Rioting in Sweden!

Great Debates
121

Um, this isn’t true. There are a lot of “fundamentalist” Muslims acclimated into various Western societies: they keep to themselves and hold to their conservative cultural and religious traditions, but they accept the legal structure and authority of the Western secular state, just as most “fundamentalist” Jews and Christians in such societies do.

I think what you mean is that there is no consistent acclimation of fundamentalist Muslims into Western society, in that many fundamentalist Muslims are a lot more hostile to and intolerant of their secular states than all but the tiniest minority of extreme fundamentalist Jews or Christians are.

122

If a group is hostile toward an adoptive country then you can’t say they’ve acclimated to that society. I don’t see the distinction you’re trying to make. There is obvious and consistent violence coming from fundamentalist Muslims in Western societies. There is no logical reason for Muslims in Sweden to fall behind the economic curve from generation to generation.

123

Pent-up frustration around being on the short end of the socio economic stick.

The Swedes have not been able to get immigrant groups from certain backgrounds and source populations on par with the rest of their population. Contrary to other comments above, they have extended a good deal more than flowery words. Sweden has been pretty diligent about extending their social welfare system/educational opportunity to all of their population; immigrant or not.

If you believe that all groups and cultures are more or less innately equally enabled, you are likely to find some local reason these groups do poorly and remain at the bottom of the socioeconomic scale. This gives some hope that there may come a point of approximate equality of success.

If you believe that source populations and cultures are innately different in their average ability or potential to create similarly-successful societies, there isn’t much reason to believe that inequality for these groups in Sweden will be ameliorated any time soon.

I do not think Sweden is big on self-identification into sub-populations, so non-anecdotal data is more difficult to find. But it becomes a nice study of whether or not official governmental social welfare policies are effective in non-homogeneous states.

124

The distinction between “some” and “all”.

Clearly, there are indeed many fundamentalist Muslims in Sweden and other Western societies that have remained (or become) openly hostile to the mainstream culture and can’t be said to have acclimated to it. But there are many other fundamentalist Muslims who have acclimated to it.

(Unless, of course, you’re defining “fundamentalist Muslim” to mean specifically “Muslim who is hostile to mainstream culture of adoptive country and refuses to accept its laws and exist peacefully within it.” In which case what you’ve got is a no-true-Scotsman problem, especially since you’re evidently willing to define “fundamentalist Christian” or “fundamentalist Jew” more loosely.)

Yup, but not from all fundamentalist Muslims in Western societies. Unless, as I said, you’re starting from the assumption that “fundamentalist Muslim” = “violent Muslim”.

Well, if we’re now talking about all Muslims in Sweden and not just the “fundamentalist” ones (however defined), that’s a different kettle of fish. In any case, there are plenty of logical possible reasons for Muslims in Sweden to “fall behind the economic curve” for the approximately two generations that Muslims have had a significant demographic presence there, including:

  1. Continuing arrival of large numbers of Muslim refugees. Refugees are typically poor, and as I noted in a previous post, Sweden is absorbing large numbers of them, sizable even relative to the entire current Swedish Muslim population. The constant influx of new and poor immigrants lowers the average economic status of all Muslims in Sweden.

  2. Continuing employment discrimination. It’s not in dispute that Muslim applicants are often discriminated against compared to similarly qualified non-Muslim Swedish applicants, and this contributes to sustained disproportionately high unemployment rates among Swedish Muslims, which depresses their economic status.

  3. Continuing failure to assimilate. Generous welfare-state policies and minimal pressure to learn Swedish, find employment, etc., mean that a number of Muslim immigrants in Sweden are making little effort to integrate into the Swedish economy and become employable.

  4. Recession. Over the past few years, everybody’s taken an economic hit, and the more disadvantaged part of the population generally suffers worst.

125

Well, if you believe that the problem is innate racial differences between Muslim immigrants and ethnic Scandinavians in Sweden, you have to explain how it happens that a large percentage of Sweden’s underachieving Muslims are Bosnian and Albanian: i.e., as white as Czechs or Ukrainians or other southeastern Europeans, who are generally considered by race-differentialists to be as racially fit as whites in general.

There’s also the issue of why Muslim refugees from Iran and Iraq, who make up the largest group of Muslims in Sweden, would be presumed racially less fit for economic success. Iran’s not one of the developed nations by standard economic yardsticks, but it has a higher per-capita GDP than China, which is typically regarded by race-differentialists as a very racially-fit country. Moreover, Iranians and Iraqis are ethnically pretty similar.

126

I don’t know what a “race differentialist” is, but I personally (as you know) am certainly both a “population” differentialist (populations vary by average gene frequency for all sorts of genes driving skillsets and behaviours along with physical phenotypic differences) and a “culture” differentialist (cultures vary by average likely result for building a decent place to succeed and thrive).

