Before reading the main recommendation below, I suggest reading Gary Becker, The Economics of Discrimination (Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 1957). Becker argued that people may have a "taste" for discrimination. Though Becker did not make the following point, and may well not have agreed, I would suggest people have a need or taste for feeling superior. And that need to feel superior is what underlies the taste for discrimination. And that need/taste for superiority can take many different avenues for satisfaction: race, gender, nationality, ethnicity, religion, class, genealogy, occupation, schooling and education, automobiles (BMWs versus Fords, Prius versus Outback), house size, neighborhoods, and on and on. In the finally analysis, most of us are immature and insecure little piss ants trying to make ourselves believe we are unicorns.
So, the recommendation:
Claire L. Adida, David D. Laitin & Marie-Anne Valfort, Why Muslim Integration Fails in Christian-Heritage Societies (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: Harvard U. Press, 2016) (From the book jacket: "Amid mounting fears of violent Islamic extremism, many Europeans ask whether Muslim immigrants can integrate into historically Christian countries. In a grounding breaking ethnographic investigation of France's Muslim migrant population, Why Muslim Integration Fails in Christian-Heritage Societies explores this complex question. The author conclude that both Muslim and non-Muslim French must share responsibility for the slow progress of Muslim integration." The authors "found that in France Muslims are widely perceived as threatening, based in large part on cultural differences between Muslim and rooted French that feed both rational and irrational Islamophobia. Relying on a unique methodology to isolate the religious component of discrimination, the authors identify a discriminatory equilibrium in which both Muslim immigrants and native French act negatively toward one another in as self-perpetuating, vicious circle." "Disentangling the rational and irrational threads of Islamophobia is essential if Europe hopes to repair a social fabric that has frayed around the issue of Muslim immigration, and Europeans must acknowledge that antiIslam sentiments at the root of their antagonism. The authors outline public policy solutions aimed at promoting religious diversity in fair-minded hist societies.")
Perhaps there is something from which the United States, and the American peoples could learn. [Note: I use the plural "peoples" because I no longer believe Americans are in any way, shape or form a united people, and especially not politically or culturally. We may not look at each other as enemies, but we do increasing look at each other with distrust and, at time, complete distain. To paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, a people so divided cannot stand.]
