Europe submits voluntarily

[Jokodo]

Incidentally, not that anyone was asking, here's a summary of the development of the homicide rate in Germany over the last 6 decades (unfortunately in German, but the graph titled "Mord (Fälle, vollendete, inklusive Totschlag, bis 1990 Westdeutschland)" should be self-explanatory; the caption translates as "murder, completed cases, manslaughter included, up to 1990 Western Germany only").

The total number of homicides is as low as it has last been around 1967. And that's cheating in the direction of making the homicide rate appear higher compared to historical values in at least two ways. First, there was obviously population growth, so the same absolute number doesn't equate to the same rate. More significantly, unification happened adding a third to the population of the Federal Republic of Germany in one go, and the numbers before 1990 refer to Western Germany only. So in terms of an actual rate, today's is comparable to the 50s, or lower.

There's one valid caveat: A lower rate of completed murders doesn't necessarily equate to a lower rate of attempted murders when emergency medicine has improved in leaps (which it has). Even so, the numbers speak a clear language and it's not one of Europe going down the gutter.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

There's a sinister over-arching narrative with honour killings. Which is what the Daily News is trying to capitalise on. But honour killings is still not normal in any part of the world. It's always an extreme outlier. It's also something specific for the mountainous "goat-herder" regions of extreme poverty of the nothern Middle-East, and into Pakistan and Afghanistan. It's not acceptable in most of the Middle-East. Which the Daily Mail would never bother to explain, because it takes the steam out of the story. There's no mention of where in Iran they're from. Iran is a happy mixture of a variety of cultures. Most of which don't do honour killings. So that would be interesting information?

Honor killings are a lot more common and widespread than you think.

I said nothing about how common they were.


Here's the whole list
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honor_killing

From this list you'll notice that it only happens in the poorest regions of their countries.

So it's linked to poverty.The good news is that the world is quickly getting richer and these impoverished island are rapidly shrinking. It's a dying custom.

All these traditions of extreme methods of controlling women is strongly linked to a non-industrialised agrarian way of life. A way of life disappearing.

While a problem and something we should take seriously is still a dying cultural practice

Note many in western European countries--hardly places in major poverty.

They happen wherever you have sufficient populations of like-thinking scumbags.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Of course this will be ignored because of the source. But if one has an open mind, this makes interesting reading based on facts.

https://www.jihadwatch.org/2018/09/ethereal-faith-vs-observable-facts

That's not a good representation of the situation.

Christianity used to be about as evil as Islam. Old style Judiasm doesn't look so good, either. It's just that they have reformed over time. Islam hasn't.

- - - Updated - - -

So you're now saying they are savages and even though they immigrate to European nations with naive governments, to sponge off the taxpayers of their host nation remain savages? But That's what Iv'e been saying all along!

No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that culture shifts slowly. The bigger the cultural leap, the longer time it takes. Iran is today a mix of modern high-tech urban culture and backward agrarian impoverished cultures as well as tribes who are kept intentionally backward and poor to make them easier to manage by the government.

The Iranian urbanites are pretty much western and who will experience little cultural clashes when moving to Europe. They tend to be well educated and are often liberal. I know many of them, since many of these fled to Sweden after Khomeini took power. These are almost all ethnically Persian.

The impoverished farmers, the backbone of the Iranian theocratic government, are the equivalent of Trump supporters. They are retarded and xenophobic. But we have little risk of getting them to Europe, because they are fed a diet of anti-western propaganda and hates us. These are mostly ethnically Persian.

The backward swamp and hill tribes. These are basically goat herders. Incredibly poor and backward actively oppressed by the government. These guys also often end up in Europe because they often engage in anti-government protests, and risk being murdered by their government. So qualify for refugee status. They are uneducated. Know nothing. Their religion is a weird mix of Islam, Christianity, Zoroastrianism and animism. Extremely superstitus. These are the only people who engage in honour killings in Iran. These are not ethnically Persian

Iran isn't where most of the immigrants to Europe are coming from. Thus it's makeup is basically irrelevant.

