Muhammad's ball, or: what Islam has done to the French National Team

[Skybird]

I apologize that this is only for those who understand German, I did not find equivalnet essays in English, but I find this too important and too interesting an explanation for the French drama.

I have indicated in the football threat that I have a problem with one or two German players as well, namely Mesut Özil, and this problem I have with him because of the same reasons that seem to have led to the meltdown in the French team. I refer to intereviews of Özil from 1 week or 10 days ago, and another one several months ago. In the first he said that he will never sing the naional anthem, for he focusses on the recitation of Quran Suras instead and finds it difficult to realise in those 2, 3 minutes that he plays for his - claimed - German home nation. This may not rasie much criticism, since several other players of Islamic and christian faith do not sing the anthem as well and have their own way to focus on the match, and I personally also am no fetishist to sing the anthem. I consider it to be a good motivational thing for players of a National team, though. However, in the other interview I saw him in, he again insisted that he refuses to identitfy himself with his role of playing "for Germany", that time he explained it because to him his Turkish identity goes first. - I therefore want to ask him then why he does not live in Turkey, and why he does not play in the Turkish national team, then? Özil is a very good footballer, a creative player with agility and creativity, no doubt. But still - this is no championship of internationally composed clubs recruiting legionairs, this is a national team, and identification should and could be expected to be part of the job description if playing in such kind of team. - Özil recently affianced with (?) the sister of pop-singer Sarah Connor, but before - that women had to convert to Islam. She said she did it for love. If love is what it is about, one could ask why Özil and /or his family clan for the sake of love could not simply ignore the religious issue alltogether, and "gave love a chance" not before she was willing to convert?

Almost half of the German players have a migration background they write in the press, which makes the German team one of the most multicultural teams at this championship. they are from places like Spain, Marocco, Poland, Turkey, Ghana, Brazil. None of them has left any doubt that they take pride from representing Germany, and that while they also sympathise with their original homeland's teams (isn't that just all to natural?), they now prioritize Germany in their sentiments, without limits, and even when playing against teams from their former homes (like Podolski had to do some years back). Just Mesut Özil, Turkish roots and confessing to be a devout Muslim for whom his religion plays a great role, refuses to do show that ammount of identification with the German national team, both over relgious and ethnic/nationalistic reasons. And that's why I have a problem with him wearing the german dress.

The following two essays point at those French players who incited the revolt in the French team, showing a derogatory, haughty behavior and a voculaburly that is somewhat typical for islamic Herrenmenschen-culture, and all the rebels have one thing in common - they all are original or converted Muslims, showing and expressing a huge ammount of behavioural and verbal contempt for the non-Muslim trainers and team "mates" whom they managed to bully into intimidated passivity instead of these other players (a majority of the team!) speaking out against them, what they easily could have done, if only they would have wanted.

The sources of the essays are a website of the Coptian communiy, the other is a blog where a lady comments on islamic and ME political issues quite intelligently.


http://koptisch.wordpress.com/2010/06/26/was-der-islam-aus-ribery-anelka-und-abidal-machte/#more-3927

http://www.eussner.net/artikel_2010-06-24_09-55-11.html

[Lord_magerius]

Skybird posting about islam... who'd have thought it...

[Tribesman]

Skybird posting about islam... who'd have thought it...
Hey its even better, its not only posting about Islam.
Look at the articles, its about all the horrible "black" people:doh:
If the jackboot fits, let them wear it.:haha:

[conus00]

Hey its even better, its not only posting about Islam.
Look at the articles, its about all the horrible "black" people:doh:
If the jackboot fits, let them wear it.:haha:

I'm not sure I follow you. As far as I can tell Skybird did not say ONE religion-derogatory or racist thing in this post. He stated only facts.
I, for one, agree with the article 100%: If you became citizen of certain country and are given the honor to represent the country on any filed as part of national team. You should be PROUD of it.

[nikimcbee]

So are there any actual Germans left in Germany, or have they all emigrated to Wisconsin?

[nikimcbee]

So, I have a question. Is Germany overrun with PCness too? Do they use the hyphenated names there, like in the US? IE: African-American, Japanese-American, etc...

A Turkish-German:doh:?

[MH]

I wonder why some Muslim ,even successful ones(top players)act so anti west or anti place they live in.
They live in top democracies no one stole their land or forced them to play for France or Germany.
I cant read German does it explain their point of view?
I can somehow understand why Israeli Palestinian wouldn't sing Israeli anthem or celebrate Independence Day(not that i like it)but why it happens in Germany or France?


I guess Allah was with Germany this time 4-1 lol

[Skybird]

So, I have a question. Is Germany overrun with PCness too?
Yes.

[krashkart]

So are there any actual Germans left in Germany, or have they all emigrated to Wisconsin?

I don't know nikimcbee, I don't live in Wisconsin. But that cracked me up for some reason. :har:

Question: Would the world be better off or worse off without PC-ness?

[Skybird]

So are there any actual Germans left in Germany, or have they all emigrated to Wisconsin?

Maybe the essay I translated in this thread sheds some light on it:

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=171110

In fact we have a massive brain drain indeed, academically trained specialists leave Germany in greater numbers than ever before, also craftsmen. Uneducated social low-class-members with little or not perspective move in. Unwillingness for mintegration is an issue with muslim immigrants, but very especially with turks - who even get encouraged by their turkish government to reject, to refuse and to resists to integration.

And two healdines from german news today, also give two random impressions.

Policemen wanting to investigate a reported incident in a bar got lured into a trap and were then attaked by a wild mob of over 30 persons age 15-35. Five policemen got seriously wounded, one is in a critcal condition. Yesterday, activists from the left scene attacked a house were Arab immigrants that - rarely enough - tried to express some sympathy with their new home nation by hanging out a german flag from the window, the house was set on fire, anonymous spokesmen claimed that the left cpuld not tolerate such blatant displays of "Germanism" in Germany.

Some days ago, during a multicultural folklore festival in a residential area of a major city, a mob of islamic juveniles and young adults attcked a Jewish dance group during performance, starting to throw stones at them and then ending up with attacking them with clubs and chasing them through the streets.

So, anti-Germanism and islamophile racism and anti-semitism are a phenomenen on constant rise in Germany - because these are just the latest incidents of these kinds. In fact over the past few years, all three type of events has become a more or less frequent, regular phenomenon, always under participation of either the political or anarchistic left, or Muslim racists. The latest statistics report of the German Federal police marks a rise in left poltical violence of 40% over the past year alone, and a decline of 20% in right-winged violence (although the latter still is ona higher level than the first). 30,000 acts of poltical violence has been reproted to the police last year.

In Berlin, in most nights of the week, one or more cars of claimed "rich pigs" are set on fire. For the running year alone the number already is in the three-digit range again.

Some days ago , an essay made a good point, about why the left is so very anti-semitic. The author claimed that in history, there has only been one model of a truly socialist community model that in fact has worked reaonably well. But that model was not run and developed by the Western left, but - how unforgiving! - the Israeli: it's the Kibbuz. And this, the author said, the Western left cannot forgive, so they take revenge by condemning the nation behind the concept. :) I think he may have some point there. Youn can see the same kind of envy and craving for power in unions when they flatten any intenral opposition or subunions becasue these threaten to undermine the claim for exclusive worker representation by the major union. (German constituional high court has just ruled for the first time ever that unions must accept that subunions that represent only subgroups of an employee group sign their own contracts and treaties with employers - the major resistence from this was not coming from employers, but the major unions who lose power and influence by this sentence).

[Jimbuna]

So, I have a question. Is Germany overrun with PCness too?

Same as in Britain but we've also got loch ness :know:

[krashkart]

Entire Post - omitted here for brevity but worth a read nonetheless

Sounds like Germany is becoming a bit like LA after the Rodney King verdict. How is the rest of Europe looking? Stateside it's still peaceful enough... Muslims had (and might still have) more to fear from neighborhood lowlifes, depending on where they live. Saw something on TV awhile back about an older Muslim man that had been chased and beaten by a group of teenagers. Looked to be a poorer neighborhood, so there ya go. Gangbangers vs. turbans = bad juju.


Same as in Britain but we've also got loch ness :know:

:rotfl2:

[Tribesman]

I'm not sure I follow you. As far as I can tell Skybird did not say ONE religion-derogatory or racist thing in this post. He stated only facts.


I never said Sky said anything, I just noted that he has gone to the crackpot fringe to find views that match his own.

I, for one, agree with the article 100%:
So you think there are too many blacks on the team and its gonna end up with just black players?

If you became citizen of certain country and are given the honor to represent the country on any filed as part of national team. You should be PROUD of it.
Yet the blog slags off french people of french ancestry.
Besides which private and very public differences within teams and between players and staff are pretty normal even at national level.
As for some players not singing the anthem before kick off, look at most teams.

[Dimitrius07]

This thread reminds me a Terry Henry story with a racist (black hater) coach. I even followed Henry game and even despite his bad performance in Barca he plays like he don`t care, and that all i can say about the entire team. Nothing.

[Snestorm]

Send them back to where they came from.

[Tribesman]

Send them back to where they came from.

Paris?:har::har::har::har::har:
Hows it going with the danish national front nowadays? are you still having fun waving your flags and moaning about peoples skin colour Sne?:down:

[Dimitrius07]

I guess Allah was with Germany this time 4-1 lol

Does Germany became an Islamic state and i don`t know anything about it? Or you just posted your little sweet fantasy? A :hmmm: friendly question.:DL

[nikimcbee]

Same as in Britain but we've also got loch ness :know:

Isn't that Scottish?

.
.
.
.
.
:har:
Score one, team Buna.:haha:

[Snestorm]

Paris?:har::har::har::har::har:
Hows it going with the danish national front nowadays? are you still having fun waving your flags and moaning about peoples skin colour Sne?:down:

Couldn't tell you about the Danish National Front, as it's not the party I support.

Dansk Folkeparti. (Danish People's Party).
Big difference.

[MH]

Send them back to where they came from.


No let them all emigrate to Europe.:D

[Snestorm]

No let them all emigrate to Europe.:D

They've already done that. Now they can emigrate right back to where they came from.

(See my sig).

[MH]

They've already done that. Now they can emigrate right back to where they came from.

(See my sig).

Why whats wrong with that picture?:D



http://go2.wordpress.com/?id=725X1342&site=moinansari.wordpress.com&url=http%3A%2F%2Fmoinansari.files.wordpress.com%2F 2009%2F07%2Feurabia-map.jpg&sref=http%3A%2F%2Frupeenews.com%2F2009%2F08%2F10%2 F2050-europe-will-be-20-muslim-racist-bigotry-or-paranoia%2F

[Snestorm]

The map looks like a left-winger's dream come true.

It's not too late to stop that, . . . . yet.

[MH]

The map looks like a left-winger's dream come true.

It's not too late to stop that, . . . . yet.



:har:


http://img379.imageshack.us/img379/640/islamcartoonfeb27aweb5yf.jpg

[Dimitrius07]

The map looks like a left-winger's dream come true.

It's not too late to stop that, . . . . yet.

Just watch out in the progress. Or they might call you a worst enemy of your own state :o:dead:.......:haha:

[Tribesman]

Isn't it supreme irony when two Jewish members from a country that is highly dependant on immigration and has been since its first proposal are having a laugh with a real anti immigrant who has this thing about racial purity of the supreme nordic aryan race and the threat impurity of blood poses to the blond haired blue eyed people.

BTW Demitiri you were called the worst enemy of your own state because you support views that even the head of Mossad says are harmful to the state.

[Foxtrot]

In other news (which should not go under your radar birdy :D)


Leftists harass Muslims for supporting Germany

Leftist anarchists in Berlin have reportedly been harassing Muslim immigrants showing their support for the German football team during the World Cup, tearing down national flags and even setting one on fire.

Here they have made a point of destroying and removing Germany flags hanging outside shops and vehicles because they believe the proud patriotism hearkens back to the ugly nationalism of the Third Reich, the paper said.

A group calling itself "Kommando Kevin-Prince Boateng" posted a notice on the website Indymedia calling on leftists to “capture” all Germany flags across the country. The name refers to the Berlin-born footballer, who is playing for Ghana at the world cup and knocked German team captain Michael Ballack out of the tournament with a brutal foul in the FA Cup final in May.

One Arab-German family has sparked their ire by hanging a giant Germany flag on their Sonnenallee building in support of the football team during the World Cup.

Ibrahim Bassal, who owns a mobile phone shop in the district, told daily Berliner Morgenpost on Saturday that since he and his cousin hoisted the flag they have had several uncomfortable encounters with the local leftists.

“During the day people from the left-wing scene come by and insult us,” Bassal said. “Am I not allowed to be proud of Germany?”

Bassal and his cousin Badr Mohammed, a well-known conservative Christian Democratic Berlin politician who lives in the same building, worked together to get the 20-metre-long flag, which cost them €500.

In recent days the situation has escalated, with the anarchists attempting to remove the flag four times and even setting it on fire, the paper reported. On one occasion a group managed to gain access to the roof of the building and cut the flag down.

Last Friday evening some 16 people dressed in typical black anarchist garb confronted Bassal in his shop, and the mood was tense, the paper said.

After Germany’s World Cup victory over Ghana last week Bassal reportedly stayed up to look after his shop until 4 am.

“They see us as immigrants,” he said. “They don’t understand that Germans who aren’t from Germany would defend Germany.”

Both Bassal and Mohammed told Berliner Morgenpost that they are incredulous they have to defend hanging a German flag to native Germans.

Though the store owner’s entire family have been citizens for many years, the leftists believe immigrants must remain foreigners, he added.

Meanwhile many of the residents of Arab or Turkish descent who live in the multicultural district are defending the huge flag and continuing to show their support, the paper reported.

The family has organised nighttime surveillance of the flag with neighbours to prevent further attacks, they said.

“We won’t let our pride be taken away,” Bassal and Mohammed said.

But according to Der Tagesspiegel, Bassal has decided to remove the flag and hoist it only on days when there is a Germany match. Meanwhile other residents told the paper they were taking special care not to leave their flags unattended.


http://www.thelocal.de/society/20100628-28147.html

Now in which group are we going to put these folks? Should we also send them back as a couple of posters in this thread pointed out?

[MH]

Isn't it supreme irony when two Jewish members from a country that is highly dependant on immigration and has been since its first proposal are having a laugh with a real anti immigrant who has this thing about racial purity of the supreme nordic aryan race and the threat impurity of blood poses to the blond haired blue eyed people.

BTW Demitiri you were called the worst enemy of your own state because you support views that even the head of Mossad says are harmful to the state.

Enemy of my enemy is my friend.:salute:

Seriusly...i personally realize that there are many kinds of people(Muslim) as i live in Jerusalem.(half of Jerusalem is Arab"s)
The problem is that its impossible to deal with trouble makers without hell braking lose about racism.
As some of you don't want to be labeled as antisemitic when criticizing Israel why you label someone as racist when doing the same with Arabs?
There are many examples of that here in Israel regarding Israeli Palestinians(the ones that live inside 67 Israel-don't want to be part of Palestinian state-just trust me on that) and lefties as well.
Some times people trying to be right(left:D) or idealistic at all coast and lose sense of reality.
I'm not saying also that I'm not suspicious of Israeli Palestinians as whole.
I admit I'm.
I'm afraid that when **** hits the fun here for real and they sense weakness on Israeli side we will have here whole kind of new "intifada".
I hope I'm wrong here but well...thats my feeling and i think its quite realistic but is it racist?

[Tribesman]

As some of you don't want to be labeled as antisemitic when criticizing Israel why you label someone as racist when doing the same with Arabs?

Thats easy
Well for starters not all Israelis are Jewish and not all Jews are Israelis, so Israel is just a country with its own individual policies and actions.
So when you want to criticise arabs which arabs do you mean and which policies from which countries, or which particular religion of arabs are you on about?

I just found it funny that Dimitri and yourself appear in agreement with someone who believes any dilution of pure nordic bloodstock amounts to genocide and that people contaminated with any cross breeding must be expelled, which seems rather like a political theory from 1930s germany.

What makes it funnier is the kick them all back to where they came from angle when many of the people in the articles are living where they come from, plus of course dimitri blowing a fuse the other week in outrage when that dumb journalist made exactly the same sort of comment.

As for "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" line, what utter tripe.
For example take Americas foriegn policy as a measure over the past 70 year, how many dozens of times has that line turned round and humiliatingly bitten them in the arse.

[Tribesman]

Now in which group are we going to put these folks? Should we also send them back as a couple of posters in this thread pointed out?
Thats an interesting one, where to send someone from a state somewhere else when they don't recognise states.
An impossibility it would seem as no matter where you sent them they would still be in the same place.

[Snestorm]

Isn't it supreme irony when two Jewish members from a country that is highly dependant on immigration and has been since its first proposal are having a laugh with a real anti immigrant who has this thing about racial purity of the supreme nordic aryan race and the threat impurity of blood poses to the blond haired blue eyed people.

BTW Demitiri you were called the worst enemy of your own state because you support views that even the head of Mossad says are harmful to the state.

You realy are at a loss when people's actions don't fit into your preconcieved picturebook, aren't you?

Just for the record, I consider myself scandinavian, not "aryan".

I believe that people have a right to their own homeland.
(Can you see some common ground here, Tribesman?)

[Skybird]

Enemy of my enemy is my friend
Not alway. Sometimes the enemy of my enemy - still is my enemy as well. The US foreign policy lives a lot by your assumption, especially in the Middle and Far East. And it has screwed up so often that one can ask if there even is any realistic middle east policy in the state departement that is worth the name. US middle east policy is at least as dilletantic and shortsighted as is the European middle east policy - and considering the infantility of the EU, that description really means something.

[Tribesman]

Just for the record, I consider myself scandinavian, not "aryan".

So is that the blond haired blue eyed nordic race which was used interchangably with aryan by the nazis and neo-nazis or do you include thishttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Saami_Family_1900.jpg scandanavian group as your blond haired blue eyed people who would be being murdered in an act of genocide by any dilution of their bloodline.

[Snestorm]

So is that the blond haired blue eyed nordic race which was used interchangably with aryan by the nazis and neo-nazis or do you include thishttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Saami_Family_1900.jpg scandanavian group as your blond haired blue eyed people who would be being murdered in an act of genocide by any dilution of their bloodline.

"The Nordic Countries" does include Finland.
"The Scandinavian Countries" does not include Finland.
Neither terminology includes Germany, so I don't know where this "aryan" concept comes from.

[Tribesman]

"The Nordic Countries" does include Finland.
"The Scandinavian Countries" does not include Finland.
Ain't it lucky that the photo shows a norwegian Sami family then which puts your Finland thing into irrelevance:har:

Neither terminology includes Germany, so I don't know where this "aryan" concept comes from.
Perhaps that explains that despite spouting out concepts from a rather twisted 1930s ideology you can't actually see what it is you are saying.
Can you work through the etymology of the word "nordic"?

[AngusJS]

Why whats wrong with that picture?:D



http://go2.wordpress.com/?id=725X1342&site=moinansari.wordpress.com&url=http%3A%2F%2Fmoinansari.files.wordpress.com%2F 2009%2F07%2Feurabia-map.jpg&sref=http%3A%2F%2Frupeenews.com%2F2009%2F08%2F10%2 F2050-europe-will-be-20-muslim-racist-bigotry-or-paranoia%2F


There are about 13 million Muslims in the EU...out of a total population of about 500 million.

They constitute 2.6 % of the population! Run for the hills!

Anyway, who cares where immigrants are from or what they think about their new country?

[Skybird]

There are about 13 million Muslims in the EU...out of a total population of about 500 million.

