I call upon the informed Teeming Millions to assist me with my father-in-law’s deepening adoption of xenophobic approach to Islam/Muslims. I’m getting more and more fear filled missives that Islam is ‘taking over’ and ‘encroaching’ everywhere. As a deeply agnostic philosophical Buddhist, I’m not a fan of any organized religion, but it bothers me the degree of hate and anger that is just under the surface of these forwarded e-mails.
I’d like to have some informed responses to the following:
My general approach has been to highlight that the Tanakh and Christian Canon also contain horrific acts, and have been used to justify violence. This means militant religious action of most any stripe can be dangerous, but I’d love to have some more counterpoints.
You’re screwed. You can say that Islam isn’t a threat all you want–and you would be right–but the point would remain that most terrorists of today are Islamic. The point would remain that the influx of Islamic refugees into many of the European states has produced an era of heightened crime reminiscent of America when the Irish or the Italians came and started gangs–but entirely new to these countries.
So long as Islamic people are causing more problems in the world than they are solving, all the talk about “minority factions” and “the actions of an impoverished people” is going to fall on deaf ears. Your points may be valid, but that doesn’t really matter until there’s any evidence that Islamic people aren’t a problem.
People were racist against the Italians and the Irish. Then their children rose in society, and they became accepted, the problems of their homeland seen as something unrelated to these people. It just sorta is the natural cycle. We can try and look back on history and learn from it–but the fact that very few of us ever do is evidence that you’re fairly well screwed. You just have to let time work its magic.
One problem you’re facing is that he’s at least half right about this. Let’s consider these three facts:
The Muslim World is much less socially liberal than the West.
There is a lot of animosity between the Muslim World and the West.
Muslims in most parts of the world tend to reproduce at an extraordinarily fast rate.
Provided that the above statements are true, it’s really not that much of a stretch to fear a demographic encroaching of Muslims in the United States. We must distinguish between categorical hatred of Muslims and a fear of what demographic trends may do to Western societies. To fear that Western societies will go downhill as Islamic values become more prevalent in our society is not irrational.
The fears could, of course, not quite stand up to reality. I don’t have all of the important facts on hand - not even close. But I think it is perfectly rational to fear Islam and the demographic trends we are seeing in certain parts of the world with regards to that faith.
That’s my gut feeling, but I’m looking for more info.
As I may not have been clear, I was indicating above that the general feeling seems that somehow Islamic extremist violent acts are of greater concern than those performed by folks like Scott Roeder. My feeling is that it’s a bit of an unfair categorization, and seems to be fear baiting and divisive.
Could I have some cites for this? I have no difficulty believing that there could well be a recent influx era of heightened crime, but i’d be suprised if it could be directly linked to Islamic immigration as a causal influence.
I live in the largest Kurdish community in the United States. There are 8,000 plus Kurds in my neighborhood here in Nashville. For the most part the Muslims here have been very quiet and hardworking and pleasant. Some are teachers or college students and professors. They have had a very good reputation.
But in the last three years there has been a street gang to arise from the Muslim population. There is a lot of “ethnic pride” going on among all of the cultures in this neighborhood, especially the blacks, Asians, and Latinos. So now the young Muslims respond with their own gang. They are tearing down the reputation that their parents and grandparents have worked hard to build over the last thirty years.
The articles the OP linked are difficult to attack as racist or xenophobic. The second is reasonably thoughtful, and the first induces or should induce some mild outrage at the way Wilders is being treated – certainly by traditional American standards of free speech, he’s suffered some significant restraint and danger for merely speaking his opinion.
I have lots of European friends as well as Americans vacationing in Europe. That might not be a great cite, but for instance I’m told that the South of France is no longer safe for a woman to tour on her own. Walking on the street you’re liable to be rousted by Muslim teens. I’ve had Swedish and Norwegian friends complain about all the crime being caused there by Muslims. That might just be their perception, but I do know that crime rates in Europe have been on the rise, so it seems likely that it isn’t just perception.
My concern is that the two I linked to are forwarded in what appears (to me) to be a “See!” kind of manner, not as points of discussion, but points of conclusion.
Well then you’re not fighting xenophobia really, you’re fighting confirmation bias.
There is evidence out there to support a rational view that non-assimilated, Islamist subgroups pose certain integration and security problems in secular Western countries to which they migrate. (There’s other evidence that supports an argument that most Muslims eventually fit in fine in the West, and by the way, there’s evidence that both might be true at the same time . . . .).
Your F.i.L. accrued some baseline amount of evidence of theory 1 and adopted theory 1 as one of his organizing principles on matters of Islamism. And you’re probably right that by now, he focuses more on the incremental news that supports his theory than on incremental news that’s inconsistent with or doesn’t support it.
That’s just human nature, not xenophobia. And it will be about as readily changed as a lifelong preference for Coca Cola or licorice or redheads – it’s not impossible, but odds are against it and if it happens, it won’t likely be through argument but through personal reassessment of views with enough new evidence.
I only started posting on the straightdope because I love xenophobia threads, and great debates never disappoints!
