My sympathies - I find such situations and behaviour as detestable as I’m sure you do. Someone I was friends with had to move away from her family for the same reason.
While in a small minority and unable to live under sharia law - yes (not that it stops the ongoing oppression of women within the communities). But the Dutch filmaker murder shows that even then the intolerance is rife. And the ‘chilling effect’ this has on free-speech in our own societies is strong and ongoing.
And as my previous anecdote shows this intolerance has real personal effects on people living in the UK.
That’s why we should draw a firm line in the sand and refuse to apologise or back down in any way shape or form to religions of any stripe. Give an inch etc.
Originally posted by ** Illuminatiprimus**
This - more or less - is exactly what I think.
I don’t think we can do much about the fate of women, homosexuals and other victims of that barbaric religion when that religion is being practised in an Islamic country.
Yes, we can send letters to Amnesty now and then, when another 16 year old girl is being hanged because she was raped, or when two men who love each-other get the same treatment.
Women being buried to their waist in the ground and then being slowly stoned to death?
Tough, right? :rolleyes:
But I DO object when MY freedom of speech - in MY country - [which isn’t an Islamic one - yet] is in danger because some muslims prefer to live in the Netherlands instead of in an Islamic country and feel they need to change MY religion.
And since most governments of NON-Islamic countries do everything in their power to keep the muslims happy, I do think the chance of getting Islamicised is bigger than anyone can imagine.
Are these governments somehow controlled by Muslims? Who is to blame at the perceived lack of defence of our values here, Muslims in general or those in power who would rather appease as many people as they can especially when it doesn’t involve taking a stand on an issue? This problem of this is not limited entirely to Islam vs West, but also to funamentalist Christians, extremist political ideologies etc. What about the right to lifers who harrass and attack women going into abortion clinics? Are they not acting to undermine our way of life too? Why are we not seeking to “do something” about them?
The issue here is not really what Muslims want or believe, but a lack of clarity over what our own belief system and centrist political ideology allows us to do when it comes to disagreement in belief. But this is an inherent problem of freedom of thought and democracy, and the rule of law in such societies. The majority should not stamp out or curtail the minority, and that applies to minorities that (if in charge) would do just that. It is action that matters, not thought or belief. It is hardly fair to blame other muslim countries for erroding our way of life when our own governments are the ones who make the changes.
That was precisely the experience of a woman I knew who married a Turkish Muslim. And the ‘behaviour in relation to power’ also mirrors the life of Mohammed. When weak in Mecca, all nice and fine. When in power in Medina - it was clobbering time.
That’s the point I’m trying to make. Free speech is the line in the sand that protects our wider freedom from fundamentalists of all stripes. But it’s the Muslim ones that are threatening my freedom in the UK. Aided and abetted by Blair in his futile attempts to win back Muslim votes after the Iraq attack.
Before you go smacking your head over my ignorance, better check out your own. Due to falling birth rates and large numbers of Muslim immigrants who have high birth rates, a number of European countries face the prospect of having a sizable minority of Muslims, if not a majority, in the next few years. These are democracies, and so what do yo think will happen politically in these countries? The influence of Muslims will grow, of course. If trends arent’ reversed, they will in fact “take over” politically and culturally, and given their attitudes, “ideological dark age” isn’t a bad way to describe the result. It’s not a likely in the US, but yeah, Europes got problems. :smack: yourself, dude.
Again, as much as it would be nice for me to live in a world where everyone thought as I did, it wouldn’t be very nice for others to have my systems of belief and thought imposed on them.
If in your own post you agree that Muslims can live in western societies and get on respecting the law and others easily enough, why does it bother you that in other countries (i.e. not the ones we live in) they behave differently?
[/QUOTE]
Actually, my biggest question regarding the cartoon riots and burning embassies and such was ‘Where were the marines?’ (or marine equivalents). Do none of these countries have military guards to protect their embassies?
I’m not all that reactionary normally (though free speech issues do it for me) but I’m pretty certain a couple of belts of .50 cal would have produced a cooling off effect fairly quickly.
It’s not quite as simple as this ‘dude’. You’re making unsubstaniated assumptions:
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That the system of immigration and assimilation will continue in the future exactly as it has done in the past. Do you really believe that if Europe thought its stablility was being undermined by hordes of rabbit-breeding jihadists who want nothing but to murder us in our beds that we wouldn’t do something to prevent immigration and asylum? Do you think we value our own safety that little?
