Irshad Manji in the LA Times

Irshad Manji is North-America's answer to Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Both women reject the fundamentalism that permeates today's Islam (and the persuction of women that is justified by this fundamentalism). Both women receive death threats the way normal people receive spam e-mails. The similarities end there.

Hirsi Ali is an honest to God apostate.

Irshad Manji claims to still be Muslim, albeit in a - no, I'm not making this up- self-concocted, lesbian feminist sort of way. Needless to say, most Muslim scholars (those of them who, contrary to Manji, are fluent in Arabic) consider her interpretation of the Qur'an to be apostasy anyway. Hence the death threats.

Hirsi Ali has called for a Muslim Voltaire, and a Muslim Enlightenment. Free speech and the separation of Mosque and State and all that. Basic stuff, really.

Irshad Manji, on the other hand, asks herself (in the april 18 Time piece she did on Hirsi Ali): "Can a multicultural society produce pluralism without relativism?" Manji calls the secularism of European non-Muslims "strident". I have no idea what she means with that.

Does she mean that European states are too stringent in their separation of church and state? Then she's an idiot, because France is the only European country where this is more so than in the United States. Besides, the issue is the separation of European Mosques from Arab states. Is that unreasonable?

Does she perhaps mean that groups of non-believers try to impose their non-religion on others? Well, it's about time atheists started to do some proselytizing of their own. Maybe someone could talk some sense into her.

Does she mean that the libertine nature of European society makes it altogether too easy to stray outside the confines of good Muslim conduct? Then I say: she's a fruitcake. A lesbian Muslim fruitcake. Go live in Saudi Arabia or Iran if you want to be shielded from your own sinful impulses. Whatever you do, don't cherrypick your own Muslim doctrine from a translated Qur'an and then start complaining about relativism.

Anyway, Irshad Manji has written an Op/Ed. For Michael Kinsley, of course, he likes his Op/Eds best when they're wingbat crazy. And she delivers. Big time.

Bear with me:

America's Wild West can't afford Europe's wimpy xenophobia, this young Muslim says.

Yep. It's about Californian and federal immigration policy. And Arnold. And name-calling. So let's bash Arnold Europe.

"Europe" is xenophobic. But, please note, not in a manly way.

Listen, Manji. Continents aren't xenophobic. People are. Let's not equate Bob Herbert with the Klan because they're both American. Are you implying Europeans are more xenophobic than Americans? Did I just mention the Klan?

When Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared that Washington should "close the borders," he wasn't just choosing the wrong word (he says he meant "secure" the borders against illegal immigrants). Schwarzenegger was also choosing the wrong side of the Atlantic to inform his views on immigration.

What he said is more the attitude of Western Europe than of the American West. On many matters, from healthcare to women's rights, the United States can learn from Europe. But on immigration, it's the other way around.

Yes. Healthcare, good. Minimum wage, good. Social Security, good. Civil liberties, good. Unions, good. Equality before the law, good. Having a large underclass of illegal immigrants who have to do without all this, also good?

Today, countries such as France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands are scrambling to catch up with the changes wrought by migrants. Particularly Muslim migrants from North Africa and Turkey. As they flood in seeking jobs and education, the old social contract — our home is your home as long as you consider it your home too — looks downright naive.

What a funny way to describe what happened in Europe, where during the economic boom of the late sixties these immigrants were invited here by businesses and mostly right-wing governments as temporary "guest workers". Our home is your home was never supposed to be part of the deal.

And - minor quibble - she doesn't mention the UK (their Muslims are mainly from Pakistan). Or Sweden (with lots of Bosnians). Or Spain. You know, that country next to Morocco where all these Moroccans bombed the trains. Do you think the Spanish want to renegotiate their social contract? Are they entitled to?

Whatever. Because now, it's Generalisation Time! Let's quote "the European" and "the immigrant". Better yet, let's quote from inside their heads!

"They want to immigrate," say non-Muslims about the newcomers, "but they don't want to integrate."

In other words, too many Muslim immigrants insist on having their own language, their own family law, their own schools, their own neighborhoods — and their own ways of dealing with those who defy Islam.

Non-Muslim Europeans wonder: When filmmaker Theo van Gogh can be killed in the streets of Amsterdam, targeted because he criticized Islam, and when a Muslim woman who has abandoned her arranged marriage can be shot dead by her brothers in Berlin, what's next? And who's next?

If they don't wish to be among us, goes the common complaint, why come here at all?

