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Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu
RECENT developments in the German city of Cologne where more than 500 complaints were lodged with the police by women alleging criminal and demeaning harassment by men of Asian origin were not at all surprising considering the large number of refugees admitted into Germany last year.

Public discontent about the presence of refugees in Germany has spread to Stuttgart where on January 14 a large number of people demonstrated against the government’s pro refugee policy.

Almost 100,000 people fleeing intense insecurity from predominantly Asian states entered Germany in 2016 alone. The countries of origin of those desperate people include Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Tunisia, Palestine, Chad, Nigeria, Niger, Mauritania, Somalia and Eretria.

All these are Moslem countries in some of which radical types of Islamic groups are trying to strike roots by violently seizing political power to turn the countries’ religio-political dispensations into line with their beliefs.

The violence is condemned by some Islamic states but supported by others. That means, in effect, that there is a cultural and doctrinal difference in the Islamic community in spite of the fact that its source of spiritual guidance is one and the same book, the Koran.

Some cultural communities regard their women folk as minors, and some as having been created for the physical service and satisfaction of the sensual pleasure of men. That trait runs in some religions.

Allowing a large body of people from a different cultural environment to settle in any nation is introducing a cultural change in the host nation.

What may be regarded as culturally offensive or demeaning by one religion – cultural community may be viewed as totally acceptable by another. A very good example of that is the Swazi monarch’s way of choosing a bride yearly from a group of teenage girls who ceremoniously parade before him for that purpose.

It would be utterly preposterous to expect, for example, German or Swedish, French or Danish people to appreciate the traditional values of that practice but the tradition is appreciated by some communities of Nguni ethnic extractions.

The socio – cultural attitude of such communities towards their women is different from that of Western Europe whose basis is the Christian religion. A more or less unique difference between two religion – marital cultures and traditions are polygamy and monogamy.

Western Europe would be advised to consider deeply some of these cultural differences between its customs, traditions and morals and those of the one million – plus oriental and Middle Eastern people it has hitherto admitted within the borders of its constituent member states.

Another very important cultural factor to consider is the difference between the Semito – Judaic and the Christian doctrines on self – assertion and, consequently, self–defence.

One Semito – Judaic doctrine calls for “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” but the Christian doctrine upholds the passively pacific practice of “turning the other cheek” when one has been smitten on one cheek, an obviously Hellenic custom shown by the Greek philosopher Socrates, who willingly drank the cup of hemlock that was the means of executing him instead of fighting for his freedom and very life.

It is most interesting to compare the way Jesus Christ was tried and crucified and the trial and execution of Socrates. Christ was passive throughout, so was Socrates.

Similarly, it is of immense historical interest to compare the peaceful evangelistic–missionary propagation method of the Christian religion with the militarily violent campaigns led by a pleiad of brilliant generals based in Mecca that carried the Prophet Muhammad’s message to North Africa, the Indian sub – continent, the southern and eastern reaches of the Balkans, the Russian regions and parts of the Iberian peninsula.

That occurred some 600 years after Christ’s death, and after his reformed Judaic religion had been established as far south of the Mediterranean sea as the Sudan, as far west of Palestine as Britain, and as far north-east as Armenia.

The Middle East was generally Christian, with Judaism as the predominant faith in Palestine but certainly not throughout the Levant.

The advent of Islam, some six centuries after the crucifixion of the Nazarene, was followed by inter -communal strife and internecine armed conflicts between two factions over the succession of Prophet Muhammad. The two factions eventually became the Sunnis and the Shia.

That was the seed of what we see in the Middle East and elsewhere today. The refugee crisis is a social climax of that historic development.

Now, the question is: Will Western Europe be able to contain and peacefully guide the cultural aspects of that development? It is significant that Pope Francis recently pleaded for the peaceful integration of the refugees into the various European host countries whose culture is based on the Christian religion.

Two options are open to the countries hosting the overwhelmingly Moslemic refugees. One is the adoption and application of what the Germans term “gleichschaltung” policy and practice.

“Gleichschaltung” refers to the standardisation of economic, social and political institutions, something commonly done by authoritarian states.

That policy was practicable at the height of the Prussian empire and during Adolf Hitler’s Nazi period. It is not practicable any longer in view of the world’s socio–cultural advancement and its social economic and political global–village environment.

The other option is for the refugee–host states to adopt the post-World War Two basic human rights regime reflected by the United Nations Charter. Those rights include that to education, a fundamental process that may involve the use of the refugees’ original language in the host national states.

Those refugees are most likely to reside in their various host countries for ever, exactly the same way the 1956 Hungarian refugees remained in the states that accepted them.

The only difference is that the Hungarian refugees were much fewer than the one million–plus from North Africa, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan, Somalia, Pakistan, Sudan, Libya, Algeria, Egypt, West Africa and, of course, Palestine and other states on the Levant.

The second difference is that the Hungarian refugees were from either a Christian or a quasi–Christian cultural environment whereas today’s refugees are the Moslemic countries some of which, (Pakistan, Egypt and Somalia) have in the very recent past had actively ruthless anti–Christian incidents in which scores of people were killed and buildings destroyed by some Moslems.

It would be naïve to think that anti–Christian hostility is non–existent among the present batch of refugees in Europe. What may be unknown is the level of the hostility.

Yet another very important characteristic of those refugees is that most of them would like to be settled permanently in the respective European countries they have chosen.

They are not likely, if at all, to return to their countries of origin. That is because in addition to the prevailing acute physical insecurity obtaining in those states, there are no employment opportunities whatsoever.

That is generally the case with all the affected countries, but particularly so with Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Eritrea, Mauritania, Syrian, Sudan and Iraq.

It is most interesting to note that during Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Angola, South Africa, Namibia, and Guinea–Bissau’s liberation struggles, hundreds of thousands of people from those countries were refugees in various mostly African states.

However, the difference between them and those under consideration here was that those had left their respective countries to join well organised armed liberation movements whose aim was to return home to free their fatherlands.

That is not the case with the refugees in Europe. Their aim is to settle in safer and economically more prosperous European nations.

The big questions about them is: Will they adapt culturally, socially, economically and politically “by doing as the Romans do”, or will they want the Romans to do as they themselves do? Pope Francis’ call for integration will succeed depending on the attitudes of the refugees themselves.

About the writer: Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu is a retired, Bulawayo-based journalist. He can be contacted on cell 0734 328 136 or through email. [email protected]