Your text is good, but I don’t think it touches points that are really relevant to how Muslims are viewed in the West. The main reasons people dislike Muslims in the West are:
1. The alliance between Muslims and the far left in some kind of third-worldist coalition, which put Muslins in the same side as obnoxious Greta Thurnberg-like people and creates surrealistic situations like trans for Palestine signs. The far left then hijacked the Muslims mentality driving it into a histerical victim complex, which doesn’t not help their case outside these circles.
2. The formation of ghettos and Muslim-majority areas in European city. Most Westerns feel that this is de-characterizing cities, especially the most tourist appealing ones, creating a gap between expectation and reality that is hard to grasp. This is also translated to those city-dwellers as a rapid decrease in quality of living and a real-time transformation of until then-familiar places. If Muslim immigration was actively managed Singapore-style, with Muslims being spread and not concentrating in certain areas, probably most of the animosity wouldn’t take place.
3. The very high Muslim in-group preference. This take place in different ways: from Muslims acting as a unified voting block to elect their mayors in Europe, to communities closing ranks to defend their youth from rape accusations, to every critic being labeled Islamophobia. It’s common to see Muslims saying that Imans are radical in the Wet and that if they preached like that in their home countries they would be in jail, but any attempt to do this in the West would lead the same people who said that to close ranks and scream “discrimination” and “Islamophobia”.This dynamic make it very hard from outsiders to be able to sort the wheat from the chaff and end up in whole communities being seen as their worst elements.
Point 1 and 3 I have already treated in immigration related essays, I will link them later but you can search my archive for them.
Point 2 has endemic political reasons linked to different nation’s own deficiencies. Why it happens in Germany, France or Spain has different reasons and trajectories.
All the points you raise have to do with the communities per se (culture) than with religion. Given that I can’t deal witn them on essays focused on the scope of what the religion says, as it doesnt prescribe to vote for left wing parties who are ok with gays or moral degeneracy, they also dont tell muslims to livr in ghettos.
I know you have written about some of these points before, all I’m saying is that most of the reason there’s animosity between Muslims and other people are due to the cultural factors, not points on Muslim religious doctrine. My main point is that the factors causing some people to dislike Muslims are cultural, not religious. And those factors are not distinguishable from each other.
And to be fair, I have to concede that point 2 is to blamed more on those countries than on Muslims. Is the host countries responsibility to not allowed this ghettofication to happen, but for some reason they find very hard to do it.
Interesting thing re: 3 is that AFAIK the outright majority of Turcogerman voters, particularly outside the Ruhrpott welfare hellscape, used to go for the CDU because they’d easier swallow the “Christian” part (which tbf has long been very theoretical) than the leftist fagolatry and economic nonsense. Since the Union joined the Green/Red Uniparty, they have pivoted to the AfD somewhat and are explicitly courted by parts of them as family values economic conservative voters AFAIK.
You are missing some aspects of why Muslims are disliked - I speak from a UK perspective a) low IQ and welfare dependency; b) clannishness and nepotism; c) disrespect of women; d) taking over public places and imposing their culture on their hosts (street praying, noisy mosques, signs in street saying no alcohol; demanding halal meat in institutions); e) cry-bullying and constant claims of Islamophobia; f) intolerance to other views, beliefs or culture; g) hatred of dogs; i) lack of respect for public places (littering, letting trash accumulate); j) arriving in a country where most of the public never wanted them in the first place; k) wanting to impose their mediaeval beliefs on others (e.g. pictures of Md. should be illegal). These are on average of course, a few are like yourself, intelligent , curious and intellectual.
What part of this comes from the people being Muslims and what part of this comes from having selected people's who no matter what religion they had would still be exhibiting similar characteristics. What you all described is the characteristics of gypsies who are nominally Christian yet every European has to restrain himself from mentioning gas chambers to them so hated they are
If Pakistanis were let's say some weird Christian branch who kept their cultural traits of clanishness and disrespect to the outgroup they would still be hated so in my view it is not really the religion (which contributes some part to it nonetheless) per se but the peoples. If you got Beni Mzbab (pious muslim group who focused on education, trading and other bourgeois positive traits) I don't think native Europeans would actually complain that much, despite Beni Mzbab and Pakistanis adhering to the same religion being Sunni islam.
I think the core problem for efforts like yours here, as great an essay as it is, is that Delia is right and it’s really talking past the issue as seen from the other side.
I think most of the trepidation up to hostility in Europe re: Islam is plainly that Europeans see a challenge by a group (or rather, “group of groups”) with very different beliefs & that holds its values very strongly, but has on average very little attractive or enviable qualities to offer to counterbalance the inherent costs of such diversity. The object level criticisms and certainly often wrong claims about the actual doctrines are I think just rationalisations of that gut feeling, which I have to say is largely correct on the whole, no matter how stupid or just factually wrong its apologetics are.
I hope you understand that I say this with if anything the opposite of personal hostility; if you were the representative experience of Muslims that Europeans get to enjoy, there would be no hostility to Islam, but alas you’re very much not. To be fair, the modal experience of Muslims in Europe is the much esteemed Kebab man; but from there the left tail is sadly much thicker and heavier than the right-.
If anything, your example about endogamy is illustrative of that: If western societies had a high point of endogamy between declining power of the Church and modern understanding of genetics that comes out to half to one-fifth of what you document for contemporary Islamia after government countermeasures, and if reducing it to basically nothing in (mostly, alas, former) Christendom took mostly recognition of the problem & self-reform, whereas getting it to those still comparatively very high levels in Islamia took heavy enforcement in regions with the highest state capacity, that is not exactly an endorsement.
Observing Islamia from the outside, and leaving aside any religious or spiritual consideration, what a European sees is:
1) a set of nations that are intra-socially quite low trust and by European standards very violent even adjusting for average age difference, and at the margins of the Ummah subversive (in low numbers) and horrifically violent (in large numbers)
2) -"- techno-commercially stagnant and poor, where not installed as effectively US compradors born atop an oil well (that still has to be exploited by foreign experts)
3) -"- that are almost uniquely bad at self-evaluation and consequent reform – where substantial reform happens, it almost always happens under (crypto or openly)secular players and propelled by violent spasms (Atatürk is of course the poster boy, but the Pakistani deep state’s techno-commercial elite is also almost comically secular, Mari is a very nice ski resort but when I was there was not a hair covering in sight – stunning ladies!)
The vast racial diversity among Islamic nations and their still relatively similar pathologies, to the outsider, obviously suggests either a defect of the common doctrine causing the problems, or at least the doctrine attracting peoples with such pathologies and then not doing much to cure them.
It’s not irrational to think that you don’t want more of that, even if you can’t correctly pinpoint the reasons why it is how it is – or at least feel you’re not allowed to. Pointing to taqiyya may be wrong, but it’s certainly more politically correct than saying “these people on average have very little to offer us because of their very nature, certainly for the radical cultural shift that accomodating them would represent”.
I completely understand and agree your point(s) and I think my past history of essays shows that I get the point where native Europeans come from and their experiences.
I think I will try to compose my answer in a longer post but I wanted to deal with "Misconceptions about Islam" and not Muslims. If I focused on the second I would most probably be veering onto Uncle Tom territory.
