Stages of migration of Muslims to Europe in the XX and XXI centuries: causes, nature, consequence

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Postgraduate Student at the Department of Informational Security National Institute for Strategic Studies

Stages of migration of muslims to europe in the XX and XXI centuries: causes, nature, consequence

Petriaiev O.S.

Abstract

The article examines the issue of the migration of the Muslim population from the regions of North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia to the European Union. Muslim migration occurs in waves depending on the economic, political and social conditions of the countries of origin. After the First World War, and the partition of the Ottoman Empire between France and Great Britain, based on the Sykes-Picot Agreement, the Arab population of the Levant and Mesopotamia was artificially divided. This led to the division of peoples professing Islam, having an identical culture, speaking Arabic, which laid the foundation for future conflicts in the Middle East. Also, the European colonization of the Middle East region at the beginning of the 20th century left a psychological mark on the Arab people, that they were conquered and plundered by the European Christian civilization. The article is aimed at demonstrating the fact that the migration flows of Muslims, in the period after the Second World War, began to form enclaves of the Islamic world in Europe, which gradually expand their controlled territory in European cities. The first wave of Muslim migrants to Europe occurred in the fifties, after a labor agreement between the Federal Republic of Germany and the Republic of Turkey. Europe lay in ruins after the Second World War, and European countries needed cheap labor. Identical agreements were concluded between France, Belgium, Holland and the Arab countries of North Africa. The second wave of Muslim migration to Europe occurred in 2011, during the Libyan Civil War and the Arab Spring. The third wave occurred in 2015, which was called the European Migration Crisis. The fourth wave of Muslim migration to Europe occurred in 2021, after the withdrawal of NATO troops from Afghanistan. The fourth migration crisis was used by the President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko as a mechanism for pressure on the countries of the European Union, primarily on Poland and the Baltic states. The Muslim migration flows pose a direct threat to the national security of both individual European countries and the entire European Union as a whole. The study was conducted using the system analysis method, which showed that Islamic migration to the countries of the European Union poses a threat to national security for European civilization, both at the moment and in the near future.

Key words: Islam, ISIS, Arab Spring, demography of Europe, national security.

Анотація

ЕТАПИ МІГРАЦІЇ МУСУЛЬМАН ДО ЄВРОПИ У ХХ І ХХІ СТОЛІТТЯХ: ПРИЧИНИ, ПРИРОДА, НАСЛІДКИ

У статті розглядається питання міграції мусульманського населення з регіонів Північної Африки, Близького Сходу та Центральної Азії до Європейського Союзу. Мусульманська міграція відбувається хвилями в залежності від економічних, політичних і соціальних умов країн походження. Після Першої світової війни та поділу Османської імперії між Францією та Великобританією на основі угоди Сайкса-Піко арабське населення Леванту та Месопотамії було штучно розділене. Це призвело до поділу народів, які сповідують іслам, що мають ідентичну культуру, розмовляють арабською мовою, що заклало основу для майбутніх конфліктів на Близькому Сході. Також європейська колонізація Близького Сходу на початку XX століття залишила психологічний слід на арабському народі, що він був завойований і пограбований європейською християнською цивілізацією.

Стаття покликана продемонструвати той факт, що міграційні потоки мусульман у період після Другої світової війни почали утворювати в Європі анклави ісламського світу, які поступово розширювали контрольовану їм територію в європейських містах. Перша хвиля мігрантів-мусульман до Європи виникла в п'ятдесятих роках після укладення трудової угоди між Федеративною Республікою Німеччина та Республікою Туреччина. Після Другої світової війни Європа лежала в руїнах, а європейським країнам була потрібна дешева робоча сила. Ідентичні угоди були укладені між Францією, Бельгією, Голландією та арабськими країнами Північної Африки. Друга хвиля міграції мусульман до Європи відбулася в 2011 році, під час громадянської війни в Лівії та арабської весни. Третя хвиля відбулася в 2015 році, яка отримала назву Європейська міграційна криза. Четверта хвиля міграції мусульман до Європи сталася в 2021 році після виведення військ НАТО з Афганістану. Четверта міграційна криза була використана президентом Білорусі Олександром Лукашенко як механізм тиску на країни Європейського Союзу, насамперед на Польщу та країни Балтії.

