OPEN DOORS 3 страница

But Western Europe is no longer synonymous with Christendom – if, indeed, it ever was. As the countries of the E.U. pursue an "ever closer union," Islam and its cultural values are increasingly being recognized as an intrinsic part of Europe and not some alien influence. The E.U. alone now has more than 17 million Muslims within its borders: Catholic France is home to some 4 million Muslims, primarily of North African origin; Protestant Britain may have as many as a million followers of Islam; and Belgium has an Islamic population of 350,000.

Islam in Western Europe is not exclusively – or even primarily – Arabic-speaking. Like the religion itself, it is a mosaic of many hues. In the Netherlands, the Indonesian community of 440,000 is largely Muslim, while in Germany Islam is dominated by the 2.1 million Turks. And most of these communities are no longer made up of immigrants, but second- or third-generation Muslims born and raised in Western Europe. "It's time to stop seeing Muslims as foreigners,» says Larbi Kechat, rector of the Adda'wa Mosque in the Stalingrad section of Paris. "The second and third generations are Europeans. The question is: How is this multiplicity going to be managed? Do we want a ghetto system or do we want all the components of the community to flourish in mutual respect?"

What's changing is how this younger generation is forging a new identity from their Western and Islamic heritages – and how non-Muslim Europeans are contending with the rise of this new cultural and religious force.

For centuries Islam has been an ethereal presence in Western Europe. Ever since the Moors were banished from Spain in the 15th century and the Turks were driven from the gates of Vienna in 1683, significant communities of Islamic people have been relegated to the fringes of prosperous Western Europe: the Tatars of the Volga Valley and Black Sea rim, the Muslim peoples of Albania, Bosnia, Bulgaria and Turkey. For those who know where to look, though, Islamic influences can be found everywhere, from Viennese coffee – legacy of retreating Turkish troops – to the architecture of Spain and Sicily. "Islam was the necessary link between Greco-Roman civilization and modern day Europe," says Farhan Nizami, director of the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies. "In that sense, Islam is not alien to Europe."

Despite the protestations of far-right groups like France's National Front and the German People's Union, Islam is now – and always has been – a strong and influential presence in Europe, When "guest workers" from Muslim countries like Turkey, Pakistan and Algeria arrived in large numbers during the 1960s to help rebuild the war-tom and manpower-starved continent, they brought with them more than just their manual labor. Many people believed that the workers would return home after they finished their contracts – and that any who stayed would be culturally and socially assimilated into the host nation – but things did not turn out that way. Many first-generation Muslim immigrants to Europe remained – usually in isolated neighborhoods like Kreuzberg in Berlin or L'Epeule in the northern French industrial town of Roubaix – and consistently ran up against glass walls of job discrimination and prejudice. The rise of militant Islam and the reports of conflicts in Israel and Afghanistan fed what researchers from Britain's Runnymede Trust, an independent think tank dealing with race relations, call Islamophobia. In the Western European popular mind, Islam became equated with religious fundamentalism, antiquated social practices and terrorism.

The reality of Islam as it is practiced in Europe has little to do with these negative stereotypes. Indeed, some Islamic virtues are indistinguishable from those long cherished in Christian Europe. Family values, for example. Says Copenhagen-based political scientist Naser Khader, author of Honor and Shame, a book he wrote in Danish about Muslim immigrants, "Islamic culture has helped open the eyes of Danes to the value of family ties." Islamic families tend to be close- knit, and, says Khader, the current Danish "back-to-the-family" movement draws some of its inspiration from the "New Danes," as Denmark's Islamic newcomers are called.

(to be continued)

I. Find English equivalents for the following:

- синоним христианского мира;

- во многих отношениях;

- преодолеть проблемы;

- чуждое влияние;

- взаимоуважение;

- ультра-правые группы;

- ручной труд;

- жесткие сроки;

- иметь мало общего с чем-либо;

- тесные семейные узы;

- нагнетать.

