I don’t object when people, as a group, decide that another group of people are sinful and immoral. People can believe whatever assholery they want. It’s when they try to influence the educational system and spread their sickness that it crosses the line.
I’m no fan of Islam, and Sharia law is barbaric from every angle, but peaceful Muslims are as welcome to come to my country as peaceful Christians. My mother in law sends me anti-immigrant shite that seems designed to ignite a religious war. I’ve argued with her before, and asked her to stop sending such stuff, so I was just going to ignore the latest bullshit. But I had to call her out after the events in Christchurch. I will not tolerate intolerance. Inflaming people about Muslim immigrants isn’t helping anybody. Many of the Muslim immigrants come here to get away from the repressive crap they had to live with back in their original country. This applies particularly to LGBQT Muslims, such as the gay refuge the Unitarian fellowship in my town is currently sponsoring. Muslims are not a monolithic group, no more than Christians or atheists are.
If you want to be a bigot then there’s little I can do about it. However I will tell you exactly what I think about your use of your god to justify your bigotry.
Reply to DH : I have to agree.
The Christchurch attack hit too close to home, I spent part of a very carefree childhood playing in Hagley Park every day after school. I don’t remember the mosque but I do remember the city having a place of worship for every group.
I will not be tolerating intolerance again and gun happy gobshites of any persuasion can kiss my large tolerant bum.
D.H. I understand your point of view…but since muslims have to accept that the Qur’an is the absolute and last word by their deity. You would have to accept that the majority of them would gleefully dance on the grave of infidel children if they are true followers of the prophet and his blood thirsty god! Those who can be made to believe in absurdities can be made to perform atrocities…..how very true…
M27Holts – What makes you thing Muslims have to do anything just because they are Muslims? There are as many versions of Islam as there are of Christianity. I would point you in the direction of some fundamentalist Muslims who see terrorism as a gross distortion of Islam, forbidden by the Prophet, but you seem to have already made your mind up.
M27Holts need not read this. But if anyone else is interested, I was thinking of http://www.salafipublications.com/sps/. I disagree with them about almost everything else, but when it comes to terrorism, they seem to have got it just about right:
“Exposing deviant ideologies, exteemism, terrorism and their proponents.”
Mr Seed. Buy yourself the picthall translation of the glorious Qu’ran. Open it at a random page. I will guarantee that you will find a verse that promotes the hatred of non believers.
Paul Seed, to extrapolate “What makes you think white supremacists have to do anything just because they are white supremacists?”
That sounds absurd, because it is absurd.
If we can’t explore, examine, and hold people to account for their beliefs and the consequences of their beliefs, then we may as well stop talking at all.
As M27 says, pretty much anywhere in the Q’ran has exhortations to kill the unbeliever, or the celebrate their eternal punishment.
Its almost the opening words, e.g. https://al-quran.info/#2
The fact that most muslims are as hypocritical and ignorant of their own faith (although they all seem pretty well informed when it comes to hating gays) as most people of all other declared faiths (or declared politics, for that matter) is an interesting fact. I guess.
But to deny that the avowed tents of Islam are violent and exclusive is to be willfully naive. At best.
Willful naivety might be politically useful in a “lets all just pretend that all our worship is the same, and that our holy books arent stuffed full of gleeful celebrations of torture, slavery, and genocide while we find ways to live alongside each other” kinda way. And that’s fine.
But let’s not confuse that with the facts.
M27Holts: I guarantee you are incorrect (about opening the Qur’an to any page and seeing a message of hatred to non-believers.) Clearly, there are numerous passages promising hellfire (often for “hypocrites”) but the “hatred of non-believers” or “celebrating” eternal punishment is so way-overstated as to be counter-productive to any reasonable discussion…as well as absurd.
As a test to myself, I opened my copy (with English and Arabic) to “Al-Ma’idah”–surah 5, v. 111-115: mostly just a tribute to Jesus.
