# Defending western values against the attack of Islam **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 28, 2007, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defending-western-values-against-the-attack-of-islam/397877 "2007-03-28T18:48:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Quiddity\_Glomfuster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/c4cdca/32.png) [@Quiddity\_Glomfuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quiddity_Glomfuster)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2007, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defending-western-values-against-the-attack-of-islam/397877/81 "2007-03-29T15:25:29Z")
[QUOTE=Uzi] Stop making excuses for religion. It is not the only reason people fight, but it is right up there with the best of them. [/QUOTE] Israel and Palestine are fighting over territory. Sunni and Shia are fighting because one group mistreated the other. Same as Tutsis and Hutus. ---
**Author:** ![Cuckoorex](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ad7895/32.png) [@Cuckoorex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cuckoorex)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2007, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defending-western-values-against-the-attack-of-islam/397877/82 "2007-03-29T15:46:42Z")
[QUOTE=Quiddity Glomfuster] Sunni and Shia are fighting because one group mistreated the other. [/QUOTE] Why did they mistreat each other? ---
**Author:** ![Kalhoun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/3bc359/32.png) [@Kalhoun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kalhoun)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2007, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defending-western-values-against-the-attack-of-islam/397877/83 "2007-03-29T15:51:00Z")
The “mistreatment” was over differing interpretations of the Quran. It’s religious. ---
**Author:** ![Wolfian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/7ea924/32.png) [@Wolfian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wolfian)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2007, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defending-western-values-against-the-attack-of-islam/397877/84 "2007-03-29T16:39:40Z")
> [@uzi](#): > > I never understand this argument. How do you know if they were, say Atheist, that they’d do the same thing? I’d say it would be highly unlikely that it would occur. Without the religion that particular conflict would not exist. With all due respect: so what? If every religion were to disappear, yes, that battle might end, but there are other causes of conflict (as you said). Why focus on the religion aspect? That’s like focusing on skin color or wealth. Even in one were to take the radical steps needed to take away the various causes of war (kill everyone who didn’t look a certain way, redistribute wealth, etc.) more would pop up. People tend to seperate into groups and those groups tend to kill each other. ---
**Author:** ![Honesty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/f04885/32.png) [@Honesty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Honesty)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2007, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defending-western-values-against-the-attack-of-islam/397877/85 "2007-03-29T16:47:37Z")
[QUOTE=Valteron] **]". . . in our opposition to the worldview of Islam, we confront a civilzation with an arrested history. It is as though a portal in time has opened, and fourteenth-century hordes are pouring into our world**." (Sam Harris, _The End of Faith_). For anyone out there naive enough to still think that Islam is just a religion like the others and that our western values are not under attack, consider some of the latest developments. France and Canada are two of the western democracies with rapidly-growing immigrant populations of Muslims. Regarding France, in a recent article entitled “_Laïcité: un héritage en péril_” (Secularism: an endangered heritage) (all translations mine) in the Jan-February 2007 issue of _Historia Thématique_ Daniel Lefeuvre, a professor of Economic and Social History at the University of Paris and Michel Renard, co-author of “L’Histoire de l’islam et des musulmans en France” 2006, clearly set out the growing danger of Islam and Muslim hostility to the fundamental values of the western democracies that have received them. And the first value they attack is secularism and the separation of Church and State. One incident after another is recorded. Gangs of young muslim thugs circulate in French schools “enforcing” Islamic dress codes on young women of Muslim background. This, incidentally was one of the principal reasons France passed a law banning the wearing of ALL religious symbols, (not just the Muslim head-scarf). The law, as draconian as it may seem, is actually a way of protecting female Muslims in France from