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)

"I consider myself a coconut: brown on the outside, and white on the inside," said Shereen Sally, a 19-year-old university student from Greenhithe, southeast of London, whose parents are Sri Lankan. "I never have been typically Asian."

With a Catholic mother and Muslim father, Sally navigates her cultures with agility. "I have been baptized and had Holy Communion, but I do Ramadan as well," she said.

Still, she says, most of her friends are South Asian like her.

"I used to think it was bad the way Asians segregated themselves but coming to university has opened my eyes. You go to your own kind because you feel comfortable with them," she said.

Ramani, 20, has platinum blond curly hair, big silver earrings, and a revealingly tight top. She smokes, dates a Moroccan man and frequents discos.

And yet she expresses an almost painful longing for her family's Islamic traditions, a sense that life in the West has deprived her of something more spiritual.

"I wish I had been born into a strict family of Muslims who made me wear the scarf and had a father who took me to the mosque once a week," she said. "I'm jealous of girls who have that."

Ramani's friend Halima Sakkali, 21, is more conservative, and considers herself more of "a real Muslim." Sakkali considers herself well integrated, but at times feels pressure to hide her religious identity in a Dutch society that is increasingly adamant about assimilation.

"I do my best to be Dutch," she said. "I say I just have another religion, but they don't accept it. They keep saying it's freedom, and you can choose what you choose. ... They don't let me wear a scarf."

"If they didn't look at me as a terrorist I'd wear one," she said.

Indeed, Europe's soul-searching runs from discussions about how to change mind-sets to the question of what Muslims should be allowed to wear or eat. After 20 years of eagerly promoting multiculturalism, some prominent Europeans have swung the other way.

Former British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw recently created a stir when he said he wants Muslim women to abandon their veils _ a viewpoint that was backed by Prime Minister Tony Blair. The Dutch government announced plans this month for a law banning the all-encompassing burqa.