Angela Merkel wants to ban the burka?

[Trausti]

Fucking hell. Why do folks always jump to Hitler? That's the only ridiculous analogy they can make. Several millennia of record human history - all they know is Hitler. There is no sense of proportionality at all. The Hitler comparison is so beyond stupid that it's difficult to take anyone who raises it seriously. Are there no original thoughts anymore?

Moreover, the point in my recent posts is that when Islam increases in a society, that society becomes less tolerant. Do you agree or disagree? A key difference beyond Hitler (because of the vast ignorance of all other human history) is that Hitler was a dictator, Islam is a political religion. Islam dictates what you can eat, believe, say, etc. If you leave Islam, that is license for others to kill you. Religions don't need dictators to make a society miserable. The adherents do that willingly.

I like how you completely ignored his point to spout more rhetoric. Man up and address his point.

That's he's completely avoiding that the more a society becomes Islamic the more that society becomes intolerant? It's just so bizarre. If you were sincerely worried about the horrors of totalitarianism, why the fuck would you invite an increase of Islam into your society?

- - - Updated - - -

Does a society become more tolerant or less tolerant as Islam increases?

Do you mean should society become more or less tolerant as Islam increases (whatever that means) or that society will become more or less tolerant as Islam increases?

Would you be willing to answer that, or just continue with the usual snark.

Irony is thy name.

Snark it is!

 

[LordKiran]

I like how you completely ignored his point to spout more rhetoric. Man up and address his point.

That's he's completely avoiding that the more a society becomes Islamic the more that society becomes intolerant? It's just so bizarre. If you were sincerely worried about the horrors of totalitarianism, why the fuck would you invite an increase of Islam into your society?

- - - Updated - - -

Does a society become more tolerant or less tolerant as Islam increases?

Do you mean should society become more or less tolerant as Islam increases (whatever that means) or that society will become more or less tolerant as Islam increases?

Would you be willing to answer that, or just continue with the usual snark.

Irony is thy name.

Snark it is!

Depending on who you ask, our society was never that tolerant to begin with. Further, the society you live in is not and has never been Islamic and is not at any risk of becoming Islamic. You sit there and look for individual cases where it seems that way the same way a child complains when his younger brother is treated better because he got to pick what movie they saw over the weekend.

Wether you choose to ignore it or not, your type of thinking IS a vector for authoritarianism, which is the fundamental point you've side stepped this entire conversation.

 

[laughing dog]

Does a society become more tolerant or less tolerant as Islam increases?

Do you mean should society become more or less tolerant as Islam increases (whatever that means) or that society will become more or less tolerant as Islam increases?

Irony is thy name.

Snark it is!

You have been "snarking" up this thread with a number of posters, so your hypocrisy is duly noted. I made an observation and I asked a simple clarifying question. Unsurprising, you were not serious with your question.

 

[Trausti]

Depending on who you ask, our society was never that tolerant to begin with. Further, the society you live in is not and has never been Islamic and is not at any risk of becoming Islamic. You sit there and look for individual cases where it seems that way the same way a child complains when his younger brother is treated better because he got to pick what movie they saw over the weekend.

Wether you choose to ignore it or not, your type of thinking IS a vector for authoritarianism, which is the fundamental point you've side stepped this entire conversation.

Yes. Western society went through phases and was not always tolerant. Don't disagree at all. And one of the takeaways from history is not to assume that any society is static. There is no reason to believe that the tolerance and freedom we currently enjoy in the West will always be here. Run through the history of the West (or any place else) and countries/societies/etc come and go. While we've never been Islamic, I'd like to keep it that way. We take it for granted today that the Islamic world stretches from North Africa to South Asia. But all of North Africa and Asia Minor used to be Christian. All of South Asia used to be Hindu. Used to be. Until the demographics of the Muslim invaders overtook the native populace. It is folly for the West to assume that their societies will somehow be spared this result as their own demographics change.

 

[bilby]

You're wrong - the scary shit is the over-reaction to this that is putting fascists into positions of power.

