Discussion at the Austrian Cultural Forum with Salman Rushdie and Alfred Gusenbauer
September 24 | 2007
By Heike Warmuth
It was an exciting start of a new era. Andreas Stadler launched his term of office as the new director of the New York Cultural Forum with a discussion event between internationally acclaimed writer Salman Rushdie and Austrian Federal Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer. "I'm delighted to have been able to start my mission here in New York with such special guests," says Stadler, who moved into his new office on 52nd Street only three weeks before the event.
Under its new director, the Austrian Cultural Forum plans to introduce current sociopolitical issues as an additional focus alongside art projects. The idea is to promote active exchange between notable artists and politicians.
The topic of the first such podium discussion, which took place in the Forum's theater with a full house, was cultural diversity and political rationality.
"Cultural diversity was a catchword over the last fifteen years in order to defend both cultural minorities and identities against the leveling force of a globalization. On the other hand it was also a catchword for nationalism and isolationism," Stadler said in his introduction. "Political rationality is something I am afraid we see less and less in world politics."
The moderator of the event, American writer and human rights activist Kati Marton, pointed out that it's not every day that "a head of a state engages or initiates a conversation with a man of letters." She went on to ask what European welfare states are doing wrong in their integration policies that might explain why European - and not American - cities have been faced with terrorist attacks and Islamic extremism since September 11, 2001. She also questioned why not only London, Madrid, and Berlin have been affected, but Vienna as well since the recent attempted attack on the U.S. embassy. She said the venue seemed somewhat improbable because only 5% of Austria's population is Muslim.
Is the American model more effective at integrating immigrants into society than the attempts of European nations - especially considering that the European countries offer more social benefits to their new citizens than the USA?
"I am not convinced that there is a direct link between terrorism and inefficiency in European integration policy," said Federal Chancellor Gusenbauer. The problem has much more to do with the clash of different cultures. Very often immigrants come from rural, "backwards" regions where conservative family values are considered important. These values conflict with an increasingly competition-oriented Western society. And this can lead to problems.
"So the problem is not connected with the welfare state," Gusenbauer concluded. He added that social benefits are important even though they cannot resolve problems because at least they prevent them from getting out of hand.
He also noted that within the European Union, there is a different understanding of the concept of "nation,"and this leads to different social differentiation mechanisms. "The American notion of the nation offers a better possibility for integration than most European cases."
Yes, the United States is an immigration country with a rich and varied immigration history. And yet, as Salman Rushdie explains, it is not unusual for immigrants to want to close the door to others who want to settle in the USA.
What he really takes as a cause for concern, though, is the fact that it is not the recent immigrants in Europe who have Islamic extremist tendencies, but the second generation, or in other words the children who were born and educated in those countries. "Terrorism is a bourgeois adventure," said Rushdie, quoting one of the most notorious dictators in European history, Joseph Stalin. "It's a middle class phenomenon."
In his opinion, it is not so much a consequence of socioeconomic discrimination - although that, too, plays a role. Both the terrorists who flew into the World Trade Center and the ones who terrorized the London underground came from the middle class.
"These are highly professional and dangerous groups," Rushdie said in the panel discussion. He referred to them as criminal gangsters and expressed his sentiment that the solution primarily has to be military. "If you are talking about fighting small highly motivated terrorist groups, intelligence action followed by military action is the way to deal with it." He holds this opinion despite the fact that based on the experiences in Iraq one might believe that a military approach is inappropriate.
"Islam as such is not our enemy. Our enemy is terror and dictatorship," Gusenbauer stated, adding that Austria is trying to go its own way. The idea is to use education to find a "European form of Islam" and to implement a clever integration policy that among other things is designed to prevent ghettoization and segregation from the outset.
"Never give up a neighborhood," said Gusenbauer, pointing out that this approach can prevent explosive situations such as those that repeatedly arise in the suburbs of Paris.
According to Gusenbauer, signs of impending trouble were overlooked in the United Kingdom as well. For too long, both under Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, radical Islamic factions and their operations were tolerated. This was a miscalculation.
And yet, the problem of Islamic extremism is international. And we need new ideas and sincere, sustainable cooperation between the Occident and Orient to rise to this challenge.
"The majority of Muslims don't want to have anything to do with the terrorists," Rushdie stated. "Whenever Muslims learn of the consequences of Islamic fascism they are opposed to it."
And yet, people of Muslim faith are too often put in the same pot as terrorists. Even Rushdie is faced with prejudices. After all, the British-Indian author has a Muslim name. And many of the border officers at airports don't know who he is.