Мусульманські міграційні потоки становлять пряму загрозу національній безпеці як окремих європейських країн, так і всього Європейського Союзу в цілому. Дослідження проводилося методом системного аналізу, який показав, що ісламська міграція до країн Європейського Союзу становить загрозу національній безпеці європейської цивілізації як на даний момент, так і в найближчому майбутньому.

Ключові слова: іслам, ІДІЛ, арабська весна, демографія Європи, національна безпека.

Introduction

In today's globalized world, migration has become an integral part of the global process. It is no exaggeration to say that the modern world is the result of centuries of movement of human communities. People from different social strata, different ethnicity, different religions, moved to where their life could get better, and where the conditions for their self-realization were more favorable.

Thus, the migration of people to more developed, prosperous and wealthy countries is a phenomenon that has a long history. The high mobility of the population in different countries of the world is due to the widening gap in the standard of living, welfare, culture, health care and other factors between the developed and developing countries of the world. The political stability of the regions is also an important factor. For many years, there has been a population migration from the troubled south to the peaceful north.

Depending on the specific circumstances, migration can become both a positive impetus for the development of the economic, scientific and technical potential of the host state, and have a negative, destabilizing effect.

The Muslim world, especially the Arab East, is an example of a region with intense migration flows. The exception is a number of countries with developed oil-producing economies located on the Arabian Peninsula. Residents of the Arab East, due to wars and a poor socio-economic situation, migrate to countries with a more developed economic system. Western Europe has become one of the economic centers that actively shapes the migration of Muslims. The main countries in which Muslim migrants are interested today are Germany, France, Great Britain, Belgium, Holland, Austria, Switzerland and the Scandinavian countries.

Most Arab migrants arrive in Europe from the countries of the Arab Maghreb due to their geographical proximity to Europe. Also, streams of Arab refugees go from the Levant and Mesopotamia through the Turkish corridor. In the summer and fall of 2021, an air corridor was marked for Afghan refugees after the fall of Kabul and the rise to power of the Taliban movement in Afghanistan, as well as Syrian and Iraqi migrants across the border of Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia and Poland.

It is important to note that the processes under consideration are taking place in parallel with the decline in the birth rate and the aging of the national population in almost all European countries. It is obvious that in the foreseeable future, the current situation may cause ethnic, religious and social conflicts.

When considering the problem of the presence of Muslims in Europe at the stage of modern history, it is necessary to analyze the migration of the population from Muslim countries in the XX and XXI centuries. The resettlement of Muslims to the European continent in modern history is associated with the economic development of Western Europe, the collapse of the colonial system, wars, the search for better places to live and the spread of Islam.

The article main goal is to study and analyze the migration flows of Muslims from the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia to the European Union, and the change in the socio-cultural and religious society in Europe.

Recent literature review

For the study, works of different political scientists and sociologists where analyzed, such as Samuel P Huntington, Desmond Dinan, Alberto Tagliapietra, James Hampshire, Richard George Adams, E. Libanova, A. Gaidutskiy, O. Malinovskiy and etc.

The main research material. The Sykes-Picot Agreement was concluded in London between May 9-16, 1916 and signed by the British Foreign Secretary Edward Gray and the French Ambassador Jules Cambon. The name of the treaty is derived from its authors, British Lieutenant Colonel for Middle East Affairs M. Sykes and French diplomat F. Georges-Picot. The purpose of this agreement was the division of the territory of the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East after the termination of its existence following the First World War. It provided for the transfer to France of such territories of the Ottoman Empire as Western Syria, Lebanon, Cilicia, areas of the cities of Ayntab, Urfa, Mardin, Sivas, Diyarbekir and the region of Hakkaria. The territories of Transjordan and Iraq were transferred under the control of Great Britain. Subsequently, Great Britain demanded a revision of the agreement, which led to the delimitation of the mandated territories of the Middle East [1].

Mandate territories in the Middle East, of the victorious countries of the First World War, in fact, represented a disguised form of colonization of the territories of the former Ottoman Empire. After the World War, the League of Nations justified the emergence of mandated territories by the fact that the population of these lands was not capable of self-government and should be placed under external control. The mandate of the group of countries "A" consisted of Iraq, Palestine, Transjordan, Syria and Lebanon. Formally, all these countries were organized as states, which in their attributes had citizenship, administrative apparatus, internal legislation, internal politics and relations with external states [2].

The redistribution of the territories of the Middle East, which was part of the Ottoman Empire, the creation of new Arab states and artificial borders, created a danger for future conflicts between the Arab peoples who inhabited these lands. The people of the Middle East were divided by artificial boundaries, ignoring their ethnic, religious, tribal and ancestral systems.

After the end of World War II, economic recovery and development began in Europe. Due to the fact that there were not enough human resources for its restoration, Western European countries relied on labor migrants from Turkey and the countries of the Middle East and North Africa. This movement of people was the first wave of migration.

Turkey was one of the countries whose labor migrants rushed to work, primarily in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). On October 30, 1961, the Republic of Turkey and the FRG signed an agreement, according to which the latter began to accept labor migrants from Turkey. The German side opened its representative office in Istanbul, which represented the interests of the German Ministry of Labor, through which German companies could employ Turkish workers. Despite the fact that the original Turkish workers were supposed to return to their homeland in two years, since 1964 they began to stay for a longer time and over time began to come with their families and remain in Germany as full-fledged citizens.

The arrival of labor migrants from Turkey to Germany continued until 1973, before the start of the economic recession, which occurred in connection with the oil crisis caused by the Arab-Israeli war. Despite the termination of the agreement on labor migration in 1961, the number of the Turkish population in Germany continued to grow due to the migration of families of labor migrants and the birth of the new generation [3].

According to the German statistical company Sta- tista, there were already 1,461,910 Turks living in Germany in 2020, representing the second largest ethnic group after the ethnic German population (Number of foreigners in Germany from 2018 to 2020, by country of origin, 2021).

Most of the ethnic Turks in Germany live in enclaves in large families, in conditions of strict adherence to traditional family values, maintaining a high birth rate, as a rule, from three to five children in each family, while each German family has from one to one and a half children. Due to the fact that the majority of the Turkish population, due to cultural differences, is not integrated into the social and political life of the FRG, their socio-political life is concluded and develops in the Turkish diaspora. In addition, cultural differences have created the conditions for the active conversion of the Turkish population to the Islamic faith through the development of a network of mosques in their areas of residence. Thus, the Turkish diaspora is a parallel society in Germany and, in fact, is not part of the culture of German society [4].

A similar situation with the Turkish population is observed in other countries of the European Union, such as Holland, Belgium, France, Austria, Great Britain, Denmark, etc. In many of these countries, the Turkish diaspora is the largest ethnic diaspora practicing Islam.

The migration of Muslims to Europe was based on two important factors: the colonial past of European countries and the lack of labor in Europe after the Second World War. France had many colonial possessions in Arab North Africa. Algeria was one of the most important colonies. By 1954, the start of the Algerian War of Independence, France had controlled the country for 120 years. Over the years, a large stratum of Europeanized, educated Algerians formed in the country, who were supporters of the French presence and French culture. Despite this, the majority of the population lived in poverty, remained illiterate and led a traditional economy; their lives were strongly influenced by the Muslim clergy and the leaders of the Sheikh tribes. A movement called the Algerian National Liberation Front fought against the French colonial authorities. After a long and bloody war of independence, in 1962, the French colonists left Algeria. Algerians who collaborated with the colonial administration, as well as the Algerian intelligentsia, military personnel and police, also moved to France. With the coming to power of the National Liberation Front movement, terror against the French population began in the country. The country's catastrophic shortage of educated people and terror led the country to economic decline. This served as a condition for the mass departure of the ethnic population from the country. According to some estimates, the number of Algerian emigrants abroad reaches 7 million, of whom 4 million live in France. An important detail should be noted: during the independence of Algeria, Algerians and their descendants moved to France, Spain and other European countries, who at the first stage supported the proclamation of their country's independence [5].

It is also worth noting the Muslim emigration to the UK. Large-scale migration of the Muslim population to England also began after the end of World War II. As a result of devastation and labor shortages, England began inviting migrant workers from former British colonies such as India, Pakistan, Yemen and other former overseas territories of the British Empire.

