Why Islam is a problem for the integration of immigrants

[El_Machinae]

Keep in mind, we have very few datapoints on going successfully from longterm conflict to longterm peace successfully. It's hard to craft dependable theory, and factoring in the shrinking of the world at the same time.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Keep in mind, we have very few datapoints on going successfully from longterm conflict to longterm peace successfully. It's hard to craft dependable theory, and factoring in the shrinking of the world at the same time.

Given the absence of long term peace it is safe to say that examples of transitions to long term peace from anything are going to be impossible to come by.

 

[Ajidica]

We disagree on what would have happened if Obama had not been in a rush to abandon Iraq. I think that staying there would have improved conditions in Iraq and possibly have affected Syria and iSIS. Its all theory crafting now as what happened happened.

So maintain a military occupation in a sovereign country with whom we had signed a treaty regarding the removal of US forces?
That can only end well.

My comments on SA winning the bush war was with the communists in Angola. SA did not fall to the communists and I that there is the victory of which I spoke.

Why was South Africa involved in the Angolan Civil War and South African Border War?
To prevent nationalist guerilla (notably SWAPO) groups from using Angola as a base of operations and to try and scare the MPLA into reducing support for the guerillas. To that end they supported their UNITA* allies with a formal military operation to establish a cordon sanitaire along the Angolan-Namibian border. Despite "winning" the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale, the South African military realized their position was becoming increasingly untenable as the Angolan army was becoming better trained and better equipped with Cuban assistance.
South Africa "won" their involvement in the Angolan Civil War because South African political leadership was convinced by the long-term untenable military situation that they could either abandon apartheid and white-rule or face a general nationalist uprising against the sole remaining white-rule country in Africa; and decided to accept a political solution before it became obvious how badly a military "solution" would have worked.

*In one of the many oddities of the Cold War in Africa, UNITA was a Maoist group whose cause was championed by the Heritage Foundation.

This is what I was trying to convey. The indiscriminate use of massive violence against a civilian population will stop an insurgency once the few left alive care more for living than for revenge. I'm not saying that that is what should be done or that it is the only way to win but that it is a possible path to victory.

Not sure what lost-causer myths you have been fed by your South African coworkers, but "kill them all" was definitely not how South African intelligence services and COIN operations worked. The South Africans borrowed heavily from the Portuguese experience which placed an emphasis on working with local communities and intelligence gathering to intercept suspected militants (who would then be tortured and imprisoned in what amounted to show trials). The South African military and intelligence services were very good, but it all came to nothing because they could not address the political issues at play: their continued attempt to preserve apartheid and white rule.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

I dunno. I think these borders -and the conspicuous absence of straight lines - were full of trouble.

Ajidica, you are more knowledgeable about foreign affairs on more than account than me - and I am very disappointment.
With this map you refer to a time where borders were always at dispute. The seeking of territory was simply what politics was all about back then. Weather lines were straight or twirled or twisted.
This changed when power was less about land and politics was less about power - politics still was about power and power still about land - but both were now about people. Identities. And then, naturally grown lines helped, because they meant people used to being regarded as one. Simple as that. Nevermind how that came about. The mere time of things was of essence. And such time meant no straight lines.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Good thread, but consider something that it illustrates.

You are presenting the Mosque as this "powerful engine of a parallel society whose very identity breaths non-integration, but rather exclusivity and counter-culture" and suggesting that "that kind of community-forging has no real counterpart in the German society." In doing so you are assigning a uniqueness to Islam that supports the idea that the current problems of integration are uniquely insurmountable. Which is a fairly common practice.

However, there might be something to be learned from standing outside a synagogue with a Catholic. Or outside one of the many huge cathedrals in Germany with a Protestant or a Jew. There is nothing uniquely powerful about a Mosque, it is just uniquely foreign to you in the current culture. It does have absolutely congruent counterparts in German history. And there is always that incredibly trite saying that can be brought out at this point, but I'll paraphrase...hasn't religious intolerance proven bloody enough in the past that you really don't want to go that route again?

There surely is a line somewhere between religious intolerance and allowing a religious group run counter to the values of society writ large. It's a problem when a large chunk of immigrants fail to assimilate - even more so when the two cultures are at complete loggerheads on major human rights issues.

I do not really know why Europe seems to struggle with assimilation so much. You could easily point to the sheer number of muslim immigrants that Europe gets but at the same time, there have been decades of mass migration from the muslim world into Europe starting at the end of WWII with all the guest worker programs European countries employed. Assimilation seemed to never really take hold and what started as small, self-segregated* immigrant communities that were largely ignored in Europe have grown quite large and at the same time they have stayed stuck in a medieval mindset while Europe liberalized.

It's a major problem and one I'm glad the US doesn't have. Having said that, I think the left has given cover to a lot of this intolerance within immigrant communities in Europe through our desire to be open and less xenophobic than in the past. I basically think that tolerance in Europe has allowed an intolerant parallel society to form within it.

*Or maybe it was state-sanctioned segregation. I don't know. Someone enlighten me on the subject please. The only real reference I have on the trend toward segregation of immigrant communities in Europe was in a non-fiction book that I read that turned into a pretty virulent anti-muslim tract by the end of it. I don't remember the name of the book or author but the cover of it was the ring of stars from the EU flag.

 

[Lexicus]

It's a problem when a large chunk of immigrants fail to assimilate

You phrase this as a general principle, but it's clear from the rest of your post that you mean it's a problem when black or brown folks don't assimilate into European culture.

a pretty virulent anti-muslim tract

I wonder whether it used the phrases "medieval mindset" or "intolerant parallel society" to describe Muslims in Europe?

