Really? You are going to make the utterly false assertion that the Muslim immigrant populations have failed, (or, by your implication, refused), to assimilate? Why would you make such a nonsense claim? By every measure but one, they have assimilated: language, national loyalty, secularization, intermarriage, etc. The only area in which they have not assimilated has been in home ownership–and that has been due to being frozen out of the market. Next we will see you complaining that black people in the U.S. have refused to assimilate.
One study found that 73% of Muslim immigrants with voting rights had participated in national elections, only a bit lower than the 81% of the general population. Muslim women voted at the same rate as Muslim men. 50% of Muslims were involved in “mixed organizations rather than organizations based on their own ethnicity or religion.”
Muslims in Europe: A Report on 11 EU Cities (New York: Open Society Institute, 2009)
62% of French Muslims claim that democracy is doing well in France, as opposed to only 58% of the general population. In the same poll, Muslims gave a 95% overall favorable rating to France and French institutions.
Sylvain Brouard and Vincent Tiberj, Francais comme les autres? Enquete sur les citoyen d’origine maghrebine, africaine et turque (Presses de Sciences Po, 2005)
Following the headscarf bans in schools, a U.S. State Department survey found that “large majorities of Muslims in France voice confidence in the country’s government, feel at least partly French, and support integrating into French society.”
French Muslims Favor Integration into French Society (Washington, DC: Department of State, Office of Research, Opinion Analysis M-58-05, 2005).
A poll from 2005 found that around 80% of Muslims were “comfortable with people of different religions dating or marrying” while 59% would not object to their daughter marrying a non-Muslim. (This is born out in the fact that 25% of French Muslim women have married non-Muslim men.)
Jonathan Laurence and Justin Vaisse, Integrating Islam: Political and Religious Changes in Contemporary Fance (Brookings Institution Pres, 2006), 43.
60% of French Muslims claim to have French friends and 45% to have Jewish friends.
A separate survey found that French Muslims felt comfortable with other French people at a rate of 85%, but felt comfortable with other Muslims at a rate of only 71% or with others of their immigrant nations at a rate of 77%. When the survey was narrowed to Muslims who self-identified as being Muslim before being French, the 85% figure jumped to 90%. (Among the French general population, this feeling of closeness for French people was only 84%.)
Sylvain Brouard and Vincent Tiberj, Francais comme les autres? Enquete sur les citoyen d’origine maghrebine, africaine et turque (Presses de Sciences Po, 2005)
Jacob Vigdor created an “assimilation index” that was based, not on attitudes, but on participation. He measured male and female employment, home ownership, and naturalization. Canada and the U.S. demonstrated very high rates of “assimilation” on his scale with rates of 77% and 60%. Most European countries rated much lower–Spain was at 38%, for example. However, when he looked behind his numbers, he did not find that the Muslim immigrants were refusing to buy homes or become naturalized, but that their general poverty and national restrictions on ownership precluded home ownership and high barrier laws prevented naturalization.
Jacob L. Vigdor, Comparing Immigrant Assimilation in North America and Europe (New York: Center for State and Local Leadership, May 2011)
Not “poverty,” but a whole range of anti-immigrant social barriers and expressed prejudices directed at them.
As opposed to your highly cerebral assessment that comes out “ISLAM! ISLAM! ISLAM!”
The false claim that “They refuse to assimilate” is the sort of canard that xenophobes traditionally direct at every immigrant group. It is rarely true and if one looks at actual information rather than the claims of anti-immigrant alarmists, one discovers that the claim is a lie. You need better sources than the Muslim haters from whom you have been getting your misinformation.