They constitute 2.6 % of the population! Run for the hills!

Check birthrates.

Anyway, who cares where immigrants are from or what they think about their new country?
You certainly don't.

Again,
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=171110

[AngusJS]

Check birthrates.Birthrates seem to be declining among immigrants.

http://www.prb.org/Articles/2008/muslimsineurope.aspx?p=1

You certainly don't.

Ok, why should anyone care? As long as they're law-abiding, why should anyone care how immigrants feel about their new country or which religion they subscribe to?

[Snestorm]

Ain't it lucky that the photo shows a norwegian Sami family then which puts your Finland thing into irrelevance:har:


Perhaps that explains that despite spouting out concepts from a rather twisted 1930s ideology you can't actually see what it is you are saying.
Can you work through the etymology of the word "nordic"?

The sami people have been where they are as long as we've been where we are.
Sorry but, I neither see them as a threat to our existance, nor we as a threat to theirs.
The rapid shift in demographics, and the colonization of our countries from outside Europe, I do see as a threat.

[MH]

Thats easy
Well for starters not all Israelis are Jewish and not all Jews are Israelis, so Israel is just a country with its own individual policies and actions.
So when you want to criticise arabs which arabs do you mean and which policies from which countries, or which particular religion of arabs are you on about?
.


Im about Muslims for most part.
Christian Israeli Palestinians somehow assimilate themselves much better into Israeli society than Muslims.
They still call themselves Arabs/Palestinians but have much less ideological/mental problems to be Israeli.
Israel is like a small lab where you can see how all kind of different religions mix together and how they interact and Islam is the troublesome.


As for "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" line, what utter tripe.
For example take Americas foriegn policy as a measure over the past 70 year, how many dozens of times has that line turned round and humiliatingly bitten them in the arse.

Please...it just poped to my mind:DL.


I just found it funny that Dimitri and yourself appear in agreement with someone who believes any dilution of pure nordic bloodstock amounts to genocide and that people contaminated with any cross breeding must be expelled, which seems rather like a political theory from 1930s germany.
.

I did not get this kind impression from any one in this thread.
Maybe you try too hard to read between the lines or i missed something.

[Schroeder]

Birthrates seem to be declining among immigrants.

http://www.prb.org/Articles/2008/muslimsineurope.aspx?p=1

Well, having one child more per woman than the rest still causes a shift in the overall population.

I also love this little thing:

The gap narrowed even further in the former West Germany, where the authors relied on data by mother's nationality rather than religionIsn't that nice? So if a Muslim woman is native German her birth rate will be counted to the German side which of course then closes the gap between not native German Muslims and "all the rest" (with plenty of Muslims with a German passport). That's a way to make a statistic look nice.


Ok, why should anyone care? As long as they're law-abiding, why should anyone care how immigrants feel about their new country or which religion they subscribe to? And if some of them openly declare war on your values and way of life? And what if this certain group is known to cause more criminals as any other ethnicity in your country? There has just been a nice report here from our police that finally gave some inside into criminal behaviour and religion. The more devout male Muslim juveniles were the more likely they became violent. They were also way more often violent than any other ethnic group in Germany.
Would you just want to sit back and see what will happen in the future, or would you want to keep a close eye on that and do something (non violent) about it?

[Tribesman]

I did not get this kind impression from any one in this thread.
Maybe you try too hard to read between the lines or i missed something.
Thats because it relates to what they have written before about cross breeding the nordic race being the same as murder.It resulted in a moderator writing Anyhow I would advise people to tread carefully when it comes to expressing concepts of genetic (racial) purity and other such stuff. We don't take too kindly to that sort of talk round these here parts



Check birthrates.

Bingo, Skybirds demographic timebomb. :har::har::har::har::har:
Please post that demographics video again, its hilarious.

The sami people have been where they are as long as we've been where we are.

So can they have their own homeland too, after all everyone needs their own livingroom. Come to think of it as the Sami are indigenous and the north germanic tribes are the immigrants shouldn't they get all the land as their homeland

[Dimitrius07]

BTW Demitiri you were called the worst enemy of your own state because you support views that even the head of Mossad says are harmful to the state.
:nope:
What kind of views and what kind of harm? I attacked a person because he is shaking his hand with Iranian president who want my country,America and everything non Islamic destroyed. It seems to me that you simply don`t like what i `am saying so you making our own versions. Big surprise!! :woot:. While we at it i never supported genocide in any form towards ANY nation and i never support other with that kind of views, from you however i hear the issue of race almost every time. Self conviction is a strong argument, especially if someone don`t follow your way :yeah:. Very low and pathetic way to draw attention to something else if you ask me.

[Tribesman]

What kind of views and what kind of harm?
You support policies and actions that are harmful to the State. After all Dagan said to the Knesset that the policies and actions are making Israel a liability to its supporters and Israel is stuffed without its continued outside support.
BTW do you think Dagan is not getting his job term extended again because of the murder fiasco in dubai?

I attacked a person ......
You attacked a Jewish person and called them an anti-semite, same as you did with the Jewish South African over Gaza, its a common pattern when someone equates any criitcism of Israel as anti semitic that they go on to call any Jews who hold different views as being somehow anti-semites.

[Snestorm]

@Tribesman post # 42

This is what the moderator wrote, in closing HIS statement.:

"Cultural evolution is an ongoing process of change and even extinction. The culture a society has now is not the same as 10 years ago, or 100 years ago, and so on. Change is inevitable, and cultures have been mixing, blending, and disappearing since the start of society. Trying to protect it is in a sense pointless as it is ever changing even without outside influences. Also this is survival of the fittest, the strongest culture is the one that survives in the end.

Also for the record, race does not exist according to genetics or scientific theory. None of the so called races posses unique genetic traits, all races have variations where some genes may be more dominant then others. All 'races' possess the physical features of all the other 'races', you can have dark skinned 'white' people, Asians with Caucasian features, and all with out intermixing of genetic data. We assign race to people because of trends in very superficial physical characteristics in the overall demographics.

One of the ironies of the holocaust was that the Nazi's were often putting to death people that more perfectly represented the physical ideals of the so called Aryan race then the vast majority of the German populace. Yet their ideology was based very much on physical traits associated with 'racial purity'.

Lastly no matter how you try to slice it, intermarriage and breeding is not ethnic cleansing. The two are practically polar opposites. One is a blending of genetic code (often with some cultural blending in the family unit), the other is the elimination of a group (which may not even be genetically different) typically by practices of genocide (mass murder, sterilization, etc).

Anyhow I would advise people to tread carefully when it comes to expressing concepts of genetic (racial) purity and other such stuff. We don't take too kindly to that sort of talk round these here parts"

Quote is from NeonSamuria. Post # 215.
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=161058&page=15

As can be seen, it was not aimed at any particular individual.

The relative parts of the discussion start at the top of page 12.

Tribesman doesn't like to see people exert themselves with "small" details.

[Snestorm]

A wikipedia link to the political party I support, and all the platforms.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_People%27s_Party

Nationalist: Yes.
Anti-multiculturalist: Yes (This is what tribesman resents most).
Anti-semetic: Sorry Tribesman but, we support Israel and USA.
Nazi: Sorry Tribesman but, you loose again.
Stopping mass immigration: YES!

Almost forgot.
Anti-EU: Yes.
Anti-Euro: Yes.
And on a more personal level, I'm also anti-socialist.

[Snestorm]

:nope:
What kind of views and what kind of harm? I attacked a person because he is shaking his hand with Iranian president who want my country,America and everything non Islamic destroyed. It seems to me that you simply don`t like what i `am saying so you making our own versions. Big surprise!! :woot:. While we at it i never supported genocide in any form towards ANY nation and i never support other with that kind of views, from you however i hear the issue of race almost every time. Self conviction is a strong argument, especially if someone don`t follow your way :yeah:. Very low and pathetic way to draw attention to something else if you ask me.

Good post. It describes Tribesman to a T.

[Tribesman]

As can be seen, it was not aimed at any particular individual.

Who are the particular individuals that call "cross breeding" murder and ethnic cleansing. Which are the particular individuals who talked of racial purity?
BTWNazi: Sorry Tribesman but, you loose again.

From one of your countrymen in the other topic ......
"they are pretty much closet neo-nazis...there is loving ones country, and then there is "loving" it DF style, the fanatic nationalist way"

[AngusJS]

Isn't that nice? So if a Muslim woman is native German her birth rate will be counted to the German side which of course then closes the gap between not native German Muslims and "all the rest" (with plenty of Muslims with a German passport). That's a way to make a statistic look nice.Was the relevant data kept in West Germany back in the 70s? Maybe the authors had to make do with what they had. The journal article is pay-to-view, so I guess we'll never know.

And if some of them openly declare war on your values and way of life? And what if this certain group is known to cause more criminals as any other ethnicity in your country?If your values are so important, make laws to protect them. Until then, I don't see why other people have to follow them. And do all ethnic Germans even have the same values in the first place?

And what exactly is your way of life?

As to crime, I'm sure ethnic Germans account for the vast majority of it in Germany. And could environment and class be a factor in explaining the minority crime rate?

[Skybird]

Birthrates seem to be declining among immigrants.

http://www.prb.org/Articles/2008/muslimsineurope.aspx?p=1



Again, I refer to Gunnar Heihnsohn's general (and stictly empirical) work. There are differences between birthrates of certain ethnic migrants, and native europeans, as well as there are differences between social high class and social low class mothers in Germany. that'S why in general more and more social wellfare children get born


Ok, why should anyone care? As long as they're law-abiding, why should anyone care how immigrants feel about their new country or which religion they subscribe to?

Because we do not and must not want our homecountry being turned into an extension of their foreign place, and we also must not want to constly needing to adress special demands and special interests of a loud yelling minority that is bullying and intimidating the majorty. Abuse of the social wellfare system, lacking will of integration (even actively rejecting it), massive overrepresentation of certain (not all!) ethnicities in crime statistics (mainly Muslim ethnicities, whereas for example Japanese and Koreans are underrepresented (if standardising), all this makes a difference between muslim migration groups, and non-Muslim migration groups.

If your values are so important, make laws to protect them. Until then, I don't see why other people have to follow them. And do all ethnic Germans even have the same values in the first place?
This says a lot about you, mainly about your lack of cultural identity and awareness of the history that formed yourself and the place that raised you.

Laws we have aplenty, and we have so many that we even got losse din the junbgle of laws and have laws contradicting other laws.

Laws can get ignored, by cirminals as well as different ethnicities foeign to the ruling culture of a place. This is our home country, our history that formed it, our cultural tradition. We have the right to say it is that, and foreigners coming here have no right to demand that we must chnage it all so that it matches the demands of that foreign place they come from. That simple, either you get that, or you don't. The values of for example Pakistani culture, are values valid in pakistan. Germany or Eurppe have no obligation whatever to take them into account inside the european "home". If Pakistani moving to eurpe do nhot liike that, they are free and highly welcomed to pack their things and mve the hell out of here, back to where they came from. If their homeplace is so wonderful - why have they even come here?



And what exactly is your way of life?
Oh ddear, now you want us to tell you who you are, why you are that, nd where you have cokme from, eh? If you can't even see that different cultures have different ways of liing and different values that formed up during history, then it really makes no sense to discuss such thigns with you. Becasue you do not know who you are, and where you come from. no wonder that you are unable and unwilling to defend both any identity and cultural history and find it pretty much okay to embrace the foreign clture uncritically as if it were your own, since always. yu may not liike it, but there are differences between cultures. And cultures are absolutely not of the same worth when copmoared to each other. some are more precious than others, some are more humane and advanced in ethical or moral qualities than others. It is considered to be politically uncorrect to say so, but it simply is the truth.

As to crime, I'm sure ethnic Germans account for the vast majority of it in Germany.

that is almost discimnation hat yousay, becasue you throw all ethnicities into the same pot and label the ones that are underrepresented in crime statistics as of the same criminality than those that are overrepresented. the simple trutzh is that e have plenty of prpbpems with muslim ethnic groups, and almost none with for example Koreans, Japanese, Chinese, North or South americans, Europeans, non-Muslim Africans. There is no use in wanting to hide that. Insiders of the security sectors, from policemen to warehouse detectives, also confirm that. In the past I worked in a department store for some years, all the rehouse detecives there came from an agency that exlcusievly emplyed migrants from the middle East area strange that no German considered that to be discrimination of Germans...). Even these detectives, with whom dealt every day I were at work, and coming from places like Turkey, Syria, Iran, admitted that the difference betwene their Muslim "clients" and native germans are immense. That starts with the numerical comparison of incidents involving Muslim thives and non-Muslims thieves, and eneded with the reafiness to turn violent and use physical force to escape. for eyxaple, when they caught a native german boy or woman or whomever, they usually approached them alone, maybe in coordination with one emplyee of the department store, but usually the first approach was made by one man alone. If they saw that the deal with an ethnic boy whose looks implied that he might be from the ME region, they called at least 2 collegaues from neighbouring stores before approaching him. And I repeatedly witbessed that it all turned into a violent mess, and worst verbal insults anyway.

There are differences - and extremely significant ones. It is just not wanted to talk aboiut them - they are violating the consensus of that all emigrants are noble and valuable and respectable. But that is not true. Statistics show that, and everyday life experience shows that.

And could environment and class be a factor in explaining the minority crime rate?
When the author of a statistic work has statistically excluded such factors, no. But your argument gets fired nevertheless, to trouble the water and disguise unwelcomed truths in a smokescreen of distractive statements and manipulative claims.

[Schroeder]

Was the relevant data kept in West Germany back in the 70s? Maybe the authors had to make do with what they had. The journal article is pay-to-view, so I guess we'll never know.
If one doesn't have proper information than one shouldn't use it in such an article. But it did fit into their agenda so they published it anyway.


If your values are so important, make laws to protect them. Until then, I don't see why other people have to follow them. And do all ethnic Germans even have the same values in the first place?
You can make as many laws if you want to but that doesn't mean that they are all obeyed (domestic violence or women's right to decide for themselves anyone?).
We don't all have the very exactly same values here but there is something one could describe as way of life with "western values".


As to crime, I'm sure ethnic Germans account for the vast majority of it in Germany. Now what a surprise!:o
Actually Muslim males account for a way over proportional amount of crimes compared to ethnic Germans or any other ethnic group in Germany. I'm afraid that has finally been proven with the last results of that police survey and can't be discussed away anymore.

And could environment and class be a factor in explaining the minority crime rate?Why do all other immigrants perform so much better than the Muslims? Are people from Vietnam and non Muslim Africa in different environments and of a higher class?

[Tribesman]

Because we do not and must not want our homecountry being turned into an extension of their foreign place
Yeah them damn Hessians, they are nearly worse than those Bavarians with their dirty foriegn ways, but on the bright side at least the Prussians ain't in the country now

[Dimitrius07]

Thats it!!!! Now some one gone completely crazy :doh:. It usually happens every time Islam or Israel or America is mentioned. Speaking about outrage..(internet outrage to be more specific:D).. nice to see someone who constantly looking on the plate of others.

[MH]

Yeah them damn Hessians, they are nearly worse than those Bavarians with their dirty foriegn ways, but on the bright side at least the Prussians ain't in the country now

So do you think its all about xenophobia?
If so...Why you do think so.

[Schroeder]

Yeah them damn Hessians, they are nearly worse than those Bavarians with their dirty foriegn ways, but on the bright side at least the Prussians ain't in the country now
That point would be valid if the Hessians, Bavarians etc would cause as much trouble per person as the Muslims do. Unfortunately they don't. BTW Prussians are for a part still in Germany.;)

[Snestorm]

Who are the particular individuals that call "cross breeding" murder and ethnic cleansing. Which are the particular individuals who talked of racial purity?
BTW
From one of your countrymen in the other topic ......
"they are pretty much closet neo-nazis...there is loving ones country, and then there is "loving" it DF style, the fanatic nationalist way"

I've got my laundry hung out for all to see.
People are free tp draw their own conclusions.
You're due no further explanation.

[Tribesman]

So do you think its all about xenophobia?

No thatts an example of how every country is made up of different people and differnt cultures and has been since countries became an established thing. If you remember Sky previously has posted about problems he has with different sorts of germans and their german cultures which seemingly must be his culture but it ain't his culture.
But given that the opening post had a link from a peron that can only be described as a small minded bigot as they had phobias about religion and skin colour then perhap it is all about xenophobia. Though of course that runs into the problem as he moans about french people being french and coming to france and they should go back to france where they belong instead of being in france......which does mean Sky linked to a fruitcake to find views that matched his:up:

That point would be valid if the Hessians, Bavarians etc would cause as much trouble per person as the Muslims do.
It only takes one person to start piles of trouble, look at that little austrian immigrant you had, he didn't like people because of their religion even if they were locals.

[AngusJS]

Because we do not and must not want our homecountry being turned into an extension of their foreign place, and we also must not want to constly needing to adress special demands and special interests of a loud yelling minority that is bullying and intimidating the majorty.I don't think laws should be bent or changed for spurious reasons just for immigrants.

This says a lot about you, mainly about your lack of cultural identity and awareness of the history that formed yourself and the place that raised you.Or it means that I believe in freedom more than you do.

Laws can get ignored, by cirminals as well as different ethnicities foeign to the ruling culture of a place. This is our home country, our history that formed it, our cultural tradition. We have the right to say it is that, and foreigners coming here have no right to demand that we must chnage it all so that it matches the demands of that foreign place they come from.The thing is, culture is not static, nor is it homogeneous. I'm sure your cultural tradition has been shaped by foreigners if you look back far enough, and its values are not held by all ethnic Germans - which is why getting bent out of shape because it's changing seems silly. But again, immigrants have no right to demand that you change your culture (as long as it isn't explicitly discriminatory).

That simple, either you get that, or you don't. The values of for example Pakistani culture, are values valid in pakistan. Germany or Eurppe have no obligation whatever to take them into account inside the european "home".Of course you don't.

Oh ddear, now you want us to tell you who you are, why you are that, nd where you have cokme from, eh? If you can't even see that different cultures have different ways of liing and different values that formed up during history, then it really makes no sense to discuss such thigns with you. No, I just wanted a clear definition of "way of life", as its way too nebulous a term.

Becasue you do not know who you are, and where you come from.Thanks, that's not in any way condescending.

I know quite well who I am and where I come from. I just don't see why I should demand that newcomers to my country be like me.

And cultures are absolutely not of the same worth when copmoared to each other.Never said they were.

that is almost discimnation hat yousay, becasue you throw all ethnicities into the same pot and label the ones that are underrepresented in crime statistics as of the same criminality than those that are overrepresented.No it isn't, it's a simple statement of fact. If Muslims are overrepresented in crime statistics, saying so is not discrimination, it's just a fact.

When the author of a statistic work has statistically excluded such factors, no.Do you have such a work?

[AngusJS]

You can make as many laws if you want to but that doesn't mean that they are all obeyed (domestic violence or women's right to decide for themselves anyone?).Then you punish the offenders.

We don't all have the very exactly same values here but there is something one could describe as way of life with "western values".Great, what is that, and how is that being infringed upon by people who don't have "western values"?

Now what a surprise!:oI was just replying to what you wrote: And what if this certain group is known to cause more criminals as any other ethnicity in your country?Actually Muslim males account for a way over proportional amount of crimes compared to ethnic Germans or any other ethnic group in Germany. I'm afraid that has finally been proven with the last results of that police survey and can't be discussed away anymore.

Why do all other immigrants perform so much better than the Muslims? Are people from Vietnam and non Muslim Africa in different environments and of a higher class?Do you have a link to that report?