Jveed. Well I just opened at page 158. Surah 16: An-Nahl v 106. Whoever disbelieves in Allah after his belief – except him who is forced to it and whose heart is still content with the faith – but who finds ease in disbelief: On them is wrath from Allah. Theirs will be an awful doom. QED. Methinks…
HelenaHandbasket. I shall take issue with your comment to Paul Seed, to extrapolate “What makes you think white supremacists have to do anything just because they are white supremacists?”
That sounds absurd, because it is absurd.
I don’t think it’s absurd. There are millions of white supremacists who never actually DO anything. There is a range in white supremacists, all the way from mild racists to murderous assholes. The modern world was created by white supremacists, taking territory in the name of white superiority.
There are millions of Christians who wouldn’t stone their daughter for refusing to marry her rapist. There are millions of Muslims who cherry pick the Quran the same way Christians cherry pick the bible. Spreading generalized bullshit about any huge group of human beings can only lead to religious wars, and atrocities like the attack in Christchurch.
I think all religions are stupid and harmful, but demonizing any one of them as if they are different from the others isn’t doing anybody any good.
DH. Are you not concerned that Muslims are taught from a very early age that the Qu’ran is the final and absolute word of an extremely unpleasant deity. It has been proven that a considerable number of muslims are in favour of the more extreme parts of sharia law. The sheeples would gladly vote for the abbatoire to be extended so to speak…
the meta-humor is that, risible as the slogans are, they grossly understate J and M’s actual requirements. the afterlife fascists always demand “respect” as code for subordination; replacing “tolerate” and “accept” respectively with “admire” and “grovel before” would be just a minimal tip of the hat towards honesty
D.H. Apparently I have to spell out what I meant.
Its this:
“If believers in white supremacism can be held to account for their beliefs, then so can believers in Jihadism”
I know that the left, for reasons if its own, finds some of the hideous extremes of Islamic radicalism palatable. Only just the other day a self-described feminist lectured me on how I was racist to oppose burkhas. At the same time the hideous extremes of other supremacisms get the opprobrium they deserve. Why this lop-sidedness happens (One suspects that they are driven by hatred of their own culture, the glories of self-flagellating guilt?) I am not sure, but I don’t see why we should allow this sort of self-indulgent hypocrisy to go unchallenged in public.
It’s massively distorting the terms of shared social space that we all have to live in.
Dehumanising is dehumanising, whoever does it to whoever. As Maajid Nawaz ably puts it; It’s a racism of low expectations not to hold brown people to account for their actions in the same way we hold white people to account for their actions.
Frankly, a lot of us are sick to the back teeth of it and the way it continually hands propaganda victories to the most unpleasant elements of the right wing, while elements of the left sit there feeling holier that thou and throwing out identity politics cliches.
They need to be shaken into some degree of responsibility over this themselves.
Are my meaning and intention clearer?
HelenaHandbasket, perfectly clear. And of course I agree. Holding extremists responsible says nothing to my comments about not demonizing an entire group, on either side. I haven’t actually noticed the left granting any slack to Islamic terrorists. I do see them pointing out the right wing tendency to describe white racists killers as lone deranged individuals who were angelic children, while describing Islamic terrorists accurately as terrorists. It’s a disturbing fact that most of the acts of terrorism in the Untied States have been perpetrated by conservative white men. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/01/homegrown-terrorists-2018-were-almost-all-right-wing/581284/
M27Holts, of course I’m concerned. And when I read that some eighty percent of Afghans think that stoning a woman to death for adultery is appropriate, I lose any interest in democracy for that country.
My wife and I volunteered to help Syrian refugees acclimatize to life in Canada. That means we had a lot more contact with actual Muslims than most people have. I dislike the culture intensely. The wife and mother of the family, a very shy and sweet woman, could not even shake my hand. The husband made clear his attitude towards homosexuals and dogs. He asked us if we believed in god and seemed amazed when we said we didn’t. I don’t think he’d ever met an admitted atheist before. But at the at the end of the conversation I asked him, “But we’re still friends. Right?” And his response seemed enthusiastic and genuine: “One hundred percent.”
