Europe submits voluntarily

[angelo]

Jesus, how ignorant is it possible to get. There is no religion in history that has used genocide so efficiently and systematically as Christianity. What do you think the Inquisition was about? The Crusades? Nazism and the holocaust? Studying history we learn that there are political reasons for this rather than teachings in the Bible. But the truth is the truth. It did happen. It's hard to find a religion that has been more intolerant than Christianity. This too has historical explanations. When kings try to build empires that cross several religions they have to become tolerant to keep the empire together. And it's not faux toleration. It's real toleration. And they have to enforce the toleration with the army. For geographic reasons European kings have had difficulties building empires. So this evolution of ideas hasn't taken place until really very recently. Only in the last couple of hundred years did Christian nations start building empires. They weren't tolerant at all. No shit western imperialism fell apart about as rapidly as it started. Caliphs managed to keep together multi-faith Caliphates for over a thousand years with little ethnic friction. Islam has a way better track record than Christian rulers has.

It seems just hard for you to grasp the concept of people freely converting to religions. People haven't converted to Islam through mass conversions. Islamic countries have never forced non-muslims to convert. Historically that hasn't happened. It's also forbidden in the Quran. You might argue that they've forced people to convert indirectly. Like having higher taxes for non-Muslims making it financially beneficial to convert. But that's not the same thing as forcing people. Whatever the dominant religion is people have a tendency to convert to it. It's human nature. We often confuse being powerful with being correct.

As for the specifics. Zoroastrianism is alive and well in Iran. Christianity, Judaism, Zoroastrianism are officially recognized by the government, and have reserved seats in the Iranian Parliament. The Iranian government has gone out of their way to prevent persecution of those groups. To make sure they have a say in how Iran is run they get more say than their actual numbers. They have disproportionally more power in Iran than if all Iranian's votes were worth as much. Zoroastrians aren't persecuted in Iran.

The persecution of Copts in Egypt is a very modern development. If I know my history correctly it has it's roots in Nasser's take-over in the 1950'ies and socialism. Nasser made an effort to include Copts into the governement. This had historically been a group that kept mostly to themselves in a separate but equal kind of arrangement. Then the "Islamic awakening" happened in Egypt which was a militant form of Islam with a target to take down the socialist regime. Copts came to be seen (by the Muslims) as complicit and part of the secular and socialist government. Which doesn't really have anything to do with religion at all. It's just politics. Egypt still has this problem. Islam in Egypt is seen as the main force against oppression. Too bad that same political party is also opposed to democracy. They have a view of democracy more in line with Iran than Montesquieu which arguably isn't democracy at all.

If we look at Christianity a few hundred years ago what you say is correct Iran as you say has MPs from minorities, though the Jewish community has slowly been declining.
As Europe's route to Islam has been accelerated by unprecedented amounts pouring into Europe, we can hope that once we are Islamic (possibly in 100 years) the predominant religion treats minorities as we do today (or even better).

An impossible dream. Islam doesn't work that way. It's anti democratic to start with.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Not a coup per se, but trying to enforce it through terrorism.

Do you think it likely that Western governments will implement Islamic laws in response to terrorism?

No, but I think a lot of damage will be done and there will be some shifting in that direction--Europe has quite a record of appeasement.

 

[whichphilosophy]

If we look at Christianity a few hundred years ago what you say is correct Iran as you say has MPs from minorities, though the Jewish community has slowly been declining.
As Europe's route to Islam has been accelerated by unprecedented amounts pouring into Europe, we can hope that once we are Islamic (possibly in 100 years) the predominant religion treats minorities as we do today (or even better).

An impossible dream. Islam doesn't work that way. It's anti democratic to start with.

Actually some Islamic countries allow all religions. We lost a few like Iraq and Syria.
If we look at Christianity 500 years ago it was also very much based on what the Church and king said. In the middle ages (England) the church was given land and alms just to pray for the soul of the king and heirs. Ordinary people were serfs and some were owned by the Church.

The question is, once Europe becomes an Islamic continent how will that affect changes. I am sure some modern values may be retained but this is hard to say.

Islam is a fractured religion. Within the main factions there are several large splinters. An Islamic state would have to exercise some form of democracy, to prevent civil wars and conflict. However some wouldn't mind.

 

[whichphilosophy]

Do you think it likely that Western governments will implement Islamic laws in response to terrorism?

No, but I think a lot of damage will be done and there will be some shifting in that direction--Europe has quite a record of appeasement.

Guess what the Jewish people are being scapegoated for 'allowing this to happen.' Some Jewish people are great thinkers and are liberals but that does not mean it is a Jewish conspiracy as banded around by the ultra right.

