Migration-engl.

About migration – from the point of view of a settled person

by Roland Fakler

For a safe home in an insecure world

As a humanist, I stand firmly on the ground of our basic law, which grants all people, regardless of their gender, their skin colour, their religion, their descent… the same human rights. Human rights are the lessons learned from the terrible history of the world, in which people have been divided into chosen and damned ones by religions (Jewishness, Christianity, Islam) and ideologies (fascism, communism), in people who are chosen and those who are damned, in true believers and false believers, in useful and worthless people and are treated accordingly.

Humanists want to create a just and peaceful world for all people. However, this just and peaceful world can only prosper based on reasonable values. For me, these are democracy and human rights.

The more people populate our planet, the more difficult it becomes to create a just world for all. The world population is growing by around 80 million people annually. For them, at least home, food, clothing and work must be procured. How can this become possible in a world that is already densely populated, polluted, exploited, and damaged by climate and that leaves less and less habitat for the rest of nature? Already in the 1970s, the Club of Rome noticed that there were too many people. At that time, there were 3.7 billion, and today there are twice as many. More people mean more energy – and resource consumption, waste, environmental pollution, cars, housing, noise… Birth control is essential for states that cannot feed their populations. Instead, nationalist and religious leaders fuel population growth, in which faith, thereby strengthens their religion or their nation…which has a catastrophic global impact and leads to migration flows.

Instead, we should strive for a state of sustainability, i.e. the population should not grow constantly, but should remain at the same level or decrease. The population explosion in poor countries and the waste-addicted lifestyle in the rich burden the earth on an unprecedented scale. It leads to migration in one direction. State borders are indispensable and must be protected because otherwise, millions from overpopulated countries will migrate to where countries are still governed reasonably. Not all humanity’s problems can be solved by humanity moving to Germany. Germany has welcomed many, but if we were to take in only 5 million migrants every year, our country would soon be destroyed, not to mention the social upheavals. In my view, it is also not a responsibility to attract doctors and plumbers from war zones such as Syria and Ukraine, where they are urgently needed, into areas of prosperity, such as Germany.

The important causes of flight are wars and dictatorships. Who wants to live in China, Russia or an Islamic state such as Iran, Afghanistan, Syria, Pakistan or Saudi Arabia today?

Unfortunately, with the flight from these countries, asylum seekers often bring the problems facing Europe from the countries which they have fled, namely their educated aversion to democracy and the liberal, Western values. They were the first victims of early childhood indoctrination in their home countries with an intolerant worldview.

After centuries of a lot of blood loss, uprisings and wars, Germany finally succeeded in overcoming the totalitarian rule of the Catholic Church, the kings of God’s grace and two dictatorships (fascism and communism) and creating a state with the rule of law that brought us peace, freedom and prosperity. Migrants who now want to put Sharia above the Basic Law should not be granted asylum here. This is where my tolerance ends. People who want to live under Sharia should move to Afghanistan.

How can a just world succeed, on a planet where very different ideas of a good government and very different living conditions prevail, that could cause people to leave the place of their birth and seek their happiness elsewhere?

Migration is a constant of world history.

Since immemorial times, people have moved, in peaceful or even with warlike intent, driven by adverse circumstances in their homeland, by oppressive political conditions and wars, climate changes and famine, or simply by a thirst for adventure.

Homo sapiens probably settled on the continent from Africa. In my Swabian home village in 2024, some excavations prove that in the Neolithic times, 7,000 years ago, the gatherers and hunters of our area were “repressed” by immigrants from south-eastern Europe. Perhaps they have also “mixed”, maybe there were fights for land and resources. There is nothing exactly known. In any case, “strangers” came to this country and settled here.

Unfortunately, migration was not always harmless or fertile, on the contrary, there are many examples in human history, where the indigenous population was expelled, subdued or greatly reduced by invaders and conquerors. The fear of the stranger was quite justified. If it was only a single stranger, he could integrate into an ancestral population, if there were very many, the locals were often subdued.

People and peoples have a remarkable ability to overestimate themselves, to consider themselves more valuable, more useful and respectable than others. They see themselves at the centre of world affairs and demonize the strangers, the barbarians, the infidels, the inferior. This seems to give them a sense of superiority and chosenness.

The Romans have conquered and enslaved countless peoples. However, they have also had a significant and often very advantageous shaping of their culture.

When Muslims conquered Persia, North Africa, Spain and parts of Europe, the intellectual achievements of the Greeks, Romans and Persians, whom they found there and absorbed them inquisitively, led to a cultural bloom under Arab – Islamic rule of 8-12. Jh. On the other hand, the historian Will Durant describes the subjugation of India by the Muslim invaders around 1000 CE as the greatest genocide in world history. In their conquests, they suppressed other religions, drove out the Zoroastrians, Yazidis, Bahai, Christians, and Armenians. They had still been before and also after the Europeans from the 7th to the 20th century a flourishing trade with African and European slaves. Islam does not integrate, it wants to conquer and rule!

