Inactive on HNN Only: Daniel Pipes
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Blaming Islamic Apostasy Laws on Western Imperialism
The recent case of Abdul Rahman, an Afghan who converted to Christianity and was sentenced to death for doing so, has made Islamists in the West squirm. The Shari‘a is perfectly clear and unanimous about the need to execute Muslims who leave their faith, whether becoming atheists or converts to another religion. If a tutorial in the matter were needed, the Rushdie affair of 1989 provided an ample one. But it's not possible to acknowledge this fact to Westerners who, as one, condemn such intolerance.
So Islamists have come up with various ways of changing the subject or pretending they are shocked. My favorite response has to be that of one Louay M. Safi, writing in a strident Islamist website that goes under the innocuous name of Media Monitors Network (which in the past five years has attacked me over one hundred times, or nearly twice a month). Safi has the audacity to state that "the Qur'an is clear on religious freedom" and instead blames the Islamic practice prohibiting apostasy on Western imperialism. Here is his argument, in part:
The issue of apostasy, like many other issues stemming from the application of shari'ah in modern society, is rooted more in the sociopolitical conditions of contemporary Muslim societies than in Islamic values and principles. More particularly, it is rooted in the incomplete transition from traditional to modern sociopolitical organization. It is rooted in the decision of many post-colonial Muslim countries to abandon traditional legal codes informed by Islamic law (shari'ah), in favor for European legal codes developed to suit modern European societies. The new laws where enforced by state elites without any public debate, and with little attention for the need to root legal code in public morality. …
The apostasy controversy highlights the importance of allowing Islamic reformers more say in public debate about political and legal reforms, and demonstrates the extent to which world powers undercut cultural and religious reforms by backing autocratic regimes the crack down on Muslim reformers in the name of combating political Islam. To legitimize their political rule and enlist the support of religious voices, autocratic rulers often align themselves with traditional religious scholars, who embrace a literalist understanding of shari'ah and perpetuate rigid and anti-reform agenda in Muslim societies.
Comments: (1) Even someone as immersed in the Islamist mindset as myself cannot but be surprised, even wondrous, at the lack of shame displayed in such passages. (2) No doubt this argument will convince some, for the readiness to ascribe all ills to the West runs deep and wide. (March 30, 2006)
Apr. 6, 2006 update: For an in-depth analysis of tawdry, dishonest apologetics on this subject, see Robert Spencer's excoriation of a article in the Chicago Tribune by M. Cherif Bassiouni, professor of law at DePaul University and president of the International Human Rights Law Institute.
Cross-posted at http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/580
Republicans and Democrats Look at the Arab-Israeli Conflict
It's hardly news that Republicans view Israel more favorably than do Democrats – I wrote about this pattern in 2000 in "The Friendly Republicans" and have even speculated (in "Arabs and Jews Sorting Themselves Out Politically in the United States?") that Jews will eventually settle in the Republican party. But now the Gallup Poll provides more detailed proof than ever before about the calibrations of American attitudes toward the Jewish state. In an article titled "Republicans and Religious Americans Most Sympathetic to Israel," Frank Newport and Joseph Carroll establish its nearly linear quality from right to left. Here are replies to the question, "In the Middle East situation, are your sympathies more with the Israelis or more with the Palestinians?"
The Gallup Poll on ratios of favorable:unfavorable views of Israel. |
Overall, they found 72 percent of Republicans and 47 percent of Democrats sympathize more with Israelis than Palestinians. The trends become more dramatic once one teases out the sub-views; note the marked diminishment of support for Israel as one goes across the political spectrum, as measured by how many times more sympathy Israel getsets:
11.1 – Conservative Republicans
3.9 – Moderate/Liberal Republicans
2.0 – Conservative Democrats
2.9 – Moderate Democrats
1.9 – Liberal Democrats
With the exception of one irregularity (why are moderate Democrats more pro-Israel than conservative Democrats?) the pattern is consistent, even if the numbers fall off dramatically:
Comment: It is surprising – and heartening – to note that liberal Democrats still support Israel by a nearly 2-to-1 ratio. It sure doesn't seem that way. (March 27, 2006)
May 23, 2006 update: I build on this weblog today at "Democrats, Republicans, and Israel."
July 20, 2006 update: Richard Baehr draws some interesting conclusions about the differences between the two parties in response to the hostilities in Lebanon. He notes that the two parties "reflects some consensus, but also two very different views on the meaning of the conflict in this theatre, and more broadly, between the West and radical Islam." In more detail:
Both Democrats and Republicans have defended Israel's actions in protecting its borders against cross border attacks and stopping rockets fired by the terrorist group Hezbollah from southern Lebanon. … Almost as if supplied by talking points by the DNC (as I am sure they were) Democrats on the various talk shows have quickly tried to change the subject from defending Israel (which may carry some risks with Muslim and Arab voters) to the "failed war in Iraq" and how the current conflicts in the Middle East are a result of the President's failure to engage in diplomacy in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Both Senators Chris Dodd and Joe Biden took this approach in their appearances on the talk shows. …
Various Republicans on this week's talk shows, Newt Gingrich, John McCain, and George Allen among them, have provided the links among Israel's fight, our battles in Iraq and Afghanistan, India's fight with Islamic terrorists over Kashmir, and other Muslim-Western conflicts around the globe (find a conflict, and it's a good bet that it fits this pattern). Seeing a bigger picture, and accepting that war is sometimes the answer, is different than a philosophy that follows the dictum that the best policy is to always turn down the temperature and stop the fighting. Senator McCain said of the Iranian nuclear program that attempting to take out this program by military means would be a terrible thing, but not as bad as seeing Iran succeed in completing its program. This of course, is not a defense of bad wars, or unnecessary wars, or poorly conducted wars. …
for many on the left, war, any war, is the ultimate evil, not tyranny, or Nazism, or Communism, or Islamic fascism. On that, their disagreement with the President and his party is profound. Scarier still, is the more hard line anti-Israel sentiment now floating freely on the hard left websites, such as dailykos. Some of the site's writers seem to feel about Israel the way Iran's President does. At every anti-Iraq war rally the past few years, anti-Israel signs have always been prominent. The two movements (anti-Iraq war, and anti-Israel) are now firmly linked on the left. It will be a fundamentally different Democratic Party that emerges if the netroots and the hard left take over. And no one can say they couldn't see it coming.
For now, the leadership of both major parties is standing firmly with Israel in this fight. But if the fight goes on very long, this coalition may fray a bit as some Democrats feel pressure from the left and hear the cooing sounds of UN peacekeepers and "peace," and get more nervous about civilian casualties and "disproportionate" responses, and fall for the bromides of the war is never the answer crowd.
Comment: I agree with Baehr's analysis and worry that today's cross-party agreement is fragile and perhaps temporary.
Aug. 2, 2006 update: An Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll released today asks three questions pertaining to the current Hizbullah-Israel war, then breaks down responses by party, with Democrats in the first column and Republicans in the second.
As you may know, Israel has responded to rocket attacks from the Lebanese group, Hezbollah by bombing Beirut and other cities in Lebanon. Do you think Israel's actions are justified or not justified? (IF JUSTIFIED) Do you think Israel's response is excessively harsh or not?"
Justified, not excessively harsh 29 64
Justified, but excessively harsh 20 11
Unjustified 36 17
Don't know 15 8As you may know, the United States is a long-time ally of Israel. Which of the following statements comes closer to your view: "The United States should continue to align itself with Israel" or "The United States should adopt a more neutral posture" or "The United States should side more with the Arab countries"?
Continue to align with Israel 39 64
Adopt a more neutral posture 54 29
Should side more with Arab countries 2 1
Don't know 5 6As you may know, the United States has not called for an immediate ceasefire in Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah, but has said that a ceasefire should wait until an international peacekeeping force can be assembled. What do you think? Should the U.S. call for an immediate ceasefire, or should the U.S. continue to work toward both sides accepting an international peacekeeping force, or should the U.S. not get involved in the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah?
U.S. call for an immediate ceasefire 17 9
U.S. work toward both sides
accepting international
peacekeeping force 39 56
U.S. not get involved in the
fighting between Israel and
Hezbollah 40 30
Don't know 4 5
Comment: To me the most interesting result is the "Continue to align with Israel" one. The same, massive 25-percent difference separates the parties, no matter how the question is asked, but the number in either party favoring the Arabs over Israel is trivial.
A Republican Jewish Coalition advertisement.
Aug. 4, 2006 update: As the Hizbullah-Israel war continues, the predicted party differences are coming to the surface, at least in Florida, site of a poll of 1,007 likely Republican and Democratic voters commissioned by the Miami Herald and carried out by Zogby International. The poll has a margin of error of 4.5 percent.
- A quarter of Republicans and 54 percent of Democratic voters say Israel has gone too far in its campaign.
- 39 percent of Republicans and 27 percent of Democrats, with 17 percent and 14 percent unsure, respectively, say the bombing campaign is just right.
- 19 percent of Republicans and 5 percent of Democrats say the Israeli response to Hizbullah should be harsher.
The article, by Marc Caputo, also paraphrases Khaled Saffuri (whose name is misspelled as Khaled Suffari), Grover Norquist's associate, with the interesting observation that Arabs and Muslims "have found it almost impossible to make it into Republican circles ever since Sept. 11," a problem he blames on what he calls the "Fox News syndrome," In Saffuri's simplistic analysis, Republicans watch Fox "and it's like brainwashing."
Sep. 6, 2006 update: Republican Jewish Coalition Executive Director Matt Brooks notes the sort of evidence presented here and concludes: "We are seeing a disturbing trend in the Democratic Party today, one that the American Jewish community needs to take note of. Democrats are increasingly turning their backs on Israel, and have done so even in the midst of Israel's efforts to stop Hezbollah from bombing Israeli cities."
Sep. 21, 2006 update: According to Ed Lasky, in a lengthy analysis of the "The Democratic Party and the Jews" in the American Thinker:
Developments in the Democratic Party bode ill for the Jewish people and for the state of Israel – home of up to 40% of the world's remaining Jewish population. The rank and file of the Party has become increasingly anti-Semitic and support for Israel has noticeably fallen. Democratic Congressmen have reflected this trend in very visible ways: their votes and actions in Congress reveal that support for Israel has eroded in alarming ways. Furthermore, more than a few Democratic Congressman have openly made statements that are either clearly anti-Semitic or can be fairly construed to be at least, "anti-Semitic in effect, if not intent".
Jan. 1, 2007 update: Gabriel Schoenfeld of Commentary reviews the situation in "Jews, Muslims, and the Democrats" and comes to similar conclusions. With regard to representative-elect Keith Ellison, called "Louis Farrakhan's First Congressman," he writes:
Both the ease with which Ellison was able to glide through this controversy and the remarkable lack of discomfort his candidacy appeared to cause among his fellow Democrats point to the larger significance of his election. For the simple fact is that in certain respects he is not alone: the past decade or so has seen the formation of a group of 40 to 50 Democratic Congressmen who, in varying degrees of intensity, have felt free to express an uninhibited hostility toward the Jewish state.
Cross-posted at http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/579
West Africa - Europe's New Border
Mauritania, a country in West Africa far from Europe, has become the latest springboard for desperate would-be immigrants to reach Europe. They travel by boat for three days and nights to cover the 500 miles from Mauritania's long coastline to the Canary Islands, which is Spanish soil. Once in the Canaries, the whole of Europe lies before them.
The voyage is perilous and over a thousand Africans have died during the past four months while sailing the Atlantic Ocean in traditional wooden fishing canoes called pirogues, normally used for net-fishing expeditions. The vessels are uncovered, are usually powered by a single outboard engine, and rarely carry navigational or emergency equipment. Up to 40 per cent of those who attempt the crossing from Mauritania may not make it. Still, 8,519 Africans reached the Canaries in 2004, 4,751 in 2005, and over 3,500 so far in 2006. The Spanish government has detained at sea more than 1,000 migrants in the last 10 days alone.
Mauritania, one of the world's poorest countries, is unable to handle the influx. Its prime minister, Sidi Mohamed Ould Boubacar, said that the country. "can't control its borders and needs help against this massive wave of immigrants. We can't resist this growing pressure. We need help of all types: planes, boats, vehicles." He said the authorities arrested 3,900 migrants in 2005 and already 1,200 in the beginning of 2006. "What is arriving is unimaginable."
Migrants in a high-sided wooden boat that set out from Mauritania and was intercepted by the Spanish coast guard off the Canary Islands. (Gustavo Gonzalez/ AFP/ Getty Images) |
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The increase appears to result from the crackdown at Ceuta and Melilla. Unable to reach there, the Canaries became the destination of choice. "The smugglers have just moved the boats south because the Moroccan police and border patrols are now stronger," says Manuel Pombo, a Spanish ambassador-at-large. Unable to travel from Morocco has made the journey much longer and more hazardous.
