I think it is obvious right now that western civilization and Islam cannot peacefully co=exist.
Aside from the specific confrontations in Iraq and Afghanistan instigated by western civilization, I doubt we’ll see any more pitched battles. Americans are growing weary with failure to accomplish victory. They will leave Iraq and Afghanistan defeated.
Assuming your goal is a peacefull world there is a saying, “If you can’t beat them join them”. For example, we could start by proclaiming laws protecting Islamic sensibilities and prosecuting those who insult Islam. We could also stop supporting Israel and get the troops out of Islamic countries.
Iran is not stupid.
What our western civilization has experienced over the past 5 years is what we will be faced with as long as there is an abundance of oil in the middle east.
To be clear, a majority of Muslims are peaceful. But the extemists are operating under the umbrella of a powerfully large religion, which is easy to insult. The extremists can take refuge and recruit under that umbrella because it must be difficult to side with infidels against extremist Muslims who claim they are fighting for Allah. Democracy is no match against a powerful religion. Manny American dopers know that. They are constantly keeping an eye on their own in house politically active fundies.
There’s the rub. Why should we? Islamic sensibilities are no more important than anyone else’s. They should get zero special treatment from any country. Either accept the laws of their adopted country or leave. Freedom of speech means I can say anything about Islam I want, without fear of being silenced by religious nut-jobs. Threaten me? Then you are the one prosecuted and jailed. The death threats just prove to me that until Islam moves out of the 13th Century and starts becoming tolerant, it will never be able to peacefully co-exist in Western Society. Yes, there are millions of peaceful, tolerant Muslims in the West, but I’m not hearing any of them condemning the threats. Where are the marches in protest of radicals who issue fatwahs against authors? All we hear is silence.
Get troops out of Islamic countries? Probably, but not because it annoys Muslims. Stop supporting Israel? Not bloody likely, and if Islamic nations think that’s a problem, tough.
silenus There’s the rub. Do you want peace or do you want your brand of justice? Islamic countries have been relatively peaceful historically where we haven’t interfered. They thrive on strong governments which support Islamic principles. Christians in those countries have nothing to fear as long as they respect Islam. Even Saddam’s foreign minister was a Christian.
Justice appears to be a bigger deal than peace in the world. We can all find common ground on the desire for peace . Unfortunately Islamic justice bears little resemblence to western justice and if we aren’t prepared to accomadate them, why should they accomadate us ?
On the edge of what? What’s going to happen in France according to you? What’s happening now that it’s terrifying you?
I just came back from the muslim-owned bakery and the muslim-owned grocery. Both said me hello with a smile and both accepted to sell me their stuff. There were plenty of arab-looking, presumably muslims people in the street. Nobody assaulted me, nobody spat on me, nobody was busy burning down the nearby synagogue, or the newspaper stand selling pornography, nobody shouted “Allah Akbar”.
Before coming back, I also had a drink at the cafe right besides my place who’s owned by, you guessed it, a muslim (my newspaper I got from a chinese man, for a change). Though he would most probably have agreed to serve me beer, I don’t like it, so I had a coffee instead. He didn’t throw it at my face. Instead of talking about the depravity of the western world, he talked about his visitation rights, because his 4 y.o. was present. Said 4 y.o. , named Belkassem, hence presumably rather muslim, must have been poorly educated because instead of mentioning his future as a djihadist, he raved about penguins. I also briefly saw his muslim girlfriend, who, who would have guessed it, was not veiled and even talked to me, a male, a stranger and an infidel.
So, I’ve seen a sample of muslims in France today. Like yesterday and the day before. And the previous week. And so on… What’s the problem with muslims and France, again? What are the warning signs of the imminent collapse? I guess it is that french bread is baked by arabs…
Regarding muslims, you’re completely wrong. I wish I could find a link to it, but a month ago or so, a poll made in various european countries by an american organization (or newspaper?? I can’t remember) showed that french muslims had (amongst other similar things) the highest rate of identification with the country they lived in of all polled countries. If I’m not mistakn, the worst answers were to be found, precisely, in the UK.
I found it on this page
Though this atcle is speciically an anlysis of the result concerning France by comparison with other countries, Im sure that if someone is interested, he’ll eaily find other articles more specifically discussing other countries.
