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Last updated on March 6th, 2018 at 12:30 am
The Financial Times reports:
European countries are paying the price for their “miscalculations” on Islam, which have come back to haunt them in the crisis over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad, according to …
a) Australian Prime Minister John Howard?
b) British Conservative leader David Cameron?
c) Herald Sun columnist Andrew Bolt?
Before you hit that link, here’s further comment from our mystery pundit:
“There is no formula for co-existence between Islam and Europe. All idyllic, unrealistic visions of laissez-faire permissiveness are no good … Islam in the west is a real political problem.”
The UK, in particular, has made a “serious error” in “encouraging and accepting” multiculturalism. “The London bombings last year were a brutal wake-up call,” he claims.
- More happy hypocritical horseshit from the fence-straddling “moderate” Muslim community.Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 02 25 at 12:14 PM • permalink
- Now, see, this is what I don’t get: In this neck of the evil Great Satan, the Muslim people in our neighborhood host “Meet without the Veil” events, the ladies, while wearing the hijab and gloves, wear the tightest jeans (the kind you fasten while lying down and hauling up the zipper with a hanger) or lovely colorful robes; everyone is friendly and shares in the child-watching (even I, who generally keep children far away, have helped with the kiddies), and the hottest points of contention seem to be sports events. The only note of dissension I’ve heard is a spat between a Persian Muslim and a Russian Jew at work, over some arecane-sounding nonsense that they seemed to resolve by themselves. What are we doing wrong???
Why aren’t we at one another’s throats? Or am I living in happy happy joyland?
- #3, it’s not happy joyland by any stretch, but there is a difference between Muslims in America and Muslims in Europe. Muslims in America, by and large, have secular educations, jobs, and businesses, and don’t rely on welfare to get by (as welfare is tougher to get and far less generous in the U.S. than it is in Europe). They’ve also faced less opposition from a society that is markedly not homogenous. This society (a very large non-Muslim majority) expects them to join in the business of civil society (or did, until multiculturalism started to take root). In other words, Muslims in America have a lot to lose by going radical.
European Muslims seem to be mostly new arrivals with little education, few jobs, and not many prospects. And, let’s face it, European society has expected very little from them. You reap what you sow.
That’s not to say they couldn’t go off the rails, but it will cost them dearly if they do.
- True: Both the men and the women, except the very old, have jobs; the kids all go to school…I guess the dopey happy dumbassedry Disney and tv and hot dog and baseball lives of Americans in general eradicates the radical. Even our radicals, as someone somewhere said, expect every other American to be comfortably bourgeois.
How sad for us, that most dumb Merkans don’t have time to sit around smoking thin cigarets and planning revolutions.
- RebeccaH
In other words, Muslims in America have a lot to lose by going radical.
Even in the metrosexual areas, enough would eventually, be enough.
In what is referred to as flyover country (Red States) BY the metrosexual, radical islamists would see what the term cruel and unusual, really means. I could be completely washed up here, BUT cost them dearly , would be the best outcome, they could hope for…for sure.
- The US has a low population density……….to approach that of England it would need another Two Billion people.
England, Netherlands, Denmark have very high population density – only England has increasing population in Europe, 66% increase due to immigration.
In countries with high population density homogeneity ensures more stability. There are almost no ethnic mninorities in Scotland or Wales or Northern Ireland – most are in London and concentrated in key cities. That is the problem because colonies have been built within these cities and sustained through active welfare politics.
The US does not have the huge welfare provision of Europe where large families could not ever hope to earn incomes to match welfare benefits. Just one Muslim loudmouth – Anjem Choudhary has 3 children and a wife drawing $3000/month in benefits with him over in Lebanon reportedly – that means a pre-tax income of $55000 which is just around the top tax bracket of 41% and in the top 10% incomes.
Now if you are into women staying at home with large families and low standards of living the welfare approach is ideal, and it is subject to moral hazard from people who are not willing to be socialised into a Protestant work culture but prefer to “live off the land”so to speak.
Until religion is truly “a private affair” and Muslims are not subjected to discrimination in much of society, divisions will remain. “To break down the suspicion between the two societies, we need true incentives in business, employment and education, to give true equal opportunities.”
This concluding paragraph is about two-thirds true, one-third crap.
RebeccaH in #4 nails it—Europe’s welfare state sets the conditions for these problems. Add in the long standing European tradition of homogeneous cultures, and Europe shot themselves in the foot on this one.
