■"A Runaway Personifies Germany's 'Multi-Kulti' Debate: A teenager's plight reflects a deeper issue of a cultural divide," by Richard Bernstein, New York Times, 19 December 2004, p. A6.
The story tells you once again that this so-called "clash of civilizations" is really mostly a "clash of gender issues": the runaway in question is an 18-year-old daughter of Turkish immigrants in Germany, who ran off rather than be "sold" into marriage to a man she had never met ("I never even saw a picture."):
Women like Jasmin are prime evidence for people in Germany who argue that the influx of Muslims is a threat to the country's social cohesion, and that stronger measures are needed to stop practices like forced marriages.
They are part of a broader current of opinion in this country, jolted into action by the recent murder of the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh. This view repudiates "multi-kulti," as multiculturalism is called here, the notion that Germany needs to become culturally more diverse.
This antagonism formed the main theme of a recent congress of Germany's main conservative parties, which issued a platform called "In Germany's Interest: Encouraging Integration, Fighting Islamism." It called for unspecified sanctions against foreigners who refused to accept Germany's democratic values, and recommended new restrictions on immigration.
But there are many other people who argue that cases like Jasmin's are unusual, and, because they are sensational, can be used for political purposes, to darken the image of the Turkish community. In reality, they say, the Turks are changing and adapting to German ways more or less the way other immigrant groups have in other countries.
"Integration takes a long time," said Barbara Joh, the former commissioner for foreign affairs in Berlin, who once protected Muslim girls against what most Germans would regard as unfair practices. "The Muslims themselves are in a confrontation, and we have to help them," she said. "But we are not doing that if we are drawing the line between the Muslims and ourselves, rather than between the fanatics and the nonfanatics."
Jasmin's take on the whole matter: "The attitude of families is that a girl from Turkey will be innocent and pure and will just stay at home and have babies."
Why didn't she? She figured out the law and realized that her real prize was a German passport and residency. She realized she was being sold for that and she rebelled.
That's your "clash of civilizations." Not some grand military struggle between tectonic forces, but a melodrama played out in living rooms.
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