II. Answer the questions:

1. What do knots of earnest young men do every Friday?

2. What is ironical about the Tawba Mosque?

3. What is oddly appropriate about it?

4. Why is Western Europe no longer synonymous with Christendom?

5. Where can we see the trace of Islamic influence?

6. Why did large number of Muslims arrive in Europe in 1960’s?

7. What is Islam usually equated with?

8. What are the main Islamic virtues?

III. Say what is true and what is false. Correct the false sentences:

1. These days Islamic communities are flourishing in the most surprising places.

2. Western Europe is still synonymous with Christendom.

3. Islam and its cultural values haven’t been recognised as an intrinsic part of Europe.

4. Since the Moors were banished from Spain in the 15th century and the Turks were driven from the gates of Vienna in 1683 significant communities of Islamic people remain in some capitals of Europe.

5. Many people believed that the workers would return home after they finished their contracts.

6. In the Western European popular mind Islam became equated with religious fundamentalism, antiquated social practices and terrorism.

7. Some Islamic virtues have little to do in common with those long cherished in Christian Europe.

8. Islamic families tend to be close-knit.

IY. Find a word or phrase in the text which is similar in meaning to the following:

- a situation of calmness and stability;

- to exist and function successfully or develops quickly and strongly all the qualities;

- traditions or features of life that have been continued over many years and passed on from one generation to another;

- an unreasonable dislike of something;

- old-fashioned and no longer appropriate and need to be replaced;

- thinking and doing what is right and avoiding is wrong.

Y. Express the meaning of following words and phrases:

- repentance;

- drab;

- legacy;

- to cherish;

- inspiration;

- virtue;

- to be close-knit.

YI. Demonstrate the meaning of the following words and expressions in sentences of your own:

- diligently;

- to exude;

- repentance;

- intrinsic;

- to contend;

- prejudice;

- antiquated;

- to flourish.

YII. Topics for discussion:

1. Muslims in Europe.

2. Islam and European culture.

UNIT 11

SPIRIT LEVEL

(part 2)

Islam is making other positive contributions to Europe. "Some would argue that in an increasingly secular Europe, the flowering of Islam brings with it a new and dynamic sense of spirituality," says Oxford's Nizami. Islamic theologians now join with Christian and Jewish scholars in debating religious as well as public issues like genetic engineering and abortion. And as Islamic faces earn recognition in endeavors as diverse as sport, fashion and food, the monochromatic nature of many European nations is being transformed.

Many European Muslims – aided by higher education and newly acquired linguistic skills – are increasingly much less shy about expressing their Islamic roots, "Our parents practiced Islam in hiding," recalls Yamina Benguigui, a 40-year-old French-born film director of Algerian descent. "We were ashamed of showing that we observed the Ramadan fast. But tray part of French society is defining itself asMuslim. Daring to be visible in a community is a sign of putting down roots."

As a child Ipek Cetinkaya, a 21-year-old student of languages at the Technical University in Berlin, had only German friends and felt ashamed that she had to peak Turkish at home because her parents could not keep up with her rapid-fire German. "For a long time," says Cetinkaya, "I rejected being Turkish." Now, Cetinkaya belongs to a Turkish student group in Berlin and, while she does not regularly attend mosque, she does profess an increasing attachment to Islam and has begun saying daily prayers. Cetinkaya's faith is an intensely personal one. "This faith gives me the strength to stand up for myself," she says, "not to give up in life, and to know that I am not alone."

Cetinkaya typifies a trend among young Muslims. Increasingly, the folk crowding the mosques and forming study groups across Western Europe are not elderly people seeking a connection to the dimly remembered traditions of their native countries, but rather young people, born in Europe, who are searching for meaning in lives fractured by a dual heritage. "These young people are considered neither entirely European nor entirely Arab like their parents," says French sociologist Farhad Khosrokhavar. "Islam offers a kind of hyphenated identity that falls somewhere between these two extremes," Throughout Europe, young Muslims are not rejecting being French, German or Belgian; they are fashioning an amalgam that is both European and Islamic.