But Boubakeur calls for “true incentives”, and that would be a valid response only if those incentives weaned European Muslims off of welfare. And “true equal opportunities” includes the chance of failure. I’m not sure that Europe is ready for this concept.
Also, how much of the division is caused by the choices of the Muslim community? The US has multiple cultures that live their ways separately, without resorting to riots. “Multiculturism” is another term hijacked and corrupted by lefties, but originally it meant two way cultural acceptance. You get what you give.
And I’m not convinced that this is valid:
For this Mr Boubakeur credits France’s secular system, which encourages immigrants to integrate into society, unlike multicultural societies, where immigrants form separate communities and preserve much of their original ethnic and religious identity.
Maybe so, maybe not. France has similar Muslim enclaves similar to England, and definite problems with Muslim violence; the car burnings last year were far more extensive than anything I’ve read of England. Their problem is creeping absorption, not rioting.
While it’s good to see a self-proclaimed moderate Muslim take this stance, I also wonder just how sincere his position is. How much of this could be taquiya?
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 02 25 at 02:55 PM • permalink
- rhhardin—reform is just what Islam needs!
But don’t forget, the reformation of Christianity was hardly peaceful. Boubakeur likely knows this….but if he is not to be a fence sitter, he needs to specifically demand reformation.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 02 25 at 02:58 PM • permalink
- America is rife with radical Islam, particularly our education system
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=16073
Many unassimilate faux-American muslims were delighted that 911 occurred and are busy planning terror attacks.Loons like the Nation of Islam have a paramilitary force known as the Fruit of Islam, which bodyguards Farraklown and other natables such as Jesse Jackson & Michael Jackson. They allegedly own 8 “security” firms” and collect something like 20 million a year from these enterprises. They allegedly have legal full automatic weapons. These guys are vile racists. The only thing that keeps them in check is fear of a backlash that would make Kristallnacht look like halloween.
- It sounds to me like he’s calling for a Reformation, such as Christianity had a few centuries ago.
That means you don’t understand The Reformation. It was a return to fundamentals – to the real basis of Scripture not to the interpretations the Church of Rome had made to Christian Faith by becoming the State Church of Rome.
The Reformation was violent and bloody – just look how many thousands died in the Peasants’ Revolt in the German principalities – just look at the upheavals of the Thirty Years War.
Maybe what we need is a Third World War – we had a Second World War against Nazism but never had a Third World War against Communism The way people speak of The Reformation is so glib that they do not seem to see that it was an upheaval every bit as big for its time as the 1939-45 War.
A Reformation may be exactly what Islam will undergo when Europe prepares for armed conflict and introduces a draft. It is Europe and Japan that is dependent on Middle East oil not the USA.
The Reformation was the second rupture in global Christendom, the first was in 1054 – now think about the way the world changed and don’t forget that Islam had its split with the murder of Ali, Muhammad’s grandson which is why we have Shia and Sunni – they think they have already had their “Reformation”
- I’m not saying there are no radical Islamists in America, because certainly there are. They just arrested three of them not 200 miles from my house. I’m just saying that I believe most American Muslims are believers along the lines of Mr. Boubakeur.
The Nation of Islam is a different animal. It’s a race-based cult in which the extremely angry and irrational beliefs and writings of the founder Elijah Muhammed (aka Robert Poole) were inserted into a general, poorly understood Islamic structure. While it has its true believers, under Louis Farrakhan it is nothing more than a criminal empire.
- People who speak of a Muslim Reformation are overlooking that there is one going on right now. The Wahhabists are trying to reform Islam in the image of their own narrow, bigoted, unlearned sect. The Saudi-funded madrassas, mosques, and “cultural centers” are converting masses of Muslims to it every day. There are similar groups of more normative Islam, closely connected to the Wahhabis now, which may be called Salafist. The Mad Mullahs of Teheran are a Shi’a version. And out of these groups the jihadis have grown. These groups are highly political, more so than really religious, insofar as one can distinguish the two in Islam. This is the Muslim Reformation, 21st Century style. As Voyager pointed out there was a great deal of violence about the Christian Reformation. There is a great deal of violence about the Muslim one too.Posted by Michael Lonie on 2006 02 25 at 05:10 PM • permalink
- He can say what he damn well oikes in French, but I’ll only start to believe he’s serious when he starts saying this stuff in Arabic. Until then, it’s one message for the believers, and one for the infidels.Posted by Oafish and Infantile on 2006 02 25 at 06:29 PM • permalink
- Errr, that would be “likes”, not “oikes”.
Preview is my friend.
Posted by Oafish and Infantile on 2006 02 25 at 06:33 PM • permalink
- #14/15 snap – moderate muslim work colleagues in melbourne – with jobs & kids in ordinary schools, not brainwashing centres where joos poison bananas, are horrified by wahabist osamites on welfare preaching violent jihad. they find the antics of hilaly and omar cringemaking & worrying. they agree with costello that if you want sharia, you shouldn’t be living in australia. they are distubed that their friends are toying with fundamentalism, & say that it is impossible to have a rational discussion with converts to fundamentalism, as with such converts of any kind. they say try talking to a newly awakened evangelical christian, & ramp up an order of magnitude. these guys escaped iran early on, and iraq more recently, & don’t want either to be replicated here. they recommend only taking muslim immigrants who are educated & will not go straight onto welfare. i suspect they represent a small minority, but don’t have any facts to back that up
Many unassimilate faux-American muslims were delighted that 911 occurred and are busy planning terror attacks.
True. I don’t know how many of them are planning terror attacks, but my sister, an RN in a northern New Jersey hospital that has a large Palestinian community in its district, witnessed the dancing (literally) in the streets on 9-11. Not 25 miles from Ground Zero.
Although the US is the land of assimilation, we really don’t have a problem with groups of people who, for whatever reason, wish to keep to themselves. The Amish, for example. The Amish are self-reliant, law-abiding and prosperous; they pay their taxes, they educate their children, they vote. When there’s need, they’re right there whether it’s a member of their community or not. And, they’re good for tourism. There’s not only one “American dream”. Live the dream that suits you. Just be a good citizen while you’re about it.
Just like everybody else, Muslims who are good citizens are welcome. Those who are not are not. And we as a nation don’t have much tolerance for the kind of crap we’ve been watching take place around the world over the past few weeks…months…years…decades. American Muslims know that.
Posted by Kyda Sylvester on 2006 02 25 at 09:23 PM • permalink
Sobering is the observation that Bin Laden is Islam’s Martin Luther…
More like its Savonarola
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 02 25 at 09:47 PM • permalink
- narrowly on-topic:
A transcript of Andrew Bolt’s speech and questions and answers at the launch of his Still Not Sorry book in Melbourne last Tuesday, is at bolt speech
- #22 – yep stroppo, i think the sensible ones may be, or become, the minority as the influence of radical clerics grows & uneducated parents from villages in the bekkah valley produce uneducated children who have no prospects but the dole. but i have absolutely no facts to back that up, only anecdotal observations, and would be delighted if somebody did some research & proved it wrong
- I’m not sure education is a good guide here. You find highly educated people among the jihadis. It seems that a return to Islamic foundations is a common reaction of people educated in Western sciences, an emotional anchor against the influence of the West. Then they decide the West is corrupt and needs destroying. There are doctors, engineers, and Western educated businessmen in the ranks of Al Qaeda’s leadership. The uneducated guy from the Bekaa who opens a shawarmi stand and 20 years later has a chain of Lebanese restaurants is infinitely preferable to some doctor or Ph.D. who goes in for terrorism or advancing the jihad in the West from his tenured professorship at an American university.Posted by Michael Lonie on 2006 02 25 at 10:59 PM • permalink
- Just like everybody else, Muslims who are good citizens are welcome. Those who are not are not.
This is also a huge difference from Europe. We do not demand that minorities assimilate…but we do demand that they buy into the American ideal.
If you don’t buy in…you get the boot. We are all immigrants here and have no patience for those who don’t play the game.
If you do buy in but want to live apart, never learn English, and live the culture of your third world shithole here in America…that’s OK. Like a Hollywood fantasy…it would be an American representation of what a third world shithole would be….ethnic food, lots of colorful ambiance, tradition music. With big screen TVs, a car in the drive, indoor plumbing, a job, and no death squads.
The comfort and safety of America are seen as weakness to some people, but what wouldn’t a free, armed, and independently minded people do to keep that comfort.
The immigrant generation loses their kids to America. That’s why the Muslims are good citizens.
- Take a look at DBO’s itinerary. I rather suspect that his version of “doing what little I [he] can for the poor” is that of the good capitalist’s – being there, having a good time, spending money and thus providing an improved livelihood for locals. Perfectly reasonable, though not really something to get up on one’s high horse over. Tourism is good for countries like Cambodia – well done, DBO. But Mother Theresa you ain’t.Posted by James Waterton on 2006 02 26 at 10:22 AM • permalink
- Oops…wrong thread! CursesPosted by James Waterton on 2006 02 26 at 10:26 AM • permalink
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