European Minorities Torn Between Worlds

Socialist presidential candidate Segolene Royal delivers a speech at the Rose Festival in Guingamp, western France, in this Oct. 1, 2006 file photo. Royal said Saturday, Nov. 25, 2006 that integrating France's minorities into the workforce is key to the revival, and survival, of the nation's sluggish economy. "France not only needs you, but it is you who are the future of France," Royal told about 400 people from disadvantaged suburbs nationwide gathered in Bondy, a town northeast of Paris whose neglected housing projects were among those wracked by riots a year ago. Inscription reads : "Let's organise the 2007's victory". (AP Photo/Vincent Michel) (Vincent Michel - AP)

Hema Bhatt, the 21-year-old daughter of a Hindu priest, is amazed at how wildly those structures can differ.

"I come from quite a large family," said Bhatt, who grew up in Manchester, England, and studies in London. "My aunt and uncle are seen like my mum and dad, and my cousins are brothers and sisters. I remember at school, friends who were not Asian found that type of relationship weird. In high school, I remember my friend turned 16 and said she was going to start paying her mum and dad rent. I found that really weird."

Many youths said that deep down their strongest attachments were to their family homeland.

Amira Tellissi, a 21-year-old Tunisian university student, grew up in the countryside outside Rome where her mother works at a riding stable. She is thinking about applying for Italian citizenship, has never mastered reading and writing Arabic, and says that if she ever left Italy she would miss mozzarella cheese and the subway.

But her heart is in Tunisia.

In Italy, "I can explain my thoughts; in Tunisia I can explain my feelings. Here I have friends; there I have brothers," she said.

"We don't have the same perspectives. They don't think of marriage, they live day by day," she said. "Westerners want to live their lives, have fun. I see having a family like something more immediate."

Mohammed Mazahaf, a 23-year-old Moroccan student who runs a youth center in Amsterdam, feels deep discomfort with Europe's abundance of choice.

"I don't want the freedom of Europe _ to drink, tell my sister to go out and have free sex before marriage. I want to have rules," he said. "I accept the rules of democracy, but I'm living the rules of Islam."

One Muslim Dutchman, Mohammed Bouyeri, had a warped interpretation of Islam's rules: Angered by Van Gogh's criticism of his faith, he murdered the filmmaker in a busy Amsterdam street, slitting his throat and leaving a letter threatening jihad, or holy war.

Most young Muslims may have no connection with that kind of extremism, but they often have strict views on Islam and have grown up more devout than their parents, perhaps rebelling against the West's unkept promise of equal opportunity.

Others are completely at home in Western culture.