The only part I disagree with the framing is that this is not really the fault of the Muslims (or any other migrant) group that was let in as much as the fault of the elites who engineered this and the larger population who is accepting of this. If you know those people are dysfunctional regularly misbehave in large numbers and basically bring little benefit in net yet continue to not only let them in but multiply their numbers every few years, I can't see how this is not an endemic failure.
Given the situation and the opposition the fact that politicians houses are not regularly going on flames (eurocrats this is not an endorsment) is incredible.
I think one wrinkle that is missing is human capital; Muslims to America seem to have radically less of the pathologies than those in Europe, across almost all ethnic lines (expert Somalians, which, coincidentally came through refugee relocation and not the selective immigration system).
This to me suggest that it’s not just Islam but also the intersection of culture and human. Capital
Recent revelations about various legal immigrant and otherwise organized etc. minorities in the US that are seen as successful or at least low-crime have made me really suspicious about the substance of these claims. This is absolutely not restricted or specific to Muslims.
It turns out a lot of the low criminality among e.g. Indians or upstate New York Hasidic welfare shtetls is apparently that the community handles everything internally and neither calls nor cooperates with the police; a lot of the economic success of e.g. Indian nepotistic cartels in various industries like hospitality seems to get a helping hand from special loans and set-asides only available to minorities etc.
So maybe some groups really are doing very well, maybe a lot of that is in reality a complete crock manufactured through piles of tax dollars and the acquiescence of the recipients of their block votes.
This suspicion will in many cases be unfair but it’s a bit like meeting a black doctor: They may be great, but affirmative action means it’s a hella bet.
It should also be noted that Muslim groups here in Europe are anything but uniform between nationalities of origin, and also between groups from the same nationality that arrived in different host countries or at different times. The perception in America seems to be that they’re near-uniformly expensive and dangerous fuck-ups but that’s really not true.
There’s whole neighbourhoods of educated and entrepreneurial Turks and many such Iranians in central Europe; Moroccans in NL and Germany are AFAIK almost universally very criminal debacles but those in southern Europe are not particularly distinguished, but also not really problematic. I’ve never heard of big problems with Indonesians, at least in Central Europe. I don’t know how the postcolonial backwash is in NL; but the only Indo-Dutch guy I knew was a former military helicopter pilot in the Dutch armed forces and an immensely cool guy. Albanians are disproportionately a mess of pimps and drug dealers but it turns out that includes Christian Albanians as well. Also apparently Albania is pretty chill and safe now because all their dregs moved north. Older Bosniaks used to be super cool, but their youth has in parts become a problem due to the Salafi influence from the 90s wars on. So like immigration to Europe in general, Muslims are a very mixed bag that can’t be reduced to “all bad” at all.
Obviously there is a lot of cultural-religious impedance mismatch here specifically that would always be something of a challenge, but the main migration problem in Europe really is the sheer volume and speed. If you rather suddenly replaced half the youth in the Netherlands with English, Germans, French, and Walloons you’d get some pretty intense feelings in the Netherlands even if these are probably the relatively most compatible and individually unproblematic foreigners in the world for the Dutch.
There’s a key wrinkle here. White-collar crime doesn’t tend to have a visceral effect on the average native and is more difficult to frame as a threat on the local way of life, crime though it may be.
On the flipside of the coin, people very easily and instinctively react with all flavors of hostility to things that are immediately and obviously alien to the local way of life and encroach on it/actively threaten it. No need for me to rehash the many pertinent examples you laid out in your earlier post.
Fraud, nepotism, etc are obviously negative, however they are still within the Western world’s bounds of understanding, hence the lack of outrage in laymen’s circles. In different terms, this is a matter of crimes that can and have been policed and adjudicated according to longstanding codes of Western law as vs “radioactive zombie horde crimes” which bear more similarity to behavior from post-apocalyptic thrillers or actual warzones than to anything Western Civ has encountered or is prepared to deal with.
Very good points, although I’d say the border between white collar crime and visceral effect is quite fuzzy. E.g. hotels/motels are ideal bases for all sorts of trafficking, and Indians with obviously fraudulently obtained CDLs have made quite the impact recently, figuratively and literally.
It’s possible that crime is likely higher than reported among immigrants in the US, though that doesn’t show up in. The data that is hard to hide (violent crime), though some crimes (domestic assault, rape) probably goes under reported (though you’d think that be the case in Europe too yet it’s still detectable). If you’re going to make that assertion, you need at least some mechanism on how the crime is actually higher while not being reported in the states while it actually being reported in Europe; I really don’t see that
I’m sorry but that article does nothing *at all* to dispute my comment that human capital may also play a role; if anything it strengthens it by highlighting the strict filtering mechanisms in the US
Do you really think antipathy to Muslims is based on false interpretations of scripture? People across Europe aren't going to read this and think, gosh, now I understand and all of my problems with the mass importation of impoverished and culturally regressive people are resolved!
Fact is that if you amend your country's immigration policy to say 'no Muslims' then everything will get better. We can (and should!) talk about why that is, and it's complex, but Europe doesn't have time to wait till that conversation is over.
"Not many people know it but MEMRI as funny as it can be is an Israeli information company that cherry picks and translates to its benefit. If Islamists were smart they would start doing the same picking the most extreme Jews."
This is unfair because MEMRI also translates a lot of pro-peace content from Arab media, which I think is also unrepresentative.
Anyway, Al Jazeera literally already does what you suggest.
A significant reason why such ideas proliferated is the strong cultural aversion to racism. It was (and still is) much easier to say and sell that a religion is the problem, not specific peoples. As someone who has long shed this moral constraint, I agree: the peoples who are Muslim are the problem, not Islam per se
You are absolutely wrong about the Iraq war. The whole premise of the neo-conservative project is that there is nothing inherently problematic about Islam.
It's very obvious. If Islam is so bad, you can't just make Iraq into a democracy because Islam will get in the way. This is why the counter-jihad crowd were critical of the Iraq war (some favouring doing nothing and focvussing on immigration, some arguing for an alternate anti Islam military strategy).
The idea of a connection between the Iraq War and Islamophobia was all bullshit from leftists and Islamists. In the real world, the first official act of GW after 9/11 was to visit a mosque and declare Islam a religion of peace.
On Taqiyya, yes it's very cringe, but it's still true that Muslims habitually present a 'best version' account of Islam to outsiders while making very little effort to promote this same best version to other Muslims. Jews are the same.
Good luck with your Musbara efforts. I'm still not sure of who the target audience is supposed to be. Europeans enjoying the effects of diversity? American shitlibs?
Personally, in your situation, I’d be trying to explain to European Muslims that they should stop behaving like inbred terrorists and criminals rather than explaining to Europeans that they’re just imagining things.
Bold of you to assume I do not already do so. But there is only so much that I can do to urge retarded people to not act like retards. The good ones don’t need any explanation and the bad ones just need to be deported
Then perhaps you should be addressing Europeans about the most effective ways to tell between the good and bad ones, as well as providing tips on how to most efficiently to deport the latter.
"Abu Banana said lying is bad, 19th century English aristocrats had cousin marriage rates of 5% which is only 10x lower than those of the demented biomass turning your towns into rapescapes" doesn't strike me as likely to be a winning message. Whereas "the 10 best ways to deport my cousins" just might be a hit!
