Is a Western Civilization-Islam confrontation inevitable?

[silenus]

Link to the latest outrage.

I'm really beginning to think that Islam and Civilization cannot peacefully co-exist. The battle will be a bloody one, and make the Crusades look like a slap-fight between children. Is this feeling I'm getting just because the extremists get all the press, or am I right? What are the chances we can defuse this and modernize and moderate the extremists? If Iran gets nukes, the game takes a whole different aspect. Can we maintain democracy in the face of Islamic invasion? France and the rest of Europe are on the edge right now. How much longer before Canada falls?

Or am I just over-reacting to an isolated incident?

[Bridget Burke]

What do you mean by "Western Civilization"? Don't you mean "Christian Or Post Christian Euro-American Whites"?

Islam & That Other Group have been confronting each other since Islam began. Sometimes bloodily, sometimes peacefully. In some of those centuries, Islamic Civilization was a considerably more "civilized" than the Dark Age Europeans.

Why don't we stop invading Islamic countries & see what works out?

[Bosda Di'Chi of Tricor]

Originally Posted by Bridget Burke

What do you mean by "Western Civilization"? Don't you mean "Christian Or Post Christian Euro-American Whites"?

Islam & That Other Group have been confronting each other since Islam began. Sometimes bloodily, sometimes peacefully. In some of those centuries, Islamic Civilization was a considerably more "civilized" than the Dark Age Europeans.

Why don't we stop invading Islamic countries & see what works out?

Bridget Burke--you obviously didn't read the linked article.

The teacher being threaten by Radical Islamics is living in France. And France isn't invading anybody.

The radicals' actions are utterly unjustified. Murder in response to criticism?

[Kimstu]

Originally Posted by silenus

Can we maintain democracy in the face of Islamic invasion? France and the rest of Europe are on the edge right now. How much longer before Canada falls?

Or am I just over-reacting to an isolated incident?

The latter, IMO. Mind you, it's true that there are a lot of radical and aggressive Muslims in the world who are encouraging and perpetrating violence and oppression. The incident you refer to is indeed just one incident, but there have been a lot of incidents like it. We don't want to ignore or underestimate this problem.

But "this problem" is not the same thing as "Islam", and we don't want to over-react or overestimate it either. For one thing, I have no idea what you mean by "France and the rest of Europe are on the edge right now".

Yes, France and Western Europe in general are having some problems with violent radical Muslims, exacerbated by their history of greater cultural/ethnic homogeneity and some of their clumsy former attempts to deal with problems of immigration, guest-worker status, and assimilation. But not even France, with one of the largest and most disaffected Muslim populations in Western Europe, is anywhere close to becoming a theocratic Islamic state.

I just spent two years in the Netherlands, and while they are seriously upset (and with reason) about things like the van Gogh murder and various problems involving Dutch Muslims, they aren't becoming a theocratic Islamic state either. "Western Civilization" is not on the verge of imminent collapse. Take a deep breath and look at the situation a little more calmly

[Oakminster]

This has nothing to do with invading countries. The linked article is about a teacher forced into hiding by death threats because he dared to criticize Islam in a local newspaper. The teacher is in France.

And yeah, Silenus, things look kinda grim. When you have a significant number of people willing to kill for any perceived insult to their religion, you have a problem. It's one thing to run your own country that way. I would not choose to live under a Taliban-like regime, but some people might. Good for them. I would say "have fun" but that's probably forbidden in that country. In a more secular state, there's a huge clash between freedom of expression and fundamentalist dogma. The fundie crowd seems to want to mandate everyone abide by the dictates of their flavor of religion...arguably, such a conflict was anticipated by prophets years ago.

[sqweels]

It's difficult to imagine large numbers of Muslims invading and siezing control of large parts of Europe, let alone North America. It's much easier to imagine an endless series of terrorist attacks and Western responses. A major battle over Israel is also within the realm of possibility, as is 1 or 2 nuke attacks on Western cities.

The trick is to find a way to shame Muslims for being so violent without provoking more violence. It's a good idea not to mention Mohammed or the Koran but rather point to "elements within Islamic culture".

I think the US could have played it's hand after 9/11 in such as way as to reduce tensions. Instead we aggrevated them.

Here's a brief essay on what I think we should have done instead:
http://www.squeakywheelsblog.com/meast/monday.html

[XT]

Originally Posted by Bridget Burke

Why don't we stop invading Islamic countries & see what works out?

Which Islamic countries had we recently invaded before some wack jobs flew planes full of innocent civilians into buildings full of other innocent civilians? I'm drawing a blank here...maybe you could help out?


I think that there is definitely a confrontation between Islam and The West(tm) brewing, but it need not necessarily be a violent or bloody one. I DO think that violent acts or aggressive protests/speeches etc DO tend to get more press both here and in Europe, so one has a some what distorted view of Islam as being more radically violent than it in fact is. That said, there does seem to be a higher percentage of violent nutballs in the nebulous grouping we think of as 'Islam' than in most other (modern) groups. Lots of nutballs in the nebulous grouping we call 'Christian', but doesn't seem to be quite as MANY (these days) anyway.

-XT

[ultrafilter]

Are we talking Islam here, or the Arab world? The two aren't the same, and you can't treat them as such.

[XT]

Originally Posted by ultrafilter

Are we talking Islam here, or the Arab world? The two aren't the same, and you can't treat them as such.

I'm assuming that we are treating them like some kind of amorphous blob all bunched together. A lot of folks think 'Islam', 'Muslim' and 'Arab' are basically the same thing. You are right of course, that its much more complex than that...but most people don't see it that way.

-XT

[Kimstu]

Originally Posted by silenus

I'm really beginning to think that Islam and Civilization cannot peacefully co-exist. The battle will be a bloody one, and make the Crusades look like a slap-fight between children. Is this feeling I'm getting just because the extremists get all the press, or am I right?

Mostly, it's because the extremists get all the press. Yes, there are a lot of Muslim extremists out there, especially among the Salafi/Wahhabi "fundamentalists", many of whom are doing or promoting indefensible things. But let's step back and look at the numbers for a minute:

- There are over 100 million Muslims in each of the countries Bangladesh, China, and India, and over 60 million in Turkey. None of these countries is run by shari'a law, and their combined Muslim population is more than double the entire Muslim populations of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and all of Western Europe combined. Global Islam is emphatically not a monolithic movement with unanimous political aims or goals.

- The variety among different Muslim sects and doctrines is huge. Note that the number of Nizari Isma'ilis alone, a small humanistic and philanthropic sect who accept the Aga Khan as their Imam (and who include the SDMB's own Angua, whose username I unfortunately can never remember how to spell so I hope that's right), is about three million. That by itself is more than the entire Muslim population of Lebanon.