this kind of bullying. Or what about cases of Muslim students physically attacked for the “crime” of eating a sandwich during Ramadan? Or what about French high schools where the cafeteria sells only “halal;” meat? And where any non-Muslim French student who dares to bring in something like a pork sandwich risks physical attack? Or what about the demands that the circumcised Muslim students cannot change in the same locker room as the “impure” French students? In the emergency wards and obstetrics wards of French hospitals, male doctors have been assaulted by Muslim husbands for coming to the aid of women, some of whom were in serious need of immediate attention. In one case, the doctor was physically thrown down and told “You are in Muslim territory here!” (The hospital is in France!) In Canada, we have as many examples. A Muslim trying for his driver’s licence refuses to accept a female employee administering the test because he will not accept a woman in the front seat with him. Can you imagine if someone said they refused to have a black or a Jew or a Catholic in the front seat? In Toronto, a Mulsim woman art student refuses to draw or paint nudes, although this is a required part of the course. The painting of nudes is an integral part of western art. Do the values and traditions of the culture this woman has voluntarily moved to mean nothing to her? In History classes, Muslim students refuse to learn about the Holocaust, alleging that it is nothing but an inventiion of the “Zionist lobby”. In France, Muslim female teachers are regularly told by male students that they should be in the home, and that they have no business talking to males. In cities like Amsterdam, where gays and lesbians have been generally safe and accepted, there is a growing crescendo of violence and attacks against them by gangs of Muslim immigrant thugs. As Lefeuvre and Renard conclude in their article, France fought a “thirty years’ war” ending in 1905 to get the Catholic Church to accept separation of Church and State. Modern France (and I would say western democracies in general) now face the choice of defeding this value or abandoning it. As Elie Barnavi says in “_Religions meurtrières_” (Murderous Religions, 2006)“We must stand and hold the line at certain basic principles that we will neither debate nor compromise on, and from which we will allow no exceptions: Here, freedom of belief is an individual right, and religion is a matter for the free choice of the individual. . . . . The Republic has been a good girl, but she must now learn to expose her claws. She must not only forbid that her laws be broken, but also that her ethic be embraced.” IT IS TIME FOR NOT ONLY FRANCE BUT WESTERN DEMOCRACIES TO WAKE UP! [/QUOTE] Let’s assume everything you said is absolutely, 100% true. What is your solution? Ban Islam? Kill all Muslims? What? I’m genuinely curious. - Honesty ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2007, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defending-western-values-against-the-attack-of-islam/397877/86 "2007-03-29T16:52:24Z")
[QUOTE=LonesomePolecat] Anti-white racism is alive and well and living at the SDMB. [/QUOTE] Do you have an example of your cryptic comment? ---
**Author:** ![Cuckoorex](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ad7895/32.png) [@Cuckoorex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cuckoorex)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2007, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defending-western-values-against-the-attack-of-islam/397877/87 "2007-03-29T17:33:31Z")
[QUOTE=Kalhoun] The “mistreatment” was over differing interpretations of the Quran. It’s religious. [/QUOTE] Exactamundo! ---
**Author:** ![Uzi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/91b2a8/32.png) [@Uzi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uzi)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2007, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defending-western-values-against-the-attack-of-islam/397877/88 "2007-03-29T18:34:04Z")
[QUOTE=Wolfian] With all due respect: so what? If every religion were to disappear, yes, that battle might end, but there are other causes of conflict (as you said). Why focus on the religion aspect? That’s like focusing on skin color or wealth. Even in one were to take the radical steps needed to take away the various causes of war (kill everyone who didn’t look a certain way, redistribute wealth, etc.) more would pop up. People tend to seperate into groups and those groups tend to kill each other. [/QUOTE] Because religion is far more polarizing than any other aspect of human society. Because there are more people willing to die (and more importantly, kill) in the name of their religion than there are willing to die in the cause of purifying the race, communism, capitalism, and any other cause you can care to name, imho. This is because there are more people supporting religion than any of these other things. If religion was taken out of the picture all you’d have left is small groups of people fighting small wars. It is highly unlikely that if you draw a picture of Karl Marx with a bomb on his head that few, if any, people are going to get killed over it in the very unlikely event that there are ensuing riots. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2007, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defending-western-values-against-the-attack-of-islam/397877/89 "2007-03-29T20:05:44Z")