 

[Jokodo]

That's not a good representation of the situation.

Christianity used to be about as evil as Islam. Old style Judiasm doesn't look so good, either. It's just that they have reformed over time. Islam hasn't.

Except it has.

You and ISIS saying that those who don't accept change aren't real Muslims doesn't make it relevant to a majority of European Muslims.

It also doesn't paint you in the best light.

And how about you focus on those excess 15000 murder victim the US *annually* suffers compared not to Germany's absolute number but to its rate? A thought we had a deal there about problems that won't go away by not looking at them?

 

[Jokodo]

They happen wherever you have sufficient populations of like-thinking scumbags.

You mean like Uruguay?

Quoted from  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_of_passion:

In Uruguay, crimes of passion continue to be legally tolerated; in certain circumstances, the law exonerates a perpetrator when a killing or a battery was committed due to "passion provoked by adultery".[42] Article 36 of the Criminal Code provides for this:

Artículo 36. (La pasión provocada por el adulterio)[43]

La pasión provocada por el adulterio faculta al Juez para exonerar de pena por los delitos de homicidio y de lesiones, siempre que concurran los requisitos siguientes:

1. Que el delito se cometa por el cónyuge que sorprendiera infraganti al otro cónyuge y que se efectúe o contra el amante.
2. Que el autor tuviera buenos antecedentes y que la oportunidad para cometer el delito no hubiera sido provocada o simplemente facilitada, mediando conocimiento anterior de la infidelidad conyugal.
Translation: Article 36 (The passion provoked by adultery): "The passion provoked by adultery empowers the court to exempt from punishment for the crimes of homicide and injury, provided that the following conditions are present: 1. The offense is committed by one spouse against the other spouse whom he or she has caught in the act, or against the lover. 2. The perpetrator has a good record and the opportunity to commit the crime was not provoked or facilitated by prior knowledge of the marital infidelity."

You see, it's not about religion...

 

[Angra Mainyu]

Jokodo,

The link is not working.

 

[DrZoidberg]

That's not a good representation of the situation.

Christianity used to be about as evil as Islam. Old style Judiasm doesn't look so good, either. It's just that they have reformed over time. Islam hasn't.

- - - Updated - - -

No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that culture shifts slowly. The bigger the cultural leap, the longer time it takes. Iran is today a mix of modern high-tech urban culture and backward agrarian impoverished cultures as well as tribes who are kept intentionally backward and poor to make them easier to manage by the government.

The Iranian urbanites are pretty much western and who will experience little cultural clashes when moving to Europe. They tend to be well educated and are often liberal. I know many of them, since many of these fled to Sweden after Khomeini took power. These are almost all ethnically Persian.

The impoverished farmers, the backbone of the Iranian theocratic government, are the equivalent of Trump supporters. They are retarded and xenophobic. But we have little risk of getting them to Europe, because they are fed a diet of anti-western propaganda and hates us. These are mostly ethnically Persian.

The backward swamp and hill tribes. These are basically goat herders. Incredibly poor and backward actively oppressed by the government. These guys also often end up in Europe because they often engage in anti-government protests, and risk being murdered by their government. So qualify for refugee status. They are uneducated. Know nothing. Their religion is a weird mix of Islam, Christianity, Zoroastrianism and animism. Extremely superstitus. These are the only people who engage in honour killings in Iran. These are not ethnically Persian

Iran isn't where most of the immigrants to Europe are coming from. Thus it's makeup is basically irrelevant.

We were talking about Iran in particular

 

[DrZoidberg]

Christianity used to be about as evil as Islam. Old style Judiasm doesn't look so good, either. It's just that they have reformed over time. Islam hasn't.

It's just a persistent myth. All religion changes a lot over time. Islam is no different. Islam has undergone dramatic changes the last two centuries.