Of course I’m concerned. The cultural divide between us seems huge. But I look at his children, all attending public schools, and I know that peer pressure has much more influence than parental pressure. So there is hope. In the meantime, the parents are salt of the earth family people. He owned a big house with a swimming pool in Syria. He had his own cement business, with a couple of cement trucks. Life was middle class good for them until he got hit by a missile from a war plane that put him in the hospital. After two years in a refugee camp in Jordan, the family came here. They don’t want to leave their culture. They wanted to get away from assholes trying to kill them.
They find adapting to Canada, where same sex marriage is legal and dogs live with people inside their houses, very confusing. But they also see what we have here, and are grateful to be starting a new life in our country. To demonize them as some great threat to our way of life is just bullshit. We have Catholic priests in Quebec inflaming their congregations about sex education in schools. I’m more worried about them.
DH — If the number of refugees is small, then the children will assimilate, and their parents won’t be able to stop it. But if the number is sufficiently large then the parents (as we’re seeing in Europe) will be able to create self-sufficient enclaves and impose the culture you dislike so intensely upon their children, and you won’t be able to do anything to stop it. That seems like kind of a bad idea, doesn’t it?
Aye. A lot of cities and towns in blighty are segmented into muslim areas and non muslim areas. They have no wish to mix with infidels and once schools are set up as madrasses then you have the perfect environment to allow the radicalisation of kids on a quite astonishing scale. As in game of thrones the great war is coming…and it will be fought in europe once more….
jb and M27Holts, you have done a great job of articulating the problem. But you both seem to accept religious war as inevitable. I don’t. I see religious war as a result of bad policy and bad propaganda by people who want to see it happen.
In France, for example, they brought Muslims into the country because they needed the laborers. But they didn’t want Muslims. They wanted to keep France “pure”. So they made policies that prevented the immigrants from becoming citizens, disenfranchised them, and created an underclass in what amounted to ghettos. They don’t like the idea of multi-culturalism, so they tried to prevent assimilation.
The totally predictable result was the situation you describe. Very soon they had young men and women who were born in France, but were not French and were prevented from becoming French. Naturally they resented this. So the French played right into the hands of the Mullahs.
There’s nothing wrong with Muslim areas and non-Muslim areas. In China, where I lived for nine years, there are many Muslim areas. They are a favorite place to go for barbecue, and my wife and I spent many enjoyable evenings sitting around the little charcoal grills eating freshly slaughtered goats on wire skewers. The Muslims seem to live in peace with the general population.
In Vancouver we have always had ethic areas – an Italian neighborhood, a Chinese neighborhoods, a German neighborhood, and yes, a Muslim neighborhood. There’s no problem as long as nobody starts “otherizing” one of the groups and inflames hatred.
In Ontario, a small group of Muslims tried to get the government to set up a Sharia court for family law. They were opposed by a much larger group of Muslims who came to Canada to get away from that kind of crap. The result was that ALL religious family courts were shut down, specifically the one that the Catholics had maintained for years. Yeah Muslims, eh.
Also in Ontario, a young Muslim man, radicalized by social media, robbed a Seven Eleven to get funds for a plane ticket so that he could go to Syria and join Isis. He was turned in to the authorities, and his plan was thwarted. By his father. That wouldn’t happen if his father feared the authorities, and had been told that he had no place in Canada.
So, it isn’t a matter of the number of refugees. We’ve had huge influxes of refugees as various parts of the world have suffered famine or war. Often the refugees are resented and an attempt is made to prevent them from integrating. (Look at the problems the Irish had in America during the potato famine.) That is a huge mistake. And spreading anti-Muslim bullshit is also a huge mistake.
Most recently, in town I live in, the word went out that Muslims were afraid to go to the mosque after the slaughter in Christchurch. Hundreds of Christians and atheists showed up to escort them. Each was presented with a rose by members of the grateful Muslim congregation. That is the kind of country I want to live in. You can keep your fear and your anecdotal stories of immigrant problems. I know which side I’m on, and that ain’t it.