In 1962, the Commonwealth Immigrants Act was passed, which entailed severe restrictions on the entry of Commonwealth citizens into the UK. Entry was allowed only for the category of people who had a work permit [6].

By 1970, there were already 400,000 Muslims, men, women and children in England who arrived in England before the 1962 Commonwealth Immigrants Act came into force. They settled in large industrial areas such as the East Midlands, London, and Northern England.

In the eighties, as a result of civil wars and political persecution, residents of Algeria, Libya, Somalia, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and Bosnia began to migrate to England as asylum seekers and refugees [7].

As in the case of France and Great Britain, Muslims began to arrive in Belgium. The country also needed a manpower to rebuild the economy and extract coal from the Belgian coal mines. Belgium signed bilateral relations on labor migrants with Morocco and Turkey in 1964, Tunisia in 1969 and Algeria in 1970. Thus, the first signs of a Muslim presence in Belgium began in the context of economic development and were mainly the result of a large wave of immigrants arriving in the country.

Despite the fact that the Belgian authorities announced an end to the wave of migration in 1974, the flow of immigration continued to be stable and the number of Muslims increased. The Belgian government expected that the stay of labor migrants would be short-term and after accumulating sufficient funds, they would return to their homeland. However, contrary to this expectation, family members of Muslim labor migrants began to move to Belgium and found their own enclaves and diasporas.

The bulk of the migrants were Moroccans, who were more comfortable living in a Francophone country [8].

The main incentive for the migration of Muslims to Europe during the first wave was the economic component. The main factors attracting Muslim labor migrants to European countries are the following:

acceptable policy towards Muslim migrants in host countries;

good economic opportunities of the host country;

a high degree of tolerance towards Muslim migrants on the part of the local population at the initial stage of resettlement [9, с. 103 - 140].

The Muslim migrants of the first wave of resettlement to Western Europe developed a certain logic. In particular, the host country does not obstruct resettlement; the resettlement process itself presents no serious difficulties; the host country provides the migrant with work, housing and benefits, allows the family to be transferred, there is no discrimination based on ethnicity and religion; there are no obstacles to the construction of mosques and the creation of a diaspora; economic and political security creates comfortable conditions for creating and running a private business.

The first wave of migration of Muslims to the countries of Western Europe, which is almost 70 years old, created a diaspora, formed separate regions (enclaves) of their compact residence and established massive small and medium-sized businesses [10, с. 195 - 200].

In late 2010, Mohammed Bouazizi, a Tunisian street vegetable vendor, committed an act of self-immolation in protest against police and state tyranny. This event triggered a series of revolutions and coups d'etat, called the Arab Spring. Revolutions, coups d'etats, protests and acts of disobedience have been reported in almost all Arab countries. At the heart of these events were unresolved political and economic problems. These include the reluctance of the ruling circles of these countries to carry out democratic reforms, ignorance of basic human rights, social injustice, large-scale bureaucratic corruption, and the lack of prospects for young people with higher education. The economic downturn led to rising prices for food and essential goods, massive unemployment and poverty. Demographic factors associated with an increase in the population in Arab countries and the marginalization of part of society outside of large cities also played an important role in this process [11].

The second significant wave of Muslim migrants occurred in 2011. During the Arab Spring, a civil war broke out in Libya between supporters of the country's leader, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, and the armed opposition. The result was the assassination of Colonel Gaddafi by rebel forces and the end of the existence of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya in the world political arena. The civil war in Libya provoked a humanitarian crisis and large numbers of refugees. It is important to note that before the outbreak of the civil war, Libya was a target for labor migration from other African countries. A developed resource-based economy and a high standard of living attracted labor migrants from black Africa.

Also, for a long time Libya was a migration corridor for African people who sought to get to Europe. They sailed on boats to the Italian island of Lampedusa, hoping to get to Italy. In 2005, 15 527 people arrived on the island, in 2006 - 18 047, 2007 - 11 749, 2008 - 31 252. In 2009, the number of African and Arab migrants felt sharply due to the agreement between the government of Italy and Libya, and amounted to 2 947 people, and in 2010 - 459. After that, it seemed that the problem was solved, and the centers for the reception of refugees on the Italian island ceased to operate. muslim migration islam

In 2011, in connection with the coup d'etat in Tunisia and the civil war in Libya, refugees began to arrive again on the island of Lampedusa. First, the citizens of Tunisia began to arrive, who fled from their country to neighboring Libya, and then to the Italian island. These were mainly women and children; then, they were replaced by Libyan refugees.