[Schroeder]

Then you punish the offenders.

It is done but only if they get reported. Muslim women usually don't report their husbands and don't tell me now that they don't do it because they like it.


Great, what is that, and how is that being infringed upon by people who don't have "western values"?
May I ask from what country you are?


you have a link to that report?http://www.kfn.de/versions/kfn/assets/fob109.pdf

There you go, but I'm afraid it's in German.:damn:
I see if I can find an English source.

*edit*
I'm afraid that it has not been translated into English yet.

[Skybird]

@ Angus,

You tolerate what/who is not tolerating you, that is the shortest summary of your way or arguing, and you pose with intentional naivety, to make it all look harmless and reasonably easy to solve (I just think of your naivety regarding enforcing the laws). But that is not reasonable of you at all. It simply is: evasion in an attempt of not wanting to fight in self-defence.

The more these developements strip you/us off guaranteed rights and freedoms you take for granted and whose reasons for existing you never seem to have reflected, and install more and more special interests demanded in the name of the religion of peace or that oh so precious foreign culture of theirs, the more you will defend the perpetrator and declare it to be our own fault that he is showing off so very much as a global Herrenkultur, and you will bow to him in an effort to avoid conflict and confrontation over defending these our freedoms and rights the generations before us have earned and suffered for so very dearly. In the end you erode and finally ultimately destroy your/our own cultural identity, and favour theirs over yours. and you do not even ask if theirs is indeed so verymuch more precious and valuable than ours. Not to mention that this place we call "home" is our place, not theirs.

and within the next generation's timespan, you will maybe realise what you carelessly have given away in freedoms and rights, over fears of needing to fight for these freedoms and rights - and then you will see that it is too late and that you have lost it, forever.

Some thigns are worth to fight for. Our ancestors understood that, else we would not be here, at least not in such a free world we enjoy to live in. This is true for a german saying so, but it is true for all europe. Nowadays, after almost 80 years of peace in europe have caused havoc on our sense for realism and our ability to recognise harsh realities, we have lost the ability to defend ourselves, our identities, our self-definition, our rights and freedoms. Our cultural degeneration, our decadence, reveals itself not so much in our lacking fighting skill, but in our lack of willingness to defend ourselves, in our display of not wanting to defend ourselves, and our lacking ability to even recognise the need of defence. we crucify ourselves over concerns about laws and bureaucratic procedures, and we care so very much for foreign people's sentiments who care little about what their behavior do to our sentiments. And, like you, we accept to actively prevent any form of self-definition, since that would mean not only to say what we are, but also would mean the need to also say what we are not, and do not want to be. We care so much about our plethora of concerns and laws and we fear so much to offend others and not being of sufficient obedience to their demands for us to adapt to them - and by doing so, we sentence ourselves to paralysis, and passivity while the threats are mounting.

The West is not the first historic power faction amongst history's known empries that gave up on themselves in exactly this manner. Our history books know it. We refuse to learn the lessons.

I do not know and do not care whether you are a tpyical left, or not. But on the left, I also say this in general: the left wants to destroy the Westenr constitutional orders. It must want to do so, because in the end the establishement of a socialistic if not even communistic dictatorship is their ultimate goal. This is only possible by destroying the currently established constitutional orders. Islamic mass migration seem to be a ntural ally, therefore, and this alliance you see being practiced in every european country. In Germany, we hear this ultimate goal of destroying democracy and establishing a communist dictatorship (spiced up with romantic memories of nicetalking the SED tyranny and sometimes even the StaSi) not even being hidden by representatives of the party Die Linke. Many of them speak it out plain and directly. what these clever left forethinkers do not understand, is this: for islam'S global quest for dominance, socialistic ideas are just - worth nothing, like Erdoghan talked of democracy as a train that you leave once you have reached your real destination, socialism/communism will be kicked by Islamic alliances once they do not need it anymore. The left very likely can end up like the ended up in the iranian revolution when they helped Khomenei to topple the Shah - dangling from lightmasts and telephone poles.

[Skybird]

I just realised how insulting the first two words in my thread title could be for Muslims. Not intended and not even realised until now - but now a laugh that is even louder. :D

[Tribesman]

Some thigns are worth to fight for. Our ancestors understood that, else we would not be here
But your ancestors were the ones who were fighting the Jewish horde who were going to take over the world, so now you feel a need to fight the Muslim horde who are taking over the world.

Our cultural degeneration, our decadence,
My struggle(1925)

[onelifecrisis]

Heh, I see Skybird is still grinding his axe.

But on the left, I also say this in general: the left wants to destroy the Westenr constitutional orders. It must want to do so, because in the end the establishement of a socialistic if not even communistic dictatorship is their ultimate goal.

Wow. Just... wow.

[Schroeder]

Wow. Just... wow.
Well, over here "Die Linke" the German left party is under surveillance by the "Verfassungsschutz", that could be translated into "constitution protection" for these very reasons Skybird posted.
I don't know much about the left in the UK but here it seems to me as if they wanted to reintroduce the system of the former DDR and that is impossible with our current constitution. Maybe it is different in your country but over here I see them as as much a threat as the far right (who are under surveillance too btw. and rightfully so).

[onelifecrisis]

Well, over here "Die Linke" the German left party is under surveillance by the "Verfassungsschutz", that could be translated into "constitution protection" for these very reasons Skybird posted.
I don't know much about the left in the UK but here it seems to me as if they wanted to reintroduce the system of the former DDR and that is impossible with our current constitution. Maybe it is different in your country but over here I see them as as much a threat as the far right (who are under surveillance too btw. and rightfully so).

Ahhh... my bad I suppose. Wikipedia to the rescue! I thought he meant "the left" not "The Left". Thanks for clearing it up.

[MH]

@ Angus,


Some thigns are worth to fight for. Our ancestors understood that, else we would not be here, at least not in such a free world we enjoy to live in. This is true for a german saying so, but it is true for all europe. Nowadays, after almost 80 years of peace in europe have caused havoc on our sense for realism and our ability to recognise harsh realities, we have lost the ability to defend ourselves, our identities, our self-definition, our rights and freedoms. Our cultural degeneration, our decadence, reveals itself not so much in our lacking fighting skill, but in our lack of willingness to defend ourselves, in our display of not wanting to defend ourselves, and our lacking ability to even recognise the need of defence. we crucify ourselves over concerns about laws and bureaucratic procedures, and we care so very much for foreign people's sentiments who care little about what their behavior do to our sentiments. And, like you, we accept to actively prevent any form of self-definition, since that would mean not only to say what we are, but also would mean the need to also say what we are not, and do not want to be. We care so much about our plethora of concerns and laws and we fear so much to offend others and not being of sufficient obedience to their demands for us to adapt to them - and by doing so, we sentence ourselves to paralysis, and passivity while the threats are mounting.


:salute::salute::salute::salute::salute::salute::s alute:

exactly....

[Skybird]

the "Verfassungsschutz", that could be translated into "constitution protection"

The "Office for the Protection of the Constitution" could be seen as a mixture of the fields of responsibility of the FBI, NSA and Secret Service. It is a intelligence service that operates on a national level only, with special focus to all sorts of activities that qualify as politically motivated violence or political crime, terrorism, threats to the constitutional poliltical order of the country and the 16 federal states, and threats to persons of poltical interest or rank. there is one nation-wide bureau and 16 federal bureaus, one per each federal state.

The BVS does not operate internationally. Outside Germany, Germany's major intelligence service is the Bundesnachrichtendienst BND, it compares to the CIA.

Additionally there is the Bundeskriminalamt BKA, in responsibility and authority it compares to the FBI.

A separate equivalent to the NSA Germany does not have, as I understand it. Elint missions are done by the BND, and the military weapon branches.

[Penguin]

I think regarding this interesting subject, the over-generalisation in this thread does not really help the debate. People stick to their prefab opinions and try to put anything into a left-right sceme. However I think most of the points made in this thread are not based on xenophobia, but on opinions which are based on experiences.


....Yesterday, activists from the left scene attacked a house were Arab immigrants that - rarely enough - tried to express some sympathy with their new home nation by hanging out a german flag from the window, the house was set on fire, anonymous spokesmen claimed that the left cpuld not tolerate such blatant displays of "Germanism" in Germany. ....

wrong, check your facts.
When I first read this, i was shocked that people were tried to be burned - which is arson to a residential house. All sources say that the flag was only taken off. Quite a difference to a murder attempt!


The map looks like a left-winger's dream come true.

I don't know any left-wingers who would like to live in an islamic republic. Check what Iran does with with political opposition from the left (basically what it does to any people who have a different opinion.)


Thats easy
Well for starters not all Israelis are Jewish and not all Jews are Israelis, so Israel is just a country with its own individual policies and actions.


Israel was founded as a sanctuary for the Jewish people. Historical comparible only with the foundation of Liberia (granted not the best example). While your first sentence is true, I think you cannot compare Israel to other countries in the world. Does it mean you can't critize it? Hell, no! Does it mean Israels right of existance must be defended? Hell yes!

And could environment and class be a factor in explaining the minority crime rate?

of course it does to an extent, but unlike Marx said, who claimed that you are formed by your environment, you have the chance to form your environment. Like Schroeder said: certain people just complain and do nothing to change their situation, while others, who come here with virtually nothing, just start to build up their own existance and put in some effort to change their situation.


@ Angus,
.... the left wants to destroy the Westenr constitutional orders

oh please. There are many laws who would not be there, if people (not only) from the left wouldn't have fought and died for. For example Social equality, Seperation of state and church, workers rights. Look at German's special "Right of Resistance" against anyone who want to change fundamental parts of the Constitution, like freedom of Speech, Freedom of Press, etc.

Certainly there are enough idiots in the left, Orwell's describtion of them in "The Road to Wigan Pier" is still one of the best and still up-to-date.

I agree with you that these are freedoms we should not take for granted and it is worth fighting against anyone who want to turn the wheel of history backwards, no matter whetther they come from the religious, left, right, yellow, blue or whatever side.

I could care less about German culture, as it is been said, culture is nothing static, but there are values which are not open for debate, some call them "Western values", some call them "universial human rights" - you get the idea.

How can we change these problems? Well, I would be a rich man, if I had the sollution. Some ideas:
1. Treating people really equally means you treat ANY cultural and religios as the same and no one gets a special bonus. "Oh you had a bad youth? ok, you get a slap on the hand for armed robbery..."
2. Defending the rights of a free and open society. No matter if morons from the government use fear or religous zealots or political idiots use intimidation to take away rights. No way!
3. Education. When asking a friend of mine, who was a violent adolescent migrant, what would be the solution to the problems we have with the youth he answereded right this: Education! Without getting interested into science and books he would be dead or in prison right now.


(...says Penguin, who does not speak for anbody but himself)

[Tribesman]

Does it mean you can't critize it? Hell, no! Does it mean Israels right of existance must be defended? Hell yes!

And the problem is that some people say that any criticism of Israel is wrong and that Israel itself can do no wrong.

[MH]

And the problem is that some people say that any criticism of Israel is wrong and that Israel itself can do no wrong.

Israel can do "wrong" and the endless criticism of what we do here can actually lead to this.
Israelis are getting tired of the endless criticism of any thing that is done here so why not start kicking asses for real?
I mean really defend our selves-screw the moaning world politicians.

[Tribesman]

Israel can do "wrong" and the endless criticism of what we do here can actually lead to this.

That sounds like the actions of a petulant child.

Israelis are getting tired of the endless criticism of any thing that is done here so why not start kicking asses for real?

Firstly because the IDF ain't what it was so its real ass kicking days have been over for nearly 30 years. Secondly it needs lots of help to survive as a state. Besides which the real criticism which is the only criticism that matters only comes when Israel does something incredibly dumb.

I mean really defend our selves-screw the moaning world politicians.
Because when you screw the world politicians you lose more and more of that help you need to survive.

[MH]

That sounds like the actions of a petulant child.
.

It is isnt it?:)
The educational system needs recheck?



Firstly because the IDF ain't what it was so its real ass kicking days have been over for nearly 30 years.
.
That can be another 1000 post topic but yes some countries in ME are closing the gaps slowly.
Every one here realizes that another war will not be six day war again but IDF still can deal very well with current threats if given free hand.



Secondly it needs lots of help to survive as a state. Besides which the real criticism which is the only criticism that matters only comes when Israel does something incredibly dumb.
Because when you screw the world politicians you lose more and more of that help you need to survive.

Yes Israel needs help to survive but the question is if it can survive for long or what quality of live we may have -i mean with all the help.

What was this thread about anyway?
Mohamed's balls or something :D

[MH]

Jeff Dunham - Achmed the Dead Terrorist

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uwOL4rB-go&feature=fvw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dq-VlHYaGYs&feature=related

[Tribesman]

What was this thread about anyway?
Mohamed's balls or something
It was about some nonsense sky found on a loony blog about blacks and muslims causing the French soccer team to be rubbish

[Skybird]

It is isnt it?:)
The educational system needs recheck?


It does. Just read at BBC that 10% and more of Muslim parents in Britain are about to withdraw - or alrerady have withdrawn - their children from music classes, since good ol Muhammad had banned music instruments.

From various countries in europe there were so many stories over the past few years when Muslim in not just few numbers withdrew their kids from biology lessons. Swimming lessons. Sports lessons. Class activities outside the teaching lessons. Now music lessons. What's next? Banning mathematics, for it teaches them logical thinking? Banning English/German/French/etc classes, for it makes them vulnerable to integration?

This is hilarious in itself, it is intolerant and "anti-integration", it is at the disadvantage of the children, and it means troubles regarding rooms and personnell for smaller schools that cannot afford both to supervise the dear little victims of Muslim superior and og so sensible mindsets. Once again Islam has demanded a special role and a special status regarding something, and once again it seems to get away with it.

There is a reason why Arabia, although it had superior starting conditions compared to Europe, fell behind so qickly once Muhammad'S impact became felt. Within 3 centuries they fell from superior economy and science status, to total fatasism and stagnation. The man's teaching has banned and declared any sort of education and science that would enable people to think independently, critically, ask questions that would trigger answers the quran does not hold, and conduct scientific analytical work that dares to touch issues that are not of a purely technical, most direct pragmatic use. Instead, all questions must be develooed in a form and manner that the answers proves the Quran to be right. All tradition of reflecting upon existential questions and basic, underlying probpems of science, as well as scientific methods to examine them, have been banned, prevented and declared a heresy. That is why the Muslim world still is stuck in the medieval in thought, skill and technological competence. All they do is buying or copying or demanding the fruit of our cultural tradition that has lead to our cultural mental climate that the free unfolding of science and arts without taboos became possible. At best they learn how to technically handle the fruits of our technology. understanding the why and how is forbiodden. And often even operating this technology is below their dignity: then they call in foreigners to their countries who need to run them for them. Look at Saudi Arabia, look at Dubai, look at Lybia - it's always the same pattern.

Primitive, inhumane in that it is a mobbing and supression of human potential - including the use of our brain - ,and disgusting. Cirumcision right between the ears, that's what it is.

why Westerners time and again are so stupid to tolerate this and think of it as a sign of tolerance that would encourage integration, is beyond me. It does not help integration, it helps: self-chosen separatism.

[Tribesman]

Just read at BBC that 10% and more of Muslim parents in Britain are about to withdraw -
Oh no you didn't, you just read that maybe about 10% could find potential problems with them, which means culturally they belong in the Britain of the commonwealth period.
Isn't it amazing how skybird can find a story, change the story and then say that the story shows what he said all along.

[tater]

As a reality check, all the Muslim countries require outside help to survive as well. It's not like they've invented anything useful since they came up with falafel. MOst that have any economy to speak of do solely because of kufir oil needs.

Their entire modern lifestyle is purchased from the kufir. Anything modern they make is just a copy of something invented by non-muslims.

Note that the same can be said of most religious fundamentalists, but remember that ALL muslim sects are fundies.

[caspofungin]

lol... you tar 1 billion people all with the same brush, skybird blames everything wrong in modern society on muslims and immigrants, but i'm the fundamentalist crazy?

[Skybird]

lol... you tar 1 billion people all with the same brush, skybird blames everything wrong in modern society on muslims and immigrants, but i'm the fundamentalist crazy?
Don't know whether you are or not, but by this your quoted statement - and other in the past - you certainly show to be a generalist who is nice-talking things whose nasty sides you want to know being ignored and not taken note of, as if they would not exist and would not have dirtect and indirect tremendous influence over dozens if not hundreds of millions. In the end I must say at least this: that almost all Muslims in the world are united in at least one thing - that they always blame others for their own cultural and educational failure and think they are the most prominent victim of other cultures that human history does know of - at the same time ignoring the massive destruction of foreign cultures that Islam has caused (and defends until today) - the biggest, greatest, longest-lasting and most successful history of military conquest, land-taking and culture-annihilating that is recorded in the books of history.



How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy.

The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.

A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.

Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it.

No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.

-- Sir Winston Churchill (The River War, first edition, Vol. II, pages 248-50 [London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1899]).

[Tribesman]

Originally Posted by W. Churchill
Wow Sky starts off with an article about the blacks and the muslims ruining football, now we have Churchill and the fuzzywuzzies:rotfl2:

BTW as apparently Germany is overrun with muslims and immigrants like Sky always says, how comes their team is doing OK in the world cup despite it containing blacks muslims and immigrants?

[caspofungin]

first, sky, i know all about the "nasty things" you bitch about, having lived in various bits of the middle east for half my life. you go on and on blaming a religion for all kinds of things -- but to me there's no difference between you and someone who uses religion as an excuse for their actions. In my opinion, individuals are responsible for their own actions or inactions, and looking at religion is pretty much a waste of time. for every muslim you know that has caused problems -- oh wait, let me correct that -- for every muslim you claim you know and claim to have caused problems, i know a muslim that hasn't.

that they always blame others for their own cultural and educational failure and think they are the most prominent victim of other cultures that human history does know of

actually, most people i know, muslim or otherwise, blame others for their own failure. just look at your own countries recent history -- if we use your mode of thinking, we'd hold all germans responsible for the actions of a few. but we don't, do we? do you?

secondly, i think it's pretty hilarious that you use W Churchill to make your arguments -- the last of the great colonialists. why don't you quote what he had to say about germany, too?

ignoring the massive destruction of foreign cultures that Islam has caused (and defends until today) - the biggest, greatest, longest-lasting and most successful history of military conquest, land-taking and culture-annihilating that is recorded in the books of history.

well, like you said, it's history, and most people i know accept that. but you don't. why don't you put your hypercritical eye on the things other cultures have done? or would that mean there would need to be some self-criticism? i mean, look at what your "superior" culture has done in the last 100+ years, let alone in 500 years ago.

anyway, i don't particularly want to get in another argument with you -- we've gone over this again and again in the past -- i just want to know why, just for personal enlightenment, why do islam and immigrants rub you the wrong way so badly?