A delegation of Spanish officials has arrived for talks to establish an "urgent plan of co-operation" by which the Spanish government helps its Mauritanian counterpart patrol its coastline and establishes centers to process migrants in the country. Between 10,000 and 15,000 Africans, mostly from Senegal and Mali, are thought to be in Mauritania planning to get to the Canaries. (March 19, 2006)
Apr. 1, 2006 update: In an on-the-scene report, the Washington Post's Kevin Sullivan compellingly fleshes out this abstract problem by telling the story of a Senegalese electrician and father of two named Magat Jope, who made the three-day bus journey to Nouadhibou, a seatown of 90,000 people and the second-largest city in Mauritania:
Wealthy beyond belief in the eyes of destitute people almost everywhere, the European Union also draws an illicit flow of migrants from the former Soviet Union, China, Latin America and the Arab world. Together, these tides of people are adding up to one of the most significant migrations of current times. The new route from Africa appears to be far more dangerous than the older ones, but people keep coming. "If you are as poor as we are, you are not afraid of death," said Jope, 34, an electrician and polite father of two. "I want a house. I want to educate my children. The risk doesn't matter." …
On any day, the town's markets are filled with traders in flowing robes selling oranges and dates. There are nearly as many donkeys as cars on the rutted streets. Along the beaches, hundreds of open fishing boats deliver cargos of mullet, shark and bright-colored shellfish. Jope soon became aware there were many people like him in town, outsiders trying to blend in, avoid the police and find boats heading to the Canaries. They were from Mali, Gambia, Nigeria and other West African countries. A population boom and ballooning joblessness in many African countries, driven in part by a wave of subsistence farmers moving from their villages into cities, has caused thousands to risk the journey here.
Ahmed Ould Haye, local head of the Red Crescent, the Muslim counterpart of the Red Cross, estimated that about 15,000 migrants were milling around here waiting to go to the Canaries. Many work as laborers or fishermen to earn money for the voyage, which typically costs $1,200, Haye said. Some of them pool their funds and buy a narrow boat shaped like a canoe, pointed at both ends. Some pay fishermen to take them. Others deal with middlemen who arrange boat and skipper. Local authorities say a boat leaves nearly every night, jammed with as many as 60 people.
Finally, on Feb. 1, 2006, he began the sea journey:
he walked down to the beach in a cold winter breeze, paid about $10 for a worn orange lifejacket and stepped into a 40-foot fishing boat with 34 other people. He handed the captain $1,100. The canoe-like boat chugged away from shore powered by a 40-horsepower outboard motor and steered by the captain using a hand-held global positioning device.
Almost immediately, Jope said, passengers who were not used to being on the water began vomiting. The smell was overpowering. Jope, over six feet tall, found there was barely enough room for people to sit. His legs and ankles swelled so much that he couldn't straighten them. People prayed and talked quietly, he recalled. There was plenty of food and water, but no one could sleep, and the leaky boat needed constant bailing.
Four days out, they were intercepted by a Moroccan naval vessel. Sailors tied a line to the bow of the immigrants' boat and towed it for three days back to Nouadhibou. All the way, Jope felt devastated. When they approached the town, everyone on the boat jumped overboard and swam to shore, then ran away to avoid being detained and sent home. He never saw the captain again, and his $1,100 was gone.
Despite this experience, "Jope said he planned to go home to Senegal, pay his mother back, save some more, then come back to Nouadhibou to try again."
Rickard Sandell, an immigration specialist at the Real Instituto Elcano in Madrid, is quoted observing that "The frontier between Africa and Europe is turning into one of the most dangerous migratory passages ever seen." Further: "We are just seeing the start of something much, much bigger."
Apr. 12, 2006 update: "Spain to free 1,500 illegal immigrants into Europe" reads the Daily Telegraph headline. Some 3,800 illegal immigrants landed in the Canary Islands since the start of 2006 and Spanish authorities have been repatriating some of them to Mauritania by chartered aircraft.
But, under its liberal immigration laws, illegal migrants can be held for a maximum of 40 days. If officials then fail to establish their nationality, or discover that they come from a country such as Mali which has no repatriation agreement with Spain, they must be released. Most illegal arrivals will therefore have to be set free, officials said. Once released on the Spanish mainland, the migrants can make their way through continental Europe because of the border-free Schengen zone.
The paper indicates that most of them hope to make their way to Britain, France, and Italy.
Apr. 29, 2006 update: Mauritania finds itself hosting not only African-would-be-immigrants-to-Europe but also South Asians with the same ambitions, Heidi Vogt documents today in an Associated Press story today from the northern town of Zouerat.
Dozens of Indians, Bangladeshis and Pakistanis have turned up in Zouerat over the past 18 months, having been abandoned by the smugglers in the Sahara with little water, no food and no passports. No one knows how many others have died in the empty desert. … The Asians say they paid around $15,000 each to be smuggled to Europe. Now they are reduced to going from door to door offering to wash clothes and do odd jobs for food or money. Undocumented, many deep in debt to the smugglers who hold their passports, they have been living in a twilight zone between the homes they left and the homes they dreamed of finding. … The road to Europe is a long one - a 6,000 mile flight from India to West Africa, and then the illegal leg begins - some 1,000 miles over the Sahara in four-wheel drive vehicles and onward to a North African port from which the migrants will try to sneak into southern Europe in search of work.
Comment: That people who have $15,000 to spend on a one-way ticket will attempt such desperate means to reach Europe points to the depth of the problems the West as a whole now faces in controlling its borders. As I predicted nearly five years ago, the militarization of the frontiers and the use of force to fend off such immigrants is close to inevitable.
May 19, 2006 update: "The calmer seas of early summer [sic – it's still spring, DP] have seen a sharp rise in the numbers reaching the holiday islands," writes Mike Elkin in the Daily Telegraph. "More than 1,400 arrived in Tenerife and Gran Canaria in the past week, while 2,000 have landed this month, mostly from Senegal and Mali, compared with 4,751 in the whole of last year." The Spanish coast guard, which has 3 naval ships and 3 surveillance aircraft watching the seas between Africa and the Canaries, yesterday alone intercepted 7 boats carrying 483 people.
The Spanish government has responded with an urgent appeal for help and with an announcement that it is dispatching diplomats to several West African countries. Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos said a special ambassador and a team of diplomats would begin "three- to six-month" missions to such African countries as Cape Verde, Gambia, Verde, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Niger and Senegal. Prime Minister JosĂ© Luis RodrĂguez Zapatero sent letters to the leaders of Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, and Mali, asking for help to curb the flow of immigrants.
May 24, 2006 update: The European Union is hearing Spain's pleas. Franco Frattini, its justice and home affairs commissioner, said the Union "will provide operational support as fully as we can to the Spanish government to deal with an urgent and difficult situation." The EU's new external border security agency, Frontex, will send two emergency coordination teams, including surveillance planes, patrol boats, and rapid-reaction aid teams, to the Canary Islands. Eight EU member states (Britain, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, Slovenia and Sweden, plus another two whose names are not presently known) will provide soldiers and police officers. Madrid also hopes other EU states will help it set up "reception centers" ("holding pens" would be a more accurate description) in such key transit countries as Mauritania and Senegal to stem the flow of illegals.
In addition, the Spanish government is in discussions with the Senegalese authorities to reduce the influx of illegals setting out for the Canary Islands. But the talks did not lead to a formal repatriation agreement, for reasons that echo the U.S.-Mexican negotiations and point to difficulties to come.
After talks in the Senegalese capital, the Spanish secretary of state for foreign affairs, Bernardino LeĂłn, said his government believed that illegal immigrants should be sent back to their home countries. "The aim is to increase our cooperation on migration in all areas," LeĂłn told reporters. "What we need at this time is to speed up these repatriations and for people to realize that we're in a moment of crisis."
But Foreign Minister Cheikh Tidiane Gadio of Senegal made clear that his country would not sign an accord to automatically repatriate those intercepted. Senegal did, however, agree to work with Spain to try to halt departures of boats carrying illegal migrants and crack down on people-smuggling gangs. "There is cooperation, but we haven't signed an agreement," Gadio said at a news conference. However, he said that Senegal's government was willing to assist its nationals stranded abroad, including bringing them home if necessary. A team of Senegalese officials will fly to the Canary Islands to interview illegal migrants held there.
The Senegalese Navy said in a statement Monday that it had seized 19 boats over the weekend carrying 1,500 would- be migrants, including 60 suspected migrant-traffickers.
May 25, 2006 update: "Europe has to wake up and stop staring at its belly button," says Miguel Becerra, a senior policy adviser in the regional government of the Canary Islands. Writing in the International Herald Tribune, Renwick McLean provides some important information on the situation:
First, although the Spanish government vows that all the migrants will be deported back to their countries of origin, illegals intentionally shed all ways of identifying them, so deportation becomes all but impossible. A Red Cross director in Tenerife, Rubén Fernández, concludes that "Most of them will probably be set free." Because of the colonial legacy, most Africans who speak a European language know French or English, so they often set off for France, Britain or Belgium.
Second, a study by the Royal Elcano Institute in Madrid argues that Europe may be on the brink of a flood of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa, with potentially historic implications. Rickard Sandell, chief investigator for demography and population studies at the institute, wrote in the report that
Both economic and demographic data provide evidence that this is only the beginning of an immigration phenomenon that could evolve into one of the largest in history. … the mass assault on Spain's African border may just be a first warning of what to expect of the future. The situation is so serious that the possibility of a mass exodus if the African states fail to absorb their rapidly increasing working age population should not be ruled out. Nor can we rule out the possibility of armed conflict as a result of the political unrest that is likely to follow from a lack of effective management of the unprecedented increase in the labour supply
Third, as the Mauritanian police begin to crack down, migrants have begun leaving from Senegal, even further south. This means that the sea journey to the Canaries that some months ago lasted a mere 12-24 hours from Morocco now requires 7-10 days.
Fourth, McLean gives some sense of the sociology of the exodus.
According to Red Cross officials, the migrants typically leave with a pile of life vests, a compass or global positioning system, limited supplies of food and water and a small outboard motor suited more for the gentle currents of a small river than for the waves of the Atlantic. One recent arrival packed 78 migrants into what looked like an enormous canoe. The only method of steering was a rusty piece of iron fashioned into the shape of a rudder and attached to the back of the boat.
"You generally find two types of social classes in the boats," said JosĂ© Reyes, 31, a Red Cross official in Tenerife who has worked extensively in Africa. "There are the fisherman who don't know how to read, and the middle class ones from the cities, who always have books or magazines in their hands." The educated ones have no idea how to survive at sea or to command a boat, he said, and the fisherman could never afford an outboard motor and a global positioning system. So they come together, with the fishermen handling the boats and the others providing the supplies. …
"The motors are in terrible condition, and if they break, they are at the mercy of the currents and can end up anywhere," said Fernández of the Red Cross. "We have no idea how many have been lost, because the currents flow away from the islands and out towards the Americas," he said. "But surely many have been lost."
In a second International Herald Tribune article, Dan Bilefsky looks at the European Union's disarray in the face of the Canary Island illegals. In particular, the European Commission, for the second time in two years, could not agree on the African countries to which would-be migrants can be sent. Draft lists have included Benin, Botswana, Cape Verde, Ghana, Senegal, Mali, and Mauritius. But Mali will be excluded because of its practice of female genital mutilation.
May 30, 2006 update: I published a column today, "[West Africa:] New Route to the West," that reviews this problem and places it in its larger context.
Also today, 732 illegal immigrants reached the Canaries in eleven boats, a single-day record. And the joint Spanish-Mauritanian patrol launched on May 15 intercepted its first boat, with 37 would-be immigrants aboard, near the northern point of Mauritania.
June 7, 2006 update: For the first time, origin, transit, and destination countries have come together to seek solutions to the African-to-Europe immigration problem. Meeting for two days in Dakar, Senegal, senior officials from more than 50 Europe and Africa countries are working on an integrated multinational strategy and action plan. Of course, a tension exists between enforcement (the European priority) and root causes (the African priority), with the current draft calling for more of both. If all goes well, the plan will be adopted by European and African ministers at a migration summit July 10-11 in Rabat, Morocco.
Also of note: Senegal has suspended repatriation flights from the Canaries, saying its migrants had been mistreated by Spanish authorities, which Madrid denies.
June 10, 2006 update: Reporting on his conversations in Madrid, EU Commissioner for Justice, Freedom and Security Franco Frattini says that "in Mauritania some 50,000 people are concentrated to try to move north, and in Senegal another 20,000 are ready to go north, to cross the ocean to try to get to the Canary Islands." He also provides a startling statistic: "Only 4 or 5 per cent of asylum-seekers coming to Europe are genuine refugees and are accepted," he says. "More than 90 per cent are rejected, so they have to be repatriated."