During the migration of nations, around 300, Germanic, Hunnic and Slavic tribes flocked from east to west; suppressed others and finally made their contribution to the decline of the Roman Empire. Alemannic tribes settled in south-western Germany.

In the Bible we are told the story of the conquest of the Promised Land by the Jews. This story has had a great influence on the world, whether it is true, is doubted by historians. However, what is written has a model character. Here too – even on God’s command – entire nations were exterminated, by the supposedly chosen people. This found many imitators.

Sea Peoples destroyed around 1200 B.C.E. entire cultures in the eastern Mediterranean and contributed to the downfall of some empires, such as the Hittites and Mycenaeans.

The Greeks successfully colonized large parts around the Mediterranean and contributed their culture through Alexander’s conquests far into the Orient to India and Egypt.

In the Middle Ages, Germans settled in Eastern European areas from the 11th to the 14th century and cultivated the region until they were driven out by the victors after the Second World War.

Europeans colonized America, Africa, India and Southeast Asia between the 16th and 18th centuries. Although they brought cultural achievements with them, their Christian delusion of being chosen prevented them from treating the natives decently, and their superiority in weaponry allowed them to subjugate them. This led to the virtual extinction of entire indigenous cultures in North and South America.

Between the 16th and 19th centuries, around 12 million Africans were captured as slaves and taken to America with the active help of African tribal chiefs.

Around 7 million people moved from Germany to North America. The causes were population surplus, famine, poverty, and oppressive political conditions under the rule of the “kings by the grace of God”.

The 12 million Germans who were expelled from the eastern regions after the Second World War were of course more easily integrated into the rest of Germany than Syrians and Turks today because they spoke the same language and came from the same culture. The Italians, Greeks and Spaniards who came to Germany in the 1960s and 1970s are also well integrated into German society today. It would probably also be the Turks who came back then if Mr. Erdogan, in his religious and national sense of mission, had not reminded them that they are Muslim Turks.

Current migration from Islamic countries

Current migration from Islamic countries

Since 2011, many people, especially from Islamic countries, have been fleeing to Europe, from Syria, Iraq, Iran and Pakistan, driven by wars, corrupt governments, oppressive conditions, overpopulation and tempting social incentives from the German social system.

Unlike migrants from Europe, immigrant Muslims are constantly making new demands on German society. They want mosques, the muezzin call, halal food, headscarves for teachers, Islamic institutes to train religious teachers, exemption of girls from sex education classes, from swimming and school trips, special cemeteries, slaughter of animals, circumcision of boys and, unfortunately, often of girls. With their demands, they do not bring about integration, but rather separation. Knife attacks and brutal murder attempts for religious reasons are becoming more and more common. The height of insolence was a demonstration for the caliphate in 2024. According to the Koran, Orthodox Muslims feel obliged to fight for the theocracy, even if they don’t want to, even if the whole world suffers because Allah wants it that way and because this is the only way they can hope to reach their illusory paradise. They want the unity of religion and state, although for them there is only one true religion. But we cannot allow that if we want to preserve democracy in Europe. The best integration aid would be mandatory ethics teaching in all schools.

Immigration must be limited to a reasonable level, to people who are persecuted and who want to integrate here. Migrants such as Hamed Abdel-Samad, Mina Ahadi, Ahmad Mansour, Nekla Kelek, Lale Akün, Seyran Ates… who stand up for our liberal values are a real enrichment for our country.

If we had less immigration from pre-democratic countries, we would have fewer integration problems, racism, anti-Semitism, right-wing extremism, conflicts with anti-human rights, anti-woman and homophobic ways of thinking, we would have fewer conflicts that are brought here from all over the world, we would have fewer educational problems, housing, landscape consumption, cities, cars, roads, less violence.

Responsibility of a Settled Person

It is not a great achievement to belong to a particular nation, but it is part of one’s identity, roots, upbringing, and history, which cannot simply be cast off, just as one cannot cast off their parents or genes. If one is born by chance into a country and a specific community, it entails obligations and responsibilities toward that country. The country and the people one belongs to are part of one’s identity. Because I want to have a positive identity, I also want this “my country” and “my homeland” to be governed reasonably, justly, and well, so that where I live, where my roots are, and where I want to continue living in the future, there is not chaos, crime, poverty, and fear, but rather happiness and encounters in love and friendship. These do not have to be ethnic Germans, but there cannot be an unlimited number of people living in one place without problems, especially with those who question the fundamental values of our liberal democracy. Unlimited and uncontrolled immigration harms our country. Unlike my ancestors, I was fortunate to be born in a country that allowed me to develop my personality peacefully and freely. For this, I am very grateful. My ancestors did not have this luck; they suffered through the Peasants’ War of 1525, the Wars of Liberation of 1813-1815, the Revolution of 1848, and were victims of history. My grandfathers had to fight in World War I, and my father in World War II.

I feel responsible now for defending the hard-won freedoms in this country for all who value these principles and against all who oppose them.

This article also appeared in “Humanisten Österreich”

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