My grandmother on the paternal side told me once: if you ever decide to leave your homeland and set foot elsewhere, you must respect local tradition and law, and learn the language of your hosts.
“You don’t have to become one of them,” she said, “but they’d better mistake you for one of their own.”
Myka Sofica (officially Sofia) — that was her name — had an unyielding backbone. A mother of six, she was a tough woman. After the Soviet occupation of Romania’s eastern territories, she remained Romanian both in heart and on paper, refusing to change her ethnicity when Moscow allowed rural populations to apply for their first Soviet passport in 1974 — despite tremendous pressure to Russify names and identities.
Many years later, I happened to attend a birthday anniversary. Among the people around the table was a man from a Caucasian country. The name of that country is not important — he could have been from anywhere. It was an experience that highlighted why myka Sofica was right, even though she never read anything but the Bible in her life, let alone theses on linguistic policies.
A Putinist at the table
I don’t remember his name, but his behavior and arguments have remained deeply engraved in my memory.
Let’s call him “Ahmed.” He was a 30-year-old fruit trader who left his country while young, established himself in Russia, then settled and married in Moldova. Aside from his mother tongue, he spoke Russian. Everyone at our table was fluent in Russian. During conversations with Ahmed, we switched to Russian for his convenience, but when chatting tête-à-tête among ourselves, we spoke Romanian to each other.
Until Ahmed made a critical observation.
“It is rude to speak in my presence in a language I don’t understand,” he said, full of confidence that he was right.
Everyone was shocked. We knew he had married a Moldovan woman and fathered three children with her, in addition to older children he had left behind in Central Asia or Russia — he actually brought all three young children to an adults-only event. We also knew he had lived and worked in Moldova for nine or ten years — plenty of time to learn a language. By comparison, African students who come to study in Chisinau become fluent in both Romanian and Russian in about 24 months.
“Why does a private conversation between two persons bother you? Especially that the topic does not concern you in any way,” I asked. “How can this be rude in relation to you?”
“It is because I don’t understand what you are talking there,” he replied.
“How come that you live in this country for such a long period and don’t speak its official language yet?” I lost my patience for a second.
“I am a representative of a minority,” Ahmed argued with an air of superiority, clapping his palms on his tracksuit. “So, I am not obliged to learn it. It is your obligation to provide maximum conditions for minorities to feel safe and welcome.”
I explained that the local law actually requires every Moldovan citizen to speak the official language at a conversational level. Ahmed had become a Moldovan citizen through marriage, most likely, though it wasn’t clear how he had passed the language exam.
I also pointed out that it is simple politeness for a foreigner to speak the language of their hosts.
Ahmed was unconvinced. Russian, he went on, is an international language so it is appropriate to use it during conversations with foreigners.
“Wait,” I interrupted him. “Have you just stopped being a Moldovan citizen? Is this an international banquet?”
I softly reminded Ahmed that his native country had banned Russian from official circulation and that, during my short visit there some time ago, local journalists and officials felt no need to switch to an international language while talking to each other at a table with many foreign journalists.
“Because you were a guest,” Ahmed cut in.
Alright then, I told myself, let’s deploy some artillery. There is a famous remark by someone your Russian friends love to quote — Karl Marx. This 19th-century philosopher is believed to have observed that those who do not speak the language of the country where they stay must be either guests, or occupiers, or idiots.
Which one applies to you?
This observation cooled Ahmed for a while. Until some of the guests made a mistake. Russia had captured Crimea in 2014 and it was really hard to avoid politics at the dinner table.
Ahmed’s eyes sparkled like the lamps in Terminator’s eye sockets.
“I love politics!” he exclaimed, seeing an opening through which he could participate in a new thread of discussion.
“Ukraine is to blame, definitely,” he continued, hijacking the topic.
The rest of the evening became an exchange of shots about Putin and Russia’s unprovoked military interventions in Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine. The opponent in front of me turned out to be a stubborn Putin zombie who had learned all the propagandist narratives by heart. He had never bothered to learn the language of his new home. He had never paid taxes. He knew nothing about Moldovan history but readily lectured us on how to live and whom to love — Putin, of course.
“A great leader of modern times,” as he described the dictator.