 

[hobbsyoyo]

You phrase this as a general principle, but it's clear from the rest of your post that you mean it's a problem when black or brown folks don't assimilate into European culture.



I wonder whether it used the phrases "medieval mindset" or "intolerant parallel society" to describe Muslims in Europe?

I mean yes and probably yes. Mexicans in the US aren't shooting cartoonists that make fun of them in alt-right tracts, after all. I get you're trying to paint me as a racist though and that's kind of the problem I'm talking about. We can't even discuss actual problems with failure to assimilate and violent extremism that is often the result of that without someone like you calling everyone a racist.

 

[Lexicus]

I get you're trying to paint me as a racist

I'm trying to say that some of the things you're saying are racist. If you are so invested in the things you're saying that you're unable to distinguish between them and you, that is your problem, not mine.

We can't even discuss actual problems with failure to assimilate and violent extremism that is often the result of that without someone like you calling everyone a racist.

Well, yeah, we can't really have a productive discussion about this when people are saying racist stuff. Indeed, in my view the whole "problems with assimilation" framing is itself racist or at least harmfully Eurocentric because you are literally saying that it is a problem that people are not adopting your culture.

 

[El_Machinae]

You shouldn't use the racist card too fast. It shuts down discussion. Seek to interpret their argument from a non-racist position (his goal IS to discuss Islam), and then pivot the discussion that way.

It's a long slog getting someone to discuss race when they want to discuss culture.

 

[Lexicus]

You shouldn't use the racist card too fast. It shuts down discussion. Seek to interpret their argument from a non-racist position (his goal IS to discuss Islam), and then pivot the discussion that way.

I will damn well "play the racist card" if I think there is racism at play. I don't care about "shutting down discussion" because I'm uninterested in discussing things with people who are unable or unwilling to examine the racism in their own statements or beliefs.

It's a long slog getting someone to discuss race when they want to discuss culture.

So once again the "it's not racism because Islam isn't a race" technicality that is utterly meaningless.
You know how I know it's meaningless? Because I explicitly framed the discussion as being about culture in my post and you accuse me of trying to make the conversation about race anyway. I conclude that the race/culture tangent is simply a card people play when they want to avoid talking about the discrimination faced by Muslims in Europe.

 

[El_Machinae]

There's really few things more frustrating than trying to discuss cultural concerns as a liberal than discovering an SJW who cannot create the headspace to distiguish race from culture.

It's this huge uphill slog figuring out whether they can even tell the difference before you then convince them to actually discuss what you want to discuss.

Let people make the distinction. Work with them to understand the distinction

 

[Lexicus]

There's really few things more frustrating than trying to discuss cultural concerns as a liberal than discovering an SJW who cannot create the headspace to distiguish race from culture.

And there are few things more frustrating than watching "liberals" justify systemic discrimination by making bogus distinctions between race and culture as though race isn't a purely cultural phenomenon to begin with.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

"I am not playing the racist card but you are a racist"

 

[Lexicus]

"I am not playing the racist card

I will damn well "play the racist card"

 

[KmDubya]

You must have secret powers like that kid in The Sixth Sense " I see racists"

 

[hobbsyoyo]

The sad thing is that we're likely of very close opinion on this and most other issues.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

There surely is a line somewhere between religious intolerance and allowing a religious group run counter to the values of society writ large. It's a problem when a large chunk of immigrants fail to assimilate - even more so when the two cultures are at complete loggerheads on major human rights issues.

That's actually only a problem if the issues in question are left to the administration of one of the religions.

Consider the "loggerheads" around ritual animal sacrifice. Some religions would do it, and some religions wouldn't but the law of the land doesn't allow it. That law isn't a "favoring" of one religion over another, it's the law as determined by the collective will of the governed. That collective will is partly shaped by the various religions, but the decisive feature is the widespread sense that torturing animals is inhumane. So the religious difference becomes irrelevant because religion is not the source of the law.

Now, Islam may have some practices that are human rights concerns, just like any other major religion. Some sects within Islam will certainly have some practices that are counter to the laws of the land, just like there are such sects within every other major religion. This is a non-issue. Religious freedom does not overturn the law of the land. You are free to believe that polygamy is acceptable in the eyes of your god, but you are not allowed to practice it under the law. You are free to believe that human sacrifice rites are the ultimate demonstration of faith, but that doesn't mean the law will give murder a free pass.

So long as all sides accept that their beliefs are not the foundation of law and don't provide them an exemption from the law everything works out fine. Now, who is it that is constantly harping that US law is supposed to enforce their religious values? Hint: it ain't Muslims. So who is the source of the problem?

 

[Broken_Erika]

The guys that think that seperation of church and state the greatest mistake in American History?

 

[Farm Boy]

You are free to believe that polygamy is acceptable in the eyes of your god, but you are not allowed to practice it under the law.

Well, everyone is the problem Tim. I'm not going to follow you into, "everything is fine you don't need an exception" land becuz erry man is allowed to marry one woman. So long as she's pigmented right and is aged right and is related right. Derp.

 

[Traitorfish]

I do not really know why Europe seem to struggle with assimilation so much.

It honestly doesn't. The only country that has large-scale and long-term problems with integration is France, and that is because, when it comes to deal with ethnic minorities, indigenous or immigrant, France is the worst.