 A tourist gives water to an African immigrant landed on Tejita beach in Tenerife, Canary Islands. |
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They were given first aid by holidaymakers and locals who took some of the most severely dehydrated to hospitals near the town of Granadilla in their cars. "It was totally spontaneous," a local police officer, Javier Melián, told El PaĂs newspaper yesterday. "Every immigrant must have had four or five people looking after them. The beach was full of tourists."
Foreign sunbathers, especially Germans, were among those who helped while Red Cross units and the local police made their way to the beach on the southern coast of Tenerife. The tourists helped the immigrants wade through the last few metres of water on to the beach, gave them water to drink, dry clothes and held towels over them to keep them in the shade. Several children were among those who had to be looked after until the Red Cross arrived.
"We handed out surgical gloves to people in case the immigrants had illnesses, but they didn't really care about that," Mr Melián said. "I was especially impressed by the young people, who gave them their things and helped, even though they could not understand a word they said."
Aug. 22, 2006 update: The rising numbers of illegal African immigrants arriving in the Canaries – 512 on August 18, 324 on the 19th, 432 on the 20th – is exacerbating the crisis, prompting the Spanish government to undertake urgent diplomatic initiatives in Africa, including a doubling of development aid from the present €650 million.
Sep. 1, 2006 update: An anti-Spanish backlash is in the making, writes David Rennie in the Daily Telegraph's blog:
the European Commission finally turned round and said Spain should take some of the blame for the surge in illegal African migration to the Spanish Canary Islands. It was high time, frankly, to call for a reality check in Spain's months-long campaign of demanding EU aid, EU boats, planes and police patrols, to help try to control this year's unprecedented influx of migrants from Mauritania and further south (first written about, as far as the British press is concerned, by this paper).
The EU justice commissioner, Franco Frattini, gave a joint interview to several Spanish papers, and said – in a nutshell – that the Socialist government helped cause this crisis, with its amnesty for hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants, last year. Spain granted the amnesty without first controlling black-market labour or consulting EU leaders, enraging countries like Germany, who suspected that many of the regularized migrants would soon be turning up in their country, thanks to the border-less Schengen zone. It also seemed likely to be what immigration officials call a "pull factor" for fresh migrants.
To quote Mr Frattini: "If a member state opens a process to make immigrants legal without controlling black market labour, it encourages illegal migrants to enter this country and move on to another." Spain introduced a three-month amnesty for illegal immigrants in February 2005, saying it was the only way to regain control of a chaotic situation. Around 600,000 people took part in the plan.
Comment: The extremism and recklessness of the Zapatero government – so evident in other areas of public policy – are finally getting exposed with respect to immigration too.
Sep. 5, 2006 update: Records exist to be broken. Twelve boats (or more) of illegals reached the Canary Islands in the span of 36 hours this past weekend – 674 people on Saturday and 522 on Sunday. More than 20,000 Africans and others have arrived, including around 6,000 in August, compared to 4,751 for all of 2005.
Sep. 9, 2006 update: Muammar al-Qaddafi has added his own unique take to the illegal immigration problem, telling European states to pay €10 billion a year to Africans "if it really wants to stop migration toward Europe."
Sep. 13, 2006 update: As illegals are arriving to the Canaries in 2006 at five times the rate they did in 2005, Madrid government has declared they will all be repatriated. In this spirit, Spain's secretary of state for foreign affairs, Bernardino Leon, has held urgent talks in Dakar with the Senegalese president, Abdoulaye Wade, and Interior Minister Ousmane Ngom to find ways to stem the flow immigrants. Leon specifically called for a crackdown on people-smugglers. But when asked if the Spanish authorities plan to repatriate Senegalese, Leon demurred.
Sep. 15, 2006 update: The Canaries having become famous as the weak link in Europe's immigration fence, a first boat carrying 216 Asian immigrants, apparently Pakistanis, is about to land there.
Also of note: the Spanish interior minister, Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba, said 59,000 illegal aliens have been expelled from Spain in 2006, with the pace ever-accelerating.
Nov. 19, 2006 update: The misery and dangers facing African would-be immigrants as they make the 1,250-mile crossing by pirogue from Senegal to the Canaries comes vividly to life in Hannah Godfrey's report from a Senegalese seacoast village called Diogue, in the Casamance region of southern Senegal. She writes in the Observer, "On a voyage of peril to the mirage of Europe":
Edward and Isaac managed to get on a boat leaving from Diogue, and were off the coast of Mauritania when a huge storm blew up. Everyone in the boat - including the ‘captain' - was so terrified that they decided to head back to Senegal. Two people died in the course of the voyage from exhaustion and sickness. Their bodies were thrown overboard. ‘It was like we had become animals,' Edward says afterwards. ‘I realised that it wasn't worth degrading ourselves, and risking our lives just to get to Europe, even though it means the end of our hopes of finding a way out of the dead end we are in. There is no work for us back home.' They know that the jobs they left in Gambia to go to Diogue will have been filled by others.
Not only have they lost their dream of a better life, Edward and Isaac have also lost the money that they had worked for a year to save up - the man who organised the voyage refused to reimburse them. Now they set off on the long journey back to Ghana. Isaac has a Spanish phrasebook tucked into his plastic bag. Will they make another attempt, once they have got some more money together? ‘When we were on that boat we saw into the pit,' he says. ‘We were so tightly packed in there that no one could move. There were a number of us who couldn't speak to anyone, because we didn't share the same language. After the storm the supplies of food and water began to run out. Most of us had never been at sea before. We were ill and scared, and then the people started dying...' His voice trails off. ‘I can't describe how awful it was. Nothing is worth that.'
Comment: Not for nothing does a 20-year-old in Diogue dub attempts to get to the Canaries "Europe Madness" and "a way of committing suicide."
Nov. 30, 2006 update: Frontex, the European Union new external border security agency, is not proving a great success – in the Canary Islands, Italy has contributed one airplane and one boat, Portugal has contributed one boat. Therefore Franco Frattini, vice president of the European Commission, is talking about the creation of a Europe-wide coast guard. This has obvious advantages, making it possible for Italy, Malta Spain, and other frontline countries to coordinate schedules, pool resources and exchange information. But it faces the EU problem of member states reluctant to relinquish their sovereign control over such a delicate matter as immigration.
Dec. 4, 2006 update: Christopher Caldwell has a 6,000-word essay on this topic in the Weekly Standard, "Europe's Future: The Senegalese (and the Malians, Mauritanians, Gambians, et al.) are coming to Spain—and staying," the first in-depth analysis of this topic in English, so far as I know. Some highlights, starting with the scope of the problem:
Thus far in 2006, 30,000 "boat people" have landed on Canary Island beaches—already six times last year's tally. The great majority come from Senegal. There are also Malians and Mauritanians, Gambians and Guineans, Congolese and Cameroonians, and others whom Spaniards don't usually think of as their neighbors, but who now consider Europe just a hop, skip, and a jump away. There are occasional boats full of Chinese and Bangladeshis, too. Spain isn't the only destination for boats pouring out of other continents. The Italian islands of Lampedusa and Pantelleria have received well over 10,000 boat people this year. Migrants from East Africa, Pakistan, and India are beaching boats launched in Libya on the shores of Malta and Greece. And boats are not the only way to bust into the E.U.—there are also land routes through Eastern Europe, and the majority of immigrants to Europe still get there by flying in as tourists or students and then overstaying their visas.
Then the special Spanish situation:
Spaniards have started to note that, in contrast to previous waves, these migrants seem to be coming to, not through, their country. Spain, which a decade ago thought it had an emigration problem, now finds itself the top immigrant destination on the entire continent. Its population has jumped to 44 million people, thanks to almost 4 million new immigrants. … Spain is now about 10 percent first-generation immigrant, and this has happened overnight. Much of the present migration is to cities. Foreigners make up 19 percent of the population (and 28 percent of the workforce) in Madrid. The Valencia region is 14 percent foreign-born. The Raval area of central Barcelona, where immigrants were exotic up until the early 1990s, is now a "majority minority" neighborhood.
Not only is immigration to Spain more sudden but it is also more severe than elsewhere in Europe:
Its population seems to have lost the appetite for procreation altogether. The average woman has 1.32 children, a figure that would have looked like a misprint to any social scientist before the 1980s. As a result, Spain's native-born population will begin contracting with shocking rapidity after 2014, and it is too late to do anything to stop it. Already Spain has gaping holes in its labor supply. The strawberry fields and clementine groves of Andalusia require tens of thousands of pickers every year. The tomato-growing greenhouses near AlmerĂa rely on Moroccan labor, and Eastern Europeans staff many tourist hotels.
In part, this is because
Spain's immigration controls are, by European standards, uniquely lax. Spain is the unlocked side-door of the European Union's house. And since the E.U.'s Schengen agreements eliminated old frontiers between member states almost a decade ago, once you get into Spain, there are no border guards to keep you out of the Netherlands, Germany, or wherever you choose to settle. If you imagine that Senegalese tend to gravitate towards France, where they speak the language and have a big established community, you are wrong. Experts at ENDA Tiers Monde, a Dakar-based think tank, say that France, while still popular for students, is far down on the list of desired work destinations, owing to its rigid labor market and relatively tough immigration laws. Italy and Spain are the countries most attractive to the latest wave of newcomers. …
Spanish laws towards foreigners are generous, and punctilious about human rights. They also invite chicanery. You cannot detain an immigrant for more than 40 days unless you charge him with a crime, and you cannot deport an immigrant unless you know where he comes from. If he can keep his mouth shut for a month or so, or if he can misdirect the bureaucracy until his 40 days have elapsed, he's in like Flynn. A common way to throw authorities off balance is to pretend to be from somewhere else. Since Spain does not have an extradition treaty with strife-torn Ivory Coast, for instance, many of the Senegalese who have arrived by boat in recent weeks have claimed to be from there (even though the two countries speak mutually exclusive sets of African languages). In October, Pakistan demanded that a half dozen boat people (out of hundreds taken off a rusty old freighter and "repatriated" there) be sent back to Spain. They turned out to be from Indian Kashmir, not Pakistanis at all. You have to be pretty unlucky to get repatriated. Of the 30,000 Senegalese who have arrived this year, only 4,000 have been sent back. The others are put on flights to the Spanish mainland, with an expulsion order in their pocket. Such orders are virtually never enforced. For a migrant, this is roughly a 7-out-of-8 chance of settling in Spain indefinitely: excellent odds.
In early 2005, Spain's Socialist prime minister JosĂ© Luis RodrĂguez Zapatero made life much easier for Spain's undocumented immigrants. He proposed to amnesty roughly a million of them, provided they could show they had been working in the country for several months. The opposition whittled the number down to about 700,000. Such amnesties were not new. The Aznar government had passed five of them since the mid-1990s. But Zapatero's was simpler and more open to abuse, and bigger than all previous amnesties combined. What is more, by announcing it many months in advance, he opened a window that would lure new immigrants into the country in order to set up a paper trail that would render them undeportable. And because of free movement between European states, the amnesty harvested the fury of politicians abroad, including the French interior minister and presidential hopeful Nicolas Sarkozy. …
But that does not exhaust the reasons to come to Spain. Under a 2000 law, registering with the local census (the padrĂłn municipal) permits access to health care and other services. An immigrant can be eligible for welfare services while existing below the radar of the enforcement authorities. The upside of such registration is that Spain may have a more accurate count of its immigrants than other countries. The downside is that it has rapidly mounting welfare dependency--300,000 immigrants now live off of social benefits. All told, the combination of easy admission and generous welfare has created what the newspapers call an efecto llamada. The most graceful way to translate the term is to say that Spain is not just accepting immigrants, it is summoning them.
Even the refugee camps in the Canaries—while overwhelmed by the waves of newcomers—are welcoming. Authorities have been easygoing about allowing Senegalese elders to organize camp life, and have done their best to ease overcrowding. In addition to the three centers in Tenerife and one in Gran Canaria, other facilities have been adapted to accommodate the overflow. The camp at Hoya FrĂa had gigantic circus tents erected outside it for much of the summer. A military barracks at Las Raices was converted to migrant housing. So was a discotheque in La Gomera.
Caldwell then looks at the dangerous passage:
There have been 600 cadavers pulled out of African waters this year, according to Froilán RodrĂguez, the immigration minister for the Canary Islands. In August, the European commissioner Franco Frattini of Italy alluded to a possible 3,000 dead. Angel Acebes, secretary-general of Spain's opposition Popular party, has thrown out the figure of 6,000. Some boats are lost altogether. The Canary current is where the Gulf Stream turns abruptly south along the African coast and then rushes west, back across the Atlantic. This past spring, a boat filled with immigrants who had left Senegal in January and suffered an engine failure was found floating, its passengers long dead, in waters off Barbados.
