What Will Europe Really Do?

Great Debates
61

Actually, I think having more moderate governments does change something—it increases the freedom that moderate individuals have to speak their minds and to do as they please. For example, women in southern Iraq generally used not to go around veiled. Now, under a more theocratically repressive government (not that Saddam’s government wasn’t very repressive politically, but it wasn’t religiously repressive), they’re being strongly pressured to do so.

Have the Iraqi women in general suddenly become more conservative and anti-secularist? No, probably not. But they have less room to express any moderate or secularist preferences. So yeah, modifying a government really can modify the social and political climate.

62

And I think you would find people in Catholic Latin America or Hindu India or Animist parts of Africa that would say the same things.

Having different laws according to religion is by no means uncommon. Our system of justice is just one of many. In many areas it is the only way the government could retain power (otherwise religions would form their own police, a la Saudi Arabia) and gain the ability to manage their diverse populations. There are plenty of things that people can’t do in America because of religion (like polygymy) but since their is no sizable native population that practices that it’s not a big deal

In any case, i think Islam has a lot of problems. But religions can change drastically (compare Christianity today to Christianity to any other century…or a hellfire American fundamentalist to a, say, Italian Catholic) and Islam isn’t going away any time soon. I think we should examine the causes of Islam’s relationship with the west (and no, that doesn’t need a time machine. Europe’s colonial adventures in the Middle East were going strong well in to the last century. This is not a permanent situation but part of an ongoing process) and emphasize the values of freedom through example.

63

In the modern world, it is quite uncommon. There are no ‘Catholic Courts’ in Nicaragua. I had to google for India, but it doesn’t appear that there is a ‘Hindu’ legal system over there.

The only example that comes to mind are Islamic courts, enforcing Islamic law.

64

One of the reasons for the prevalence of Islamic courts in countries is because Islam has a very well developed system of legal thought and jurisprudence. A lot of it isn’t compatible with western/English common law practice but it works as a system of law in its own right. Few other religions have the same development of legal thought which is why you’re not likely to find a hindu court - there just isn’t the legal basis or framework to have one.

Whether those courts should still be considered relevant or not is a matter for the government of that country to decide. I think it would be difficult for a country like Britain to maintain dual systems of law and still be clear on what constitutes justice in any given situtation (it would literally be one law for me, another for you).

65

The end times are upon us!!! Repent!!! :smiley:

66

This would be the optimal solution, and is probably what the Dutch should be working toward. However, it’s by no means a lock that this will happen. The phenomenon of social integration is well understood and has occurred successfully and repeatedly in America. So is the phenomenon of ghettoization. And given that the Islamic immigrants are not just socially, but visibly “different” from the Dutch, with their own value system which they tend to be loathe to give up, and the imams will see any social integration as greatly redung their power, it’s very possible that liittle or no integration will occur. In which case, big problems down the road for the Dutch.

I think it would be extremely naive and foolish of the Dutch to asume that the Muslim immigrants will just naturally and easily integrate into Dutch society over the course of time. Be nice if that happens. Be very nasty if it doesn’t.

67

Well, not since we crushed the Mormons. And wiped out the Indians (I thnk some Indian tribes had “non-traditional” marriage arrangements).

By this do you mean, “Let’s wallow in liberal guilt over all the bad things we’vd done in the past” or “Let’s try to learn from past mistakes.” I’ll grant you that we’ve fucked up royally in the Middel East in the past. The CIA operation overthrowing Iran’s democracy and putting up a puppet Shah of Iran back in the 50s was REALLY REALLY REALLY stupid, for example. We’re STiLL paying for that one. The British creation of Iraq was … not well considered. Making the House of Saud a client state of the US in return for letting radical Wahhabi muslims control Saudi Arabia’s educational system … not well considered.

But this doesn’t mean that much of the stuff that goes down in the Middle East isn’t directly due to the patriarchal, sexist, greedy, baboonish culture that exists there. That’s where the real problem lies, IMHO.

