I stumbled upon an interesting dialogue on Bloggingheads.tv between Bruce Feiler and Reza Aslan, author of No God But God (and, apparently, the Brad Pitt of young Muslim commentators…).

It’s a lengthy interview, throwing up some interesting points as the two talk about the Iranian community in America, and the political state of play in Tehran at the moment.

Around the 5minute mark the interview swerves to Europe, where Aslan recently toured, courtesy of the American State department, giving lectures and performing works of ‘public diplomacy’. And what can Aslan, TBPOYMC™ tell us about European efforts to integrate their migrant communities (many of which are Muslim)?

Aslan: “I will say one thing, that I thought was absolutely fascinating, and it’s something we can talk about: Everywhere I went, with the possible exception of the UK – which is a little more advanced with some of its assimilation work – but in the Netherlands, France, Italy, Germany all the assimilation work, all the work on integration, all the conferences that are being put together, all of the reports that are being put together, being written, and the suggestions that are being made to the Government, all of that work is being done by Americans.”

Feiler: “Really” (with a tone of happy incredulity)

Aslan: “It’s not being done by Europeans. It’s our Embassy, It’s our citizens – people like me – who are getting paid to go over there and do this kind of work because simply, the Italian government – they’re so screwed up they can’t do anything let alone work on this kind of tproject; the German government have no history of working towards integration and assimilation…”

Hmmm. Where to begin? Perhaps it was a language barrier or jet lag that made Aslan overlook the efforts of the crazy screwed up Italian government (and it should be remembered that the previous government served for its full term with a majority) and Italian NGO’s. Had he taken a brief look at some Italian Association’s such as the Consiglio Italiano per i Rifugiati (Italian Council for Refugees), he would find a long list of links to Italian, and indeed European organisations that have a long history of working in the field.

It might also come as a surprise to German politicians and professionals involved in the field that they have no history of working towards assimilation. They’ve obviously been asleep since the 1950s influx of Gastarbeiters (Italians included).

This is not to suggest for a second that assimilation and integration are smooth and problem free in Italy, or elsewhere in Europe – on the contrary it remains problematic (see this article from the latest edition of Three Monkeys) and a subject of serious national debate, and one which divides the current Italian government for example.

There is an assumption, though, in Aslan’s remarks that the Anglo-American community are world leaders in integration. An assumption that is open to question, given that the current political wisdom in America seems to see th immigration ‘problem’ solely in terms of border fences, and that America’s first Muslim member of congress has only recently been elected.

Claims that Britain is far ahead of the European pack in terms of integration are difficult to verify. It certainly has a larger immigrant population than countries like Italy, but whether that population is significantly integrated is thrown into question daily by British novelists (Nadeem Aslam, for example), mainstream musicians (Bloc Party), and indeed the Government (hence the establishment of the Commision on Integration and Cohesion – a commission that has European equivalents in most countries, including Italy).

Perhaps Aslan was just playing to the crowd, presumably mostly American, with his remarks. Perhaps it was a self-justification, working on ‘public diplomacy’ on behalf of the American taxpayer.

Sadly it calls into question the rest of his interview, on a topic this monkey is less informed about – Iran. What Aslan says throughout seems to make sense, and is both interesting and thought-provoking. But after a State Department Sponsored clanger…