Islam became a symbol of resistance to western colonialism. So they started to adopt any practice that set them apart from the west. Westernism became equated with evil.

Before 1830 burkhas wasn't a thing among Muslims. It was a class marker denoting wealth, and was associated with rich Christian converts. Because it started out as a Christian thing. Also a Bedouin thing. In 1830 they still practiced a blend of Islam and animism. They still do in many parts.

In the 20'th century Islam's militisation went into overdrive. Islam's biggest reformer was Sayyid Qutb. He invented the form of Islam Al Qaeda embraced.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayyid_Qutb

The Taliban in Afghanistan is a form of Islam imported from India. After the, Muslim led, Sepoy rebellion of 1857 it's leaders fled India to Aghanistan. Again... It's an anti western form of Islam that equates anything western with evil.

The Nigerian Islamists Boko Haram's name literally means the West is forbidden.

My point is that modern Islam is on us. The West created it by our horrendous misbehaviour during the age of colonialism.

But it's not just western colonialism. The 17'th century Wahabi invented Wahabism, the form of Islam of Saudi Arabia, and was designed against Turkish colonialism. It's harsh Islam is a contrast to the Ottomans very liberal Islam.

Anyhoo... we should stop saying that Islam hasn't had a reformation or hasn't changed. It's wrong. It was always just anti-Islamic propaganda that was never true.

Also worth noting is that the Christian reformation didn't make Christianity more liberal. It was the opposite. It gave rise to extreme forms of Christianity with extremely rigid forms of social control, so rigid it eventually pushed people away from Christianity. It became too much.

Which is analogue to what is happening now in the Middle-East. Wherever Al Qaeda or Isis takes control It alienates the population.

 

[Jokodo]

Jokodo,

The link is not working.

Sorry, yeah. I forgot the Wikilink template requires only the title. should be a regular link or a Wikilink like this:  Crime_of_passion

 

[metacristi]

That's not a good representation of the situation.

Christianity used to be about as evil as Islam. Old style Judiasm doesn't look so good, either. It's just that they have reformed over time. Islam hasn't.

It experienced some shallow reforms no doubt, unfortunately far from what we witnessed in the other 2 major Abrahamic religions. More generally even those who argue that there was an Islamic Enlightenment contend that 'it was different' from that seen in Europe, in open translation it was way more limited in its scope than even the 'moderate' Enlightenment in Europe, which saw quite many very religious otherwise people adhering to its principles by the way. This is not surprising if we take in account the nature of Islam and the fact that the changes were almost entirely attributable to the fact that the usual violent jihad policy against the infidels became practically impossible due to the strong military pressure of the European Powers, giving thus a limited chance to the few, weak, modernists of the time (unlikely to have become more influential otherwise*).

Even today there is basically no equivalent of the Radical European Enlightenment's criticism of religion in the Islamic world, still no equivalent of Reform Judaism or Liberal Christianity for example (which involve renouncing inerrancy of the Bible, sometimes involving huge variations from the medieval Christianity, even denying Resurrection). And yet all we hear from the part of the so called 'progressives' is that he have to keep this status quo in Islam with all costs because muslims 'want so' (or else we are fascists or bigots). I am sure though that much more muslims will dare to transform islam in unrecognizable, really progressive, ways if we helped the radical reformers instead of the conservative forces as we do today.

Finally the many 'fractures' seen by some in Islam are in fact largely 'micro-fractures', an illusion of great diversity (even more valid in the Middle Ages, when even the Sufis were fervent supporters of aggressive jihad); this naturally explains also why we have the current disaster in the Islamic world in spite of a long exposure to Modernity now, finally why people willing to consider Muhammad less 'perfect' than accepted today (without leaving Islam however) still have to hide deep down even in the West. In reality we still wait for a modern Islam, its shallow penetration by Modernity we have witnessed so far is not enough (important returns toward the same discriminatory past are always possible, plenty of examples in the last 70 years; I'm afraid acting only against literalism, regarding the Quran, via all sort of far fetched postmodernist 'progressive' reinterpretations is shown by recent History as being insufficient). I would argue exactly the opposite of what the so called 'progressives' argue, we should rather promote important reforms (not Reformations!) like those presented by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. This if we really want to bring Islam more into the 21st century, I'm afraid there are strong reasons to think that granting all sorts of exceptions for muslims (from the secular rationale) won't work in the medium and long run.