68

I found that description also fitted pretty well to the US. And as you say, that’s your opinion. Personally I think if the third world wasn’t regularly being screwed over by the developed world they’d have less to be resentful about towards us. The whole “they hate us because we love freedom” argument is laughable - they hate us because we strangle their trade, try and control their governments and lives and generally tell them what to do! You might think that our actions are justified (separate debate) but you can’t deny that that is one of the biggest contributors to the antipathy towards us. That’s pragmatism rather than post-colonial guilt tripping.

Oh, and don’t think I didn’t read your post saying:

I just thought it was so mornonic and lacking in way of contribution to the discussion that I couldn’t bring myself to muster an actual response.

69

Yeah, but it DOES kinda sound like post-colonial guilt-tripping. I agree that this business of installing fascist puppet governments in the Middle east and supporting them while the fuck over their people has not been for us in the long term, or for Middle Easterners in any way whatsoever. But other than that, we haven’t done a lot of “telling them what to do.” If we had, we might not be so bad off. But just to assume that if we withdrew from the region with many apologies, everytghing would be hunky-dory … what are YOU smokin’?

I think world Wars 1 and 2 kinda speak for themselves.

70

Well, we were extremely naïve and foolish.
We didn’t expect from muslims to ‘intergrate’ completely. Otherwise we wouldn’t have built the mosques and Islamic schools, you know.
We are USED to it by now, to see the minarettes of mosques being higher than the highest church tower.
That’s okay.
We just expected them to love us a little bit, I guess. Like we tried to give our love to them.

We are still the country of ‘live and let live’.
Do anything you like, Love anyone you like, Believe anything you like.
Just don’t HURT people.
[Oh, another reason why Islam is likely to ‘take over’ Holland, is that the Dutch are emigrating en masse to other countries.
http://www.cbs.nl/nl-NL/menu/themas/dossiers/allochtonen/publicaties/persberichten/2006-013-pb.htm
Steeds meer Nederlanders emigreren
Het aantal Nederlanders dat het land definitief verlaat, blijft stijgen, meldt het CBS. Vorig jaar emigreerden maar liefst 121.000 Nederlanders. Een jaar eerder waren dat er nog 110.000. Last year, 121.000 moved out, the year before: 110.000]

And it’s not just the Dutch either.
Same things are happening in other European countries that embraced their Islamic fellow ‘countrymen’.
Germany, France, Belgium, etc, etc. And DENMARK, ofcourse: All have excellent reputations of being tolerant countries.
But all failed with muslims.

Must be us…

Originally posted by Kimstu

Yes.
And you, yourself, can see that’s exactly what’s happening.

Originally posted by Grossbottom

Very true.

We’ve created this mess, I think we ought to solve it ourselves.
I don’t expect anything from the US.
[except maybe a burkha. Size 2, if you have.]

71

Well a lot of them hate poor little Denmark now. And Denmark never screwed over anyone in the Middle East (except perhaps Iraq) – in fact Denmark has being sending down millions on millions dollars in aid every year for God know how long (without one damn thing to show for it either) and generally being taking the Arab side in the Arab/Israel disputes etc. From here it looks most like it’s them trying to tell us what to do with our government and our lives and our freedom of press (which is abolish it). And have been strangling our trade for some three decades by the oil valves and now by organised boycotts. The Middle East has earned gazillions of dollars by exporting some black goo they, no thanks to themselves, were so fortunately to happen to have in their underground – and which is mostly extracted by Western companies. That’s not strangling their trade – that’s giving them a bonanza.

No they hate the West because they’re envious and weak when they ought, in their own understanding, to be the ones calling the shots. They’re pressed from all sides; culturally, politically, military. And it irks them to no end to see the West having overtaken them in pretty much all things. And instead of taking a long look in the mirror, it’s always easier to blame all ones own miserable incompetence and stupidity on someone else, and to invent all kinds of idiotic conspiracy theories which explain why it is, that you have been cheated out of your righteous inheritance. It’s just not helping any. They need to change and that’s that. And you’re doing them no favour by helping convince them that their own miserable position in the world is anybody but their own fault.

