I'm going to agree with Oden here. It's another awful liberal idea that's grasping at the moment to do what makes you feel good rather than what makes sense. If you want to bring in people suffering there's no shortage in other parts of the world. The story Crown posted is a moronic ruling that's obviously motivated by political nonsense. The influx of Syrian refugees has been nothing but a problem for Europe(rife with sexual assault and terror suspects), and false equivalencies because 'every group commits crime' is an appalling lack of consideration as to - what's the words you guys love? Cultural diversity? I've worked with a lot of Somalis, and they most definitely are misogynistic, but far less problematic than from a country like Syria. Just out of curiosity, do you guys apply this reasoning to all Christian nations as well? Russia? Germany? England? Meh, white Christians, it's all the same, right? No, I don't think they are going to out breed everyone else and overthrow our democracy. That doesn't make it a good idea. Is this a willful ignorance in believing that every culture is the same with a 'few bad apples'? Or is it a willful ignorance in believing that our government is going to successfully vet every refugee, and that everyone who isn't a terrorist is a good person who will positively contribute to our society? I would wager a lot of money that I've spent more time with Muslims and have had more Muslim friends than all the posters above me combined hopping on their high horse. It's not that they're Muslims that makes me concerned, it's the culture of that specific region.
You believe I am anti-Muslim. You want to call me a bigot. That's fine. The problem is you are talking about a life you have never lived. I get it, your morals and limited life experience will not allow you to believe that a group of people could live so differently and it should be something that concerns you. At the end of the day we flatly disagree. If you aren't concerned, I sincerely hope you are right because regardless of my feelings on the subject, we will end up taking in a lot of people on an expedited timeline without any vetting and no requirement to follow the normal immigration procedures. With that said, unfortunately, reality tells a different story: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-36587665 https://www.rt.com/op-edge/360675-sweden-migrants-police-zones/ I won't go into all of the stories about women discouraged from provocative dress, or encouraged to cover their heads, or drunk passers by beaten in predominantly Muslim neighborhoods for being drunk and alcohol being haram or any number of other problems in Europe right now. Look at those two articles though. Areas of Europe are "no-go" zones for law enforcement, areas of Europe have Islamic Councils that function as community courts, that use Sharia law as the benchmark of justice. Tell me who is going to enforce the laws of Europe in these neighborhoods, who is going to ensure women are treated fairly, who is going to ensure children aren't abused, who is going to ensure the safety of the gay community? I know what your knee-jerk reaction will be. You will say that this can't happen here. I can assure you that it already is within different communities, I can tell you stories of South Florida out along the edge of the glades where the Sheriff's Department won't go after dark. I can tell you stories about South Florida that will put your brain on tilt because it will seem so foreign to you and outside of what you expect in this country. So don't for a minute think that this can't happen here because it does and it will.
The BBC article merits some discussion that I'm too tired to write about, but how come I can't find one solid source to support this idea of no go zones in Sweden? That would be major fucking news. Instead it is just a mess of far-right wing/conspiracy nonsense. The person being interviewed in that RT piece seems like Swedish wingnut. Her wikipedia entry says that her newspaper is meant to be critical of Islam and I did just hear her insinuate it was okay to burn down asylum housing in Sweden (which I think is actually being done) on a weird youtube channel. Bonus points for her showing up on gatesofvienna.net whose website image says "Gates of Vienna: At the siege of Vienna in 1682 Islam seemed poised to overrun Christian Europe. We are in a new phase of a very old war." She is obviously very fluent in English, so why won't bigger media outlets pick her up? As far as good sources go, I do get this from 2015: Fox News Apologizes for False Claims of Muslim-Only Areas in England and France And this one: Debunking the Myth of Muslim-Only Zones in Major European Cities: Stories about big Western cities surrendering neighborhoods to control of Islamist extremists are shocking—and totally false I get this one from 2016: Where Does Fear of Refugees Come From? What false stories say about true concerns in Europe which has some interesting statistics in it about the crime rate in Germany. I also get the Swedish embassy saying that no go zones don't exist. And here is a pretty balanced editorial (from what I can tell; I don't know shit about Sweden) about the matter: 'Sex attacks and fascism are not the new Swedish norm' It seems to me like there is a pattern here. Crimes, rates of crimes, etc. are blown out of proportion and used as evidence that refugees are bad hombres destroying the nation that they are in, but upon a closer look that doesn't really seem to be the case. Tension? Small problems? Sure. But nothing catastrophic generally. Also, 'Nadians, didn't y'all just take in 25,000 Syrian refugees? How's that going?
