Not all Muslim-majority nations have enshrined Sharia law, there are secular Muslim states: Albania, Turkey, and others
Not all Western nations are secular in the sense of separation of church and state, which was seen as a very strange novelty when the US did it. Argentina and and Costa Rica are officially Roman Catholic (so is the Vatican, that’s sort of a duh! statement). Peru, Poland, and Spain have constitutional features favoring Catholicism. Greece and Georgia are officially Eastern Orthodox. English is officially Anglican. Denmark, Iceland, Finland, Norway, and Sweden are all officially Lutheran.
In other words, most places aren’t America - and given how American society at large currently views the non-Christian elements of the population (how many atheists elected to Congress? I think there’s one Muslim in Congress) the nation de facto favors Christianity in many aspects of social and political life.
Interesting point. So France has had two 9/11s recently. Germany just had theirs. If a few other European countries have their own 9/11s before long (seems fairly probable IMO at this point) things could get really “interesting”.
The right are patient. Why move when popular discontent isn’t strong enough to seize real power electorally? Let the problem grow and then when there is support from the populace and law enforcement act.
A street battle now would result in potential backlash against the right.
Thankfully nothing we read on this thread or in the media will minimize what happened in Germany last week. There is a natural ebb and flow to these issues; and the flow is now towards a more reactionary policy in Germany on the issue of immigration. No amount of debate(or cultural navelgazing) on here will now change that.
I am as dismayed as anyone by the initial reports of police and press that downplayed the events of New Year’s Eve - but you are doing just the opposite. The last time a group of several thousand men committed rape in Germany was probably during the Thirty Years War, if at all. In Cologne according to latest reports *two *rapes were committed. Estimates are that one, not “several”, thousand men of North African or Middle Eastern origin were present at Cologne central station. I have not read any reports stating that all of them took part in the assaults.
The events as they happened were bad enough. No need to blow them out of proportion.
Yep - in Germany this has worked for the right once before: Wait until you get elected, then act. That was in 1933. Let’s hope people remember what came next.
Know what the difference between death and sexual assault is?
You can recover and have a life after sexual assault.
Sorry, no - that is NOT “Germany’s 9/11”. It’s not the equivalent of November 13 in Paris, or Charlie Hebdo, or the Madrid train bombings on March 11, 2004 or the Bali Bombings, or 7/7 in London.
Yes, it was horrible, especially for the women raped, but no one died. No buildings fell down. The equation of rape with death is just another way that society treats women as disposable (to be fair, generally society is even worse towards men who are raped).
Seriously? They’re comparing it to a war that killed 50 million people? That’s a new form of hyperbole.
Without wanting to going into this extremely controversial discussion in detail: the ethnic makeup of Germany (and other European countries) will change dramatically. The power of the German economy will weaken as the productive part of the population ages while an ever increasing part of the population will be living off and demanding welfare.
Germany today, at the beginning of 2016, is a deeply divided country. About ⅓ agrees with Merkel’s policy of unlimited immigration from the Middle East, North Africa and Afghanistan while the rest is living a nightmare. A considerable number of Germans have lost their faith in government, the state, the judicial system, the “elite”, as it were, and especially the media.
Is there a danger of an imminent coup or collapse: no. But in 20 or 30 years, this part of the world will look very, very different. This development started decades ago, but the attacks in Cologne were surreal.
Eastern Europeans currently consider Germany a lunatic asylum, run by lunatics - and I agree.
This argument borders on being similar to the arguments I criticized upthread as overdosing on political correctness, saying “we westerners are as bad as the Muslims”.
Yes, ALL western nations really are secular, when compared to most Muslim nations. The many countries which are “officially” Catholic or Anglican, or Lutheran, have essentially zero discrimination against other religions. They may fund the Catholic church from tax money, or make all school children sing Anglican Christian hymns once a day…but they are western style democracies. Certainly, their social customs and legal systems do not tolerate murdering women for “family honor”, which is a common atttitude in many Muslim countries.
(Note: this doesnt mean that we need to be as paranoid as donnertwetter is in this thread. The cologne riots are not a 9\11 moment. But they *are[\i] a wake-up call that needs to be addressed, and not swept under the carpet.)
If by sixty or seventy years you mean six or seven centuries, when witches were burned. Sixty years ago, my mother had three kids yet was working full time. She started working still in high school. At the same time her mother worked in a defense plant.
Yes, and I don’t blame them. However then there was at least a reasonable attempt to control who was arriving and find out who they were, now Merkel has thrown the doors wide open. It is at the very least a questionable policy. It would be a strange thing to do for a property-owner never mind a country and one that has had an impact right across Europe.
