Syrian Refugees in the USA

[CharlesPhipps]

There's kind of a weird bunch of assumptions in the above post.

What in the world makes you think the Syrian refugees don't like America? Syria was one of the more secularized and stable countries in the region. To reduce this to gamer logic, it's assuming the people of Syria are the Qunari when they're just the people in Rivain. As I said to my wife when she was trying to wrap my head around it. "You don't think they have TV repairmen, used car salesmen, and plumbers in Syria?"

They went to Europe, America, and Turkey because they're stable places with the internet, plumbing, television, and shopping centers.

They're not sneaking in to places they hate. They're going places they think they'll have a better life in. It's why all the refugees put in Eastern Europe keep trying to get to Germany.

Also, it's funny you talk about displacement because Puerto Rico is ****ed and doens't seem to be getting any better thanks to the complete negligence from the federal government. This, despite the fact it's part of the United States.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

People have to APPLY for refugee status. They WANT to come here, or somewhere else, or really just somewhere where they don't have to pick shrapnel out of their teeth.

The fact that people don't like our way of life but want to sneak in here tells you something or despite hating America so much, but they don't want to leave when their bluff is called.

You know I think the main thing they hate about our "way of life" is us bombing them.

What do you think is so fundamentally alien about foreigners that they will never be able to function in this country?

[CharlesPhipps]

There's a real sense of many people that Muslims are fundamentally different people from Americans in axiomatic ways. They don't think of that Iranian woman who won a race car championship or the 3 million Muslims living in America, they think of essentially some weird DC comics theme park version of a "Muslim" nation that basically is all populated by bearded men and cloaked women who hate America.

And all Muslim nations are identical to it.

To be fair, American media has been feeding it.

I loved the prank a bunch of Arab taggers did on the cast of Homeland for example.

And this

Which I felt was a crowning moment of awesome.

But the real thing that I think a lot of people struggle with is they have this "one size fits all" package for Muslims that they're all monolithic group. ISIS is committing genocide against distinct ethnic and religious groups in Iraq-Syria. The Iranians and the rest of the Middle East have had conflict for millennium. South Asian Muslims outnumber the Arabic kind by magnitudes beyond count.

Saddam was a secular Muslim ruler who kept brutalizing the more religious and different ethnic groups or religions because, again, they were different in fundamental ways.

[Darth Wedgius]

Muslims are not a monolithic group, even Muslims from the same region, but statistics will hold for large groups.

Large minorities in European countries (maybe almost a quarter in Britain) want Sharia law used in some areas. A poll showed about half think homosexuality should be illegal. Pedophilia grooming gangs in Britain have had high proportions of Muslims. A professor in Norway said, "I will not blame Norwegian women for the rapes. But Norwegian women must understand that we live in a multi-cultural society and adapt themselves to it."

Many countries in the Middle East still have "marry-your-rapist" laws.

I've always said I want to treat individuals as individuals according to their own actions where possible. However, it's not irrational to be concerned about a large influx of Muslims. If it can be shown to me that Europe is much the better for the influx of refugees, I'm certainly open to admitting that all the worries are over.

[CharlesPhipps]

Muslims are not a monolithic group, even Muslims from the same region, but statistics will hold for large groups.

Large minorities in European countries (maybe almost a quarter in Britain) want Sharia law used in some areas. A poll showed about half think homosexuality should be illegal. Pedophilia grooming gangs in Britain have had high proportions of Muslims. A professor in Norway said, "I will not blame Norwegian women for the rapes. But Norwegian women must understand that we live in a multi-cultural society and adapt themselves to it."

Many countries in the Middle East still have "marry-your-rapist" laws.

I've always said I want to treat individuals as individuals according to their own actions where possible. However, it's not irrational to be concerned about a large influx of Muslims. If it can be shown to me that Europe is much the better for the influx of refugees, I'm certainly open to admitting that all the worries are over.

Funny you should mention that but i was just reading an article about human trafficking in Germany which was following up an article about how in the United States that getting rid of Craigslist's personal ads (which were used, disproportionately, for advertising sex based services) would result in a large spike of actual murder of women because in places where those services were available, murder of women dropped like 20%.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/ger ... 533-3.html

http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/201 ... _redu.html

I don't bring this up as a general example of, "White people are rapists too!" Though, there's a lot nastier underbelly to supposedly enlightened societies than many people acknowledge, I think. I instead bring this up in the context of the Snow Queen Effect. It's something we used to talk about in my university when discussing multiculturialism. Effectively, referring to the original Hans Christian Anderson tale about the boy who got the shard of a magic mirror in his eye that caused him to see nothing but the bad in people.

One can fight for protection of human rights, democracy, and (depending on your inclination) secularization but there's a sense that I've gotten a lot of people want to make the conflict for a better world of greater human rights into "the brown people are just objectively worse than us." It's an attitude I refer to another person's advice which is that we should worry about the plank in our eyes as well as the splinter in our neighbors. It's possible to want to campaign for women and against abuses against them while respecting Islam following people are not that different--because they happen everywhere. The Rochdale child sex abuse ring in England didn't happen because the participants were Muslim, it happened because they were monsters.

I also attended an interesting talk on English imperialism where a large number of the people involved in discussing it were Indians. One of the more interesting qualities was there a sharp divide among Indian men and women. Both sides complained bitterly about the abuses and racism they'd suffered but the latter had a good deal more ambivalence due to the fact women's rights as well as their participation in government/social issues had happened due to protections imposed on them by the British. A small good happening in the midst of a great evil.

