[QUOTE=tomndebb]
If we look at Valteron’s favorite whipping boy, France, we find that even though Muslims have been members of French society for decades, all the recent conflicts are, indeed, recent. What is the difference between French Muslims in 2007 and French Muslims in 1977? Well, for one thing, with the increase in immigrants, there has been an anti-immigrant backlash that has often been displayed as anti-Muslim activity. (See clairobscur’s post linked earlier.) Just as most Catholic immigrants to the U.S. between 1850 and 1950 became “more Catholic than the pope” and embraced a very conservative brand of Catholicism in reaction to being treated harshly as Catholics, so, I suspect, something similar is happening in France.
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Tomndeb’s theory as stated above is interesting, and it also fills the need to make the west the guilty party. It is WE, the west who treat them harshly. It is OUR fault.
The analogy with Catholic immigrants to America between 1850 and 1950 is interesting, but like all analogies is it not a perfect fit.
Our western society in 1850 and 1950 was not the same as our society today. Protestants and Catholics in 1850 and even 1950 had a centuries-old, fully developed and deeeply rooted loathing for one another, already created in the old world. And by the way, I assume you are willing to admit that the Catholics arriving in mainly Protestant America were not somehow marvellously free of anti-Protestant feeling. :dubious:
There have indeed been Muslims in western countries, and Mosques as well, for decades. Did you know that the Al Rashid Mosque in Edmonton, Alberta dates from 1938? (see here)
The mosque in my city in Canada was built in the 1970s. At the time, I remember not a word of anti-Muslim hostility from other Canadians. Local suburbanites said they enjoyed the “exotic” touch that the graceful minaret and Islamic architecture added to their street.
While I am not naive enough to pretend that western democracies are bigotry-free zones, I DO believe bigorty is far less acceptable now than it was during the period of heavy Catholic immigration from 1850 to 1950. It is because bigotry is so unacceptable that posters who have no good arguments against me fall back on the strategy of yelling “bigorty” at me.
The Muslim immigrants who arrived in the west up to about 1990 were by and large people who were prepared for the west and its cultural values. And if they were not, they were present in such small numbers that they had to learn to adapt and accept, period.
Much of the Muslim immigration to France decades ago was the result of he French decolonization of Algeria and Tunisia. The people who came over were often termed “Les Français musulmans”, implying that they were both, and indeed they were often of mixed parentage as well as culture. Some had to leave, but others took one look at what life would be like in an indpendent Muslim society and decided they liked the values of France.
If France was the haven of anti-Islamic bigots that it is now being made out to be, one wonders how it is that all of these people got along in French society.
Tomndeb is perfectly right to attribute the problem to RECENT immigration.
But instead of using knee-jerk political correctness to make the western society responsible for the backlash, let’s look at another theory.
The recent Muslim immigrant comes to the west for economic reasons. But this is the very crux of the problem. As Sam Harris says in “The End of Faith”:
“The reality that the West currently enjoys far more wealth and temporal power than any nation under Islam is viewed by devout Muslims as a diabolical perversity. . . .” (op. cit., pg. 32)
In other words, the Muslim immigrant arrives seeking a better material life, but armed with a political, moral and religious philosophy so foreign to western culture that he cannot help but be stunned by the culture shock.
Back home, when his daughter asked him why she should wear a hijab, he would tell her that any respectable woman who is not a slut or a whore covers her hair outside he home. But if he looks out the window in the west, he and his daughter can see five of her schoolmates off to the mall bareheaded, without one of them being a slut or a whore.
All his life, he has lived in a society where homosexuality is an abomination and homosexuals are flogged, imprisoned, entrappd and even put to death. He turns on the TV in the west and he sees Will and Grace and Rosie O’Donnell. He reads that a handful of western countries have actually allowed homosexuals to form legal marriages.
All his life, he has believed what the Koran says about men and women: Surah 4:34 Men are in charge of women, because Allah hath made the one of them to excel the other, and because they spend of their property (for the support of women). So good women are the obedient, guarding in secret that which Allah hath guarded.
But he gets a job in a company where the chief executive is a single woman who has control over 100 men and 50 women who work together.
All his life he has been told that sex and pregnancy out of wedlock are so horrible that some cultures in Islam even accept the murder of family members who transgress these laws. But in the west, TV shows and movies show Murphy Brown and charcters on “Friends” as getting preganant out of wedlock without a word or condemnation. As to sex outside marriage, it is almost a given. One day, the single, female CEO of his company is reported to have had herself voluntarily impregnated because she WANTS to be a single parent.
By this time, Abu’s head is ready to explode.
All his life, he has been told that religion is necesssary for morality and that without the puritanical laws of Islam, society would fall apart.
But here is the west, filled with perfctly moral atheists who behave no worse than anyone else, and who hold the “March of Godless Americans” in Washington.
Here he is in the west, where he wants to stay becuse he is making far more money than he could ever make in his Islamic homeland.
But here he is faced with a quandry: Either he dumps much of his Islamic blief and accepts that it was all puritnical bullshit and repressive theocracy, or else he clings harder than ever to pure, conservative Islam. If he accpts the second, then he MUST view the west as incredibly corrupt.
A secular culture is nothing more than a culture of infidls. Gay rights is no progress and freedom, it is legalized filth by people who have lost all moral sense. Western women are not free, they are sex dolls competing for the next man to knock them up. Andso on and so on he goes, wedded to the west’s material posperity and freedom, but despising the culture he lives in.
Every day, he must assert himself to validate his Mulim belifs.
For example, we now have cases of Mulims in England refusing to use the disinfectant hand lotion that all visitors to hospitals are required to use. Why? Because it contains alcohol!See the Sun article here
Did we know this would happen when we let thse people in? How do we get out of this mess?
And BTW, France is NOT my whipping boy. I admire the courage of French politicians who have passed law to defnd secularlism such as the banning of ALL overt religious displays in public schools, including hijabs.
No pitchforks, no mobs, no torches, no concentration camps. Just firmness from a western society that can stand up for itslf.