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That, indeed, every muslim (and again the term applies to nearly a billion people so it’s hard to categorise accurately here) who moves to “the west” does so with the intention of turning it into the country they’ve left. I know lots of muslims who, glad that they are of the freedom to follow their beliefs and customs within the law, have no wish to live in an Islamic state (here or elsewhere).
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That the birthrates of the Islamic world will continue at the pace they are now and that the western birthrate will similarly stay in decline - can I borrow that crystal ball of yours as it’s obviously very accurate for you to be so sure of something as unpredictable as long term demographic trends.
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That the “Islamic world” wants to see “the west” destroyed or indeed turned Islamic. Again, all 1 billion muslims pray ceaselessly for the day when Islam covers the world and every night stroke their AK47s ready to take out a few infidels when the time is right? Does every person in “the west” (again, nearly all 1 billion of us) care so passionately about the securalisation and democratisation of the east? Or do we just think it would be nice if it happened and leave it at that? Why are you so sure that those living in eastern countries are so totally different from us? Have you been to any of these countries? Or do you think that as a westerner you wouldn’t make it out of the airport alive once you landed?
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‘Sizable muslim minority/majority in the next few years’ - what, 2 years? Five? Ten? When is this extinction level event of muslim domination and overthrow of democracy supposed to happen?
In your argument I can hear the same wide-eyed fear expressed by the protestants of England who lived in terror of the prospect of popery coming back to England and children being thrown out of windows and people masacred by the thousand and everyone forced to pray at knife point to the pope. It didn’t happen - it couldn’t EVER have happened when the vast majority of the population was protestant and even those who were catholics didn’t necessarily want the country to become catholic again. The whole system of the country was entrenched with protestantism, even a frothing-at-the-mouth catholic monarch wouldn’t have had much chance of changing anything when the entire system of government, law, military and the general populace was dead set against it.
This danger you’re so clear exists and that I can’t see because I’m too european and wooly liberal I think is little more than unconscious xenophobia. You forget that europeans know what it is to be invaded by neighbours and have foreign systems of belief pushed onto them in a way that America never has done. We know what invasion feels like, and this isn’t it. In history no society has ever been overthrown and replaced by a totally alien belief system which endured without that society already having been in decline or stagnation. The west is neither stagnant nor is it declining.
I’ll sleep soundly in my bed tonight knowing that I’ll wake up tomorrow without a gun to my head forcing me to the mosque for 5am prayers, I hope you will too.
I wondered that too - you think they’d at least have a working smoke alarm between them 
No. Denmark has no guards at her embassies, but rely on the protection of the host country. I think that is so with the embassies of most of the worlds’ countries.
We might come to that yet.
Or provoked a full-out military response from the “host” country.
? What about Turkey and Indonesia, where, for example, homosexuality is legal? Or are you using “Islamic country” to mean specifically one with a theocratic Islamist government, not just one composed mostly of Muslims?
I don’t get how it is INHERENTLY more so than Christianity. Traditional Christian and traditional Muslim ideology seem to have about equally strict views inherently concerning the necessity for everyone to acknowledge their truth, how all unbelievers are going to burn in hell, and so forth.
The crucial difference seems to be, as noted by others, that Christianity now dominates mostly in secular, at least nominally democratic societies (though there’s a wide spectrum between, say, Christian Western Europe and parts of Christian South America). This has greatly modified the “at the name of Jesus every knee must bend and every tongue must swear, that Jesus Christ is Lord” absolutism of traditional Christian ideology.
No, the crucial difference is that the Bible never commands us to kill non-believers. I do not remember who said this but, “Fundementalist Christians will tell you you are going to hell if you don’t believe what they believe, fundemetalist Muslims are trying to send you there.” That is not verbatim but it gets the point across. That is the crucial difference, the Koran tells Muslims to kill those who don’t convert.
http://www.answering-islam.org/Quran/Themes/jihad_passages.html
Excerpt K 4:074-077
Set 15, Count 38-41 [4.74] Therefore let those fight in the way of Allah, who sell this world’s life for the hereafter; and whoever fights in the way of Allah, then be he slain or be he victorious, We shall grant him a mighty reward. [4.75] …fight in the way of Allah… [4.76] Those who believe fight in the way of Allah, and those who disbelieve fight in the way of the Satan. Fight therefore against the friends of the Satan… [4.77] …when fighting is prescribed for them…Our Lord! why hast Thou ordained fighting for us?..
Excerpt K 8:012
Set 28, Count 62 …make firm those who believe. I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them.
