Why Can`t We Integrate?

by Abdi-Noor Mohamed
Monday, December 06, 2010

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Why can`t we integrate? Why can`t we protect our Somali and islamic identity while remaining part of the wider community to which we had migrated? Why can`t we get far in our new environment? Do we know that if we do not integrate we shall face the music of segregation? We are already labeled as the backward people who only want to exploit the system by living on welfare. We are known to be religious extremists, khat traders and addicts. It is beyond dount that we are so few in the public, business and employment spaces of the countries we live in. Our children make little or virtually no progress at school according to studies published in the Swedish daily and weekly papers. One can say with all certainty that they are victims of a dysfunctional family and a disintegrated community.

What future will our children have in the Diaspora if we keep wearing the straight jacket of change-not, submit-not to the new life? After all if we integrate does it mean that we will lose all our traditional, cultural and Islamic values? First do we know that we are not the only migrants in Europe, nor that we not the only moslems in Europe, so why can`t we stay as a community and act just like other moslems who have made great strides in the fields of integration and development. I think it is time to reviewe our actions and come up with a strategy to move ahead in the direction of change? If we do not find our rightful place in the Diaspora, no one will find it for us. We may melt away and eventually disappear in a horizon of non-existence. Please share this poem with me:

I see an invisible psychological wall
Building up in the shadow of silence
Separating the love hearts of a family
As the young integrate with the Swedish
Sending new roots in their new environs
While the old show reluctance to change
Clinging to habits that are hard to die

Are we determined to crash that wall
Or we better stay cut off lest we get astray
If we do not integrate we shall disintegrate
The choice is ours.

Abdi-Noor Haji Mohamed
Smålandsmuseum, Vaxjo
Sweden.

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