Even if everything goes perfectly, crossings are harrowing. These boats run at 5 or 10 knots, which will get you to the Canaries in 7 to 8 days if the weather is good and the seas are calm. There are no toilets and the stink, naturally, is unimaginable. There is no place to lie down and the benches offer nothing to lean back on. This means an almost sleepless week for many people.
But if you get on a bad boat, as 17-year-old Malang Kalela of Ziguinchor did, all bets are off. I met him at the Machado Escuela Hogar, a school for troubled teens near the village of Esmeralda that has been converted into a camp for underage migrants in Tenerife. Both motors on Malang's boat conked out, and only a good captain kept it, and the 80 passengers aboard, from drifting westward into oblivion. It arrived in Tenerife on its thirteenth day at sea, after the food, fresh water, and seasickness pills had run out. Worse, two people had leapt off the boat in the middle of one night, and drowned. Such incidents are common. Many of the migrants have never been at sea before and don't know how to swim..
A few more details on Frontex:
Spain asked for help from Frontex—the European Union border guard launched in 2005. Frontex has two big problems. The first is that it is a Potemkin agency, with a budget of only €15.8 million ($20 million). This makes it a coalition of the willing, and the coalition has not been very willing. Under Frontex's aegis, Spain has deployed one Guardia Civil helicopter to Mauritania and two more to Dakar. There was supposed to be an Italian boat, but as of this fall it was getting repaired. Finland promised to send a plane. There was a Portuguese destroyer operating far out to sea in the Cape Verde Islands.
Cross-posted at http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/577
West Africa - Europe's New Border
Mauritania, a country in West Africa far from Europe, has become the latest springboard for desperate would-be immigrants to reach Europe. They travel by boat for three days and nights to cover the 500 miles from Mauritania's long coastline to the Canary Islands, which is Spanish soil. Once in the Canaries, the whole of Europe lies before them.
The voyage is perilous and over a thousand Africans have died during the past four months while sailing the Atlantic Ocean in traditional wooden fishing canoes called pirogues, normally used for net-fishing expeditions. The vessels are uncovered, are usually powered by a single outboard engine, and rarely carry navigational or emergency equipment. Up to 40 per cent of those who attempt the crossing from Mauritania may not make it. Still, 8,519 Africans reached the Canaries in 2004, 4,751 in 2005, and over 3,500 so far in 2006. The Spanish government has detained at sea more than 1,000 migrants in the last 10 days alone.
Mauritania, one of the world's poorest countries, is unable to handle the influx. Its prime minister, Sidi Mohamed Ould Boubacar, said that the country. "can't control its borders and needs help against this massive wave of immigrants. We can't resist this growing pressure. We need help of all types: planes, boats, vehicles." He said the authorities arrested 3,900 migrants in 2005 and already 1,200 in the beginning of 2006. "What is arriving is unimaginable."
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Migrants in a high-sided wooden boat that set out from Mauritania and was intercepted by the Spanish coast guard off the Canary Islands. (Gustavo Gonzalez/ AFP/ Getty Images) |
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The increase appears to result from the crackdown at Ceuta and Melilla. Unable to reach there, the Canaries became the destination of choice. "The smugglers have just moved the boats south because the Moroccan police and border patrols are now stronger," says Manuel Pombo, a Spanish ambassador-at-large. Unable to travel from Morocco has made the journey much longer and more hazardous.
A delegation of Spanish officials has arrived for talks to establish an "urgent plan of co-operation" by which the Spanish government helps its Mauritanian counterpart patrol its coastline and establishes centers to process migrants in the country. Between 10,000 and 15,000 Africans, mostly from Senegal and Mali, are thought to be in Mauritania planning to get to the Canaries. (March 19, 2006)
Apr. 1, 2006 update: In an on-the-scene report, the Washington Post's Kevin Sullivan compellingly fleshes out this abstract problem by telling the story of a Senegalese electrician and father of two named Magat Jope, who made the three-day bus journey to Nouadhibou, a seatown of 90,000 people and the second-largest city in Mauritania:
Wealthy beyond belief in the eyes of destitute people almost everywhere, the European Union also draws an illicit flow of migrants from the former Soviet Union, China, Latin America and the Arab world. Together, these tides of people are adding up to one of the most significant migrations of current times. The new route from Africa appears to be far more dangerous than the older ones, but people keep coming. "If you are as poor as we are, you are not afraid of death," said Jope, 34, an electrician and polite father of two. "I want a house. I want to educate my children. The risk doesn't matter." …
On any day, the town's markets are filled with traders in flowing robes selling oranges and dates. There are nearly as many donkeys as cars on the rutted streets. Along the beaches, hundreds of open fishing boats deliver cargos of mullet, shark and bright-colored shellfish. Jope soon became aware there were many people like him in town, outsiders trying to blend in, avoid the police and find boats heading to the Canaries. They were from Mali, Gambia, Nigeria and other West African countries. A population boom and ballooning joblessness in many African countries, driven in part by a wave of subsistence farmers moving from their villages into cities, has caused thousands to risk the journey here.
Ahmed Ould Haye, local head of the Red Crescent, the Muslim counterpart of the Red Cross, estimated that about 15,000 migrants were milling around here waiting to go to the Canaries. Many work as laborers or fishermen to earn money for the voyage, which typically costs $1,200, Haye said. Some of them pool their funds and buy a narrow boat shaped like a canoe, pointed at both ends. Some pay fishermen to take them. Others deal with middlemen who arrange boat and skipper. Local authorities say a boat leaves nearly every night, jammed with as many as 60 people.
Finally, on Feb. 1, 2006, he began the sea journey:
he walked down to the beach in a cold winter breeze, paid about $10 for a worn orange lifejacket and stepped into a 40-foot fishing boat with 34 other people. He handed the captain $1,100. The canoe-like boat chugged away from shore powered by a 40-horsepower outboard motor and steered by the captain using a hand-held global positioning device.
Almost immediately, Jope said, passengers who were not used to being on the water began vomiting. The smell was overpowering. Jope, over six feet tall, found there was barely enough room for people to sit. His legs and ankles swelled so much that he couldn't straighten them. People prayed and talked quietly, he recalled. There was plenty of food and water, but no one could sleep, and the leaky boat needed constant bailing.
Four days out, they were intercepted by a Moroccan naval vessel. Sailors tied a line to the bow of the immigrants' boat and towed it for three days back to Nouadhibou. All the way, Jope felt devastated. When they approached the town, everyone on the boat jumped overboard and swam to shore, then ran away to avoid being detained and sent home. He never saw the captain again, and his $1,100 was gone.
Despite this experience, "Jope said he planned to go home to Senegal, pay his mother back, save some more, then come back to Nouadhibou to try again."
Rickard Sandell, an immigration specialist at the Real Instituto Elcano in Madrid, is quoted observing that "The frontier between Africa and Europe is turning into one of the most dangerous migratory passages ever seen." Further: "We are just seeing the start of something much, much bigger."
Apr. 12, 2006 update: "Spain to free 1,500 illegal immigrants into Europe" reads the Daily Telegraph headline. Some 3,800 illegal immigrants landed in the Canary Islands since the start of 2006 and Spanish authorities have been repatriating some of them to Mauritania by chartered aircraft.
But, under its liberal immigration laws, illegal migrants can be held for a maximum of 40 days. If officials then fail to establish their nationality, or discover that they come from a country such as Mali which has no repatriation agreement with Spain, they must be released. Most illegal arrivals will therefore have to be set free, officials said. Once released on the Spanish mainland, the migrants can make their way through continental Europe because of the border-free Schengen zone.
The paper indicates that most of them hope to make their way to Britain, France, and Italy.
Apr. 29, 2006 update: Mauritania finds itself hosting not only African-would-be-immigrants-to-Europe but also South Asians with the same ambitions, Heidi Vogt documents today in an Associated Press story today from the northern town of Zouerat.
Dozens of Indians, Bangladeshis and Pakistanis have turned up in Zouerat over the past 18 months, having been abandoned by the smugglers in the Sahara with little water, no food and no passports. No one knows how many others have died in the empty desert. … The Asians say they paid around $15,000 each to be smuggled to Europe. Now they are reduced to going from door to door offering to wash clothes and do odd jobs for food or money. Undocumented, many deep in debt to the smugglers who hold their passports, they have been living in a twilight zone between the homes they left and the homes they dreamed of finding. … The road to Europe is a long one - a 6,000 mile flight from India to West Africa, and then the illegal leg begins - some 1,000 miles over the Sahara in four-wheel drive vehicles and onward to a North African port from which the migrants will try to sneak into southern Europe in search of work.
Comment: That people who have $15,000 to spend on a one-way ticket will attempt such desperate means to reach Europe points to the depth of the problems the West as a whole now faces in controlling its borders. As I predicted nearly five years ago, the militarization of the frontiers and the use of force to fend off such immigrants is close to inevitable.
May 19, 2006 update: "The calmer seas of early summer [sic – it's still spring, DP] have seen a sharp rise in the numbers reaching the holiday islands," writes Mike Elkin in the Daily Telegraph. "More than 1,400 arrived in Tenerife and Gran Canaria in the past week, while 2,000 have landed this month, mostly from Senegal and Mali, compared with 4,751 in the whole of last year." The Spanish coast guard, which has 3 naval ships and 3 surveillance aircraft watching the seas between Africa and the Canaries, yesterday alone intercepted 7 boats carrying 483 people.
The Spanish government has responded with an urgent appeal for help and with an announcement that it is dispatching diplomats to several West African countries. Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos said a special ambassador and a team of diplomats would begin "three- to six-month" missions to such African countries as Cape Verde, Gambia, Verde, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Niger and Senegal. Prime Minister JosĂ© Luis RodrĂguez Zapatero sent letters to the leaders of Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, and Mali, asking for help to curb the flow of immigrants.
May 24, 2006 update: The European Union is hearing Spain's pleas. Franco Frattini, its justice and home affairs commissioner, said the Union "will provide operational support as fully as we can to the Spanish government to deal with an urgent and difficult situation." The EU's new external border security agency, Frontex, will send two emergency coordination teams, including surveillance planes, patrol boats, and rapid-reaction aid teams, to the Canary Islands. Eight EU member states (Britain, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, Slovenia and Sweden, plus another two whose names are not presently known) will provide soldiers and police officers. Madrid also hopes other EU states will help it set up "reception centers" ("holding pens" would be a more accurate description) in such key transit countries as Mauritania and Senegal to stem the flow of illegals.
In addition, the Spanish government is in discussions with the Senegalese authorities to reduce the influx of illegals setting out for the Canary Islands. But the talks did not lead to a formal repatriation agreement, for reasons that echo the U.S.-Mexican negotiations and point to difficulties to come.
After talks in the Senegalese capital, the Spanish secretary of state for foreign affairs, Bernardino LeĂłn, said his government believed that illegal immigrants should be sent back to their home countries. "The aim is to increase our cooperation on migration in all areas," LeĂłn told reporters. "What we need at this time is to speed up these repatriations and for people to realize that we're in a moment of crisis."
But Foreign Minister Cheikh Tidiane Gadio of Senegal made clear that his country would not sign an accord to automatically repatriate those intercepted. Senegal did, however, agree to work with Spain to try to halt departures of boats carrying illegal migrants and crack down on people-smuggling gangs. "There is cooperation, but we haven't signed an agreement," Gadio said at a news conference. However, he said that Senegal's government was willing to assist its nationals stranded abroad, including bringing them home if necessary. A team of Senegalese officials will fly to the Canary Islands to interview illegal migrants held there.
The Senegalese Navy said in a statement Monday that it had seized 19 boats over the weekend carrying 1,500 would- be migrants, including 60 suspected migrant-traffickers.
May 25, 2006 update: "Europe has to wake up and stop staring at its belly button," says Miguel Becerra, a senior policy adviser in the regional government of the Canary Islands. Writing in the International Herald Tribune, Renwick McLean provides some important information on the situation:
First, although the Spanish government vows that all the migrants will be deported back to their countries of origin, illegals intentionally shed all ways of identifying them, so deportation becomes all but impossible. A Red Cross director in Tenerife, Rubén Fernández, concludes that "Most of them will probably be set free." Because of the colonial legacy, most Africans who speak a European language know French or English, so they often set off for France, Britain or Belgium.
Second, a study by the Royal Elcano Institute in Madrid argues that Europe may be on the brink of a flood of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa, with potentially historic implications. Rickard Sandell, chief investigator for demography and population studies at the institute, wrote in the report that
Both economic and demographic data provide evidence that this is only the beginning of an immigration phenomenon that could evolve into one of the largest in history. … the mass assault on Spain's African border may just be a first warning of what to expect of the future. The situation is so serious that the possibility of a mass exodus if the African states fail to absorb their rapidly increasing working age population should not be ruled out. Nor can we rule out the possibility of armed conflict as a result of the political unrest that is likely to follow from a lack of effective management of the unprecedented increase in the labour supply
Third, as the Mauritanian police begin to crack down, migrants have begun leaving from Senegal, even further south. This means that the sea journey to the Canaries that some months ago lasted a mere 12-24 hours from Morocco now requires 7-10 days.