Mind you, I weirdly think I'm more open to this view because I grew up in the rural Deep South of America in an area where there are a lot of extremist Christian sects alongside more moderate Christian sects that would be considered, themselves, extremist in, say, Europe or even parts of the US. My wife grew up in a community where it was forbidden to cut your hair, wear makeup, and there was rampant sexual abuse as well as child marriage.

To which I say, as a religious person, fuck those guys. While also saying I love my wife and am glad she is here and had better opportunities. She's also still deeply religious. I see a similarity in the conflicts among Muslim as one's which mirror ones in my area where there are groups that also want the apocalypse and would love to begin a war to overthrow the government to replace it with a theistic Christian one.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Well, Darth, it's a bit of a relief for the true motives to be shown instead of all the waffling about "integration" and "terrorist risks". This is fear of Muslims, plain and simple.

We don't need a violent overthrow by Christians in this country imposing the Christian equivalent of Shariah law because they are already in office. Just ask Vice President Mike "hang the gays" Pence, or the Rapist In Chief.

Terry Pratchett said that Wisdom is one of the few objects that appears larger from a distance. I think the same thing applies to sexism, homophobia, and extremism.

[Darth Wedgius]

Muslims are not a monolithic group, even Muslims from the same region, but statistics will hold for large groups.

Large minorities in European countries (maybe almost a quarter in Britain) want Sharia law used in some areas. A poll showed about half think homosexuality should be illegal. Pedophilia grooming gangs in Britain have had high proportions of Muslims. A professor in Norway said, "I will not blame Norwegian women for the rapes. But Norwegian women must understand that we live in a multi-cultural society and adapt themselves to it."

Many countries in the Middle East still have "marry-your-rapist" laws.

I've always said I want to treat individuals as individuals according to their own actions where possible. However, it's not irrational to be concerned about a large influx of Muslims. If it can be shown to me that Europe is much the better for the influx of refugees, I'm certainly open to admitting that all the worries are over.

I instead bring this up in the context of the Snow Queen Effect. It's something we used to talk about in my university when discussing multiculturialism. Effectively, referring to the original Hans Christian Anderson tale about the boy who got the shard of a magic mirror in his eye that caused him to see nothing but the bad in people.

...
The Rochdale child sex abuse ring in England didn't happen because the participants were Muslim, it happened because they were monsters.

...

I see a similarity in the conflicts among Muslim as one's which mirror ones in my area where there are groups that also want the apocalypse and would love to begin a war to overthrow the government to replace it with a theistic Christian one.

I think we're arguing in circles here. I'll say a greater preponderance of Middle Eastern Muslims will do X, Y, and Z. You'll note that there's X, Y, and Z here, and that not all Middle Eastern Muslims are the same.

There are probably Christians who want to wouldn't mind a theocracy, but what percentage? Now, how many Muslims want rule by Sharia law, proportionately? And just calling the members of grooming rings monsters just doesn't change anything. People are more likely to do something if it's more acceptable in the country they were raised in.

[Darth Wedgius]

Well, Darth, it's a bit of a relief for the true motives to be shown instead of all the waffling about "integration" and "terrorist risks". This is fear of Muslims, plain and simple.

We don't need a violent overthrow by Christians in this country imposing the Christian equivalent of Shariah law because they are already in office. Just ask Vice President Mike "hang the gays" Pence, or the Rapist In Chief.

Terry Pratchett said that Wisdom is one of the few objects that appears larger from a distance. I think the same thing applies to sexism, homophobia, and extremism.

Fuzzy, is everything you say going to be just accusing people of motives you pull from your ass?

[CharlesPhipps]

I think we're arguing in circles here. I'll say a greater preponderance of Middle Eastern Muslims will do X, Y, and Z. You'll note that there's X, Y, and Z here, and that not all Middle Eastern Muslims are the same.

There are probably Christians who want to wouldn't mind a theocracy, but what percentage? Now, how many Muslims want rule by Sharia law, proportionately? And just calling the members of grooming rings monsters just doesn't change anything. People are more likely to do something if it's more acceptable in the country they were raised in.

I'm not trying to argue past in circles, just point out that "grooming circles" are monstrous but the fact is the trafficking in enslaved women, especially very young women, is nothing which Europe or America has any moral high ground on. It's also a problem in Asia. It's one of those things people have thrown out in order to make Muslim society look worse that doesn't hold up under scrutiny.

My main concern in this sort of situation boils down to the following:

1. The humanitarian crisis of these displaced people.
2. Avoiding stereotyping of the public via misinformation
3. Understanding who are the bad actors in which groups and why

Accepting different groups into your community results in changing of that community but at what point is it bad versus good? Basically, you have 1000 Muslims added to 10,000 person community and ask, "At what point is my society threatened by their INTELLECTUAL contribution to the local discourse?"

Which is a different thing than fearing terrorism. It's the idea that secular society can't stand up to people who argue against it (assuming they will versus freedom of expression).

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Well, Darth, it's a bit of a relief for the true motives to be shown instead of all the waffling about "integration" and "terrorist risks". This is fear of Muslims, plain and simple.

We don't need a violent overthrow by Christians in this country imposing the Christian equivalent of Shariah law because they are already in office. Just ask Vice President Mike "hang the gays" Pence, or the Rapist In Chief.

Terry Pratchett said that Wisdom is one of the few objects that appears larger from a distance. I think the same thing applies to sexism, homophobia, and extremism.

Fuzzy, is everything you say going to be just accusing people of motives you pull from your ass?

How is going from "Muslims on average are more prone to extremism and less tolerant" to "you are motivated by fear of muslims" an ass pull?