首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
Even if they produced no other positive result, the attacks on the London Underground have compelled Europeans of all faiths to
Even if they produced no other positive result, the attacks on the London Underground have compelled Europeans of all faiths to
admin
2011-06-24
81
问题
Even if they produced no other positive result, the attacks on the London Underground have compelled Europeans of all faiths to think with new urgency about the Continent’s Muslim minority. Such a reckoning was long overdue. Some left-wing politicians, like London’s mayor, Ken Livingstone, have chosen to emphasize the proximate causes of Muslim anger, focusing on the outrage widely felt in Islamic immigrant communities over the war in Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But the harsh reality is that the crisis in relations between the European mainstream and the Islamic diaspora has far deeper roots, consoling as it might be to pretend otherwise.
Indeed, the news could scarcely be worse. What Europeans are waking up to is a difficult truth: the immigrants who perform the Continent’s menial jobs, and, as is often forgotten, began coming to Europe in the 1950’s because European governments and businesses encouraged their mass migration, are profoundly alienated from European society for reasons that have little to do with the Middle East and everything to do with Europe. This alienation is cultural, historical and above all religious, as much if not more than it is political. Immigrants who were drawn to Europe because of the Continent’s economic success are in rebellion against the cultural, social and even psychological sources of that success.
In a sense, Europe’s bad fortune is that Islam is in crisis. Imagine that Mexican Catholicism was in a similar state, and that a powerful, well-financed minority of anti-modem purists was doing its most successful proselytizing among Mexican immigrants in places like Los Angeles, Phoenix and Chicago, above all among the discontented, underemployed youth of the barrios. The predictable, perhaps even the inevitable, result would be the same sort of estrangement between Hispanics and the American mainstream.
Whatever the roots of the present troubles, what is undeniable is that many immigrant Muslims and their children remain unreconciled to their situation in Europe. Some find their traditional religious values scorned, while others find themselves alienated by the independence of women, with all its implications for the future of the "traditional" Muslim family. In response, many have turned to the most obscurantist interpretation of the Islamic faith as a salve. At the fringes of the diaspora, some have turned to violence.
So far, at least, neither the carrot nor the stick has worked. Politicians talk of tighter immigration controls. Yet the reality is that a Europe in demographic freefall needs more, not fewer, immigrants if it is to maintain its prosperity. Tony Blair just proposed new laws allowing the deportation of radical mullahs and the shutting of mosques and other sites associated with Islamic extremism. But given the sheer size of the Muslim population in England and throughout the rest of Europe, the security services are always going to be playing catch-up. Working together, and in a much more favorable political and security context, French and Spanish authorities have, after more than 20 years, been unable to put an end to the terrorism of the Basque separatist group ETA. And there are at least twice as many Muslims in France as there are Basques in Spain.
At the same time, it is difficult to see how the extremists’ grievances can ever be placated by conciliatory gestures. It is doubtful that the British government’s proposed ban on blasphemy against Islam and other religions will have a demonstrable effect. (What would have happened to Salman Rushdie had such a ban been in force when "The Satanic Verses" was published?) Meanwhile, the French government has tried to create an "official" state-sanctioned French Islam. This approach may be worth the effort, but the chances of success are uncertain. It will require the enthusiastic participation of an Islamic religious establishment whose influence over disaffected youth is unclear. What seems clearer is that European governments have very little time and nowhere near enough knowledge about which members of the Islamic community really are "preachers of hate" and which, however unpalatable their views, are part of the immigrant mainstream.
The multicultural fantasy in Europe—its eclipse can be seen most poignantly in Holland, that most self-definedly liberal of all European countries—was that, in due course, assuming that the proper resources were committed and benevolence deployed, Islamic and other immigrants would eventually become liberals. As it’s said, they would come to "accept" the values of their new countries. It was never clear how this vision was supposed to coexist with multiculturalism’s other main assumption, which was that group identity should be maintained. But by now that question is largely academic: the European vision of multiculturalism, in all its simultaneous good will and self-congratulation, is no longer sustainable. And most Europeans know it. What they don’t know is what to do next. If the broad-brush anti-Muslim discourse of Jean-Marie Le Pen’s National Front in France or the Vlaams Belang Party in Belgium entered the political mainstream, it would only turn the Islamic diaspora in Europe into the fifth column that, for the moment, it is certainly not. But Europeans can hardly accept an immigrant veto over their own mores, whether those mores involve women’s rights or, for that matter, the right to blaspheme, which the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh so bravely asserted—and died for.