I know this is really inconvenient for you to believe that such things can happen but here you go: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/27/opinion/wake-up-to-the-problem-separate-and-unequal-in-france.html Go to 3:00 to see the welcome party, though the rest will be just as good for your disbelieving eyes to see. http://www.svd.se/55-no-go-zoner-i-sverige/om/ledare from google translate; Imagine how tough that is to admit for law enforcement. They cannot do their jobs. In Sweden of all places....a Liberal person's paradise. A place continually pointed out by Bernie and Hillary on the campaign trail as a place we should model ourselves after. This really sucks, huh? Speaking of campaigns, goddamn if Podesta's emails don't show up on all of the hot button issues on wikileaks: https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/295 I won't quote this one because it is a veritable smorgasbord of quotes, links and insight into the problem but feel free to read through and then tell me how easy it is to dismiss the problem. i have no idea who sent the email to Podesta or what his relationship is to that person but there is a lot of information in that email about this issue from reputable sources.
I think we might be having more of an argument about immigration than is necessary right now. From the living-in-North-America-liberal side, I don't believe anyone here is advocating for open borders. The current immigration program for refugees takes upwards of two years, and is about as tedious and exacting as you could imagine. It requires and enormous amount of legwork, paperwork and checking before a person can even apply to immigrate as under refugee status. If there is a loophole at all, it's possibly through work or student visa programs, since those are way easier to get. Also, the US currently has a pretty good system for assimilating immigrants. Testing requiring knowledge of history and culture, the official language being English, etc. This is where the European Union really has a deficit. What you absolutely do not want is pockets in major cities where "little Iraq" or "little Somalia" is allowed to be created. It allows the negative parts of the foreign culture to flourish and does not afford the people access to the opportunities of the native-born population. The reality is, the way the US Immigration program functions now, it is highly unlikely that large swaths of terrorists or nefarious people could enter. And, indeed, they have not. The terrorists on US soil have either been home-grown or middle class men who radicalized. The flipside to this argument is the I-have-lived-in-developing countries group, and let me tell you, anyone who has has seen some stuff. I do not care about race or religion; neither has a huge impact on what I'm about to discuss. What I care about is culture. If the culture that the people are fleeing from is toxic, then you have to shrewdly monitor who you let in and how they behave when they get here. You may find this hard to believe, but there is no such thing as a moral absolute. What is acceptable in one area is abhorrent in another, and both sides believe they're right. Three purely anecdotal stories from my own life: 1. In 1997, in rural Indonesia. One of the contractors was late paying their labourers, and the labourers were understandably pissed off. My father - the head guy on site - got word that there was unrest down at the dam office where the contractor was located. He hightailed it there, along with the head of police in the area. He arrived to find a mass of men on the verge of rioting, and the contractors hiding for their lives in their offices. Before my father could say anything, the Chief of Police got out of the car, took an AK-47 from the back of it, and fired off a burst over the heads of everyone in front of him. They all hit the dirt, and he announced to them that anyone who didn't leave right now would be shot on sight. Let me stress: this was an official government employee. 2. In 2008 I was teaching in rural Uganda to a group of young adults. The subject was sexual reproductive health, and the kids were probably 16ish years old. We had to administer a quiz at the start of the semester, then administer the same quiz at the end to judge learning. One question was, "Is it acceptable for parents to rape their children?" All the students - ALL the students - raised their hand for yes. I turned to my teaching partner and asked her to translate the question for them, because I figured they weren't understanding. She did and confirmed that yes, all the kids agreed. This was after our charity had been teaching in the area for about three years, too. 3. Also in rural Uganda, different village a few weeks later: a man was caught by the villagers stealing chickens. He was tied up, drug through the town, stoned to death on the front lawn of that town's volunteers and left dead right there. You had to step over his body when you got off the bus at the stop by their house. None of these stories reflect a problem with religion. They all reflect a fundamental difference in culture, and you have to reach an effective way to knock all that shit out if you're going to let people in. Not only to preserve your culture and protect your people, but to protect the immigrant people, too. What you don't want is what absolutely happens here, which is an immigrant population that behaves correctly toward native North Americans, but still believes they can treat their women and their children the way they would at home. Gender selective abortions, female circumcisions, honour killings, etc...you bet your ass that happens in our countries, and those are the kinds of practices that need to be aggressively weeded out.