 

[angelo]

Many liberals, with the proof in front of their eyes refuse to face the reality that only a tiny fraction of the followers of islam have ever integrated with a Westerners culture. Everywhere large hoards of them are concentrated, they build their own community within a community. A place like Molenbeek. Which has up to 70% muslims, up to fifty mosques, run by imams who speak little or nothing of the native tongue. They could be ISIS recruiters for all the locals know. Do these communities follow the Belgian laws or sharia laws.

 

[jonatha]

Many liberals, with the proof in front of their eyes refuse to face the reality that only a tiny fraction of the followers of islam have ever integrated with a Westerners culture. Everywhere large hoards of them are concentrated, they build their own community within a community. A place like Molenbeek. Which has up to 70% muslims, up to fifty mosques, run by imams who speak little or nothing of the native tongue. They could be ISIS recruiters for all the locals know. Do these communities follow the Belgian laws or sharia laws.

You may have KeepTalking on ignore, or perhaps overlooked his post, but he provided a source that indicates Molenbeek is less than 40% Muslim.

 

[whichphilosophy]

Many liberals, with the proof in front of their eyes refuse to face the reality that only a tiny fraction of the followers of islam have ever integrated with a Westerners culture. Everywhere large hoards of them are concentrated, they build their own community within a community. A place like Molenbeek. Which has up to 70% muslims, up to fifty mosques, run by imams who speak little or nothing of the native tongue. They could be ISIS recruiters for all the locals know. Do these communities follow the Belgian laws or sharia laws.

You may have KeepTalking on ignore, or perhaps overlooked his post, but he provided a source that indicates Molenbeek is less than 40% Muslim.

In some places it may well be 70% and in others almost NIL. Actually the overall picture is possibly correct with Saint-Joose-Ten-Noorde with just under 50%. However within that areas there may be higher concentrates in some areas could even be over 70% and in others almost nil. This happens with all communities.

 

[angelo]

All other communities integrated. The Southern Europeans of the 40 - 60's also were concentrated around the city centres of Perth, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane. By the 80's they practically all moved to the outer suburbs and integrated with everyone. I simply don't see this with mulim communities. They generally create little Lebanon's and other little Middle Eastern or North African conclaves.

 

[whichphilosophy]

All other communities integrated. The Southern Europeans of the 40 - 60's also were concentrated around the city centres of Perth, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane. By the 80's they practically all moved to the outer suburbs and integrated with everyone. I simply don't see this with mulim communities. They generally create little Lebanon's and other little Middle Eastern or North African conclaves.

In a hundred years our descendants may have to learn how to integrate with Islam so that's one solution

 

[DrZoidberg]

All other communities integrated. The Southern Europeans of the 40 - 60's also were concentrated around the city centres of Perth, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane. By the 80's they practically all moved to the outer suburbs and integrated with everyone. I simply don't see this with mulim communities. They generally create little Lebanon's and other little Middle Eastern or North African conclaves.

It's hilarious how you don't see how these are the exact same thing. Obviously they will become integrated just as well. For the simple reason that it's better to integrate than not. So we know it'll happen.

- - - Updated - - -

Many liberals, with the proof in front of their eyes refuse to face the reality that only a tiny fraction of the followers of islam have ever integrated with a Westerners culture. Everywhere large hoards of them are concentrated, they build their own community within a community. A place like Molenbeek. Which has up to 70% muslims, up to fifty mosques, run by imams who speak little or nothing of the native tongue. They could be ISIS recruiters for all the locals know. Do these communities follow the Belgian laws or sharia laws.

Could it perhaps be that we look at the same evidence but draw completely different conclusions from them? I see none of the above as a problem? I make no difference between churches or mosques. Same same.

 

[DrZoidberg]

If we look at Christianity a few hundred years ago what you say is correct Iran as you say has MPs from minorities, though the Jewish community has slowly been declining.
As Europe's route to Islam has been accelerated by unprecedented amounts pouring into Europe, we can hope that once we are Islamic (possibly in 100 years) the predominant religion treats minorities as we do today (or even better).

An impossible dream. Islam doesn't work that way. It's anti democratic to start with.

ha ha... and Christianity isn't? Scandinavia's Christening became the death of democracy for the Vikings. Yes, we elected our kings. Not proper liberal democracy as we have it today. Still a far cry from autocratic rule by despots. Viking kings had to behave. Christianity is designed so that Christians don't challenge the power of the emperor. How is that in any way pro democracy? If Europe could become democratic in spite of Christianity why can't the Middle-East become it in spite of Islam.