Unquestionably, one of the issues that has generated the most discord is the Islamic practice of wearing headscarves. The increased popularity of headscarves among young Muslim women is not the result of pressure from narrow-minded clerics. The scarves are, in fact, considered optional in most communities. Instead, it comes from a new sense of religious pride. Says 16-year-old Berliner Rabia Lekesiz, who began wearing a headscarf two years ago, "I feel very connected to Germany and do not want to go back to Turkey.

But faith plays an important role in my life and wearing a headscarf is a sign of my faith." But to many non-Muslims in Western Europe, headscarves, especially when worn in state schools, conjure up fears of Islamic fundamentalism. In the small Danish town of Dalum on the island of Funen, two teachers were suspended from their jobs last June because they refused to teach three Somali girls who wore headscarves.

Working out accommodations on these issues is not easy, and some Muslim voices urge that Islamic communities show flexibility too. "Classical Islam developed a theology for a majority religion sovereign in its own land," says Soheib Bencheikh, the mufti of Marseilles. "We have no theology for being one minority among others in a secular space. We need a new theology to bring the Muslim faith into line with these new realities." Leaders like Bencheikh in France and Zaki Badawi, the former director of the Islamic Cultural Centre at the Central Mosque in London, have been exploring a new theology – or, at the very least, some new practices – that will allow Islam to develop as a minority religion. They would, for example, like to see an easing of traditionally strict codes on courtship and marriage.

The history of Islam is the history of adaptation. Islam's core beliefs remain immutable, but compromise with local customs around the edges has been the norm. Now that Islam is being recognized as an integral part of European culture, Europeans of all faiths could well learn to adopt the flexibility and tolerance necessary to prosper. In time a form of Euro-Islam may develop that is as different from the Islam of Turkey or Pakistan as Damascus' Great Mosque is from that makeshift red-brick mosque in Copenhagen.

(Ulla Quens, Time)

I. Find English еquivalents for the following:

- добиться признания;

- совершать богослужения;

- алжирского происхождения;

- соблюдать пост;

- пустить корни;

- беглый немецкий язык;

- заявлять;

- постоять за себя;

- компромисс;

- привести в соответствие;

- со временем.

II. Answer the questions:

1. What are positive contributions of Islam to Europe?

2. Why are Muslims now much less shy about expressing their Islamic roots?

3. In what way do they express it?

4. What is trend among young Muslims?

5. What did classical Islam develop a theology for?

6. Why do Muslims need a new theology?

III. Say what is true and what is false. Correct the false sentences:

1. An Islamic faces earn recognition in endeavors as divers as sport, fashion and food, the monochromatic nature of many European nations is being transformed.

2. Ipek Cetinkaya took it for granted that she had to speak Turkish at home because her parents could not keep up with her rapid-fire German.

3. «This faith gives me the strength to stand up for myself and to know that I am not alone».

4. Very Few elderly people are seeking a connection to the dimly remembered traditions of their native countries.

5. Islam offers a kind of hyphenated identity that falls somewhere between these two extremes.

6. One of the issues that has generated the most discord in the Islamic practice of wearing yashmak.

7. But to many non-Muslims in Western Europe headscarfs, especially when worn in state schools, conjure up fears of Islamic fundamentalism.

8. Now that Islam is being recognized as an integral part of European culture, Europeans of all faiths could well learn to adopt the flexibility and tolerance necessary to prosper.

IY. Find a word or phrase in the text which is similar in meaning to the following:

- something you give, do or say in order to help to make something successful;

- having no connection with religion or churches;

- ancestry that your family has;

- a strong feeling of confidence, trust and optimism about something or somebody;

- a mixture of two or more things;

- to cause something to being;

- a good feeling of happiness and eagerness for praise;

- the unpleasant feeling you have when you think that you are in danger;

- being never changed

- to be successful and make a good progress.

Y. Express the meaning of the following words and phrases:

- to profess;

- to stand up for oneself;

- hyphenated identity;

- narrow-minded;

- optional;

- accommodation;

- custom;

- sovereign.

