Europe Needs a New Identity
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10019771/site/newsweek/
Theory and practice diverge sharply. Europeans claim to have given up
their old national identities, but have they really?
By Fareed Zakaria
Newsweek
Nov. 21, 2005 issue - One week is a lifetime in the world of journalism
these days. We've now been through two cycles of commentary on the
French riots. The first saw the troubles as part of the broader clash
of civilizations between Islam and the West. "Falluja-Sur-Seine?" asked
the neoconservative Weekly Standard. The columnist Mark Steyn went
further, drawing dark parallels to the Muslim conquest of Europe in the
eighth century. But the riots had little to do with Islam. There were
no green flags, no crescent signs, no slogans about Palestine, no
rhetoric about Islam. The young men interviewed were irreligious and
talked about respect, jobs and discrimination, not jihad, suicide and
virgins in paradise. The pictures looked more like those of America's
race riots in the 1960s than of Fallujah or Ramallah.
Fareed Zakaria
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.atheism/msg/183efdb1ef3cbc8a
.
|