[QUOTE=Uzi] Because religion is far more polarizing than any other aspect of human society. [/QUOTE] I’d have to disagree with that. If one believes in Maslow’s heirarchy, and for the most part I do, what matters most to humans is sustenance and shelter, not God. Consequently, I think what you’ll find is that the most “polarizing” thing when it comes to human conflict is land and resources. While everyone is happily citing religious conflicts, it’s worth noting that _most_ wars are over land and resources. World War II wasn’t over religion, and World War I wasn’t, and the U.S. Civil War wasn’t and Vietnam wasn’t and so on and so forth, and even nominally religious wars produced strange bedfellows when land and gold were on the line. But all wars do seem to have an element of material goods involved. It’s interesting to note that the Jews and the Muslims didn’t have as many problems with each other when land and riches weren’t on the line. > [@](#): > > If religion was taken out of the picture all you’d have left is small groups of people fighting small wars. See above. Really, you can’t believe this if you just list all the world’s worst wars; the great majority of them had essentially no religious cause. The Second World War was just “Small groups of people fighting small wars”?? ---
**Author:** ![I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/i_love_me_vol.i/32/521_2.png) [@I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/I_Love_Me_Vol.I)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2007, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defending-western-values-against-the-attack-of-islam/397877/90 "2007-03-29T20:51:41Z")
Conflicts over land and resources are natural. Humans need to eat and have shelter and will fight to the death in order to ensure access to those things. Religion, OTOH, is NOT natural. In fact, it is completely unnecessary. Yes, if religion were removed from the picture humans would still fight, but at least we could eliminate the senseless killing over who’s primitive superstitions are the best. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2007, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defending-western-values-against-the-attack-of-islam/397877/91 "2007-03-29T21:19:30Z")
> [@ILMVI](#): > > Religion, OTOH, is NOT natural. In fact, it is completely unnecessary. Yes, if religion were removed from the picture humans would still fight, but at least we could eliminate the senseless killing over who’s primitive superstitions are the best. :dubious: Well, that was helpful. Is there a significant difference between **Valteron** ’s using the issue of defending humanistic values as an excuse for railing against one religion, and your using it as an excuse for railing against all religions? ---
**Author:** ![Wildfire\_MM](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/f08c70/32.png) [@Wildfire\_MM](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wildfire_MM)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2007, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defending-western-values-against-the-attack-of-islam/397877/92 "2007-03-29T21:20:45Z")
what values? ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2007, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defending-western-values-against-the-attack-of-islam/397877/93 "2007-03-29T21:42:25Z")
> [@Wildfire\*\*MM](#): > > what values? 😕 Haven’t you been reading the thread? The humanistic values that the OP claimed to want to “defend” from the “attack” of militant theocratic Islamism include religious pluralism and tolerance, the dominance of secular law in the civil/governmental sphere, freedom of belief and expression, individual autonomy in sexual/family relationships, etc. etc. Basically, all the values that permit the personal freedom of the individual under secular law in modern liberal Western societies. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Sable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/22d042/32.png) [@Martin\_Sable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Sable)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2007, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defending-western-values-against-the-attack-of-islam/397877/94 "2007-03-29T23:29:21Z")
