The issue is that, once dead, they can no longer do anything to impact the culture. The fact that they did things in the past whose effects are still observable is a separate issue, and applies to all people. Most of the impact that the elderly had on culture, they already had and is manifest in the culture, so it isn't changing the culture for the worse after they die. Extremely rare instances of the one in a billion whose ideas only impact after they are dead are beside the point. The more meaningful impact is on how each individual everyday person impacts their community by their words, actions, voting, etc..
I (and the research I cited) am not referring to meaningless anecdotes or non-representative "radicals" but rather to the overwhelming super-majority of Muslims that reside in the UK and other western-and northern European countries. Of course dangerous right-wing theocrats who threaten basic liberties also have good qualities. That is no more true of Muslims, than of the most extreme right wingers in the US, every racist cop, and the Nazis. So how is that at all relevant to a meaningful discussion of whether Muslim immigrants threaten secular, liberal, post-enlightenment values that we are simultaneously trying to advance and protect from these other groups as well?
Intolerance and authoritarianism are central to the values of Islam, as they are to the Bible. They are not "radicalizations" of these views produced by external threat. How are US fundamentalists actually "threatened"? They manufacture false "threats" to rationalize their intolerant aggression. External threats to Muslim nations increase commitment to Islam, which means increase commitment to its inherently intolerant and authoritarian values. But people socialized to deeply accept Islam and/or hold those values it endorses, then have those values regardless of whether they are actually threatened. Not to mention, mere tolerance and secularism are threats to the core values of Abrahamic religion, so their is no way to uphold tolerance and secularism without some perception of threat.
Hearts and minds and winning them over is the way to go.
Sure, our foreign policy approach has mostly harmed any internal evolution and secular enlightenment in the Muslim world. But even with radical change in such policies, such an evolution takes centuries. Meanwhile, we'll have many generations of extreme radical right-wingers opposed to the most core values of secular democracy flooding into secular democracies, and no "hearts and minds" approach is going to get them to suddenly abandon those values. Suppose that Europe got tough on its own home-grown neo-Nazis and booted them out. Would you welcome many millions of hard-core neo-Nazi immigrants into the US and your neighborhood, because after all, many of them probably have strong devotion to family and friendship?
rolleyes: hysterical, or what!) seem like a pussy-cat.
