The Newsman

[Loren Pechtel]

I don't think the ones like him are the threat. It's the ones that don't try so hard that are the problem.

You are ALWAYS CONCERNED with how hard others work. How friggin hard do you work? You have no sense of what it is like to be that person struggling with language issues and prejudiced people in a strange land. Yes, Muslim culture is right wing, but the poorer classes are essentially trampled by Muslim culture. These people need to reorient themselves completely to adapt to the place they have taken themselves...the along come foreman Loren...better get to working harder...some kind of expert. I bet the average immigrant could teach you a few things.

I don't care how hard others work except when they ask for help because they don't have enough. At that point how hard they work becomes an issue.

 

[bilby]

In my experience, Muslim immigrants to the UK are neither radical not conservative, and are rather keen to integrate and be accepted by their chosen home.

The problems arise, not from the immigrants, but from their children and grand-children, who have never experienced life in the country from which their parents or grandparents fled, and are easily persuaded to a utopian view of living in an Islamic nation, free from the casual racism of their English neighbours.

The first generation say "Well it's not nice to be treated as second class citizens, but it's only a minority of English people who are horrible to us, and our life really is far better than it was back in Whereverstan, and a bit of hostility from the locals is to be expected, so we will make the best of it. That Imam may have had a good life in Whereverstan, but my life was nothing like what he says - if it was so great, I would have stayed there".

The second generation say "We are treated like scum. Back in Whereverstan, we would not be 'different' and would be respected by our neighbours. The Imam is dead right, these decadent western infidels are scum, and someone needs to put them in their place".

If the problem was the immigrants, then the solution would be immigration reform. But it's not; the problem is second and third generation English born people being rejected by the society their parents sought to join. The problem is racism, and ghettoisation - and to a great extent, the existence of religious schools. Kids who go to school with kids of other races and cultures find racism and religious hatred much harder to develop and sustain than those who never had a non-Muslim, or a non-Catholic, or a non-Protestant as a school-friend.

 

[J842P]

In my experience, Muslim immigrants to the UK are neither radical not conservative, and are rather keen to integrate and be accepted by their chosen home.

The problems arise, not from the immigrants, but from their children and grand-children, who have never experienced life in the country from which their parents or grandparents fled, and are easily persuaded to a utopian view of living in an Islamic nation, free from the casual racism of their English neighbours.

The first generation say "Well it's not nice to be treated as second class citizens, but it's only a minority of English people who are horrible to us, and our life really is far better than it was back in Whereverstan, and a bit of hostility from the locals is to be expected, so we will make the best of it. That Imam may have had a good life in Whereverstan, but my life was nothing like what he says - if it was so great, I would have stayed there".

The second generation say "We are treated like scum. Back in Whereverstan, we would not be 'different' and would be respected by our neighbours. The Imam is dead right, these decadent western infidels are scum, and someone needs to put them in their place".

If the problem was the immigrants, then the solution would be immigration reform. But it's not; the problem is second and third generation English born people being rejected by the society their parents sought to join. The problem is racism, and ghettoisation - and to a great extent, the existence of religious schools. Kids who go to school with kids of other races and cultures find racism and religious hatred much harder to develop and sustain than those who never had a non-Muslim, or a non-Catholic, or a non-Protestant as a school-friend.

In a lot of ways the US has managed to avoid this problem, although obviously not entirely. And sometimes regardless of integration and assimilation young men can still be 'radicalized.' Take for example the Tsarnaev brothers who perpetrated the Boston Marathon bombings.