Some abstracts from the article :
So, you couldn’t be more wrong about french muslims, especially when stating that the UK, of all countries, would be somehow more able to handle the “issue”.
For the mods : I hope the quotes weren’t too extensive, but the article is quite long.
l should have bolded too the part about french muslims “[reporting] that they have had a bad experience attributable to their race, ethnicity or religion”.
As an exercice for the reader : do you guess from what kind of public statements and what kind of perceptions these “bad experiences” arise?
It hasn’t been carved away from France (or more exactly, it wasn’t french teritory before the 1789 revolution and the following conquests, and had not been since the middle ages). Wallony was part of the duchy of Flanders, then of the Spanish low countries, etc…
I can’t decide if you are serious or not. If you are, that’s just sad. Is our culture so weak that we would give up a cherished right like freedom of speech in the face of a few threats of violence?
Frankly, the notion that we would solve this by passing laws that enable religious police to prosecute people for ‘insulting Islam’ gives me the willies. Over my dead body.
And stopping support for Israel means abandoning our allies to religious fanatics because we don’t have the stomach to stand with them as they defend their own western, enlightened values. This also gives me the willies.
That’s a nice sound bite, but is it true? How much oil revenue did the Taliban have? Bin Laden’s money comes from construction. I assume you mean that if there’s no oil in the middle east we can leave, and once we leave they’ll be happy. Frankly, that’s nonsense. Pandora’s box is now open. The problem is that the world is now too small. Satellite communications and the Internet have put us all in each other’s neighborhoods. Muslims are being exposed to western culture in a myriad of ways, and the radicals and fundamentalists among them don’t like it.
If anything, having the middle east run out of oil could make things worse, because it will economically depress the region, cause more internal stress and perhaps further radicalizing the population.
This is ridiculous. Democracy has coexisted with religious fundamentalism for hundreds of years. Christians like democracy. They may want to tinker with it on the fringes, but very, very few modern Christians want to live in a theocracy.
This isn’t ‘religion against Democracy’, or even ‘fundamentalism against democracy’. It’s a specific religion which, when taken to extremes, mandates behaviour that is incompatible with free choice. I know it’s fashionable to lump all religions into a big basket here so we don’t have to do the politically incorrect thing and single out Islam, but pesky facts get in the way. Christians by and large have not been attacking modernity with bombs and blowing up people by the thousands because they are infidels. Nor are Christians stabbing filmmakers, threatening cartoonists and writers, or rioting in the streets and burning American flags because, say, the ten commandments was removed from a courthouse.
Justice? How about freedom? And frankly, we’ve been fighting and dying to protect our freedom for hundreds of years. It’s always easy to submit to the latest thug with a gun and a plan for your life. Luckily, we’ve been the kind of people that, when freedom itself is on the line, choose to do the hard thing. I hope we still have that spirit within us as a society.
Really? That’s funny, because when I look around the world today, Muslims are involved in all sorts of conflicts. Darfur, for example. Then of course there was the Iran/Iraq war in recent memory, and the conflicts between India and Pakistan, and the Taliban overthrowing the government of Afghanistan, and several Arab/Israeli wars, and recently a rocket attack on Israel from Hezbollah.
Charming. Keep your mouth shut, don’t defend your own religion, be happy you’re a second class citizen, and we won’t kill you.
Wow, what an attempt at moral equivalence. Let’s be clear - the ‘accomodation’ we are looking for is to be left in peace to live our own lives. The ‘accomodation’ they are looking for is that we have to change the way we live or be put to the sword. There is nothing even remotely similar about these two desires.
We’re not talking about ‘justice’. We’re talking about saving our culture - a culture shared by western nations for 900 years. Democracy, freedom of speech, equal rights for men and women, and the ultimate right of the individual to live his or her own life free from coercion. The ‘accomodation’ we’re being asked for is to revert back to a theocratic, authoritarian existence where we are all subjugated to the demands of religion and ruled over by theologians.
No thanks. I’ll gladly trade some peace to prevent that. I’ll fight to the death to keep my daughter from having to wear a burkha or be a second class citizen in the new religious order. I’m saddened that anyone in the west would feel differently.
Do all death threats sent following a co-ed piece prove to you the same thing about the writers’ persuasion and/or religious beliefs?
Because if it’s the case, we’re in for a long list of people with whom we can’t peacefully co-exist, some of whom have been amongst us for quite a long time. Out of my head, and still in France, you could kick out to begin with Jews (there has been a similar issue some months ago, statements critical of Israel’s policy followed by an organized campaign against the equally Jewish signatories and death threats. The story incidentally was published by the same french newspaper, but strangely enough didn’t make its way into GD) and christians (especially since they didn’t stop at threats but firebombed the cinema where the movie they happened to dislike was shown. I remember it quite well since I intended to go to this cinema, it was the last one in Paris that hadn’t caved in). I’m not sure about hindus (in France at least, in India, we would have no trouble finding much more than mere threats) but I’m convinced that we would find some death threats senders amongst them if we searched hard enough.
But since I somehow suspect that it’s only with the muslims that you believe we can’t coexist peacefully, I’m pretty sure these death threats don’t prove to you anything you weren’t already fully convinced of.
You know, that’s a disingenuous argument. Yes, there are always death threats from wackos. You can find lone nutbars of every religion or lack thereof. The difference with radical Islam is that the death threats are acted upon, and that they often come from high-ranking members within the community and are supported by million of people.
This is not a distinction you can just hand-wave away by showing that some nutbar in Idaho once threatened a radio station, or even if some lone nutcase actually acts on a threat and kills somebody. We are talking about a worldwide religious phenomenon in which high ranking clerics issue death threats and the rank-and-file carry them out. Fatwas are issued calling for the death of some westerner for a supposed insult, and thousands demonstrate in the streets in support of it.
The problem is serious enough that it is already having a chilling effect on western culture. Operas are cancelled, newspaper stories pulled, TV networks alter their programming, and God only knows how many creative ideas never even make it to air because some writer or editor or studio head said, “That’s not something I want my head cut off for.”
The scale and scope of this problem is dramatic, and attempts to equate it with the odd extremist wacko in other religions are just pathetic.
I’ll accept your equivalence with Jewish radicals when I start seeing comedians cut Jewish jokes out of their routines for fear of being stabbed on their way home, and when Comedy Central pulls a South Park episiode making fun of Jews for fear of having their offices bombed or their executives hunted down and killed by Jewish radicals egged on by Rabbis in Israel.
Sorry, but ** Silenus ** argument was disingenuous as well. He didn’t speak about the mullah, or refer to 9/11 or anything but stated that the death threats made him think that we couldn’t live in peace with muslims. If it were true, then he would think the same about pretty much everybody else, because death threats are commonplace (*). So, it’s not true.
I’m fully convinced he already thought so much, and he’s merely using here this example in support of his preconceived opinions, as in “look how evil these muslims are. Here’s another proof. Discuss”.
I’m not going to debate seriously about the negative aspects of Islam (and it’s not like I’m a great fan of Islam, or even of religions in general) with someone who is so obviously prejudiced as he is. Actually, I’m not going to discuss the negative aspects of Islam at all, because currently there’s no need to do so, no need to fuel the fire of a hate that many seem to find acceptable to express. There are widely enough people around doing so, including in this stronghold of knowledge that the Straigh Dope purports to be. On the other hand, there’s a real need to fight in the best case the ignorance and stupidity, but often the lies, the prejudices, the rampant racism that is becoming so commonplace regarding muslims and “arabs”.
(*)and acting on them too. I’ve seen here a number of threads using a violent attack or a murder commited by muslims in Europe as an OP, but not even once an OP about violence and murder targetting arabs and muslims, and it’s not like there aren’t any. Do you think it’s just an happenstance ?
I’m just not seeing this widespread hatred and and ‘racism’ against Arabs and Muslims that you seem to be seeing. In fact, every time I see the issue discussed I see people being very careful to single out ‘radical Islam’ or ‘Islamism’ as being a very different thing than mainstream Muslim belief. But it sure is handy to toss around the racism card against your opponents.
And just how much violence and murder is there targeted against Muslims? How does it compare to the violence and murder coming from the other side? Why must you always go for some moral equivalence?
Here’s an analogy that fits what you’re trying to say:
“We need to crack down on mob violence. We need a special task force because the mob is getting out of control and killing people!”
“Oh yeah? Well, I read an article the other day about a grandma who killed someone in Des Moines! You gonna set up a special task force to crack down on grandmothers?”
One side is organized, widespread, violent, and promises more violence. They number in the millions. The other side has the occasional whacko, crackpot, or disturbed loner.
You can draw an equivalence between Islamic violence and violence targeting Muslims when you can point to a large, organized group of people taking orders from religious leaders to hunt down and kill any Muslim who steps out of line. In the meantime, your claims of widespread racism and violence against Muslims are just so much hot air. Yes, there have been isolated cases of enraged people going after individual muslims. A very, very small number, especially since a large bloc of Muslims has pretty much declared open war on us.
That the amount of violence against Muslims is as small as it is, is a testament to the essential tolerance and goodness of our society, yet you seem to want to paint us as something much darker.
Just out of curiosity, are you a Frenchman or an American ex-patriate?
I seem have developed a sense over the years that Frenchman are very sensitive to the preservation of their language and culture particularly wrt to American cultural influence. It would seem to me that the French would be wary of Islamic influence as well as I presume that there are a lot more Muslims in France than Americans.
I understand your post, because as a Canadian I couldn’t quite understand the negativity, indeed hatred for Fundies displayed on this message board when I first joined. Every now and then a fundie newbie appears and before too long he/she is drummed out. We have Fundies here in Canada too and I have had many pleasant experiences with them. Since then I’ve learned that many Americans fear their growing political power to change their culture. I think they are over reacting but I understand these dopers now.
It is not individuals that are to be feared. It is the movement. Most Americans were treated quite hospitably in Germany prior to 1939.
Darfur is the only one of those examples in which violence occurred outside the context of Western/European conflicts.
Iran/Iraq was an attempt to “renegotiate” European imposed borders following the disruption of Iran by U.S. interference in their self-government. (It was certainly an opportunistic land grab by Hussein, but the antecedents included a lot of Western interference.)
India and Pakistan became separate nations and then went to war on several occasions as a hangover from the British occupation of the subcontinent and artificial adminstrative lines. This is not to say that the subcontinent would be a model of peace had Great Britain never wandered in, but then Europe has only been peaceful for the last sixty years–a pretty short period in world history.
The Taliban took over Afghanistan as one ethinic group asserting dominance over other ethnic groups after receiving arms and training from the U.S. in a proxy war against the U.S.S.R. that was continuing the “Great Game” of 19th century European hegemony over that region.
Israel was established and supported by the United Nations which was, pretty much, a European/North American playground during the first two Arab-Israeli wars and had not yet undergone any third world dominance by the time of the third Arab-Israeli War. (And a certain amount of Arab rhetoric is little more than a distraction used by the winners among the groups that got the power after Europe divvied up the Turkish Empire without regard to ethnic boundaires in the early 20th century.) Again, there is ample Arab hatred to fuel the situation, but a claim that the conflicts do not have roots in Western interference is simply to ignore history.
I am very serious, but I am not advocating surrender. What I am suggesting is that there just is no prospect for peace in the future with Islam.
I would suggest that 99.99 % of us westerners would agree with you. to the death as you say. I would also suggest that no Muslim would turn in a killer of a Muslim apostate or a killer of someone who insulted the prophet. Nor would a Muslim hesitate to vote for the banning of Islamic insults.
Once again I’m not advocating that position, but our world would be a lot more peaceful if the Americans would stop supporting them.
Oh please. You’ve demonstrated an excellent grasp of how economies work in the past. What fueled all those construction projects on the Arabian peninsula? Dates? And what about those immediate disbursements of units of 12,000 USD cash that Hezbollah doled in the immediate aftermath of the war in Lebanon?
It will help
On that point I completely agree. Furthermore modern communications will magnify every perceived insult of Islamic values.
That might be true but without money the Islamists will have less ability to project their hatred on the world at large.
Its a matter of degree and where you are coming from. If you are pro choice, homosexual or an atheist American you might think differently.
I can’t disagree with you. The point I wanted to bring across is that the root of the problem with Islam isn’t individual Muslims, it is the religion Islam which provides the media that cultures violence around the world. Dopers have no fear of individual Fundies, but they do fear (although to a much lesser degree) Fundamentalism.