The main factor preventing democracy in the Middle-East is tribalism. Which has nothing at all do with religion. Europe went through the same bullshit. We still managed to emerge as strong democracies. If we can, so can they.

 

[TSwizzle]

Ha ha. Not a chance. They (muslims) are headed in the opposite direction to democracy and straight to theocracy.

 

[Colonel Sanders]

The main factor preventing democracy in the Middle-East is tribalism. Which has nothing at all do with religion. Europe went through the same bullshit. We still managed to emerge as strong democracies. If we can, so can they.

Like evolution with respect to intelligence, there's no evidence that all cultures, given enough time, will produce secular, liberal democracies. And there is little evidence that Islam has any especially strong desire to produce such systems.

Like any culture, it has people who have an interest in either gaining power or holding onto it at the expense of everyone else, but Muslims countries control exercised through religion to implement authoritarianism. And when the majority is poorly educated, that will hold.

There is certainly tribalism, but that tribalism has deep religious roots: Our version of how to please the Sky God vs. Their version of how to please the Sky God. And both versions provide for killing everyone else who doesn't please the Sky God the right way.

We see similar, but less extreme versions of it in the U.S. when individuals like Ted Cruz tells certain crowds of people that the law of his god comes first before anything. Thankfully, that shit won't actually fly here and even most Christians don't want the country run as a theocracy. That isn't the case in the ME.

 

[whichphilosophy]

Ha ha. Not a chance. They (muslims) are headed in the opposite direction to democracy and straight to theocracy.

Unfortunately or warmongering in the Middle East didn't help things.

 

[whichphilosophy]

An impossible dream. Islam doesn't work that way. It's anti democratic to start with.

ha ha... and Christianity isn't? Scandinavia's Christening became the death of democracy for the Vikings. Yes, we elected our kings. Not proper liberal democracy as we have it today. Still a far cry from autocratic rule by despots. Viking kings had to behave. Christianity is designed so that Christians don't challenge the power of the emperor. How is that in any way pro democracy? If Europe could become democratic in spite of Christianity why can't the Middle-East become it in spite of Islam.

The main factor preventing democracy in the Middle-East is tribalism. Which has nothing at all do with religion. Europe went through the same bullshit. We still managed to emerge as strong democracies. If we can, so can they.

Tribalism is one major factor plus subdivides within Islam. Christianity (as implied by you) did a lot of harm before it did some good, like staying out of politics and allowing other religions and non religions. It even accepted homosexuality and the theory of evoloution (at least many do).

 

[DrZoidberg]

The main factor preventing democracy in the Middle-East is tribalism. Which has nothing at all do with religion. Europe went through the same bullshit. We still managed to emerge as strong democracies. If we can, so can they.

Like evolution with respect to intelligence, there's no evidence that all cultures, given enough time, will produce secular, liberal democracies.

True. We only have one example and that's Europe. A statistical population of one isn't much to create a theory from. But the same could be said of the Middle-East. We only have one Middle-East and the fact that it's not democratic (apart from Israel) doesn't prove anything.

But we do have a global community communicating like crazy. Liberal democracy, as a system of government, is popular. People like freedom. While the western world stays rich, powerful and stable there's no reason to think that the rest of the world won't bit-by-bit edge toward western style liberal democracy. The 20'th century was just one huge massive win for democracy. The number of countries that were democratic just constantly grew and grew. That's a trend that hasn't been slowing down. It might not go as quickly as we might wish. But it is happening.

Why is the change slow? People are afraid of change. That's just normal. Countries with money, especially oil rich countries have little incentive to change. So they won't. That's a problem for the Middle-East. And also something which has nothing to do with religion.

There's a whole host of civic institutions that need to be in place before liberal democracy is possible. We learned that the hard way when colonialism dismantled. In hind-sight it was obvious and inevitable which democracies would fail.

And there is little evidence that Islam has any especially strong desire to produce such systems.

Correlation does not imply causation. Also.. Islam isn't a person. But to use your terminology, Islam managed to produce democracy in Indonesia. 15% of all Muslims live in Indonesia. About 50% of all the world's Christians live in democratic countries. Since democracy started in Europe we did get a head start. Don't you think that alone can explain the discrepancy? Do you really think the problems with establishing democracies in Africa has anything to do with them being Christian or Muslim?

Like any culture, it has people who have an interest in either gaining power or holding onto it at the expense of everyone else, but Muslims countries control exercised through religion to implement authoritarianism. And when the majority is poorly educated, that will hold.