I think the section on cousin marriage is weak. Yes, it's really a matter of Arab cultural norms rather than theology or even Islamic law, but in reality that's a big part of what Islam has always been, a universalist conquering faith, that is also a sort of an ethnoreligion.
The issue is the variance, I don’t think Arab cultural norms are the strong factor as many don’t seem to have made it to Pakistan yet they for sure did reach the Amazigh groups of North Africa and the difference of cousin marriage is 15% to 60%.
But I am interested of the potential counter-arguments to better argue it
Relevant: "A 2000 study by Andrey Korotayev found that parallel-cousin (Father's Brother's Daughter – FBD) marriage is likely to be common in areas that were part of the eighth-century Umayyad Caliphate and remained in the Islamic world, i.e., North Africa and the Middle East. Korotayev argues that while there is some functional connection between Islam and FBD marriage, the permission to marry a FBD does not appear to be sufficient to persuade people to actually marry FBD, even if the marriage brings with it economic advantages. According to Korotayev, a systematic acceptance and practice of parallel-cousin marriage took place when Islamized non-Arab groups adopted Arab norms and practices, even if they had no direct connection with Islam, to raise their social standing."
"Besides Muslims, some Jews and Arab Christians in the Middle East have a history of cousin marriage. In addition, some Muslim groups living outside the Middle East, such as expatriate Pakistanis living in England, also practice consanguineous marriage."
I have seen it claimed that Pakistan is still closer to Indian practices where they have their own weird forms of endogamy because of the caste system. Although maybe this plus FDB is what makes them this insanely high 60 percent rate.
Interesting takes from the other side. Polemics aside, (and this seems like only part one, so you'll probably address other things), the alt-right optics simply do not look good for Islam.
There are a couple of framing things I particularly disagree with in the beginning, which sours me on the rest of the article, even if well-argued regarding taqiya and cousin marriage (a la Kevin La Corte's video on Cousin Marriage).
On prima facie, the GWOT would be "the West's modern crusade against Muslim Civilization," but there are several serious confounders to that framing. Given the background of the Cold War ending in 1991, fighting for resource control is a stronger explanatory factor than "quick! Iraq didn't have WMD's, we must find another reason for war so we can fund military industrial complex! Roll out the anti-Muslim propaganda!"
You also overemphasize the role of the GWOT in the Arab Spring: instability is a cause for revolt, but if the "Arab Spring: in 2010, it would also follow that the 2008 crash contributed a LOT more to economic instability as well, given the petrodollar (in alliance with Saudi Arabia) and the US having economic problems at home.
The nail in the coffin for the desert wars as a "crusade against Islam" is that sentiment of Muslim Americans *IMPROVED* shortly after 9/11, with the fairly positive neo-lib legacy media trotting out pieces in favor of Islam. Source is on page 11 here: https://indike.org/llr/llr.pdf
The fact that Islamophobia is in the lexicon should demonstrate that Muslims are a darling of the Left, even if Muslim theology would hang the gays. Islam gains association with the promotion of violence and terrorism primarily on the right, not the left. See recent Pew Polls on American perceptions of Islam.
All in all, this reads like a liberal black man writing an essay about "Misconceptions on Black Culture" or something, crying "muh racism" about misconceptions, when the stereotypes are very well deserved. Islam has terrible optics. Native Europeans are starting to get more and more fatigue, the Indians REALLY do not like the Pakistanis for the 2008 Mumbai bombings, and even the Chinese are doing the funny to the Uighur Muslims. After InspiringPhilosophy had a 2-hour debate with Daniel Haqiqatjou-taking a peek-at-chu on the ethics of Child Marriage (the Muslim defending it), pretty much all of Christian YouTube at the time ranging from Mike Winger to Trent Horn soured pretty fast on Islam. Unless the majority of Islam Westernizes like Saudia Arabia or abrogates the war verses from Muhammad, Islam will continue to be a threat to Western civilization.
Fair points, I have retracted part of that and added a footnote, but to defend my point of view. America went against Afghanistan and then Iraq in just a couple of years after the 9/11 attacks. While Afghanistan can be understood as I said, Iraq is really not or at least not more than attacking Syria so it is "the West's modern crusade against Muslim Civilization" because that is how it is seen in the Arabic/Islamic world.
As for "You also overemphasize the role of the GWOT in the Arab Spring"
No I don't feel like I do, the Arab Spring had different causes as I said but the instability created an opportunity for Islamist groups who have been growing because of the GWOT in Iraq created by the US, and the opportunity was seized by the Jihadi groups who grew during the GWOT. So yes, one fed into the other and had notable influences.
"The fact that Islamophobia is in the lexicon should demonstrate that Muslims are a darling of the Left"
Which is why I avoided using the word, they are the darlings of a very specific part of the extreme left but those views are by no means common amongst the general population.
After you mix different dynamics. Pakistanis and Indians hate each other since 1947, terrorist attacks have been committed by Pakistanis but Indians are not peaceful victims as this page well shows https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_against_Muslims_in_India. In China there are other different dynamics linked to China being an ethnonationalist state in practice who also around the same time were doing funny things to the Tibetans (who are Buddhists).
When it comes to European natives getting fatigued I have dealt with such subjects in other essays, this one was specifically about Islam topics but I guess the introduction was probably not the best way to bring the topic.
Good piece. You could probably extend the logic to FGM, women's rights more generally. Lewis always made the case that Islam was relatively egalitarian to women comparatively and of course Leila Ahmed made an even stronger case.
but I think what is missing is the distinction between Islam as a theology, Islam as a social structure (and Islam as an overall governing system though less relevant to this discussion). Given how durable Islam has proven to be, and how Islam's social's structures became integrated into local systems - the school, the judge - of course the actual experience of a young girl who has FGM is that "Islam" did it - even if there's no actual Muslim ruling and this is a habit that predates Islam. That's a serious point that's worth mentioning - the way the durability of Islam can also reinforce social structures we might see as obsolete.
And a quick note about MEMRI - they don't only translate weird and outlandish stuff although they do focus on extremism - they translate a whole range of stuff, but the really outlandish stuff is what goes viral.
FGM is planned on the next part, with slavery and the concept of Jihad.
I have pointed towards that in the Cousin Marriage part that there seems to be Islam in theory, and how it’s neutrality or positivity to certain traits pushes the scales towards selection of dysfunctional behaviours.
On MEMRI it might be true, I have also seen criticism (on Arabic) of MEMRI’s role in selecting an already biased sample from select countries.
I can't speak to how representative overall they are, but they definitely (a) seek to cover extremism and (b) don't only cover extremism. My argument is more that even if people are seeing bias, they aren't Robert Spencer biased, as in muslims = bad.
Not sure if the problem of the Umah and thus a perceived inability to be loyal to one's country, especially if it is majority non-Muslim, is an issue. In my country, the USA, this was seen to be a problem with Catholics, and judging by how some Trad Caths reacted to Trump's fight with the Pope, they may have had a point. And Jews have often faced this issue in regards to "international Jewry" at first, and then the state of Israel once it was created. I wonder how many of our issues with Islam just happen to come down to the fact there have been a lot of wars recently. I have the odd distinction of having watched a lot of WW2 media and documentaries before getting into anime and weeb culture, and it is wild how differently Japan specifically and Asia in general were perceived back in the day. Perhaps my grandchildren will grow up watching Morrocn cartoons and I will be the wierdo who grew up paranoid in the GWOT era.