By September 21, 2011, 55,298 people had already arrived on the Italian island, of which 27,315 were from Tunisia, 27,983 from Libya, the rest of the refugees were representatives of Nigeria, Ghana, Mali and Cote d'Ivoire [12].

During a military operation by NATO and their Arab allies to force the Libyan government to ceasefire, Colonel Gaddafi threatened the European Union to use the waves of migration of Africans who were in Libya as a hybrid weapon against European countries. On March 5, 2011, Colonel Gaddafi said in his interview to the French newspaper Le Journal du Diman- che: “I want to be understood: if we are threatened, if we are destabilized, we will take advantage of immigration. Thousands of people will invade Europe from Libya. And there will be no one to stop them. Osama bin Laden will come to North Africa with his armed groups. On the breed of Europe there will be Osama bin Laden.” Further in the same interview, Colonel Gaddafi says the following: “This is reality! In the current political vacuum in Tunisia and Egypt, Islamists can come to power. An Islamic jihad awaits Europe. There will be attacks on the 6th US fleet and on European ships in the Mediterranean. 50 kilometers from the borders of the European Union will be piracy. Bin Laden's people will wage jihad on land and at sea. Kill, rob and capture people with a demand for ransom. We will return to the time of Barbarossa pirates, the Ottomans who demanded ransom for ships. These will indeed be a global crisis and disaster for all” [13].

It should be emphasized that the European Parliament was well aware of Colonel Gaddafi's plans to use thousands of Arab and African migrants to create a crisis in the European Union, as noted in the report No. E-002902/2011, dated 25.03.2011 for European parliamentarians [14].

Also, in his radio address to the Libyan people and addressed to the European leaders, Colonel Gaddafi said that: "... the wonderful Libyan people" will attack "houses, offices and entire families" in Europe and, especially, in France, Great Britain and Italy ... The colonel also declared European officials, civilians, and urban infrastructure in European countries "legitimate targets of war” [15].

Summing up the process of the second migration wave of Muslims to Europe, it should be noted that even before the start of the civil war in Libya, there was a migration corridor through this country. For many years, this territory has accumulated African labor migrants and refugees fleeing civil wars in their countries. The coup d'etat in Tunisia and the civil war in Libya created, in fact, an army of Arab refugees from these countries.

President Gaddafi had comprehensive information about the number of refugees in his country; their ethnicity with Arabs and Africans professing Islam; that among these refugees there are many representatives of various jihadist movements who at any time are ready to take advantage of the unstable situation in the regions of North Africa in order to seize power or, under the guise of refugees, will try to penetrate the European continent in order to continue the religious war in the countries of the European Union.

After the death of Colonel Gaddafi, Libya plunged even more into civil war. The Libyan migration corridor continued to operate, which leads to even greater flows of illegal migrants from Equatorial and North Africa striving on various floating facilities, with the assistance of smugglers, to enter the European Union.

The Arab Spring also affected the Syrian Arab Republic. The country plunged into a long bloody civil war. In 2014, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) began to take an active role in the conflict, which in a short time was able to capture vast territories of Syria and neighboring Iraq. The war, destruction, poverty and brutality of Islamic militants have led to the emergence of large numbers of refugees in the territory of neighboring states with Syria, such as Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon.

In 2015, Europe was marked by a manifold increase in the flow of migrants and refugees from the Middle East and Africa. This migration flow for the countries of the European Union has become a serious civil problem, which the European Commission has recognized as the biggest crisis since the Second World War.

The size and simultaneous nature of the crisis caused a mixed reaction in the world. On the one hand, the migration crisis is seen as the beginning of the end of European civilization, on the other hand, the current situation has shown the ineffectiveness of European institutions and organizational structures in regulating migration flows, which symbolized the failure of European migration policy.

The 2015 migration crisis was the result of a number of related factors, which include the global economic crisis, social inequality, the aftermath of military conflicts and civil wars, and the destabilization of Arab countries.