Fourth, McLean gives some sense of the sociology of the exodus.
According to Red Cross officials, the migrants typically leave with a pile of life vests, a compass or global positioning system, limited supplies of food and water and a small outboard motor suited more for the gentle currents of a small river than for the waves of the Atlantic. One recent arrival packed 78 migrants into what looked like an enormous canoe. The only method of steering was a rusty piece of iron fashioned into the shape of a rudder and attached to the back of the boat.
"You generally find two types of social classes in the boats," said JosĂ© Reyes, 31, a Red Cross official in Tenerife who has worked extensively in Africa. "There are the fisherman who don't know how to read, and the middle class ones from the cities, who always have books or magazines in their hands." The educated ones have no idea how to survive at sea or to command a boat, he said, and the fisherman could never afford an outboard motor and a global positioning system. So they come together, with the fishermen handling the boats and the others providing the supplies. …
"The motors are in terrible condition, and if they break, they are at the mercy of the currents and can end up anywhere," said Fernández of the Red Cross. "We have no idea how many have been lost, because the currents flow away from the islands and out towards the Americas," he said. "But surely many have been lost."
In a second International Herald Tribune article, Dan Bilefsky looks at the European Union's disarray in the face of the Canary Island illegals. In particular, the European Commission, for the second time in two years, could not agree on the African countries to which would-be migrants can be sent. Draft lists have included Benin, Botswana, Cape Verde, Ghana, Senegal, Mali, and Mauritius. But Mali will be excluded because of its practice of female genital mutilation.
May 30, 2006 update: I published a column today, "[West Africa:] New Route to the West," that reviews this problem and places it in its larger context.
Also today, 732 illegal immigrants reached the Canaries in eleven boats, a single-day record. And the joint Spanish-Mauritanian patrol launched on May 15 intercepted its first boat, with 37 would-be immigrants aboard, near the northern point of Mauritania.
June 7, 2006 update: For the first time, origin, transit, and destination countries have come together to seek solutions to the African-to-Europe immigration problem. Meeting for two days in Dakar, Senegal, senior officials from more than 50 Europe and Africa countries are working on an integrated multinational strategy and action plan. Of course, a tension exists between enforcement (the European priority) and root causes (the African priority), with the current draft calling for more of both. If all goes well, the plan will be adopted by European and African ministers at a migration summit July 10-11 in Rabat, Morocco.
Also of note: Senegal has suspended repatriation flights from the Canaries, saying its migrants had been mistreated by Spanish authorities, which Madrid denies.
June 10, 2006 update: Reporting on his conversations in Madrid, EU Commissioner for Justice, Freedom and Security Franco Frattini says that "in Mauritania some 50,000 people are concentrated to try to move north, and in Senegal another 20,000 are ready to go north, to cross the ocean to try to get to the Canary Islands." He also provides a startling statistic: "Only 4 or 5 per cent of asylum-seekers coming to Europe are genuine refugees and are accepted," he says. "More than 90 per cent are rejected, so they have to be repatriated."
A tourist gives water to an African immigrant landed on Tejita beach in Tenerife, Canary Islands. |
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They were given first aid by holidaymakers and locals who took some of the most severely dehydrated to hospitals near the town of Granadilla in their cars. "It was totally spontaneous," a local police officer, Javier Melián, told El PaĂs newspaper yesterday. "Every immigrant must have had four or five people looking after them. The beach was full of tourists."
Foreign sunbathers, especially Germans, were among those who helped while Red Cross units and the local police made their way to the beach on the southern coast of Tenerife. The tourists helped the immigrants wade through the last few metres of water on to the beach, gave them water to drink, dry clothes and held towels over them to keep them in the shade. Several children were among those who had to be looked after until the Red Cross arrived.
"We handed out surgical gloves to people in case the immigrants had illnesses, but they didn't really care about that," Mr Melián said. "I was especially impressed by the young people, who gave them their things and helped, even though they could not understand a word they said."
Aug. 22, 2006 update: The rising numbers of illegal African immigrants arriving in the Canaries – 512 on August 18, 324 on the 19th, 432 on the 20th – is exacerbating the crisis, prompting the Spanish government to undertake urgent diplomatic initiatives in Africa, including a doubling of development aid from the present €650 million.
Sep. 1, 2006 update: An anti-Spanish backlash is in the making, writes David Rennie in the Daily Telegraph's blog:
the European Commission finally turned round and said Spain should take some of the blame for the surge in illegal African migration to the Spanish Canary Islands. It was high time, frankly, to call for a reality check in Spain's months-long campaign of demanding EU aid, EU boats, planes and police patrols, to help try to control this year's unprecedented influx of migrants from Mauritania and further south (first written about, as far as the British press is concerned, by this paper).
The EU justice commissioner, Franco Frattini, gave a joint interview to several Spanish papers, and said – in a nutshell – that the Socialist government helped cause this crisis, with its amnesty for hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants, last year. Spain granted the amnesty without first controlling black-market labour or consulting EU leaders, enraging countries like Germany, who suspected that many of the regularized migrants would soon be turning up in their country, thanks to the border-less Schengen zone. It also seemed likely to be what immigration officials call a "pull factor" for fresh migrants.
To quote Mr Frattini: "If a member state opens a process to make immigrants legal without controlling black market labour, it encourages illegal migrants to enter this country and move on to another." Spain introduced a three-month amnesty for illegal immigrants in February 2005, saying it was the only way to regain control of a chaotic situation. Around 600,000 people took part in the plan.
Comment: The extremism and recklessness of the Zapatero government – so evident in other areas of public policy – are finally getting exposed with respect to immigration too.
Sep. 5, 2006 update: Records exist to be broken. Twelve boats (or more) of illegals reached the Canary Islands in the span of 36 hours this past weekend – 674 people on Saturday and 522 on Sunday. More than 20,000 Africans and others have arrived, including around 6,000 in August, compared to 4,751 for all of 2005.
Sep. 9, 2006 update: Muammar al-Qaddafi has added his own unique take to the illegal immigration problem, telling European states to pay €10 billion a year to Africans "if it really wants to stop migration toward Europe."
Sep. 13, 2006 update: As illegals are arriving to the Canaries in 2006 at five times the rate they did in 2005, Madrid government has declared they will all be repatriated. In this spirit, Spain's secretary of state for foreign affairs, Bernardino Leon, has held urgent talks in Dakar with the Senegalese president, Abdoulaye Wade, and Interior Minister Ousmane Ngom to find ways to stem the flow immigrants. Leon specifically called for a crackdown on people-smugglers. But when asked if the Spanish authorities plan to repatriate Senegalese, Leon demurred.
Sep. 15, 2006 update: The Canaries having become famous as the weak link in Europe's immigration fence, a first boat carrying 216 Asian immigrants, apparently Pakistanis, is about to land there.
Also of note: the Spanish interior minister, Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba, said 59,000 illegal aliens have been expelled from Spain in 2006, with the pace ever-accelerating.
Nov. 19, 2006 update: The misery and dangers facing African would-be immigrants as they make the 1,250-mile crossing by pirogue from Senegal to the Canaries comes vividly to life in Hannah Godfrey's report from a Senegalese seacoast village called Diogue, in the Casamance region of southern Senegal. She writes in the Observer, "On a voyage of peril to the mirage of Europe":
Edward and Isaac managed to get on a boat leaving from Diogue, and were off the coast of Mauritania when a huge storm blew up. Everyone in the boat - including the ‘captain' - was so terrified that they decided to head back to Senegal. Two people died in the course of the voyage from exhaustion and sickness. Their bodies were thrown overboard. ‘It was like we had become animals,' Edward says afterwards. ‘I realised that it wasn't worth degrading ourselves, and risking our lives just to get to Europe, even though it means the end of our hopes of finding a way out of the dead end we are in. There is no work for us back home.' They know that the jobs they left in Gambia to go to Diogue will have been filled by others.
Not only have they lost their dream of a better life, Edward and Isaac have also lost the money that they had worked for a year to save up - the man who organised the voyage refused to reimburse them. Now they set off on the long journey back to Ghana. Isaac has a Spanish phrasebook tucked into his plastic bag. Will they make another attempt, once they have got some more money together? ‘When we were on that boat we saw into the pit,' he says. ‘We were so tightly packed in there that no one could move. There were a number of us who couldn't speak to anyone, because we didn't share the same language. After the storm the supplies of food and water began to run out. Most of us had never been at sea before. We were ill and scared, and then the people started dying...' His voice trails off. ‘I can't describe how awful it was. Nothing is worth that.'
Comment: Not for nothing does a 20-year-old in Diogue dub attempts to get to the Canaries "Europe Madness" and "a way of committing suicide."
Nov. 30, 2006 update: Frontex, the European Union new external border security agency, is not proving a great success – in the Canary Islands, Italy has contributed one airplane and one boat, Portugal has contributed one boat. Therefore Franco Frattini, vice president of the European Commission, is talking about the creation of a Europe-wide coast guard. This has obvious advantages, making it possible for Italy, Malta Spain, and other frontline countries to coordinate schedules, pool resources and exchange information. But it faces the EU problem of member states reluctant to relinquish their sovereign control over such a delicate matter as immigration.
Dec. 4, 2006 update: Christopher Caldwell has a 6,000-word essay on this topic in the Weekly Standard, "Europe's Future: The Senegalese (and the Malians, Mauritanians, Gambians, et al.) are coming to Spain—and staying," the first in-depth analysis of this topic in English, so far as I know. Some highlights, starting with the scope of the problem:
Thus far in 2006, 30,000 "boat people" have landed on Canary Island beaches—already six times last year's tally. The great majority come from Senegal. There are also Malians and Mauritanians, Gambians and Guineans, Congolese and Cameroonians, and others whom Spaniards don't usually think of as their neighbors, but who now consider Europe just a hop, skip, and a jump away. There are occasional boats full of Chinese and Bangladeshis, too. Spain isn't the only destination for boats pouring out of other continents. The Italian islands of Lampedusa and Pantelleria have received well over 10,000 boat people this year. Migrants from East Africa, Pakistan, and India are beaching boats launched in Libya on the shores of Malta and Greece. And boats are not the only way to bust into the E.U.—there are also land routes through Eastern Europe, and the majority of immigrants to Europe still get there by flying in as tourists or students and then overstaying their visas.
Then the special Spanish situation:
Spaniards have started to note that, in contrast to previous waves, these migrants seem to be coming to, not through, their country. Spain, which a decade ago thought it had an emigration problem, now finds itself the top immigrant destination on the entire continent. Its population has jumped to 44 million people, thanks to almost 4 million new immigrants. … Spain is now about 10 percent first-generation immigrant, and this has happened overnight. Much of the present migration is to cities. Foreigners make up 19 percent of the population (and 28 percent of the workforce) in Madrid. The Valencia region is 14 percent foreign-born. The Raval area of central Barcelona, where immigrants were exotic up until the early 1990s, is now a "majority minority" neighborhood.
Not only is immigration to Spain more sudden but it is also more severe than elsewhere in Europe:
Its population seems to have lost the appetite for procreation altogether. The average woman has 1.32 children, a figure that would have looked like a misprint to any social scientist before the 1980s. As a result, Spain's native-born population will begin contracting with shocking rapidity after 2014, and it is too late to do anything to stop it. Already Spain has gaping holes in its labor supply. The strawberry fields and clementine groves of Andalusia require tens of thousands of pickers every year. The tomato-growing greenhouses near AlmerĂa rely on Moroccan labor, and Eastern Europeans staff many tourist hotels.
In part, this is because
Spain's immigration controls are, by European standards, uniquely lax. Spain is the unlocked side-door of the European Union's house. And since the E.U.'s Schengen agreements eliminated old frontiers between member states almost a decade ago, once you get into Spain, there are no border guards to keep you out of the Netherlands, Germany, or wherever you choose to settle. If you imagine that Senegalese tend to gravitate towards France, where they speak the language and have a big established community, you are wrong. Experts at ENDA Tiers Monde, a Dakar-based think tank, say that France, while still popular for students, is far down on the list of desired work destinations, owing to its rigid labor market and relatively tough immigration laws. Italy and Spain are the countries most attractive to the latest wave of newcomers. …
Spanish laws towards foreigners are generous, and punctilious about human rights. They also invite chicanery. You cannot detain an immigrant for more than 40 days unless you charge him with a crime, and you cannot deport an immigrant unless you know where he comes from. If he can keep his mouth shut for a month or so, or if he can misdirect the bureaucracy until his 40 days have elapsed, he's in like Flynn. A common way to throw authorities off balance is to pretend to be from somewhere else. Since Spain does not have an extradition treaty with strife-torn Ivory Coast, for instance, many of the Senegalese who have arrived by boat in recent weeks have claimed to be from there (even though the two countries speak mutually exclusive sets of African languages). In October, Pakistan demanded that a half dozen boat people (out of hundreds taken off a rusty old freighter and "repatriated" there) be sent back to Spain. They turned out to be from Indian Kashmir, not Pakistanis at all. You have to be pretty unlucky to get repatriated. Of the 30,000 Senegalese who have arrived this year, only 4,000 have been sent back. The others are put on flights to the Spanish mainland, with an expulsion order in their pocket. Such orders are virtually never enforced. For a migrant, this is roughly a 7-out-of-8 chance of settling in Spain indefinitely: excellent odds.