Ruth Benedict's book *The Chrysanthemum and the Sword* was instrumental in doing Japan hasbara for Americans, and began a trend of the educated classes being more pro-Japan. Far more significant was Japan admitting defeat, and pivoting to adopting the best business and cultural contributions its conquerors had to offer.
It’s tragic and also funny, because even modern sheikhs of the Arab world aren’t taking second wives anymore (Hamdan Al Maktoum, pretty much all of current Jordanian royalty). MBS is rumored to have a second wife but the fact that he’s not openly announcing it already shows a tide against even sheikhs having them. Why would they when they can just have affairs with women and avoid taking full responsibility?
But I appreciate what the article is actually saying. Islam is so misunderstood by essentially everyone that we actually can’t trust what we read about it. Short of having to read the Quran and the history behind it, we’re stuck with “moderate Muslims are also part of the problem and they don’t condemn their extreme counterparts”. Mfs, they’re also scared of speaking out and getting killed for it too!
What should also have been mentioned is the hijab. I am not sure if it’s actually mandatory because the very term isn’t mentioned? It just seems like there is a strong expectation to dress modestly but a lot of Muslim women I knew never bothered to wear one and no one cared.
If you are still looking for future topics to evaluate or rebut, as a secular Westerner my biggest concern regarding Islamic doctrine is the treatment of apostasy. Especially if my understanding of Islamic jurisprudence, that anyone born to a Muslim parent is a Muslim and any Muslim who refuses to repent apostatic beliefs/actions may be subject to the death penalty, is accurate and widely approved of in Muslim-majority countries.
To pre-empt the obvious, Christianity in the not-so-distant past also had severe punishments for apostasy and heresy so culturally this isn't unique to Islam. But as far as I am aware there is not such a strong doctrinal basis for such harsh treatment in the Bible which has allowed for a greater degree of flexibility in many historically Christian countries; I consider that a desirable state of affairs but perhaps you do not.
Tangential but I did read an interesting article recently about the history of the 'ulema acting independently of the state long before the two became intertwined in more modern times that ran against my preconceptions of how Islam operates. It was the only thing valuable I found linked in another article that tried to argue Islam is fundamentally liberal which came across as massive cope.
I find this very persuasive in how it references quranic texts, mainly because I'm fascinated by how islam was a sort of progressive force in the context of 7th Century Middle East (I wanna see how you tackle the issues of slavery and compulsory castration). That said, I still think many sociological data that you expose across the page defeat the point of some of the arguments, especially if we're trying to grapple with Western misconceptions that of course are going to be more focused on real life application than scripture puritanism.
I don't find it very persuasive to argue that Ashkenazi Jews or aristocratic families had relatively high rates of endogamy when current rates in Muslim-majority countries are still so dramatically higher. Most people will agree that endogamy has simply been a recurrent practice in human history just like slavery, or war, and people can agree that endogamy thrives in cultures still rooted in clan-like structures interested in gatekeeping their wealth, and not only islam. The fact that the quranic case for endogamy is feeble does not help the case of Muslim communities when compared to other cultures that similarly have a record of engaging in endogamy and could easily justify it on religious terms but have abandoned it in significant stretches since in the last 150 years.
I want to see how this piece progresses... The elephant in the room is jihad and how it completely alters the Western conception of islam and Muslims. I think you understate the prejudice faced by other communities. Hindus, for instance, (and really Indians in general) are subjected to all forms of stereotypes and discrimination, including cliches about inbreeding and arranged marriages. Israelis may overblow the extent of Muslim fanatism with programs like MEMRI, but same tropes are applied to Jews and Israelis even today, similarly based on cherry-picked clips of some rabbi or Hilltop Youth whacko spewing bs about "Amalek" and whatnot, used to justify the most outlandish theories you could imagine. If you think Jews are not remotely as victimized by as Muslims by these stereotypes is because of the drastic social and economic gaps between both groups in the West. How Jews are largely wealthy in and outside Israel, and are just 20 million people, while Muslims are not as wealthy nor assimilated and comprise a massive population of 2 billion. Ultimately, the most defining factor is terrorism and the state of current belligerency between the Muslim world and the West, which could be attributed to seld-destructive Western policy, but will still, in most charitable cases, fuel wariness and disdain towards islam even in cosmopolitan, liberal societies. Personally, I'm not someone who sees islamic or Arabic terrorism as a political tool exceptional. In the case of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Jewish groups also resorted to terrorism in ways that were pretty much identical to their Arab counterparts. Terrorism is found in Marxist guerrillas in South America, in the Apartheid-era South Africa, in Czarist Russia, but I'd argue people is particularly appalled by the extreme virulence and recklessness of Islamic terrorism, specificially the topic suicide attacks, which are particularly jarring for the Western brain.
Thank you for the comment. I think I wanted this piece to be misconcpetions people have on Islam and not misconceptions people have on Muslims. I have gotten a lot of correct comments pointing out that some arguments are not as convincing or that I have left out the actions of muslims but this was very much an exercice to touch Islam itself, what are the doctrines and what do the texts actually say and how it expresses itself.
How many muslims act in the West has in many cases little connexion with the theory or follows very specific currents that are cracked down even in Islamic countries (the list of Arabic countries where the Islamic Brotherhood is allowed to exist is small to null). That connexion has been explained by better people than me and I will get to it someday.
That part was to state the rhetoric practice, I stated that Islam (or rathee Arabic tribal norms) exacerbate the cultural problem but that Islam is neutral to slightly positive in it. What Muslims then do with it is different.
As for the last paragraph, other ethnicities are maligned or have bad reputations but the Jews are clearly not one of them. Larry Ellison (very open Zionist Jew) has control of a large media corportation in the US. I accept the point about Indians ultimately. As for terrorism yeah it was the domain of marxsists before the Islamists took the torch on it.
Jihad is a big topic so will probably get its own part
Your text is good, but I don’t think it touches points that are really relevant to how Muslims are viewed in the West. The main reasons people dislike Muslims in the West are:
1. The alliance between Muslims and the far left in some kind of third-worldist coalition, which put Muslins in the same side as obnoxious Greta Thurnberg-like people and creates surrealistic situations like trans for Palestine signs. The far left then hijacked the Muslims mentality driving it into a histerical victim complex, which doesn’t not help their case outside these circles.
2. The formation of ghettos and Muslim-majority areas in European city. Most Westerns feel that this is de-characterizing cities, especially the most tourist appealing ones, creating a gap between expectation and reality that is hard to grasp. This is also translated to those city-dwellers as a rapid decrease in quality of living and a real-time transformation of until then-familiar places. If Muslim immigration was actively managed Singapore-style, with Muslims being spread and not concentrating in certain areas, probably most of the animosity wouldn’t take place.
3. The very high Muslim in-group preference. This take place in different ways: from Muslims acting as a unified voting block to elect their mayors in Europe, to communities closing ranks to defend their youth from rape accusations, to every critic being labeled Islamophobia. It’s common to see Muslims saying that Imans are radical in the Wet and that if they preached like that in their home countries they would be in jail, but any attempt to do this in the West would lead the same people who said that to close ranks and scream “discrimination” and “Islamophobia”.This dynamic make it very hard from outsiders to be able to sort the wheat from the chaff and end up in whole communities being seen as their worst elements.
