TRIBUNE – In a text published by the Spanish press, and translated into French for the first time, the writer reflects on the way in which immigration is profoundly disrupting European civilization. According to him, the term that should be used to describe the attitude of a part of Muslim immigration is the Greek word “oikophobia”, which designates hatred of one’s home, of the place where one lives, and the refusal to adopt its customs.
* Latest book published : « The Italian » (Gallimard, 2024).
I am sitting on the terrace of a café in a town in northern Italy and, in the space of half an hour, I see a dozen Muslim women pass by, their faces covered except for their eyes. Some are holding children by the hand, others are carrying shopping baskets, and as I look at them, I think of the cold inevitability of history, of the fact that the geopolitical transformation of the Mediterranean is now taking place on makeshift boats, and that the waves of migrants are an irreversible factor in civilisation. Of a new Europe that is nothing like the other. But when you are of a certain age and have a library, realising this is neither dramatic nor terrible. History is made up of collapsed civilisations, and we do not always have the privilege of witnessing the decline of one of them.
It goes without saying that Europe has always been a mixed space where misfortunes often came…
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