Well I would agree to a point. But if doing the hard thing which America is doing in Iraq and Afghanistan is futile, we are only magnifying the injury to ourselves.
There is no majic bullet here, but my case is for pulling the troops out, and halting all further Islamic immigration and visitation(especially clerics). Nobody dies. Everyone wins.
Where we haven’t interfered I said. All these regions were under British control at one time. The point is definitely arguable so I really don’t wish to debate it.
That is how a Christian can live in peace in an Islamic country. It works. Lets make sure there is no chance that our great grandchildren in Canada are faced with this choice.
To summarize, I believe we can’t fight Islamic extremism so we shouldn’t try. I believe most Muslims are peace loving, but extremism is entrenched in Islam and growing. Thus we need to isolate ourselves from further foreign Muslim influence.
The survival of Amish culture is a good example.
Yes, sure. The OP is about the western civilization being on the verge of collapse due to hateful immigrants (note : immigrants, not muslims) stuck in the 7th century and threatening our “heritage”. The ennemy is at the gates. I know quite well this kind of discourse. It’s the discourse spread by the european extreme-right parties.
Fortunately, there aren’t that many murders motivated by racism. Only one from time to time. A random Belgian immigrant is killed in the street, a building housing german immigrants is burnt down, a frenchman is thrown in the Seine river, that sort of things. But how many religiously motivated murders are taking place? Theo van Gogh in Netherlands? Even fewer. But you can count on some of our distinguished european members (the ones worried about our “heritage”) to write an OP every time such a thing happens anywhere in Europe.
As for racially motivated violence : it’s widespread. Common. Uglily ordinary. Way, way more common than the other way around. There’s even a word in french for “let’s go and beat the crap out of arabs” : ratonades. Not that it’s only a french phenomenon. Neo-nazis in eastern Germany have made it a form of art, I’m told.
And I’m not even talking about discrimination (employment, housing, clubs, whatever…). This is essentially a given, a fact of life for your average muslim immigrant.
I will until idiotic and ignorant statements against muslims and arabs won’t be tolerated anymore than they are for other minorities.
For your analogy to hold, acts of violence commited by grandmothers would have to be actually widespread. I don’t have to search high and low for an isolated instance of racially motivated violence against arabs (turks, whatever…) to contrast with the last “see how hateful these immigrants are” OP. Its a pervasive issue.
Nope. You’re confusing two issues. On one hand things like terrorism networks, and on the other hand the ocasional whacko or crackpot who send a death threat or murder a dutch filmaker, the later being the topic of the OP and having perfect equivalents amongst Jews, christians, etc… Note that none of these issues is particularily relevant when talking about the ordinary muslim immigrant. The ordinary muslim immigrant don’t belong to Al Qaida and don’t send death threats. He’s too busy baking my bread.
And on “the other side” we’re not talking about the occasional whacko. We’re talking about the extreme-right gaining ground in every election in France, in Belgium, in Netherlands, in Denmark, in Germany, in Austria, etc… on the basis of their anti-immigrant, “arabs are going to destroy our civilization” stance. We’re are talking about widespread ordinary racism and discrimination, we’re are talking about commonplace racially motivated violence.
The amount isn’t small. I googled for some recent french figures, but for some reason, the first hit were old (1992) german official figures : 9 murders, 195 arsons during this year. At least it shows that it’s not merely a recent phenomenon.
Next hit : 201 “acts of racist violence” in french public schools in two months. Note that this would include violence against blacks too, there’s no seperate figure. But you can assume that the majority is against “arabs” (antisemite attacks are counted separately).
Third one : in 2005, in France, 18 arsons and 4 bombings targeted buildings housing north-african immigrants.
What makes you think that violence against muslims is so rare in Europe? How comes you’re aware about violence commited by muslims but not about violence targeting muslims? Could it be because the former is so widely discussed and reported, in particular here, and the latter is not? Could it be because the statements of the european extreme-right are sneakily making their way to north-america and somehow are taken there at face value, as an objective view of the situation in Europe re. muslims? You should be warry of that, because it’s what appears to be happening to me.