process and perhaps leading to introversion. This also raises the following questions: What makes a deeply-rooted country such as France, which was a model in terms of accepting immigrants on the principle of citizenship alone, transform into a country that has doubts about its doctrine and identity?
Has Europe failed in its capacity to integrate immigrants, or rather to accept its own citizens of Arab and Islamic origin? - Will the move to limit religious freedoms appear in all European countries, and will it encourage radicalism and fanaticism in the Muslim diaspora? - Why does Europe hesitate to adopt the principle of multiple and peaceful identities as a way out of what is essentially a religious and political crisis? - Do we stand before a new challenge for Europeans of Arab and Islamic origins whereby they become responsible for convincing their compatriots that their Arab names are not a yardstick to measure the extent of their integration, especially that they were born in Europe, have studied there and contribute to its construction.
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