Point 1 and 3 I have already treated in immigration related essays, I will link them later but you can search my archive for them.
Point 2 has endemic political reasons linked to different nation’s own deficiencies. Why it happens in Germany, France or Spain has different reasons and trajectories.
All the points you raise have to do with the communities per se (culture) than with religion. Given that I can’t deal witn them on essays focused on the scope of what the religion says, as it doesnt prescribe to vote for left wing parties who are ok with gays or moral degeneracy, they also dont tell muslims to livr in ghettos.
I know you have written about some of these points before, all I’m saying is that most of the reason there’s animosity between Muslims and other people are due to the cultural factors, not points on Muslim religious doctrine. My main point is that the factors causing some people to dislike Muslims are cultural, not religious. And those factors are not distinguishable from each other.
And to be fair, I have to concede that point 2 is to blamed more on those countries than on Muslims. Is the host countries responsibility to not allowed this ghettofication to happen, but for some reason they find very hard to do it.
Interesting thing re: 3 is that AFAIK the outright majority of Turcogerman voters, particularly outside the Ruhrpott welfare hellscape, used to go for the CDU because they’d easier swallow the “Christian” part (which tbf has long been very theoretical) than the leftist fagolatry and economic nonsense. Since the Union joined the Green/Red Uniparty, they have pivoted to the AfD somewhat and are explicitly courted by parts of them as family values economic conservative voters AFAIK.
You are missing some aspects of why Muslims are disliked - I speak from a UK perspective a) low IQ and welfare dependency; b) clannishness and nepotism; c) disrespect of women; d) taking over public places and imposing their culture on their hosts (street praying, noisy mosques, signs in street saying no alcohol; demanding halal meat in institutions); e) cry-bullying and constant claims of Islamophobia; f) intolerance to other views, beliefs or culture; g) hatred of dogs; i) lack of respect for public places (littering, letting trash accumulate); j) arriving in a country where most of the public never wanted them in the first place; k) wanting to impose their mediaeval beliefs on others (e.g. pictures of Md. should be illegal). These are on average of course, a few are like yourself, intelligent , curious and intellectual.
What part of this comes from the people being Muslims and what part of this comes from having selected people's who no matter what religion they had would still be exhibiting similar characteristics. What you all described is the characteristics of gypsies who are nominally Christian yet every European has to restrain himself from mentioning gas chambers to them so hated they are
If Pakistanis were let's say some weird Christian branch who kept their cultural traits of clanishness and disrespect to the outgroup they would still be hated so in my view it is not really the religion (which contributes some part to it nonetheless) per se but the peoples. If you got Beni Mzbab (pious muslim group who focused on education, trading and other bourgeois positive traits) I don't think native Europeans would actually complain that much, despite Beni Mzbab and Pakistanis adhering to the same religion being Sunni islam.
I think the core problem for efforts like yours here, as great an essay as it is, is that Delia is right and it’s really talking past the issue as seen from the other side.
I think most of the trepidation up to hostility in Europe re: Islam is plainly that Europeans see a challenge by a group (or rather, “group of groups”) with very different beliefs & that holds its values very strongly, but has on average very little attractive or enviable qualities to offer to counterbalance the inherent costs of such diversity. The object level criticisms and certainly often wrong claims about the actual doctrines are I think just rationalisations of that gut feeling, which I have to say is largely correct on the whole, no matter how stupid or just factually wrong its apologetics are.
I hope you understand that I say this with if anything the opposite of personal hostility; if you were the representative experience of Muslims that Europeans get to enjoy, there would be no hostility to Islam, but alas you’re very much not. To be fair, the modal experience of Muslims in Europe is the much esteemed Kebab man; but from there the left tail is sadly much thicker and heavier than the right-.
If anything, your example about endogamy is illustrative of that: If western societies had a high point of endogamy between declining power of the Church and modern understanding of genetics that comes out to half to one-fifth of what you document for contemporary Islamia after government countermeasures, and if reducing it to basically nothing in (mostly, alas, former) Christendom took mostly recognition of the problem & self-reform, whereas getting it to those still comparatively very high levels in Islamia took heavy enforcement in regions with the highest state capacity, that is not exactly an endorsement.
Observing Islamia from the outside, and leaving aside any religious or spiritual consideration, what a European sees is:
1) a set of nations that are intra-socially quite low trust and by European standards very violent even adjusting for average age difference, and at the margins of the Ummah subversive (in low numbers) and horrifically violent (in large numbers)
2) -"- techno-commercially stagnant and poor, where not installed as effectively US compradors born atop an oil well (that still has to be exploited by foreign experts)
3) -"- that are almost uniquely bad at self-evaluation and consequent reform – where substantial reform happens, it almost always happens under (crypto or openly)secular players and propelled by violent spasms (Atatürk is of course the poster boy, but the Pakistani deep state’s techno-commercial elite is also almost comically secular, Mari is a very nice ski resort but when I was there was not a hair covering in sight – stunning ladies!)
The vast racial diversity among Islamic nations and their still relatively similar pathologies, to the outsider, obviously suggests either a defect of the common doctrine causing the problems, or at least the doctrine attracting peoples with such pathologies and then not doing much to cure them.
It’s not irrational to think that you don’t want more of that, even if you can’t correctly pinpoint the reasons why it is how it is – or at least feel you’re not allowed to. Pointing to taqiyya may be wrong, but it’s certainly more politically correct than saying “these people on average have very little to offer us because of their very nature, certainly for the radical cultural shift that accomodating them would represent”.
I completely understand and agree your point(s) and I think my past history of essays shows that I get the point where native Europeans come from and their experiences.
I think I will try to compose my answer in a longer post but I wanted to deal with "Misconceptions about Islam" and not Muslims. If I focused on the second I would most probably be veering onto Uncle Tom territory.
The only part I disagree with the framing is that this is not really the fault of the Muslims (or any other migrant) group that was let in as much as the fault of the elites who engineered this and the larger population who is accepting of this. If you know those people are dysfunctional regularly misbehave in large numbers and basically bring little benefit in net yet continue to not only let them in but multiply their numbers every few years, I can't see how this is not an endemic failure.
Given the situation and the opposition the fact that politicians houses are not regularly going on flames (eurocrats this is not an endorsment) is incredible.
I think one wrinkle that is missing is human capital; Muslims to America seem to have radically less of the pathologies than those in Europe, across almost all ethnic lines (expert Somalians, which, coincidentally came through refugee relocation and not the selective immigration system).
This to me suggest that it’s not just Islam but also the intersection of culture and human. Capital
Recent revelations about various legal immigrant and otherwise organized etc. minorities in the US that are seen as successful or at least low-crime have made me really suspicious about the substance of these claims. This is absolutely not restricted or specific to Muslims.
It turns out a lot of the low criminality among e.g. Indians or upstate New York Hasidic welfare shtetls is apparently that the community handles everything internally and neither calls nor cooperates with the police; a lot of the economic success of e.g. Indian nepotistic cartels in various industries like hospitality seems to get a helping hand from special loans and set-asides only available to minorities etc.
