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?
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?
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
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.
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.
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™ 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.
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.
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.
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.
No, just better armed. Why fly a plane into a building when you have cruise missles and bombers ?
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.
This is true, and makes me feel a bit more confident in the future.
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.
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.
If we start the discussion by confusing large, distinct groups, is there any hope for clarity?
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?
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.
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 ).
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.
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.