Figuring out how to prevent Europe’s multicultural reality from becoming a war of all against all is the challenge that confronts the Continent. It makes all of Europe’s other problems, from the economy to the euro to the sclerosis of social democracy, seem trivial by comparison. Unfortunately, unlike those challenges, this one is existential and urgent and has no obvious answers.
According to the passage, which of the following is the major lesson learned from the attacks on the London Underground?
选项
A、The government should propose new laws stopping the Islamic diaspora.
B、The British army should pull out from the Iraqi war.
C、The government should guard against the Islamic bombers.
D、Europeans should draw their attention to the Muslim minority.
答案
D
解析
由第一段可知,伦敦地铁袭击事件带来的积极结果就是迫使欧洲人思考穆斯林移民问题,也就是关注穆斯林民族(D)。虽然政府可以提议新的法律停止伊斯兰移民,但这也不现实,因为欧洲国家需要大量移民,所以选项A不对。选项B和C看似都有道理,但文章并未提及。故D为正确答案。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/5yYO777K
0
专业英语八级
相关试题推荐
A、Thisattackhappened10daysafterthesuicidesbombingsinLondon.B、Allthevictimsinjuredweresenttothenearbyhospital
AsAmericansarecalledUncleSam,Britisharecalled______
ThebiggestproblemfacingChileasitpromotesitselfasatouristdestinationtobereckonedwith,isthatitisattheendof
ThefoundersoftheRepublicviewedtheirrevolutionprimarilyinpoliticalratherthaneconomicorsocialterms.Andtheytalke
Patents,saidThomasJefferson,shoulddraw"alinebetweenthethingswhichareworthtothepublictheembarrassmentofanexc
A、federalgovernmentB、thehome-loversC、thepeoplewhokillthewildhorseD、thenativepeopleC
TheHistoryofAmericanIndiansWhenEuropeansdiscoveredtheWesternhemisphere,theydiscoveredaraceofpeople.【1】______
Maslow’sHierarchyofNeedsAbrahamMaslowhasdevelopedafamoustheoryofhumanneeds,whichcanbearrangedinorderofim
SANTEE,CALIF--WhennewsbrokeaboutthemayhemandkillingatSantanaHighSchool,CharlesWilliamsfranticallydashedtothe
Theworldisinaself-destructionmode.BythisstatementImeanthatthepeopleoftheworldarebentonmakingthisplanetin
随机试题
领导者具有指导作用,通过指导其他人活动,领导者用自己的行动带领人们实现目标。()
女性,41岁,突然寒战、高热,腰痛并尿频、尿痛1周,既往无类似发病史。检查:体温39.4℃,右侧肾区叩痛阳性,尿蛋白(+),白细胞20~30/HP,白细胞管型0~2/低倍,比重1.022。诊断的主要依据是
流行性出血热患者高热40℃3天,有瘀斑,突然热退。血压6.67/5kPa(50/30mmHg),尿蛋白(+++),有膜状物,最合适的治疗
A.消旋麻黄素B.马吲哚C.复方樟脑酊D.麦角胺咖啡因片属于药品类易制毒化学品的是
A.一般不得超过7日用量B.一般不得超过5日用量C.一般不得超过3日用量D.可适当延长处方用量依照《处方管理办法》,处方用量管理的要求是普通处方
既可用于寿命期相等的方案比较,也可用于寿命期不等的方案比较的方法为()。
局域网是指将各种计算机网络设备互连在一起的通信网络,但其覆盖的地理范围有限,通常在()。
A股份公司委托某证券公司代理发行普通股。100000股,每股面值1元,每股按1.2元的价格出售。按协议,证券公司按发行收入的3%计提手续费,并直接从发行收入中扣除。则A公司计入资本公积的数额为()元。
12,19,29,47,78,127,()
强调古典自由教育,注重经典名著的学习,对美国高等教育和成人教育产生了广泛的影响的教育思潮是
最新回复
(
0
)