[QUOTE=uglybeech] Nice clear-headed post. Thank you. I would only have to second **Tomndeb** ’s amendment that there is a Group 3 who are in fact just flat-out bigots. [/QUOTE] There is a Group 3. But many in Group 1 can get so overzealous and blinded with righteous anger that they sometimes appear unable to distinguish between Group 2 and Group 3. [QUOTE=Kimstu] I totally support these concerns. But I don’t think that they justify sloppy overgeneralizations and accusations directed at innocent people. [/QUOTE] To my eyes, many “sloppy overgeneralizations” about Islam/Muslims, on these and other boards, are no more sloppy or overgeneral than what routinely passes without comment when discussing Republicans, Democrats, Europeans, Americans, Communism/Capitalism, men/women, or other large groups. Yes, people can sometimes be sloppy when speaking. Language is symbolic and inherently imprecise. Words have slightly different nuances and shades of meaning to different people. But it’s usually easy enough to figure out what someone really means if we bother to try. For some reason, though, when Islam is the topic, the discussion always gets heated and no one bothers to try. I see many in Group 1 demanding a level of linguistic precision that they do not require–and often do not themselves practice–when the topic is something other than Islam. And I don’t think they realize they’re doing so. The result is a lot of well-meaning people talking past each other, neither group stopping to consider that maybe, just maybe, they’re misinterpreting what the other person is saying. [QUOTE=Kimstu] Let us by all means condemn whatever customs, laws and beliefs we find to be immoral, and let us strive to uphold our own moral principles and vigilantly defend our right to profess them. But let’s not weaken our case by gratuitous bigotry. [/QUOTE] I agree. But where are the threads where this is happening? Pretty much every Islam thread turns into a carbon copy of this one: Group 1 gets in a shouting match with Group 3, and Group 2 is either lumped in unfairly with Group 3 or else throws up its collective hands in disgust and leaves because they can’t get a word in edgewise. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2007, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defending-western-values-against-the-attack-of-islam/397877/95 "2007-03-29T23:59:06Z")
> [@Martin Sable](#): > > Yes, people can sometimes be sloppy when speaking. Language is symbolic and inherently imprecise. Words have slightly different nuances and shades of meaning to different people. But it’s usually easy enough to figure out what someone really means if we bother to try. For some reason, though, when Islam is the topic, the discussion always gets heated and no one bothers to try. I don’t think the distaste for **Valteron** ’s comments about Islam here is merely the result of nobody “bothering to try” to understand what he “really meant”. I think he made it perfectly clear what he really meant, with remarks like these: > [@Valteron](#): > > Islam is a world-wide movement that believes that it has a duty to conquer the entire world for Allah, and to impose Islam. If by conversion, fine. If by conquest or infiltration, fine. […] > > Nobody is criticizing Islam in Muslim countries. Least ways, nobody living. […] > > […] the precious right of freedom of the press, a right that Muslims countries neither have nor could even comprehend, let alone respect and cherish. > > Muslims have no trouble identifying THEIR values, you can be sure. They are right in the Koran. And they have decided the whole world is meant to accept those values. > > Muslims have never heard of sepatating Church and State, believe the Koran is the Word of Allah, and believe they should kill anyone who is an apostate from the faith. […] This isn’t a question of “nuances and shades of meaning”. This is a case of leveling extreme accusations at **an entire undifferentiated group of people** , most of which are not even true for the majority of members of that group. **Valteron** had plenty of chances to modify his over-the-top anti-Islam rhetoric into more reasonable and factual statements that would still have done a perfectly good job of expressing his concern about the perils posed to Western values by extremist theocratic Islam. But he preferred to stick with his absolutist, undifferentiated anti-Islam bigotry, and then to bail out of the thread once it became clear that he wasn’t going to get away with it. > [@Martin Sable](#): > > Pretty much every Islam thread turns into a carbon copy of this one: Group 1 _[i.e., opponents of anti-Muslim religious bigotry]_ gets in a shouting match with Group 3 _[i.e., anti-Muslim religious bigots]_, and Group 2 _[i.e., non-bigoted supporters of Western values and opponents of Islamist extremism]_ is either lumped in unfairly with Group 3 or else throws up its collective hands in disgust and leaves because they can’t get a word in edgewise. Where are the people in this thread trying to defend the “Group-2” position, except perhaps some of us in “Group 1”? As I’ve already indicated more than once, I’d be happy to discuss with rational Group-2 types the issue of threats posed to modern societies by Islamist extremism, and the measures that modern societies might take to defend their modern values. But AFAICT, there isn’t anybody around here seriously trying to make this discussion a debate about Group-2 rather than Group-3 ideas. Except perhaps you yourself, and you seem to be more concerned about how mean we’re all being to poor little **Valteron** than about actually discussing the OT. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2007, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defending-western-values-against-the-attack-of-islam/397877/96 "2007-03-29T23:59:10Z")
[QUOTE=I Love Me, Vol. I] Conflicts over land and resources are natural. Humans need to eat and have shelter and will fight to the death in order to ensure access to those things. Religion, OTOH, is NOT natural. In fact, it is completely unnecessary. Yes, if religion were removed from the picture humans would still fight, but at least we could eliminate the senseless killing over who’s primitive superstitions are the best. [/QUOTE] WISE ONE: Of course there’s war! The stupid French-Chinese think they have a right to Hawaii! ---
**Author:** ![Anduril](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c0e974/32.png) [@Anduril](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anduril)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2007, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defending-western-values-against-the-attack-of-islam/397877/97 "2007-03-30T00:31:45Z")
[QUOTE=Kimstu] But AFAICT, there isn’t anybody around here seriously trying to make this discussion a debate about Group-2 rather than Group-3 ideas. Except perhaps you yourself, and you seem to be more concerned about how mean we’re all being to poor little **Valteron** than about actually discussing the OT. [/QUOTE] Kudos for the use of “AFAICT”. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2007, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defending-western-values-against-the-attack-of-islam/397877/98 "2007-03-30T00:45:13Z")
> [@Anduril](#): > > Kudos for the use of “AFAICT”. Well, CYT any different? Where are the alleged Group-2 debaters whose sincere persistent efforts to address in a rational manner the issues of theocratic-extremist Islamism and its threats to western values are being allegedly drowned out by the “shouting match” between Group-1 and Group-3 debaters? ---
**Author:** ![Quiddity\_Glomfuster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/c4cdca/32.png) [@Quiddity\_Glomfuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quiddity_Glomfuster)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2007, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defending-western-values-against-the-attack-of-islam/397877/99 "2007-03-30T00:45:21Z")
[QUOTE=Cuckoorex] Why did they mistreat each other? [/QUOTE] Because humans seem to be predisposed to dividing their fellows into ‘us’ (i.e. the good guys who are to be lauded and treated well) and ‘them’ (i.e. the black hat bad guy). You see it in this very thread; **Valteron** is trying to make a case that all Muslims are ‘them’ - the bad guys. Once you distinguish another group as ‘bad guys’, that gives you leave (in your mind) to mistreat them; witness the US administration excusing its torture of ‘enemies’. If they’re bad guys, you can do anything to them because they don’t count as humans. Your excuse may be religion. It may be nationality. It may be colour. It may be language. It may be anything, but that’s only the reason for the distinction. It is not the religion that causes the war, but rather that people of one religion decide that people of another are inferior, and therefore are bad guys who deserve mistreatment. If the ‘bad guys’ fight back, you have a war. ---
**Author:** ![Quiddity\_Glomfuster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/c4cdca/32.png) [@Quiddity\_Glomfuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quiddity_Glomfuster)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2007, 12:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defending-western-values-against-the-attack-of-islam/397877/100 "2007-03-30T00:56:56Z")
[QUOTE=Cuckoorex] Exactamundo! [/QUOTE] No, actually, it started over power; who was to succeed Muhammad as the head of the empire. It was about power, leadership, and politics. As, in the end, are most wars. [http://anewerworld.org/?p=275](http://anewerworld.org/?p=275) [http://www.newstatesman.com/200702120010](http://www.newstatesman.com/200702120010) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defending-western-values-against-the-attack-of-islam/397877.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defending-western-values-against-the-attack-of-islam/397877.md?page=6)