[MH]

zakir naik: International preacher of islamist hate

http://www.faithfreedom.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/zakir-naik.jpg (http://www.faithfreedom.org/articles/free-thought/zakir-naik-international-preacher-of-islamist-hate/attachment/zakir-naik/) zakir naik

from: The global muslim brotherhood daily report
the federation of student islamic societies (fosis) in the uk and ireland has issued a statement condemning the decision by the home office to ban dr zakir naik from visiting the uk. According to the fosis announcement (http://fosis.org.uk/media/press-releases/721-fosis-slams-home-office-decision-to-ban-dr-zakir-naik):
the federation of student islamic societies (fosis) in the uk and eire today criticised the decision by the home office to ban dr zakir naik from visiting the uk.
faisal hanjra, president of fosis, said today, “this is an individual who is a widely-respected household-name for many muslims in the uk. He has carried out a significant amount of work in india to reach out to both the muslim and non-muslim communities and he has a truly global following. Crucially here, his stance vis a vis terrorism is clear – he condemns it and has done so categorically. His banning by the home office is shocking.”
he further added, “the campaign by right wing think tanks and media outlets has unfortunately paid off. For the home secretary this is a shocking own goal. We hear time and again the cry of freedom of speech and freedom of expression, this event strikingly illustrates once again that it is one rule for the muslim community and another rule for everyone else. We will strongly oppose these moves to ban legitimate speakers from entering the uk, and we will work tirelessly to increase their profiles in our communities until our government starts acting with some commonsense.”
canadian media has reported (http://news.nationalpost.com/2010/06/22/controversial-muslim-televangelist-zakir-naik-banned-from-toronto-conference/) on some of the incendiary comments that have been made by dr. Naik who was also banned from entering canada:
an indian muslim televangelist who was banned from britain last week for “unacceptable behaviour” will not be allowed into canada to speak at an upcoming conference in toronto, sources familiar with the situation have told the national post.
dr. Zakir naik, who has said “every muslim should be a terrorist” and that jews are “our staunchest enemy,” was to headline next month’s journey of faith conference — which is billed as one of north america’s largest islamic conferences and is expected to attract upward of 10,000 people.
dr. Naik, the mumbai-based founder of peace tv and a widely respected lecturer in india, has a laundry list of views that could have led to his exclusion from the u.k. And canada, both of which require an indian citizen to obtain a visitor visa.
the 44-year-old medical doctor recommends capital punishment for homosexuals and the death penalty for those who abandon islam as their faith.
he has said that a man is within his right to beat his wife (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1fyvtjh5um) “lightly,” though in a july 2009 youtube video he cautioned against hitting her on the face or leaving a mark.
the “keep zakir naik out of canada (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=128828540484928)” facebook group, which was launched over the weekend, also points out his view that western women make themselves “more susceptible to rape” by wearing revealing clothing.
among the chief reasons, british home secretary theresa may decided to quash dr. Naik’s u.k. Speaking tour later this month, however, were comments he made in a widely circulated 2007 video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvtadpzywta).
“if [osama bin laden] is fighting the enemies of islam, i am for him … if he is terrorizing a terrorist, if he is terrorizing america the terrorist, the biggest terrorist, i am with him,” said dr. Naik, who has delivered hundreds of talks in india, canada, the u.s. And the middle east. “every muslim should be a terrorist.”
a report (http://www.socialcohesion.co.uk/files/1231525079_1.pdf) by the center for social cohesion that outlined the muslim brotherhood ties of the federation of student islamic societies in the u.k. And ireland (fosis), founded in 1962 and described as an umbrella grouping of most major university islamic societies in the u.k. The report concluded that iscc’s (campus islamic societies) and fosis members are more likely to hold intolerant views:
significant minorities of muslim students – and particularly younger ones – support violence in the name of islam, endorse punishing muslim apostates “in accordance with the sharia” and believe that men and women are not equal in the eyes of allah and should not be treated equally.
comparable minorities, around 10 percent of muslim students, also have little or no respect for jews, atheists or homosexuals and support islamist proposals such as re-creating the caliphate, introducing sharia law to britain and establishing an islamic political party. Sizable numbers, between 20 and 30 percent of muslim students, also hold intolerant attitudes towards minority forms of islam such as shi’ism and sufism.
the report additionally suggests that active members of islamic societies are more likely than other muslim students to hold such intolerant views – notwithstanding that active isoc members are also more likely to believe that democracy and re-interpreting the sharia are compatible with islam. Isoc leaders and former members make up the membership of the federation of student islamic societies (fosis).
however, as only a minority of muslim students are active members of isocs, fosis’ claims to represent british muslim students should be treated with caution. Treating fosis as representative of all muslim students risks disproportionately empowering a small number of highly conservative, and sometimes islamist, individuals at the expense of ordinary muslims.
at the same time, a significant minority of non-muslims polled had a hostile view of islam, being less respectful towards muslims than towards other minorities such as jews, homosexuals and atheists. Non-muslims are also more likely to believe that the narrow and intolerant interpretations of islam promoted by islamist and conservative groups represent the “true” islam: For example, more than half of non-muslims polled believe that islam favours inequitable treatment of women and is incompatible with secularism. This strongly suggests that islamist groups and the ideas they promote are partly responsible for the intolerance found on campuses towards muslim students and their religion.
the poll results also indicate that a large proportion of muslim students, up to 40 percent depending on the question, are undecided on key issues such as the legitimacy of religious violence, respecting others and whether islam is compatible with secularism.
it should be noted that as discussed in an earlier post (http://globalmbreport.org/?p=1761), that umar farouk abdulmutallab, who has been charged with attempting to blow up a u.s. Airliner in 2009, was president of the islamic society at university college london between 2006 and 2007.



***


An Open Letter to All Practising Muslims

By Al-Mansur

(Re-Post: Previously published on September 25, 2002)

I was just wondering ……….
1) Hypothetically speaking, if I have you decapitated for not sharing my beliefs and views, thereafter taking possession of your property, violate your wife (in fact, I may just have sexual intercourse with her within 24 hours of your decapitation, if she happens to be a beautiful 17 year old Jewess) and bring up your children to hate and ridicule you as well as your beliefs and to think that your death was perfectly justified as it was ordered by some person known as the Merciful a.k.a the Compassionate (like some sort of sick joke), is that perfectly alright with you? Kindly explain if your answer is in the negative.
Would your answer be different, if you only thought that your beliefs are right whereas I KNOW that only I am right?

2) Muslims always say that “ISLAM IS THE FASTEST GROWING RELIGION IN THE WORLD”. As Christianity is currently the ‘largest’ religion in the world, this would mean that at least some point in time Christianity was the fastest growing religion in the world. Does this mean that Christianity is still the one true religion OR was it only the one true religion during the centuries when it was the fastest growing?
Since in the early and mid 20th century, atheism was the fastest growing “belief” in the world, does that mean that there was no God during those decades?
If pork consumption becomes the fastest growing dietary trend in the world, does that mean that God is trying to tell mankind that pork is God’s choice of meat?

3) Do you think that apostates from Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism who embrace Islam should be killed by their former fellow coreligionists?
If your answer is in the negative, please explain in not more than 50 words why converts to Islam should be treated differently from apostates of Islam.

4) Since an enormous mosque has been built in Rome, the heart of Catholicism, would you advise/encourage the Pope to have a cathedral of a similar size be constructed in Mecca to cement and nurture ties between Catholicism and Islam, the world’s most peaceful and tolerant religion?
Would your answer be any different, if the purpose of having the Cathedral built in Mecca is not to nurture ties, but to propagate Christianity in the same manner and extent as what Muslims are doing in the West?

5) If there were books and other materials published/distributed or made available in your country which advocates violence against Muslims and is blasphemous to Islam, do you agree that it should be banned?
If you happened to be a peace-loving and tolerant Muslim, would your answer be any different, if these books and materials advocates violence and war against Jews, Christians and Pagans ONLY and is only blasphemous to these religions (e.g. attacking the very fundamentals of Christianity such Jesus was not the Son of God and he never died on the cross)?

6) Do you agree that on 9/11 it was “ISLAM WHICH WAS HIJACKED” as most American Muslims claim? [Personally I think it was Humanity which has been hijacked by Islam, not that my opinion counts]
If your answer is in the affirmative, I would presume that Allah would naturally sent these HIJACKERS OF ISLAM to Hell. Right?
Question : How do you think Allah should deal with the hundreds of thousands who cheered, celebrated, danced on the streets, shoot in the air after they saw ISLAM BEING HIJACKED on 9/11?
Please let me know your thoughts. Your views on the above matter are highly appreciated.
Best Wishes to All
Al-Mansur

[caspofungin]

:roll:

[Skybird]

first, sky, i know all about the "nasty things" you bitch about, having lived in various bits of the middle east for half my life. you go on and on blaming a religion for all kinds of things
No - I blame religion, and islam, for the content of it's teachings and the fruits of it's education that show in the state of it'S culture and places. The state of the Muslim world in the modern era is nothing that earns our respect - churchill has described it absolutely exactly, and his words still match the realities that I have seen in several Muslim countries. the Muslim world still acts and think by standards of medieval thinking. That is more than one millenia of stagnation. No wonder that the West has become the power to drive forward the world in science, tehcnology, freedom and human rights. sometimes our ancestors failed, sometimes even terribly - we admit that, we are aware of that, we have apologized for that. In Muslim countries,most of the time I met neither admitting faults in Islam, nur apoligies - but denial of the many damages and deformations caused to others and caused to themselves. like you deny it, too.


-- but to me there's no difference between you and someone who uses religion as an excuse for their actions. In my opinion, individuals are responsible for their own actions or inactions, and looking at religion is pretty much a waste of time.

Be careful, you "Muslim" - I have been in Muslim places where they would chase you away and even would want to kill you for heretic statements like that. In accordance with the quran they would! ;).


for every muslim you know that has caused problems -- oh wait, let me correct that -- for every muslim you claim you know and claim to have caused problems, i know a muslim that hasn't.

Let me make one thing clear - what a Muslim is, to me, and foir any reasonable understanding of the term as well. I prefer the term Muhammedanism, it is academically more precise, since every teaching and scripture in islam - even what people believe to know about Allah - is inspired and/or came from the mouth of Muhammad. No Muhammad - no Allah (that'S why "Allahism" would be less precise). the term "Muhammedanism" is neither offending, nor distracting. It is simply true, and precise. Islam claims you already are Muslim/Muhammedan if you have been born as a child of a Muhammedan father. In other words: Islam claims possession over you from birth on, you have no word in it, since later you cannot withdraw wihtiout risking to get murdered for that (in accordance with the official scirpture). I refuse to accept or respect this practice, not in this and not in any other religion. Muhameddan you are if you confess to a certain ideology and dogma, by adult, unmanipulated educated decision, and the dogma you confess to being fixiated in the Quran. the Quran and nothing else defines what Isalm is. No Quran - no Islam, no muslim identity.

many Muslims indeed may reject parts of the Quran, or refuse it alltogether. But then they must ask themselves why they still insist of being labelled "muslim". Muslim is no independent cultural identity, nor is it an ethnicity. They claim to be muslim just because they have been born to a Muslim father? That makes no sense, that is mixing relgious ideology with ethnicity. Their skin colour and ethnciity is completely unaffected from whether they are muslim or christian or atheist or whatever.

Many muslims-that-are-no-muslims may indeed support the Western understanding of terms like freedom, human rights, coexistence. But if they do so, they must check themselves for whether they are supporting quranic ideas and a thinking tradition that is opposing the former mentioned Western concepts - or not. If they support the Quranic view of things, then they cannot claim to support the western view of things at the same time, those constitutionally guaranteed rights and freedoms of ours, because the Western culture and the Quran are incompatible and their concepts are antagonistic to each other, to put it mildly. If these people however indeed support the Western view, and reject the quranic dogma and thinking of things, then they are no longer Muslim. If then they are willing to integrate in our home countries, if they choose to come here, then I have little porblem with them. Actually, some of such people have been friends for me.

You may want to consider this complicated implication when telling me about Muslims that you know and that you assume I know. I judge it by the Quran - it's views, it's spirit is the criterion to define what Muslim is and what not - nothing else.

some things simply do not go together. Liberal tyranny. Democratic fascism. Humanistic Stalinism. Euro-islam - as if there could be a balance between totalitarianism and medieval superstition, and humanism, democracy, freedom in western understanding. an islam becoming compatible with these concpets, necessarily will not be any islam anymore, but something totally different that needs to be labelled different, therefore, and does not maintain connections to the Quran or Sharia.

There was a pirate in the Baltic, some centuries ago during the era of the Hanse alliance, Klaus Störtebeker, famous figure over here, pushed into mythological overdrive as well, like Robin Hood. His motto was "Niemandes Freund, aller Welts Feind." - Nobody's friend, all world's enemy. I have fully adapted that motto to be the best, shortest characterisation of how islam meets other cultures that are not itself- with supremacism, intolerance, aggression, totalitarian claim for dominance. And if I check that with history, along all it's contact lines with the foreign world and foreign cultures the islamic world stands in flames and have brought conflict and unrest upon others. No other religion or political ideology has caused and still causes so much trouble. And i say that with also the third Reich, the crusades and the tyranny of the Catholic church on my mind. The Islamic global "project" outclasses them all in range and longevity.

actually, most people i know, muslim or otherwise, blame others for their own failure. just look at your own countries recent history -- if we use your mode of thinking, we'd hold all germans responsible for the actions of a few. but we don't, do we? do you?

secondly, i think it's pretty hilarious that you use W Churchill to make your arguments -- the last of the great colonialists. why don't you quote what he had to say about germany, too?

Because I am not about Germany in this thread, but Islam. Simple, isn't it!? He said a lot of true things about the Germany of his time, too, though. Feel free to make a thread on that.


well, like you said, it's history, and most people i know accept that. but you don't.

I accept history for what it is. And ongoing things in the present as what they are. I refuse forging any of them, where I am aware of the forgery. Your social circle is no argument here. One of the things I also have learned about muslim culture (and radical christian fundamentalists and creationists :D) is that there hardly are any other that are of so very selective perception of history, as these two; always filtering out what is not in line with the official self-description of Islam as being right, shining and noble, even destroying archeologic evidence proving that the relgious dogma is wrong. History gets forged so very massively - both regarding what is taught in history books, and also in destroying and supressing historic artefacts, monuments, and other material substrates of historic events Islam wants not need to deal with for they are too challenging to it's claimed inner identity.

The motive of "supression" meets you so very often in islam: supression of women, supression of history, supression of sexual drives, supression of critical thinking, supression of criticism, supression of science that tries to adress existential wuestions for which only the Quran claims to be the only valid authority... All that inner tension does not simply dissapear. That islamic history and the islamic world is so much characterised by aggression to the inside as well as the outside, is not by random chance. Add to this the suprerssion of the sons by the patriarchalic fathers, whcih also is a dominant motive in ME societies, et voila... Lots of stockpiled inner tensions and aggressions seeking relief, and finding them all to often in dealing with females, and supervising them. I know family therapists who say that in Muslim famaily they are confronted as often by islam-caused probelsm as well as by tyrannic father-sopn family structures that pull down all the rest of the family as well. Islam is a problem - patriarchalism also is, especially in it's form of tribal cultures.

as one female Muslim writer put it: the Islamoic world is in desparte need of a sexual revolution. And that is both damn true, and very courageous a thing to say - she is living in hiding now, for her life is at risk.


why don't you put your hypercritical eye on the things other cultures have done?

the failures of others do not make the failures and the inhumane ideology of aggressive history of Islam any smaller.

or would that mean there would need to be some self-criticism? i mean, look at what your "superior" culture has done in the last 100+ years, let alone in 500 years ago.

This debate on history we have had several times in the past ten years, from grenada over India and Byzanz to inquisition and crusades. And I do not want to rewrite it all again, just this: no other religious dogma and political ideology has caused so many internal civil wars, like islam. no other has caused so many wars and war-like aggressions to the outside. no other has caused so many purely religiously ambitioned wars. no other causes so many daily deaths in terror, riots, progroms, civil wars even in the present. and different to islam today, the West has admitted past mistakes, learned from them, apologised for them. the Muslim world is committing it's errors and violence until today - for the very same motives like already in - the medieval. Can't see us europeans still supporting slave trade in africa (a Musolim invention, btw). Can't see France and germany and England waging wars in europe over excessive nationalism and supremacism, or Christian faith. Can't see us not thinling critical of colonialism and apartheid.

We have moved on, not without setbacks, sometimes fast, sometimes, slow, but from century to century we were better off than before, saw our culture blossoming a bit more. - Islam got it's head stuck in the arse of history, 1400 years deep. And being so alone deep in there and feeling lonely in the dark, it has turned fatalistic whining and always accusing others for one's own failures into a form of creative art. We psychologists call that behavior tactic a "projection", btw. I admit, it works wonders. Eurppeans love to fall back from unvalid claims and demands made by Muslim communities who say they are offended and discirminated.

Islam declares all females humans of lesser value, and all non-muslims as candidates for enforced converting, or execution, and every year commits progroms and even huge genocides over ethnic and religious motives in Africa and SE Asia - and complains about claimed racism of the others...? :lol:

anyway, i don't particularly want to get in another argument with you -- we've gone over this again and again in the past -- i just want to know why, just for personal enlightenment, why do islam and immigrants rub you the wrong way so badly?
Because I spend several years to read the Quaran, literature on Islamic history and scripture, and find islam disgusting by its very own claims and scriptures and content, and correlating all that with my experiences in various countries during extensive offroad-traveling, both private and professional trips. Travelling between North Africa and the middle East, and europe, often made me think of it as "time travels". The culture clash between West and Islam, last but not least is a clash of different ages, too, a clash of time eras: modern present vs medieval.

Regarding immigrants, we have immigrants from many different places here. and for some reason - maybe the education Muslims have enjoyed from their Islamic culture and teaching? - immigrants from africa, south America, north America, europe, russia, Asia, for some reason do not cause us any problems, not culturally and not criminologically, but the ones that give us troubles where-ever they form bigger than small communities and subcultures in the west, are Muslim immigrants. So keep both groups separate, please, else you offend the non-Muslims immigrants over the mess the muslim immigrants cause all to often. I insist on Islam accepting responsibility for cultural shockwaves it creates by its very ideology and content, and the cultural climate that derives from that. and I save neither you nor anyone else defending Islam from pointing these things out. Our problem in europe is not "migrants". Our problems almost exclusively are caused by MUSLIM migrants - not the Koreans, not the chinese, not the Japanese, not the Australians or Canadians, not the Kenians or Kongolese (?) or southafricans, not the brasilians or Mexicans, not the French or Russians or Poles or Spanish or italians or Greek - but the Muslims from various different countries, especially turkey, Albania, Afghanistan, Pakistan (in France also Algerians etc). Our financial statistics say so, our sociological statistics prove it, our criminologist statistics show it. the overrepresentation is statistically highly significant. Sometimes we talk of ranges covering several factors.

The problem is the Quran, it's content, the cultural climate that it has created, and the thinking and attitude that it educates. This affects the way people think of integration (or better: non-integration), and accepting responsibility for themselves and their deeds. The educational climate in Quran-influenced traditions is simply the most influential, most enduring, most totalitarian, most supremacist disaster in the history of human cultures. and as I often have said before, thinking of "Islam" and not including the Quran, is like thinking of "christianity" without a "Christ" or a new testament wothout the four gospels. it's not only absurd - it is completely pointless.

I believe in the "reforming of islam" like I believe in the democratisation of fascism - it is utopic. islam must not be reformed - it must be replaced - for the wellbeing of us "infidels" as well as muslims in muslim countries. We suffer from your intolerance and aggression and constant demands for special rights and special status, you suffer from your own stagnation and impotence that denied you the skill to become masters of your own fate in the modern era. saving you from these sharp criticism like I summarise them, will do nothing good for you, or for us, just give you an excuse to not start thinking critically about yourself and to not question your history objectively and to not start imagining if maybe you better should change some basic, important things. What Europe and it's ambilavent relation with the church went through in centuries and centuries of dark eras, you still must go through. But as long as you Muslims do not even see the need to get started, you simply will remain to be what you are and have been since centuries: a problem for everybody else around you, the bully of the block, the source of constant tension and conflict and in the modern present: terror as well. I am voicing these criticism and accusation not to offend, but because this "conflict-therapy" is the only chance to get some alternative thinking started. If no pressure is put on you muslim people to look at yourself, then you will never do. And while it is only some people only who actually actively do bad or aggressive stuff (but in growing numbers), it is the so very silent, so overwhelmin big majority that does not stop these people who act in their name, hidden in their middle, and by that these many silent passive people nevertheless are guilty of giving a silently agreed legitimation to it. Even a passive "Mitläufer" (follower, hanger-on) must accept his share of responsibility, just claiming he does not love those in power is not enough - a very German lesson, learned the very hard way.