Many ordinary apolitical Germans thought that the NSDAP were a bit over the top, but at least they were standing up to the Jews who threatened the very existence of Germany. The terrifying thing about the Nazis is not that they were such vile and monstrous thugs; It is that they were completely ordinary, everyday people, just like you or I, who simply blundered into totalitarianism because they were angry and scared. America and Britain are doing EXACTLY the same thing today - embracing nationalism as a cure for problems they don't understand, without stopping to consider the unintended and dangerous consequences.

Fucking hell. Why do folks always jump to Hitler? That's the only ridiculous analogy they can make. Several millennia of record human history - all they know is Hitler. There is no sense of proportionality at all. The Hitler comparison is so beyond stupid that it's difficult to take anyone who raises it seriously. Are there no original thoughts anymore?

I don't 'always jump to Hitler', and it is my firm belief that the reason we are in this mess now, with a real danger of a new nationalist/fascist totalitarianism, is that those who have used Hitler as their favourite analogy for anyone they disagree with over the past 70 years have weakened people's ability to recall that Nazism and Fascism were real, powerful, and dangerous ideologies that arose in apparently liberal and democratic nations in response to fear and economic hardship.

As a result, now that such comparisons have become genuinely apt, people dismiss them as 'more of the same'. Which is a shame, because this is NOT political posturing as usual. We really are seeing the rise of extreme nationalism to the point where it is becoming mainstream.

Lots of other people have cried 'wolf', and they have done so for a long time. Now I am pointing out an actual wolf; And you refuse to consider the possibility that it might be real. Which is a great shame.

Re-read what I wrote above. But this time, try reading it carefully, rather than dismissing it as soon as you encounter the 'H' word, and see if you can come up with a reason why it is wrong, other than the mere fact that it mentions Hitler and the Nazis.

Moreover, the point in my recent posts is that when Islam increases in a society, that society becomes less tolerant. Do you agree or disagree?

I disagree.

A key difference beyond Hitler (because of the vast ignorance of all other human history) is that Hitler was a dictator, Islam is a political religion. Islam dictates what you can eat, believe, say, etc. If you leave Islam, that is license for others to kill you. Religions don't need dictators to make a society miserable. The adherents do that willingly. There is no Muslim Pope.

Indeed. But Islam is NOT capable of making western society miserable - it's too small, and too weak. The Muslims who want to come to the west are disproportionately moderates - the fundamentalists are at home fucking goats and making life miserable for their countrymen. They have no interest in coming to the west, other than occasional evangelical tours that can only get any traction at all because the young men they are talking to are struggling economically, and are being constantly derided by neo-fascists such as the Daily Mail and their Brexiteer followers. Absent these forces of right-wing stupidity, Islam in the west will simply disappear, just as Christianity has disappeared across Europe.

Despite the hysteria from the Daily Mail et al, the vast majority of Muslim immigrants to the west are assimilated rapidly into their new societies.

The rise of intolerance we are seeing in the west today is not caused by Muslims; It merely uses them as scapegoats. Any sufficiently large community contains some idiots, criminals and extremists. Pointing to these rare individuals and pretending that they are symptomatic of a problem with the community as a whole, is a classic fascist tactic. Fascism is incapable of flourishing in the absence of fear and anger.

The Daily Mail don't even have to invent bullshit stories (although they do anyway, from time to time); All they need to do to promote their neo-fascist agenda is to report every last incident they can find involving anyone who happens to be a Muslim, and to present their reports in the most emotive and least flattering way, with a strong subtext of 'this is what THEY are all like'. If the Mail reported all crimes committed by Christians in the same way, they wouldn't have room in the paper for any stories about Muslim rapists and murderers. But of course, they have no intention of reporting in a fair and balanced way. Fairness and moderation don't sell newspapers. Whipping the ignorant masses into an emotional frenzy of hatred and vitriol is highly profitable.

 

[Trausti]

Moreover, the point in my recent posts is that when Islam increases in a society, that society becomes less tolerant. Do you agree or disagree?

I disagree.

I am genuinely astonished by that.

 

[bilby]

I disagree.

I am genuinely astonished by that.

