Is The European Union Discriminating Against Muslims?

The Examiner website reports this week that some people believe the European Union (EU) is discriminating against Muslims, because the EU announced a new visa regime that allows the citizens of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), Montenegro, and Serbia to travel to EU countries without a visa, but excludes three other Balkan countries with a Muslim-majority population -- Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo -- from doing so.

These people also claim that the EU has denied Turkey membership in the EU for several years, because Turkey is 99 percent Muslim.

The fact is that Turkey does not meet the standards of being worthy of EU membership. The EU has made it very clear to Turkey that there are two critical prerequisites that Turkey must achieve before it can become an EU member.

First, Turkey must reopen the Orthodox seminary on its island of Halki, which it illegally closed in 1971. Second, Turkey must withdraw its troops from the northern third of the island of Cyprus, which it invaded and seized in 1974, and allow that area to become an integral part of the republic of Cyprus.

Consequently, Turkey's membership in the EU is not being denied because it is a country that is 99 percent Muslim, but because Turkey must first undo what it illegally did to the Halki Seminary in 1971, and to the northern third of Cyprus in 1974.