[Schroeder]

In my opinion, individuals are responsible for their own actions or inactions, and looking at religion is pretty much a waste of time. for every muslim you know that has caused problems -- oh wait, let me correct that -- for every muslim you claim you know and claim to have caused problems, i know a muslim that hasn't.

What about that police report here from Germany that makes it clear that Muslim males are over proportionally violent and criminal than ANY other ethnicity in Germany? That is not just a random claim but empirical proven.


actually, most people i know, muslim or otherwise, blame others for their own failure. just look at your own countries recent history -- if we use your mode of thinking, we'd hold all germans responsible for the actions of a few. but we don't, do we? do you?
Would you have held them responsible while they entered your country and started behaving like the "master race"?


secondly, i think it's pretty hilarious that you use W Churchill to make your arguments -- the last of the great colonialists. why don't you quote what he had to say about germany, too?
Well, what's wrong with his views on Islam?

The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.
What's wrong with that? Even here in Germany a lot of Muslims are treating their wives like their property. Of course not all of them do, but it is definitely not a rare occasion here.


Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it.

What was the last technological improvement that was made by a Muslim nation that has not just been copied? (I'm really curious about that one as I know of none but that doesn't mean that there really haven't been a few, so if you know of something important I really would like to know).


No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.

Again, what's wrong with it? Did Islam spread quickly and often by force? I think it did. Would it have stopped before taking over Europe without being repelled militarily? I don't think so.


well, like you said, it's history, and most people i know accept that. but you don't. why don't you put your hypercritical eye on the things other cultures have done? or would that mean there would need to be some self-criticism? i mean, look at what your "superior" culture has done in the last 100+ years, let alone in 500 years ago.
No, it's not history unfortunately. It's still going on. Sometimes using force (like Sudan) and sometimes by demographic change ( like in Europe).
I really don't get why some people always insist on playing the "But your culture did that too" card. Yes, we conquered, we murdered, we suppressed. Does that mean we should allow everyone on this planet to do the very same BS too? I don't understand the logic in that.

anyway, i don't particularly want to get in another argument with you -- we've gone over this again and again in the past -- i just want to know why, just for personal enlightenment, why do islam and immigrants rub you the wrong way so badly?Well, this wasn't directed at me but maybe you are interested in my version as well.
I don't see the Islamic culture as on par with our values and our constitution. I simply don't like it to have 4 million people here with a faith that is proven to spawn more criminals than any other group here, that keeps demanding more and more and who's leaders have more or less openly declared war on our culture. I feel invaded. I usually don't count myself to the right wing (I've no problems with most foreigners here and have some non German friends as well) but with Islam I really see a threat to our nation (and Europe as a whole). We have almost no benefit from having them here but a lot of disadvantages (criminals, social welfare recipients). The average Muslim here performs way worse than immigrants from ANY other ethnicity.
Why should I be glad that they are here?

*cross post with Skybird*

[Skybird]

What about that police report here from Germany that makes it clear that Muslim males are over proportionally violent and criminal than ANY other ethnicity in Germany? That is not just a random claim but empirical proven.

Or repeated statistical findings over the past three or four years showing that in England and Germany the young third generation muslim migrants are more orthodox than their grandparents ever had been who originally came to these our countries? Or the representative findings showing that between - hope I rember the numbers correctly - 20 and 40% of the younger people accept violence if that is needed to impose Sharia on German and English societies? that amongst Muslim boys and girls a representative examination showed that half of them fully accept and desire a submissive social role for women, and that violence should be used by males to govern females - and that Muslim young males find it cool to f#ck german infidel sluts, becaseu, so they said, that bsi what infidel sluts are there for - but that they would fall back to their right of blood revenge if somebody would do that with thei sister, or if their sister would behave in a modern way that does not fit Islamic/patriarchalic patterns? Or the year-for- year repeated warnings of the intelligence service in Germany, namely the BVS, of the unconstitutional goals and activities of muslim communities and nationalistic turkish organisation and Saudi-payed "culture-centres", including the king Fahd Academy (known to be a hotspot for hate preaching and radicalisation of muslims and stroing hints that it is engaged in assistsing in terror logistics as well? Warnings the experts and professional insiders of police and intel repeat time and again in more and more urgent tone - just to get ignored and overruled by politicians to scared to accept and adress the presence of these threats?

;)

Beside the criminological statoisztics and aspects, there is the burden uneducated social low class migrants put on the social wellfare system. such migration is not a relif to our social system that is under demograophic stress, but it adds to the future costs, it does not ease them.While there are burgeouse famiolies of Muslimfaith coming, from Iran for example, Muslims migrants of middle or higher social class and with good qualification are a minority, and not a big one. in very many muslim families of social low class, the resistence to adequate integration and education is high, which means no future perspective for jobs - not to mention academically highly qualified jobs with good wages and good tax returns. a new subcultural, resistent-to-integration, hostile-to-the-constitution precarity gets artifically created here. And it already has started to cost us dearly, although this is not much compared to things to come. We need well-edcuated, integration-willing, acadmeically trained migrants with good qualification - we do not need just any migrant there is. but if I were a well-trained, academically edcuated migrant - why the hell should I choose to go to germany where the future is grim, and almost 51% of my income gets collected by the state in taxes and social insurrances - tendency growing for the coming 20 years, when few and fewer employees must finance more and more old people? (so says a statistic they reported today: since today, the Geman average employee works for his own pocket.the days before in the first half of the year he worked to see his wages completes taken by the state). Germany is a very bad place to raise a family. If you want to do that: run, run, run.

some years ago, Indian specialists came in some numbers, well-trained computer specialists and programmer (the Indians are good at this stuff). Problem is they realised what show is running here - and for the most they left again.

[tater]

All religious literalism rubs ME the wrong way.

Don't get me wrong, I have several expensive carpets, and I love middle eastern food, and north african architecture, too. Other than that? Na, nothing I can think of to keep.

I'm just as harsh on creationist christians, and other religious kooks.

When creationist christian kooks start flying planes into buildings, I'll get more harsh on THEM, too.

[Tribesman]

Be careful, you "Muslim" - I have been in Muslim places where they would chase you away and even would want to kill you for heretic statements like that. In accordance with the quran they would
Sounds like the sort of people with the same circular logic as Sky uses, all muslims are fundamentalist nuts, if they ain't fundamentalist nuts they ain't muslim as all muslims are fundamentalist nuts.
But isn't it the case that the koran says bugger all about that and what sky is talking about there is one theological schools interpretation of a document that was written several centuries later. Not of course suggesting that there are different theological schools as there is only one islam and it is and always has been the fundamentlist nutty kind, even when it didn't exist.

[Skybird]

All religious literalism rubs ME the wrong way.

Don't get me wrong, I have several expensive carpets, and I love middle eastern food, and north african architecture, too. Other than that? Na, nothing I can think of to keep.

I'm just as harsh on creationist christians, and other religious kooks.

When creationist christian kooks start flying planes into buildings, I'll get more harsh on THEM, too.
Creatinionism is becoming very popular in Islam, too. ;) Birds of same feather flock together.

[onelifecrisis]

many Muslims indeed may reject parts of the Quran, or refuse it alltogether. But then they must ask themselves why they still insist of being labelled "muslim". Muslim is no independent cultural identity, nor is it an ethnicity. They claim to be muslim just because they have been born to a Muslim father? That makes no sense, that is mixing relgious ideology with ethnicity. Their skin colour and ethnciity is completely unaffected from whether they are muslim or christian or atheist or whatever.

It's nothing to do with ethnicity. I am an atheist yet I still recognise in myself the heavy influence of a Christian upbringing, particularly when it comes to ethics but also culturally. If I were in a foreign culture and someone asked me my religion, I would probably answer "Christian" for it defines/identifies me better than any other religious category; indeed in many ways the term suits me better than the term "atheist" since atheists are often assumed by theists to be either amoral or angry/bitter theists.

Many muslims-that-are-no-muslims may indeed support the Western understanding of terms like freedom, human rights, coexistence. But if they do so, they must check themselves for whether they are supporting quranic ideas and a thinking tradition that is opposing the former mentioned Western concepts - or not. If they support the Quranic view of things, then they cannot claim to support the western view of things at the same time, those constitutionally guaranteed rights and freedoms of ours, because the Western culture and the Quran are incompatible and their concepts are antagonistic to each other, to put it mildly. If these people however indeed support the Western view, and reject the quranic dogma and thinking of things, then they are no longer Muslim. If then they are willing to integrate in our home countries, if they choose to come here, then I have little porblem with them. Actually, some of such people have been friends for me.

Islam is hardly unique in that regard. Why do you focus so much energy into attacking that one religion?

http://img117.echo.cx/img117/984/biblewarning5hl.jpg

[Foxtrot]

Germans can always reinstate Stasi, and Skybird can lead that good forces against the invading forces of evil :salute:

[Skybird]

Germans can always reinstate Stasi, and Skybird can lead that good forces against the invading forces of evil :salute:
Some poltiicians in parliament indeed defend the StaSi, and the SED of the former GDR. different to me, they all are members of the party "Die Linke". and you can't be any more leftist than Die Linke is, for sure.

Over the years I got accused in this forum to be a Nazi, a racist, a socialist and even a communist, a rightwinger, a conservative, a leftist, a pacifist, a warmonger, a reasonable, and an insane. Some even accused me to be a religious believer. :lol:

Pick your preferred label. I personally lost track of what many different things I am at the same time. Maybe I am schizophrenic and suffer from multiple personalities. Could be. Maybe at next occasion I should discuss this possibility with my other selves. :88)

[caspofungin]

well, like i said before, we've had these arguments before and nothing has been gained. you refuse to accept that there are several different theological schools in islam -- you have a very black and white view of things which in my opinion are significantly nuanced. no problem, that's your opinion. i would prefer it however, if you would stop saying i'm not muslim. after all, i must be, since i get hassled at airports all the time.

what i'm trying to say is its very simple to lay the blame on islam, when most of the problems in these ME countries have to do with government, tribal, local, and national, which has more to do greed and personal aggrandizement than any religous dogma. the outlook of individuals from saudi, for example, where had work is somewhat frowned upon and they'd much prefer paying someone else to do the work, is totally different from someone from oman where they try to be more self-sufficient. even in saudi that is changing due to economic pressures. but it's simpler to just say, "it's because of their religion."

it's very easy to say, "the failings of these immigrants is due to their religion" -- perhaps it is. but perhaps it also has to do with their starting point in either their home country or wherever they've immigrated to.

as to the fact that offspring of immigrants tend to be more orthodox -- i see you don't mention the interpretation that some sociologists have that this is a response to either perceived or real social injustices.

there are certainly a lot of faults with the interpretation and implementation of islamic theology, most muslims recognize that there are different schools of theology so i'm not sure why other people find it so difficult.

as to how people act, well, the scientific terms confounding factors and multifactorial come into it.

[Skybird]

well, like i said before, we've had these arguments before and nothing has been gained. you refuse to accept that there are several different theological schools in islam -- you have a very black and white view of things which in my opinion are significantly nuanced.
I am not unaware of these, I just refuse them the legitimation they often claim, and I do so for hiostoiriuc reasons, reasons that lie in the scritpure, and I also asnwer you that you seem to ignore the many things on which they agree. In the end, muslims have no porblems, whenever it is for their advanatge, to refer to and confess to always just "Islam" itself", and the one Ummah of islam. Not different versions of the one or the other. The perceived diversity of possible interpretation of quran - for kost is a wetsern ionvention of the past 40, 50 years. And even many promionent muslim clerics, pliktici9ans, and spokesmen deny that diversity of Islam, labelling it an insult to think there is diversity possible in the Quranic tradition. Since the 9th or 10th century, there is agreement between the most dominant six major school of law in Islam that the abrogation principle in Quranic suras is existing and is valid. It also is laid out right in words in at least four different passages of the Quran.


no problem, that's your opinion. i would prefer it however, if you would stop saying i'm not muslim. after all, i must be, since i get hassled at airports all the time.
Flawed logic in that argument. On being Muslim, see me earlier answer(s).

what i'm trying to say is its very simple to lay the blame on islam, when most of the problems in these ME countries have to do with government, tribal, local, and national, which has more to do greed and personal aggrandizement than any religous dogma.

So says you, ignroing that the cultural climate of these palces inflkuenced the factors you mentioned to stay what they are. Europe has been in a much poorer intellectual and scierntiifc and cultural state, too, however, europe was able to imporve, to develope, to grow, to blossom, and leave the supression of females and witch hhunts, relgious intolerance and patriarchalism behind to very wide degrees. I wonder if that has somethign to do with the power of the church's dogma getting broken and the role and influence of dogmatic relgion being relativised? :hmmm:

the outlook of individuals from saudi, for example, where had work is somewhat frowned upon and they'd much prefer paying someone else to do the work, is totally different from someone from oman where they try to be more self-sufficient. even in saudi that is changing due to economic pressures. but it's simpler to just say, "it's because of their religion."

The rich nations basing on oil - see that oil being produced with Wetsern technology, that was developed by Wetsern science, the facitlites oftehn get run and maintained by Wetsern experts, and the managing of the trade and fiancial business gets organised by wetsern examples. the only merit these nations have in their welath is - that they have oilö. but that is no merit i itself, nor a cultural acchievement. and the many mega-buildings they have risen in the gulf region recnetly: you see wetsern architects, and constuction being done by workers from foreign countries, with materials and technical solutions develkoped in asian and western places. and whenever ther eis an epidemic spreading, whom, do you call? the Ansar university in Khairo where students spend half of their time learning relgious dogmas - or the disease control centre in Atlanta? when Lybia needs a reorganisation of it'S health system and hospoitals - does it acchieve that all by itself or by blackmailing foriegn nations to bring in the knowhow on how to do it? the satelittes for dubai TV broadcasting - are they the product of science run in the islamic cultural sphere, or the West? The basic fundamental knowlöedge and understanding for modern science and tehcnology - developed in the West and Japan/china, or in the islamci world? modern agricultural standards and multiplication of harvest incomes - by methods of traditional ME habits, or by wetsern knowledge and knowhow? What had the Palestinians made of their living place before the Israelis came? back then, it was a stony desert, today the Israelis run agriculture their that is incredible for such a dry place. and on and on and on the list goes. and this althiough 1400 years ago arabian peninsula was far ahead of Europe in trade, science, medical treatement! and then it stopped to move forward, and stagnated. that was it for them until poil was found. And if westerners wouldn't have found it for them, and wouldn'T have priduced it for them, then they still would not know what to make of it and how to turn it into money.

Now, I save myself from, listing a series of general philosophic and legal accievements of the West, that for most are still maintained and by wide consensus are agree upon in the Western world, from the equality of women to the freedom of speech, from the banning of slavery to the belief that the dignity of man/women (even infidels!) should be untouchable.

The West is not perfect, and for two steps forwqards it seem to make one step back, or takes a sidestep. but all in all we improved ourselves more or less constantly since centuries. the Muslim sphere of influence: stagnates, became fatalistic, uncreative, passive. By mental attitude it still is where it was over a thousand years ago. When Napoleon landed in Egypt and showed the Muslim world that infidels not only could reach them, but had superior means available and that muslims could not even do anything to to deny them entry or keep them away, that was not onlya shock - it was an offence for an ideology that saw and still sees itself as the greatest installement of civilisational superiority on this planet. and due to this "offence" that is defined by others having done better than the so self-glorifying Islamic world itself - you people still feel constantly offended by others - instead of seeing the falure in your own cultural system that is so massively mutilated by islam despite the once sueprior starting conditions that you had.

If I were you or any muslim, I would curse and doom Muhammad for what he has done to my people's future.

it's very easy to say, "the failings of these immigrants is due to their religion" -- perhaps it is. but perhaps it also has to do with their starting point in either their home country or wherever they've immigrated to.

One wonders why other immigrants do so much better, and why Muslim migrants starting point is so much inferior to that of others, then. could it be that it has soemthign to do with their hostory, theirt attitude they had been raised to, the educaiton influencing the way in which they approach - or not approach the challenges of life and migrating to another place...? Admitted, the West is stupid enough to m,ake it easy for them to fail, by feeding them and cuddling them wiothiut daring to raise demands to them. gemany is probaly the kost stupid wetsern country in this regard. Australia, america, Canada, and others do ask their immigranst what they have to offer to contribute to the nation'S improvement. In Germany, asking that is considered to be discrimination. I think that way we deserve to get only those migrants that other nations already have refused. We bancrupt ourselves that way.

as to the fact that offspring of immigrants tend to be more orthodox -- i see you don't mention the interpretation that some sociologists have that this is a response to either perceived or real social injustices.
I know that argument, and it is coming from left socialists, pedagogues, and the what in Germany is called the 68-generation trying to gloss over the situation. as a matter of fact, such effects can be calculated out of statistics, so that you can demonstrate for example that the higher representation in crime statistics is not due to social injustice, but due to inner sociological constellations founded on the cultural background and unhealthy family situations. Lacking perspectives can serve as intermitting variables, as they are called in German statistics, too, of course they can. But then you need to ask why this affects Muslim miograns more than non-Muslim migrants, and again you need to conclude that the muslim background has somethign to do with it due to the influence on mindset, general attitude. It is interesting that those muslim girls/women that suffer more from Islam than men, do much better at school, at the cost of raising more family conflicts and accepting personal risks: female muslim young immigrants outclass their male companions in most educational and acadmeical scores. which again is an offence to Muslim men, and makes them more supressive to their sisters and girlfriends. the number of male-female conflicts in families (especially regarding sisters/daughters), is rising. That is because better education means more success and also more demand to benefit from the superior wetsern freedoms and values.Education is the enemy of every relgion, and islam is no exception. Islamic education wants submission by the girls, and compliance with the dogma. Grils viollating this scheme, live dangerous. but such girls, and women craving for more freedom in muslim ****ries, are another reason why I attack islam so unforgivingly. not attacking it means to betray the hopes for a better life and escape from supression and de facto slavery for hundreds of milions of girls and women - something that many islamophile appeasers just ignore.

there are certainly a lot of faults with the interpretation and implementation of islamic theology, most muslims recognize that there are different schools of theology so i'm not sure why other people find it so difficult.
Maybe becasue that variety of possible interpretations is illusory, or ill-based. To me, the teaching of quran is primitive, inhumane, and evil, and I can fully understand the need in people to try to believe in so,mehtijg better than that. The old god of the Thora is a tyrannic psychopath and sadistic dictator. It took quite some creative, hairsplitting, witty intellectualism to turn that beast of a guy into the forgiving, well-meaning father modern Jews prefer to believe in, and christians as well. the christian god in the OT is basing on the Jewish Jahwe, but the new testament (Jesus reforming of Judaic belief - that si what made him so dangerous to the pharisees) implemented a different con cpet of God, and again some century later came the inner-christian reformation, leading to the splitting of the church into Orthodox Catholicism, and Protestants. there was a desire to leave the old revnging vulcan god of thethora and Ot behind, and the same desire is felt by many Muslims - thus their desire to distort the quranic teaching to degrees that quran simply does not support, and thinking that the resulting "interpretation" of islam nevertheless wopuld be "original". It is a compliment for muslims that they see the need to escape the Quranic origianl conceptions. but they are inconsistent when that does not lead them to question the claimed fame and status of that conception, and want to be seen in conformity with it while already having abandoned it in parts.

when you see the evil in Nazism and refuse Nazism therefore, there is no excuse why you nevertheless want to be seen as a Nazi. eventually you do it if you think you can make claims over it for benefits that otherwise you donot deserve. I think that is wehat many Muslims do on a subconsious level.