Islam isn't a culture. It's not even an ethnic group. It's just a religion. Christianity isn't a culture either. It's vaguely a group of cultures that are somewhat associated with the religion.

There is certainly tribalism, but that tribalism has deep religious roots: Our version of how to please the Sky God vs. Their version of how to please the Sky God. And both versions provide for killing everyone else who doesn't please the Sky God the right way.

No it doesn't. Tribalism is family. It's got nothing to do with a shared faith. Tribalism just means that blood ties (imagined or real) trump any other consideration.

We see similar, but less extreme versions of it in the U.S. when individuals like Ted Cruz tells certain crowds of people that the law of his god comes first before anything. Thankfully, that shit won't actually fly here and even most Christians don't want the country run as a theocracy. That isn't the case in the ME.

If by God you mean money, then we see it similarly. Iran and ISIS are the only Muslim theocracies out there. That's like 3% of the total Muslim population. Doesn't that disprove your theory about Muslims wanting theocracies? Obviously they don't want it particularly much.

 

[angelo]

All other communities integrated. The Southern Europeans of the 40 - 60's also were concentrated around the city centres of Perth, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane. By the 80's they practically all moved to the outer suburbs and integrated with everyone. I simply don't see this with mulim communities. They generally create little Lebanon's and other little Middle Eastern or North African conclaves.

In a hundred years our descendants may have to learn how to integrate with Islam so that's one solution

Yes, by either submission to islam or death!

 

[angelo]

An impossible dream. Islam doesn't work that way. It's anti democratic to start with.

ha ha... and Christianity isn't? Scandinavia's Christening became the death of democracy for the Vikings. Yes, we elected our kings. Not proper liberal democracy as we have it today. Still a far cry from autocratic rule by despots. Viking kings had to behave. Christianity is designed so that Christians don't challenge the power of the emperor. How is that in any way pro democracy? If Europe could become democratic in spite of Christianity why can't the Middle-East become it in spite of Islam.

The main factor preventing democracy in the Middle-East is tribalism. Which has nothing at all do with religion. Europe went through the same bullshit. We still managed to emerge as strong democracies. If we can, so can they.

You forget that moslems have been at it for 1400 years, and there's no end in sight, in fact getting worst by the decade. The Western " dark ages" were all over in less than a few centuries.

 

[repoman]

This illustrates that even being topical is racist. What about the old movie "Arlington Road"? Was that unfair to white children of rural people damaged in water rights legal battles?

 

[DrZoidberg]

ha ha... and Christianity isn't? Scandinavia's Christening became the death of democracy for the Vikings. Yes, we elected our kings. Not proper liberal democracy as we have it today. Still a far cry from autocratic rule by despots. Viking kings had to behave. Christianity is designed so that Christians don't challenge the power of the emperor. How is that in any way pro democracy? If Europe could become democratic in spite of Christianity why can't the Middle-East become it in spite of Islam.

The main factor preventing democracy in the Middle-East is tribalism. Which has nothing at all do with religion. Europe went through the same bullshit. We still managed to emerge as strong democracies. If we can, so can they.

You forget that moslems have been at it for 1400 years, and there's no end in sight, in fact getting worst by the decade. The Western " dark ages" were all over in less than a few centuries.

1. Christians have been at it 2000 years. The early birds only managed to democratise the last couple of centuries. About half of all Christians still live in dictatorships. So even if Moslems democratise in a hundred years they'll still beat us.

2. It's not getting worse. A dictatorship being replaced by another dictatorship isn't getting worse. It's things just staying the same. I recommend reading up on French history following the French revolution. Pick any Middle-Eastern country and I'll bet you'll be able to find a corresponding era in French history to match. Democratisation is rarely smooth and pretty. It's usually very bloody with plenty of hiccups. Another good example is USA. Australia isn't the norm. Australia is an anomaly.

3. The dark ages in Europe didn't actually exist. It's a Renaissance myth that just refuses to die. The fall of the Roman empire wasn't replaced by chaos. In fact nothing much happened. A dysfunctional Roman bureaucracy was replaced by a "barbarian" one that worked and was efficient. That's why Rome fell. No other reason. The "barbarians" who conquered Rome were literate, cultivated and technologically superior. That's why they won. People yearning nostalgically about a time where everything was so great and awesome is a common mythic theme. Once investigated these myths all turn out to be rose-tinted bullshit. Not even the plague years can be considered "dark". Since they brought with them social reform and strengthening of rights for peasants. Things do tend to get progressively better all the time. That's a trend that keeps holding true. It's still true. The number of people who die from wars and terrorist attacks is constantly falling, and has been since the dawn of man. It's now at it's lowest point ever.