Posted on 09/22/2002 3:29:38 PM PDT by Mr. Mulliner
Does Welfare Cause Terrorism? Part 27: Ian Johnson of the Wall Street Journal makes the linkage between the two as clear as it can be made in an excellent piece on Muslim extremists in Germany. The key paragraphs:"It's no coincidence that the hijackers came from Germany," says Bassam Tibi, a scholar of Islam at Goettingen University, who is himself a Muslim immigrant from Jordan. "Here, they could live outside of society. No one even expected them to work." ...
Mr. Barakat [who early in the piece praises Mohamed Atta as a "true martyr"] came to Germany in 1979 as a visitor from Syria. Like many men in the Muslim-extremist scene, he married a German woman, which gained him permanent residency. ...For Mr. Barakat, who is 52 years old, work and success are unimportant. He says he has training in television repair and industrial electronics but hasn't held down a regular job since 1996. "The most important thing," he says, "is to do good deeds."
Welfare checks help make such benevolence possible. Mr. Barakat receives about $2,500 a month in payments from the government. He says he feeds his extended family's nine mouths on that and still managed to make a pilgrimage earlier this year to Mecca, in Saudi Arabia. [Emphasis added.]
As described by Johnson, the fitful but increasing German efforts at assimilating Muslims take the form of eliminating their ability to cry "discrimination" and restricting immigration. The mystery left unanswered is why Germany doesn't take the simpler, more obvious step -- allowing immigration, but denying immigrants the welfare benefits that support an unassimilated opposition culture.... Mightn't such a hostile culture be supported by workers? Sure. But people who come and work (the vast majority of Germany's Muslims, apparently) are unlikely to be able to lead a life so apart from the society they live in that they can be like Mr. Barakat:
Mr. Barakat says the city around him is of no interest. Walking down Steindamm on his way home, he ignores a dazed junkie combing her hair. "I don't care where I live," he says. "I could be anywhere."
Let work do the work of assimilation! ... Suddenly the Republicans who denied welfare benefits to new immigrants as part of the 1996 welfare reform look a bit more sensible, no?
To the best of my knowledge, he isn't. He's trying to extend them.
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