Assimilation and integration has many enemies.
Remittances from abroad are an important part of the gross national
product and budgetary revenues of countries such as Bangladesh and
Pakistan. Hence their frantic efforts to maintain the cohesive national
and cultural identity of the expats.
DITIB is an arm of the Turkish government's office for religious
affairs. It discourages the assimilation or social integration of Turks
in Germany. Turkish businesses - newspapers, satellite TV, foods,
clothing, travel agents, publishers - thrive on ghettoization.
There is a tacit confluence of interests between national governments,
exporters and Islamic organizations. All three want Turks in Germany to
remain as Turkish as possible. The more nostalgic and homebound the
expatriate - the larger and more frequent his remittances, the higher
his consumption of Turkish goods and services and the more prone he is
to resort to religion as a determinant of his besieged and fracturing
identity.
Muslim numbers are not negligible. Two European countries have Muslim
majorities - Bosnia-Herzegovina and Albania. Others - in both Old
Europe and its post-communist east - harbor sizable and growing Islamic
minorities. Waves of immigration and birth rates three times as high as
the indigenous population increase their share of the population in
virtually every European polity - from Russia to Macedonia and from
Bulgaria to Britain.
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