So maybe some groups really are doing very well, maybe a lot of that is in reality a complete crock manufactured through piles of tax dollars and the acquiescence of the recipients of their block votes.
This suspicion will in many cases be unfair but it’s a bit like meeting a black doctor: They may be great, but affirmative action means it’s a hella bet.
It should also be noted that Muslim groups here in Europe are anything but uniform between nationalities of origin, and also between groups from the same nationality that arrived in different host countries or at different times. The perception in America seems to be that they’re near-uniformly expensive and dangerous fuck-ups but that’s really not true.
There’s whole neighbourhoods of educated and entrepreneurial Turks and many such Iranians in central Europe; Moroccans in NL and Germany are AFAIK almost universally very criminal debacles but those in southern Europe are not particularly distinguished, but also not really problematic. I’ve never heard of big problems with Indonesians, at least in Central Europe. I don’t know how the postcolonial backwash is in NL; but the only Indo-Dutch guy I knew was a former military helicopter pilot in the Dutch armed forces and an immensely cool guy. Albanians are disproportionately a mess of pimps and drug dealers but it turns out that includes Christian Albanians as well. Also apparently Albania is pretty chill and safe now because all their dregs moved north. Older Bosniaks used to be super cool, but their youth has in parts become a problem due to the Salafi influence from the 90s wars on. So like immigration to Europe in general, Muslims are a very mixed bag that can’t be reduced to “all bad” at all.
Obviously there is a lot of cultural-religious impedance mismatch here specifically that would always be something of a challenge, but the main migration problem in Europe really is the sheer volume and speed. If you rather suddenly replaced half the youth in the Netherlands with English, Germans, French, and Walloons you’d get some pretty intense feelings in the Netherlands even if these are probably the relatively most compatible and individually unproblematic foreigners in the world for the Dutch.
There’s a key wrinkle here. White-collar crime doesn’t tend to have a visceral effect on the average native and is more difficult to frame as a threat on the local way of life, crime though it may be.
On the flipside of the coin, people very easily and instinctively react with all flavors of hostility to things that are immediately and obviously alien to the local way of life and encroach on it/actively threaten it. No need for me to rehash the many pertinent examples you laid out in your earlier post.
Fraud, nepotism, etc are obviously negative, however they are still within the Western world’s bounds of understanding, hence the lack of outrage in laymen’s circles. In different terms, this is a matter of crimes that can and have been policed and adjudicated according to longstanding codes of Western law as vs “radioactive zombie horde crimes” which bear more similarity to behavior from post-apocalyptic thrillers or actual warzones than to anything Western Civ has encountered or is prepared to deal with.
Very good points, although I’d say the border between white collar crime and visceral effect is quite fuzzy. E.g. hotels/motels are ideal bases for all sorts of trafficking, and Indians with obviously fraudulently obtained CDLs have made quite the impact recently, figuratively and literally.
It’s possible that crime is likely higher than reported among immigrants in the US, though that doesn’t show up in. The data that is hard to hide (violent crime), though some crimes (domestic assault, rape) probably goes under reported (though you’d think that be the case in Europe too yet it’s still detectable). If you’re going to make that assertion, you need at least some mechanism on how the crime is actually higher while not being reported in the states while it actually being reported in Europe; I really don’t see that
And yes Muslims aren’t a monolith in the US too
https://asmium.substack.com/p/on-muslim-immigration-to-europe
I’m sorry but that article does nothing *at all* to dispute my comment that human capital may also play a role; if anything it strengthens it by highlighting the strict filtering mechanisms in the US
The article linked is to point out I already discussed this elsewhere and it is unlinked to the topic at hand
Do you really think antipathy to Muslims is based on false interpretations of scripture? People across Europe aren't going to read this and think, gosh, now I understand and all of my problems with the mass importation of impoverished and culturally regressive people are resolved!
Fact is that if you amend your country's immigration policy to say 'no Muslims' then everything will get better. We can (and should!) talk about why that is, and it's complex, but Europe doesn't have time to wait till that conversation is over.
Oh hell nigga It’s readin time!
"Not many people know it but MEMRI as funny as it can be is an Israeli information company that cherry picks and translates to its benefit. If Islamists were smart they would start doing the same picking the most extreme Jews."
This is unfair because MEMRI also translates a lot of pro-peace content from Arab media, which I think is also unrepresentative.
Anyway, Al Jazeera literally already does what you suggest.
I have heard this point many times, do you have any evidence to it ?
There are 3 distinct Al-Jazeeras:
the gay lefitst woke (never say anything bad about muslims) western one (AJ+)
the hidden propaganda one (Al-Jazeera English)
Al-Jazeera Arabic which was mostly ok (for an Arabic news channel) pre-2015.
Neither of them take Avraham Baruch or the latest Ben Gvir speech and translate it verbatim, they all of course spin it in their own propaganda ways
Actually, you're right it's more a Middle East Eye thing, but still Qatari money https://www.youtube.com/shorts/DICQEP6hE7M
A significant reason why such ideas proliferated is the strong cultural aversion to racism. It was (and still is) much easier to say and sell that a religion is the problem, not specific peoples. As someone who has long shed this moral constraint, I agree: the peoples who are Muslim are the problem, not Islam per se
You are absolutely wrong about the Iraq war. The whole premise of the neo-conservative project is that there is nothing inherently problematic about Islam.
What do you mean?
It's very obvious. If Islam is so bad, you can't just make Iraq into a democracy because Islam will get in the way. This is why the counter-jihad crowd were critical of the Iraq war (some favouring doing nothing and focvussing on immigration, some arguing for an alternate anti Islam military strategy).
The idea of a connection between the Iraq War and Islamophobia was all bullshit from leftists and Islamists. In the real world, the first official act of GW after 9/11 was to visit a mosque and declare Islam a religion of peace.
I think I will strike the whole section and write a mea culpa, it seems being born after 9/11 in a Muslim family inculcates certain ideas.
George Bush also made a point to explain how Islam is a religion of peace.
A mind-blowing fact is that most Muslims in America arrived after 9/11.
"f Islam is so bad, you can't just make Iraq into a democracy because Islam will get in the way. "
Saddam's secular fascist Baath Party seems to have secularized them quite a bit?
On Taqiyya, yes it's very cringe, but it's still true that Muslims habitually present a 'best version' account of Islam to outsiders while making very little effort to promote this same best version to other Muslims. Jews are the same.
I agree, which is why I don't want to sugarcoat things in this series. Slavery is gonna be a topic that won't be liked by muslims who follow me.
Good luck with your Musbara efforts. I'm still not sure of who the target audience is supposed to be. Europeans enjoying the effects of diversity? American shitlibs?
For now anyone willing to listen. The objective is medium term to have a similar list in French where I’d prefer to not be pogromed in 20 years
How many articles like this would you estimate add up to an impact on public opinion sufficient to offset one grooming gang or the French equivalent?
Given the assymetric nature of destruction vs construction not much.
Still better to do a small inconsequential thing than to do none.
More if it serves to organize my thoughts and improve them in public
Personally, in your situation, I’d be trying to explain to European Muslims that they should stop behaving like inbred terrorists and criminals rather than explaining to Europeans that they’re just imagining things.
