Immigration & Islamophobia

Hi all, today I want to talk about my take on these 2 topics plaguing many countries in the world. It seems the more affluent a country is, the more these topics affect her. First of all, a disclaimer, I live in a multi-racial and multi-religious society. And inevitably, I have made some Muslim friends. Also, this is purely my view on what is going on. So now that you have a chance to see where my biases, if any, come from, let’s start with the discussion proper.

Islamophobia means phobia of followers of Islam. It means fear of Muslims or anyone having anything to do with the religion in general. Funny thing is this was never a word till extremists started creating havoc around the world.

Immigration is the movement of people – usually permanently – to “greener pastures” in search of a better future. It can happen for a multitude of reasons. It can be in the form of push factors such as poverty and war, or pull factors such as high income prospect and political stability. Or some combination of both.

So, what’s the relationship between these 2 topics?

If one has been following the news recently, one would see the articles of immigration policies being a hot debate amongst politicians in the states and in Europe. Granted in America, it is not immigration, but rather a sort of face control at the gates, we shall assume them to be something similar for now as the main reasons for those “foreign aliens” being in America in the first place fits the definition of immigration. Why? These countries and states have been struggling with increased death toll due to terrorism. And who claims responsibility of these attacks? You guessed it…the Islamic State (IS).

Why does this group called IS want to hand down such inhumane acts upon fellow humans? They proclaim it is to create an Islamic caliphate. They want a world where everyone worships their God. They claim that they are trying to save the world by ridding it of non-believers. So they will wage a holy war on the world by infiltrating the world and unseating their governments.

Would anyone in right mind believe that their God would want them to kill all who don’t share the same God? Well, I didn’t want to assume, so I asked my Muslim friends just to be sure. That’s weird, their Quran didn’t seem to share the same ideals as this IS group. The answer I got from them was that the IS was misquoting the Quran and taking certain texts out of context and twisting the meaning for their convenience. Think about this: roughly 29% of the world’s population is Muslim. If the religion was that violent, wouldn’t we have had world war 3 long time ago? Why are there only acts of violence here and there every few days? Also, anyone notice that the violence only happens in more affluent countries? Did they try infiltrating poorer countries like Somalia or Senegal?

So how did this group of people have so many followers who are willing to give up their lives for the famed 40 virgins (for those not in the know, it means to die a martyr)? We realise that Muslim-majority countries struggling with a war on IS usually have one thing in common. They either had their leaders toppled with help from America and Europe or are in the process of doing so. And since neither America nor Europe had a person in mind to put in power after the toppling of the leader, this leaves a power vacuum. This power vacuum attracts opposing factions like bees to honey. Suddenly everyone wants to be in power.

What better time to gain popularity than now, when the country is in shambles and the Muslim-majority population is starving, homeless and desperate? Propose a holy war on the people who caused the problem in our country! Is it any surprise they got so many loyal followers?

So these loyal followers sneak into other countries through the guise of immigration together with others who have a genuine intention of settling down in the receiving country to start an honest life. And the first reaction by governments is to restrict acceptance of immigrants or have face control at the borders and airports. A blanket policy that also robs industries of manpower they need to run their business operations. But it is as ridiculous as saying “fire can burn, so we should ban the use of fire.” Oh yeah? Try going without heat or fire for a week. Are you going to eat salads and canned meats all day? How about clean water? Winter time?

The religion has been wrongly demonised and it is affecting Muslims all over the world. I was recently at a mosque to celebrate the break of fast. The leader of the mosque shared with me the reason they fast, and even invited me over to sit with them and the congregation during the meal. Their religion is as peaceful as other religions are. It is the fault of an opportunistic lot of bad apples that gave them a bad reputation. As I’ve mentioned earlier, almost a third of the world population is Muslim. But as with all things journalism, peaceful news doesn’t sell. Would you read news of the majority of the Muslim population who are living honest lives in society? No. But when IS claims responsibility for something, it must be the Muslims, right? Where’s the sense in that?

So that’s my rant on what I think about immigration being affected by Islamophobia. Let me know what you guys think. Thank you for reading my friends, and have a good day!