To which the immigrants respond: We want to integrate, but not assimilate. And the way to integrate is to secure jobs, pay our taxes, finance unemployment insurance, hospital beds, pensions — all the things you Europeans desperately need because of your own low birthrates, aging populations and expectation of material comforts. In short, our contract with you is to keep the welfare state intact without losing our sense of self. If you recognized all that we can contribute, then we wouldn't need to express rage at a society that demonizes us. Now give us work instead of flak.

First off: having your own language is fine. If you're bilingual.

Second: secure jobs. There aren't any. We Europeans (see, I can generalize too) have chosen for a relatively high minimum wage, and relatively generous unemployment benefits. As a consequence of this, all sorts of low paid jobs of the kind uneducated immigrants could perform no longer exist in Europe. We don't have someone who bags our groceries in the supermarket. We don't have half as many janitors as you do. Or street cleaners. This is the downside of having a lavish welfare state. Higher unemployment for the uneducated. So, no, having more immigrants come over will not necessarily pay for our taxes, pensions and hospital beds. They have to be educated and productive immigrants. The upside is, of course, less homeless people, more social mobility, longer holidays and a people that are, by and large, in better health than in the US. That's why we put up with the high taxes and unemployment and stuff.

With identities threatened on both sides, the most frantic voices have gained traction. Some politicians in the Netherlands want a moratorium on immigration, proclaiming their country "full up." It's a small piece of land (unlike California), so I can see why so many Dutch feel saturated and frustrated by people who put the fear of God into their otherwise happily humanist souls.

Meanwhile, Muslim leaders cry racism and plead to journalists like me, "Do you see why we feel driven into the arms of fundamentalists?"

What the fuck? "People who put the fear of God into their otherwise happily humanist souls"? She sounds like fucking Ward Churchill. We don't fear God, we think the shit doesn't exist. We fear Muslim lunatics who bomb train stations and assassinate critics, who kill their own sisters rather than have those sisters marry with one of us. We fear Moroccan boys because they have the highes crime rate of all juveniles. Because they have re-introduced gay-bashing to Amsterdam. Now, I happen to think that in time, these problems will probably go away. But that does not mean it's racist to wish these problems never had come up. Large scale immigration is something you cannot easily undo.

And yes, Holland is small and crowded. With over 1000 people per square mile of land, it's more than five times as crowded as California. Different circumstances, different solutions?

It doesn't take long before I hear something else from European Muslims: This wouldn't happen in America. We would belong in the United States.

As incredible as that sounds in the era of the Patriot Act and Guantanamo Bay, dozens of Muslims in Western Europe have told me that the U.S. has a genius for inclusion because of how it treats social status. To the question, "Can you earn status rather than be born into it?" America still answers "yes."

Given their hunger to achieve, Americans are disposed to jostling with the "other," and they expect the "other" to jostle right back. What makes someone a real American is not so much his color or faith as his willingness to compete. Just ask the South Asian and Chinese immigrants who made up one-third of Silicon Valley's scientists and engineers during the dot-com craze.

In Western Europe, by contrast, heredity, hierarchy and entitlement trump achievement.

This is so much bullshit. This is mindnumbingly stupid. Manji, step into the reality-based world or stop writing. Please.

Because in the U.S. the accident of birth has a far higher impact on your status than it does in Europe! The United States are more class-ridden, not less, than Europe is. You may believe otherwise, but that doesn't make it so.

Of course, this Horatio Alger bullshit is so widely believed that it might as well be true. American Muslims think they're better off, social mobility-wise, then their European counterparts. They're wrong, but happy in their belief.

One's past remains far more important than one's future. No wonder countless Muslim laborers who have been living in Europe for two or three generations continue to be referred to as immigrants, even when they're bona fide citizens.

They are called immigrants (or allochthonous or whatever), because they adhere to another culture. They are Turkish in the same way that you'll find Chinese people in Chinatown. They speak Turkish amongst each other and eat Turkish food and celebrate Turkish holidays and stuff. So they are Turks (Moroccans etc.). And they are citizens, just as Arnold and most of those Chinese are U.S. citizens.

This difference between the United States and Europe feeds into the perception that immigrant communities have about whether they can ever be good enough for their host societies. That, in turn, can only influence how hard (or not) they try to integrate in each place.

Thus, the Islamic Center of Beverly Hills sends out e-bulletins declaring "God bless America." A recent one requested that everyone pray for President Bush, whether they agree or disagree with his policies. I've never heard such patriotism trumpeted by a mosque in Western Europe. Nor have Muslims there confided to me that they appreciate their precious freedoms. In the U.S., I get this assurance regularly — unprompted.