Just to clarify a few things - the US does not have an official language. English is just the most widely used, but its not mandated and immigrants do not have to speak it. They have to recite their oath in English and in a few other areas, but a level of proficiency isn't required. We have always had pockets of culture in major cities. Little Italy, Little Poland, Little Havana, Little Haiti, Chinatown, etc. The issue with individuals emigrating from troublesome areas, which I think you were getting at, is that they bring their terrible culture with them. Even though cultural integrity is important, a level of assimilation should be required. I think you make a good point that the issue is really culture. However, I think your anecdotes lend credibility to the concept of moral absolution. Its been endlessly debated in philosophical circles, but I would consider the concept of universal human rights a formal decree of a baseline for morality.
It's an academic concept, though. A philosopher can come up with the idea of universal human rights and baseline behaviors for society. Culturally, though, an individual is a product of their upbringing. The reason I don't subscribe to marrying off my daughter when she's 10 years old isn't because I'm morally superior; it's because I was raised differently. Similarly, Muslim people who were born and raised in, say, Ireland are probably far more culturally similar to Canadians than a Christian person born in Syria. It's the norms of any particular society that are a problem; not a fundamental flaw with any specific religion.
I wasnt just speaking about religion, but in general. But its difficult to divorce religion from culture or the societal norms, particularly when those norms are born from a theocratic government and religious perspective that dictates a way of life. And religious or cultural incompatibility with one society or another has been the catalyst of a variety of responses, such as religions that splinter and section into new versions. Look at Christianity for example, one of the prime examples being Lutheranism. From Lutheranism spawned Anabaptism, which is a good analog to the fanatical Islamic sects that exist today. I think we can agree that at the very least, murder is inherently evil. But if a religious sect or extremist culture dictates that killing someone for blasphemy is an appropriate remedy, I think acceptance is an inappropriate response.
I don't know, I prefer another email of his where this time the long raving ramblings are about how vastly superior the Jewish people are to every other group of people where he pauses at one point to try and list all the Jewish American celebrities he knows, and half of the (not mainstream so clearly much more trustworthy) media outlets reported on it as proof that Hillary and Podesta are really fucking racist despite it being sent to them from some rando and not from them, and the other half of those kinds of media outlets are reporting on it as proof that the Hillary campaign is in cahoots with our Jewish overlords. You know, the groups of international bankers and shape-shifting reptiles who rig our elections.