Excerpt K 9:005
Set 33, Count 91 …slay the idolaters wherever you find them…take them captives and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush…
http://www.teleologic.com/archives/2005/07/some_quotes_fro_1.html
Sura 4-89: “They but wish that ye should reject Faith, as they do, and thus be on the same footing (as they): but take not friends from their ranks until they flee in the way of Allah (from what is forbidden). But if they turn renegades, seize them and slay them wherever ye find them; and (in any case) take no friends or helpers from their ranks…”
Sura 9-29: “Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.”
Sura 22-9: “As for the unbelievers for them garments of fire shall be cut and there shall be poured over their heads boiling water whereby whatever is in their bowels and skins shall be dissolved and they will be punished with hooked iron rods.”
Sura 47-4: “When you meet the unbelievers, strike off their heads; then when you have made wide slaughter among them, carefully tie up the remaining captives”
That is the crucial difference. Christians converted by the sword throughout history, not because the Bible commanded them to, but because of powerful men wanting even more power. Muslims converted by the sword due to the teachings in their holy book, the Koran.
Ever stop to think that Europe wouldn’t be having all these problems if they hadn’t come up with Colonialism in the first place? The Europeans went over there and thought they could do a better job of things. Now we’re shocked- shocked- when the Middle East wants to give it a shot.
So the solution is to build a time machine?
Yeah, because until the Crusades and colonialism there was never a problem with Muslims encroaching into Europe or other parts of the world. China certainly never spread Buddhism by the sword or kept their neighbors as subordinate states or anything. There are a lot of factors going into this so I don’t think blaming European colonialism is going to provide us with a complete picture.
Marc
But - again- the fact that Islamic societies were peaceful, stable and more in tune with the values of today in the past is being ignored. Islam of now is not Islam as it has always been. I am not denying it is more extremist now, or that the states that Islamic states that are theocratically governed don’t match our idea of an ideal society. There are probably muslims from the Abbassid Empire and Emirate of Cordoba who would agree with you (if I could borrow that time machine to get them here). But considering not that long ago (less than a century) we were doing a lot of the things that we are criticising muslims for I don’t see how that constitutes enough moral high ground for us to denounce them.
1950s America:
[ul]
[li] suppression of minorities that disagreed with Christianity - check[/li][li] harrassment, ostracisationand and killing of homosexuals - check[/li][li]Lack of equality for women - check (if a woman was raped, it was also her fault then too)[/li][li]Aggressive political ideology that held itself above everyone else and thought that the world should be forced to live as they do if they had the means to make it happen - check[/li][li]Racial discrimination - check[/li][/ul]
Effectively a society in which you conformed (or saw to conform in) or you were destroyed. This is fifty years ago. Forget what the Koran says, there are lots of muslims who don’t unthinkingly act out every word in it (as someone says above, Turkey is a good example of this) just as we don’t act out every word of the bible by stoning adulterers when we see them in the street as the bible says we should. I’m friends with a muslim woman and she and her husband manage (I’m not sure how) to not kill be for being a filthy homosexual every time I meet them, or from cutting off my fingers or head for being an unbeliever.
Once more - the issue here is us trying to claim that our value system is superior to that of another culture and insist they conform to ours rather than the other way around. Fine, do that, but don’t be upset when someone in another culture (i.e. a hardline islamic one) does the same thing.
If you seriously believe that the level of intolerance in 1950’s America was anywhere near what we’re seeing in Islamist countries, you’ve got a serious problem with perspective.
Women were not caned in the public square in 1950’s America for being ‘disrespectful’.
Women were not murdered in large numbers for marrying outside their faith (‘honor killings’ take place by the hundreds per year in some Muslim countries).
If homosexuals were killed, it was the act of a deranged individual, not a systematic pogram endorsed by the state.
People who left the Christian faith were not hunted down and murdered for apostasy.
The state did not have laws against blasphemy.
People who mocked Christianity in 1950’s America were not tied down and stoned in the public square.
1950’s America did not convert sports stadiums into public execution arenas for women who refused to submit to their husbands.
1950’s America did not have religious police that would force young girls back into burning buildings because they ran from the fire without suitable body coverings.
1950’s era fundamentalist Christians did not issue death warrants on people who ‘insulted’ the faith.
Really. Let’s get some perspective here. Drawing a cheap parallel between what’s going on in the Muslim world and Christian fundamentalism is just a cheap way of claiming a moral equivalence so that you don’t have to face an ugly reality.
Peaceful and stable? Not hardly. Here is the Wiki entry on the history of Islam. Islam has been involved in warfare from its very beginning, with Moe leading his followers in Medina in battle against Mecca.