D.H. do you think that declaring Mohammed as a historically proven blood thirsty sociopath is anti Muslim? Is my wife wearing a short skirt when we visit Bolton anti Muslim? Because both of these are considered inflammatory in a so called free country!
M27Holts, “Because both of these are considered inflammatory in a so called free country!” Considered inflammatory by whom?
Simply declaring yourself an atheist is considered inflammatory in many communities, and putting a Darwin fish on you vehicle is an invitation to having your car keyed.
Many things are considered inflammatory by those looking to take offense. Fuck ’em. Many others are just fine with the things you mention, and I refuse to paint the whole country with the attitudes of the intolerant. It’s my country too, damn it. The assholes can’t tell me what the tone of the country is. Laugh at them. Don’t take them seriously. And for goodness sake, don’t let them sour your attitude to a whole group of people.
Nice to be getting noticed by M27 Holts and Helena Handbasket. The problem with their approach is that they are looking at words in a book, and mistaking them for reality. I am relying on colleagues I work with on a daily basis, many of whom happen to be muslims.
Darwin Harmless, I appreciate the work you do with Afghan refugees into Canada. And I agree that people coming from Afghanistan to Canada (or the UK) may find all their assumptions challendged by reality. But there are many interesting and exciting changes going on in muslim countries now. Democracy has to be built and defended.
Mr Seed. Your assumptions are letting you down. I have worked with lots of muslims in the past. Some of them have been nominally muslim. However, as with conservative xtians the muslims who have been successfully brainwashed as children have to be the most ignorant people I have met. I had a close friend beaten to death when I was in my early twenties? His crime? He was secretly dating a muslim girl in bury and when her brothers found out they stamped on him till he was dead…Nobody was ever brought to justice either..I think you trivialise the grip that the words of the Qu’ran have over those with weak minds…
Well, I think we can all agree, that religion is a pernicious influence. But there’s a school of thought about this, that the (selectively) reported vicious character of Islam isn’t really Islam at all, it’s a cultural backdrop that’s prevalent in the middle east. If you looked at say Indonesia to get your ideas about Islam, it would be very different (and there are lots of them, I believe it’s the largest Islamic population in one country.)
As has been said a million times. If you follow the teachings of a sixth century nutter then it wouldn’t be surprising that you might find that your delusions are not really compatible with 21st century democratic cultures. Once you have a sufficiently large number of such individuals then they will successfully project their masters wishes and attempt to bring back the dark ages. They have succeeded in a lot of places, turning them into hell holes of ignorance and theocratic tyranny…
Jesus & Mo (the characters) are absurd, blinkered, and oddly very sweet. J&M (the cartoon) is brilliant: sharp, delicious, irresistible. Salman Rushdie
Jesus and Mo cartoons are wonderfully funny and true. Richard Dawkins
Jesus and Mo make the world a better place, bless their little hearts. Ophelia Benson
In a world defined by outrage and offence and liberal spinelessness, Jesus and Mo is a treasure, whose value we should never fail to recognize. Read them. Laugh. And think. Kenan Malik
The brilliant, celebrated, freaking hilarious atheist comic strip ... Greta Christina
...rays of sanity in a befuddled world. Keri Hulme
The liveliest depictions of Muhammad currently available... Malise Ruthven
J & Mo is the funniest and most consistently thought-provoking cartoon strip on the Net. In a saner world, it would run in a major newspaper. Nelson Jones, Heresy Corner
Consistently amusing, frequently thought-provoking and often heart-warming. New Humanist
Jesus & Mo is one of the most wonderful things on the internet.. JT Eberhard
Wittily captures much of the absurdity of religious apologetics. Mano Singham
I love jesusandmo.net cartoons - witty and sharp! Katha Pollitt
Often hilarious, frequently wry, these cartoons do what all the best cartoons do: they tell the truth through humour. Terry Sanderson, NSS President
...a wonderfully acid British cartoonist... Nick Cohen
I love the scrappy mockery of Jesus and Mo. Freedom of speech
includes the freedom to mock any person, any thing, any activity, and
any belief -- and J&M stands up for this unflinchingly Richard Stallman
...empowering, important and deeply progressive, not to mention hilarious... Council of Ex-Muslims
November 20, 2006
Sadly, spot on, Author…
And FIRST?