In that vein, I am not shocked that those from either Islamic cultures or genetically sub-saharan african populations have trouble being successful in a relatively homogeneous European nation like Sweden. This lack of success fits a general pattern that is not typically reversed. It’s pretty much the same story: Those two categories have shitty homelands and do shittily upon emigration anywhere.

Your mileage varies, I know, in how neatly one can encapsulate the problem by blaming crappy genes and crappy religions. Let us hope you are right and I am wrong. Perhaps tomorrow these immigrant kids will rise right to the top of their scholastic peers and we will find their religion is no barrier at all to integration into society. Perhaps it was just the failure of the Swedes to get it right.

127

“Islamic cultures” is an awfully broad category, encompassing a very wide variety of “homelands”: from Muslim-majority MENA nations to Muslim communities in India to the Muslim-majority South Asian nations of Bangladesh and Pakistan to Bosnia to Turkey to Indonesia, etc.

Would you really say that, for example, Pakistani immigrants in the US or Indonesian immigrants in the Netherlands have done “shittily”? AFAIK both are typically included in “model minority” stereotypes.

Likewise for the sub-Saharan African populations: there’s a lot of variation there both in the stability and success of the home country and in the success of emigrants in different countries. Nigerians in the US, for example, who make up the largest group of African-born immigrants, seem to be doing rather well on average.

128

Excluded middle fallacy. Even if Muslim immigrant kids in Sweden don’t rise right to the top of their scholastic peers tomorrow, you might still be wrong.

129

I was going to reply that this was not a very good objection, since it did not appear to make any serious point.

Of course, then I read further and came across this:

The percentage of “fundamentalist Muslims” who are among the large number of immigrants is minuscule.

If one is discussing an immigrant group, relying on references to outliers is silly. We already demonstrated the fiction that the youth riots in France had anything to do with Islam–and especially not “fundamentalist Islam”–when those riots were occurring several years ago.

I don’t have explicit numbers for Sweden, but looking at other high immigration European nations, we find a number of interesting attitude polls.
One study found that 73% of Muslim immigrants with voting rights had participated in national elections, only a bit lower than the 81% of the general population. Muslim women voted at the same rate as Muslim men. 50% of Muslims were involved in “mixed organizations rather than organizations based on their own ethnicity or religion.”
Muslims in Europe: A Report on 11 EU Cities (New York: Open Society Institute, 2009)
62% of French Muslims claim that democracy is doing well in France, as opposed to only 58% of the general population. In the same poll, Muslims gave a 95% overall favorable rating to France and French institutions.
Sylvain Brouard and Vincent Tiberj, Francais comme les autres? Enquete sur les citoyen d’origine maghrebine, africaine et turque (Presses de Sciences Po, 2005)
Following the headscarf bans in schools, a U.S. State Department survey found that “large majorities of Muslims in France voice confidence in the country’s government, feel at least partly French, and support integrating into French society.”
French Muslims Favor Integration into French Society (Washington, DC: Department of State, Office of Research, Opinion Analysis M-58-05, 2005).
A poll from 2005 found that around 80% of Muslims were “comfortable with people of different religions dating or marrying” while 59% would not object to their daughter marrying a non-Muslim. (This is born out in the fact that 25% of French Muslim women have married non-Muslim men.)
Jonathan Laurence and Justin Vaisse, Integrating Islam: Political and Religious Changes in Contemporary Fance (Brookings Institution Pres, 2006), 43.
60% of French Muslims claim to have French friends and 45% to have Jewish friends.
A separate survey found that French Muslims felt comfortable with other French people at a rate of 85%, but felt comfortable with other Muslims at a rate of only 71% or with others of their immigrant nations at a rate of 77%. When the survey was narrowed to Muslims who self-identified as being Muslim before being French, the 85% figure jumped to 90%. (Among the French general population, this feeling of closeness for French people was only 84%.)
Sylvain Brouard and Vincent Tiberj, Francais comme les autres? Enquete sur les citoyen d’origine maghrebine, africaine et turque (Presses de Sciences Po, 2005)
In 2009, 77% of British Muslims identified “extremely strongly” or “very strongly” with Britain as their homeland, (vs only 50% of Britons in the general population). While lower, the numbers for French and German Muslims were 52% and 40%.
The Gallup Coexist Index 2009: A Global Study of Interfaith Relations, 21 - 24.
Jacob Vigdor created an “assimilation index” that was based, not on attitudes, but on participation. He measured male and female employment, home ownership, and naturalization. Canada and the U.S. demonstrated very high rates of “assimilation” on his scale with rates of 77% and 60%. Most European countries rated much lower–Spain was at 38%, for example. However, when he looked behind his numbers, he did not find that the Muslim immigrants were refusing to buy homes or become naturalized, but that their general poverty and national restrictions on ownership precluded home ownership and high barrier laws prevented naturalization.
Jacob L. Vigdor, Comparing Immigrant Assimilation in North America and Europe (New York: Center for State and Local Leadership, May 2011)

