Qamar Bashir
Part One of this series examined the distance between the language of a Muslim invasion and the history of workers recruited to sustain European economies. It also drew on my diplomatic service in France and community contacts elsewhere to describe families absorbed in earning a living. The next question concerns their future: will their children and grandchildren be accepted as equal members of the societies they help sustain?
A society reveals the meaning of its equality when a cleaner’s child becomes qualified to lead. If that child’s ambition triggers suspicion because of a Muslim name or faith, the obstacle has moved beyond immigration policy into the rights of people who already belong. Education, citizenship and public service then become tests of whether proclaimed principles extend to everyone.
What has struck me most in the United States is the fear of becoming visible. In community conversations and WhatsApp groups, I have encountered people reluctant to discuss politics, criticise government policy or openly express their feelings. Some avoid even educational, religious or community gatherings because they fear attracting attention. They worry about deportation, their green cards, permanent residence or citizenship. I describe the fears they expressed and the silence those fears produced.
These are people trying to protect whatever security they have managed to build. They work, pay their bills and lower their voices. To hear them described as an organised invading force is, to me, a profound distortion of the lives I have witnessed. Their reserve is interpreted as separation, their religious identity as an agenda, and their children’s advancement as a threat.
That experience informs my objection to the invasion narrative. A waiter is not an occupying soldier. A taxi driver supporting his children is not evidence of a coordinated religious project. A mosque does not establish a conspiracy, and a Muslim graduate seeking public office is exercising a claim to equal citizenship. Neither modest work nor professional success should become grounds for permanent suspicion.
The consequences of exclusion are measurable. The EU Agency for Fundamental Rights’ 2024 report, based on its 2022 survey, found that 47 percent of Muslim respondents experienced racial discrimination during the preceding five years, compared with 39 percent in the earlier survey. The experiences reported across the participating countries expose a serious gap between proclaimed equality and lived experience.
Education provides another window into the changing lives of these families. In France’s 2025 figures, 36.5 percent of first-generation immigrants from the Maghreb had at most a lower-secondary qualification, compared with 20 percent of their France-born second generation. For people of Turkish origin, the corresponding shares were 63.2 and 19.6 percent. Higher-education qualifications were held by 10.6 percent of Turkish immigrants and 37.5 percent of their France-born descendants. These origin-based figures record both educational disadvantage and the growing qualifications of the next generation.
Research extending to a third generation also shows substantial advancement alongside persistent inequality. An INED account of a study using the 2019–2020 TeO2 survey reports that 46 percent of North African immigrants’ grandchildren pursued higher education, compared with 55 percent in families without a migration history. These grandchildren belong to the societies in which they grew up. Their educational advancement strengthens their claim to opportunity and makes the portrayal of permanent foreignness still more indefensible.
In my assessment, resentment becomes particularly visible when the children of immigrants move beyond the occupations associated with their parents. The objection then appears to be less about whether they contribute than whether they may compete for authority, status and opportunity. A Muslim seeking professional or political office is not taking something reserved by birth for another race or religion.
America’s constitutional commitments provide a clear standard against which to judge its leaders. The First Amendment prohibits religious establishment and protects free exercise; Article VI prohibits religious tests for federal public office. These guarantees protect Muslim citizens alongside their fellow Americans. Government measures that discriminate on religious grounds must face constitutional scrutiny.
Trump’s March 1, 2025 order designated English as the official language while allowing agencies to continue other-language services. Its practical effects deserve scrutiny wherever language policy restricts access to public services or opportunity. In employment, EEOC guidance requires justification for restrictive workplace language rules and prohibits unlawful national-origin discrimination.
France’s Constitution identifies the republic as secular and guarantees citizens equality regardless of origin, race or religion. Germany’s Basic Law protects religious freedom and prohibits discrimination on specified grounds including faith and origin. These principles require governments to respect equal citizenship and provide a basis for challenging discriminatory state action.
Freedom of religion protects belief, expression and practice within the law. It belongs to Muslims as fully as to other citizens. Peaceful prayer and religious dress are expressions of identity; accusations of coercion or unlawful conduct require evidence of the conduct alleged.
In France, Éric Zemmour described Muslim presence as an invasion and colonisation and argued that Muslims should choose between Islam and France. His conviction for inciting discrimination and religious hatred survived scrutiny at the European Court of Human Rights in December 2022. The court found no violation of his freedom of expression. Accountability was already available through law.
In the Netherlands, Geert Wilders asked supporters in 2014 whether they wanted more or fewer Moroccans. They chanted for fewer. In July 2021, the Dutch Supreme Court upheld his conviction for insulting a group. The judgment addressed ethnic targeting and demonstrated that political prominence carries accountability under domestic law.
Accountability must therefore distinguish protected opinion from punishable conduct. American law broadly protects offensive speech. Under Brandenburg, advocacy can be punished as incitement when directed toward producing imminent unlawful action and likely to produce it. European systems permit certain wider restrictions, as these French and Dutch cases demonstrate. Legal accountability requires a defined offence, evidence and due process.
The practical response is to enforce anti-discrimination laws, investigate threats and violence, provide accessible complaints procedures, challenge unlawful state measures and apply valid incitement laws through independent courts. Where speech remains protected, voters, journalists and parties should impose political accountability. Equal protection must coexist with freedom to criticise religion and government.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights affirms equality and freedom of religion and expression. Its international authorship underscores the shared ownership of those principles. Speaking in Florida on October 20, 2026, Bill Clinton echoed the message of Surah Al-Hujurat, verse 13: humanity was created as different nations and tribes so that people might know one another. He presented that message as a call to mutual understanding rather than contempt, offering a powerful counterpoint to the collective suspicion directed at Muslims.
Europe and America may regulate immigration. They may prosecute crime and resist coercive extremism. But Muslim identity is not proof of criminality, foreign allegiance or invasion. The decisive question is whether societies that proclaim universal rights will uphold them when the people claiming equality pray differently.
Press Secretary to the President (Rtd), Former Press Minister, Embassy of Pakistan to France, Former Press Attaché to Malaysia and Former MD, SRBC .He is living in Michigan, USA