One of the features of the 2015 migration crisis is the diverse ethnic and national composition of the refugees, consisting of Syrians, Egyptians, Libyans, Nigerians, Afghans, Pakistanis and other people. Most of them, initially, were aimed at obtaining the wealth that the inhabitants of Western Europe, primarily Germany and France, possessed. This indicates that the migrants of the third wave were well informed about the standard of living in these countries, the quality of economic and social support for the population living in these territories. Unlike the first two migration waves, the migrants of 2015 fled from their countries not so much from poverty and war as they acted purposefully, using information from the Internet and organizing propaganda of national diasporas in Western Europe.

Kapitsa L.M. believes that refugees and migrants from poor countries of the Middle East, Central and North Africa, and Central Asia, moving to the countries of Western Europe, are trying to get the benefits created by the labor of Europeans, without making efforts to create them. Further, these people, receiving European benefits, reject European values, and try to establish their own life principles, creating and expanding their own cultural and national structures (national enclaves) in European cities [16].

In the formed situation in 2015, which in our study we designated as the third Muslim migration wave, two important factors must be distinguished. The first is information manipulation that accompanied the migration crisis. In particular, the famous incident that took place on September 2, 2015 on the Mediterranean coast, not far from the Turkish city of Bodrum, where a drowned Kurdish boy from Syria, Ailan Kurdi, aged four, was found. His photograph was circulated by all the world's media and radically changed the attitude of Europeans towards refugees. Even British Prime Minister David Cameron said that as a father, he is very emotionally hurt by this photo. Thus, this informational propaganda created an emotional background among the Europeans, which formed public opinion for the admission of migrants to the countries of Western Europe [17].

The second factor of the European migration crisis is associated with Turkish President Recep Erdogan, who used the migration flows of Muslims in 2015 as a manipulative tool in order to put pressure on the European Union, after which an agreement was signed between the European Union and Turkey at the end of the year, according to which Turkey received from the EU $ 3 billion in exchange for stopping the migration flow of Muslims to Europe [18].

The year 2021 was marked by two flows of Muslim refugees to the European Union. The first flow was associated with the withdrawal of the NATO coalition armed forces from Afghanistan, the fall of the Ashraf Ghani regime, and the rise to power of the Islamic Taliban movement. The second flow took place on the Belarusian-Lithuanian, Latvian and Polish borders during the summer and autumn. Muslim migrants from countries such as Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan tried to cross the border with the European Union in order to reach Germany. In our research, we have combined these two flows into one called the fourth wave of Muslim migrants.

During the withdrawal of US and NATO troops from Afghanistan and the fall of the regime of President Ashraf Ghani, the mass exodus of Afghans from their country began. First of all, the country was left by citizens who collaborated with the American and European occupation forces, and the local administration, in addition, there were many people who feared terror from the Taliban. For several weeks, the United States and the EU carried out air evacuation of citizens of their countries and the host country. Some of the residents fled to neighboring Iran and Pakistan.

On August 15, 2021, power in Kabul was taken by Taliban. On August 31, the ministers of the interior of the member states of the European Union made a joint statement regarding the admission of Afghan refugees. At the same time, there were fears of a repeat, uncontrolled flow of Muslim refugees, as it happened in 2015 [19].

On October 7, 2021, the European Commissioner for Internal Affairs Ilva Johansson, in her speech, stated that already 300 thousand Afghans have a residence permit in European countries.

After the fall of Kabul, EU countries evacuated 22,000 Afghans to Europe. The European Commissioner noted that the European Union should continue to help Afghan refugees in providing asylum, primarily human rights defenders, journalists and women. She also said that Afghan refugees should be integrated into the 300 thousand Afghan European diaspora.

On December 13, 2021, the European Commissioner for Internal Affairs announced that 15 EU member states have agreed to host 60,000 Afghan refugees. The European Union has taken full responsibility for their evacuation and placement so that: "So that's 60,000people in need of protection who won't pay a fortune to smugglers, won't end up on a rubber boat on the Mediterranean, suffocating in an air-tight van or freezing in a deadly cold forest at the Eastern EUborder, tricked and trapped by Lukashenko" [20].

Thus, we can conclude that the leaders of the European Union by their actions contribute to the creation of a Muslim diaspora in the EU member states.