The degree of tolerance in a society is determined by a HUGE number of factors. Religion is certainly one of them - but it's neither necessary nor sufficient that religion be present in order for a society to be intolerant. And Islam isn't a special case - It's just another stupid religion. It happens to be popular in places that are highly intolerant; But IMO the main driver of intolerance is inequality of wealth and power.

The defining characteristic of Saudi Arabia is that it is a country of penniless desert nomads, some of whom suddenly became massively rich. They needed a powerful means to keep people in line, and so Wahhabism arose; as a consequence of intolerance, not a cause of it.

We see the same pattern of intolerance, violence and dictatorship wherever lots of very poor people are mixed up with handfuls of very wealthy ones. This is a pattern repeated throughout history, and throughout geography. It's the reason why the resource-rich nations of sub-Saharan Africa are such total shit-holes. They have the commodities that could make their nations moderately wealthy, but they use them to make their rulers fabulously wealthy instead.

Religion is often used as one of the more important tools by the wealthy to keep the masses from rising up and chopping off their heads. But the intolerance is not a consequence of the religion; rather the religion arises as a rationalization for the intolerance.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

According to Wikipedia, the Rape rate in Germany in 1995 was 7.57 per 100,000 people. In 2011, the rate was about 9 per 100,000. Even if we took the unlikely assumption that the entire increase was due to Muslims, German women would still be four times as likely to be raped by a non Muslim German as by a Muslim. By FAR the biggest rape threat to German women comes from their own families. Perhaps we should ban families?

2011 is before the big problem. Unfortunately, I'm having no luck finding more recent data, although I did find a report of a major spike in various types of crime (rape wasn't listed) between 2014 and 2015. However, I don't think the stats will mean anything--there's also the problem that Germany finally fixed a serious flaw in their rape law that will increase the reporting rate.

The facts do not support your conclusions.

We don't know what the facts are.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Unfortunately for Muslim apologists is the fact that 100% of Islamic terrorist attacks are perpetrated by Muslims!

Sorry, but this posts flunks the laugh test.

 

[LordKiran]

Depending on who you ask, our society was never that tolerant to begin with. Further, the society you live in is not and has never been Islamic and is not at any risk of becoming Islamic. You sit there and look for individual cases where it seems that way the same way a child complains when his younger brother is treated better because he got to pick what movie they saw over the weekend.

Wether you choose to ignore it or not, your type of thinking IS a vector for authoritarianism, which is the fundamental point you've side stepped this entire conversation.

Yes. Western society went through phases and was not always tolerant. Don't disagree at all. And one of the takeaways from history is not to assume that any society is static. There is no reason to believe that the tolerance and freedom we currently enjoy in the West will always be here. Run through the history of the West (or any place else) and countries/societies/etc come and go. While we've never been Islamic, I'd like to keep it that way. We take it for granted today that the Islamic world stretches from North Africa to South Asia. But all of North Africa and Asia Minor used to be Christian. All of South Asia used to be Hindu. Used to be. Until the demographics of the Muslim invaders overtook the native populace. It is folly for the West to assume that their societies will somehow be spared this result as their own demographics change.

First of all, All of south east Asia did NOT use to be Hindu. While Gaja Mada's Empire was nominally Hindu, much of his empire was decidedly Buddhist, as was/is the vast majority of indochina.

Further while north Africa did used to be christian, they were of the coptic faith and treated as heretics by the Patriarchate of Nova Roma. The reason North Africa (or at least Egypt) "Fell" to Islam is because the coptics overthrew the romans with the aid of the muslims and then promptly converted. This is a common theme throughout the golden age of the Islamic world. While Islamic kingdoms were made out of conquest, Most were made through peaceful conversion. The only place where this wasn't really the case was the indian sub continent which is reflected in the muslim/hindu divide to this day.

Ultimately your views of muslims throughout history is falsely colored by your selective intake of information.

 

[DrZoidberg]

BTW, whenever we get annoyed about any group of people the focus is most often on:

1) How badly they treat their women.
2) How badly they treat their children.
3) How badly they control their sexual urges.

It shouldn't come as any surprise to people in the west that angry people in every other culture are horrified about the west for the exact same things. What they're horrified about is of course nothing but myths and twisted statistics. I don't know how many links I've seen to videos of foreign media being horrified about the high rape statistic of Sweden (which has no relation to the number of real rapes) and then they go on to explain how this is linked to our godlessness, as if our high numbers of rapes is a objective truth.