Pascal Bruckner 'Political correctness is in fact a denial of reality' (Google Translate is far from good but the article is intelligible)


* as a side note - contrary to the revisionist 'post colonial' studies of today there are actually very strong reasons to think that the medieval Islamic world couldn't have produced, by itself, alone, any Scientific Revolution or Enlightenment in a foreseeable future; Islam itself having its important share here

 

[Loren Pechtel]

That's not a good representation of the situation.

Christianity used to be about as evil as Islam. Old style Judiasm doesn't look so good, either. It's just that they have reformed over time. Islam hasn't.

Except it has.

You and ISIS saying that those who don't accept change aren't real Muslims doesn't make it relevant to a majority of European Muslims.

It also doesn't paint you in the best light.

I said nothing about whether they are real Muslims. I was explaining why Islam is a bigger problem--it's still staying with it's evil roots rather than moderating over time.

And how about you focus on those excess 15000 murder victim the US *annually* suffers compared not to Germany's absolute number but to its rate? A thought we had a deal there about problems that won't go away by not looking at them?

Our murder rate is criminals killing criminals. Blame the drug laws. It's not religious.

 

[Jokodo]

I said nothing about whether they are real Muslims. I was explaining why Islam is a bigger problem--it's still staying with it's evil roots rather than moderating over time.

It's not called "explaining", it's called "making an unfounded claim". The vast majority of Muslims are not in any meaningful way "staying with Islam's roots", evil or not.

And how about you focus on those excess 15000 murder victim the US *annually* suffers compared not to Germany's absolute number but to its rate? A thought we had a deal there about problems that won't go away by not looking at them?

Our murder rate is criminals killing criminals. Blame the drug laws. It's not religious.

I'm not saying it is, and you're kind of making my point, you realise that? Bad things happen for a lot of different reasons in a lot of different places. Most of them boil down to some version of "desperate people will take desperate actions, and stuff gets out of hand". Blaming it on religion if and only if it happens in a Muslim country is nothing less than magical thinking.

That, and the irony of people living in a country with over 8 times Germany's murder rate who complain about how Germany's becoming unsafe...

 

[angelo]

So you're now saying they are savages and even though they immigrate to European nations with naive governments, to sponge off the taxpayers of their host nation remain savages? But That's what Iv'e been saying all along!

No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that culture shifts slowly. The bigger the cultural leap, the longer time it takes. Iran is today a mix of modern high-tech urban culture and backward agrarian impoverished cultures as well as tribes who are kept intentionally backward and poor to make them easier to manage by the government.

The Iranian urbanites are pretty much western and who will experience little cultural clashes when moving to Europe. They tend to be well educated and are often liberal. I know many of them, since many of these fled to Sweden after Khomeini took power. These are almost all ethnically Persian.

The impoverished farmers, the backbone of the Iranian theocratic government, are the equivalent of Trump supporters. They are retarded and xenophobic. But we have little risk of getting them to Europe, because they are fed a diet of anti-western propaganda and hates us. These are mostly ethnically Persian.

The backward swamp and hill tribes. These are basically goat herders. Incredibly poor and backward actively oppressed by the government. These guys also often end up in Europe because they often engage in anti-government protests, and risk being murdered by their government. So qualify for refugee status. They are uneducated. Know nothing. Their religion is a weird mix of Islam, Christianity, Zoroastrianism and animism. Extremely superstitus. These are the only people who engage in honour killings in Iran. These are not ethnically Persian

These guys are also actively shunned by expat Iranian-Persian groups. Because they're so fucking backward.

