hi clo,
thanks. it may be that the us is better than france at assimilation. although let's not forget that the recent problem for france emerged from belgium, whence a pocket of ancestrally moroccan terrorists attacked. and we should remember that there are moslem communities all round the world and the same problems emerge wherever there are large moslem minorities. indeed, violence against minorities in majority moslem countries is also a problem as we were recently reminded in pakistan in an incident that involved 72 deaths: "We have carried out this attack to target Christians who were celebrating Easter". hardly reported in the us as the policy is to pretend it has nothing to do with islam.
but back to moslem minorities. is it always the recipient population that is to blame? or should we deduce that there's something about islam that makes it hard to integrate? whether it be france, sweden, germany, belgium, britain, nigeria, kenya, china, the philippines, india or russia, moslems tell the recipient society that they are victims of intolerance.
why isn't the same thing true for sikhs, hindus, jews etc? where are the hindu bombings in london, former colonial master of india? the contrast screams.
the victim narrative is relentlessly promoted by moslems. the colony narrative is often employed as part of it. yet the moslems in europe are mostly refugees from dysfunctional, post-colonial islamic-run countries. just turned out islamic governance often seems to result in people fleeing to nice, formerly peaceful, secular, western cultures. unfortunately for naive, immigrant-encouraging european multicultures, islamic terrorism followed.
it may be that the us is merely fortunate that it has so few moslems. as such, the critical mass simply isn't present. originally, we had few problems in the uk, but then the numbers rose. now we have four times as many moslems per capita as the us and the same victimology, violence and other issues have emerged.
islam solves the issue of groups of believers from different cultures by its notion of the umma - roughly, the brotherhood of all moslems. in the end, loyalty is to islam rather than to any tribe or country.
i think we have a problem in islam. took me a long time to admit it. but it is what it is and we need to do something about it.
the difficulty for the us is to escape from the tempting but indulgent notion that it is somehow better than other countries - nice to imagine but unlikely - and just to admit it's been a bit lucky in mostly taking immigrants from regions in which islam is less widespread. and so the toxic level of concentration hasn't yet emerged.
if it does, my guess is that american luck will run out. and lest we forget, there are harbingers of such misfortune in the variety of events in which america and islam have been involved. san bernadino is the most recent example. san bernadino, for gawd's sake.
it just seems like islam produces too large a number of violent people to conclude that it is a coincidence. there's something about islam. if moslems cannot solve their own problems, then you end up with the emergence of the right wing. which is not what i want, but it is happening as we speak.
i prefer to recognise the problem and try to find a good solution before bad ones take hold.
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