It's the exact same bullshit that our right wing media does when it is horrified about how Muslims treat their women, children and how they're out of control sexually.

Are you seriously downplaying the differences in the treatment of women between the West and Muslim worlds? Fucking wow. I'm against a burka ban because the government should not have that intrusive power over people. But Islam is quite incomparably with the West;

I've got two comments.

Statistics is statistics. There are general trends of how women are treated. It sucks being poor in a rural backwater. Those women have horrible lives compared to the the poorest women in the west. The western society have really helped these. But Middle-Class women tend to have it comparability well. All over. And social change starts at the top and travels downward. So we know this is phase that will stop. Women in the Middle-East will continue to get better lives. This is the inevitable march of history and there's nothing Muslim scholars can do about it.

Women are treated badly in India to. Hindu. And women are treated badly in Africa to. Mostly Christian. It seems like it is unrelated to religion. So please find another reason to explain patriarchal oppression. The more a country gets it's income from agriculture the worse it treats their women. The more a country has industrialized the better it treats it's women. Perhaps that explains the difference? Agrarian cultures also place a greater emphasis on social control. Post-industrial cultures have respect for the individual. Agrarian cultures put the collective above the individual. But the cat is out of this bag. We're all heading toward a post-industrial world. So collectivist cultures will disappear.

if the mass migration of Muslims to the West continues, in a generation or two the West will become a historical curiosity, like the Byzantine Empire.

Lol, no it won't. Stop being silly. The Byzantine empire that fell to the Muslims was a shadow of it's former self. What they conquered was Greece. Granted that they had disproportionately big buildings and big libraries. But it was still a pretty minor province. The Byzantine empire falling was a huge shock to the west because it was such a great symbol. But that was all it was. A symbol with nothing to back it up.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Yes of course. It's those xtians who are raping and causing mayhem and terrorist attacks in Germany, France etc. The death toll would be even greater were not many plots discovered before the savages had a chance to unleash more terror.
Watch what will happen to Merkel and other pro immigration politicians in the coming elections. The ordinary person in the street is rising up against the status quo!

According to Wikipedia, the Rape rate in Germany in 1995 was 7.57 per 100,000 people. In 2011, the rate was about 9 per 100,000. Even if we took the unlikely assumption that the entire increase was due to Muslims, German women would still be four times as likely to be raped by a non Muslim German as by a Muslim. By FAR the biggest rape threat to German women comes from their own families. Perhaps we should ban families?

You (and all those ordinary people in the street) need to stop reading neo-fascist hate sites, and calm the FUCK down.

This problem exists in your head. As evidenced by your overly emotional and hyperbolic language. Sure, some Muslims are rapists. So are some Christians, some Hindus, and some Atheists. Your ability to conjure up lurid feats of imagination wherein "The death toll would be even greater were not many plots discovered before the savages had a chance to unleash more terror" is indicative only of the fact that you have successfully had the pants scared off you by hard-right anti-immigration loonies.

The facts do not support your conclusions.

Again... you can't compare rape rates between countries. Mostly we're measuring willingness to report rape. The social stigma of being a rape victim. Numbers up or down tells you nothing about whether or not real rape numbers go up or down.

Also statistics are different in different countries. In Sweden rape is an extremely wide term. In some countries there has to be some actual penetration for it to be rape. Also, countries change their definitions now and again. When you say stuff like a number is going up or down, please verify that what has been changed hasn't been the method with which the statistic is collected.

There's also loads of other weird factors. Anybody low on the social status ladder is more likely to get convicted for any crime. Immigrants are typically lowest on the social pecking order. So what exactly does a higher conviction rape statistic for immigrants measure? I'm not saying it is higher. But there's just so much in the soup to muddy the waters.

We have no idea how common real rape is anywhere. We just don't. That's a fact that researchers in this field struggle with. And if the basic data is questionable it makes all the aggregate numbers all the more questionable.