When these guys move to Europe they have no fucking clue. They don't have any skills useful to our economy. They probably never went to school at all, so we don't have the necessary tools with which to train them even if we tried. We're not doing these any favours by letting them stay. These guys will most likely live off welfare perpetually because the economic culture from where they live is simply too alien to the modern European way of life. It'll take several generations to integrate them.

This is the extreme short version. I got plenty of the details wrong. But this is roughly the make up of Iran. BTW, only about 60% of the Iranians are Persian. Iran is an extremely culturally diverse country.

- - - Updated - - -

Of course this will be ignored because of the source. But if one has an open mind, this makes interesting reading based on facts.

https://www.jihadwatch.org/2018/09/ethereal-faith-vs-observable-facts

Meh... dumb. Overly simplistic IMHO.

So you're finally admitting all these freeloaders aren't "refugees " but economic migrants which are bound to have a large percentage of jihadis among them?

 

[DrZoidberg]

So you're finally admitting all these freeloaders aren't "refugees " but economic migrants which are bound to have a large percentage of jihadis among them?

Lol... no I didn't. Try reading it again

 

[metacristi]

I said nothing about whether they are real Muslims. I was explaining why Islam is a bigger problem--it's still staying with it's evil roots rather than moderating over time.

Exactly. And the solution is rather that suggested also by Bruckner, Islam needs more, not less, criticism in order to flourish, and to move into a future it can share with other faiths.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I'm not saying it is, and you're kind of making my point, you realise that? Bad things happen for a lot of different reasons in a lot of different places. Most of them boil down to some version of "desperate people will take desperate actions, and stuff gets out of hand". Blaming it on religion if and only if it happens in a Muslim country is nothing less than magical thinking.

That, and the irony of people living in a country with over 8 times Germany's murder rate who complain about how Germany's becoming unsafe...

I blame it on Islam when Islam is the driving force.

And a comparison of the murder rates doesn't show the real picture. Most American murders are criminal on criminal and pose very little threat to non-criminals. The Islam-driven murders are of innocents, not fellow Islamists.

 

[Jokodo]

I'm not saying it is, and you're kind of making my point, you realise that? Bad things happen for a lot of different reasons in a lot of different places. Most of them boil down to some version of "desperate people will take desperate actions, and stuff gets out of hand". Blaming it on religion if and only if it happens in a Muslim country is nothing less than magical thinking.

That, and the irony of people living in a country with over 8 times Germany's murder rate who complain about how Germany's becoming unsafe...

I blame it on Islam when Islam is the driving force.

That's not how it comes across. It rather looks like you blame it on Islam whenever a Muslim has been within shouting distance.

And a comparison of the murder rates doesn't show the real picture. Most American murders are criminal on criminal and pose very little threat to non-criminals. The Islam-driven murders are of innocents, not fellow Islamists.

Everywhere in the world, criminals are at greater risk from other criminals than the population at large.

But hey, let's ignore that and pretend that all of this applies to not one of Germany's 5-600 annual completed homicides: Are you willing to go on record explicitly claiming that out of the 17,500 murders the US had in 2015, significantly less than 2500 (about the number we'd expect if the US had Germany's rate, already corrected for population) are of "innocents", and more than 15,000 criminal-on-criminal murders?

Do you have any figures to back that up?

Or is this just another red herring?

 

[angelo]

I said nothing about whether they are real Muslims. I was explaining why Islam is a bigger problem--it's still staying with it's evil roots rather than moderating over time.

Exactly. And the solution is rather that suggested also by Bruckner, Islam needs more, not less, criticism in order to flourish, and to move into a future it can share with other faiths.

Yea, that will be the day when pigs sprout wings and take to the sky! how can you reform a supremacist ideology that claims their holy book is the last word of god. unlike the Babble which has a new testament which preaches to turn the other cheek and to love your enemies the Koran preaches the complete opposite!

