Integration happens

While Islamic State followers are calling on Arab and Muslim communities making Western countries their homeland to leave these places of the “infidel”, these communities are increasingly feeling right at home in their adopted countries.

The Arab and Muslim immigrants brought with them their culture and way of life and they seem to remain faithful to them even when facing discrimination and hostility in some countries.

For example, one hears a lot of Arabic on the streets of Montreal, New York, London, Paris, etc., where Arabs live, so much so that many no longer feel homesick. 

The reason: they brought “home” with them.

There are Arabic and Muslim restaurants all over in Western capitals where the word “halal” has become a household term. 

Muslim and Arab women wear the veil and feel no alienation from the general public. Besides, these communities tend to live in the same neighbourhoods, separated from other areas.

Still, the cultural clash persists among these communities, especially between new and first-generation immigrants.

True, by and large Arab and Muslim parents have yet to get accustomed to the kind freedom demanded by their children who would like to integrate into the mainstream society where they live in order to be accepted.

It is hard for the daughter or son of an Arab or Muslim family to live segregated from the opposite sex as their parents had lived “back home”.

No matter how much parents insist that their children live the way they themselves had lived back home, sooner or later the younger generation of Arab and Muslim rebels and goes its separate ways.

Social pressures are too hard to overcome.

Some children in Muslim and Arab communities live in fear or under pressure, trying to take the middle road, between their original culture and their new lifestyle.

Sooner or later, the Arab and Muslim communities will integrate in the societies in which they live and will acquire many of their cultural habits and traditions.

That is what the Western countries receiving Muslim and Arab immigrants hope will happen in the end.  

The new language entails big changes in the way of thinking of the newcomers. 

The newly acquired cultural values may come at a cost sometimes, but they take roots nevertheless, despite the difficulty associated with this transition into a different culture. 

Give or take a generation or two, the Muslim and Arab communities will become indistinguishable from the other nationals of the countries they chose to make home.