It isn’t an ongoing thing that dominates the current era like Islamic terrorism does. That it exists I already conceded and this only proves my point.
It’s generally more productive to view terrorism as crime, and leave it at that. Unless you are a professional investigator, who has to delve into specifics a lot to work on individual cases, or an intelligence operative who is working on specific groups, terrorism (a word with either no meaning or which means all things to all people it seems) is best seen as violent crime and treated as such, IMO. Militarizing the problem , and viewing it constantly in ideological terms even when the motivations are (like with Boka Haram and, frankly, a lot of ISIS) mostly the same as have motivated bandit warlords and criminal gangs for centuries (rape, loot, and pillage), just makes things harder to deal with. Again, IMO.
…in the west, I think you need to qualify this with. I’m sure for people like the Rohingya, it’s a completely different matter.
I don’t need to qualify that because it’s not just the west. ISIS began their caliphate in the Middle East. There are many non-atlantic nations where Islamic terrorism has been on the rise in the last decades. Indonesia, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, just to name a few. It’s everywhere except maybe South America.
Buddhist terrorism isn’t really a thing in the west, was my point. It’s not so easily dismissed elsewhere in the world. And to pre-empt your counter-argument: I’m not saying it’s as big a thing as islamic terrorism, but just because a thing isn’t the biggest thing doesn’t mean it can be discounted.
Anyway, I certainly don’t dispute the following:
but how does that mesh with
If migration and the lack of integration is to blame, why is islamic terrorism the most active in islamic nations like Afghanistan, Iraq, etc?
Because Western nations are different places than Middle Eastern ones.
ISIS isn’t landing paratroops in say England. They’re recruiting locals who have been disenfranchised online for the most part.
Christianity has something very near to Salafism/Deobandism/fundamental Islamism in the form of Dominionists and the abolishment of democracy and the institution of Leviticus Law, and hey, a few more years of Pence and Co and maybe you guys can replace your judges with priests and start having laws written and societal norms on what do with your daughters vagina and your haircut and all that shit.
It just isn’t a thing that dominates your consciousness, because you don’t know about it.
But that shit is going on right now. We’re seeing what is essentially genocide in Burma, committed by Buddhist fundamentalists.
You not being current with such events isn’t the same as them not happening. You are aware of Islamic fundamentalists because they are shown on the news, but they present essentially zero real threat to you.
Why are you arguing against something I never stated? What point are you trying to make? I said in my first post that Buddhism is also a catalyst for violence, yet for some reason you clamp onto this as if it’s my main point. It’s not. It’s not even a supporting argument, only an aside.
Islam fundamentalists present zero threat? Is that what you are saying here?
I worry more about drowning in my bathtub than Islamic fundamentalists.
To you? Yeah. Assuming you live in the US, Islamic fundamentalists pose a statistically insignificant threat to you.
If you love in the middle East? Then they pose a significant threat. But if you live in Burma? Then Buddhist fundamentalists pose a significant threat.
But in the US? You are far more likely to be injured or killed as the result of the actions of a Christian fundamentalist, white supremacist group.
I don’t live in the US. I live in Western Europe where the threat of fundamentalist most certainly isn’t zero.
But that’s not even the point. Death by terrorism is what the populist right loves to whine about, yet it’s largely irrelevant. It’s the persistence of Islamic culture among Muslim groups—actively supported by their nations of origin—that is the real long term threat.
It’s pretty close to zero.
Who suffers most from terrorism? People living in the Middle East. Not Western Europe or the US.
It seems to me that entire gun thread is filled with folks freaking out about statistically insignificantly threats to be mowed by down by crazy kids using “assault rifles.” Western Europeans face at least as big a threat of being victims of Islamic terrorism as American face of being victims of random mass shootings.
I agree with Marinus lack of assimilation by many Muslims, many European countries. (In the case of UK and France over several generations) is a long-term concern. I don’t honestly know how many examples of Sharia law in Europe are products of right wing propaganda, and how much is true. But the picture that CNN, MSNBC, and Fox all painted after the Paris night club attacks was that are large areas in both France and Belgium where it is unsafe for women wearing western clothes to enter. That is pretty scary.
In the UK its a little different. I dont know of any areas with a large muslim population where a woman would feel afraid for wearing regular normal clothing or even a miniskirt.
Certainly not Birmingham where I am from which has a high population of immigrants from Pakistan in particular. This maybe due to the time these folks came to the UK. The vast bulk of immigrants from Pakistan came before the rise of the taliban like extremism in the region so that maybe a factor. I will also note that Brummie pakistani’s as a whole , particularly the generation thet I grew up with as friends and neighbours dont really give a shit about “modest” dress or any of that stuff (that goes for men and women). The best comparison I can give is like episcopalian & evangelical christians in the USA. Both may have roots in the UK but they treat their faith VERY differently.
Sure you get the usual old man nutter who prattles on about god a lot, but as a rule most young Brummie Pakistani’s make fun of them more than anything. Heck a brummie lad even made a hit sitcom about it.
Mr.Khan on immigration :)
Frankly Brummie pakistani’s have been pretty much model immigrants , giving balti amongst other things and are very active in the Brummie music scene in addition to the tradition of running small businesses that British/Pakistani’s are known for in the UK.
Strangely enough there are places in NYC which are majority Orthodox Jewish, where women are shamed for dressing in a ‘lewd manner’. They can even be spit on. Boro Park Brooklyn for example.
It’s certainly way, way lower than the threat from nutjob nationalists. And we don’t even need to go back a few decades to when they killed millions and millions of people in Western Europe.
Hi Timex, can you give a reference on that? That is not my understanding of how the Quran is arranged. It’s ordered by length not by relative authority.
His point was as a significant part of Europe’s population feel their tolerant open societies are under threat by muslim immigrants who refuse to adjust and bring bigoted and sexist values.
Combine that with now annual if not more often acts of islamic terrorism within Europe then dismissing that concern seems a bit ivory tower. Even if you disagree with it millions of Europeans feel it and I suggest Americans as well. Just look at election results the past few years.
Whether that threat is real or not is kind of irrelevant, voters feel that way. One thing that IS real is the misery, murder and oppression done in the name of Islam within some Islamic countries. When people in the west look at whats going on in those countries do you really blame them for thinking “yeah, no thanks.”?