No argument, no matter how grounded in fact, worked for Ahmed. It was pointless to show him historical examples because my impression was that he had learned the subject only from Russian television. When I tried to show him articles from the internet, he dismissed them as untrustworthy.
“I don’t use the internet,” he noted.
If we hadn’t had to go home, Ahmed and I would probably have ended up fighting.
Two Arabs competing for French identity
That evening stayed with me, not because Ahmed was exceptional — he wasn’t — but because years later, watching French television, I saw pretty similar arguments coming from another mouth, in a new country, wearing a hijab instead of a tracksuit.
The real trigger for this article was a public debate on the TPMP YouTube channel almost two years ago. The main participants were Jean Messiha and a veiled activist named Soukayna, both French citizens.
Jean Messiha and Soukayna
The former, born in Egypt, adopted the French way of life. The latter, born in France of Arab descent, has imported Islamic tradition in her public appearance and civic activism.
When she told him he “has an Arab head,” he replied: “The way you are dressed, you are not French. I am French, and I am not disguised as an 8th-century Bedouin.”
Their heated argument reminded me of my evening with Ahmed. But it also raises a larger question: what does integration mean in the societies people choose to join?
France — and Europe as a whole — is not merely a passport and access to benefits. France is a specific culture, a history, a way of life, the values of the Enlightenment, and strict secularism enshrined in the 1905 law. It is a country where church and state are separate, where women do not hide their hair or face by religious decree, where people do not bow to medieval desert customs.
People choose to live in European countries because standards of living are higher. Because there’s more freedom and opportunity. It is also true that many immigrants are fleeing oppression and hunger — from societies that allowed oppression and hunger to take root.
The hijab is not just a piece of fabric. It is a visible sign of belonging to the Islamic Ummah, where religion dominates the republic. It is a symbol of refusal to assimilate. When a woman comes dressed like that and demands to be considered French, to quote Messiha, she asks us to pretend nothing is wrong — that a parallel society where Sharia norms gradually replace ours is normal, and that French society should adopt Muslim customs.
Of course, millions of Muslims in Europe live integrated, secular lives, speak the local language, send their children to public schools, and ask for no special accommodation. They are not the subject of this essay. The subject is those who refuse assimilation and demand that Europe adapt to them — rather than the other way around.
If someone comes to France and insists on introducing Sharia law and Islamic dress, what was the point of leaving their homeland where those things already exist? Does a French passport grant the right to undermine the foundations of the nation that issued it? Has Soukayna become truly French? Has Ahmed become truly Moldovan?
Is this the kind of diversity Europe expected?
I have asked myself these questions many times since that evening with Ahmed. And I have watched similar debates in France, in Germany, in the United Kingdom, in Romania. The pattern is the same everywhere. The excuses are the same. The accusations of “racism” and “Islamophobia” are the same. And the paralysis of European elites is the same.
My grandma’s wisdom
My grandmother wasn’t a proficient reader. She never heard of Voltaire or the 1905 French law on secularism. But she knew something that Europe’s educated elites have forgotten: a house cannot stand if the guests rewrite the rules.
Europe, pardon me, is not a hotel. It is not a duty-free shop where anyone can wander in, take what they want, and demand that the staff adjust the lighting and the music to their personal taste. Europe is a civilization — fragile, hard-won, and worth defending.
Yes, Europe needs immigrants. Strength lies in people. The demographics are unforgiving as demonstrated by multiple studies and analyses (check out a few here, here, here, here, and here). Without migration, the workforce shrinks, pension systems collapse, and whole regions empty out.
But need is not surrender. Nor an invitation to be colonized by the very customs people fled.
Ahmeds will not learn a new language. Instead, they will demand everyone to speak a language they understand. Soukaynas will not remove their hijabs. They would rather dictate what to wear at the Paris Fashion Week.
So, what can Europe do?
Enforce a rigorous selection. With mandatory language test before arrival. Proven literacy and secondary education. A secularism charter signed by default. Minimum cultural compatibility checks at the pre-seeding stage.
Not because we hate outsiders — but because we love our own house enough to maintain its walls and character. That is not racism but self-preservation.
My grandmother taught me to honor the hosts’ values. It is time the hosts made their values non-negotiable.
***
p.s. I published here an article in defense of immigrants, and I stand by the principles outlined there.