I'll never understand how someone can make a hard distinction between religion and culture, especially in places where religion is the overwhelmingly dominant force within the culture. The moral absolute conversation is endlessly interesting, despite there being so few of them. The definition I find most useful is: something that is always wrong, no matter the circumstance. It's really difficult to come up with something besides rape and slavery, since even murder can be justified in a shockingly high number of situations. Oddly enough, the two most followed religions swung and missed on both of those, really hard. The majority of moral problems don't fall under the 'absolute' distinction so easily, but many have been borne out by trial and error. For example, we know by centuries of experimentation that dictatorships, monarchies and theocracies are demonstrably inferior to democracies. Sticking with theocracies, this brings up another nominee for an absolute: no punishment for a type or lack of belief or thought -- which I would say is strike three for the two major religions, since there is punishment a plenty, on earth and after, for denying the wrong god. Do you think the fact Mohammed raped a nine year old girl plays any part in certain cultures that revere him trying to lower the age of "marriage" to nine years old? Problems like the ones we're discussing rarely have a lone cause, but if you think the problem is never religion, or that all religions are equally anything, you aren't seeing the whole picture. The history of the modern Western world is largely a success story of secularism defanging public religious authority. The evidence of its superiority ranges from enfant and mother mortality, women's education and birth control, economic stability, artistic expression and technological advancements. It's not a fluke that places where people can peacefully choose and change their leaders dwarf places where people can't on all the above and more.
This right here is where it gets murky, and where I will unequivocally admit religion has a profound negative influence. On the whole, I don't like blaming a religion for the behaviours of a group of its fundamentalists. This might seem contradictory, but hear me out. Throughout the world, an overwhelming majority of the world subscribes to some kind of religion, and only a relative few use the doctrine of the religion to excuse violent, aggressive or dominant behaviour. As soon as you open your mouth and blame the religion directly, two things happen: you alienate every member of that faith, and you shut down a meaningful discussion about reform within the culture of it. I would argue that perhaps the problem isn't the religion, per se, but the culture you're brought up in regarding how much weight religion should bear in your life. The majority of North America's population is from some kind of Judaeo Christian background, yet we do not stone prostitutes or use the lash. We were brought up, for the most part, in a culture that says, "Believe what you will and use your faith as you must, but do not take the doctrine of your religion to be the framework of your society." So, in order to keep the discussion open, I like to distinguish between the cultural behaviours that are unacceptable (child marriage, female circumcision, corporeal punishment, etc.) and the religions that spawn/advocate their usage. All that being said, there are most definitely problems with religions, and some religions are worse than others. I personally feel that the Islamic faith needs reformation, and badly. As a non-Muslim, however, I'm not really in any position to affect that kind of change. One could argue that the New Testament and Jesus Christ gives modern society an "out" when it comes to the Christian doctrine. Christ was born and died for our sins, and with his death God brought a new covenant with the people. So, if you are confused or the Bible seems contradictory in some parts, just follow what Jesus did and you're good. Given that Jesus was for the most part kind and understanding, it's easy to weave the New Testament teachings into how we live today and acknowledge that the portions of the Bible that are incompatible with 2016 are from a time before Christ and can be treated as a philosophical point rather than an actionable one. Unfortunately, the Koran has no equivalent to the New Testament. On top of that, Mohammed is an irrefutable prophet from God, and the writing within the Koran is the most beautiful example of Arabic ever written. Excuse the blasphemy, but the Koran is essentially the Donald Trump of Islam; it is infallible and not open to critique or censor. Until and unless the cultures who subscribe to the Islamic faith find some sort of workaround or loophole, they must realize that they are serving two masters when they try and live in a free society. Sharia law is fundamentally incompatible for how we all choose to live here, and I have yet to hear someone make a valid case on how to seal the schism in the doctrine.
This is like saying Obama's birther conspiracy invalidates the criticism of his expansions into violating American privacy after spending the entire '08 campaign speaking about how he was going to cut it back and lead the most transparent government in American history. But I thought we were talking about the Syrian refugees, Does this just always circle back to racism in your mind? Do you really think the majority of concerns are about their skin color? I'll grant you that Islamophobia is a relatively pervasive issue, but we're also talking about cultures that harbor the most widespread misogynistic views, have a majority that sincerely believing killing apostates is justice, and has more violently active radicals than any other faith. Pointing out Christian assholes, and referencing the much less common terrorist acts throughout globe is a teensy bit disingenuous. Personally, I don't care that they're Muslims. I'm looking at what's happened in Europe and that specific region. That right there is the issue in a nutshell. America has the most progressive Muslim population in the west, far more integrated than Europe (even before the Syrian refugees) and I would like to keep it that way. As obscene is their religion is, the old testament is just as bad, if not worse. Reading through that thing you wonder at times if they were actively trying to squeeze in every shitty idea. Judaism has no new testament, and yet they're on average probably more progressive than Christians.