Sadly, spot on, Author…
And FIRST?
First and second by the look of it Tomas!
So the last will be first, and the first last. Where does the second end up, Author?
Since when did J& M become that self-reflected and aware of being intolerant, disrespectful and rejectful?
And how are they going to climb in the same bed tonight?
Cheers!
This one’s good. Hold a mirror up to those hypocritical bastards!
“Tolerate our intolerance”. Think you’ve summed up the 2,000yr old debate right there!
This is precisely why I have ceased to tolerate religious tolerance.
I don’t object when people, as a group, decide that another group of people are sinful and immoral. People can believe whatever assholery they want. It’s when they try to influence the educational system and spread their sickness that it crosses the line.
I’m no fan of Islam, and Sharia law is barbaric from every angle, but peaceful Muslims are as welcome to come to my country as peaceful Christians. My mother in law sends me anti-immigrant shite that seems designed to ignite a religious war. I’ve argued with her before, and asked her to stop sending such stuff, so I was just going to ignore the latest bullshit. But I had to call her out after the events in Christchurch. I will not tolerate intolerance. Inflaming people about Muslim immigrants isn’t helping anybody. Many of the Muslim immigrants come here to get away from the repressive crap they had to live with back in their original country. This applies particularly to LGBQT Muslims, such as the gay refuge the Unitarian fellowship in my town is currently sponsoring. Muslims are not a monolithic group, no more than Christians or atheists are.
If you want to be a bigot then there’s little I can do about it. However I will tell you exactly what I think about your use of your god to justify your bigotry.
Reply to DH : I have to agree.
The Christchurch attack hit too close to home, I spent part of a very carefree childhood playing in Hagley Park every day after school. I don’t remember the mosque but I do remember the city having a place of worship for every group.
I will not be tolerating intolerance again and gun happy gobshites of any persuasion can kiss my large tolerant bum.
D.H. I understand your point of view…but since muslims have to accept that the Qur’an is the absolute and last word by their deity. You would have to accept that the majority of them would gleefully dance on the grave of infidel children if they are true followers of the prophet and his blood thirsty god! Those who can be made to believe in absurdities can be made to perform atrocities…..how very true…
Is it intolerant to be intolerant of the intolerant?
M27Holts – What makes you thing Muslims have to do anything just because they are Muslims? There are as many versions of Islam as there are of Christianity. I would point you in the direction of some fundamentalist Muslims who see terrorism as a gross distortion of Islam, forbidden by the Prophet, but you seem to have already made your mind up.
M27Holts need not read this. But if anyone else is interested, I was thinking of http://www.salafipublications.com/sps/. I disagree with them about almost everything else, but when it comes to terrorism, they seem to have got it just about right:
“Exposing deviant ideologies, exteemism, terrorism and their proponents.”
Mr Seed. Buy yourself the picthall translation of the glorious Qu’ran. Open it at a random page. I will guarantee that you will find a verse that promotes the hatred of non believers.
Paul Seed, to extrapolate “What makes you think white supremacists have to do anything just because they are white supremacists?”
That sounds absurd, because it is absurd.
If we can’t explore, examine, and hold people to account for their beliefs and the consequences of their beliefs, then we may as well stop talking at all.
As M27 says, pretty much anywhere in the Q’ran has exhortations to kill the unbeliever, or the celebrate their eternal punishment.
Its almost the opening words, e.g. https://al-quran.info/#2
The fact that most muslims are as hypocritical and ignorant of their own faith (although they all seem pretty well informed when it comes to hating gays) as most people of all other declared faiths (or declared politics, for that matter) is an interesting fact. I guess.
