Not long ago, Europe was a continent that resembled how the Middle East looks today. It was bursting with dictators and stalked by political extremists. Its intolerance of minorities led to the horrors of the Holocaust. Perpetual contests over its national borders triggered two world wars.

This depressing picture is being repeated across the region, from Morocco to Syria to Yemen. The rise of religious sectarianism in Iraq and Syria, like the repression of Islamists in Egypt, produces the magnetic narratives of radicalism that find adherents among Europe’s young Muslims. Many see the region as a desperate case.

Yet there is reason to hope Europe’s past and present can inform the Middle East’s future. Just as a warring continent found peace through unity by creating what became the EU, Arabs, Turks, Kurds and other groups in the region could find relative peace in ever closer union. After all, most of its problems – terrorism, poverty, unemployment, sectarianism, refugee crises, water shortages – require regional answers. No country can solve its problems on its own.