YII. Demonstrate the meaning of the following words and expressions in the sentences of your own:

- discord;

- optional;

- to conjure up;

- to bring into line;

- code;

- courtship;

- immutable;

- to prosper;

- to be suspended from the job.

YII. Topics for discussion:

1. Muslims in Russia.

2. Islam and Christendom.

UNIT 12

CRISIS DOWN ON THE FARM

(part 1)

Like all animals, humans are territorial. But unlike other creatures, we are also attached to the soil by an emotional imperative. What nation doesn’t have its rural landscape - its fatherland or motherland - as one of the wellsprings of its poetry, music and folklore? So the luckiest of people must surely be farmers. AS The poet Virgil, a small farmer himself, put it: «How blessed beyond all blessings are farmers, if they but knew their happiness! Far from the clash of arms, the most just earth brings forth from the soil an easy living for them.»

The depth of the crisis was brought home earlier this year in Britain., when about 280,000 country people marched quietly through the streets 9f London carrying placards pleading «Listen to Us», and «Don’t Take the Backbone out the Farming». As well as farmers, they were people wanting to preserve rural jobs and ways of life: hunters, farriers and foresters. Thousand were there simply because they know that the countryside is an economic, recreational and spiritual resource that, once lost, cannot be replaced. Says one of those marchers, Perevel Bruce, a dairy and arable farmer in Hampshire: «I see my life’s work as being for my children. I want to nurture my land for them. I hope there’s a future in farming for my sons.»

The fact that there is no future on the land for the children of many farming families is popularly blamed on the Common Agricultural Policy of the European Union-probably unfairly. The CAP aimed to provide farmers with a guaranteed price for their goods, help peasant farmers adapt to modern, sustainable agriculture and offer rural workers «a fair standard of living.» Behind those noble goals was the need to boost food production in a post-war Europe plagued by shortages.

But Virgil wrote those lines in about 30 B.C. Today, how many small farmers in Europe would share his vies that the living is easy? The truth is that the image city people love to hold in the sunshine, brown cows and battered red tractors - is in danger of becoming restricted to storybooks. A great many of Europe’s millions of small farmers are deep in financial mire, unable to battle modern intensive agribusiness, and suffered the humiliation of earning a big chunk of their income by being paid not to grow crops or raise animals.

But some 40 years on, the remedy has produced alarming long-term side-effects. The subsidies offered under the policy – either in payments for each animal kept or hectare farmed, or in guaranteed minimum prices for produce – created a false market and encouraged overproduction that led to the infamous wine lakes, butter mountains and now, huge grain surpluses. o It fostered bigger-is-better, intensive farming that can cause environmental damage, and left small farmers unable to compete.

Certainly some agribusinesses have done very nicely out of the CAP. A dozen or so huge company farms in the flat east of England receive annual support checks from Brussels of more than $1.5 million each. The total payout on agriculture is $44 billion a year – half the E.U.'s total budget. And because the system so distorts real supply and demand, some of it goes toward "unfarming" – giving farmers money not to produce. This "set-aside" policy affects about 5%of Europe's farmland. E.U. Agriculture Commissioner Franz Fischler proposes it should be 10%next year because of soaring production, especially of cereals. Without changes to the system, the European Commission estimates 30%of land will have to be "set aside" to avoid new mountains of unsaleable produce.

The biggest reaper of cm money is France, which received about $8.5 billion in 1996, followed by Germany, which gleaned more than $6.5 billion. But even the French accept that the well will eventually run dry. Says Francis-Regis Fontan, who grows soy, sunflowers and wheat at Garac, near Toulouse: "We're worried. The CAP has made everyone much more dependent on Brussels. I don't understand how they can give so much. But if the subsidies go, there'll be no more agriculture." Despite such dire predictions, subsidies do seem destined to go, or at least to be cut drastically. But since countryside issues are closer to the heart than coal mines or shipbuilding, few politicians in Brussels risk saying by how much, or when.