But to deny that the avowed tents of Islam are violent and exclusive is to be willfully naive. At best.
Willful naivety might be politically useful in a “lets all just pretend that all our worship is the same, and that our holy books arent stuffed full of gleeful celebrations of torture, slavery, and genocide while we find ways to live alongside each other” kinda way. And that’s fine.
But let’s not confuse that with the facts.
M27Holts: I guarantee you are incorrect (about opening the Qur’an to any page and seeing a message of hatred to non-believers.) Clearly, there are numerous passages promising hellfire (often for “hypocrites”) but the “hatred of non-believers” or “celebrating” eternal punishment is so way-overstated as to be counter-productive to any reasonable discussion…as well as absurd.
As a test to myself, I opened my copy (with English and Arabic) to “Al-Ma’idah”–surah 5, v. 111-115: mostly just a tribute to Jesus.
Interesting – I just did a Google search on “intolerance quotes” and got a BUNCH of ’em. One in particular:
Anger and intolerance are the enemies of correct understanding.
— Mohandas Gandhi
Far as I’m concerned, those who would be intolerant and who would superimpose their intolerance upon others must themselves not be tolerated.
Jveed. Well I just opened at page 158. Surah 16: An-Nahl v 106. Whoever disbelieves in Allah after his belief – except him who is forced to it and whose heart is still content with the faith – but who finds ease in disbelief: On them is wrath from Allah. Theirs will be an awful doom. QED. Methinks…
HelenaHandbasket. I shall take issue with your comment to Paul Seed, to extrapolate “What makes you think white supremacists have to do anything just because they are white supremacists?”
That sounds absurd, because it is absurd.
I don’t think it’s absurd. There are millions of white supremacists who never actually DO anything. There is a range in white supremacists, all the way from mild racists to murderous assholes. The modern world was created by white supremacists, taking territory in the name of white superiority.
There are millions of Christians who wouldn’t stone their daughter for refusing to marry her rapist. There are millions of Muslims who cherry pick the Quran the same way Christians cherry pick the bible. Spreading generalized bullshit about any huge group of human beings can only lead to religious wars, and atrocities like the attack in Christchurch.
I think all religions are stupid and harmful, but demonizing any one of them as if they are different from the others isn’t doing anybody any good.
DH. Are you not concerned that Muslims are taught from a very early age that the Qu’ran is the final and absolute word of an extremely unpleasant deity. It has been proven that a considerable number of muslims are in favour of the more extreme parts of sharia law. The sheeples would gladly vote for the abbatoire to be extended so to speak…
the meta-humor is that, risible as the slogans are, they grossly understate J and M’s actual requirements. the afterlife fascists always demand “respect” as code for subordination; replacing “tolerate” and “accept” respectively with “admire” and “grovel before” would be just a minimal tip of the hat towards honesty
D.H. Apparently I have to spell out what I meant.
Its this:
“If believers in white supremacism can be held to account for their beliefs, then so can believers in Jihadism”
I know that the left, for reasons if its own, finds some of the hideous extremes of Islamic radicalism palatable. Only just the other day a self-described feminist lectured me on how I was racist to oppose burkhas. At the same time the hideous extremes of other supremacisms get the opprobrium they deserve. Why this lop-sidedness happens (One suspects that they are driven by hatred of their own culture, the glories of self-flagellating guilt?) I am not sure, but I don’t see why we should allow this sort of self-indulgent hypocrisy to go unchallenged in public.
It’s massively distorting the terms of shared social space that we all have to live in.
Dehumanising is dehumanising, whoever does it to whoever. As Maajid Nawaz ably puts it; It’s a racism of low expectations not to hold brown people to account for their actions in the same way we hold white people to account for their actions.
Frankly, a lot of us are sick to the back teeth of it and the way it continually hands propaganda victories to the most unpleasant elements of the right wing, while elements of the left sit there feeling holier that thou and throwing out identity politics cliches.
They need to be shaken into some degree of responsibility over this themselves.