I disagree with the first part, to a degree. What made it possible to a certain extent was that the religion's code itself allowed for change. I don't think that if the Bible was comprised excursively of the Old Testament, you would have had the ease of transition that we did. It's hard to justify rape and war and destruction if you are trying to adhere to the teachings of Christ. Sadly, it's very easy to adhere to them if you follow the teachings of Mohammed. I don't think we can discount the flexibility or the adaptability of the doctrine here.
Is this actually happening, though? And, like, from people other than the European equivalent of red pill MRAs and people who think gendering a baby before it can decide for itself what they are is a hate crime? I do know that there's a changing conversation surrounding hijabs/burkas that's being led by Muslim feminists about how it shouldn't be seen as sexist for women to wear them by choice when they're living in countries where it's not legislated, but that's a lot different than non-Muslim people saying rape is bad unless a Muslim does it.
Pretty sure we agree more than we don't, but I'll clarify that when I say religion I mean its texts and founder, not the individual people who follow it. There's a good chance you've heard it before, but fundamentalism is only a problem if the fundamentals are bad. As an outlier, the more fundamental a follower of Jainism becomes, the more difficult life becomes for that person only. As for the most followed religions, it's obvious that the majority of followers are FAR better, morally, than the texts and founders they follow, even if they'll never admit it. But what about when they aren't using religion as an excuse to be violent, but are in fact following explicit instructions to be violent? Do you think certain populations just naturally really wanna kill gays, rape children, stone adulterers and execute apostates and blasphemers, and the book is just a handy excuse? Or is it possible that they actually believe god wants them to do those things? And? I'm not advocating they should be stopped from believing what they want, certainly not how many of them would force me to believe something I don't want to, I'm just advocating they can't rape little girls like their prophet did. I'm sure you know of the people within these societies who want to but wouldn't dare type, let alone speak, the things we do without a second thought, because of the legitimate threat of death sanctioned by the dominant religion in their culture. If as an outsider even I'm not supposed to talk about it, what hope do the people who want reform from within have? Why not? If you make an honest effort to educate yourself, and are open to changing your mind, what does your religious affiliation have to do with anything? I strongly doubt that any bad idea/belief/philosophy/regime has ever been toppled entirely from within.
Very true, but I meant from a Christian scholar perspective. Sorry if that was unclear. Believe it or not, but I think this dovetails nicely with the thread about men being shut out of the dating pool. I think religion is often a convenient excuse if you have a large group of young men just out of puberty and they are not yet married or they do not have prospects to marry. Do certain populations naturally want to do these things? No. It's a culture's way of reacting to female choice and young men that may not have any outlet for sex. If you have no prospects on ever finding a mate - due to a lack of available women or a lack of desirable features - and you also have an abundance of hormones it creates a pathological instability that can be extraordinarily dangerous in large groups. I'm unaware of any problem that's ever been solved through alienation or the discussion devolving into a screaming match. Someone saying to you, "Your whole way of life is a lie and all your people are idiots!" does not ever make someone say, "Thank you for your criticism. I will reconsider my choices." The only way to solve the problem if that's your approach is through armed conflict, which we have been doing for some decades now. It would be far less violent and have a far broader reach if you could promote change from within the troubled group. In a word, hypocrisy. I lack the experience and education to meaningfully address Muslim people about their religion's shortcomings. If a dude who had never been on a date tried to give me relationship advice, I'd tell him to fuck off. Same principle here.