I don't buy it, and tell them instead: kick all that dusty nonsense out of the window, don't waste time with demanding undeserved profits for yourself that you did not earn, and finally start moving again, after one millenia you have to move fast in order to ctahc up with therest of the modern world again. That way, and only that way, you will improve your places, will give your children a btter, less intellectually castrated future, that way you will earn the creativioty to forge your own fate instead of depending on the inventions of other cultures. and only that way you will beocme less a paijn in the a$$ for all the other natiosn and cultures on this planet that escaped the fate of having been subjugated by islam so far.

For wanting that, you can get my respect. For dojng so, you can get my support and help.

For staying like you are, you only get my mockery and my determined und non-negotiable resistence.

[Tribesman]

most muslims recognize that there are different schools of theology so i'm not sure why other people find it so difficult.

Thats easy, once they accept that then their arguement falls apart, you will have to learn to accept that for some people like Skybird and the Taliban there is only one school of thought on scripture and its the one they share.

Flawed logic in that argument. On being Muslim, see me earlier answer(s).
Thats the earlier answers with the circular logic, which by definition is flawed.

[MH]

I
Maybe becasue that variety of possible interpretations is illusory, or ill-based. To me, the teaching of quran is primitive, inhumane, and evil, and I can fully understand the need in people to try to believe in so,mehtijg better than that. The old god of the Thora is a tyrannic psychopath and sadistic dictator. It took quite some creative, hairsplitting, witty intellectualism to turn that beast of a guy into the forgiving, well-meaning father modern Jews prefer to believe in, and christians as well. the christian god in the OT is basing on the Jewish Jahwe, but the new testament (Jesus reforming of Judaic belief - that si what made him so dangerous to the pharisees) implemented a different con cpet of God, and again some century later came the inner-christian reformation, leading to the splitting of the church into Orthodox Catholicism, and Protestants. there was a desire to leave the old revnging vulcan god of thethora and Ot behind, and the same desire is felt by many Muslims - thus their desire to distort the quranic teaching to degrees that quran simply does not support, and thinking that the resulting "interpretation" of islam nevertheless wopuld be "original". It is a compliment for muslims that they see the need to escape the Quranic origianl conceptions. but they are inconsistent when that does not lead them to question the claimed fame and status of that conception, and want to be seen in conformity with it while already having abandoned it in parts.

when you see the evil in Nazism and refuse Nazism therefore, there is no excuse why you nevertheless want to be seen as a Nazi. eventually you do it if you think you can make claims over it for benefits that otherwise you donot deserve. I think that is wehat many Muslims do on a subconsious level.

.

That is brief but still insightful view on religion.
I as an atheist agree with it 100% i have many religious friends and co workers and sometimes i like to sting them about how God is actually mean and revengeful toward his believers and ruthless toward unbelievers.
Kind of egomaniac?.
I also ask them how they can take seriously this "gods chosen people" thing considering Jewish history.....from my point of view we where chosen by GOD to be kicked around-some kind of dark sense of humor.
Ok... i don't get stoned to death as i would if Israel was like Iran or Saudia.
From my point of view it is impotent to have division between state and religion.
For Europe it took hundreds of years to achieve that-you can go to church every Sunday but its not a big deal if your neighbor doesn't.
For most part your children still will go to same school and learn same values.
Islam for now has a hard time in doing that-in many countries it is achieved by dictatorship and iron feast.
Arab countries are what Europe was 1000 years ago.
I think its quite understandable why Europeans should be at least be watchful toward Islam as it is today.I think that letting emigrants know that certain things are not OK is a good thing.
It may actully help the next genaretion with the intagration.
Some times it can also have opsite effect but nothings pefect

Islam definitely can be threat to Western way of life as it by definition lacks(and is not supposed to have ) any tolerance to non Muslim way of life as should be forced upon people whenever circumstances allow that.
That can be jihad or demographic majority.
This may not be solid view of every religious Muslim but it is a view of most religious leaders.
Of course there are reformist in Islam as there where in Christianity 500 years ago.

[tater]

Sounds like the sort of people with the same circular logic as Sky uses, all muslims are fundamentalist nuts, if they ain't fundamentalist nuts they ain't muslim as all muslims are fundamentalist nuts.
But isn't it the case that the koran says bugger all about that and what sky is talking about there is one theological schools interpretation of a document that was written several centuries later. Not of course suggesting that there are different theological schools as there is only one islam and it is and always has been the fundamentlist nutty kind, even when it didn't exist.

Sects of a religion are "fundamentalist" if they are literalists.

Did the world take 7 days to make? Were Adam and Eve real? Is the book true, 100% (even if you have to stick your fingers in your ears and yell "LA LALALLALA" when someone reads internally inconsistent passages)? Do they believe in "creationism?"

What sects of Islam are NOT fundamentalist, and how many are in that sect out of the 1.2 billion worldwide?

[Tribesman]

Sects of a religion are "fundamentalist" if they are literalists.

So you just mean those who came from the Salafi school who have gone one step further.
Though even that doesn't work as if they were true literalists they would be getting stuck with the contradictory passages.
So they are not literalists just selective literalists which is why they are fundamentalists as they believe in the fundamentals only as interpreted by themselves.

[tater]

So you just mean those who came from the Salafi school who have gone one step further.
Though even that doesn't work as if they were true literalists they would be getting stuck with the contradictory passages.
So they are not literalists just selective literalists which is why they are fundamentalists as they believe in the fundamentals only as interpreted by themselves.

I mean that if you think the world was created as in genesis, you are a fundy, period. If you think that the koran is accurate? Fundy.

A non-fundy will admit that their book is "just so" stories. Not literally true, but useful for a moral.

What islamic sects specifically state that the koran is not literally true, just useful stories?

[Tribesman]

What islamic sects specifically state that the koran is not literally true, just useful stories?
I see where your problem is.
What is the koran Tater?

[Skybird]

Good point, Tater, which I also make time and again: Islam is fundamentalist by definition. If it is not fundamentalist - or as you say: not literalist - then it cannot be Islamic in the Quran's meaning. that is no circular logic by me when claiming that - it simply is an adequate description of the nature of this ideology.

I could as well be accused of "circular logic" when saying that Nazism is racist, and when denying their are more liberal, more democratic forms of Nazism. Nazism is by nature and definition racist - always, else it is not Nazism. A Nazi indeed refusing the racist component in it, is no real Nazi.

Muhammad used the hiding of a religion that he invented to make himself unavailable for criticism and quesitoning his leadership - by declaring such criticism a heresy that could cost the heretic his life. Muhammad's sermons are designed to acchieve maximum unit and support by his followers of his time, to make his army strong and not plagued by doubts or hesitations, and to intimidate everybody who could have meant a challenge to Muhammad'S claim for power. And for acchieving this outcome, this social effect, he did not need sensible reasoning and love for human kindness, but he enforced uniformity and totalitarian control. Only from this perspective it can be understood why the Quran is what it is, and is not any different. And only against this background the Quran can be "interpreted" correctly. leave the supoerstition behind, this is no book of metaphysical insight and divine revelation, but it is nothing else put a work of pure fiction of a single man that he opportunistically designed to support his powerpoltiical intentions.

Ron Hubbard, founder of the corporation of Scientology, 1400 years later: "You don't get rich writing science fiction. If you want to get rich, you start a religion." And: "I'd like to start a religion. That's where the money is."

Maybe for Muhammad, wealth and treasury also was a point, and maybe he started as a social reformer before he became known as a kahin, a seer. But in the end - he was about power, and women.

[Konovalov]

Can't we give this Islam that, Islam this stuff a rest once and a while. Life is hard enough at times let alone to have to visit here and come across countless threads by the same old people on this same old subject of Islam is evil, Muslims are taking over the planet, yada yada yada. I mean come on, is there nothing else happening in your lives like sims and most importantly sub sims?

I am not saying no discussion on the subject at all. I am simply asking for a little bit of variety and a little bit of self-moderation. All I see is just the same old tiresome flame war between the same old people. I'm getting on for near a decade of being a member of this forum but quite frankly it is a horrible place to be at times for the small minority of Muslims who are indeed members and do make meaningful contributions here.

And as for this topic it ain't hard to figure out. France were crap and living off past glories with a coach who said prior to the World Cup that he was leaving at the end of the tournament. The French football team was an accident waiting to happen. It has nothing to do with Islam. They were a rubbish team and simply not good enough just like my Australia and England. :down:

[tater]

I see where your problem is.
What is the koran Tater?

Why do you reflexively defend Islam? It's just as stupid as any other religion.

Qur'an, plus hadith.

The same standard for fundamentalism applies to Islam as Christianity. Biblical literalism in the latter (and the former for the shared bits), and koranis literalism for the latter.

Any belief that the haditha are literally true also plays into this.

What sects openly state that the Koran and hadith are just stories that don't even have to be true, just good moral teachings in fictional form?

[Penguin]

From my point of view it is impotent to have division between state and religion.

Dr. Freud anyone? :03:
Fact is we don't have a true seperation of state and religion here, religion is mandatory taught in most states. Blasphemy laws are still there...


What sects of Islam are NOT fundamentalist, and how many are in that sect out of the 1.2 billion worldwide?

The Alevis are pretty laid-back people... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alevi
About 15%-30% of the Turkish population, but granted a minority worldwide.


As much as I dislike (political) Islam, you cannot say it's all the same.
What about Indonesia, where the government is pretty hard engaged into the fight agains fundamentalists, Pakistan also to a level?
What about Iraq, where Sunnis and Shiites kick the S. out of each other (and both fight against the Kurds)
What about Qatar, Bahrein, Kuwait, Dubai who treat their foreign workers from islamic countries like slaves?
What about the great Arabic states who care nothing about the Palestinians? As long as they are in poverty, they have a reason to blame the Jews. There are some of the richest countries in the world in the Middle East, with their money every Palestinian "refugee" could have a big house, huge piece of land and prime infrastructure, but no, they need their scapegoats...

This doesn't look like Islam is a homogeneous mass.

[tater]

Muslims are not a homogeneous mass. Islam is what it says in the book(s), OTOH. I see Islam as fairly homogeneous, Muslims as far more diverse.

My thought is that in areas remote from Arabia, there are more moderate practitioners for the simple reason that they are illiterate in arabic. There are ~200 million speakers of all the arabic languages (many mutually incomprehensible) combined. That leaves 1 billion muslims who cannot actually read their holy book to know what it says. If their tradition has been moderate, they are moderate. When taught to read arabic, and they read, they become more fundamentalist. That's the point of so many islamic charities that build "schools." They build schools to create arabic literacy to read the only books that matter to them...

[MH]

Dr. Freud anyone? :03:
Fact is we don't have a true seperation of state and religion here, religion is mandatory taught in most states. Blasphemy laws are still there...
.

Religion should be thought its part of history.
I don't thing its a problem as long as it comes with other lessons.



This doesn't look like Islam is a homogeneous mass.
No ....and good that so.

[Penguin]

Ok tater, I see your point.

Regarding the illiteracy in Arabic of most Muslims: I think there is also a problem for someone who wants to read the quran. The whole interpretation and translation process is in the responsibility of the teacher. If this guy is a fundamentalist it is much easier to brainwash the scholars if they cannot read it by themselves. This is a major problem here in Germany, where no one really checks out the people who teach in a mosque with the result that there are some really disgusting "preachers" who are allowed to work and teach (Islam) here.
Luther's main historic deed was to translate the bible from Latin to (ancient) German so everyone who was literate could read it. He basically opened the interpretation of the bible to the masses, the result was less extremism.
The Quran is only valid in Arabic however, does anyone know the reason why? My guess is that the reason is to keep a monopoly in the interpretation.

[tater]

Yeah, but then you read someone like Hirsi Ali. Her take (and others) is that it's not that illiterates are brainwashed, but the exact opposite. Illiterates (in arabic, not in general!) are more free to have variant practices because they cannot read in black and white where it is unambiguously forbidden to do X, Y, and Z that they in fact do. She mentioned her grandma doing things that she later found to be "wrong" due to learning arabic, and being taught by the Muslim Brotherhood.

When she heard bin Laden's rants quoting the qur'an after 9-11, she went and read the sections assuming he was using them out of context to "brainwash" people, and found OBL had quoted them very fairly. She was left with the internal choice to side with OBL (he properly quoted the exact words of god after all!), or dump Islam. She chose the latter and is now an atheist.

Hitchens asked a famous, moderate Swiss Muslim cleric about apostasy, and the punishment. The guy was forced to admit that the punishment was unambiguously "death," but offered that since it wasn't practical to kill all apostates, this wasn't a problem!

[MH]

The Quran is only valid in Arabic however, does anyone know the reason why? My guess is that the reason is to keep a monopoly in the interpretation.



Translating may be already the same as interpreting
Religious books are written in very murky way most of the time.
Sects of Islam or any other religions are based on those different interpretations.

I think its possible to buy Quran in English.
http://www.amazon.com/Quran-Translation-Commentary-English-Arabic/dp/0940368323

[tater]

Translations of stuff like silly holy books makes real argument pretty difficult.

There are many cases (not just Islam) where translations from one language to another leave huge holes where the common understanding uses one modern word, where the likely intent in the original language (or contemporary use at the time) held an entirely different meaning.

It's like apologists who claim that "jihad" is some sort of internal mental argument ("struggle") when contextually, and historically, the relevant bits being discussed clearly mean "war."

[Schroeder]

Dr. Freud anyone? :03:
Fact is we don't have a true seperation of state and religion here, religion is mandatory taught in most states. Blasphemy laws are still there...

I don't think that is true. We've had the choice in school to either attend to religious classes or do something called "Werte und Normen" (could be translated to values and standards [standards might be a poor translation, I'm not sure of that]). So there is a choice to avoid religion.

I'm also not aware of any blasphemy laws and have never heard of any being enforced here.:06:

[Skybird]

The originality of the one and only Quran is a myth. also, the suras are not presented in historically correct timeline, but in order of length. If you would read the suras in sequence of their historic creation, the quran you know from today would appear to be wildly shuffled (if you search the intenret, you can find Quran versions that have rearranged the sequence of suras to reflect a linear timescale for the date of their assumed creation). it is common rule, accepted in all major traditions of islamic law, that contradicting passages in the quran get dealt with by a principle of that the latest entry overrules all earlier entries contradicting it.

this one needs to know, that the suras in the present form are not presented in historically correct time-sequence, and that the so-called abrogation principle decides in case of contradicting passages which one now overrules the others. If these two rules are being followed, you are left with almost zero room for "interpretation" in the Quran, and you have a very radical, fundamentalist, angry piece of writing.

From an earlier essay of mine:

As far as the content and verbal style is concerned, generally a split is perceived in the Quran, separating the scriptures of Muhammad’s time in Mekka (beeing more metaphysical in content and style, focussing on ethical and spiritual questions) from those suras that are basing on his preachings in Medina, that shows more pragmatical relation to situations and problems of practical life, and are of less prosaic language.

It is undisputed amongst Quran-researchers, that the better part of the book without doubt is basing on Muhammad at least actively helping to shape it’s content. The academic voices that defended an opinion that without doubt ALL it’s content is „Muhammad pure“ nevertheless are said to have become rare since a longer while now.

The Quran is regarded as Allah’s revelation to mankind and thus is the basis of Muslim belief. It’s creation must not be explained, because Allah always have been existent and so the Quaran as his word and will cannot have been created by man – as an idea it has always been there. The many doubts that are existent about the tradition that influenced and conserved it’s form and made it to what it is today, are therefor ignored and considered to be irrelevant. Pragmatical from a Muslim point of view, but hardly acceptable for a less metaphysical mindset.

During Muhammad’s lifetime his prophecies had been conserved by verbal delivery and fixing in writing, using palm-leafs, leather, and whatever material was used for that purpose. The effort to do so was non-systematic and unorganized, so that the tradition was scattered around somewhat. Parts of these preachings additionally got lost, when close followers of Muhammad, who had learned to memorize „their“ part of the always increasing collection of preachings, had been killed in one of the many battles they went through. The first Caliph after Muhammad’s death, Abu Bakr (who also was Muhammad’s father-in-law), therefore ordered Muhammad‘s last secretary to collect all written and verbal material that was circulating, to bring it into an order and to fix it in a final writing. The result was a first version of the Quran about which we know almost nothing today. After Abu Bakr’s death two years after that of Muhammad, his successor, the second Caliph, Umar, is said to have given this version to his daugther Hafsa, Muhammad’s fourth wife, because she should have had such a splendid memory that she seemed to be ideally fitted to become the guardian of a Quran that now was hoped to see no more changes added to it by circulating different fragments and contents, whose originality was uncertain. However, orientalists raise serious doubts that it could have been like this. It seems to be unreasonable to assume that the most important document of Islam‘s faith should have been given into the hands of a woman, that – although beeing Muhammad’s wife - was of relatively minor importance in history.

Not that this question is of much importance, because this version of the Quran found no general acceptance, and few years later again complaints were raised, that in the provinces still a growing diversity of different versions of the Quaran were circulating, most or all of them adding new things or reinterpreting it towards a higher level of political relevance, or reinterpreting it in other ways that did not seem to be acceptable, or did not have any authenticity. So the new, third Caliph, Uthman, again ordered Muhammad’s old secretary to collect and form a new version of the Quaran, which he did and compared it with the first version that still was in possession of Hafsa. He also reworked and translated all material into the dominant Arab dialect, that of Mekka, because the fragments that had been scattered around were written or memorized in various different languages. Of this new version he created, only five numbers were written down and were given to the five centers of Islamic knowledge and scholarship in Mekka, Medina, Damascus, Basra and Kufa.

Scientific research asks some very serious questions about this course of the whole story. It is assumed that there was no single authority, no agreed institution of competence for the Quran existent. That there were two main versions created may have been a sign that there may have been at least two rivalling traditions of interpretation. Criterias for what was accepted for both of these main versions, and what not, are unknown, also who raised these criterias, if this should mean there were no central figure of evaluating it all, then this may be interpreted as arbitrariness deciding the second form of the Quran, or choices were made that were born out of political opportunism. And why was the first version without influence, why was the number of different versions beside that first collection of writings constantly increasing? All this is in contradiction to Islam’s understanding, that the Quaran was from the very beginning of Islam’s history what it always had been in later times. It cannot have been like that. Islam ignores these questions, and says that all this is unimportant. Despite all the obvious changes it must have gone thorugh, it should have remained unchanged since the beginning. A miracle? But, as P. Raddatz points towards an important question that kept Quran reseach before second world war very busy, how was it possible that during 25 years an ever increasing number of many followers memorized all verbal inspirations and preachings of Muhammad (and that was quite an impressive lot of material!!) , spreading them around all over their living places, giving them to others, so that thousands of passages went through thousands of ears and mouths – and nevertheless all of it shouldn’t have changed the smallest bit, and should have seen no faults and no adulterations (Verfälschungen) of even a minor kind? It is difficult enough to learn the whole Quran from fixed writing only, to learn it without faults by hear-say only seems to be beyond ability of man.