Are my meaning and intention clearer?
HelenaHandbasket, perfectly clear. And of course I agree. Holding extremists responsible says nothing to my comments about not demonizing an entire group, on either side. I haven’t actually noticed the left granting any slack to Islamic terrorists. I do see them pointing out the right wing tendency to describe white racists killers as lone deranged individuals who were angelic children, while describing Islamic terrorists accurately as terrorists. It’s a disturbing fact that most of the acts of terrorism in the Untied States have been perpetrated by conservative white men.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/01/homegrown-terrorists-2018-were-almost-all-right-wing/581284/
M27Holts, of course I’m concerned. And when I read that some eighty percent of Afghans think that stoning a woman to death for adultery is appropriate, I lose any interest in democracy for that country.
My wife and I volunteered to help Syrian refugees acclimatize to life in Canada. That means we had a lot more contact with actual Muslims than most people have. I dislike the culture intensely. The wife and mother of the family, a very shy and sweet woman, could not even shake my hand. The husband made clear his attitude towards homosexuals and dogs. He asked us if we believed in god and seemed amazed when we said we didn’t. I don’t think he’d ever met an admitted atheist before. But at the at the end of the conversation I asked him, “But we’re still friends. Right?” And his response seemed enthusiastic and genuine: “One hundred percent.”
Of course I’m concerned. The cultural divide between us seems huge. But I look at his children, all attending public schools, and I know that peer pressure has much more influence than parental pressure. So there is hope. In the meantime, the parents are salt of the earth family people. He owned a big house with a swimming pool in Syria. He had his own cement business, with a couple of cement trucks. Life was middle class good for them until he got hit by a missile from a war plane that put him in the hospital. After two years in a refugee camp in Jordan, the family came here. They don’t want to leave their culture. They wanted to get away from assholes trying to kill them.
They find adapting to Canada, where same sex marriage is legal and dogs live with people inside their houses, very confusing. But they also see what we have here, and are grateful to be starting a new life in our country. To demonize them as some great threat to our way of life is just bullshit. We have Catholic priests in Quebec inflaming their congregations about sex education in schools. I’m more worried about them.
DH — If the number of refugees is small, then the children will assimilate, and their parents won’t be able to stop it. But if the number is sufficiently large then the parents (as we’re seeing in Europe) will be able to create self-sufficient enclaves and impose the culture you dislike so intensely upon their children, and you won’t be able to do anything to stop it. That seems like kind of a bad idea, doesn’t it?
Aye. A lot of cities and towns in blighty are segmented into muslim areas and non muslim areas. They have no wish to mix with infidels and once schools are set up as madrasses then you have the perfect environment to allow the radicalisation of kids on a quite astonishing scale. As in game of thrones the great war is coming…and it will be fought in europe once more….
jb and M27Holts, you have done a great job of articulating the problem. But you both seem to accept religious war as inevitable. I don’t. I see religious war as a result of bad policy and bad propaganda by people who want to see it happen.
In France, for example, they brought Muslims into the country because they needed the laborers. But they didn’t want Muslims. They wanted to keep France “pure”. So they made policies that prevented the immigrants from becoming citizens, disenfranchised them, and created an underclass in what amounted to ghettos. They don’t like the idea of multi-culturalism, so they tried to prevent assimilation.
The totally predictable result was the situation you describe. Very soon they had young men and women who were born in France, but were not French and were prevented from becoming French. Naturally they resented this. So the French played right into the hands of the Mullahs.
There’s nothing wrong with Muslim areas and non-Muslim areas. In China, where I lived for nine years, there are many Muslim areas. They are a favorite place to go for barbecue, and my wife and I spent many enjoyable evenings sitting around the little charcoal grills eating freshly slaughtered goats on wire skewers. The Muslims seem to live in peace with the general population.
In Vancouver we have always had ethic areas – an Italian neighborhood, a Chinese neighborhoods, a German neighborhood, and yes, a Muslim neighborhood. There’s no problem as long as nobody starts “otherizing” one of the groups and inflames hatred.
