When the war in Ukraine erupted, Muslims denounced Europe and America for receiving Ukrainian refugees: “How do they welcome Ukrainians but refuse to welcome us, the Muslim refugees?” This outcry spread among Muslims everywhere, from east to west and from north to south. What is surprising is that Muslim and Arab elites adopted the same refrain and deliberately ignored an obvious reality:
First, a Muslim is not equal to a non-Muslim.
Second, it is natural for a Western European to receive a Ukrainian European like himself ; they belong to the same continent. His willingness to host him carries not the slightest trace of racism when he refuses to receive Muslim refugees coming from another continent and from a religion different from that of Europe.
Third, many Muslims hold Europeans and Westerners responsible for their conflicts and backwardness, while the primary responsibility for the decline of Muslims lies with Muslims themselves. Was it Europe that ignited the fires of war in Sudan ? How can some expect France to welcome Sudanese refugees while neighboring countries-closer to them in language, religion, and customs-do not ? What logic is this that some Muslims defend so fiercely ?
Have they been blinded by globalisation, which claims to level all human differences ? That is impossible ; God did not create us as identical copies. He created among nations forms of divergence and even conflict, especially through civilizational and religious differences. Have we forgotten that we are the descendants of Cain and Abel? How, then, can we overlook this truth and demand that the West show us mercy and receive us in its lands while we fail to show mercy to one another ?
And why do we go to the West to export to it our backwardness and our problems instead of remaining in our own countries to solve our crises among ourselves, away from the condescension of the West ? How can the West receive our migration and asylum claims when accepting us-in accordance with its laws and constitutions-would oblige us to deal with the fornicators, homosexuals, lesbians, and atheists among its people ?
The West is not obliged to receive us, nor to grant us the right to asylum or migration so that we may impose on it lifestyles or beliefs that contradict its laws and constitutions. Those most entitled to be welcomed on its soil are the ones who share with it its civilizational and intellectual identity.
I hope I have expressed myself with full clarity on this matter-one that many Muslims refuse to acknowledge.