In early 2005, Spain's Socialist prime minister JosĂ© Luis RodrĂguez Zapatero made life much easier for Spain's undocumented immigrants. He proposed to amnesty roughly a million of them, provided they could show they had been working in the country for several months. The opposition whittled the number down to about 700,000. Such amnesties were not new. The Aznar government had passed five of them since the mid-1990s. But Zapatero's was simpler and more open to abuse, and bigger than all previous amnesties combined. What is more, by announcing it many months in advance, he opened a window that would lure new immigrants into the country in order to set up a paper trail that would render them undeportable. And because of free movement between European states, the amnesty harvested the fury of politicians abroad, including the French interior minister and presidential hopeful Nicolas Sarkozy. …
But that does not exhaust the reasons to come to Spain. Under a 2000 law, registering with the local census (the padrĂłn municipal) permits access to health care and other services. An immigrant can be eligible for welfare services while existing below the radar of the enforcement authorities. The upside of such registration is that Spain may have a more accurate count of its immigrants than other countries. The downside is that it has rapidly mounting welfare dependency--300,000 immigrants now live off of social benefits. All told, the combination of easy admission and generous welfare has created what the newspapers call an efecto llamada. The most graceful way to translate the term is to say that Spain is not just accepting immigrants, it is summoning them.
Even the refugee camps in the Canaries—while overwhelmed by the waves of newcomers—are welcoming. Authorities have been easygoing about allowing Senegalese elders to organize camp life, and have done their best to ease overcrowding. In addition to the three centers in Tenerife and one in Gran Canaria, other facilities have been adapted to accommodate the overflow. The camp at Hoya FrĂa had gigantic circus tents erected outside it for much of the summer. A military barracks at Las Raices was converted to migrant housing. So was a discotheque in La Gomera.
Caldwell then looks at the dangerous passage:
There have been 600 cadavers pulled out of African waters this year, according to Froilán RodrĂguez, the immigration minister for the Canary Islands. In August, the European commissioner Franco Frattini of Italy alluded to a possible 3,000 dead. Angel Acebes, secretary-general of Spain's opposition Popular party, has thrown out the figure of 6,000. Some boats are lost altogether. The Canary current is where the Gulf Stream turns abruptly south along the African coast and then rushes west, back across the Atlantic. This past spring, a boat filled with immigrants who had left Senegal in January and suffered an engine failure was found floating, its passengers long dead, in waters off Barbados.
Even if everything goes perfectly, crossings are harrowing. These boats run at 5 or 10 knots, which will get you to the Canaries in 7 to 8 days if the weather is good and the seas are calm. There are no toilets and the stink, naturally, is unimaginable. There is no place to lie down and the benches offer nothing to lean back on. This means an almost sleepless week for many people.
But if you get on a bad boat, as 17-year-old Malang Kalela of Ziguinchor did, all bets are off. I met him at the Machado Escuela Hogar, a school for troubled teens near the village of Esmeralda that has been converted into a camp for underage migrants in Tenerife. Both motors on Malang's boat conked out, and only a good captain kept it, and the 80 passengers aboard, from drifting westward into oblivion. It arrived in Tenerife on its thirteenth day at sea, after the food, fresh water, and seasickness pills had run out. Worse, two people had leapt off the boat in the middle of one night, and drowned. Such incidents are common. Many of the migrants have never been at sea before and don't know how to swim..
A few more details on Frontex:
Spain asked for help from Frontex—the European Union border guard launched in 2005. Frontex has two big problems. The first is that it is a Potemkin agency, with a budget of only €15.8 million ($20 million). This makes it a coalition of the willing, and the coalition has not been very willing. Under Frontex's aegis, Spain has deployed one Guardia Civil helicopter to Mauritania and two more to Dakar. There was supposed to be an Italian boat, but as of this fall it was getting repaired. Finland promised to send a plane. There was a Portuguese destroyer operating far out to sea in the Cape Verde Islands.
Cross-posted at http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/577
More on the North Carolina Jihadi, Mohammed Taheri-azar
In "Sudden Jihad Syndrome," I looked at the case of Mohammed Taheri-azar's attempt to kill students at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill by driving a rented Jeep Cherokee into a campus plaza on March 3, drawing conclusions about free-lance jihadis who appear out of nowhere and go on a rampage. I did so with just the barebones of information about the perpetrator and will report as more becomes public about his background and his attempted murder spree.
To start with, a local television station made available today a handwritten letter that Taheri-azar wrote on March 10 from prison, responding to its request for an interview, in which he explained his goals in the attack (thanks to PipeLineNews for the digital version):
March 10, 2006
Amber Rupinta
111 Liberty St.
Durham, NC 27701In the name of Allah, the merciful the compassionate
Dear Ms. Rupinta:
I've included a visitor's application. I left a one page letter for the police in the bedroom of my apartment at 303 Smith Level Rd. A-34 but in brief;
I live with the holy Koran as my constitution for right and wrong and definition of injustice.
The Koran also spelled Quran is a scientific and mathematical miracle so there can be no doubt that it is from a supernatural source, i.e. Allah the creator and controller of all things. Those who follow the Koran, i.e. the truth, are members of one family, as the Koran states. Allah in the Koran gives permission for those who follow Allah to attack those who have waged war against them, with the expectation of eternal paradise in case of martyrdom and/or the living of one's life in obedience of all of Allah's commandments found throughout the Koran's 114 chapters.
I've read all 114 chapters about 20 times since June of 2003 when I started reading the Koran. The U.S. government is responsible for the deaths and torture of countless followers of Allah, my brothers and sisters. My attack on Americans at UNC-CH March 3, was in retaliation for similar attacks orchestrated by the U.S. government on my fellow followers of Allah in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Saudi Arabia and other Islamic territories. I did not act out of hatred for America but out of love for Allah instead. I live only to serve Allah by obeying all of his commandments of which I am aware by reading and learning the contents of the Koran.
I would be glad to have an on-camera interview.
Sincerely
Mohammed Taheri-azar
Comment: That sentence about "I did not act out of hatred for America but out of love for Allah" deserves special pondering.
Then a local newspaper, the Herald Sun, published a second letter from Taheri-Azar:
3/10/2006
Mohammad Reza Taheri-Azar
T328156
1300 Western Blvd.
Raleigh, NC 27606In the name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate
Dear Ms. Velliquette;
To get right to the point, I will answer each of your questions:
- The Koran, the truth from Allah, the creator of all things, dictates in numerous places, e.g. Chapter "Muhammad," that Allah's followers have permission to attack these who have waged war against them, with eternal paradise as an expected reward so long as Allah's followers abide by all commandments listed throughout the Koran. The fact that the Koran is a scientific and mathematic miracle proves that it is from a supernatural source.
- Judging by the U.S. government's continuing invasions and killing of my fellow followers of Allah in Islamic territories in the Middle East, even after the deaths of more than 1,000 U.S. soldiers, I concluded that I didn't want to attack in the Middle East since there would likely be no significant change in the U.S. government's military presence in Islamic territories.
- I therefore decided to attack within the U.S. borders, hoping that the U.S. government would understand that my fellow followers of Allah will do everything necessary to defeat our enemies, even giving up a college degree from UNC Chapel Hill, as I did myself.
- I have no hatred for anyone. I only act out of love for Allah and I never hesitate to do as Allah has commanded in the Koran, which I have read all 114 chapters of approximately 15 times now, beginning in June 2003.
- In response to the 9/11/2001 attacks, I have always believed that the U.S. government should have immediately seeked peace instead of war.
- I discussed my plans with no one but Allah when I prayed to him in the days prior to March 3rd.
- I turned myself in to assure the world that I wasn't some insane person who went on a killing rampage suddenly.
- With Allah's help, I am prepared and will be prepared for a life sentence. I only fear and only respect Allah.
- Please see to it that this letter is broadcast throughout the world in its entirety.
Sincerely yours,
Mohammad Taheri-Azar
Then there is this reportage from Athena at "Terrorism Unveiled," dated March 6. First on Taheri-azar's marijuana smoking:
After speaking with someone who knew Taheri-Azar, a little bit more interesting details come into view. The guy I spoke with said Taheri-azar pledged his fraternity, Sig Ep, and that the frat "blackballed" him, meaning kicked him out because he was such a recluse and antisocial. They referred to him as "Mo." Sig Ep is a typical fraternity, fairly popular, and while "Animal House" would be an exagerration, it's a site of frequent parties. And while all frats do some form of community service, Sig Ep isn't your co-ed service fraternity that exists soley for that function.
The Sig Ep brother said that Taheri-azar was from a wealthy family, a frequent marijuana smoker and "most always high" and that he drank heavily as well. So much for being religiously pious. Though, it is reported that in the past year he turned away from these habits and became more religious.
Then on his lone-wolf behavior:
The guy I spoke with also said he seemed to have few friends and didn't "fit-in" socially. From this and his actions, Taheri-azar fits well as a "lone wolf" actors that go out and try to do the "will of Allah." Socially awkward and looking for something to legitimize themselves, to make them feel "worth" something---they turn to this type of behavior.
They find a purpose in a religious ideology because they are empty. He had money, he had an education from one of the finest schools in the country [I am biased], he had a job (although it was at a local fast food restaurant--Jimmy John's subs) he turned to this. Once again, this shows that it's not necessarily poverty that drives people to take on these type of causes. (See Marc Sageman's book Understanding Terror Networks)
(Mar. 14, 2006)
Mar. 16, 2006 update: The News & Observer makes available much additional biographical detail, all of which adds up to Taheri-azar sounding like a normal teenager with no hints of his future career as an ideological murderer.
Taheri-azar, a U.S. citizen, was born in Iran. His parents, Lily and Latif, were married in Tehran in 1972, but divorced in 2003, records show. Mohammed was the middle child with older and younger sisters. … The upper middle class household wasn't overtly religious, friends said. At South Mecklenburg High School, Taheri-Azar wore polo shirts and khakis, did not drink alcohol, ate fast food and played video games. "He was somewhat socially awkward, not to the point that he would shy away from people, but he would never make an effort to go out," said Justin Kirschbrown, a UNC-CH senior and high school classmate who also worked with Taheri-azar at a Best Buy in Charlotte.
He was reserved—"He didn't even cuss," said Sean Cordova, another high school friend—but also stubborn. Taheri-azar was known for making provocative comments in class, just to challenge teachers. "He would dig his heels in even when he was in the wrong," said Phillip Bush, a classmate at South Mecklenburg and UNC. "In high school, you kind of respected it."
Cars revealed a wild side. Taheri-azar claimed to have gotten his license at 12 and talked about driving cars in the Iranian desert, Kirschbrown said. "That was the thing with Mo—you never knew if he was lying," Kirschbrown said last week. A South Mecklenburg yearbook caption labeled him "South's Speedster." In his souped-up Eagle Talon, Taheri-azar would race on Charlotte's highways, often topping 100 mph, friends said. "I think he had the fastest car in school," said Cordova, who remembered watching Taheri-azar lose control in a street race, resulting in two 360-degree turns on a Charlotte highway. Between 2001 and 2003, police ticketed Taheri-azar four times for unnecessary honking, driving down the middle of two lanes of traffic, and failure to obey directions at a police checkpoint. He was last ticketed in June 2003 for traveling at 74 mph in a 45-mph zone along N.C. 54 in Carrboro.
At UNC-CH, Taheri-azar spent time with high school friends at first. He and his first freshman year roommate—a friend from South Mecklenburg—didn't get along, and Taheri-azar moved out in fall 2001. Taheri-azar dropped out the next semester, UNC officials said, but he re-enrolled that summer. He volunteered as an emergency department aide at UNC Hospitals in 2001-2002 and 2004-2005, said Stephanie Crayton, a spokeswoman for UNC Health Care. He did menial chores—stocking medical supplies, fetching wheelchairs and delivering food trays.
In his sophomore year, he was set to move in with another high school acquaintance, Philip Brodsky, but started hanging out with a different group. Brodsky rarely ran into Taheri-azar after that. At one point, out of the blue, Taheri-azar sent e-mail to old friends. "I think the e-mail was like, ‘We haven't talked in a while but we used to be friends. I just wanted to say if I ever did anything to offend you, I'm sorry,' " Brodsky recalled.