Yep, it's happening. http://www.wnd.com/2016/01/criticize-muslim-rapes-youre-a-bigot/ Pretty much, if you condemn it, they use the standard deflection tactic. "You're racist, white people rape too, western rape culture, etc." Sweden responded to the sexual assaults by issuing orders to police not to record the ethnicity of perpetrators for all crimes. Just when you think SJW madness has hit bottom another jackass comes along with a shovel. Of course, they're just trying to help. After all, facts are a dangerous tool used by their detractors, err I mean bigots. This is what happens when your desire to push a narrative and maintain an echo chamber becomes more important than using reality to make informed decisions. MRAs have been about as effective at influencing geopolitics and legislature as the Westboro baptist church. That comparison doesn't work.
Again, I don't see why you frame religion only as an excuse in this context. I absolutely agree that young men who aren't getting laid cause the most violence in the world, just as a general problem. Wouldn't you agree that telling them that sex before marriage is forbidden, if they die a religious martyr they'll get all the pussy they could want, that they're entitled to multiple wives (from their own religion) as young as nine and entitled to sex slaves (from other religions) makes the problem worse? I agree, but you've completely straw-manned what I've said, especially the part where I said I'm not advocating for them to stop believing anything. I certainly never called anyone an idiot. You agree Islam needs reform. So why is it a problem to point out the parts that you think need it? Raping children and killing apostates, which the founder did and approved of, seems like a good place to start, no? I think I understand and largely agree with most of your position, but I feel you're missing the problem with it: you're treating them like they're all the same. You've demarcated it as a Muslim problem that can only be solved by Muslims. I'm saying it's a human species problem, and that as the part of the species whose culture long ago went through a similar reform, it's our duty to help those within those societies who, unlike us, face death for saying nine is a bit young, even for the prophet, and maybe apostates deserve to live. How does throwing our hands up and saying, 'I'm just gonna stay out of this' do anything to help those struggling to create change from within?
So, if you actually go through all of the right-leaning opinion pieces about opinion pieces and get to the actual essays they're talking about, you get the Mayor of Cologne doing some serious victim-blaming and being completely dragged for it by both sides of the issue, but not really addressing the refugees themselves, and these pieces: 1 2 3 4 which are a little bit more nuanced than being "leftists who excuse and enable any refugee that does something terrible and cries racism at the thought of imposing western norms like not raping or not assaulting non-Muslims." Some even outright agree with what that WND op-ed that criticized them was saying. But it looks like they just read the quotes Breitbart pulled instead of actually reading the full essays. As for the Swedish police thing, I think I agree that it's really dumb. It's a bit disingenuous to say it was done in response to the sexual assaults, and I'd really like to read the actual memo rather than reports on it thanks to how these things often go. But if it's leaving race out of reports of suspects they're trying to track down, that is definitely really dumb and dangerous. If it's leaving race out of reports of suspects they've already caught, I think that's solidly in the "we're being a bit too sensitive here, guys" territory, but is it particularly dangerous or have any ill effects on maintaining law and order? I don't really think so, but maybe there's something I'm not considering about that. It should also be pretty clear that I was dismissing MRAs and their European equivalents as an example of the far right fringe opinions unimportant to the conversation at hand (along with their parallels on the left), not saying they influence geopolitics and legislature. Also for this: It's more like saying I no longer value the opinion and political thought of someone who is a birther, or like saying I'm not going to wait around in front of the guy raving on the street corner to see if this time he might have some valid points.
I don't know the email sender of the Podesta emails from Adam and I wouldn't consider any of that Podesta or Clinton's opinion. I wouldn't even say I agree with the nonsensical level of hyperbole used in the senders writing. The fact remains that he provided links for his points from reputable news sources from Europe. Der Spiegel, for instance, is a very influential magazine similar to TIME, which specializes in investigative reporting; unfortunately in America investigative reporting appears to be dead and buried at this point. In any case, you can attack the senders opinion but you cannot claim that reputable news agencies are not reporting this information and that there isn't a problem any longer. http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-51448987.html From google translate: