July 3, 2016,
Cairo – The latest edition of the Cairo
Review of Global Affairs is featuring a Special Report: “Trouble in Europe”,
which surveys the continent’s deepening social, security, and political crises.
In the lead essay, “Crisis of Identity,” French sociologist Michel Wieviorka
examines the Brexit campaign and anti-European Union sentiment, warning of the
danger of nations retreating behind their borders. “Europe has not forgotten its wars of religion,
or the major military and nationalist clashes of past centuries,” writes Wieviorka,
“The resurgence of identity issues expresses the continent’s impotence in the
face of its social and economic ills.”
Peter D. Sutherland delivers a passionate argument for
multiculturalism in Europe in his essay in the Spring 2016 edition, titled,
“Our Great Migration Challenge.” Sutherland, the UN secretary-general’s special
representative for international migration, writes, “We must now demonstrate
not merely our humanity but our belief in the equality and dignity of man and
seek in our own society to integrate with the strangers in our midst.”
In other essays, Catherine Wihtol de Wenden offers alternatives to
the security-driven approach to the European refugee crisis; Pascal Blanchard
explores the history of France’s Muslim immigrants and their marginalization;
and Emmanuel Todd asks whether France’s “Je Suis Charlie” declarations
represented an admirable defense of press freedom or an outburst of xenophobia
in a country that has lost its way.
In his essay, “Fantasies of a Middle East Envoy,” Ahmad Samih
Khalidi questions the thesis of former U.S. peace negotiator Dennis Ross that
the U.S.-Israeli relationship is “doomed to succeed.”