 

[iolo]

Dr Zoidberg has been making an rather remarkable amount of sense of late. The key point, I think, is that most societies are traditionally disgusting in many ways, sexism being perhaps the most obvious just now, and 'religions' tend to be heavily traditional, mostly. The reason, I think, that India, the Middle East and Africa are all disgusting on this front is that they were all colonized, and colonialists always make an alliance with reactionaries, while 'defence of our native values' tends to support all sorts of archaic vomit as opposed to bullying foreigners and their wicked ways. These things take time, and religious wars are the very last thing likely to drive progress forward.

 

[Toni]

According to Wikipedia, the Rape rate in Germany in 1995 was 7.57 per 100,000 people. In 2011, the rate was about 9 per 100,000. Even if we took the unlikely assumption that the entire increase was due to Muslims, German women would still be four times as likely to be raped by a non Muslim German as by a Muslim. By FAR the biggest rape threat to German women comes from their own families. Perhaps we should ban families?

You (and all those ordinary people in the street) need to stop reading neo-fascist hate sites, and calm the FUCK down.

This problem exists in your head. As evidenced by your overly emotional and hyperbolic language. Sure, some Muslims are rapists. So are some Christians, some Hindus, and some Atheists. Your ability to conjure up lurid feats of imagination wherein "The death toll would be even greater were not many plots discovered before the savages had a chance to unleash more terror" is indicative only of the fact that you have successfully had the pants scared off you by hard-right anti-immigration loonies.

The facts do not support your conclusions.

Again... you can't compare rape rates between countries. Mostly we're measuring willingness to report rape. The social stigma of being a rape victim. Numbers up or down tells you nothing about whether or not real rape numbers go up or down.

Also statistics are different in different countries. In Sweden rape is an extremely wide term. In some countries there has to be some actual penetration for it to be rape. Also, countries change their definitions now and again. When you say stuff like a number is going up or down, please verify that what has been changed hasn't been the method with which the statistic is collected.

There's also loads of other weird factors. Anybody low on the social status ladder is more likely to get convicted for any crime. Immigrants are typically lowest on the social pecking order. So what exactly does a higher conviction rape statistic for immigrants measure? I'm not saying it is higher. But there's just so much in the soup to muddy the waters.

We have no idea how common real rape is anywhere. We just don't. That's a fact that researchers in this field struggle with. And if the basic data is questionable it makes all the aggregate numbers all the more questionable.

Of course you can compare rape incidence between countries. An intelligent person also compares definitions and also considers barriers to reporting. And of course, the honesty of such reports by states. For starters.

What do you consider to be 'real rape?'

 

[angelo]

Unfortunately for Muslim apologists is the fact that 100% of Islamic terrorist attacks are perpetrated by Muslims!

Dont forget all those bombings and mass murders by right leaning extremists and all the right leaning individuals who support authoritarianism. Clearly right leaning people should be kicked out of our country because they're dangerous, and their culture just isn't compatible with our democratic values.

A drop in the bucket of terrorist attacks on the West by little more than retarted, savages and followers of a pedophile con man Muhammad!

 

[angelo]

More blood on the hands of Merkel in the latest terrorist attack in Germany by a follower of the murderous Muhammad and Islam.

 

[LordKiran]

Dont forget all those bombings and mass murders by right leaning extremists and all the right leaning individuals who support authoritarianism. Clearly right leaning people should be kicked out of our country because they're dangerous, and their culture just isn't compatible with our democratic values.

A drop in the bucket of terrorist attacks on the West by little more than retarted, savages and followers of a pedophile con man Muhammad!

Maybe in your country. Although Australia, so maybe not.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Again... you can't compare rape rates between countries. Mostly we're measuring willingness to report rape. The social stigma of being a rape victim. Numbers up or down tells you nothing about whether or not real rape numbers go up or down.

Also statistics are different in different countries. In Sweden rape is an extremely wide term. In some countries there has to be some actual penetration for it to be rape. Also, countries change their definitions now and again. When you say stuff like a number is going up or down, please verify that what has been changed hasn't been the method with which the statistic is collected.

There's also loads of other weird factors. Anybody low on the social status ladder is more likely to get convicted for any crime. Immigrants are typically lowest on the social pecking order. So what exactly does a higher conviction rape statistic for immigrants measure? I'm not saying it is higher. But there's just so much in the soup to muddy the waters.