As if this not already raised doubts in the complete originality of today’s Quaran, an even greater problem existed – the changes in written language during the two- or threehundred years after Muhammad’s death. Not before the 10th century the introduction of diacritic punctuation („diakritische Punktierung“) to Arab writing was completed, which changed vocalisation and meaning of words of Arab dialects significantly. Linguists say that the translation of the second Quran version into the new version of Arabic writing necessarily must have increased the level of misinterpretations or changes of understandings of given words, and very drastically so. The new punctuation caused the changes of "letters" into different ones, and due to the inner nature of Arab language this meant, that words and complete sentences could transform into complete new meanings and understandings. This is the main reason, probably, why the number of different versions of the Quaran, with sometimes very dramatic changes in meaning and content of complete passages, grew constantly in the two hundred years after Muhammad’s death. A caste of professional Quran-readers had been formed by this, and they had high political influence, since due to the unity of religion and politics in Islam, their individual interpretations of the Quran really made a difference in local policies. - Even today preachers at the traditional Friday prayers are having high political influence and a significant power to mobilize their community. - They also implemented up to seven differing major traditions of interpretation, that took quite some time to get reduced to a smaller number of traditions again, and finally to just one. Like especially radical preachers today, they also may have had personal ambitions, coming from the power that they had to influence the crowds. The impression Islam is giving, that it only were different styles of verbal recitation, has been proven wrong by science, it has not been that simple and harmless and this claim holds no ground. It was not only different styles in presentation, but different conclusions by different styles of interpretation of the Quran, and different versions of Quaran itself. Today’s two only dominant ways in possible Quran interpretation, that allows both fundamentalists and non-fundamentalists to justify their deeds by the Quran and find coverage from it, may have found it’s reason in this chapter of history. However, this difference in interpretation finds no room and justification in the one quran that there is today. [Edit: in principle, there can be only one understanding of today'S Quran, and that is a quite fundamentailst one.]

Caliph Uthman obviously made a wise decision to concentrate the interpretation of Quran at the five centers of knowledge that were delivered the only five existing issues of the second official collection of the Quaran scriptures. He made a cut and accepted that an uncertain ammount of falsified, wrong material, that was lacking any authenticity, found entrance into the official Quaran. Anything was better than to allow a further spreading of different traditions to interpret the Quaran that only could have led to an increasing diversity in faith – exactly what Islam ideology does NOT want. The Quran-readers that made their living by interpreting the Quaran, and twisted it to the liking of the political needs of those who ordered and payed for their services, or to their own ambitions, lost their jobs and political influence. The centralization of interpreting the Quaran ended the regional political agitation and strengthened centralized, superregional powerstructures.

Linguistically, the origin of the word qur’an links parts of the Mekkanesian (?) scriptures of the Quran to the tradition of Christian liturgy, and Christian tradition and languages. This is critical, because Muslims think of the Quran to have been send down to man in Arab language – the Arab language that is known today. But that form of language did not exist before twohundred years after Muhammad’s death. So how could his preachings have been conserved and delivered, if not by accepting that the first and original version of the Quran had not been send down to man and fixed in punctuated Arabic, but more likely in a mixture of the dialect of the Quraysh and Arameic language, or Syrian dialects? Some commentators say that the Quran originally may have been a liturgic reading for Christian services, and that up to one quarter of the Quran’s content until today raises verbal problems with Islamic interpretations of passages that seem to point more towards Christian tradition and the Old and New Testament than towards the usual Muslim interpretation of this stuff. They also argue that the Quran may not have been a document of it’s own value and religious right, but may have been something like a comment to the writings of the Christians, focussing on them as the main word. These authors argue that the Quran probably has no original identity of it’s own, but was more an added comment on the basis of a foreign religious scripture, which most probably may have been the Bible as it was existent at that time.

Islam’s claim that the original language of the Quaran has been Arabic is highly questionable from an academical point of view, and it’s belief of the Quran’s delivery in that language (despite the well-documented changes the Arab language went through between the 7th and 10th century) as a miracle does not add anything valuable to discussion. The Quaran’s claimed originality is highly speculative, seen that way.

---

In that essay, which I wrote in 2005 I think, I then told a story by experience, from my time in Iran:

When asking persons that were close to some clerics in Iran about how the Quaran’s content found it’s way into the world of man, they said it had always been there by idea, in form it had been brought to man by the prophet. When I asked about how this could be if it is known that initially there had been at least two different main version of the Quran, at least seven traditions to interpret it and a number of more different versions of the scriptures scattered around, and Arab language drastically changed between the 7th and 10th century, this knowledge was straigthly rejected and they insisted on that it could not have been so. There were no changes in Quaran, and there never were different versions, period. I also triggered anger by that question occasionally, or I acchieved a sudden drop of social temperature if asking this question one time too often :) In Muslim countries, at least orthodox people apparently do not like to be reminded of these (and other) inner contradictions.

---

Although Uthman had made sure that the Quran was no longer to be mixed and watered by contacts with foreign teachings, there was still the chance that it would be „misinterpreted“ by the simple fact, that the Arab conquerers, when they started to leave the Arab peninsula and spread Allah's word outside, would somewhat mix and water it when coming in contact with the traditions in Egypt and Syria, here factions were living that were hostile to the Byzantine empire and for that reason tended to sympathise with the Arabs - who could not avoid to be influenced by these foreign religions in return, because their leaders even demanded them to treat friendly those that were hostile towards the Byzantines – which now was the Muslim Arabs’ major enemy. Although it took until late into the 8th century until the Quaran as we know it today had strengthend in structure and content, one thing was undisputed and beyond doubt for every Muslim from the beginning: that it was the word of Allah, without fault, without doubt, without wrong, without any reason to ask, examine or critisize it, always existent, never changing. This „hard belief“, immune to changes, even more consolidating itself in the more than 1300 years to come, made it impossible for Muslim religion to establish a tradition of self-critical examination of it’s own basis of beliefs, as we have seen it in the developement of Christian tradition, that led to the splitting into different Christians churches and sects, but nevertheless helped to gain a more modern understanding of Christianity‘s own faith, that considered the many changes the mental evolution of western man during the different phases of Western cultural history went through. The raised levels of knowledge and insight changed Christian religion, growing education lowered the need for religously motivated regulation, the implementation of legal laws replaced the enforcment of religious commandments. But Muslim theology did stop to develope very early in Islam’s history in an understanding of critically examining itself (if the heretic’s writings are not counted as part of the official theology), and seen that way one could even say that it does not exist in a western understanding.

[Penguin]

I don't think that is true. We've had the choice in school to either attend to religious classes or do something called "Werte und Normen" (could be translated to values and standards [standards might be a poor translation, I'm not sure of that]). So there is a choice to avoid religion.

I'm also not aware of any blasphemy laws and have never heard of any being enforced here.:06:

ok, this is maybe better now. In the 80s you had to attend religion class, if your parents didn't opt you out, untill the age of 14. In senior high school (Oberstufe to the Germans) we had in fact the choice between religion and philosophy.

Blasphemy: you may want to check out StgB 166 http://bundesrecht.juris.de/stgb/__166.html
One example when it was enforced was the most cost-intensive process which the satire magazine "Titanic" lost, against the catholic church. They had a poster with Jesus on the cross subtitled "Ich war eine Dose"("I was a tin can", commercial for recycling)

Crosses in school/court. Kindergarden/schools/youth clubs run by the church, but funded by the public. Church representatives in the control board (Aufsichtsrat) of the public media. All examples of no real seperation of state and religion.
In my opinion religion is a private matter, if you offend someone in a personal way, there are laws for this, religious beliefs need no special protection.

[Skybird]

By law and constitution, Germany is meant to be a secular state. the special status givien to church, the powers and tax incomes it enjoys, the ways of inbfluencing edcuation and the health and social sector, is a scandal.

i take some pride in the fact that I asked relgious teachers at school so many logical questions that i finally was banned from relgious classes - with my parents refusing to protest to that.

I honestly think the power of the churches in Germany must be broken. I dislike them as much as i dislike islam.

In Berlin, btw, schools now offer ethics classes instead of religion classes. A referendum that was tried by pro-church initiatives and the churches themselves, was defeated by a clear majority of the population.

[Schroeder]

Blasphemy: you may want to check out StgB 166 http://bundesrecht.juris.de/stgb/__166.html
One example when it was enforced was the most cost-intensive process which the satire magazine "Titanic" lost, against the catholic church. They had a poster with Jesus on the cross subtitled "Ich war eine Dose"("I was a tin can", commercial for recycling)

Ah, thanks. Wasn't aware of that. What a load of....


Crosses in school/court. Kindergarden/schools/youth clubs run by the church, but funded by the public. Church representatives in the control board (Aufsichtsrat) of the public media. All examples of no real seperation of state and religion.
In my opinion religion is a private matter, if you offend someone in a personal way, there are laws for this, religious beliefs need no special protection.That's something I also strongly oppose. As you said, religion is a private matter and has nothing to do in public affairs!:down:

[MH]

...........................

Very impressive.... you really seem to know your stuff:salute:

[Tribesman]

Why do you reflexively defend Islam? It's just as stupid as any other religion.

I defend any religion where the fruitcakes are being portrayed as the mainstream.
Qur'an, plus hadith.

What is the koran Tater?

Any belief that the haditha are literally true also plays into this.

Once again you are showing the same problem, what is a hadith and how many dozens of types are there?

Here's a clue......
Religious books are written in very murky way most of the time.
Sects of Islam or any other religions are based on those different interpretations.
........
A dozen religious scholars can read the same passage, they can all say they believe in the words....but they can all say the words mean different things.

Hitchens asked a famous, moderate Swiss Muslim cleric about apostasy, and the punishment. The guy was forced to admit that the punishment was unambiguously "death," but offered that since it wasn't practical to kill all apostates, this wasn't a problem!
Well was Hitchen writing when drunk again or did he just make it up?
The punishment for apostacy is....to be meted out in the afterlife by the big fella.

When she heard bin Laden's rants quoting the qur'an after 9-11, she went and read the sections assuming he was using them out of context to "brainwash" people, and found OBL had quoted them very fairly. She was left with the internal choice to side with OBL (he properly quoted the exact words of god after all!), or dump Islam. She chose the latter and is now an atheist.

Are you sure about that? She does have a habit of making stuff up.

Luther's main historic deed was to translate the bible from Latin to (ancient) German so everyone who was literate could read it. He basically opened the interpretation of the bible to the masses, the result was less extremism.

Actually it was mixed, the schism brought around some very extreme movements .


And as for this topic it ain't hard to figure out. France were crap and living off past glories with a coach who said prior to the World Cup that he was leaving at the end of the tournament.
You mean it wasn't because of blacks and muslims:yeah:

[tater]

The fruitcakes in Islam ARE the mainstream.

PEW (extremely liberal) surveyed world muslims, and at best, a substantial minority support AQ, for example. That's places like the US, where the Muslim population is VERY progressive for Muslims. In the rest of the world, it's typically a MAJORITY that support people like bin laden.

Funny that the PEW headline was that US Muslims were "mostly middle class, and mostly mainstream."

How do you get "mainstream" when ~40% have either a favorable opinion of AQ, or claim "no opinion" (which is tantamount to support in a poll, they are refusing to answer, anyone who hated AQ who simply say so in the US). 40% in the US. In the "Muslim world" it's over 60%.

Sorry, nutjobs are the mainstream.

The base doctrine makes the current "fruitcakes" simply people who actually follow their fruitcake recipe book.

Oh, and the koran was a verbal narration, and is now written as well. The narration was from the archangel to the prophet, and is thought by these fruitcakes (all of them) to be the word of god as told to muhammad. The basic rule is that chronologically more recent bits supersede earlier bits in the same text (it's not usually presented in chronological order, though there are versions that do this). This helps them justify the many internally inconsistent bits, presumably.

The hadith are not the words of god, but a sort of collected stories about the life and words of that child-raper muhammad. Many are debated by muslim scholars, while there is a core group that is pretty much accepted by all muslims.

[tater]

It is not mentioned in the koran, but in the sunna (the distilled bits from parts of the hadith, basically, what muhammad thought, etc). It is clear there, and not really argued by islamic scholars. Male apostates get death, the prophet said so.

[Tribesman]

PEW (extremely liberal) surveyed world muslims, and at best, a substantial minority support AQ, for example.
Run through the actual questions of that survey and the responses. PEW has so many surveys on the subject and so many condradict each other you will have to be more specific.

The narration was from the archangel to the prophet, and is thought by these fruitcakes (all of them) to be the word of god as told to muhammad.
Well done, and who says it has to be interpreted in a literal senselike errrrr.....fundamentalists?

The base doctrine makes the current "fruitcakes" simply people who actually follow their fruitcake recipe book.


No the fruitcakes are the ones that take a literal interpretation.
The basic doctrine is simple, its the differences what come after that which makes the fruitcakes.

It is not mentioned in the koran, but in the sunna (the distilled bits from parts of the hadith, basically, what muhammad thought, etc). It is clear there, and not really argued by islamic scholars.
Actually it is one of the common things argued and has been for centuries, recently back again as a few people from some branches of one major sect that never accepted the later lesser version started teaching it.
which just shows how interpretations are always changing.


The hadith are not the words of god, but a sort of collected stories about the life and words of that child-raper muhammad.
Oh dear, you had to go and trash yourself didn't you.
So from which legal code or piece of scripture can you make such a nonsensical statement?
Remember rape is a specific term and so is child.

Many are debated by muslim scholars, while there is a core group that is pretty much accepted by all muslims.
They are all debated, some are deemed important and some unimportant, some are even deemed to be of doubtful provenance. If they were pretty much accepted by allMuslims they wouldn't be debated and wouldn't have been being debated since they were written would they.

[tater]

Well done, and who says it has to be interpreted in a literal senselike errrrr.....fundamentalists?

All major denominations of Islam, that's who. I'm open to the suggestion that some new, "Reformed" version might be possible, but that's what it would take. Again, point me at some substantial, and for our purposes, growing, denomination of Islam that holds the words of god as delivered to the prophet to be "just so" stories.



No the fruitcakes are the ones that take a literal interpretation.
The basic doctrine is simple, its the differences what come after that which makes the fruitcakes.The basic doctrine is pretty awful, frankly. I have to admit, I am a religious fundamentalist atheist. If the words people use to worship god are arbitrary, and open to wide latitude, then they have zero authority. Hence, I reject that religion. So if the bible says the earth was created in 6 days, and it was longer (cooling alone would take way longer than that) then the entire religion is wrong. Look, if you can't get the creation story spot-on, then what possible reason is there to believe that the guy you claim is god is god? Also, Theology is the claim to know the MIND of god, again, any inconsistencies show that god is inconsistent, which makes him sorta un-godlike.

In the real world, all the major factions are in fact fundies in Islam. If they think the words delivered to the prophet was direct commo with god, then there is no latitude there.

Actually it is one of the common things argued and has been for centuries, recently back again as a few people from some branches of one major sect that never accepted the later lesser version started teaching it.
which just shows how interpretations are always changing.Not apostasy. Again, what major sect rejects death as the ideal penalty? If it's gone back and forth, elaborate.

Oh dear, you had to go and trash yourself didn't you.
So from which legal code or piece of scripture can you make such a nonsensical statement?
Remember rape is a specific term and so is child.Children cannot consent, so any consummation of a marriage with a child is rape. Moh was a child rapist. Assuming he even existed, lol (huge assumption, actually).

They are all debated, some are deemed important and some unimportant, some are even deemed to be of doubtful provenance. If they were pretty much accepted by allMuslims they wouldn't be debated and wouldn't have been being debated since they were written would they.Again, the major sects have accepted many as uncontroversial. Some oddball someplace saying that one isn't good doesn't matter in the grand scheme. As I said above, Muslims are not monolithic in belief, but the doctrine of a given sect basically is.

Some new sect of Islam will get treated by the others the same way they like to treat each other now. You know, like how well the Sunni and Shia get along.

[MH]

*****
Some food for thought....


The future belongs to Islam

The Muslim world has youth, numbers and global ambitions. The West is growing old and enfeebled, and lacks the will to rebuff those who would supplant it. It's the end of the world as we've known it. An excerpt from 'America Alone'.

MARK STEYN | Oct 20, 2006


Sept. 11, 2001, was not "the day everything changed," but the day that revealed how much had already changed. On Sept. 10, how many journalists had the Council of American-Islamic Relations or the Canadian Islamic Congress or the Muslim Council of Britain in their Rolodexes? If you'd said that whether something does or does not cause offence to Muslims would be the early 21st century's principal political dynamic in Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium, France and the United Kingdom, most folks would have thought you were crazy. Yet on that Tuesday morning the top of the iceberg bobbed up and toppled the Twin Towers. Continued Below





