Visiting predominantly Muslim suburbs emerging outside nearly all northern European cities, one question keeps recurring: Why have some of the richest, most educated, most secular, most placid and most homogeneous countries in the world willingly opened their doors to virtually any migrant from the poorest, least modern, most religious and least stable countries?
Other questions follow: Why have mostly Christian countries decided to take in mostly Muslim immigrants? Why do so many establishment politicians, most notably Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel, ignore and revile those who increasing worry that this immigration is permanently changing the face of Europe? Why does it fall to the weaker Visegrad states of Eastern Europe to articulate a patriotic rejection of this phenomenon? Where will the immigration lead to?
There's no single answer that applies to multiple countries; but of the many factors (such as secularization) behind this historically unprecedented acceptance of alien peoples, one stands out as most critical: a Western European sense of guilt. To many educated Western Europeans, their civilization is less about scientific advances, unprecedented levels of prosperity and the achievement of unique human freedoms, and more about colonialism, racism and fascism.
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