And the same goes for Europe. Europe needs to wake up and smell the coffee. And stop going around in their little safe and cosy wand utterly pathetic world of anti-Americanism, blame Reagan, Bush, Cheney, whatever.

72

But not with fifth- and sixth-generation immigrants, right? As I said above, it seems to me that the Dutch descendants of earlier Indonesian Muslim immigrants are considered pretty well integrated. Is that a mistaken idea? The way it looks, to a foreigner like me at least, is as though the “indisches” or Indonesian-Dutch are generally seen as a part of the Dutch colonial past and are accepted as the “good Muslims” (to put it crudely).

The impression I get is that the Muslims who are considered dangerously un-integrated (the “bad Muslims”, so to speak) are mostly the first- and second-generation immigrants from (mostly) Morocco and Turkey. They were invited to the Netherlands beginning in the 1970’s, generally as unskilled “guest workers” who, it was expected, would return to their home countries after a few years, so they weren’t required to learn Dutch or to integrate significantly into Dutch society or to give up their ties with their countries of origin. (This policy has now been replaced, ISTM, by one that focuses much more strongly on “inburgering” or immigration/assimilation, with immigrants required to pass Dutch language/history exams and so forth.)

But the “bad Muslims” haven’t produced any fifth- or sixth-generation descendants yet, AFAICT, so it seems too soon to tell whether they will really remain as unassimilated and “un-Dutch” as the first- and second-generation ones.

73

Kimstu, I don’t know about Indonesian/Dutch muslims. I found a list of these churches:

Molukse Evangelische Kerk (de grootste)
Molukse Protestantse Noodgemeente in Nederland
Zuid-Oost Molukse Protestantse Kerk
Zuid-Molukse Christelijke Kerk
Indonesische Protestantse Kerk
Molukse Protestantse Kerk
Kristen Zuid-Molukse Kerk in Nederland.

Doesn’t sound very Islamic to me.

Anyway: I don’t care about your exuses. They’re getting stale.

We are HURT by Islam
We are CENSORIZED by Islam
We are being TAKEN OVER by Islam.

Thanks to you, and your ilk.

[Theo van Gogh must laugh his ass off, in his grave, seeing how a couple of cartoons sparked a discussion. Instead of his murder]

Oh and Rune in that first paragraph of yours you could have interchanged Denmark to Holland.

74

I don’t know much either, which is why I asked. I did find a little information on Google:

How to tell if you’re Dutch:

What “excuses”? I asked some questions about Dutch Muslims from different countries of origin, and gave my impressions about the ways in which they seem to be viewed in the Netherlands.

75

Let me clarify…in India it’s family law (marriage, divorce, inheritance) that is governed differently according to religion. Basically when you get married you register the marriage under a religion (or you can choose a neutral court marriage…recently they began making registering marriages mandatory) and any future civil conflicts are judged according to the laws set forth under that religion’s arrangements with the government.

This is common- de jure and de facto- everywhere where there are multiple religions that are older than dirt and a fairly new government. In the Middle East, for example, it’s common for Christians to be technically allowed to drink alcohol even though it is forbidden to Muslims living within the country.

76

Kimstu, my point is: There *aren’t * a lot of Dutch/Indo muslims in the Netherlands.
They’re mostly Protestant.
There might very well be temporary students who pray in mosques, but as your cite says:

Most of them are not muslim anymore. Apostates.

This is correct.
We don’t care where people come from.
We don’t give a shit what color your skin is.
So we *do * consider people with Indonesian ancestors Dutch. We also consider people with people with Chinese, African etc. ancestors, Dutch.

[I love that site, btw. :slight_smile: Here’s another fun one: http://www.cactii.net/~bb/dutch.php Let me know how you Dutch you are? :)]

By excuses I mean that you try everything to divert us from the important part: Islam is a intolerant, backwards religion and it’s trying to gain power in Europe - in my country - by sheer violence.

.

77

heh. I got 8 just answering what a typical Dane would say. I always said Danes are more like the Dutch than the rest of Scandinavians - I also understand most of the written Dutch. Now if you guys could just learn how to speak without breaking your tongue.

78

hehhehe, :o My tongue’s okay.
Do you have a birthday calendar in your bathroom as well? :smiley:

Have you read this, Rune?
From http://www.yaledailynews.com/article.asp?AID=31848:

The U.S. of A, naturally, will not allow Europe to outdo it at anything, even caving in to death threats, and its luminaries have struck some exemplary profiles in cowardice. Bill Clinton, proving that he can parrot a mullah with nearly as much ease as a Baptist preacher, decried “this appalling example in northern Europe, in Denmark … these totally outrageous cartoons against Islam.” The administration followed Clinton by issuing a blanket denunciation of “anti-Muslim images” in an official State Department statement. Neither Clinton, nor President Bush, apparently, has bothered to look at the Jyllands-Posten cartoons. Otherwise they could not honestly take the position that the cartoons, with one exception, are anywhere in the neighborhood of bigotry.

True, in one cartoon of the 12, Muhammad’s turban is a bomb, and, who would have guessed it, that one cartoon is better known and more widely discussed than any of the others. (The way to prove the cartoonist who drew it wrong, however, is not to kill him.) In another “total outrage against Islam,” Muhammad is depicted in heaven before a queue of apparent martyrs, shouting, “Stop! We’ve run out of virgins.” Exposing the hypocrisy of slaughter in the name of God’s justice is not an offense; it is an editorial point eminently worth making. Another of the cartoons is not of Muhammad at all, but of a nervous cartoonist attempting to draw Muhammad and at the same time keep all unwelcome eyes away from his composition. Would anyone like to argue that this cartoon denigrates Muslims?

But of course, the reason for the embassy burnings, the promises of murder, the blackmail of civil institutions, is not the light in which a group of Danish cartoonists portrayed Muhammad, but the fact that Danish cartoonists portrayed Muhammad at all. And while Muslims have every right to abhor visual representations of their prophets, they have no right – none whatsoever – to prevent non-Muslims from drawing whatever pictures they want to. This is not a matter of tolerance of Muslim beliefs, but of whether or not we non-believers are prepared to submit ourselves, out of fear, to Islamic law. Capitulation to the bullies is not a sign of an abundance of intellectual sophistication, but a severe lack of self-respect.

And from the same page:

like University of Copenhagen lecturer Carsten Niehbuhr, who was beaten and left on the side of a road, and Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, who was butchered with a knife in broad daylight

Who is - was? - Carsten Niebuhr?

.

79

Clinton in Pakistan: Convict cartoon publishers - Says press should not be allowed to criticize other faiths - So is this true? Does Clinton really think the newspapers should be punished, and all religious satire be totally forbidden?! Quite mindboggling. If this is anywhere true. The I have lost all my respect for Clinton. The man is a fucking idiot.
Carsten Niebuhr was a Danish explorer of amongst other things the Middle East in the 18 - 19 century. He published some extensive and important works. Carsten Niebuhr Institute is a Danish institute under the University of Copenhagen which specialises in Near Eastern and Arab studies. The man talked about is a (Morrocan and Jewish) lecturer at the institute who in 2004 was forced into a car and severely beaten (hit in the kidnies till he urinated blood) threatned on his and his family life - because he had read from the Koran during a lecture, a thing the attackers meant Jews were allowed to. The attack remains unsolved.

First Freedom Fries and now this Roses of the Prophet Mohammed ! We’re doomed! (Danish pastries renamed in retaliation for cartoons).

80

not fer nuttin but we have our southern baptist convocation with it’s admonition that wives be obedient to their husbands…apparently a 12th century fantasy that is not limited only to one of the three cults of Yahweh.