So let’s look at a few of those fertility rates:
Albania: 2.03
Turkey: 1.92
Lebanon: 1.90
Algeria: 1.89
Kazakhstan: 1.89
Iran: 1.80
Tunisia: 1.74
Bosnia: 1.22
All less than the U.S., and all less than replacement value. Oh, my God, it’s a crisis!
I personally prefer to be vigilant rather than outraged.
As a matter of fact, I happen to be about as brown as many Muslims. I am regularly asked by Arabs if I am one of them. So much for your theory that my “rant” is racism.
Okay. Then what? What do you think we should do about all these Muslims threatening our core Western values?
Where do you want me to start? Take just one thing that Muslims in the west have trouble with: Male-female equality:
In the west, a woman can speak to a man who is not her husband on the street. She can shake hands with men. She can be a judge over men. She can sit in the front seat of a car with a man if she is a driving inspector and he is trying to get a licence.
Beating your wife is considered a crime of assault in most western countries. In the Koran, on the contrary, it says in Surah 34, verse 4, Men are in charge of women, because Allah made men to be better than women. Refuse to have sex with women from whom you fear rebellion, and scourge them. (note that it is enough to FEAR rebellion. His problem becomes her black eye.
Or take Surah 5, verse 6: When it’s time to pray and you have just used the toilet or touched a woman, be sure to wash up. If you can’t find any water, just rub some dirt on yourself. How do you suppose that affects the thinking of young Muslim men who are taught that?
Careful reading of the Old Testament will reveal just as many wrong-headed ideas.
(Is it true your membership expires this Saturday?)
The last time we had one of these alarmist oh-my-god-them-nasty-musselmens-are-coming-to-take-our-land-burn-our-civilization-and-steal-our-women threads, clairobscur (a real live French person living on the invasion front) had a number of comments about the “violence” in Europe in this post. Actually, it would not be a bad idea for those who have not already gone through this exercise to go read the earlier thread in its two-and-a-bit page entirety, paying special attention to all of clairobscur’s comments.
Substitute “xenophobia” for racism.
That is what I would like to see debated here.
In point of fact, the following measures are already being enacted or considered in parts of the western world.
The Dutch and other highly tolerant European nations are looking at the possibility of better screening of immigrants, restrictions on immigration from Mulim countries, asking Muslim immigrants to study and sign that they at least accept the core values of the west. For example, telling them clearly that they will have to accept that when it comes to the beating of women, our criminal codes over-rule the Koran.
Active prosecution of Muslim gangs who try to impose Islam on the unwilling and the lukewarm in the Muslim communities in the west.
Active education of westerners concerning the defense of our values.
Any other suggestions?
What universal western values are you referring to?
That’s ok though because I hear they eat their babies. :rolleyes:
‘Western values’ . . . mmmmm.
I found it difficult to focus on those after the USA, the UK and Australia all re-elected leaders who had lied to them in order to invade Iraq in pursuit of oil.
I’m sure there are some left, but after 50-60 hours working, responding to the call to achieve and consume, all I’ve got the strength for is a double burger with double fries and double milkshake.
But at least when I go to bed I can start to count that day’s dead Iraq’s to help me sleep, that and what car I’m going to get when I’ve finished paying for this beauty.
Elsie, while you wallow in western guilt and laugh at our values, you can be sure that throughout the Muslim world, they are telling the faithful that it is their duty to impose Islam on the corrupt west. Nobody is criticizing Islam in Muslim countries. Least ways, nobody living. 
Hate, apparently. 
Valteron, your basic problem seems to be that you’re conflating “Islam” in general with “extremist theocratic Islam”. I don’t think anybody would deny that extremist theocratic versions of Islam are in conflict with “Western” (that is, secular rationalist humanist) values and in many cases are deliberately attacking those values. What we’re objecting to is your attempting to assign that viewpoint to Islam as a whole, based on naive literalist readings of the Qur’an.
If you could distinguish between Islam as a whole and the specific subset of it that promotes anti-Western theocratic extremism, some of your ideas would actually be perfectly reasonable. For instance:
I don’t see any problem with such policies, and of course they should be applied to immigrants of all religions, not just Muslim ones. The principles of religious pluralism and secular law are important in modern Western societies, and I don’t have a problem with explicitly telling all immigrants that they’re expected to abide by those principles. (Once immigrants become citizens, of course, they have as much right as any other citizens to dissent from these principles and to advocate a different form of government if they want to. But ISTM that we’re within our rights to screen out the declared anti-secularists as much as possible at the entry stage.)
This makes no sense as currently phrased: it’s impossible to “impose Islam” on anybody within “Muslim communities”, because members of Muslim communities, by definition, already adhere to Islam. What you mean is that Muslim-extremist gangs should not be allowed to impose the dictates of extremist theocratic Islamism on their more moderate fellow Muslims.
I completely agree with that suggestion, and in fact I’m opposed to gangs of any kind in a modern secular society being allowed to impose extra-legal religious mandates on anybody by force or threats of force. Prosecute 'em all.
Actually, I do not believe that one can number “hate” among “Western” values, at least in that it seems to be highly regarded among a number of other cultures as well.
If you wish to seek out Westen Values, I would suggest starting with colonialism (a strong case made be made for that), considering genocide (we at least have a lot of practice), mass consumerism (a value we have exported to other societies but which we appear to have created and certainly fostered and nurtured until we could set it free in the world).
Just as one example, ask Salman Rushdie or the Danish cartoonist(s) who did the Mohammed cartoons about 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.
If we in the west cannot identify our values or respect them, then maybe we DESERVE to lose in the clash of civilizations!
I’ve spent quite a lot of time in Islamic countries and with Muslims, and I know which value set makes for a happier, more contented person who doesn’t have to contend with the range of absurdities and contradictions flung iny face every day.
Really pal, you need to get out more. Go crazy, get a passport maybe.
As noted in a current Pit thread, a (woman) German judge appears to have bought into Valteron’s odd view of Muslim support for wife-beating. In response to her ruling claiming that exact thing,
So while we have some posters on message boards and an ignorant German judge claiming that Islam supports wife abuse, we have an actual council of Muslims condemning such actions.
Whom to believe?
Indeed, it’s disingenuous but serves the purpose.
Good old western values in action.