Because they were already here? Because Western society has enough home-grown problems without importing more?
That would be WWII; 10s of 1000s, if not 100s of 1000s of Allied soldiers raped millions of women as if it was the International Year of Rape.
Not just in Germany either.
the exagerated over-heated and over-dramatic internet hyperbole.
Let me state again, there is only one that supposedly uses the Sharia directly and it is the Saudi arabia. There is the mixed cases like of the Sudan, which in its strange dictatorship has both civil law and the customary law, haphazard as Nisrine Malik has writtne. But the law codes of most countries in fact are based on adaptations of the French code civil with changes in the family code for adaptation to islamic marriage and inheritance. the family law.
for 905+ of the mulsim world only in the areas of the marriage, the divorce and the inheritance is there any implication of islamic custom in law, making it very stupid and absurd when people go on about the islamic law showing they don’t really know much other than what googling through bigotted sites is feeding them.
it is further why I note that I do not think the german can easily tell if somone is an algerian or an italian - the numbers said to be milling about of a certain ethnicity or ethnicities are not something I would trust.
Et voila… so by this we understand you do not see a capacity for other than the europeans origin population to be productive and be anything other than on welfare… interesting
that is false and ridiculous hyperbole. The German economy is looked up to by every e. european I ahve ever known and the german model is excessively admired, I have never once heard a european, eastern or western, make a statement like this.
The objective figures say he is right - actual economic data on work force participation. Whatever people choose to believe from exagerated prejudcied stereotypes.
Indeed it does, but having a fixed term to a contracted marriage gives the Shia many advantages, such as not having to commit to a sale, and allowing two lonely people some mutual happiness without any break-up and bitterness.
The 3-day marriages might suit visitors to lovely Las Vegas.
Oh balls. In Britain over a hundred years, my parents were divorced; my paternal grandparents were divorced; and my paternal great-grandparents separated ( and she moved back to Spain ) — and each time it was the woman’s decision.
And in America divorces were commonly allowed from the mid-19th century, including no-fault divorces, and in some of which states divorce settlements were mandated as crazily generous to women.
Keep in mind that Germany isn’t nearly as big as the U.S. The gymnasium of my old high school (which is less than 1 kilometer away from where I am right now) has been converted into a refugee shelter, the exact number of inhabitants is unknown to the authorities, probably around 150, allegedly mainly Syrians and Iraqis (according to the mayor’s office). Nothing bad has happened as of yet, there is a private security service on site (the security industry, BTW, is booming like no other in Germany). This refugee center/school gymnasium is situated smack in the middle of a residential area, the nearest family homes are across the street, less than 10 meters away.
in certain middle eastern and asian, as it is in certain lower income Christian countries
Broomstick was writing responding to a specific wrong point
Your gross generalization and amalgam are the same error (it is so convenient to talk Western countries and helpfully exclude lower income christian countries but alagmate all the muslims together as if it is all Afghanistan or the Irak or the Saudi arabia).
Excuse me? Supporting a church via tax money is not a secular feature. Forcing all children to sing Anglican hymns whether or not they’re Anglican is forcing a religious practice on all. Neither of those is secular.
Excuse me? How about Cyprus? Greece from ancient times through the 20th Century. The Napoleonic Code used a spouse caught in the act of adultery as a mitigating circumstances in murder - that’s Belgium and France, as well as other countries using the French civil code as a base. Italy from the time of ancient Rome through the modern day. India. Uruguay. Mexico, El Salvador, Columbia, Peru, and Chile until the 1990s. Brazil, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Panama, Argentina, Nicaragua, and Ecuador until the 2000’s. None of those customs and laws excusing murder or mitigating it originated in Islam. They came from the Christian or even pre-Christian west.
Absolutely. There were repugnant crimes and need to be punished. What I object to is the notion is that this is somehow unique to the MENA region - it’s not. Young men abusing women and raping them is a universal problem. (There’s also a segment of old men doing such things as well, but I suspect it’s more a problem with the young.)
Don’t just mention the Allies - EVERY side was doing rape during WWII.
Except that the laws varied from state to state, which is why so many people “moved” to Nevada specifically to get a divorce. Many states through the middle of the 20th Century only allowed divorce for cause, such as adultery.
And some of the “crazy generous” settlements for women were mandated because until the 1970’s it was legal to pay women less for the exact same work as men did in many places, and many professions were entirely barred to women. Women were less able to support themselves.