- And I haven't even mentioned the world's largest Muslim country, Indonesia, with nearly two hundred million Muslims, which is also much more secular than hard-core Middle-East Salafism, and which has repeatedly rejected efforts by its more conservative Muslim citizens to establish it as an Islamic state.

As I said, we certainly do need to fight against widespread violence and oppression in radical aggressive forms of Islam. But IMO, the first step in that fight is to refrain from playing into our opponents' hands by lazily or ignorantly accepting the identification of radical aggressive forms of Islam with Islam per se and in toto.

[Der Trihs]

Originally Posted by xtisme

Which Islamic countries had we recently invaded before some wack jobs flew planes full of innocent civilians into buildings full of other innocent civilians? I'm drawing a blank here...maybe you could help out?

And in retaliation, we invade Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with it, and wreck it. By doing so, we made the "America is the Great Satan" people look like they had a point.

Originally Posted by xtisme

Lots of nutballs in the nebulous grouping we call 'Christian', but doesn't seem to be quite as MANY (these days) anyway.

No, just better armed. Why fly a plane into a building when you have cruise missles and bombers ?

[XT]

Originally Posted by Der Trihs

And in retaliation, we invade Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with it, and wreck it. By doing so, we made the "America is the Great Satan" people look like they had a point.

Ah...its all clear now. They had a time machine! They could peer into the future to get all worked up about stuff that hadn't happened yet!

Originally Posted by Der Trihs

No, just better armed. Why fly a plane into a building when you have cruise missles and bombers ?

Um...righto mate.

-XT

[silenus]

I try not to confuse the two. What I am most concerned about in Europe, besides the obvious threat by extremists (as noted in the article), is what is going to happen when you get a significant Islamic voting bloc somewhere. Is France willing to let it's heritage be taken over by immigrants? They aren't the US. We are a nation of immigrants. France isn't.

- There are over 100 million Muslims in each of the countries Bangladesh, China, and India, and over 60 million in Turkey. None of these countries is run by shari'a law, and their combined Muslim population is more than double the entire Muslim populations of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and all of Western Europe combined. Global Islam is emphatically not a monolithic movement with unanimous political aims or goals.

This is true, and makes me feel a bit more confident in the future.

[chowder]

As was expected Der Trihs pops in, makes no reference to the OPs questions but yet again comes out on the side of the nutters.

Jesus wept

[Kimstu]

Okay, just one more point and I'll shut up for a bit.

I really think it's worth emphasizing this point about "playing into our opponents' hands" by, as xtisme said, treating all these categories of Muslims/Arabs/etc. "like some kind of amorphous blob all bunched together". That is exactly what the violent Islamic-extremists want you to do.

Violent and radical Islamic-extremists are not the anointed spokespeople for global Islam or Muslims in general. But when Western media and leaders treat them as though they are, by speaking about "Islam" as though it's something defined by its most violent and radical elements, it boosts their credibility.

It is lousy strategy to increase your adversary's dignity and status by making him out to be more important or more representative than he is.* When we lazily or ignorantly accept the claims of violent extremists that they somehow stand for Islam as a whole, or the "essential nature" of Islam, we are giving them a huge PR advantage that does us no good at all and is a libel on the facts.

Don't help our violent, anti-democratic, repressive adversaries by buying into this inaccurate "amorphous-blob" equating of their views with Islam as a whole. These people need to be disparaged and marginalized, not stupidly elevated to the entirely undeserved status of Official Voice of Islam.




*This is one of the reasons that I always complain about the term "war on terror". War is something carried out by warriors, fighters, enemy combatants---all terms with connotations of legitimacy and dignity that terrorists do not deserve. Terrorists are criminals and murderers, not warriors.

[ultrafilter]

Originally Posted by silenus

I try not to confuse the two. What I am most concerned about in Europe, besides the obvious threat by extremists (as noted in the article), is what is going to happen when you get a significant Islamic voting bloc somewhere. Is France willing to let it's heritage be taken over by immigrants? They aren't the US. We are a nation of immigrants. France isn't.

The problem that European countries are having with Arab immigrants isn't really cultural so much as economic. France and Germany in particular have very stratified economies, and if you're in the bottom tier, it's almost impossible to move up.

Take a look at Britain, which has a much better track record of giving out stable employment to immigrants. They've got some concerns, but things are nowhere near as volatile as they are on the continent.

Originally Posted by xtisme

I'm assuming that we are treating them like some kind of amorphous blob all bunched together. A lot of folks think 'Islam', 'Muslim' and 'Arab' are basically the same thing. You are right of course, that its much more complex than that...but most people don't see it that way.

If we start the discussion by confusing large, distinct groups, is there any hope for clarity?

[tomndebb]

Originally Posted by chowder

As was expected Der Trihs pops in, makes no reference to the OPs questions but yet again comes out on the side of the nutters.

Should I now make the observation that "as expected, chowder pops in, makes no reference to the OP's questions, but yet, again, makes off-topic comments about other posters"? Or are you going to refrain from doing this again?

[ /Moderating ]

[Der Trihs]

Originally Posted by xtisme

Ah...its all clear now. They had a time machine! They could peer into the future to get all worked up about stuff that hadn't happened yet!

No, but invading Iraq made them stronger. Our constantly offering proaganda victories to the terrorists is not going to decrease the conflict between the West and radical Islam. We have in fact done an excellent job of silencing the moderates.

Originally Posted by chowder

As was expected Der Trihs pops in, makes no reference to the OPs questions but yet again comes out on the side of the nutters.

Jesus wept

No, just pointing out that we are just as bad; we are just better armed. They destroy a building and kill thousands; we wreck a country and kill tens of thousands ( so far ).

Originally Posted by Kimstu

*This is one of the reasons that I always complain about the term "war on terror". War is something carried out by warriors, fighters, enemy combatants---all terms with connotations of legitimacy and dignity that terrorists do not deserve. Terrorists are criminals and murderers, not warriors.

Killing is killing. "Terrorist is what the big army calls the little army"; I see no difference between a soldier killing innocent people or a terrorist doing so, except that the soldier tends to kill more of them, due to being better armed, better organized, and more numerous.

[Bippy the Beardless]

It does seem to me ellements within Islam are trying to stir up some sort of war between the Western Civilization and some parts of the Arabic Civilization. It is difficult to see why on a political level, since there isn't any chance of the Arabic party coming off particularly well in such a confrontation.
Is it some attempt between Sunnis and Shiites to get the west to seriously damage the other. Is there some kind of end-of-times fanatisism that makes the possibility of an almosy unwinnable war seem justified/necessary. Is it somehow thought of as a way to get rid of Israel, or fix the Palastinian problems. Or something else intirely? This Islamic extremism has been prevalent long before the Iraqii wars, I'm not sure if it predates Israels formation or not, but it is a movement towards millitant interpretation of the Al'Quarran (sp? sorry) that has been building up for some time.