Taheri-azar graduated from UNC-CH in December, and apparently had considered graduate school, but at the time of the attack, he was working on Franklin Street in a sub shop.
As for the attack itself:
Police say he plotted the attack for months. About two weeks before, Taheri-azar went shopping for an SUV—a Porsche Cayenne, some of which cost more than $110,000. He strolled into Performance Automall in Chapel Hill. "He just came in and looked at them, ... said he might want to buy one," said Scott Trombley, retail sales manager. In the end, Taheri-azar rented a Jeep Grand Cherokee.
And about Taheri-azar's motives and plans, from a letter he wrote to a News & Observer reporter, received on March 15:
It was fair for me to attack those people because, whether they claim to or not, they support the U.S. government as long as they are in its territory and they are not attacking it to overthrow it, attacking by physical and violent force, to be exact. … If Allah wills, I will plead guilty to all 18 charges currently against me and I expect a life term in prison.
Taheri-azar clamed that the Koran permits him to "to punish the U.S. government, the enemy of my brothers and sisters in religion." He looks forward to using his court proceedings to broadcast his message to the world.
Mar. 24, 2006 update: The letter Mohammed Taheri-azar left in his apartment for police to find on March 3 has now been published in full.
In the name of Allah, the merciful, the compassionate.
To whom it may concern:
I am writing this letter to inform you of my reasons for premeditating and attempting to murder citizens and residents of the United States of America on Friday, March 3, 2006 in the city of Chapel Hill, North Carolina by running them over with my automobile and stabbing them with a knife if the opportunities are presented to me by Allah.
I did intend to use a handgun to murder the citizens and residents of Chapel Hill, North Carolina but the process of receiving a permit for a handgun in this city is highly restricted and out of my reach at the present, most likely due to my foreign nationality.
I am a servant of Allah. I am 22 years of age and I was born in Tehran, Iran. My father, mother and older sister immigrated to the United States in 1985 when I was two years of age and I've lived in the United States ever since.
I attended elementary, middle and high school in North Carolina and I was accepted into the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I began my college career in August 2001 and graduated in December 2005 with a bachelor's degree in psychology and philosophy with Allah's help.
I do not wish to pursue my career as a student any further because I have no desire to amass the impermanent and temporary fame and material wealth this world has to offer. However I made the decision to continue my studies and to graduate from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill so that the world will know that Allah's servants are very intelligent.
Due to the killing of believing men and women under the direction of the United States government, I have decided to take advantage of my presence on United States soil on Friday, March 3, 2006 to take the lives of as many Americans and American sympathizers as I can in order to punish the United States for their immoral actions around the world.
In the Qur'an, Allah states that the believing men and women have permission to murder anyone responsible for the killing of other believing men and women. I know that the Qur'an is a legitimate and authoritative holy scripture since it is completely validated by modern science and also mathematically encoded with the number 19 beyond human ability. After extensive contemplation and reflection, I have made the decision to exercise the right of violent retaliation that Allah has given me to the fullest extent to which I am capable at present.
I have chosen the particular location on the University campus as my target since I know there is a high likelihood that I will kill several people before being killed myself or jailed and sent to prison if Allah wills. Allah's commandments are never to be questioned and all of Allah's commandments must be obeyed. Those who violate Allah's commandments and purposefully follow human fabrication and falsehood as their religion will burn in fire for eternity in accordance with Allah's will.
Sincerely yours,
Mohammed Reza Taheri-Azar
Mohammed Taheri-azar read a paperback copy of the Koran he brought with him during almost all of the witness testimony against him at his two-hour long probable cause hearing on March 24, when probable cause was indeed found on multiple counts and he will be going to trial. (News & Observer photo by Harry Lynch) |
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Mar. 25, 2006 update: Taheri-Azar's older sister Laila read a statement to the press after the conclusion of his probable cause hearing yesterday. She
described her brother as a "kind, gentle and pure soul," and as someone who loved animals, fishing, camping and race cars. He wouldn't permit people to kill "a spider, a fly, a roach" in his presence. She said Taheri-Azar, a U.S. citizen who was born in Iran, had moved to the United States with his family when he was 2. He speaks no Arabic and only rudimentary Farsi, the native language of most Iranians that is not related to Arabic.
Laila Taheri-Azar said the family condemned her brother's actions and was shocked and saddened by them. She apologized to the victims on behalf of the family. "We beg of you not to rush to judgment," she said, adding that the family was concerned about her brother's state of mind.
Sep. 18, 2006 update: The Daily Tar Heel provides an update on Taheri-Azar in "Pit attack leaves wake" by Shannan Bowen.
"While in prison, Taheri-Azar has written more than 30 letters to The Daily Tar Heel describing his unguided quest into Islam and the religious book he says grants him permission to kill."
"At his last hearing June 21, Taheri-Azar initially voiced a request to represent himself and dismiss James Williams, his court-appointed public defender. Judge Carl Fox told Taheri-Azar he would have to undergo psychological evaluations in order to represent himself, and Taheri-Azar agreed to keep his legal counsel."
"Taheri-Azar has yet to enter a plea. In a letter dated May 23, Taheri-Azar writes he will plead not guilty, and he will never carry out additional attacks and hopes to continue working in the country. ‘Whether I intend to uphold the promise is something known to myself and Allah, which I can neither confirm nor deny, for the court,' he writes in a letter dated May 30. But Taheri-Azar announced at his last court appearance June 21 that he would enter a guilty plea."
"Taheri-Azar writes that he was not raised a Muslim. He was born in Iran and came to the United States when he was 2 years old. He and his family attended a Baptist church in Charlotte when he was about 4, and he attended Catholic school in ninth grade. Just three years ago, Taheri-Azar began reading the Quran out of curiosity of his heritage. In one letter he states: ‘Gradually I took it upon myself to read the Quran as much as I could each evening, and I began to abide by its commandments, e.g. praying and being kind to my parents, etc. However, after beginning to study Islamic fundamentalism on my own in about July 2004, I began to focus more on the militant verses throughout the Quran.' After graduating from UNC with degrees in psychology and philosophy, he wanted to join an Iraqi insurgency or enlist in the military so he could drop a nuclear bomb over Washington, D.C. Taheri-Azar also writes that he has received no formal training on the Quran."
"Taheri-Azar writes that several verses in the Quran grant Allah's followers the right to kill in his name. ‘Allah demands of believers to retaliate violently against persons responsible for attacking them or their fellow believers around the world,' Taheri-Azar writes in a letter dated April 27."
"Taheri-Azar also distances himself from MSA and other organizations. In a letter dated June 3 he writes that MSA ‘is an organization meant to lead people astray from truth'."
Separation of Civilizations?
I recently wrote a column on the separation of civilizations, "How the Cartoon Protests Harm Muslims," and here will follow the extent to which that trend is continuing or not.
Mar. 10, 2006 update: The UAE purchase of P&O Ports North America, giving it a major presence in U.S. ports, prompted such a populist backlash that the UAE company in question, Dubai Ports World, had to agree to sell off the U.S. holdings. The huge flap is expected to lead to a reduction of Arab investment in the United States and also is likely to lead to other consequences – not just a chill in trade with the Muslim world but also a reduction in other relations. For example, the Wall Street Journal ran a story today, "Donor Fallout From Port Flap," suggesting that "hard feelings" will prompt some Arab philanthropists and governments to reduce their contributions to U.S. nonprofits and government agencies.
Mar. 20, 2006 update: Evidence in the other direction comes in an article by Jeff Chu, "Coming Back to School," in Time Magazine. He reports that in 2005 the U.S. and Saudi governments agreed on a project by which, over the next four years, the Saudi authorities will pay for as many as 20,000 young Saudis to study in the United States. For its part, Washington "has pledged to speed visa processing for the students—while still running full background checks and in-person interviews at the consulate in Jidda." The program has already brought more than 6,600 Saudis to American campuses, thus raising their numbers above pre-9/11 levels.
Apr. 21, 2006 update: The Wall Street Journal provides specifics about the growing Muslim-American economic "chasm" in "Mideast Money Pinch" by Yasmine El-Rashidi.
U.S. visits by Saudi Arabians, for example, fell to 18,573 in 2004, the last year for which statistics are available, from 72,891 in 1999, Commerce Department figures show. That represents an especially pronounced drop in tourist dollars because Saudi visitors spend three times as much per person as any other group of U.S. tourists, $9,368 per trip to the U.S., the Commerce Department says. Visa hassles have affected export businesses, too, Arabs and Americans say, by placing a wall between U.S. companies and prospective clients who may turn to countries to which travel is easier.
Arab tourists, deterred in part by U.S. visa hassles, are flocking to other burgeoning tourist destinations close to home, such as Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, which offers resort hotels, theme parks and shopping malls patterned on U.S.-style attractions. Jay Rasulo, president of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, has been outspoken about how the visa process deters tourists. Mr. Rasulo told a recent travel-industry gathering that U.S. share of international travel has dropped by double digits since 2000, to its all-time low, dropping by "about $20 billion a year." …
In the health-care industry, immediately after Sept. 11, the number of Arab patients at high-end medical clinics such as the Cleveland Clinic and the Mayo Clinic immediately fell by 20% to 50%, say industry officials. The fallout hit more than the clinics. High-profile Arab patients often came to the U.S. for lengthy treatments along with large families and staffs. When former U.A.E. President Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan traveled to Cleveland in 2000 for a kidney transplant, he and his entourage of hundreds stayed for four months. All needed to be fed, transported and housed during that time. …
As for education, U.S. colleges and universities, once highly desirable destinations for wealthy Arabs, have seen a steep drop in Middle Eastern students, losing as much as $43 million a year. The consistently steepest decline comes from Saudi Arabia, which sent 14% fewer students to the U.S. last year, according to the International Institute of Education. Enrollment by students from Muslim nations in general has fallen steeply as well, evidence that Middle Easterners aren't alone in finding America a more forbidding destination since Sept. 11. … Saudi Arabia's minister of higher education recently unveiled a "look east" strategy for education. An increasing number of students, he said, will be sent to China, India, Malaysia, Singapore and South Korea.
May 17, 2006 update: "US hospitals lose Saudi patients and income" reads the Boston Globe story written by Farah Stockman, confirming the pattern I have discerned.
Saudi Arabia has shut down a decade-old program that brought patients to the United States for medical treatment and paid for their care, a move that could translate into millions in lost annual income for Boston-area hospitals. Saudi diplomats say the growing US delays in granting visas to Saudi citizens, because of stricter rules imposed on visitors from the Middle East after the Sept. 11 attacks, were a major factor in the decision to halt the program in recent weeks. It was funded by a Saudi prince's charity. Two similar programs associated with the Saudi armed forces and the Ministry of Health will be sharply scaled back but will continue to bring some patients to US hospitals, the diplomats said.
This is part of a larger pattern of Saudis staying away from the United States since 9/11: "The number of "B" visas -- those issued for medical reasons, business, or tourism -- to Saudis plummeted from 56,912 in 2001 to 14,403 in 2002, according to the State Department. Last year, it rose to 22,621, after President Bush met with Crown Prince Abdullah -- who is now king -- at Bush's ranch in Texas and promised to ease the visa restrictions."
June 6, 2006 update: In the aftermath of an anti-terror raid in east London on June 2, which led to the arrest of Abul Koyair, 20, and the shooting and arrest of his brother, Mohammed Abdul Kahar, 23, a number of Muslims are rethinking their presence in Great Britain, according to Arifa Akbar in the Independent. Here are two excerpts from the article:
Saeed Butt, 49, who moved back to Pakistan with his children after the July bombings last year, said he was relieved he was no longer living in east London. His return to the Forest Gate area on holiday coincided with the police raid. "I came to this country four decades ago but left last year with my children who were born here because I felt, more and more, like we were being picked on. I didn't want my children brought up feeling unsafe. Now I feel that anyone can wake up in the night and have their house raided. The intelligence needs to be 100 per cent if they are going to do what they did on Friday," he said.
Mohammed Azhar, a Kashmiri Briton who owns a furniture shop metres from the police cordon on Lansdown Road, said people were now "terrified" of being mistaken for extremists. "People feel unsafe and are thinking, ‘Ve should go', and these are people who have given a lot to this country. They have worked 12 hours a day, seven days a week. We are angry and we are scared. It' s a case of shooting first and asking questions later. It's day four and where's the evidence? They can say anyone is a terrorist," he said.
June 28, 2006 update: Michael Freund of the Jerusalem Post reports that U.S. non-immigrant visas to Saudi nationals in FY 2006 are double what they were in FY 2005. (The fiscal year runs October 1-September 30.) Here are the recent figures:
- 2001 - 83,761
- 2002 - 30,065
- 2003 - 23,254
- 2004 - 22,235
- 2005 - 22,521 (9,338 through June 10)
- 2006 - 18,683 (through June 10)
Amanda D. Rogers-Harper, a spokeswoman for the US State Department, commented on this increase: "We are pleased to see an increase in visa applicants at posts around the world, including Saudi Arabia," adding that this year's increase could be attributed to "a new student scholarship program funded by the government of Saudi Arabia, which encourages students to pursue their studies in the US. "We hope to see a continuation of this positive momentum."