"Without subsidies, there's no doubt, all the local farms would disappear," says Jean-Gerard Pimpaneau, mayor of the village of Lafat in the northwestern foothills of France's Massif Central. Lafat is typical of thousands of villages throughout the c E.U. At the turn of the century, it was a farming community of 1,2000 people. Today the population is 450 of whom nearly 20% are past the age of 75. The combination of small, unprofitable holdings and the lure of the cities, has been irresistible. Today, one of Lafat’s main crops is bachelors. «All the young women leave,» says Pimpapeau. They have little choice. A clothing factory that employed 330 women moved to Poland in 1992. The local school closed the same year.

For all their difficulties, few French farmers would swap places with their Polish counterparts. The average per capita eve of Poles is barely half that of the E.U.'s poorest members, Greece and Portugal. Yet it is countries like Poland, one of those at the head of the line to join the E.U., that make the present subsidy system even more untenable in the long term.

Poland has 28%of its workforce in agriculture, compared to the E.U. average of 5%.Its more than 2 million farms average not much more than seven hectares, less than half the E.U. average. If the farmers from Poland and the other countries hoping to join the club were to receive the subsidies available to the 6.9 million E.U. farmers, there would be only one word on everyone's lips in Brussels: bankruptcy.

Some of those eastern farmers are of two minds anyway: they fear an invitation to join the E.U. ranks might leave them even worse off. Says Henryk Adamczyk, 38, who farms 12 hectares near the isolated village of Wola Wladyslawowska, 75 km southeast of Warsaw, "The E.U. is not going to be sentimental." Apart from making production more efficient, Poland and othercandidates will have to meet stricter health and veterinary standards. It was the failure of two export-certified dairy plants in Poland to pass E.U. hygiene inspections that led to the suspension of those exports in December 1997. Adamczyk thinks the E.U.might work for Polish farmers in 15 years or so, once agriculture there has been restructured, and "after something is done about all these people who will have to leave the villages." Adamczyk makes a bare living through a contract to sell pigs to a processing plant, but his farm offers no future for his two sons or his daughter.

Poland's Agriculture Minister, Jacek Janiszewski, says there is no choice but to enter the E.U. system. But in a speech earlier this year he added a caveat that is echoed by his counterparts everywhere: «With integration or remaining outside the E.U., there is no chance that traditional, family-run farms can maintain themselves from agriculture alone. Farms must acquire an additional source of income."

(to be continued)

I. Find English equivalents or the following:

- сельский пейзаж;

- разделять точку зрения;

- в глубокой финансовой трясине;

- жирный кусок;

- благородные цели;

- длительные побочные эффекты;

- нарушения в окружающей среде;

- все хорошее когда-нибудь кончается.

II. Answer the questions:

1. What image do city people love to hold of farmers?

2. What is the today’s position of small farmers in Europe?

3. Why did Peverell Bruce participate in the farmer’s demonstration?

4. What was the main goal of CAP in a post-war Europe?

5. What has the remedy caused?

6. What is the essence of the «set-aside» policy?

7. What is the main Lafat’s crops? Why?

8. What are the prospects of Poland’s future?

III. Say what is true and what is false. Correct the false sentences:

1. But unlike other creatures we are also attached to the soil by an emotional imperative.

2. As well as farmers, they were people waiting to preserve rural jobs and ways of life: hunters, farmers and foresters.

3. Thousands don’t know that countryside is an economic, recreational and spiritual resource that, once lost, cannot be replaced.

4. The CAP aimed to provide goods, help peasant farmers adapt to modern, sustainable agriculture and offer rural workers «a fair standard of living».

5. Without changes to the system, the European Commission estimates 50% of land will have to be «set aside» new mountains of unsaleable produce.

6. At the term of the century, it was a farming community of 1,200 people. Today, the population is 450, of whom nearly 20% are past the age 75.

7. For all their difficulties, many French farmers are eager to swap places with their Polish counterparts.

8. Farms must acquire an additional source of income.

IY. Find a word or phrase in the text which is similar in meaning to the following:

- to put a limit on something in order to prevent it being large,

- the felling of embarrassment caused by having lost one’s pride,

- to adjust to a new situation in order to be able to deal with it,

- to increase and improve something by a large amount,

- a situation where there is not enough of something,

- a quality of something that is extra or more that is needed,

- to change a statement or an argument so that its meaning becomes different,

- an attractive quality that something has, or something that you find attractive.