We have no idea how common real rape is anywhere. We just don't. That's a fact that researchers in this field struggle with. And if the basic data is questionable it makes all the aggregate numbers all the more questionable.

Of course you can compare rape incidence between countries. An intelligent person also compares definitions and also considers barriers to reporting. And of course, the honesty of such reports by states. For starters.

What do you consider to be 'real rape?'

The point is a translation error here.

What their law calls "rape" encompasses many acts we would define as "sexual assault".

 

[DrZoidberg]

Of course you can compare rape incidence between countries. An intelligent person also compares definitions and also considers barriers to reporting. And of course, the honesty of such reports by states. For starters.

It's the Dunning-Kruger paradox. I'm not going to say that these people are stupid. But it does require ignorance to think that you are at all capable of doing such a comparison. If you think you can, in your head, compensate for the problems then you're Dunning-Krugering like a mother fucker. I guarantee that you will in every instance be so wrong it'll be laughable. If serious researchers can't do it, you sure as hell can't.. on the fly.

The biggest problem with rape statistics is that all researchers agree that in every culture rapes are under-reported. This is based on studies made with older women who are asked about being raped when they were young. Based on that research it's only a fraction of real rapes that are ever reported. If you want to from that build a database of rape statistics that you're then going to compare with other countries. Good luck with that. You will have no idea what it is you are comparing.

What do you consider to be 'real rape?'

Real rape is in relation to reported rape. Often reported rapes are used in the statistic, and a bait and switch is made to make it look like convicted rapes. I've many times seen numbers of rape convictions compared with reported rapes as if they're the same thing. But not every reported rape is a an actual rape. And we know that many rapes are not beyond reasonable doubt. So even if it was a real rape there still no conviction. And that variance can vary greatly even within the same country. And finally what is considered rape (legally) varies greatly between countries. So.... yeah... huge problem with the data.

 

[bilby]

A drop in the bucket of terrorist attacks on the West by little more than retarted, savages and followers of a pedophile con man Muhammad!

Maybe in your country. Although Australia, so maybe not.

Terror attacks in Australia (and their perpetrators):
Yugoslav Travel Agency bombed (Croatian Separatists) - 1972, 16 injured
Hilton Hotel bombing Sydney (Suspected to be ASIO) - 1978, 3 killed, 11 injured
Assassination of Turkish Consul General and his Security Attache (Justice Commandos for the Armenian Genocide) - 1980, 2 killed
Various Asian restaurant bombings in WA (Australian Nationalist Movement) - 1980s, at least 1 killed, many injured
Israeli Consulate Bombing (Unknown, possibly Palestinian) - 1982, 2 injured
Turkish Consulate Bombing (Armenian Revolutionary Federation) - 1986, perpetrator killed by his own bomb
French consulate Bombing (Anti-nuclear activists) - 1995, no deaths or injuries
East Melbourne Family Planning clinic (Anti Abortion activist) - 2001, 1 killed
Endeavour Hills stabbings (Islamic State supporter) - 2014, 2 injured, perpetrator shot dead by police
Parramatta Shooting (Kurdish boy, motive unclear) - 2015, 2 killed, including the perpetrator shot dead by police.

That's the full list - Australia is effectively untouched by terrorism. Many people incorrectly list the 2014 Sydney Hostage Crisis as a terrorist attack, but it is clear that the perpetrator's motive was personal (he was protesting against a court decision that went against him), rather than a political act.

So we have, for the total of all terrorist attacks in Australia since federation in 1901, (and assuming that the Kurdish boy who carried out the Parramatta shooting was an Islamic terrorist):

11 killed: 4 victims of non-Islamic terrorists, 3 victims of ASIO, 2 perpetrators killed by law enforcement, 1 victim of Islamic terrorist.
>31 injured: >16 victims of non-Islamic terrorists, 11 victims of ASIO, 4 victims of Islamic terrorists.

Our own security services are, statistically, three times as dangerous to Australians as Islamic terrorists are. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney_Hilton_Hotel_bombing.