Bold of you to assume I do not already do so. But there is only so much that I can do to urge retarded people to not act like retards. The good ones don’t need any explanation and the bad ones just need to be deported
Then perhaps you should be addressing Europeans about the most effective ways to tell between the good and bad ones, as well as providing tips on how to most efficiently to deport the latter.
"Abu Banana said lying is bad, 19th century English aristocrats had cousin marriage rates of 5% which is only 10x lower than those of the demented biomass turning your towns into rapescapes" doesn't strike me as likely to be a winning message. Whereas "the 10 best ways to deport my cousins" just might be a hit!
They’re not retarded. It’s culture. We burp to great offense. Muslims rape to great offense. This isn’t working out.
As if a Kike from Jewistan has any idea what’s going on in Europe
Thorazine
God’s holy word suffices
Plainly
I think the section on cousin marriage is weak. Yes, it's really a matter of Arab cultural norms rather than theology or even Islamic law, but in reality that's a big part of what Islam has always been, a universalist conquering faith, that is also a sort of an ethnoreligion.
The issue is the variance, I don’t think Arab cultural norms are the strong factor as many don’t seem to have made it to Pakistan yet they for sure did reach the Amazigh groups of North Africa and the difference of cousin marriage is 15% to 60%.
But I am interested of the potential counter-arguments to better argue it
Relevant: "A 2000 study by Andrey Korotayev found that parallel-cousin (Father's Brother's Daughter – FBD) marriage is likely to be common in areas that were part of the eighth-century Umayyad Caliphate and remained in the Islamic world, i.e., North Africa and the Middle East. Korotayev argues that while there is some functional connection between Islam and FBD marriage, the permission to marry a FBD does not appear to be sufficient to persuade people to actually marry FBD, even if the marriage brings with it economic advantages. According to Korotayev, a systematic acceptance and practice of parallel-cousin marriage took place when Islamized non-Arab groups adopted Arab norms and practices, even if they had no direct connection with Islam, to raise their social standing."
"Besides Muslims, some Jews and Arab Christians in the Middle East have a history of cousin marriage. In addition, some Muslim groups living outside the Middle East, such as expatriate Pakistanis living in England, also practice consanguineous marriage."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cousin_marriage_in_the_Middle_East#Relation_with_the_spread_of_Islam
I have seen it claimed that Pakistan is still closer to Indian practices where they have their own weird forms of endogamy because of the caste system. Although maybe this plus FDB is what makes them this insanely high 60 percent rate.
Interesting takes from the other side. Polemics aside, (and this seems like only part one, so you'll probably address other things), the alt-right optics simply do not look good for Islam.
There are a couple of framing things I particularly disagree with in the beginning, which sours me on the rest of the article, even if well-argued regarding taqiya and cousin marriage (a la Kevin La Corte's video on Cousin Marriage).
On prima facie, the GWOT would be "the West's modern crusade against Muslim Civilization," but there are several serious confounders to that framing. Given the background of the Cold War ending in 1991, fighting for resource control is a stronger explanatory factor than "quick! Iraq didn't have WMD's, we must find another reason for war so we can fund military industrial complex! Roll out the anti-Muslim propaganda!"
You also overemphasize the role of the GWOT in the Arab Spring: instability is a cause for revolt, but if the "Arab Spring: in 2010, it would also follow that the 2008 crash contributed a LOT more to economic instability as well, given the petrodollar (in alliance with Saudi Arabia) and the US having economic problems at home.
The nail in the coffin for the desert wars as a "crusade against Islam" is that sentiment of Muslim Americans *IMPROVED* shortly after 9/11, with the fairly positive neo-lib legacy media trotting out pieces in favor of Islam. Source is on page 11 here: https://indike.org/llr/llr.pdf
The fact that Islamophobia is in the lexicon should demonstrate that Muslims are a darling of the Left, even if Muslim theology would hang the gays. Islam gains association with the promotion of violence and terrorism primarily on the right, not the left. See recent Pew Polls on American perceptions of Islam.
All in all, this reads like a liberal black man writing an essay about "Misconceptions on Black Culture" or something, crying "muh racism" about misconceptions, when the stereotypes are very well deserved. Islam has terrible optics. Native Europeans are starting to get more and more fatigue, the Indians REALLY do not like the Pakistanis for the 2008 Mumbai bombings, and even the Chinese are doing the funny to the Uighur Muslims. After InspiringPhilosophy had a 2-hour debate with Daniel Haqiqatjou-taking a peek-at-chu on the ethics of Child Marriage (the Muslim defending it), pretty much all of Christian YouTube at the time ranging from Mike Winger to Trent Horn soured pretty fast on Islam. Unless the majority of Islam Westernizes like Saudia Arabia or abrogates the war verses from Muhammad, Islam will continue to be a threat to Western civilization.
Fair points, I have retracted part of that and added a footnote, but to defend my point of view. America went against Afghanistan and then Iraq in just a couple of years after the 9/11 attacks. While Afghanistan can be understood as I said, Iraq is really not or at least not more than attacking Syria so it is "the West's modern crusade against Muslim Civilization" because that is how it is seen in the Arabic/Islamic world.
As for "You also overemphasize the role of the GWOT in the Arab Spring"
No I don't feel like I do, the Arab Spring had different causes as I said but the instability created an opportunity for Islamist groups who have been growing because of the GWOT in Iraq created by the US, and the opportunity was seized by the Jihadi groups who grew during the GWOT. So yes, one fed into the other and had notable influences.
"The fact that Islamophobia is in the lexicon should demonstrate that Muslims are a darling of the Left"
Which is why I avoided using the word, they are the darlings of a very specific part of the extreme left but those views are by no means common amongst the general population.
After you mix different dynamics. Pakistanis and Indians hate each other since 1947, terrorist attacks have been committed by Pakistanis but Indians are not peaceful victims as this page well shows https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_against_Muslims_in_India. In China there are other different dynamics linked to China being an ethnonationalist state in practice who also around the same time were doing funny things to the Tibetans (who are Buddhists).
When it comes to European natives getting fatigued I have dealt with such subjects in other essays, this one was specifically about Islam topics but I guess the introduction was probably not the best way to bring the topic.
Good piece. You could probably extend the logic to FGM, women's rights more generally. Lewis always made the case that Islam was relatively egalitarian to women comparatively and of course Leila Ahmed made an even stronger case.
but I think what is missing is the distinction between Islam as a theology, Islam as a social structure (and Islam as an overall governing system though less relevant to this discussion). Given how durable Islam has proven to be, and how Islam's social's structures became integrated into local systems - the school, the judge - of course the actual experience of a young girl who has FGM is that "Islam" did it - even if there's no actual Muslim ruling and this is a habit that predates Islam. That's a serious point that's worth mentioning - the way the durability of Islam can also reinforce social structures we might see as obsolete.
And a quick note about MEMRI - they don't only translate weird and outlandish stuff although they do focus on extremism - they translate a whole range of stuff, but the really outlandish stuff is what goes viral.
FGM is planned on the next part, with slavery and the concept of Jihad.
I have pointed towards that in the Cousin Marriage part that there seems to be Islam in theory, and how it’s neutrality or positivity to certain traits pushes the scales towards selection of dysfunctional behaviours.
On MEMRI it might be true, I have also seen criticism (on Arabic) of MEMRI’s role in selecting an already biased sample from select countries.
I can't speak to how representative overall they are, but they definitely (a) seek to cover extremism and (b) don't only cover extremism. My argument is more that even if people are seeing bias, they aren't Robert Spencer biased, as in muslims = bad.
If Islam is misconcepted as bad, how come there’s a literal city called Islamisbad? Exactly. Thank you for coming to my TEDTalk.
(P.S. I did not read the article but will one day.)
Not sure if the problem of the Umah and thus a perceived inability to be loyal to one's country, especially if it is majority non-Muslim, is an issue. In my country, the USA, this was seen to be a problem with Catholics, and judging by how some Trad Caths reacted to Trump's fight with the Pope, they may have had a point. And Jews have often faced this issue in regards to "international Jewry" at first, and then the state of Israel once it was created. I wonder how many of our issues with Islam just happen to come down to the fact there have been a lot of wars recently. I have the odd distinction of having watched a lot of WW2 media and documentaries before getting into anime and weeb culture, and it is wild how differently Japan specifically and Asia in general were perceived back in the day. Perhaps my grandchildren will grow up watching Morrocn cartoons and I will be the wierdo who grew up paranoid in the GWOT era.
Ruth Benedict's book *The Chrysanthemum and the Sword* was instrumental in doing Japan hasbara for Americans, and began a trend of the educated classes being more pro-Japan. Far more significant was Japan admitting defeat, and pivoting to adopting the best business and cultural contributions its conquerors had to offer.
It’s tragic and also funny, because even modern sheikhs of the Arab world aren’t taking second wives anymore (Hamdan Al Maktoum, pretty much all of current Jordanian royalty). MBS is rumored to have a second wife but the fact that he’s not openly announcing it already shows a tide against even sheikhs having them. Why would they when they can just have affairs with women and avoid taking full responsibility?
But I appreciate what the article is actually saying. Islam is so misunderstood by essentially everyone that we actually can’t trust what we read about it. Short of having to read the Quran and the history behind it, we’re stuck with “moderate Muslims are also part of the problem and they don’t condemn their extreme counterparts”. Mfs, they’re also scared of speaking out and getting killed for it too!
What should also have been mentioned is the hijab. I am not sure if it’s actually mandatory because the very term isn’t mentioned? It just seems like there is a strong expectation to dress modestly but a lot of Muslim women I knew never bothered to wear one and no one cared.
The hijab is mandatory if I well remember but it depends on interpretation, that is a good topic to be added
If you are still looking for future topics to evaluate or rebut, as a secular Westerner my biggest concern regarding Islamic doctrine is the treatment of apostasy. Especially if my understanding of Islamic jurisprudence, that anyone born to a Muslim parent is a Muslim and any Muslim who refuses to repent apostatic beliefs/actions may be subject to the death penalty, is accurate and widely approved of in Muslim-majority countries.
To pre-empt the obvious, Christianity in the not-so-distant past also had severe punishments for apostasy and heresy so culturally this isn't unique to Islam. But as far as I am aware there is not such a strong doctrinal basis for such harsh treatment in the Bible which has allowed for a greater degree of flexibility in many historically Christian countries; I consider that a desirable state of affairs but perhaps you do not.
Tangential but I did read an interesting article recently about the history of the 'ulema acting independently of the state long before the two became intertwined in more modern times that ran against my preconceptions of how Islam operates. It was the only thing valuable I found linked in another article that tried to argue Islam is fundamentally liberal which came across as massive cope.
https://canopyforum.org/2019/10/30/what-can-islam-teach-us-about-the-separation-of-church-and-state-by-shlomo-c-pill/
I find this very persuasive in how it references quranic texts, mainly because I'm fascinated by how islam was a sort of progressive force in the context of 7th Century Middle East (I wanna see how you tackle the issues of slavery and compulsory castration). That said, I still think many sociological data that you expose across the page defeat the point of some of the arguments, especially if we're trying to grapple with Western misconceptions that of course are going to be more focused on real life application than scripture puritanism.
I don't find it very persuasive to argue that Ashkenazi Jews or aristocratic families had relatively high rates of endogamy when current rates in Muslim-majority countries are still so dramatically higher. Most people will agree that endogamy has simply been a recurrent practice in human history just like slavery, or war, and people can agree that endogamy thrives in cultures still rooted in clan-like structures interested in gatekeeping their wealth, and not only islam. The fact that the quranic case for endogamy is feeble does not help the case of Muslim communities when compared to other cultures that similarly have a record of engaging in endogamy and could easily justify it on religious terms but have abandoned it in significant stretches since in the last 150 years.
I want to see how this piece progresses... The elephant in the room is jihad and how it completely alters the Western conception of islam and Muslims. I think you understate the prejudice faced by other communities. Hindus, for instance, (and really Indians in general) are subjected to all forms of stereotypes and discrimination, including cliches about inbreeding and arranged marriages. Israelis may overblow the extent of Muslim fanatism with programs like MEMRI, but same tropes are applied to Jews and Israelis even today, similarly based on cherry-picked clips of some rabbi or Hilltop Youth whacko spewing bs about "Amalek" and whatnot, used to justify the most outlandish theories you could imagine. If you think Jews are not remotely as victimized by as Muslims by these stereotypes is because of the drastic social and economic gaps between both groups in the West. How Jews are largely wealthy in and outside Israel, and are just 20 million people, while Muslims are not as wealthy nor assimilated and comprise a massive population of 2 billion. Ultimately, the most defining factor is terrorism and the state of current belligerency between the Muslim world and the West, which could be attributed to seld-destructive Western policy, but will still, in most charitable cases, fuel wariness and disdain towards islam even in cosmopolitan, liberal societies. Personally, I'm not someone who sees islamic or Arabic terrorism as a political tool exceptional. In the case of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Jewish groups also resorted to terrorism in ways that were pretty much identical to their Arab counterparts. Terrorism is found in Marxist guerrillas in South America, in the Apartheid-era South Africa, in Czarist Russia, but I'd argue people is particularly appalled by the extreme virulence and recklessness of Islamic terrorism, specificially the topic suicide attacks, which are particularly jarring for the Western brain.
Thank you for the comment. I think I wanted this piece to be misconcpetions people have on Islam and not misconceptions people have on Muslims. I have gotten a lot of correct comments pointing out that some arguments are not as convincing or that I have left out the actions of muslims but this was very much an exercice to touch Islam itself, what are the doctrines and what do the texts actually say and how it expresses itself.
How many muslims act in the West has in many cases little connexion with the theory or follows very specific currents that are cracked down even in Islamic countries (the list of Arabic countries where the Islamic Brotherhood is allowed to exist is small to null). That connexion has been explained by better people than me and I will get to it someday.
That part was to state the rhetoric practice, I stated that Islam (or rathee Arabic tribal norms) exacerbate the cultural problem but that Islam is neutral to slightly positive in it. What Muslims then do with it is different.
As for the last paragraph, other ethnicities are maligned or have bad reputations but the Jews are clearly not one of them. Larry Ellison (very open Zionist Jew) has control of a large media corportation in the US. I accept the point about Indians ultimately. As for terrorism yeah it was the domain of marxsists before the Islamists took the torch on it.
Jihad is a big topic so will probably get its own part
In many ways violent Jihad is a post 1970's phenomenon. The world would be very different today if the Soviet Union didn't invade Afghanistan.