Lash wrote:This is how it seems to me, as well. I think most of these nimh-types mean well--but they don't trust other people to be able to separate the terrorists from the rest of the Muslims--they must feel a bit superior, and therefore we are in need of their tutelage.
You certainly seem to be, because you appear to be perennially unable to walk the line between identifying real dangers and resorting to generalising rants.
ME: I personally think that Muslim fundamentalism, Islamism, is a real and serious threat to democracy, human rights and womens rights in particular throughout the Middle East.
I also think that the situation in many multicultural neighbourhoods of Western Europe is bad, really bad, and could spill over into violence like it happened in France. Any continued systematic, institutionalised discrimination of immigrants and their offspring, the massive hate that swells towards - in Holland, for example - Moroccan youths, will provide a combustive mix with the poverty, the failing education, and the acute identity crisis of young sons of immigrants, torn between the deeply conservative and rather humble culture of their fathers and the modern and rather assertive culture of their new homeland. I'm afraid they'll take the worst of both worlds, which will make the **** hit the fan.
I am
afraid that Islamist cliques will take advantage of this, and recruit such angry/confused youths. I havent, however, seen much proof yet that Islamist extremism has
already taken hold over any substantial proportion of the Muslims in Holland or Belgium. In Holland, they killed Van Gogh. But investigations into the network behind it seem to turn up ever the same dozen or two of names - and half of them are white or black converts to Islam, not Northern African immigrants.
As Steve said of course, just one person is enough to cause death. But that doesn't mean that it's not important to point out, when, for example, you go much further and submit that most of the French riots sprang forth from religion, that I have seen nothing to prove or illustrate that. I will even bring a series of on-the-spot reports that I think are really informative for those interested in what
is really going on; lord knows it's bad enough. And I
will note when you seem to base your submission on little more than a general impression of whats going on in this corner of the world, generally: on speculation and prejudice.
So yes, I like facts and specifics - sue me. I like on-the-spot testimonies. I like distinguishing what exactly happened, where exactly, regarding what problem and for what reason - rather than taking a general theory (Rising Islamism will terrorize Europe) and filing everything that happens that relates to the theme under that category automatically.
You have made a number of assertions on this thread. Most importantly, that most violence in France these weeks was inspired by religion. You have brought little more about that but the overall theory that something surely is up. Well, yes, something surely is up, and one of those things is rising Islamism. But I still havent seen any evidence that it was Islamists who were
behind these riots.
Most of the assertions you did specify turned out to be wrong. You specify that, of course, in your sketch of what the rioting neighbourhoods are like, you are talking about first-generation immigrants. But 90% of those arrested were born in France. You talk of "homogenous neighbourhoods"; but in Clichy-sous-Bois, the suburb where the riots first started, as the WaPo reported Monday, "government figures show that half of all families are immigrants; unofficial estimates place the numbers higher". Note, ergo: a third or half the residents is native French; the rest are immigrants - including West- and North-Africans, former Yugoslavs, Asians, Turks.
Most important of all, vile stereotyping remains vile, regardless. And you will be called on it, yes. The fact that there
is an Islamist scene that should worry us, does not add any more legitimacy to your Le Pen-like rants like on the last page, sketching the majority of Muslims in our countries as some kind of illiterate, genitally mutilating fundamentalists who have to pray and ritually wash five times a day and who refuse to work with people of other religions - "earned prejudice", as you call it. That remains plain, offensive bullshit - regardless of whether there is a man called Mohammed Bouyari.
Yes, I recognize the Islamist threat. Also how it plays out on the streets of the banlieues - notably re: the treatment of women there. But no, that doesn't make it OK to spout
any old nonsense about said threat. Even if there is something in the general direction you're pointing, doesn't mean that any kind of pointing in it is per definition right; less still, that when people put you right on what you're blathering about it, they must just be bleeding-heart, blindfolded liberals who just dont want to know, period. I'd say that if you actually want to
fight Islamism, rather than just showboat about it, you'd bloody well better know what exactly is going on.
