The solidarity of rich Muslim countries

Europe has been flooded with nearly a million migrants in just a few months, and the flow continues.  Poor souls are fleeing their countries from three continents, either because of extreme poverty, lack of freedom, internecine conflicts, religious wars, and the scourge of our 21st century, the so-called Caliphate which purports to invade the whole planet in order to impose its horrendous medieval-style laws, the infamous Sharia’h.

We all know that Europe is in deep crisis, it has been so since 2008: thousands of young people, many with university degrees, can’t find jobs in their homelands, which they are forced to leave for greener pastures, mainly overseas.  Even the retirees of the middle classes are looking for new places to live more decently, for, with their pensions, having diminished considerably, they can no longer afford the life they had expected to lead, not to mention the very rich who are deserting countries like Greece, Italy, Spain, and even France, where taxes have become prohibitive, not only for them – they are certainly not to be pitied – but for every segment of the population.

The majority of the migrant families come from Muslim countries and believe that Europe is, if not an Eldorado, at least a welcoming continent, where they will be able to work, feed their children, and have a proper roof over their heads, until, until … – that is their legitimate hope -, they can return to their former homes, once there is peace again.

Many Europeans still bear a guilty feeling because their forebears were colonialists and, worse even, slave-traders.  In the meantime, of course, Europe, and the West in general, have become the most democratic area of the world.  But that sentiment has turned into a very unhealthy and never-ending Mea Culpa, the more so since a number of immigrants play on this complex in order to justify claims they would never have dreamt of voicing in their countries of origin.  I like to compare a nation like India and the Maghreb region which comprises Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia, former French colonies.  Indians are advancing and building a modern and democratic society, in spite of its many hurdles and sometimes formidable difficulties.  Nowadays the Indians and the British, who had ruled over the latter until 1947, respect and even admire each other, whereas a great number of French politicians and especially intellectuals, who are or were originally Christian, feel either ashamed in front of their Muslim compatriots or, on the contrary, aggressive, which in turn pushes some of the latter to be over-demanding, creating thus a very vicious circle.

This guilty feeling appears nonexistent among the descendants of the Ottoman Empire, or at least among the current Turkish regime, for it still won’t recognize and consequently refuses to be blamed for the Armenian genocide perpetrated during and after the First World War, in which over a million people were tortured and murdered.  Neither do the Arabs bother to mention the tens of millions of Africans they have enslaved during centuries, up to the present day, whether in places like Mauritania, Saudi Arabia or the Emirates, in which the world’s most luxurious skyscrapers are being built with the blood and the sweat of thousands of foreign workers who are treated like forced laborers, and from whom the passports are taken away so that they won’t complain.  And what with the abductions of hundreds of young girls and young boys, and the killing of thousands of people of all religions carried on by the Boko Haram, Al Qaida and Daesh terrorists.

Why don’t the petrol-rich nations of Saudi Arabia, of Algeria, of the United Arab Emirates, of Bahrein, of Brunei, or even prosperous Malaysia and Indonesia, offer their downtrodden coreligionists, so ill-treated in Africa, in the Middle East and in parts of Asia, safe asylum?

Look at the size of Saudi Arabia or of Algeria – Africa’s largest country -, the wealth of the Emirates.  The latter are so proud of owning the tallest and most magnificent buildings in the world, yet, as everyone knows, there are countless unoccupied rooms in them.  Couldn’t they be used to host some of these poor souls who are rotting in squalid tents in Jordan, Lebanon, or Turkey – their governments are to be commended, particularly the former two which bear the brunt when they themselves have huge problems and struggle for survival.

And last, but not least: do you know that Israel treats for free hundreds of wounded people who cross the border every day from Syria and even from Gaza and the West Bank, which it has occupied for too long?  Why doesn’t anyone blame Morocco for occupying Western Sahara (a former Spanish colony), denying its people to be free?  The same applies to Turkey, Syria, and Irak (or whatever is left of them), which won’t let the thirty-odd million Kurds gain their independence.

Where is the solidarity of the rich Muslim countries?