July 11, 2006 update: By a showing of hands on July 10, the Egypt parliament graciously but narrowly approved the acceptance of €60 million in loans from the Danish taxpayer for such projects as provising drinking water, setting up an electricity generation wind farm, and building grain silo. Opposition members insisted, however, that the hand count was inaccurate and opponents actually outnumbered supporters of Danish aid. One member of the ruling party member, Mustafa el-Katatny, explained his attitude: "I feel bitter in my heart towards Denmark but I accept the agreement if it is in Egypt's interest."
July 11, 2006 update: By a show of hands on July 10, the Egypt parliament graciously but narrowly approved the acceptance of €60 million in loans from the Danish taxpayer for such projects as providing drinking water, setting up an electricity-generation wind farm, and building grain silos. Opposition members insisted, however, that the hand count was inaccurate and opponents actually outnumbered supporters of accepting the Danish aid. One member of the ruling party member, Mustafa el-Katatny, explained his attitude: "I feel bitter in my heart towards Denmark but I accept the agreement if it is in Egypt's interest."
Aug. 5, 2006 update: The Sharif University of Technology Association has met every two years since 2000, bringing together alumni and professors of one of Iran's foremost technology institutions. To commemorate the hundredth anniversary of the 1906 earthquake, SATU chose the Hyatt Regency in Santa Clara this year, expecting about 650 people to show up. About 120 SATU of the approximately 300 Iranians who applied received U.S. entry visas from the consulate in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and elsewhere (Washington has no diplomatic presence in Iran). But as many as 100 Iranian travelers were detained over the last week when on arrival in the United States, starting on July 25, when Kourosh Elahidoost was turned away (he says) "for reasons of national security."
Those denied entry had a choice: withdraw their applications and return to Iran, or contest the revocation and face a ban on a visa in the future. Most chose the first option, after spending the night in what they called "jail-like" conditions. Bureau of Consular Affairs spokeswoman Laura Tischler declined comment on the case, citing confidentiality. Visas "can be revoked at anytime, when there are indications of possibility of ineligibility for admission."
Aug. 16, 2006 update: The neologism "Muslim digital ghetto" refers to the fact that Muslims living in the West tune into their own television channels, as explained by the BBC's Torin Douglas. He quotes Navid Akhtar, a TV documentary maker:
there is definitely now a digital ghetto. People just don't watch CNN, they definitely don't watch mainstream TV, they don't watch the BBC, because for very little money you can get Pakistani TV and people have just tuned out. That includes members of my own family. Often when I make programmes and talk to people, they didn't watch them because they were too busy watching something on, say, the Islam Channel. People just aren't attuned to British ideas.
Douglas notes that
There are now almost 40 Asian TV channels available on the Sky satellite, ranging from entertainment channels such as Zee Music and B4U Movies to Star News, Al Jazeera and Abu Dhabi TV. Others can be picked up on different satellite systems on sale in areas such as Southall and Walthamstow. Some, like Zee Music, are free-to-air, others require a subscription. A few - including the Islam Channel - broadcast in English, but most are in other languages.
Douglas then cites data suggesting that the younger generation is more attuned to British media.
Aug. 28, 2006 update: Jacques Chirac, president of France, weighed in on this topic, in a much-noted speech. He was discussing Lebanon and then digressed: "Au-delĂ de ces affrontements se profile un danger majeur, celui du divorce entre les mondes, Orient contre Occident, islam contre chrĂ©tientĂ©, riches contre pauvres." In English: "Beyond these conflicts lies a major danger – a divorce between worlds, East against West, Islam against Christianity, rich against poor."
Aug. 29, 2006 update: On the occasion of a bombing in the Turkish resort town of Antalya, killing 3 and wounding 20, the British Herald provides a list of terrorist attacks against Western tourists. Though far from complete (it does not include, for example, the attack on tourists in Djerba in 2002), it does make a point:
- April 2006 – Two Britons injured in blast which killed at least 24 people in three bomb attacks in Egypt.
- July 2005 – A bomb rips through a minibus in the western Turkish holiday resort of Kusadasi, killing at least five people, including a British woman and an Irish woman. Ten Britons among more than 60 killed when Sharm el Sheikh in Egypt rocked by three explosions.
- August 2004 – Five British tourists injured in bomb attack in Prague. Owners of local casino thought to be target of the bombing. Some 500 Britons among thousands of travellers and holidaymakers caught up in violence in Kathmandu as suspected Maoist rebels set off two powerful bombs.
- July 2003 – 13 people, including one British tourist, injured in bombing offensive by Eta, the Basque terror group, on Costa Blanca resorts of Benidorm and Alicante.
- October 2002 – 28 Britons among 202 people killed in Bali nightclub bombings. Police blamed Jemaah Islamiyah, a terror group linked with al Qaeda.
- November 1997 – Three Britons shot dead by Islamic militant gunmen along with 58 tourists and four Egyptians in Luxor.
The impact everywhere of terrorism against tourism is to separate civilizations. Here is a snippet from the Antalya coverage:
Antalya is a popular tourist resort, particularly with Russians, Germans and Israelis. Millions of foreigners flock to the long Turkish coastline each summer. Locals are concerned the Ł9.5bn tourist industry, a powerful motor of the Turkish economy, may be further damaged by the attacks, the latest in a string of bombings in the past year. There was little immediate impact on Turkish financial markets, but one hotel owner in Marmaris said cancellations had already started to flow in. Mesut Isik, who owns a photographic shop in Antalya, was pessimistic. "The tourists have already been few this season and from now on none will come. Shops have no option but to close."
Sep. 9, 2006 update: Anti-separation forces got a big boost (as did efforts to broaden Saudi influence in the United States) with the new educational exchange program brokered by President George W. Bush and Saudi King Abdullah. The program, paid for by the Saudi royal family, quintuples the number of Saudi students and scholars in the United States to 15,000 by the end of the 2006-07 academic year. When that number of students is reached, the kingdom will be have more students at American universities than either Mexico or Turkey. In a rare note of skepticism, Clark Kent Ervin, a former inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security, finds that proper safeguards are not yet in place effectively to check the background of all applicants.
Sep. 20, 2006 update: But will the Saudi students actually go to the United States? It's hard to turn down an all-expenses paid scholarship to a top university, but Saleh Fareed writes in the Saudi newspaper, Arab News, that this might be the case. As a result of Homaidan Al-Turki's being sentenced in Colorado to 27 years in prison for enslaving and raping his maid, Fareed writes, "Saudis are thinking twice before sending their children to study in America."
He provides some quotes and specifics:
- "Such discrimination and humiliation would discourage parents from even thinking about sending their children to study in the US," said Muhammad Al-Enezi, 39. Al-Enezi, a teacher at one of the largest high schools in Jeddah, said that many of his students who had been contemplating of studying in the US now showed no interest in heading there. "Most of them refuse to continue their college education in the US and they have the support of their parents. It's obvious that they've decided so after hearing about the mistreatment and intimidation suffered by other Saudi students in the US," he said.
- Jamal Al-Najjar, a government employee and father of two, urged the Saudi government to put pressure on the US administration to change its policy toward Saudi students. Al-Najjar hopes that Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah will interfere and bring a solution to the issue relating to Al-Homaidan, who was sentenced in the US under "false accusations." "I am not going to sacrifice my sons by sending them to the US as long as they keep mistreating our children and abusing them for no reasons. My two sons will be graduating this year from high school and I will never ever think of sending them to America," Al-Najjar said. "I know of many parents that have changed their plans and are sending their children to other destinations such as Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. The US is not the right place for our children and I hope all parents do not think about sending their children to any part of the US," he added.
Fareed notes the large drop in Saudi students in the United States and then finds a Saudi student to explain why:
"This is because of the new political climate after Sept. 11, 2001, and the fact that Muslims in the US are facing many difficulties for mistakes that could be dealt in a less aggressive way," said 29-year-old Ahmed Al-Falih, who is currently studying at a university in the US Midwest. Speaking to Arab News by telephone, he described the situation of Saudi students as unsafe. "Many students feel scared. They expect the unexpected just like Al-Turki who has been accused of rape and other things that he did not do."
Meanwhile, a Saudi tourist returning from the United States recently expressed anger and frustration at mistreatment suffered at the hands of US authorities when he was detained for a couple of hours at the J.F. Kennedy Airport. "I thought things would have calmed down after all these years but the situation is still tense and Arabs are discriminated against and mistreated," said Mamdouh Al-Saeed, 24. Al-Saeed added that he would not feel comfortable going to the US for further education in the current climate.
Comment: If the mood is anything as presented here, one wonders which Saudis will take their lives in their hands and foray on to an American campus.
Sep. 24, 2006 update: In an unusual move, two Muslim countries, Tunisia and Egypt, have banned leading European newspapers because of articles critical of Islam. The September 19 edition of Le Figaro, containing an article by Robert Redeker, "Face aux intimidations islamistes, que doit faire le monde libre?" ("Confronted by Islamist intimidation, what should the free world do?") was confiscated in Tunisia on the grounds that it contained "offensive material about Islam." Both that issue of Le Figaro and the September 16 issue of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung were banned in Egypt, the latter due to an article by Egon Flaig, "Der Islam will die Welteroberung: Die Kriegsregeln sind flexibel, das Kriegsziel bleibt: Mohammeds kämpferische Religion" ("Islam wants world conquest: War rules are flexible, the war goal remains: Mohammed's warlike Religion"). Egypt's Information Minister Anas el-Feki issued a decree that . "They published articles which disparaged Islam and claimed that the Islamic religion was spread by the sword and that the Prophet ... was the prophet of evil."
Nov. 14, 2006 update: "Saudis return in record numbers to US universities" is the headline in the Saudi Gazette. Their total comes to 10,936 at 733 educational institutions, including 1,653 females. An additional 3,000 Saudi students are expected to arrive in early 2007, bringing the total to 14,000 students. The prior record was 10,440 in the academic year 1980/1981, according to the International Education Institution in New York. In September 2001, the number of Saudi students stood at 5,579. Their number dipped as low as 3,035 in the academic year 2004/2005. The current students' favorite states are California, Florida, Colorado, followed by Virginia. Gregory Gause III, Middle East studies professor at the University of Vermont commented (in a back-translation from Arabic) that "relations at the government level are strong but at the people's level there is a lot of mistrust and hatred. This scholarship program is a good step towards eradicating some of the mistrust and hatred."
Cross-posted at http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/578
American Attitudes toward Islam and Muslims – Which Direction?
A Washington Post-ABC News poll on American attitudes towards Islam and Muslims, published today, is garnering much attention because of its negativity, but the numbers differ little from those of almost three years earlier. The current one finds that:
- 33 percent say Islam encourages violence against non-Muslims and 54 percent call it a peaceable religion.
- 46 percent of respondents have unfavorable attitudes towards Islam and 43 percent have favorable attitudes.
- 58 percent say there are more violent extremists within Islam than in other religions, 34 percent say about the same, and 3 percent say fewer.
In contrast, the July 2003 survey conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press (subtitled "Growing Number Says Islam Encourages Violence Among Followers"), analyzed by me at "[Fixing] Islam's Image Problem," found
- 44 percent say Islam is likely "to encourage violence among its believers."
- 51 percent have positive views of American Muslims.
- 31 percent say the would not vote for a Muslim as a candidate for president.
- 22 percent reply affirmatively to the question, do "the Muslim religion and your own religion have a lot in common?"
On the key question, the 2003 survey found 44 percent believing that Islam encourages violence and this new one only 33 percent. It is hard to see where the Washington Post came up with the conclusion that a "growing proportion of Americans are expressing unfavorable views of Islam." (March 9, 2006)
Apr. 12, 2006 update: CBS News reports a poll of Americans taken on April 6-9, which really does find a more negative view of Islam:
- 45 percent replied "unfavorable" to the question, "What is your impression of Islam?" and 19 percent "favorable." In February 2002, the percentages were 33 percent unfavorable and 30 percent favorable, pointing to what CBS terms "sinking perceptions of Islam."
The poll finds that Islam has the lowest favorables among Americans than any mainstream religion:
- 58 percent have favorable attitudes toward Protestantism/Other Christians, 48 percent favorable toward the Catholic religion, 47 percent favorable toward the Jewish religion, 31 percent favorable toward "Christian fundamentalist religions," 20 percent favorable toward the Mormon religion, 19 percent favorable toward Islam, and 8 percent favorable toward Scientology.
Cross-posted at http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/587
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