This scares me. Not the Islamic Center. The patriotism. This chauvinistic mix of patriotism and religion used to have a name in Europe. Nowadays, we tend to think that the free-est, bestest countries are those where unprompted social commentary comes in the form of a complaint. When people are so brainwashed that they'll start yapping spontaneously about their "precious freedoms", they are close to losing the freedom not to yap about how swell everything is. Scary shit.

Which brings me back to Schwarzenegger. When he calls for a clamping of the borders, he's giving up the ghost of the frontier mentality — the one that screams: "We too can do, and we'll show you!" He's hinting that California no longer has the entrepreneurial spirit to figure out how to invest in immigrants, including the illegal ones. He's implying that the nation is bankrupt of its most precious resource: imagination.

If he's right, all the more reason to welcome immigrants. Because history shows that diversity breeds pluralism of ideas, and ideas will be needed to reinvent the American dream in a century when technology, money and people are moving faster.

The frontier has gone. And maybe, just maybe, the frontier mentality ("Kill an Indian and get his land for free" or whatever it was) no longer applies.

If you want a land of equal opportunities and equality before the law, you cannot have illegal immigrants. It's simply not possible. So you have to choose: either you allow everybody to come on over and risk turning LA into Mexico City, or you only allow some people in. But then, yes, it's true, you have to check the borders. And then it's better to check the borders carefully, as it is easier to be lenient towards a small number of illegals than it is on a big number. And the harder you make it for them to get in, the fewer will try.

Of course, immigration also has huge advantages. It keeps the population relatively young, which is good, because young people pay taxes while old people draw pensions. To put it another way: government finances are a lot easier to manage when the government can borrow in the present for the needs of 1000 people but can repay in the future by taxing 1200 people.

That is why Canada, Ishrad Manji's home country (she's from Toronto), has an active immigration policy. The Canadians (or at least the Liberals running the show) aim at about 1% growth through immigration per year. For a country of 32 million, that's about 300,000. That's a lot of growth. (As a comparison, total growth in the US is about 0.9%)

And how do they do this, these Canadians? Do they just allow everybody in? Let's ask this official Canadian government website where they quote some Danish guy who explains Canada to the Danes:

Opposition on the right-wing side of government is divided but not opposed to the overall aim of a large, yearly immigration to Canada. It merely finds that the aim should be lower. And that Canada should allow other groups of immigrants to enter. The aim of 300,000 a year, however, will not be met. The reason being that Canada to a large degree reserves the right to select its immigrants. Immigrants that enter as a result of reunification of families and refugees constitute a small number of new immigrants.

In 2002, Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) anticipates that 140,000 immigrants will be granted access to Canada. These immigrants will enter on the basis of their qualifications or investment potential. CIC predicts that up to 62,000 immigrants will enter Canada as a result of reunification of families whereas the number anticipated for refugees is predicted to be up to 30,400.

So of the 140,000 some 50,000 will be allowed to enter Canada on the basis of their qualifications or investment potential. Hell, we don't have the room here in Holland to entice those rich and smart people to come over here, but otherwise.....

Then, family reunion and/or formation. Of the 62,000 how many are from the developing world? How many (i) uneducated, (ii) non-English, non-French speakers are we talking about? Maybe then you can compare the Canadian situation with the one in California. Add (iii) a non-western set of values to the lack of education and linguistic skills if you want to compare with immigration to Europe, and add (iv) the profound lack of room for houses and workplaces and recreation in Holland, Belgium, England and large swathes of Germany to get a feel for things in the more crowded bits of Europe.

When you look at this list from the 2001 census, I get a feeling that Canada, multicultural as it may be, does not have a relatively large Muslim population. I mean, the people of Icelandic background outnumber the Afghans, Turks and Moroccans combined.

And, in case you're wondering, 30,000 asylumseekers (about 1 per 1000 inhabitants) is pretty generous , but nothing special.

In short: Canada is a long way away from where the poor people live. Even if you hold open the door, they don't come over in droves. The poor people that do come over are not mainly from North-Africa and the Middle East (far from it), but from all over. A lot of them speak English or French. And the Canadians can use immigration as a means to achieve growth, because there's room to spare for all of them.

Even room for lesbian Muslim fruitcakes. Maybe she should come to Amsterdam. We've got plenty of Muslims. And plenty of lesbians and fruitcakes, too. She wants a moderate Islam, yet she dislikes "strident secularism". Well, she's welcome to come over and try moderate. I know a few Mosques here in wild, wild Amsterdam where the congregation is just itching to get preached to by an unveiled homosexual woman.