Y. Express the meaning of the following words and phrases

- recreational and spiritual resource;

- to nurture;

- side-effect;

- a fair standard of living;

- false market;

- set-aside policy;

- a bare living.

YI. Demonstrate the meaning of the following words and expressions in the sentences of your own:

- to nurture;

- to adopt;

- sustainable;

- noble goals;

- to boost;

- shortage;

- surplus;

- reaper;

- well will run dry.

YII. Topics for discussion:

1. Social position of western peasants.

2. Agriculture in developed countries.

UNIT 13

CRISIS DOWN ON THE FARM

(part 2)

The search for new rural livelihoods may be helped by a turnaround in the trend that attracted people to the cities. Urban crowding and high costs of living are causing a return flow in many places. In Britain, an estimated 1,700 people a week move out of heavily urban areas. The Labour government has said 4.4 million new houses need to be built in Britain by the year 2016, and that 40%of these should be in the countryside, making many country people shudder at the likely environmental impact. But this readjustment gives hope to village mayors like Pimpaneau. He says eight houses in Lafat have been sold to newcomers in the space of a year.

In some places, farmers have shown initiative of their own. In the northern Spanish village of Plan, in the province of Huesca, local men – who far outnumbered women among the 500 inhabitants – advertised in the national press about 10 years ago inviting women to join them for a weekend of partying. The experiment worked so well they repeated it four years in a row – and there were 40 weddings in and around Plan. Other towns and villages have copied the idea. However, Plan's mayor, Jose Antonio Lopez, says there remains a pattern of "young girls leaving to study and find jobs in larger towns. There is nothing for them to do here."

There are now an estimated 900 ghost towns and villages scattered across Spain. But small successes like those in Lafat or Plan support the arguments of those who claim there isno countryside crisis at all. "What we're seeing is a mutation," says sociologist Marcel Jollivet of France's National Center for Scientific Research. "We're entering the post-industrial rural era. It has become much cheaper to buy or build a house in the country, and as the quality of urban living continues to deteriorate rural areas are acquiring an increasingly positive image." Jollivet says the communications revolution means new activities should be possible in the country. For example, managers, accountants – even computer programmers – could do most of their work just as easily via e-mail.

The Irish have shown flair in bringing new jobs to a jaded economy. The state- backed Industrial Development Agency (IDA) helped create more than 15,000 during 1997, luring multinationals to Ireland with bait such as a 12.5%corporations tax. But the relative boom in the high tech, construction and engineering sectors has been mostly in or around towns. The IDA is now selecting rural black spots, building factories in them at its own expense, then offering them rent-free for a set period to encourage the start-up of new businesses.

Meanwhile, in Ireland there are now half as many farms as there were in 1970, and nearly half of their owners are over 55. This lack of young blood is found in most E.U. countries. In Italy, 20%of Italian farmers are well over 60.

Their farms are being merged into bigger holdings. There were 300,000 dairy farms in Italy in 1985; today there are 110,000.

While this may make economic sense, small farmers only reluctantly give up their land. Typical is the southern Italian grape- and olive-growing town of Guardia Sanframondi, 60 km northeast of Naples. Until the 1960s, most of its 6,000 inhabitants worked on the land; today fewer than 800 do. But another statistic is equally revealing: in 1981 Guardia's 1,354 registered agricultural concerns averaged a single hectare; today there remain 1,039, with the average size still only 1.2 hectares. The reason is people like Giuseppe Ciarleglio, one of a new generation of farmers who have to hold down a second job. Ciarleglio supports his wife and two young children by working 36 hours a week as a fireman, plus farming the 1.5 hectares of vines he inherited from his parents. The grapes add $12,000 a year to his income. "I couldn't make ends meet otherwise," he says.

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