Your post proves how irrational it is to be xenophobic. Those are some really super-intelligent facts you’ve posted there. Can you please point, on a map, maybe make a link to it, where we can find the “Muslim World”? If you can help me find it then maybe I can accept fact #1 as true. Shit, I’ll accept fact #2 as being rational if you can find this Muslim World for me because my geography lessons never taught me this stuff. Fact #3, Muslims like to fuck. Are they fucking at a more terrifying rate than Chinese or Indians? Do you fear the Kung-fuication of the West?
And only a rational thinker would distinguish between the West being sullied by the presence of Muslims versus just hating Muslims. Kudos to your rational analysis of the situation. It’s only rational to fear a group of people if you start at hating them or thinking they are fundamentally different from yourself, of course, because if you didn’t think that you wouldn’t give a shit.
Yes Huerta88 it’s difficult to see how blaming Muslims for the legal problems of a douche who violates the laws of his countryman might be considered xenophobic. Why just the other day I got caught speeding, but I feel the Muslims made me do it, and, if that isn’t enough, the Muslims secretly forced me to be caught! Bastards!
As for the 2nd article, I guess the only thing that proves is that you might as well let anybody into your country because if it isn’t the Muslims, then the Nazis will get ya, and if it isn’t the Nazis then the Rwandans will get ya, and if it isn’t the Rwandans then the god damn Commies will get ya, and if it isn’t the Commies then xenophobes will think of something for me to shit my pants over.
I’ve seen calls from within the Muslim community that are pretty similar to the second source you quoted, actually. Here is a site that has a giant list of Muslims denouncing terrorism as un-Islamic and wrong.
You really aren’t aware of nations with Islam as the official state religion? Really? Seriously?
**From Wiki:
Afghanistan (Islamic state)
Algeria
Bahrain
Bangladesh
Brunei
Comoros
Egypt
Indonesia (Uses Islamic jurisprudence in private law[citation needed], and in Aceh special territory as a basic law. Officially also recognize Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, Buddhism, Hinduism and Confucianism as religion, but they have much less influence in government and law)[citation needed].
Iran (Islamic state)
Iraq
Jordan
Kuwait
Libya
Malaysia
Maldives
Mauritania (Islamic state)
Morocco
Oman
Pakistan (Islamic state)
Qatar
Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic
Saudi Arabia (Islamic kingdom)
Somalia (the newly established coalition government announced in March 2009 that it would implement shari’a as the nation’s official judicial system.[22])
Tunisia[23]
United Arab Emirates
Yemen (Islamic state)
Sunni Islam
* Algeria[citation needed]
* Comoros[citation needed]
* Malaysia
* Maldives[citation needed]
* Mauritania
* Pakistan[citation needed] (as national-sanctioned religion)
* Saudi Arabia (as state-sanctioned religion)
* Somalia
* Jordan
* Indonesia (Aceh Special Province Only)
Shi’a Islam
* Iran (as state-sanctioned religion)**
As for the second point that The Bith Shuffle made about animosity between the Muslim World and the West are you not aware of the celebrations that occurred in Islamic countries after 9/11? Is this because you didn’t know there were Islamic countries?
That’s because the terrorists who are Islamic are carrying out their terror in the name of Islam. The (tiny) number of white, Christian terrorists, like Timothy McVeigh and…uh…yeah, Timothy McVeigh, committed acts in the name of exceptionally muddled political philosophies connected to insane conspiracy-theory movements - not in the name of “white Christian males.” And not everyone got a pass. The militia movement in America, for instance, is now inextricably linked with McVeigh (despite the fact that McVeigh was not part of a militia nor acting in the name of a militia) and even just gun owners in general get the “crazy white militia gun nut” stigma thrown at them. Ridiculous media alarmism about militias was all the rage during the early to mid 1990s and talk show hosts acted like they were some kind of unbelievably dangerous threat to America. To date, I can’t think of a single terrorist act carried out by a militia.
You know full well there have been terrorist acts committed in the US by white Christian males other than McVeigh (Rudolph, Roeder) and those acts were done in the name of religion. And if you were to look at American history as a whole, you would find that the majority of terrorist acts (such as the Alabama church bombings) were committed by white males acting in the name of religion.
I’m not dismissing the threat Islamic extremism poses, but I’m also not dismissing the real threat that Christian extremism poses to this country.
That’s only one way to rank them, and if your goal is to actually protect US economic interests as well as people, then there is no particular reason to use only that ranking. As I said, white male Christian terrorists always get a pass for some reason.
In proportion to their numbers Muslims have committed far more terrorism. The reason why white Christian males get a pass in America is because almost the entire damn country consists of white Christians. How do you not give them a “pass” in such a situation? You know, every damn day I hear about 30 people blown to pieces in Iraq by Sunnis and then 45 more people blown to bits by the Shiites and so on and so on. It’s sickening, the amount of violence that Muslim terrorists in Iraq are committing (against their fellow Muslims.) But in Iraq, these Muslim terrorists “get a pass.” Why? I think you should probably be able to figure it out.