Much has been made of the minority of Muslims who “support violence.” In fact, in the U.S. 7% of Muslims reported that violence against civilian targets is “sometimes justified” while another 1% say it is “often justified.”
Muslim Americans: No Signs of Growth in Alienation or Support for Extremism
Of course, when similar questions were asked of the general American population, 24% said that bomb attacks aimed at civilians are “often or sometimes justified” while another 6% said they were “completely justified.”
John L. Esposito and Dalia Mogahed, Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think New York: Gallup Press, 2008), 95.
In a similar poll in Europe, the question [are] “attacks on civilians morally justified?” received affirmative responses of 1%, 1%, and 3% among the general populations of France, Germany, and Britain, but 2%, 0.5%, and 2% among the Muslim populations of the same countries.
The Gallup Coexist Index 2009: A Global Study of Interfaith Relations, 40 - 41.

The “elephant in the room” is not fanatical Fundamentalist Islam, it is the willingness of people to make bad assumptions about other people without considering evidence–or even in the face of evidence as we saw during the French youth riots. In fact, I would venture that there is no “elephant in the room” in the sense of a large, smelly, messy, potentially dangerous beast about which no one dare speak. Rather, there appears to be a mouse in the room about which all sorts of people are willing to talk at length while they and others leap on chairs to avoid it.

Now, I have not been able to find serious numbers regarding Swedish Muslim immigrants, in particular. However, unless someone has actual data regarding the Swedish immigrants that is in direct conflict with the consistent data already provided regarding France, Britain, Germany, and the U.S., I see no reason to believe that speculation about the Swedish immigrants is anything more than the same fear-based nonsense that has been spread about regarding the maligned immigrants for whom I have shown data (that pretty much exactly parallels the same sort of phobias that were spread regarding the Irish, Italians, Chinese, and other immigrants to the U.S.)

130

The short term issues of jews being driven out of Malmo (note the similar trend in France & [URL=“http://www.jpost.com/Jewish-World/Jewish-News/I-see-no-future-for-Jews-in-the-Netherlands”]Holland ) & and a spike in s8xual assaultsincluding gang rapeswill just be collateral damage. The politicians who allowed this won’t face any consequences.

131

In the face of actual facts, the killer analogy above, and someone on “my side” who is discussing genetic differences of Muslim immigrants I hereby withdraw my previous statements. (I wish there were a “No, I am not being sarcastic” emoticon).

132

And yet we have all these problems. You’re making my point for me. It is the religion at the core of the disenfranchisement.

133

“All these problems”? Piffle.
We are having the same problems that large waves of immigration always have, regardless whether the religion of the immigrants is the same as or different from the country to which they immigrate.

Doug Saunders has spent several years studying the interconnected issues of Islam, Islamist behavior, terrorism, immigration, and related topics. Rather than wandering off on “philosophical” speculation, he tends to look at the factrs and draw conclusions from actual studies.

Here is his current blog entry, fortuitously addressing the issue of terrorism and Muslim immigration. (For readers in subsequent months, the specific article is dated April 25, 2013.)

Excerpts:

And, as I have noted above, we went through many of the same arguments during the period of the French youth riots. At that time we established that the kids doing the rioting were not adherents of Islam, but kids who had fallen away from the faith of their parents and were acting more as rebellious French teens than Muslim rebels. They were not observant Muslims. They were not inspired by the Qur’an. They were simply under-educated, impoverished, and unemployed kids in a country from which they felt alienated, reacting with violence to their situation. (Pretty much like the kids in Sweden appear to be, today.)

So, “Islam” is not really promoting terrorism and “Islam” is not encouraging unemployed kids to riot. Your point is without foundation and appears to be little more than wishful thinking to provide you a boogeyman against whom you can protest.

134

:rolleyes:

135

Not really. Are there examples of jewish or east asian americans rioting, burning out cars & schools, being overrepresented in violent crime and s8xual assault?

Again, there are examples of under-educated, impoverished & unemployed asian & jewish americans living in squalid conditions. However, there’s less evidence of the kind of behaviour seen by rioters in Paris, London or Stockholm. I’m not aware of no-go areas’ or zones de sécurité prioritaires where there are Chinatowns.

In the case of Stockholm & Paris the rioters tend to come from African or Middle Eastern societies. Could that be significant? Anthropologist Peter Frost comments:

136

Folks from any culture who can leave their religion on the back burner are not going to have trouble integrating elsewhere. As one who was born and raised in an Islamic culture and owes a fantastic childhood to Muslims, I think I understand that. The trouble with Islam in broader societies has always been twofold:

  1. Muslim first and all else second, so (as with our more extreme Christian fanatacisms) there is a relative cloistering of immigrants that makes integration into a new culture more problematic.
  2. Extremism is not the rule but it is not rare, and it is worsening, I think. It is not the majority of immigrants from an Islamic culture who create religiously-grounded discord, but neither is it some tiny handful.