[chowder]

Originally Posted by tomndebb

Should I now make the observation that "as expected, chowder pops in, makes no reference to the OP's questions, but yet, again, makes off-topic comments about other posters"? Or are you going to refrain from doing this again?

[ /Moderating ]

Oh C'mon now all I did was point out the obvious.

However if it means that I run the risk of a ban then yes I'll refrain

[Dob]

No, but invading Iraq made them stronger...

Made who stronger? Have they done something they couldn't previously do? Has the anger over Iraq allowed a new muslim state to emerge? how are "they" stronger exactly?

And thanks Kimstu for shining the light on a murky subject. Your posts were excellent.

[tomndebb]

Originally Posted by chowder

Oh C'mon now all I did was point out the obvious.

However if it means that I run the risk of a ban then yes I'll refrain

You are hardly under threat of banishment; I did not even issue a Warning.

However, if it is "obvious" then it did not need to be said
and if it is personal, it is laible to derail the thread--and we have not even reached page three where I generally expect the debate to turn into personal jibes and mudslinging.

I would just like this thread (actually, all the threads) to display an actual discussion on the issues for a while before I have to come in and settle down the sandbox squabbling.

[LonesomePolecat]

Originally Posted by silenus

We are a nation of immigrants.

Hogwash. The last of my immigrant ancestors came over before the Civil War. How long would my family have to be here before you'd concede we're no longer immigrants? That isn't a valid point. That's just vacuous, noble-sounding rhetoric.

[ralph124c]

The issue seems more to be: will muslim immigrants to the West assimilate?
I would say, in most cases yes. What we are seeing in muslim lands is the death throes of traditional Islam. As modern comminications become widspread, the reactionary component of islam is trying to assert itself. The reactionary side of islam thrives in areas with low literacy, limited eductaion, suppression of women, etc. Simply put: does anybody REALLY want to life life in the 13th century? I think not.

[tomndebb]

Originally Posted by LonesomePolecat

Hogwash. The last of my immigrant ancestors came over before the Civil War. How long would my family have to be here before you'd concede we're no longer immigrants? That isn't a valid point. That's just vacuous, noble-sounding rhetoric.

Actually, in context, silenus pointed out an extremely important distinction. The U.S., Canada, and Australia, (with similar, if somewhat less pronounced, examples in New Zealand, Argentina, and, perhaps, South Africa) were all built as immigrant nations and, while several of those states have resorted to xenophobic responses to specific immigrant waves, all of them have absorbed immigrants--with attendant changes to local culture--within living memory. The last Vandals shuffled out of France around 1500 years ago, the Vikings pretty well settled down around 1100 years ago and the only serious cultural "invasions" were those of the Moors in Spain (ended over 500 years ago), the Turks in the Balkans (still suffering shocks), and the various Germanic emigrations to Russia.

Europe is going through something for which they have no memory or tradition. (I find it ironic to watch much of the upheaval in Europe, today, after reading any number of contemptuous observations from Europeans during the civil rights movement and racial conflicts of the 1960s.)

Your knee-jerk reaction to his use of the phrase seems to have caused you to miss his actual point.

[ultrafilter]

Originally Posted by LonesomePolecat

Hogwash. The last of my immigrant ancestors came over before the Civil War. How long would my family have to be here before you'd concede we're no longer immigrants? That isn't a valid point. That's just vacuous, noble-sounding rhetoric.

No, there's some value to the observation. The US is not a nation of immigrants in the sense that any significant portion of its population has been first- or second-generation immigrants throughout history, but in the sense that it has a very good record of assimilating immigrants, both culturally and economically. Compare that to Germany, which has a very poor record on both fronts, and can't reasonably be called a nation of immigrants.

[Der Trihs]

Originally Posted by Dob

Made who stronger? Have they done something they couldn't previously do? Has the anger over Iraq allowed a new muslim state to emerge? how are "they" stronger exactly?

Our actions have justified them, partially or completely in the eyes of many; discredited and weakened us, their enemies; greatly weakened moderates/reformers within Islam; and provided them with more recruits than they can likely handle.

[The Hamster King]

Originally Posted by silenus

Or am I just over-reacting to an isolated incident?

You're over-reacting. The Islamic world doesn't have the industrial base or the manpower to project real power into the rest of the world. The best their nutters can do is stage occasional terrorist attacks. And as the British demonstrated with the IRA, civil society can still continue to function perfectly well even in the midst of fairly high levels of terrorism. After a while people learn to live with the threat. Life goes on.

The only reason that Islamic fundamentalism is a global issue at all is because of oil. And, as we see with Iran, even if the fundamentalists get control of an oil-producing nation they keep pumping. Because that's where they get their money from. So there's not even a real danger of them cutting off our energy. They need our dollars as much as we need their oil.

No, the real long-term threat to the United States and Europe is China. They've got a billion people, their economy is booming, and they have a massive industrial base. And they're competing with us for the same shrinking pool of natural resources. That's where the next big "clash of civilizations" is going to be.

[Sam Stone]

Frankly, I believe multiculturalism has been a big part of the problem. The U.S. has been spared much of the trouble Europe has because the U.S. has traditionally been a melting pot - If you emigrated to the U.S., you were expected to become an American first. That meant learning English, it meant your first loyalty was to the American constitution and its principles. You could still retain your ethnicity - the Italians, Chinese, Germans, and other ethnic groups still have a strong ethnic presence in areas of the U.S. But first and foremost, you were American, and accepted all that America stood for.

Multiculturalism has turned countries into cultural mosaics. Move to Canada, and we'll teach you in your native language, accomodate your cultural artifacts, and maybe even allow things like Sharia law. We've been taught that no culture is superior to another, that we must all be allowed to keep our cultural identity in all things.

The result has been Balkanization and confrontation between opposing ethnic groups. France has a problem with Muslims because France allows them to immigrate, but doesn't require them to assimilate. And because they don't assimilate, they wind up at a competitive disadvantage, and over time you wind up with a group of people who cannot find work, who are disaffected, who do not care about France and its customs and traditions, and essentially become a thorn in France's side. It's not just that they are Muslim - it's that they are militant muslims because they are poor and disenfranchised and care very little about France itself.

The Danes face the same problem. Their liberalism has been their undoing. Welcoming vast numbers of muslim immigrants who come there not because they love the Danish way of life, but because they found the country easy to move to and easy to maintain their own little enclave of culture inside it, while enjoying all the benefits of citizenship. And now they are large in number and asserting themselves.

