1054Thanks
LinkBack URL
About LinkBacksHmmm....
*sips tea*
Seems to me....there being a billion Muslims and all...that if they were a collective threat, we would have felt a bigger impact by now.
This is a discussion on Is Islam a threat to the Western World ? within the The Debate Forum forums, part of the Topics of Interest category; Hmmm.... *sips tea* Seems to me....there being a billion Muslims and all...that if they were a collective threat, we would ...
Hmmm....
*sips tea*
Seems to me....there being a billion Muslims and all...that if they were a collective threat, we would have felt a bigger impact by now.
this debate have being going for so long what you need to ask yourselves is why is the Islam being shown by politicians as a threat , the answers is very easy: Do you know what's the best way to unit a divided nation: give them a common enemy.Take some time and think about it...
And manipulate/brainwash masses to think that the 'common enemy' is the 'main problem' as a distraction from real domestic problems. Well done, Western authorities.Originally Posted by Einsteinette
The PUPPY!!!!!!! OMG!!!!
As an ENFP I try to understand people so as much as what they are doing to people is cruel, I kept telling myself that they mistakenly thought they were justified because their ignorance had led them to believe that Islam is the "enemy"....
But a puppy??? :,( Tearing up here. Sorry for threadjacking. As an owner of 5 dogs and 7 cats that part just *shudder* REALLy got to me.
The puppy's all that got to you? What about the fourteen year old girl that watched her parents and kid sister shot to death by soldiers and burned with kerosine? They brutally raped her and shot her in the fucking head after that. I was a lot more torn up about the girl, personally. She went through a lot more terror than that little puppy. Those are crimes against humanity. None of that fascist bullshit about the Gypsies and Jews excuses them from atrocity. This is no different.
No, but fundamentalists and extremists of any kind are a threat
I still say the premise of this thread is totally moronic.
Just the title of this thread is terribly ignorant and portrays how irrational human beings can be when frightened. There are many wonderful aspects of religion that can affect a population positively. Many children begin their basic moral education through religion which more consistent than you think amongst different faiths. However, like any powerful metaphorical message, there is always going to be an extreme interpretation. The beauty of certain pieces of literature, such as the quran and the bible, are often misinterpreted by small groups and consequently misrepresented. So is Islam a threat to the western world? no. Is ignorance a threat to the western world? yes, it's a threat to the whole world! There is the ignorance of those who literally interpret religion AND the ignorance of those who are intolerant of others. Together these factors are the dry trees and the strong wind that have been feeding an timeless wild fire of religious/ideological conflict.
[QUOTE=JigOS;1278434 hypothetically, what do *you* propose will happen in these two scenarios: 1: The West experiences, at this current time, an 'Islamic phenomenon' or 'movement' in which large amounts of people convert to Islam, and 2: Over a decade or two, Islam in the West grows to represent a politically significant amount of people?[/QUOTE]
Sorry, I know this wasn't aimed at me, but you have a good understanding of culture. Unfortunately, I disagree with your take on it, though :-)
1) This is extremely unlikely or basically impossible. The West's cultural values are too far away from Islamic values to see any kind of mass movement. Besides that, the West is moving toward secularism (depending on the country) and will probably not go back to religion in masses - although certainly some people will return to religion.
2) You are confusing Islam with muslim, I think. Islam is a belief system but there is no actual reason for it to be political unless you are talking to a politically motivated muslim. There are many different interpretations of Islam and most of them are far more accepting than what the media publishes. Don't forget that both Iran and Iraq were relatively progressive states before fundamentalist revolutions in the middle of the last century. In both countries, women were working and gaining more rights and the culture was becoming increasingly westernised before the revolution and the entrance of fundamentalist dictators/ayatollas. So Islam itself does not have any anti-west political motivation. Before the revolution, it incorporated aspects of western culture.
What I would say is this. Muslims have lived happily in the US for decades and no one was complaining about them (too busy whining about the Mexicans or something) until after 9/11. In the US, from what I have been told, they are better integrated than in the UK, where the muslim population has grown more rapidly recently.
But when Jewish people entered America, did you worry that people would convert to Judaism or that there would be politically significant population of jewish people? Judaism is from the same part of the world as Islam (well Christianity is too essentially but that's more westernised than the other two).
This sort of thing happens with each influx of new culture. There are several reasons why muslims are segregated from society. One of them is that they simply haven't been in the UK as long as the sikhs, which one person from the UK mentioned earlier, comparing the integration of sikhs compared with muslims. You could say the same about black people. They are more integrated than newly arrived muslims for the reason that they are not newly arrived. However, I hate to point it out, but black people tend to be overrepresented in parts of cities as well don't they? That's true of my city. I've moved around several times but I have never lived in a part of the city where there are many black people. There are a lot of black people in the city, but they don't live in the same place I do. Is this because they haven't integrated? No, that's ridiculous. We're talking 2nd, 3rd, 4th generation here, they're British. The reason they are still where they are is because of economic and cultural segregation and because, to be honest, people kind of like living near their families. That's a significant part of it.
Now, before we start having a go at the muslims for living in parts of the city that have a high proportion of muslims already living there. I recently visited Torrevieja in Spain. My boyfriend's parents rent a house out there. It's one of many ex-pat villages in Spain. For miles around, there was not one Spanish person. There were Chinese chippies, English owned bars and shops and about 98 per cent of the population did not speak Spanish. Why do people crowd together when they reach a new country? For the same reason the ex pats do it in Spain. They want to be close to home.
I have a bit of a problem with this arrogant view (not of the poster above me, I'm talking generally now) that people of different cultures who move to Britain or America should become British or American. If I ever did move to Spain, I would never consider myself Spanish. If I ever did move to Japan, I would never consider myself Japanese. I could learn the language, become a citizen, marry a local, raise a family, grow old and die there, but I would still consider myself English. The west expects everybody to bend over to their rules.
I think that cultures generally do meld into one another but there are teething problems at first. Fundamentalism I think we can basically ignore in this disucssion because we're talking about a very slim minority. Just like gay people have their own strips of bars, muslims are going to stick together at first. Anyone wanna say gay people aren't integrated? Why don't they just come into the straight bars, eh? What's their problem?
It's just not how it works. It takes a very long time for cultures to get along, even just sub cultures within one country. Give it time and try to consider what you would do if you went to live in a foreign country.
Did you not read my post? Didnt say anything excuses or justifies crimes against humanity; merely stated that I could empathise with the hatred a lot of brainwashed soldiers might feel towards Arabs in general - but that the puppy baffled me.
If anyone's going to react to this post negatively, please look up the definition of "empathise".
That's all I was saying. Not saying that the raped girl and mutilated woman who had committed "suicide" weren't terrible - just saying that I can understand - but disagree with, obviously - the mindset.
It was a statement similar to "I found it absolutely odd that the mass murderer suddenly killed 100 butterflies, after his spree of killing prostitutes".
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks