Clash of Cultures Looms in Europe, Experts Say

[indianasmith]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40336911/ns/world_news-europe

I think this story just covers the tip of the iceberg.

[dean]

The more we all fight the less likely we are to get along, I'm pretty sure that's a fact.  The longer the conflict the more likely more people will start saddling up on either side ready for a brouhaha.

At least this article mentions there are 5,000 extremists out there, with 20-50,000 sympathisers out of some 53 million people.  That's hardly a significant figure [I wouldn't condemn a whole people based on such a comparative minority.]

As a quick comparison, I did a not-very-thorough search that mentioned there were at least 150,000 neo-nazis operating in Western Europe, with some even getting a fair percentage of the vote, for a minority party in I think that one was Estonia, sorry closed the window and can't find it now.


Certainly if things keep going the way they are, it seems inevitable that there will be an escalation of violence.  With this in mind we should be trying to avoid it by promoting peace rather than getting our war-on.

[Trevor]

I am genuinely concerned that sooner or later, civil war will break out in South Africa. 

[Doggett]

I'm not scared of a couple of nutters.
I live in an islamic/sikh/hindu area of London and I haven't felt any tensions. Most families in my borough are from Pakistan, India and Afghanistan.
My neighbours, who are islamic, delivered my family early Christmas presents this very morning.

The media loves scare stories, and its stories like this that play in to the hands of the far right. People of any group will bunch towards their own when they feel under attack, and thats esspecially dangerous when there are such extreme people withing that group.

The problem is the islamic community has a sense of deep shame about these extremists, and they like to keep their head low when a story about the extremist comes up so they're not assocated with them, when they should shout out against them. Its such a shame the way the media protrays them all in the same light.


I wonder if Irish people were under attack like this in the 70's, 80's, 90's...

[lester1/2jr]

they've been saying this stuff forever. Back in the 80's they said France was going to be majority muslim by like 2006.

[Ed, Ego and Superego]

Oh, thats never happened before.
-Ed

[indianasmith]

they've been saying this stuff forever. Back in the 80's they said France was going to be majority muslim by like 2006.

The birthrate among ethnic French is sitting at about 1.4 children per couple.  The birth rate among Middle Eastern immigrants living in France is about 5 children per couple.  Do the math.  The Islamization of Europe is coming.

[lester1/2jr]

the problem is more that they AREN'T taking over. None of the big companies or universities are being run by or staffed by muslims. Hard for them to take over when they have zero power.


at any rate there are a number of europeans on this board and my guess is they have a little more insight into this than you or I so I'd hold off on the bold pronouncments. Again, guys like Le Pen said this was already to have happened by now back in the 80's.

[indianasmith]

When the workforce is 60%  Middle Easterners or more, and the current generation of European workers are retired and demanding all those cradle-to-grave benefits that socialism has promised them, they will have all the power they need - and they aren't going to appreciate being taxed at 50 to 80% of their income to finance the luxurious retirement of a bunch of elderly infidels.  You can sneer at me all you want, but the resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism, combined with falling birthrates in the Western World and the bizarre self-loathing for the Western heritage that has made most of the advances of the modern world possible is a combination that will achieve what none of the medieval sultans could dream of - the banner of the crescent floating over every European capital and the great cathedrals of antiquity converted into mosques.  Laugh all you want, the future of Western Civilization is more bleak now than it has been since the Middle Ages, and most Westerners either don't realize it or don't care.

[dean]

they've been saying this stuff forever. Back in the 80's they said France was going to be majority muslim by like 2006.

The birthrate among ethnic French is sitting at about 1.4 children per couple.  The birth rate among Middle Eastern immigrants living in France is about 5 children per couple.  Do the math.  The Islamization of Europe is coming.

China's the next super power, so you'd think that'd be a bigger concern to 'western society.' 

But if we're using maths and figures, I have an easy solution to the Europeans who feel under pressure: 'Get breeding.'

White europeans seem like they just need to get their batting average up if you're worried they're falling behind.

Then maybe people would loosen up a bit and have a good time.   

[Flick James]

they've been saying this stuff forever. Back in the 80's they said France was going to be majority muslim by like 2006.

The birthrate among ethnic French is sitting at about 1.4 children per couple.  The birth rate among Middle Eastern immigrants living in France is about 5 children per couple.  Do the math.  The Islamization of Europe is coming.

China's the next super power, so you'd think that'd be a bigger concern to 'western society.' 

But if we're using maths and figures, I have an easy solution to the Europeans who feel under pressure: 'Get breeding.'

White europeans seem like they just need to get their batting average up if you're worried they're falling behind.

Then maybe people would loosen up a bit and have a good time.   

I agree with both dean and indianasmith. Western civilization IS disappearing for the reasons both have stated, and I find it very sad. However, what are ya gonna do about it? indianasmith, you're a history man. You know as well as I do that great civilizations are temporary. The world is continually shifting between ages of dark and light. I'm a man of some faith in the supernatural, but am vehemently anti-religious, so I look at it differently than you may. Virtually every Christian I know looks at this as the end of days, the Lord is coming, the rapture is approaching, the New World Order and the Beast is about to take power, and so on. I work with a number of Christians and I hear them talk about this stuff at least once a week.

I just see it as yet another turn in the great historical wheel, and I find it very sad for different reasons than my Christian fellow citizens do. The great Western civilization that has developed since the last dark ages has been one of the greatest throughout all of history, in terms of civil rights especially, and of humanity being able to live free of the fear of tyrannical religious control and worship and believe spiritually as they choose. This a truly great thing that is being threatened.

However, history has demonstrated repeatedly that great civilizations of progress cannot last. The dark ages always return. It's unavoidable I'm afraid, and certainly makes me wish in many ways to have been alive at a different time. But, alas, I can only concern myself with what little I can control. It would seem that if Western civilization is threatened, then the only fix is outright hatred of Muslims and Easterners in general and a warlike attitude toward them. In that case, we are still f**ked, because in order to fight it we must stoop to their mentality, and as a deist, I see no difference between fundamentalist Christianity and fundamentalist Islam.

Call me a heathen and that I need to pick sides, but I'm sorry, I won't. I choose my own side. I will not choose sides in a religious war when I think both sides are out of their minds, just like I won't choose sides in a Democrat/Republican battle when I think both sides have lost their way. I believe in the basic ideals of Western civilization, decency, secularism, liberty, and a fierce opposition to a tryannical government, something my beloved USA is slowly becoming as a response to this "Islamization" or "Easternization," whatever you choose to call it. The East has already won, because we ARE denying what we are, we live in fear and entrust our security to an incompetent government that doesn't know what the hell they are doing. What more proof do you need that the terrorists have won. We need to blame ourselves just as much as them, because, like all great civilizations that have collapsed, they only need push a little, watch us destroy ourselves, then sift through the ashes.

What I find particularly disturbing is the media. They are doing just what is done by societies just before they collapse, saying "everything is fine." Recently I saw an article that said the job market was starting on an upswing, the justification for this claim being that unemployment claim numbers have dropped. The reality is that the reason unemployment numbers have dropped is that people's benefits have run out. Talk about some serious spin. But this is what I'm talking about. The Roman Empire did that same thing, placate the people and tell them everything is fine and indulge them in one of the biggest surges in entertainment they had ever seen.

So, indianasmith, I understand what you're saying completely, and agree with you wholeheartedly that our great Western civilization is going away. And I for one do care. But there's nothing we can do about it. All great civilizations, because they are so "civilized," eventually will not be able to stave off the barbarians, not without losing their civility and what made that society great, meaning the civilization is lost no matter how you cut it. Extremely sad, but historically, the truth.

[lester1/2jr]

so the problem is the birthrate?

so europeans should have more kids. problem solved, unless their new muslim overlords have them all neutered.


mathmatically speaking they have plenty of time to get going on this. the Israelis, who this argument was probably borrowed from, have a much shorter deadline.

onerous taxation due to the massive welfare state is likely the reason many aren't having more kids when they are physically able, and some leftover Malthusian population hogwash from the 70's where people thought the Earth was overpopulated. That got ingrained and is being pushed along a bit by the green crowd.

also, the so called expert here is from the CIA, the same "experts" who gave us the iraq war intel.

[Hammock Rider]

   I'm sure there are some true believers in any fundamentalist movement, but I also beleive that the people at the top of those movements, although perhaps originally motivated by spiritual reasons, become corrupted by their power and start to focus on that instead. The West has plenty of corrupt religious "leaders" and I don't see why the East would be any different.  Anjem Choudary could be stirring up all this trouble for secular reasons as well as religious ones. Notice how he's not the guy who's ever going to blow himself up. No, he's finding other people to do it for him.

    Also, although I think it will be a rough ride, I think most of the serious Islamists will become just as corrupt by goold old Western culture as we Westerners are. I think most of the serious suicide bombers and jihadists come from very impoverished backrounds and blowing yourself up to get to Paradise, or if your family is promised a cash reward for your fiery death, might look pretty good to some people who have it really tough. But once those people get a taste of our decadence, at least some of them will come over to the Dark Side.

[Rev. Powell]

    Also, although I think it will be a rough ride, I think most of the serious Islamists will become just as corrupt by goold old Western culture as we Westerners are. I think most of the serious suicide bombers and jihadists come from very impoverished backrounds and blowing yourself up to get to Paradise, or if your family is promised a cash reward for your fiery death, might look pretty good to some people who have it really tough. But once those people get a taste of our decadence, at least some of them will come over to the Dark Side.

That's sort of my view.  There's a lot of talk about radical Muslims in the West, but little talk about people who immigrate from relatively repressive countries and moderate their views due to exposure to our prosperity (and decadence).   

[Umaril The Unfeathered]

    Also, although I think it will be a rough ride, I think most of the serious Islamists will become just as corrupt by goold old Western culture as we Westerners are. I think most of the serious suicide bombers and jihadists come from very impoverished backrounds and blowing yourself up to get to Paradise, or if your family is promised a cash reward for your fiery death, might look pretty good to some people who have it really tough. But once those people get a taste of our decadence, at least some of them will come over to the Dark Side.

That's sort of my view.  There's a lot of talk about radical Muslims in the West, but little talk about people who immigrate from relatively repressive countries and moderate their views due to exposure to our prosperity (and decadence).   

Well said by both of you. It's a given that some may change their views as a result of exposure to something they previously weren't, and may be better off or worse off for it, depending on how it affects them.

Humans have 2 sides to our thinking:

We have the rules we live by in our personal codes of conduct, and then, we
have the ones we rely on for inner theme when and if we need to legitimize our deviation from said codes. 

By nature, we are a self-serving and self-satisfying species, and are prone to breaking
our own rules when and if it serves us.   

It's old internal struggle-doing what's right for yourself,  vs. doing what "feels" good and right at the expense of others and possibly yourself. What a species we are..