Europe's anti-Semitism crisis

Great Debates
261

Finally some content! Maybe we are getting a discussion after all.

The problem with that is that many (probably most) of the youths that partake in riots like Sarcelles are from families that immigrated in the sixties.
Those who are coming today are often refugees, who cannot easily be rejected under international conventions.

I agree. That is easier said than done though. I do not think the French have high unemployment, because they want to. I am not saying that nothing could be done, and i agree that the track record of the current government in fighting unemployment is less than shiny.

I agree that authorities should monitor if any mosque, culture centre or whatever is becoming a breeding ground for hate speech. But in France as in the US free speech is treasured and given a lot of room. Where do you draw the line?

Besides - I am not French and may be wrong here - my impression is that many of the youths who partake in anti-semitic assaults are not the mosque-going kind.

Absolutely! … If there actually are such people, for which, despite repeatedly being challenged, you have not provided any evidence.

I do not know if that “bait” approach would work. Do you send undercover black policemen to the hangouts of white supremacists in the US, in oder to see if they may be getting violent?
But I agree with the “actively try to find racist criminals” part. Then again, I believe they are actually doing that. It’s just pretty hard to lock someone up for something they have not yet done. So the best they can do is to monitor known extremists, and grab them once they become active (like getting armed).

You absolutely had to add a few insults to spice up your post? It would be so mch easier to actually have a discussion, if you could keep it in.

262

That is likely true as well. I know the Kouachi brothers at least did not go to an established mosque but rather received religious teachings from a lone, activist “garage Imam” they’d met in prison who had been involved in a smuggling ring ferrying prospective jihad fighter over to… Syria, IIRC ? That’s what he was in jail for.

263

Actually, after thinking it over for a few minutes, I take that back.

For one thing, since lone Jews don’t typically go strolling into Muslim 'hoods whistling Dixie it would at best sting a handful of perpetrators before word would spread and the ruse stopped being ruse-y. For another, it would do nothing whatsoever to tweak the root causes of the problem. At best it would temporarily address the most egregious of symptoms - as my Dad would say, “paint over merde” (that is, if he didn’t dub it “Arab’s work” :().

264

To expand on some points made by a couple other posters:

You seem to be laboring under a misapprehension that Muslims all joined of their own will, like joining the Freemasons, or the Free Will Baptists, or Power Girl fandom.

It’s not that straightforward.

Because, and this is what you’re somehow not quite getting, historically Islam has sometimes, even often, actually been a really nasty killer cult. Like, “murder the apostates,” nasty. So, if you were ruled by a Muslim caliph, sultan, emir, or khan, and you had the dumb luck to be born to a Muslim parent, you sucked it up and maintained enough of a (moderate) Muslim public identity not to die. So because of the wild political success of fanatical, murderous, power-mad, and utterly too pious Muslim rulers from long ago, several long-standing traditions of more moderate “Muslim” identity sprang up and have now been around for centuries.

A lot of these Muslims in France aren’t true believers. They’re cultural Muslims, it’s part of their ethnicity. Also a good way not to die if ever visit the old homeland, maybe. The scary guys *you’re *thinking of are “fundamentalist” Muslims.

And of course, as others have pointed out, since this is about ethnic identity, some of the brutes aren’t even really pious or very observant. They’re just doing ethnic violence.

By failing to understand & acknowledge that there are “fundamentalist,” “moderate,” and “cultural/ethnic” Muslims, you state the problem over-broadly.

265

I wonder, because I am a pessimist, if there’s meant to be some sort of right-wing fiscal recommendation behind the line, “France should restructure its economy to encourage employment.” If so, that may be counterproductive, really. I get the impression that France, with its extensive safety net and socialist tendencies, has not suffered as much economically since 2008 as the countries that have embraced “austerity.”

266

I’ll um… I’ll let **clairobscur **field that one, because he’s so very well-spoken.
[SIZE=1]Also because I have no blessed idea. See, this would be one of the many reasons I don’t vote, people. I know we got hit hard in 2009 (THANKS, OBAMA !), and I know we’ve tentatively sprung back into the black since, but possibly not enough to compensate ?

I don’t understand financial stats. Even just glancing the Wiki page, my eyes glaze over. Gently caress that noise :o.[/SIZE]

267

Is this one of those “we’re allowed to say it but you’re not allowed to say it” things?

268

Still is.

269

No, it’s not. Calling Islam as a whole a “nasty killer cult” is both offensive and inaccurate. I agree that historically a lot of violence has been triggered by or justified with Islam. But the same can be said for Christianity.

270

At last, something resembling an argument! Now was that so fricken’ hard?

As several posters have noted, many who seem to be responsible for the violence referenced in this thread are 2nd or 3rd-generation French citizens. So it’s maybe a bit late for that.

Well, there are probably lots of reasons France should restructure its economy. We’ll just add this one to the list and I’m sure they’ll be getting right on it, just as soon as they privatize all the state-run institutions and get rid of the cap on working hours, and all the other things that are highly unlikely to happen.

Yes, crime should be prosecuted. Can’t argue with that. How do we know that these crimes are being incited by one mosque or another, however? Not why do you think that, but how do you know?

Well, you really should define ‘kowtowing’, but I’ll set that aside and say: yes, they should. But who, specifically, is doing that, right now, in France? I don’t see much evidence.

'Home mosques" again. Anyway, yes police should employ sting operations, just like setting out bait cars for auto thieves, it they think there is value to it. Next time I’m talking to a French cop, I’ll ask why they aren’t doing that.

Aw, and you were doing so well up that point. Oh well, baby steps.

Last thing. How much time have you ever spent in France, Haberdash? I lived in Paris from 1989 to 1997 and still go there frequently on business, and I have to say from personal experience that what posters like Kobal2 and Clairobscur have to say about the situation there is generally far more often on the mark than your comments. Not that you should shut up or anything; just realize you are coming off as a person who knows little about the country other than what you’ve cherry-picked from news articles that you believe support your premise.

271

Right, it’s offensive, because killing apostates isn’t part of the classic teachings of Islam in some the more conservative cultures.

Oh, wait, yeah, it is. And even the descendants of “apostates” 1000 years later, if we’re talking about Daesh, or the worst Sunni radicals in Pakistan today.

But my point was that Islam as a whole isn’t that way, and there is no Islam as a whole, because the “Muslim world” has a lot of local adaptations and more liberal traditions, formed to survive in the face of…piety eruptions. Or Tamerlanes.

It hasn’t been completely vicious everywhere, and not all the time. Islam had to become sort of peaceable to succeed back in the days of the caliphates.

But I should have clarified: Nasty killer cult to its own “wayward” children, mainly. Persecution of Jews in parts of the “Muslim world” is bad now, but it used to be *Christians *that were known for that.

272

Now you are differentiating. Good. I have no problem with anyone calling out Muslim *radicals *for what they really are. And there certainly are those whose interpretation of Islam is quite accuately described as “nasty killer cult”. What I do not like is generalization. Muslims today represent almost a quarter of the world’s population. To imply that they are all of a mind with the extremists among them is simply unfair - and it is not conductive to any attempt at solving the problem.

273

But you’re only “laughing” at the language used to refer to Muslims, right? The language that refers to Jews gets no mention. Is that not what Haberdash predicted?

274

No. The misapprehension he’s laboring under is that because some Muslims hate Jews, all Muslims hate Jews. Assuming that statements that are true of some members of a group are true of all members of that group is the fundamental fallacy of bigotry. Muslims and Jews, blacks and whites, Star-Bellied Sneeches and non-Star-Bellied Sneeches, the groups don’t really matter; it’s the “All X’s are…” thinking that is the root of the problem. Or as you put it,

275

He did not call you out over an anti-Jewish cliché in a post where you defend Haberdash. Did it ever occur to you that he may have guessed that you were not serious with that? To construe some anti-Jewish bias from that is really a stretch.

276

No bubbe. I’m only laughing, quite literally, at you and your bizarre attempt to make a point.

I hear the laughable “Joos are stingy” bullshit all too often to find it noteworthy. Stupid as fuck, but not noteworthy. But “Mohammedan?” That’s comedy.

ETA: What Hiker said.
.

277

And you’re showing here that you don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re assuming that somehow the guy commiting whatever antisemitic act does so because of the teachings he received in some mosque.

From a poll, about 12% of Muslims in France go regularly to a mosque (we aren’t very religious over here, not even Muslims), let alone to your fantasyland extremist mosque where the imam tell people they should beat up Jews more often. The guilty party in a run of the mill antisemitic action is likely to be some youth who has no interest in religion altogether, and will have picked his antisemitism from his friends at school, riled up by the last Palestine footage he has seen.

There are antisemitic attack by indoctrinated religious extremists. Like the kosher market, for instance. But everyday antisemitism is much more pervasive than that. It’s not based on religious beliefs. It’s flowing freely in some populations. The “gang des barbares” already mentioned wasn’t motivated by religion. They only “knew” that Jews have money, hence that someone would end up paying a big ransom if they abducted a Jew.

The aforementioned Dieudonné most certainly bears more responsibility in everyday antisemite acts during the recent years than any extremist imam or religious activist. That’s from the youtube videos of a famous humorist such as him that they will receive “guidance”, not from ISIS website. From the “common knowledge” of their peer group, not from the local imam.

Then, you also have intellectual, ideologue antisemites. But they’ve been around forever, and you’d be sorely mistaken if you believed that they’re all muslims. The one I’ve known the most closely was a perfectly Christian police officer studying to become a police commisary. They’re also way too cautious to end up being personnally involved in actual antisemite incidents. I’m pretty certain this police officer never uttered once “death to the Jews”. Again, you’re more likely to find them in the backroom of a political pary than in anything ressembling a mosque.

There are some mosques with extremists preachers, networks of extremist Islamists. But their presence and audience is very limited. They’re recruiting the hardcore militants, those who will go to Syria to fight or will attack Charlie-Hebdo. Not the kids who will give a hard time to a kippa-wearing child.

The typical French Muslim as I know them is probably currently having a beer at the corner cafe and couldn’t tell you where the nearest mosque is if his life depended on it.

278

Every single one of these posts is false and every claim about what other posters have said is false.

No one has claimed that anti-Jewish violence is not happening.
No one has posted that it is not evil.
No one has posted that it does not need to stop.

If you continue to deliberately paraphrase other posters in ways that are utterly different than what they have posted, I am going to begin to believe you are just trolling. Address the actual statements posted and stop trying to change the discussion by claiming posters say something different than what they actually posted.

For example, NOTHING in clairobscur’s post suggests that French are better or smarter than people in the U.S. His point, about which he was quite explicit, was that the same actions occur in regard to minority groups in both countries, but that it may not be obvious to posters from the States who are unfamiliar with the language used.

You are not being told that you cannot argue your views.
You are being told that if you continue to misrepresent other posters’ statements, you will be sanctioned for trolling. There is a difference between the odd straw man argument and a deliberate pattern of misrepresentation. You have persistently posted on the wrong side of that divide.

[ /Moderating ]

279

Have you thought of all these Muslims from Indonesia who are lacking Jews to beat up on the week-end to fulfill their religious obligations?

280

Nah, if board moderators are going to step in and try to regulate discussions they’re participating in based on whether they approve of the opposing arguments or not, I have nothing further to say here.