WRT Pakistan in particular, I’d expect the average Pak immigrant to come to the US with the purpose of working his ass off, see his kids take full advantage of educational opportunity without needing special programs, and be highly successful either as an entrepeneur or knowledge worker (the latter more likely for the second generation).

The Swedes have spent an awful lot of money and effort on programs extended to their immigrants so it will be interesting to see if, over time, the same population groups (west african source populations, say) have the same trouble succeeding in the same fields (STEM, say) as they do elsewhere. Perhaps it will turn out that the Swedes resolve the argument once and for all, and that these sorts of broad average differences are not based in gene prevalence differences. Since the ability to attain economic parity in a western culture is highly driven by an ability to succeed academically, the second and third generations become nice test cases for whether or not equal academic opportunity produces equal success rates among the various immigrant groups. Although the Swedes don’t keep track by ethnicity, it would be interesting to see the relative success rates of the Somalis versus the Indians, say, over time. I do not think there is a high percentage of west africans in Sweden to serve as a comparison group.

137

Pakistani immigration to Britain has been much more problematic than it has in the US. We get the top tier, Britain gets immigrants much more representative of the Pakistani population. Organized crime, forced prostitution, honor killings, cousin marriages, demands for sharia law, etc.

Nearly all the Muslims in Sweden are Caucasoid, including the Somalis, Iranians, and Iraqis, according to the standard 3 race category system. The problems in Sweden have very little to do with West Africans, or what old school race categorization called “Negroes”. Genetically, Somalis are much closer to the peoples of Egypt, and the Arabian peninsula than they are to West Africans.

138

I have made no claim that every immigrant group has gone through the identical experience, only that it is a common experience for mass immigration. Jewish immigration was never “massive,” being less than half the numbers of several other groups such as the Italians. Similarly, during the original years of immigration, only about 300,000 Chinese immigrated. (The Chinese also never had the problem of young, unemployed workers: the majority of riots involving the Chinese were riots against them for “taking” American jobs.)

For the riots to develop, we need a very large number people from a recognizable group concentrated in ghettos with a large number of unemployed young men. Criminal behavior requires only a large number of unemployed.

The Chinese were never a large enough community for “riot” conditions to develop within them. Chinatowns tend to have been created a long time ago when there were fewer immigrants. They are now an established part of society, not an immigrant experience. On the other hand, in the U.S., where there was a resurgence of Chinese immigration since around 1950, as the numbers swelled in the 1970s, there came an increase in criminal activity, including the formation of gangs. (Without even getting into the matter of the Tong Wars from 1880 to 1910.)
Jewish immigrants to large cities contributed more than enough young men to crime. They tend to get not noticed in historical reviews because, in cities that were swamped with dozens of immigrant groups, they tended to attach themselves to criminal institutions that were already in place. On the other hand, the Monk Eastman gang was every bit as criminal as the Italians and Irish with whom it competed and it was definitely a Jewish gang.

Well, in the sense that the immigrants from those areas would be more visibly distinct than the immigrants from Romania and Bulgaria and Russia, and so would suffer more immediate discrimination when applying for work, I guess you could say that their places of origin would be “significant.” We have seen the same thing happen, repeatedly, in the U.S. where black workers were discriminated against in favor of European immigrants who looked more like their employers.

139

Of course, as several of the polls noted above demonstrated, that is not the case for the majority of immigrants who do not see themselves as “Muslim” before being “French” or British" or whatever. I suspect that it is easier for Muslims in Muslim nations to see themselves first as Muslim, but that those who chose to leave those countries do not bring that attitude with them.

On the other hand, as the British MI5 surveys noted in the Doug Saunders blog to which I linked, the violence has tended to be carried out by politically oriented men, not religious fanatics, and by new converts who have only the most shallow understanding of their new faith.

140

Right, although what kind of crimes were being committed? I’m not sure there was anything approaching the kind of generous welfare state that Sweden is renowned for. So you might expect more property type crimes. But Sweden appears to have experienced a significant rise in s8xual assaults (see links above) coinciding with people coming from cultures with very different attitudes towards women. I don’t think there is any parallel in that respect.

I agree overall comparisons are difficult with the US, but just in terms of your point about unemployment, Walsh cites some interesting studies:

(p33)

In relation to jewish americans, Walsh notes that from 1900 to 1915 when many lived in slums they were 15.9% of overall prosecutions but 25.4% of the population in NY. Even that appears to have been a one generation thing.

In Sweden the disparity is far greater:

There is a breakdown of 1st & 2nd generation rates here (Peter Martens, 1997). Would be interesting to see a follow up.