We aren't making the problem go away by accomodating extremists. We'll begin to win this clash of civilizations when we start acting like our civilization is worth defending, instead being constantly on the defensive and prone to knee-jerk apologies for being who we are.

When the Danish cartoon writers were threatened, the west should have stood up en masse and defended them. Those cartoons should have been published in every major newspaper. When a 'moderate' muslim cleric speaks out in favor of terrorism or speaks in defense of a man who murdered Theo Van Gogh, he should be forcefully opposed in rhetoric. Our leaders should be giving speeches saying things like, "Our values involve free speech, and that includes the freedom to publish pictures of Mohammed. If you don't like it, you don't have to read it. If you can't stand living in a country where this happens, pack up and leave. This is one of our core values, and you will not threaten us into giving it up."

One of the problems we have is that the militant muslims see the west as unprincipled, weak, and believing in nothing. We're simply decadent hedonists. They have contempt for us. To the extent that we enable that belief by continually apologizing for who we are and offering to give up our core principles for the sake of accomodation, we'll simply make them stronger.

[Damuri Ajashi]

Originally Posted by silenus

Link to the latest outrage.

I'm really beginning to think that Islam and Civilization cannot peacefully co-exist. The battle will be a bloody one, and make the Crusades look like a slap-fight between children. Is this feeling I'm getting just because the extremists get all the press, or am I right? What are the chances we can defuse this and modernize and moderate the extremists? If Iran gets nukes, the game takes a whole different aspect. Can we maintain democracy in the face of Islamic invasion? France and the rest of Europe are on the edge right now. How much longer before Canada falls?

Or am I just over-reacting to an isolated incident?

The Israeli conflict is the wellspring of almost all the problems the west has had with the middle east. Of course at this point the agitators have too much power to just give it up even if we can somehow solve the Israeli issue but it'll never come to war between the Middle East and the rest of the world. Extremists will have power and support as long as people think they make a good point, their good points right now are Israel and Iraq.

If we could have stopped Pakistan from getting the nuke we would have, they are not significantly more stable or democratic than Iran and yet they do not nuke India. We'll stop Iran from getting the nuke if we can help it and even if they do get the nuke, they are not likely to use it against us. Remember, just about EVERYONE condemned massive scale terrorist actions like 9/11 and al Queda is the only organization of any sort that exhorts terrorist actions that result in such massive amounts of death. As a matter of fact, many diplomats thought that the U.S. could have used 9/11 to negotiate peace in the middle east (now THAT would have been a great tribute to the victims of 9/11, instead we have Iraq).

[Kimstu]

Originally Posted by Der Trihs

I see no difference between a soldier killing innocent people or a terrorist doing so

That's reasonable. However, I do see a big difference between soldiers killing other soldiers in a mutually recognized military conflict between two national entities, and a terrorist (or a soldier) murdering innocent civilians in an unprovoked attack.

I don't like war, but I recognize an ethical difference between war (even guerrilla war) and murder, and terrorism is murder.

Originally Posted by Sam Stone

The U.S. has been spared much of the trouble Europe has because the U.S. has traditionally been a melting pot - If you emigrated to the U.S., you were expected to become an American first. That meant learning English,

Gotta call out this one. As we've discussed on these boards before, lots of first-generation immigrants to the US in previous eras didn't learn English any faster than immigrants today. Second- and third-generation immigrants are where the real linguistic assimilation takes place, and second- and third-generation Muslim immigrants to Europe show that pattern too.

Originally Posted by Sam Stone

We'll begin to win this clash of civilizations when we start acting like our civilization is worth defending, instead being constantly on the defensive and prone to knee-jerk apologies for being who we are. [...]

To the extent that we enable that belief by continually apologizing for who we are and offering to give up our core principles for the sake of accomodation, we'll simply make them stronger.

This one too, which seems to be little more than an anti-liberal straw man. Where are the liberals who are "apologizing for who we are"? Liberals are overwhelmingly the ones who support civil-liberties organizations such as the ACLU, the ones who stand up for women's rights and gay rights and sexual freedom and governmental secularism and all the other things that radical-conservative Islamic extremists think are so horrible.

Egalitarianism, tolerance, and religious/societal freedom: brought to you mostly by liberals. What we need in the fight against violent and repressive Islamic extremism is more liberalism, not less.

Originally Posted by Sam Stone

When the Danish cartoon writers were threatened, the west should have stood up en masse and defended them. Those cartoons should have been published in every major newspaper. When a 'moderate' muslim cleric speaks out in favor of terrorism or speaks in defense of a man who murdered Theo Van Gogh, he should be forcefully opposed in rhetoric.

This sounds as though you just haven't been paying attention. Islamic-extremist calls for terrorism and violence are forcefully opposed in rhetoric. I really don't think there's any dearth of opinion media sources willing to come right out and say "terrorism is bad".

Not everybody was equally supportive of the anti-Muhammad cartoons, but that was largely because most of the cartoons were disgustingly smelly. (Similarly, I might be in favor of a free press and the right to sexual freedom without demanding the publication of graphic porn in "every major newspaper".) However, even the liberals who were most revolted by the anti-Muhammad cartoons, AFAICT, were unanimous that it was wrong for outraged Muslims to threaten or carry out violent acts in response to them. So, no "offering to give up our core principles" there either.

[Sam Stone]

Originally Posted by col_10022

The Israeli conflict is the wellspring of almost all the problems the west has had with the middle east.

Israel is the excuse. Do you believe that if Israel was gone, the Middle East would suddenly turn into a bastion of peace and stability?

Of course at this point the agitators have too much power to just give it up even if we can somehow solve the Israeli issue but it'll never come to war between the Middle East and the rest of the world. Extremists will have power and support as long as people think they make a good point, their good points right now are Israel and Iraq.

Israel is a 'good point'?

al Queda is the only organization of any sort that exhorts terrorist actions that result in such massive amounts of death.

Well, aside from Hezbollah, Iran, Hamas, the Chechen terrorists, the Libyans who blew up a 747, the muslims who are terrorizing the population in Darfur... And everyone didn't condemn 9/11. The Palestinians were partying in the streets. Saddam was laughing his head off. The Taliban helped pull it off.

As a matter of fact, many diplomats thought that the U.S. could have used 9/11 to negotiate peace in the middle east (now THAT would have been a great tribute to the victims of 9/11, instead we have Iraq).

Yeah. Because negotiating for peace in the face of aggression has always worked so well. That's why we think so highly of Neville Chamberlain today. Imagine what might have happened if Churchill had risen to power.

[tomndebb]

Originally Posted by Sam Stone

Yeah. Because negotiating for peace in the face of aggression has always worked so well. That's why we think so highly of Neville Chamberlain today. Imagine what might have happened if Churchill had risen to power.

Done right, it would not have been a Chamberlain variety appeasemant (which did have the good result of giving Britain time to begin rebuilding its military for 11 months that might not have been possible with a war that began in 1938).

Rather, had the U.S. encouraged the West to go into Afghanistan to oust the defenders of al Qaida, then (instead of Bush's idiotic and hypocritical claim that we were not there for "nation building"), we had provided the resources to allow Afghanistan to rebuild itself free from both the Taliban and the warlords, demonstating a nation that could govern itself without the extremists, we could have used that example to negotiate with Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Yemen, Oman, perhaps even Saudi Arabia, to consider adapting more democratic institutions, thus marginalizing the extremists.

Instead, we threw that away with a proxy war in Afghanistan followed by a useless and illegal invasion of Iraq (at which point Bush hypocritically claimed that we were interested in nation building), that has been the largest recruiting tool ever seen by any Wahabbist in the middle East.

[Der Trihs]

Originally Posted by Kimstu

That's reasonable. However, I do see a big difference between soldiers killing other soldiers in a mutually recognized military conflict between two national entities, and a terrorist (or a soldier) murdering innocent civilians in an unprovoked attack.

Well, I don't see any difference in killing soldiers or civilians in an unprovoked war.

[msmith537]

Originally Posted by Der Trihs

And in retaliation, we invade Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with it, and wreck it. By doing so, we made the "America is the Great Satan" people look like they had a point.

Not to mention that Iraq was secular under Saddam, not Muslim.


We are already involved in a conflict between Western (defined as modern post industrial AmeroEuro) civilization and Islamic fundamentalism. This conflict will only get worse as the Arab world begins to modernize. If and when that happens you will most likely see fundamentalism pushed into African nations where the problems will be ten times worse.

[Sam Stone]

Originally Posted by Sam Stone
The U.S. has been spared much of the trouble Europe has because the U.S. has traditionally been a melting pot - If you emigrated to the U.S., you were expected to become an American first. That meant learning English,

Gotta call out this one. As we've discussed on these boards before, lots of first-generation immigrants to the US in previous eras didn't learn English any faster than immigrants today. Second- and third-generation immigrants are where the real linguistic assimilation takes place, and second- and third-generation Muslim immigrants to Europe show that pattern too.

I'm specifically talking about countries that are not the US, where accomodations are made such as allowing Sharia law in some form, providing government services in the immigrant's language, changing laws to accomodate other cultures such as changing police uniform rules to allow the wearing of turbans or other religious artifacts, etc. If a Christian cannot wear a crucifix on a police uniform, a Sikh should not be allowed to wear a turban.

Originally Posted by Sam Stone
We'll begin to win this clash of civilizations when we start acting like our civilization is worth defending, instead being constantly on the defensive and prone to knee-jerk apologies for being who we are. [...]

To the extent that we enable that belief by continually apologizing for who we are and offering to give up our core principles for the sake of accomodation, we'll simply make them stronger.

This one too, which seems to be little more than an anti-liberal straw man. Where are the liberals who are "apologizing for who we are"? Liberals are overwhelmingly the ones who support civil-liberties organizations such as the ACLU, the ones who stand up for women's rights and gay rights and sexual freedom and governmental secularism and all the other things that radical-conservative Islamic extremists think are so horrible.

Which is why it's so sad that so many of them reflexively make common cause with the very people who are totally antithetical to everything they believe in. Look at the love-fest George Galloway gets from some members of the left. The man's a thug who supports the other side. Or the roses thrown at Hugo Chavez, despite the fact that he's allied himself with freaking theocratic Iran against the best interests of the United States, Canada, and other western countries.

The 'it's all our fault' crowd is loud and well established. There are lots of people in our society who, when attacked, immediately and reflexively look at what we might have done to warrant the attack. And there are lots of people who, when confronted with a barbaric attack by the other side, reflexively seek a moral equivalence by bringing up things we might have done in the past that were even remotely similar. There are also plenty of moral relativists who are completely unwilling to say that our culture is better than any other.

One of the reasons so many on the left get tarred as being anti-semitic is that some confuse anti-semitism for this general desire to see fault within ourselves rather than in our enemies. Israel is a western nation, and therefore has committed original sin in the eyes of many. Any every barbaric attack on Israeli citizens is met with comments along the lines of, "Well, if Israel hadn't done X, this wouldn't have happened. And the Palestinians don't have tanks, so this the only weapon they've got. So it's understandable. Regrettable, but understandable." In the meantime, if an Israeli bulldozer attempting to close a tunnel used to smuggle bomb equipment accidentally kills a young woman attempting to stop it illegally, and who can't be seen behind the giant blade, there are marches in the streets of the west against Israel, and the event is spun into a condemnation of the entire country. Claims about a massacre in Jenin are accepted at face value and even exaggerated, while claims of horrors done on the other side are ignored, downplayed, or disbelieved. When Israel tried to show that the house they bulldozed when Rachel Corrie was killed was actually a critical military target, liberals all over the place put their fingers in their ears and went, "lalalalala".

If you haven't been seeing that kind of behaviour, you haven't been paying much attention. In fact, Rachel Corrie herself is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. She was supposedly a modern liberal activist, yet she was the champion of people who supported Hitler, the Soviet Union, Saddam, and who were ruled by a series of thugs. The people who cheered in the streets on 9/11. She died trying to protect one of the tunnels they used to smuggle suicide bombs into Israel to blow up kids at discos.

Here's a picture of her in her element Rachel Corrie screaming and burning an American Flag in the Gaza Strip.

She's not alone. She's part of a large group of Americans and other westerners who reflexively take the side of the enemy. They did the same thing during the Cold War. God knows why.

[Sam Stone]

Originally Posted by tomndebb

Rather, had the U.S. encouraged the West to go into Afghanistan to oust the defenders of al Qaida, then (instead of Bush's idiotic and hypocritical claim that we were not there for "nation building"), we had provided the resources to allow Afghanistan to rebuild itself free from both the Taliban and the warlords, demonstating a nation that could govern itself without the extremists, we could have used that example to negotiate with Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Yemen, Oman, perhaps even Saudi Arabia, to consider adapting more democratic institutions, thus marginalizing the extremists.

Nice idea, but it should be clear by now that 'the west' IS the United States, along with a handful of much smaller players. I think everyone is still on board with the goal of help Afghanistan get on its feet - how's NATO recruiting working out for that? Canada is there in decent numbers, but only because we elected a Conservative. The Liberals and NDP are already calling for us to pull out. Other countries who have been called on to help have ignored it, or contributed only a fraction of what they originally promised.

Instead, we threw that away with a proxy war in Afghanistan followed by a useless and illegal invasion of Iraq (at which point Bush hypocritically claimed that we were interested in nation building), that has been the largest recruiting tool ever seen by any Wahabbist in the middle East.

See, you have the advantage here of A) using hindsight, and B) not having to confront the possible ways your alternate scenario might have gone. For example, had the U.S. stood down against Saddam, it's entirely possible that he would have been emboldened and started smuggling WMD to terrorists (WMD that he had every intention of building once the heat was off him). Or that he would have been a lightning rod and energized the militants in the middle east to stand up to the U.S. and we would have had the same terrorist problem we have today, except this time with heavy state sponsorship from Libya, Iraq, and other countries rallied around Saddam.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing. For example, I remember a time after the Afghanistan war that everyone was using it as the perfect example of how to do this kind of thing: Instead of invading en-masse, you arm and support native insurgencies, have them overthrow the government, then work with them. Having an indigenous force due the heavy lifting prevents an insurgency against foreign occupiers. Most everyone, including those on the left, thought it was brilliant, and it was one thing the U.S. military and Bush administration got high marks for.

Now it's going through a rocky period, and you get to claim that obviously the way the war was carried out was wrong, and that it should have been done differently.

[Larry Borgia]

ISTM that there is a clash of something brewing, but I don't see it as a clash between Islam and the West, I see it as a clash between fundamentalism and modernity.

On the one hand you have a tradition of science, democracy and individual rights dating from the enlightenment. On the other you have a view rooted in religion that feels increasingly threatened by secular modernity. This fear and feeling of marginalization leads to increasingly strict readings of religious texts and a militant hostile view towards the secular west. Islamic radicals and Christian fundamentalists are two sides of the same coin. For that matter if you read some things the more radical Jewish west bank settlers are saying, they're indistinguishable from Christian and Islamic fundamentalism. Ditto--from what little I've read--for the Hindu fundamentalists that are gaining power in India.

I don't understand why denouncing Christian fundamentalism is regarded as a "liberal" position and denouncing Islamic fundamentalism is regarded as a conservative" position. They're basically the same thing! In America the Christian Fundamentalists are far more dangerous than Islamic militants to any tattered remnants of the Enlightenment philosophy espoused in our Constitution, although the atttacks of Islamic terrorists are more frightening.

Frankly my money's on the fundies. They're more passionate, more violent, reproduce more, and they're not afraid of dying.

[Marley23]

Originally Posted by Bippy the Beardless

It does seem to me ellements within Islam are trying to stir up some sort of war between the Western Civilization and some parts of the Arabic Civilization.

Some terrorists definitely have that goal. Others have more limited (although still enormous) goals like getting the West to cease all involvement with the Middle East.

The OP assumes that Islam is separate from Western Civilization, and I disagree with that point. There are American Muslims, at the rate of Muslim immigration to America is the highest it has been in decades. (You have to be a New York Times Select member to read the article, which I'm not, but I read it when it was new.) Muslims have successfully integrated into some parts of the West, others not so much, but I think that has more to do with the countries in question and not so much to do with Islam.

[tomndebb]

Originally Posted by Sam Stone

See, you have the advantage here of A) using hindsight, and B) not having to confront the possible ways your alternate scenario might have gone. For example, had the U.S. stood down against Saddam, it's entirely possible that he would have been emboldened and started smuggling WMD to terrorists (WMD that he had every intention of building once the heat was off him). Or that he would have been a lightning rod and energized the militants in the middle east to stand up to the U.S. and we would have had the same terrorist problem we have today, except this time with heavy state sponsorship from Libya, Iraq, and other countries rallied around Saddam.

The only thing that hindsight might give me is the opportunity to say "I told you so."

The use of the Northern Alliance was the correct way to overthrow the Taliban so that they could not rally other Afghanis with a claim that the U.S. was invading as the U.S.S.R. had done. Once Omar and his boys had capitulated and fled, however, the appropriate action was to saturate the country with peacekeeping troops to help disarm the warlords so that the nation of Afghanistan could determine its own government without armed pressure groups corrupting the process. Instead, the U.S. pulled out numbers of troops (including intelligence units) to go play in Iraq while letting the Afghanis play "turn in your neighbor so you can steal his cow" whle we locked up hundreds of innocents in Guantanamo. It was not until we had ignored Afghanistan for three years (letting the conditions that had led to the rise of the Taliban begin to fester again) that we finally went to NATO and asked for sufficient troops to handle the mess. There is no surprise that NATO nations are now leery of sending troops into a hot zone at this late date when they might have prevented the zone from going hot had sufficent troops been sought in the summer of 2002. We did not blow the war, only the rest of the task.

As to Hussein supplying terrorists with weapons: by the time we lurched into Iraq with our inadequately staffed forces, the UN inspectors had spent nearly five months reporting that it appeared that Hussein actually did not have any weapons to distribute to Islamic Fundamentalists (most of whom hated Hussein nearly as much as they hated the U.S.) and it was pretty clerar that most of our (OSP generated) claims were lies. The pressures we had placed on Hussein through the UN were sufficient to keep him disarmed and contained--and everyone not led astray by the lies of the Office of Special Projects could see that before the war was begun.

If we're going to play "what if" games, then we have to ask "what if" a bunch of the Saudi princes who continue to fund al Qaida had decided to stage a coup and cut off petroleum to the West until we met their demands to abandon Afghanistan? "What if" Musharraf had decided that he did not enjoy being leaned on by the U.S. and had decided to distribute his nuclear weapons (ones that actually exist, unlike those of Iraq) to the Islamists (who are warm, close personal friends of most of the senior officers of Pakistan's military). "What if" Bush had not made his stupid "Axis of Evil" speech so that the theocrats in Iran had not been scared into shutting down the moderate opposition under a threat from the U.S. and their (unsilenced) opposition (who had control of much of the government before they were ousted from above) was now working to rein in the Iranian support for Hamas? There are a lot of "what if" games that we may play, but the reality is that we blew it in Afghanistan (in ways that were predicted when the decisions were made) and we blew it in Iraq (in ways that were predicted when the decisions were made).

[Kimstu]

Originally Posted by Sam Stone

I'm specifically talking about countries that are not the US, where accomodations are made such as allowing Sharia law in some form, providing government services in the immigrant's language, changing laws to accomodate other cultures [...]

Yes, and my point is that you're wrong in assuming that the US did not make many similar accomodations for immigrants in earlier eras. Take the case of
bilingual education in American public schools:

Bilingual education, though sometimes controversial, was found nationwide. [...]

In 1866, succumbing to pressure from politically powerful German immigrants, the Chicago Board of Education decided to establish a German-language school in each area of the city where 150 parents asked for it. By 1892 the board had hired 242 German-language teachers to teach 35,000 German-speaking children, one-fourth of Chicago's total public school enrollment. In 1870, a public school established in Denver, Colorado, was taught entirely in German. An 1872 Oregon law permitted German-language public schools to be established in Portland whenever 100 voters petitioned for such a school. Maryland, Iowa, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, and Minnesota also had bilingual education laws, either statewide or applying only to cities with large immigrant populations. In Nebraska, enabling legislation for bilingual education was enacted for the benefit of German immigrant children as late as 1913.

Or take the widespread "Bible Law"---the standard practice of daily readings from Protestant Bible versions in American public schools---which was discontinued in many cases due to protests from Catholic immigrants, and provoked tremendous amounts of controversy and even violence:

Alderman Hugh Clark introduced before the [Philadelphia] city legislature a resolution to ban Bible reading in the public schools. Again, the nativists united to defend the old state law.

Their victory so angered Clark that he walked into Kensington School one morning during devotional, grabbed the Protestant Bible from the teacher's hands and proceeded to tear it page from page.

Hoooooo-EEE! How's that for attempts at multicultural "accomodation"? Started the 1844 Bible Riots, that did.

Heck, English-language competency wasn't even a requirement for US citizenship until 1906.

No, dude, you're kidding yourself if you imagine that the current controversies over "making accomodations" and "changing laws to accomodate other cultures" are somehow new or exclusive to non-US societies.

Originally Posted by Sam Stone

Which is why it's so sad that so many of them [liberals] reflexively make common cause with the very people who are totally antithetical to everything they believe in. Look at the love-fest George Galloway gets from some members of the left. The man's a thug who supports the other side. Or the roses thrown at Hugo Chavez, despite the fact that he's allied himself with freaking theocratic Iran against the best interests of the United States, Canada, and other western countries.

More strawmen and unsupported vague assertions. "So many of them"? How many? Where? Who?

And if you're claiming that any liberal who praises Chavez' share-the-wealth policies* is thereby supporting Iranian theocracy, you're really pissing into the wind. By that logic, you have to conclude that Bush supporters are also aligning themselves with Islamic theocracy because the Administration regards "freaking theocratic" Saudi Arabia as a close ally.

Originally Posted by Sam Stone

The 'it's all our fault' crowd is loud and well established. There are lots of people in our society who, when attacked, immediately and reflexively look at what we might have done to warrant the attack. And there are lots of people who, when confronted with a barbaric attack by the other side, reflexively seek a moral equivalence by bringing up things we might have done in the past that were even remotely similar. There are also plenty of moral relativists who are completely unwilling to say that our culture is better than any other. [...]

Just more generalized zeitgeist-moaning that doesn't provide any actual evidence that "liberalism" is really a significant contributing factor to problems with violent Islamic extremism. Okay as a rant, inadequate in a debate.

Originally Posted by Sam Stone

In fact, Rachel Corrie herself is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. She was supposedly a modern liberal activist, yet she was the champion of people who supported Hitler, the Soviet Union, Saddam, and who were ruled by a series of thugs.

Like I said above, that line of reasoning is a two-edged sword; plenty of conservatives have also made common cause with groups that were involved in various ways with thuggery and despotism. How about the conservatives that supported Saddam against Iran, or the ones who supported the fundamentalist Afghan mujahideen that gave rise to the Taliban?

There's enough tar on your broad brush for people of all ideological stripes.



*A category of liberals that would not include me, btw. I like antipoverty measures and economic democracy as much as the next lib, but I do not trust Chavez.

[Themenin]

Originally Posted by Tomndebb

all of them have absorbed immigrants--with attendant changes to local culture--within living memory. The last Vandals shuffled out of France around 1500 years ago...
...Europe is going through something for which they have no memory or tradition. (I find it ironic to watch much of the upheaval in Europe, today, after reading any number of contemptuous observations from Europeans during the civil rights movement and racial conflicts of the 1960s.)

Although a country like France's national identity isn't tied up with immigration in the same way that the US's is, I'm not sure I agree with this.
France has had a first generation immigrant population of 5 to 10% for more than a 100 years. The main recognized waves were Belgian (XIX century), Italians (early XX) followed by Portuguese, and most recently Algerian and Morrocan. As regards the difficulties, there have always been conflicts during large waves of immigration, but the early 1960s may have been the most violent period, France and Algeria at war, extensive rioting, terrorist bombings (by both sides, in both countries, FLN and OAS), assasinations etc.

Originally Posted by Sam Stone

Frankly, I believe multiculturalism has been a big part of the problem. The U.S. has been spared much of the trouble Europe has because the U.S. has traditionally been a melting pot - If you emigrated to the U.S., you were expected to become an American first. That meant learning English, it meant your first loyalty was to the American constitution and its principles. You could still retain your ethnicity - the Italians, Chinese, Germans, and other ethnic groups still have a strong ethnic presence in areas of the U.S. But first and foremost, you were American, and accepted all that America stood for.

I don't know that the US has had more success integrating immigrant populations than other countries. I've found that 'ghetto-ization' is more extensive in the US than in western Europe. In fact France is probably more strict than the US about assimilation (remember the ban on headscarves in state schools). Currently the only truly non-assimilated immigrant group in France is the Chinese, who are the most recent arrivals. Until recently Switzerland was the country I would have cited for successfully absorbing massive immigration (on their own scale), but recent events seem to show that the Swiss would disagree.
Getting back to the 'clash of civilizations' - Although there's clearly a cultural conflict between Islam and liberal western societies, I haven't seen any strong proof that Islamist terrorism has established a serious foothold amongst European Muslims, and I have seen no indication that any of the Middle Eastern nations want to see large scale conflict with the US or Europe. Even in the worst-case scenario where the US extends the ground war to Iraq's neighbors in the Middle East, I see no reason to believe that Pakistan, Indonesia, or Europe's Muslim populations would rise up and join in the fray.

[Spectre of Pithecanthropus]

Originally Posted by ralph124c

The issue seems more to be: will muslim immigrants to the West assimilate?
I would say, in most cases yes. What we are seeing in muslim lands is the death throes of traditional Islam. As modern comminications become widspread, the reactionary component of islam is trying to assert itself. The reactionary side of islam thrives in areas with low literacy, limited eductaion, suppression of women, etc. Simply put: does anybody REALLY want to life life in the 13th century? I think not.

I hope you're right.

Did you read where the editorial talked about imposing new modesty restrictions on women's bathing suits, and setting up female-only bathing periods, during this summer's Paris beach party? I tend to draw the line here, and truly believe that if you want to emigrate to another country, you should adapt yourself to the host country rather than having the host country change to suit you.

It seems to me it's an act of appeasement, as was the Berlin opera cancellation.

[tomndebb]

France has had a first generation immigrant population of 5 to 10% for more than a 100 years. The main recognized waves were Belgian (XIX century), Italians (early XX) followed by Portuguese, and most recently Algerian and Morrocan.

Well, the Belgian immigrants were French, being mostly the population of Wallony that had been carved away from France and given to the Netherlands, (then breaking free to create the artifical nation of Belgium), following the unpleasantness with Napoleon. Then the Italians and Portuguese were very much part of the same basic culture--Catholic traditions, Romance languages, etc. And when we do find immigrants coming from North Africa, they initially came from areas in which France had a serious colonial presence (and many of the initial immigrants were originally "returning" French colonists' grandchildren). It is only when the later immigration waves began to include more people who had much less cultural connection that serious problems began.
Now, it is also true that France has had a pretty long tradition of being nearly the most cosmopolitan of nations and that it did absorb more immigrants (generally from its colonies) than much of Europe, (although the Dutch and British can make good claims to those attitudes, as well). However, most French immigration appeaers to have been limited to Paris and a few coastal cities. I do not recall stories of xenophobic outbreaks in Aquitaine, Brittany, or the Loire (particularly prior to the early 1970s).

[tagos]

Originally Posted by Kimstu

The latter, IMO.

The trouble is that these are 'isolated incidents' not because only a few people have those opinions. It is because everyone else won't take the risk. It is the chilling effect of the threat of Islamic fundie violence on free speech.

After Rushide and after Van Gogh it takes a brave artist to write a book or make a film that is anything other than craven towards Islam. As this story proves.

[Themenin]

Responding to Tomndebb Obviously it's a big part of the ongoing political debate over here - the extreme right tend to define past immigration out of existence by citing cultural similarities (such as the Italian immigrants shared religion, or the Wallon's possibly shared language) in order to bolster their position that the current immigration wave is unprecedented and threatening.

Fact is that the previous waves also led to social upheaval and conflicts - the Wallon's arrival in the mining areas was met with rioting and ghetto-ization, similarly with the Italian arrival in the industrial regions. The cultural similarities argument is something of an anachronism - in 1900, an Italian peasant probably had less in common with his new French neighbors than a present day Chinese immigrant to the US has to his new neighbors - distances and cultural differences were considerably more marked a hundred years ago.

I'm not sure what your point is regarding the geographical distribution of immigration, but it is fairly even, though primarily urban (as in the US) - I think you're overlooking Lyon and Marseille (and historically the northern mining regions around Lille, and industrial centers like Clermont-Ferrandand St Etienne).

I think some of the confusion regarding Eoro-immigration vs US immigration is due to the role that immigration plays in the US 'identity-myth', and the huge absolute numbers of immigrants that the US welcomed around the turn of the last century (can we still use that expression ?). In terms of numbers, Germany, France and UK all have a larger percentage of foreign born in their populations than the US (Canada is probably at the front of the pack).

For over a hundred years (and probably back to pre-historic times...) there has always been a segment of the native population who fear immigrants, and believe that they are monolithic and are going to somehow swamp the culture - so far this hasn't happened. While it's true that the most recent wave of immigrants are overwhelmingly Muslim, this may be changing now, as immigration from China and from Eastern Europe (Poland in particular) is growing exponentially. Immigrants are not monolithic,and for the most part conflicts between immigrants and natives have nothing to do with religion.

Originally Posted by Tagos

It is because everyone else won't take the risk.

While this may be true of the mainstream press (although I should point out that Figaro did publish this piece, even though they chickened afterwards) there are any number of smaller publications, artists etc who are prepared to stand up against the intimidation attempts. The French weekly Charlie Hebdo boosted their circulation from an average of ~100,000 to a record ~400,000 for the issue where they published the infamous 'caricatures'. There's an upcoming court battle about this early next year.

[tagos]

Originally Posted by Themenin

While this may be true of the mainstream press (although I should point out that Figaro did publish this piece, even though they chickened afterwards) there are any number of smaller publications, artists etc who are prepared to stand up against the intimidation attempts. The French weekly Charlie Hebdo boosted their circulation from an average of ~100,000 to a record ~400,000 for the issue where they published the infamous 'caricatures'. There's an upcoming court battle about this early next year.

Thanks for the info. Kudos to them for their courage. Of course the act of publishing cartoons or creating works of art should not be one of courage in the first place.

[Bridget Burke]

Originally Posted by Bosda Di'Chi of Tricor

Bridget Burke--you obviously didn't read the linked article.

The teacher being threaten by Radical Islamics is living in France. And France isn't invading anybody.

The radicals' actions are utterly unjustified. Murder in response to criticism?

Sorry for this late response. Yes, I read the article. The high school philosophy teacher got the reaction he wanted. He wasn't just criticizing "Radical Islamics"--he's totally against the religion. {"Islamics"?)

But Redeker expanded his critique from these examples to a broadside against Islam as a religion. He acknowledged that violence was commonly committed in the name of Christianity, but claimed that "it is always possible to turn back to evangelical values, to the mild personage of Jesus, from the excesses of the Church." Muhammad, he claimed, offered no such recourse: "Jesus is a master of love, Muhammad is a master of hate."

I hear that Michelle Malkin is also outraged.

Not that I agree with the reaction to his screed--but it's short-sighted to claim that Islam & Christianity might have a confrontation. Read a history book. Or two.

[Rune]

Originally Posted by Bridget Burke

The high school philosophy teacher got the reaction he wanted.

So you think he wanted the death threats against himself, his wife and children and to be hounded from his job and home? And even, should we believe for a second that that is exactly what he wanted, why should we ever agree to oblige him? Even when someone is clearly taunting extremists for a response, we should never accept or make weak apologies for the extremists response.

Originally Posted by Bridget Burke

He wasn't just criticizing "Radical Islamics"--he's totally against the religion.

Perhaps. And what of it? Is that bad or good and why should we even care. Nothing wrong with being against a religion or religion in general.

Originally Posted by Bridget Burke

Read a history book. Or two.

[Bosda Di'Chi of Tricor]

Originally Posted by Bridget Burke

Sorry for this late response. Yes, I read the article. The high school philosophy teacher got the reaction he wanted. He wasn't just criticizing "Radical Islamics"--he's totally against the religion. {"Islamics"?)



I hear that Michelle Malkin is also outraged.

Not that I agree with the reaction to his screed--but it's short-sighted to claim that Islam & Christianity might have a confrontation. Read a history book. Or two.

But what the heck does this response have to do with your first post?

How does "invading countries" fit in? The French are invading anything! They are merely appeasers to extremists, as usual.