This is about the seven-eighths below the surface -- the larger forces at play in the developed world that have left Europe too enfeebled to resist its remorseless transformation into Eurabia and that call into question the future of much of the rest of the world. The key factors are: demographic decline; the unsustainability of the social democratic state; and civilizational exhaustion.
Let's start with demography, because everything does:
If your school has 200 guys and you're playing a school with 2,000 pupils, it doesn't mean your baseball team is definitely going to lose but it certainly gives the other fellows a big starting advantage. Likewise, if you want to launch a revolution, it's not very likely if you've only got seven revolutionaries. And they're all over 80. But, if you've got two million and seven revolutionaries and they're all under 30 you're in business.
For example, I wonder how many pontificators on the "Middle East peace process" ever run this number:
The median age in the Gaza Strip is 15.8 years.
Once you know that, all the rest is details. If you were a "moderate Palestinian" leader, would you want to try to persuade a nation -- or pseudo-nation -- of unemployed poorly educated teenage boys raised in a UN-supervised European-funded death cult to see sense? Any analysis of the "Palestinian problem" that doesn't take into account the most important determinant on the ground is a waste of time.
Likewise, the salient feature of Europe, Canada, Japan and Russia is that they're running out of babies. What's happening in the developed world is one of the fastest demographic evolutions in history: most of us have seen a gazillion heartwarming ethnic comedies -- My Big Fat Greek Wedding and its ilk -- in which some uptight WASPy type starts dating a gal from a vast loving fecund Mediterranean family, so abundantly endowed with sisters and cousins and uncles that you can barely get in the room. It is, in fact, the inversion of the truth. Greece has a fertility rate hovering just below 1.3 births per couple, which is what demographers call the point of "lowest-low" fertility from which no human society has ever recovered. And Greece's fertility is the healthiest in Mediterranean Europe: Italy has a fertility rate of 1.2, Spain 1.1. Insofar as any citizens of the developed world have "big" families these days, it's the anglo democracies: America's fertility rate is 2.1, New Zealand a little below. Hollywood should be making My Big Fat Uptight Protestant Wedding in which some sad Greek only child marries into a big heartwarming New Zealand family where the spouse actually has a sibling.
As I say, this isn't a projection: it's happening now. There's no need to extrapolate, and if you do it gets a little freaky, but, just for fun, here goes: by 2050, 60 per cent of Italians will have no brothers, no sisters, no cousins, no aunts, no uncles. The big Italian family, with papa pouring the vino and mama spooning out the pasta down an endless table of grandparents and nieces and nephews, will be gone, no more, dead as the dinosaurs. As Noel Coward once remarked in another context, "Funiculi, funicula, funic yourself." By mid-century, Italians will have no choice in the matter.
Experts talk about root causes. But demography is the most basic root of all. A people that won't multiply can't go forth or go anywhere. Those who do will shape the age we live in.
Demographic decline and the unsustainability of the social democratic state are closely related. In America, politicians upset about the federal deficit like to complain that we're piling up debts our children and grandchildren will have to pay off. But in Europe the unaffordable entitlements are in even worse shape: there are no kids or grandkids to stick it to.
You might formulate it like this:
Age + Welfare = Disaster for you;
Youth + Will = Disaster for whoever gets in your way.
By "will," I mean the metaphorical spine of a culture. Africa, to take another example, also has plenty of young people, but it's riddled with AIDS and, for the most part, Africans don't think of themselves as Africans: as we saw in Rwanda, their primary identity is tribal, and most tribes have no global ambitions. Islam, however, has serious global ambitions, and it forms the primal, core identity of most of its adherents -- in the Middle East, South Asia and elsewhere.
Islam has youth and will, Europe has age and welfare.
We are witnessing the end of the late 20th- century progressive welfare democracy. Its fiscal bankruptcy is merely a symptom of a more fundamental bankruptcy: its insufficiency as an animating principle for society. The children and grandchildren of those fascists and republicans who waged a bitter civil war for the future of Spain now shrug when a bunch of foreigners blow up their capital. Too sedated even to sue for terms, they capitulate instantly. Over on the other side of the equation, the modern multicultural state is too watery a concept to bind huge numbers of immigrants to the land of their nominal citizenship. So they look elsewhere and find the jihad. The Western Muslim's pan-Islamic identity is merely the first great cause in a world where globalized pathologies are taking the place of old-school nationalism.
For states in demographic decline with ever more lavish social programs, the question is a simple one: can they get real? Can they grow up before they grow old? If not, then they'll end their days in societies dominated by people with a very different world view.
Which brings us to the third factor -- the enervated state of the Western world, the sense of civilizational ennui, of nations too mired in cultural relativism to understand what's at stake. As it happens, that third point is closely related to the first two. To Americans, it doesn't always seem obvious that there's any connection between the "war on terror" and the so-called "pocketbook issues" of domestic politics. But there is a correlation between the structural weaknesses of the social democratic state and the rise of a globalized Islam. The state has gradually annexed all the responsibilities of adulthood -- health care, child care, care of the elderly -- to the point where it's effectively severed its citizens from humanity's primal instincts, not least the survival instinct. In the American context, the federal "deficit" isn't the problem; it's the government programs that cause the deficit. These programs would still be wrong even if Bill Gates wrote a cheque to cover them each month. They corrode the citizen's sense of self-reliance to a potentially fatal degree. Big government is a national security threat: it increases your vulnerability to threats like Islamism, and makes it less likely you'll be able to summon the will to rebuff it. We should have learned that lesson on Sept. 11, 2001, when big government flopped big-time and the only good news of the day came from the ad hoc citizen militia of Flight 93.
There were two forces at play in the late 20th century: in the Eastern bloc, the collapse of Communism; in the West, the collapse of confidence. One of the most obvious refutations of Francis Fukuyama's famous thesis The End Of History -- written at the victory of liberal pluralist democracy over Soviet Communism -- is that the victors didn't see it as such. Americans -- or at least non-Democrat-voting Americans -- may talk about "winning" the Cold War but the French and the Belgians and Germans and Canadians don't. Very few British do. These are all formal NATO allies -- they were, technically, on the winning side against a horrible tyranny few would wish to live under themselves. In Europe, there was an initial moment of euphoria: it was hard not be moved by the crowds sweeping through the Berlin Wall, especially as so many of them were hot-looking Red babes eager to enjoy a Carlsberg or Stella Artois with even the nerdiest running dog of imperialism. But, when the moment faded, pace Fukuyama, there was no sense on the Continent that our Big Idea had beaten their Big Idea. With the best will in the world, it's hard to credit the citizens of France or Italy as having made any serious contribution to the defeat of Communism. Au contraire, millions of them voted for it, year in, year out. And, with the end of the Soviet existential threat, the enervation of the West only accelerated.
In Thomas P. M. Barnett's book Blueprint For Action, Robert D. Kaplan, a very shrewd observer of global affairs, is quoted referring to the lawless fringes of the map as "Indian territory." It's a droll joke but a misleading one. The difference between the old Indian territory and the new is this: no one had to worry about the Sioux riding down Fifth Avenue. Today, with a few hundred bucks on his ATM card, the fellow from the badlands can be in the heart of the metropolis within hours.
Here's another difference: in the old days, the white man settled the Indian territory. Now the followers of the badland's radical imams settle the metropolis.
And another difference: technology. In the old days, the Injuns had bows and arrows and the cavalry had rifles. In today's Indian territory, countries that can't feed their own people have nuclear weapons.
But beyond that the very phrase "Indian territory" presumes that inevitably these badlands will be brought within the bounds of the ordered world. In fact, a lot of today's "Indian territory" was relatively ordered a generation or two back -- West Africa, Pakistan, Bosnia. Though Eastern Europe and Latin America and parts of Asia are freer now than they were in the seventies, other swaths of the map have spiralled backwards. Which is more likely? That the parts of the world under pressure will turn into post-Communist Poland or post-Communist Yugoslavia? In Europe, the demographic pressures favour the latter.
The enemies we face in the future will look a lot like al-Qaeda: transnational, globalized, locally franchised, extensively outsourced -- but tied together through a powerful identity that leaps frontiers and continents. They won't be nation-states and they'll have no interest in becoming nation-states, though they might use the husks thereof, as they did in Afghanistan and then Somalia. The jihad may be the first, but other transnational deformities will embrace similar techniques. Sept. 10 institutions like the UN and the EU will be unlikely to provide effective responses.
We can argue about what consequences these demographic trends will have, but to say blithely they have none is ridiculous. The basic demography explains, for example, the critical difference between the "war on terror" for Americans and Europeans: in the U.S., the war is something to be fought in the treacherous sands of the Sunni Triangle and the caves of the Hindu Kush; you go to faraway places and kill foreigners. But, in Europe, it's a civil war. Neville Chamberlain dismissed Czechoslovakia as "a faraway country of which we know little." This time round, for much of western Europe it turned out the faraway country of which they knew little was their own.
Four years into the "war on terror," the Bush administration began promoting a new formulation: "the long war." Not a good sign. In a short war, put your money on tanks and bombs. In a long war, the better bet is will and manpower. The longer the long war gets, the harder it will be, because it's a race against time, against lengthening demographic, economic and geopolitical odds. By "demographic," I mean the Muslim world's high birth rate, which by mid-century will give tiny Yemen a higher population than vast empty Russia. By "economic," I mean the perfect storm the Europeans will face within this decade, because their lavish welfare states are unsustainable on their post-Christian birth rates. By "geopolitical," I mean that, if you think the United Nations and other international organizations are antipathetic to America now, wait a few years and see what kind of support you get from a semi-Islamified Europe.
Almost every geopolitical challenge in the years ahead has its roots in demography, but not every demographic crisis will play out the same way. That's what makes doing anything about it even more problematic -- because different countries' reactions to their own particular domestic circumstances are likely to play out in destabilizing ways on the international scene. In Japan, the demographic crisis exists virtually in laboratory conditions -- no complicating factors; in Russia, it will be determined by the country's relationship with a cramped neighbour -- China; and in Europe, the new owners are already in place -- like a tenant with a right-to-buy agreement.
Let's start in the most geriatric jurisdiction on the planet. In Japan, the rising sun has already passed into the next phase of its long sunset: net population loss. 2005 was the first year since records began in which the country had more deaths than births. Japan offers the chance to observe the demographic death spiral in its purest form. It's a country with no immigration, no significant minorities and no desire for any: just the Japanese, aging and dwindling.
At first it doesn't sound too bad: compared with the United States, most advanced societies are very crowded. If you're in a cramped apartment in a noisy congested city, losing a couple hundred thousand seems a fine trade-off. The difficulty, in a modern social democratic state, is managing which people to lose: already, according to the Japan Times, depopulation is "presenting the government with pressing challenges on the social and economic front, including ensuring provision of social security services and securing the labour force." For one thing, the shortage of children has led to a shortage of obstetricians. Why would any talented ambitious med school student want to go into a field in such precipitous decline? As a result, if you live in certain parts of Japan, childbirth is all in the timing. On Oki Island, try to time the contractions for Monday morning. That's when the maternity ward is open -- first day of the week, 10 a.m., when an obstetrician flies in to attend to any pregnant mothers who happen to be around. And at 5.30 p.m. she flies out. So, if you've been careless enough to time your childbirth for Tuesday through Sunday, you'll have to climb into a helicopter and zip off to give birth alone in a strange hospital unsurrounded by tiresome loved ones. Do Lamaze classes on Oki now teach you to time your breathing to the whirring of the chopper blades?
The last local obstetrician left the island in 2006 and the health service isn't expecting any more. Doubtless most of us can recall reading similar stories over the years from remote rural districts in America, Canada, Australia. After all, why would a village of a few hundred people have a great medical system? But Oki has a population of 17,000, and there are still no obstetricians: birthing is a dying business.
So what will happen? There are a couple of scenarios: whatever Japanese feelings on immigration, a country with great infrastructure won't empty out for long, any more than a state-of-the-art factory that goes belly up stays empty for long. At some point, someone else will move in to Japan's plant.
And the alternative? In The Children Of Men, P. D. James' dystopian fantasy about a barren world, there are special dolls for women whose maternal instinct has gone unfulfilled: pretend mothers take their artificial children for walks on the street or to the swings in the park. In Japan, that's no longer the stuff of dystopian fantasy. At the beginning of the century, the country's toy makers noticed they had a problem: toys are for children and Japan doesn't have many. What to do? In 2005, Tomy began marketing a new doll called Yumel -- a baby boy with a range of 1,200 phrases designed to serve as companions for the elderly. He says not just the usual things -- "I wuv you" -- but also asks the questions your grandchildren would ask if you had any: "Why do elephants have long noses?" Yumel joins his friend, the Snuggling Ifbot, a toy designed to have the conversation of a five-year old child which its makers, with the usual Japanese efficiency, have determined is just enough chit-chat to prevent the old folks going senile. It seems an appropriate final comment on the social democratic state: in a childish infantilized self-absorbed society where adults have been stripped of all responsibility, you need never stop playing with toys. We are the children we never had.
And why leave it at that? Is it likely an ever smaller number of young people will want to spend their active years looking after an ever greater number of old people? Or will it be simpler to put all that cutting-edge Japanese technology to good use and take a flier on Mister Roboto and the post-human future? After all, what's easier for the governing class? Weaning a pampered population off the good life and re-teaching them the lost biological impulse or giving the Sony Corporation a licence to become the Cloney Corporation? If you need to justify it to yourself, you'd grab the graphs and say, well, demographic decline is universal. It's like industrialization a couple of centuries back; everyone will get to it eventually, but the first to do so will have huge advantages: the relevant comparison is not with England's early 19th century population surge but with England's Industrial Revolution. In the industrial age, manpower was critical. In the new technological age, manpower will be optional -- and indeed, if most of the available manpower's Muslim, it's actually a disadvantage. As the most advanced society with the most advanced demographic crisis, Japan seems likely to be the first jurisdiction to embrace robots and cloning and embark on the slippery slope to transhumanism.
Demographic origin need not be the final word. In 1775, Benjamin Franklin wrote a letter to Joseph Priestly suggesting a mutual English friend might like to apply his mind to the conundrum the Crown faced:
Britain, at the expense of three millions, has killed 150 Yankees this campaign, which is £20000 a head... During the same time, 60000 children have been born in America. From these data his mathematical head will easily calculate the time and the expense necessary to kill us all.
Obviously, Franklin was oversimplifying. Not every American colonist identified himself as a rebel. After the revolution, there were massive population displacements: as United Empire Loyalists well know, large numbers of New Yorkers left the colony to resettle in what's now Ontario. Some American Negroes were so anxious to remain subjects of King George III they resettled as far as Sierra Leone. For these people, their primary identity was not as American colonists but as British subjects. For others, their new identity as Americans had supplanted their formal allegiance to the Crown. The question for today's Europe is whether the primary identity of their fastest-growing demographic is Muslim or Belgian, Muslim or Dutch, Muslim or French.
That's where civilizational confidence comes in: if "Dutchness" or "Frenchness" seems a weak attenuated thing, then the stronger identity will prevail. One notes other similarities between revolutionary America and contemporary Europe: the United Empire Loyalists were older and wealthier; the rebels were younger and poorer. In the end, the former simply lacked the latter's strength of will.
Europe, like Japan, has catastrophic birth rates and a swollen pampered elderly class determined to live in defiance of economic reality. But the difference is that on the Continent the successor population is already in place and the only question is how bloody the transfer of real estate will be.
If America's "allies" failed to grasp the significance of 9/11, it's because Europe's home-grown terrorism problems had all taken place among notably static populations, such as Ulster and the Basque country. One could make generally safe extrapolations about the likelihood of holding Northern Ireland to what cynical strategists in Her Majesty's Government used to call an "acceptable level of violence." But in the same three decades as Ulster's "Troubles," the hitherto moderate Muslim populations of south Asia were radicalized by a politicized form of Islam; previously formally un-Islamic societies such as Nigeria became semi-Islamist; and large Muslim populations settled in parts of Europe that had little or no experience of mass immigration.
On the Continent and elsewhere in the West, native populations are aging and fading and being supplanted remorselessly by a young Muslim demographic. Time for the obligatory "of courses": of course, not all Muslims are terrorists -- though enough are hot for jihad to provide an impressive support network of mosques from Vienna to Stockholm to Toronto to Seattle. Of course, not all Muslims support terrorists -- though enough of them share their basic objectives(the wish to live under Islamic law in Europe and North America)to function wittingly or otherwise as the "good cop" end of an Islamic good cop/bad cop routine. But, at the very minimum, this fast-moving demographic transformation provides a huge comfort zone for the jihad to move around in. And in a more profound way it rationalizes what would otherwise be the nuttiness of the terrorists' demands. An IRA man blows up a pub in defiance of democratic reality -- because he knows that at the ballot box the Ulster Loyalists win the elections and the Irish Republicans lose. When a European jihadist blows something up, that's not in defiance of democratic reality but merely a portent of democratic reality to come. He's jumping the gun, but in every respect things are moving his way.
You may vaguely remember seeing some flaming cars on the evening news toward the end of 2005. Something going on in France, apparently. Something to do with -- what's the word? -- "youths." When I pointed out the media's strange reluctance to use the M-word vis-à-vis the rioting "youths," I received a ton of emails arguing there's no Islamist component, they're not the madrasa crowd, they may be Muslim but they're secular and Westernized and into drugs and rap and meaningless sex with no emotional commitment, and rioting and looting and torching and trashing, just like any normal healthy Western teenagers. These guys have economic concerns, it's the lack of jobs, it's conditions peculiar to France, etc. As one correspondent wrote, "You right-wing ****-for-brains think everything's about jihad."
Actually, I don't think everything's about jihad. But I do think, as I said, that a good 90 per cent of everything's about demography. Take that media characterization of those French rioters: "youths." What's the salient point about youths? They're youthful. Very few octogenarians want to go torching Renaults every night. It's not easy lobbing a Molotov cocktail into a police station and then hobbling back with your walker across the street before the searing heat of the explosion melts your hip replacement. Civil disobedience is a young man's game.
In June 2006, a 54-year-old Flemish train conductor called Guido Demoor got on the Number 23 bus in Antwerp to go to work. Six -- what's that word again? -- "youths" boarded the bus and commenced intimidating the other riders. There were some 40 passengers aboard. But the "youths" were youthful and the other passengers less so. Nonetheless, Mr. Demoor asked the lads to cut it out and so they turned on him, thumping and kicking him. Of those 40 other passengers, none intervened to help the man under attack. Instead, at the next stop, 30 of the 40 scrammed, leaving Mr. Demoor to be beaten to death. Three "youths" were arrested, and proved to be -- quelle surprise! -- of Moroccan origin. The ringleader escaped and, despite police assurances of complete confidentiality, of those 40 passengers only four came forward to speak to investigators. "You see what happens if you intervene," a fellow rail worker told the Belgian newspaper De Morgen. "If Guido had not opened his mouth he would still be alive."
No, he wouldn't. He would be as dead as those 40 passengers are, as the Belgian state is, keeping his head down, trying not to make eye contact, cowering behind his newspaper in the corner seat and hoping just to be left alone. What future in "their" country do Mr. Demoor's two children have? My mother and grandparents came from Sint-Niklaas, a town I remember well from many childhood visits. When we stayed with great-aunts and other relatives, the upstairs floors of the row houses had no bathrooms, just chamber pots. My sister and I were left to mooch around cobbled streets with our little cousin for hours on end, wandering aimlessly past smoke-wreathed bars and cafes, occasionally buying frites with mayonnaise. With hindsight it seemed as parochially Flemish as could be imagined. Not anymore. The week before Mr. Demoor was murdered in plain sight, bus drivers in Sint-Niklaas walked off the job to protest the thuggery of the -- here it comes again -- "youths." In little more than a generation, a town has been transformed.
Of the ethnic Belgian population, some 17 per cent are under 18 years old. Of the country's Turkish and Moroccan population, 35 per cent are under 18 years old. The "youths" get ever more numerous, the non-youths get older. To avoid the ruthless arithmetic posited by Benjamin Franklin, it is necessary for those "youths" to feel more Belgian. Is that likely? Colonel Gadhafi doesn't think so:
There are signs that Allah will grant Islam victory in Europe -- without swords, without guns, without conquests. The fifty million Muslims of Europe will turn it into a Muslim continent within a few decades.
On Sept. 11, 2001, the American mainland was attacked for the first time since the War of 1812. The perpetrators were foreign -- Saudis and Egyptians. Since 9/11, Europe has seen the London Tube bombings, the French riots, Dutch murders of nationalist politicians. The perpetrators are their own citizens -- British subjects, citoyens de la République française. In Linz, Austria, Muslims are demanding that all female teachers, believers or infidels, wear head scarves in class. The Muslim Council of Britain wants Holocaust Day abolished because it focuses "only" on the Nazis'(alleged)Holocaust of the Jews and not the Israelis' ongoing Holocaust of the Palestinians.
How does the state react? In Seville, King Ferdinand III is no longer patron saint of the annual fiesta because his splendid record in fighting for Spanish independence from the Moors was felt to be insensitive to Muslims. In London, a judge agreed to the removal of Jews and Hindus from a trial jury because the Muslim defendant's counsel argued he couldn't get a fair verdict from them. The Church of England is considering removing St. George as the country's patron saint on the grounds that, according to various Anglican clergy, he's too "militaristic" and "offensive to Muslims." They wish to replace him with St. Alban, and replace St. George's cross on the revamped Union Flag, which would instead show St. Alban's cross as a thin yellow streak.
In a few years, as millions of Muslim teenagers are entering their voting booths, some European countries will not be living formally under sharia, but -- as much as parts of Nigeria, they will have reached an accommodation with their radicalized Islamic compatriots, who like many intolerant types are expert at exploiting the "tolerance" of pluralist societies. In other Continental countries, things are likely to play out in more traditional fashion, though without a significantly different ending. Wherever one's sympathies lie on Islam's multiple battle fronts the fact is the jihad has held out a long time against very tough enemies. If you're not shy about taking on the Israelis and Russians, why wouldn't you fancy your chances against the Belgians and Spaniards?
"We're the ones who will change you," the Norwegian imam Mullah Krekar told the Oslo newspaper Dagbladet in 2006. "Just look at the development within Europe, where the number of Muslims is expanding like mosquitoes. Every Western woman in the EU is producing an average of 1.4 children. Every Muslim woman in the same countries is producing 3.5 children." As he summed it up: "Our way of thinking will prove more powerful than yours."
Reprinted by permission of Regnery Publishing from America Alone © 2006 by Mark Steyn