 

[DrZoidberg]

I said nothing about whether they are real Muslims. I was explaining why Islam is a bigger problem--it's still staying with it's evil roots rather than moderating over time.

Exactly. And the solution is rather that suggested also by Bruckner, Islam needs more, not less, criticism in order to flourish, and to move into a future it can share with other faiths.

Yea, that will be the day when pigs sprout wings and take to the sky! how can you reform a supremacist ideology that claims their holy book is the last word of god. unlike the Babble which has a new testament which preaches to turn the other cheek and to love your enemies the Koran preaches the complete opposite!

I suggest reading the Quran. It goes on endlessly that it's better to forgive than punish. It also says that it's better to forgive than hold a grudge. What the Quran does say, that sets it apart from the Bible, is that it says that sometimes revenge can be justified.

I read and compared both books. Both are so self contradictory and all over the place that I think they're interchangeable. You can use both the Quran and Bibla to justify any behaviour. Which is why people have. Hitler quotes the Bible heavily in his Mein Kampf. Like a good Christian boy

 

[metacristi]

Of course this will be ignored because of the source. But if one has an open mind, this makes interesting reading based on facts.

https://www.jihadwatch.org/2018/09/ethereal-faith-vs-observable-facts

Not all religions are equally violent in their core teachings (valid also when we compare only the Abrahamic ones) and not all put the same brakes to (progress) change, that's I think a valid premise.

One can even argue that some modern values (secularism included) have their roots in mainstream religious sects from Christianity and I agree with that as well. For example as John Needham pointed out well the Western civilization was the only culture which developed the concept of law of nature (although the modern form came into prominence only after Descartes the pro-idea is centuries older), rooted in a belief in a Lawgiver characterized by Reason (neither the Chinese nor the muslims did that, their very different worldviews, rooted in their religions, playing a strong role here), A. C. Crombie argues that we have to trace the beginning of science in the works of the Christian philosophers after the 13th century, Rodney Stark showed well that the belief in Reason has important roots in Christian theology* (although I find his other theses way too strong) and so on.

More generally I think that there are good reasons to believe that culture played a decisive role in the advent of Modernity** (geography, 'germs' and so on are not enough, even less the 'post colonial' studies reliance on 'lucky chance') and here religion, very important in people's lives in the Middle Ages, cannot be overlooked. Modernity is not the creation of a class of 'secularists' and 'freethinkers' coming from the sky pushing dogma relentlessly but an internal achievement having its roots also in the religious beliefs of the time. Finally it is not at all a 'lucky chance' that the attempts of very religious otherwise medieval Christians (at least after the end of the 16th centiry) to validate Tradition and Revelation based on Reason lead in the opposite direction and opened the door to Modernity (if God is Reason and man is created in God's image then following Reason to the end is a valid approach).

This being said I cannot now agree that Christianity is directly responsible for the advent of Modernity (belief in Reason*** is not enough if Reason can only confirm Religion, Christianity can pose strong problems, as history shows clearly), rather the answer should be found in the many 'holes' which the Christian organized Church & theology left for the forces of change / progress to develop further, quite many very religious themselves, strongly 'catalysed' also by the Reformation (something much more difficult to happen in Islam for example, even today).

Happily Christianity is not Islam in what regards the coercive measures used to keep the status quo and there is also undeniably much more internal logic to attain high compatibility with modern law.


* even if one can argue that Reason was indeed severely underestimated by Christian theology between roughly 395 and the beginning of the 13th century it is also a fact that after Thomas Aquinas it made a strong comeback, leading in time to the Enlightenment view which offered it precedence over Tradition and even Revelation (the Bible).

** see also Toby Huff's books about the apparition of Science The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China and the West and Intellectual Curiosity and the Scientific Revolution

***those accustomed with philosophy know well that there are different levels of Rationality, the organized Church chose less rational paths many times (although agreeing that Reason is important)