In parallel with the flow of Afghan refugees in June 2021, another wave of Muslim migrants went to the countries of the European Union, across the border of the Republic of Belarus, which borders Poland, Lithuania and Latvia. Most of the migrants were from Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, who arrived in Belarus by flights from their countries or with a transfer in Turkey. From Minsk, the capital of Belarus, they took buses to the Polish, Lithuanian and Latvian borders, and tried to cross them illegally.

Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielus Landsbergis said that Belarus uses illegal migrants as a political weapon not only against some members of the union, but also against the European Union as a whole [21].

It is important to note that the Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who was after the presidential elections in political and economic isolation, with the help of organized flows of refugees, managed to find a lever of influence on the countries of the European Union to start a dialogue. Also, this action was a provocation, with the aim of showing that the member states of the European Union are ready to move away from the principles of the ideology of liberal democracy, in conditions of national security.

Conclusion

After World War II, Europe was in ruins. The post-war reconstruction and economic boom required a lot of cheap labor, which was sorely lacking in connection with the death of millions of people. This workforce has become migrants from Muslim countries invited by the governments of West Germany, Belgium, Holland and Great Britain. Also, the process of decolonization that unfolded in the post-war period led to political and economic instability in the former colonies, forcing many of their inhabitants to migrate to the former metropolises. The first migration war created Muslim diasporas in Western European countries, such as: Turkish in Germany, Algerian in France, Moroccan in Belgium, Pakistani in Great Britain. If we characterize the reasons for the first migration wave of Muslims to the countries of Western Europe, it should be noted that, first of all, they were related to economic ones.

The second migration wave of 2011 was associated with the Arab Spring and the civil war in Libya. Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi tried to use African migrants who had been in his country for many years and continued to arrive, gradually sending them to Europe. Despite the fact that Gaddafi and the Libyan Jamahiriya quickly fell as a result of the Arab Spring and external military intervention, the precedent with African and Libyan refugees showed that migrants can be successfully used as a political weapon against the countries of the European Union.

The third wave of migration occurred in 2015, as a result of which Syrian, Iraqi and other refugees who were in Turkish refugee camps rushed to the countries of the European Union. The potential for this migration was significant. The movement of Muslim migrants to the European Union was heavily covered by the media. For example, photographs of Aylan Kurdi, a Syrian child of Kurdish origin, have been featured in many European news outlets, provoking a sense of duty among the European public in rescuing the refugees. The factor of Arab migration to the countries of the European Union was used as a lever of manipulation by Turkish President Recep Erdogan. The leaders of the European Union, by the fall of 2015, entered into a dialogue with Turkey on stopping the flow of Muslim migrants from their territory.

The fourth wave of Islamic migration occurred in 2021 during the withdrawal of US troops and their NATO allies from Afghanistan. The Afghan population, which worked closely with the NATO occupation forces, fearing for their lives and the lives of their loved ones, fled with the Western coalition. Many of them have moved to European Union. At the same time, a migration crisis occurred on the border between Belarus and Poland, Lithuania and Latvia. On Belarusian airlines Belavia, Syrians, Iraqis, Afghans, arriving in Belarus under the guise of tourists, tried to cross the border with the European Union. Some have succeeded. Alexander Lukashenko used the refugee factor as a provocation and an element of hybrid weapon to discredit the leadership of the European Union, Poland and the Baltic countries. We combined these two flows of Muslim refugees in 2021 into one fourth wave of migration.

After analyzing the migration flows of the XX and XXI centuries of Muslims to Europe, one can come to the conclusion that the European Union, to some extent, has become a hostage to its internal and external liberal-democratic policy. Muslim migrants, taking advantage of the open policy of Brussels, which for the same reasons cannot apply tough measures to protect its borders, actively took advantage of the conditions for settling in the territories of the European Union. In addition, the tactic of Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and President of the Republic of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko included the use of Muslim migrants as an element of a hybrid war against the European Union.

In the 21st century, in the era of globalization, migration flows remain and will continue to be used as an element of destabilization of both individual countries and state unions. Such actions lead to aggressive retaliatory measures using violence against migrants by border forces, pressure on the state budget, popularization of nationalist parties, and conditions for the emergence of ethnic, religious and cultural conflict in the future.

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