In Ontario, a small group of Muslims tried to get the government to set up a Sharia court for family law. They were opposed by a much larger group of Muslims who came to Canada to get away from that kind of crap. The result was that ALL religious family courts were shut down, specifically the one that the Catholics had maintained for years. Yeah Muslims, eh.
Also in Ontario, a young Muslim man, radicalized by social media, robbed a Seven Eleven to get funds for a plane ticket so that he could go to Syria and join Isis. He was turned in to the authorities, and his plan was thwarted. By his father. That wouldn’t happen if his father feared the authorities, and had been told that he had no place in Canada.
So, it isn’t a matter of the number of refugees. We’ve had huge influxes of refugees as various parts of the world have suffered famine or war. Often the refugees are resented and an attempt is made to prevent them from integrating. (Look at the problems the Irish had in America during the potato famine.) That is a huge mistake. And spreading anti-Muslim bullshit is also a huge mistake.
Most recently, in town I live in, the word went out that Muslims were afraid to go to the mosque after the slaughter in Christchurch. Hundreds of Christians and atheists showed up to escort them. Each was presented with a rose by members of the grateful Muslim congregation. That is the kind of country I want to live in. You can keep your fear and your anecdotal stories of immigrant problems. I know which side I’m on, and that ain’t it.
D.H. do you think that declaring Mohammed as a historically proven blood thirsty sociopath is anti Muslim? Is my wife wearing a short skirt when we visit Bolton anti Muslim? Because both of these are considered inflammatory in a so called free country!
M27Holts, “Because both of these are considered inflammatory in a so called free country!” Considered inflammatory by whom?
Simply declaring yourself an atheist is considered inflammatory in many communities, and putting a Darwin fish on you vehicle is an invitation to having your car keyed.
Many things are considered inflammatory by those looking to take offense. Fuck ’em. Many others are just fine with the things you mention, and I refuse to paint the whole country with the attitudes of the intolerant. It’s my country too, damn it. The assholes can’t tell me what the tone of the country is. Laugh at them. Don’t take them seriously. And for goodness sake, don’t let them sour your attitude to a whole group of people.
Nice to be getting noticed by M27 Holts and Helena Handbasket. The problem with their approach is that they are looking at words in a book, and mistaking them for reality. I am relying on colleagues I work with on a daily basis, many of whom happen to be muslims.
Darwin Harmless, I appreciate the work you do with Afghan refugees into Canada. And I agree that people coming from Afghanistan to Canada (or the UK) may find all their assumptions challendged by reality. But there are many interesting and exciting changes going on in muslim countries now. Democracy has to be built and defended.
Mr Seed. Your assumptions are letting you down. I have worked with lots of muslims in the past. Some of them have been nominally muslim. However, as with conservative xtians the muslims who have been successfully brainwashed as children have to be the most ignorant people I have met. I had a close friend beaten to death when I was in my early twenties? His crime? He was secretly dating a muslim girl in bury and when her brothers found out they stamped on him till he was dead…Nobody was ever brought to justice either..I think you trivialise the grip that the words of the Qu’ran have over those with weak minds…
And your argument also seem to resonate with the argument. “The Kray twins were ok geezers coz they bought their mother flowers”…
Well, I think we can all agree, that religion is a pernicious influence. But there’s a school of thought about this, that the (selectively) reported vicious character of Islam isn’t really Islam at all, it’s a cultural backdrop that’s prevalent in the middle east. If you looked at say Indonesia to get your ideas about Islam, it would be very different (and there are lots of them, I believe it’s the largest Islamic population in one country.)
As has been said a million times. If you follow the teachings of a sixth century nutter then it wouldn’t be surprising that you might find that your delusions are not really compatible with 21st century democratic cultures. Once you have a sufficiently large number of such individuals then they will successfully project their masters wishes and attempt to bring back the dark ages. They have succeeded in a lot of places, turning them into hell holes of ignorance and theocratic tyranny…