I know that is a somewhat explosive topic. It's one of those topics that tends to trigger passionate or heated debates, usually ending in an avalanche of a lot of ugly and derogatory terms.
And for this and other reasons i generally like to stay as far away as possible from these discussions.
Yet, i hope that here, on the DMT-nexus site, a more mature discussion is possible.

Personally, i don't realy have a very strong opinion on the issue of multicultural society.
I think the whole situation is actually quite complex when it comes to where the fault lines are situated and what they tend to be about.

I see that there is an element of racism and xenophobia. It's hard to deny that these sentiments exist and play a huge role here, both in the united states as in western europe. I live in the Netherlands, and to give just one example of how racism and xenophobia have taken hold of dutch society: the word many ducth people use to describe africans who've drowned in the mediteranean sea, trying to get to europe...'floatniggers'. I would say that word says a lot about the mentality of many dutch people, not to mention the posts on Facebook, twitter or other of these so called 'social media' everytime several hundreds of drowned africans make the headlines, because those many of those comments are like "yippee, 900 less of those bloodsucking leaches".
You could say that this is a fault line between basically black and white.

Then there is the fact that the vast majority of the people making those kind of comments, are poor and poorly educated. In Germany, most of the people protesting against immigration and most of the people supporting pegida or the AFD, are referred to as 'wendeverlierer', meaning people who have had a hard time adapting to the fall of communism. They tend to be poorly educated or unskilled. I suppose that in america, most of the trump-supporters are also people without a degree or a nice pension. So there's a fault line here between...well,
what? Rich and poor? Educated vs uneducated? or simply intelligent and not so intelligent?

Then there is the migrants communities themselves. Hard to deny again, that serious problems do exist. There IS a lot of antisemitism, homophobia and misogyny amongst many muslims. There have been serious incidents in cologne and other german city's during new years eve, there have been serious incidents in sweden during many music festivals. Many if not the vast majority of the muslims in europe reject terrorism, but there are also quite a few muslims who either openly support it, or who seriously argue that there is no islamic terrorism, but that it's actually jews try to make islam look bad, who're behind all the terror attacks we've seen over the past few decades. There's no use in downplaying the dark side of islamic community's within europe. Many jewish people are leaving europe because they no longer feel safe here, many gay people don't publicly dare to show any kind of affection (like holding hands) anymore, at many schools, teachers don't want to teach about the holocaust anymore...These things áre happening, and they are real. Not twisted fantasy's or exaggerations of some rightwingnutters, but stuff that realy happens.
That's definately another fault line there.

It's making me sad. And i don't have answers. I only think that we should try not to escalate the whole situation, and that politicians are doing exactly the opposite because it tends to pay off.

You have every reason to be sad, mad, scared right down to the existential level of your DNA. You're making all the appropriate observations, it's just that your post-modern paradigm has "blinded" you.

Mass murder, wanton slaughter, shameless misogyny and grotesque supremacism tend to foster a, "shedding of the scales".

Maybe it isn't exclusively the, "poor, uneducated, rightwingnutters" who can "see" what is not prudent to articulate on this forum.

In short, I feel you! Cast off your torpor.

Peace

The thing is that i believe that what you call post modern paradigm, has actually been progress, if you take a more distant look.
Maybe western society has been too naïve for a long time, when it came to the dark currents within the islamic world.
But when we would fall back into categorically labeling people as rapists or terrorists, purely because of their background, we would lose a hell of a lot.
To have a human rights that universally apply, and to have a constitutional state to more or less safeguard these rights, is what separates the west from country's like egypt, pakistan or china.
You cannot take away these 'postmodern' vignettes of civilisation, without changing everything else as well.
That's the whole point. That's why i believe that people like trump áre dangerous.

Firstly, we'll drive many moderate muslims straight into the arms of the extremists, so we'll make our society less safe.
Secondly, we'll set a precedent that will have consequences.
Thirdly, and most importantly, we will lose our civilisation and consequently will fail the challenge to deal with this properly.

I believe that this whole situation can be de-escalated. But that will require realism, pragmatism, ethic's and patience. Everything populist politic's is lacking.

If they're so quick to default to extremism, maybe these 'moderate muslims' were never really moderate at all.

I'm seeing some tentative but encouraging signs of slowly rising self-awareness in the Arab world. You'd be surprised how many *real* moderate, Westernized muslims agree with Trump's temporary muslim immigration ban. They realize that they have more to lose from spreading extremism than anyone else.

I recently found some amazing Arabic TV interviews on Youtube with people who truly 'get it', and criticize their own culture at least as harshly as the most right-wing white nationalist, if not more.

People such as Ibrahim Al-Buleihi, Sayyed Ayad Jamal Aldin, and Nasser Dashti, making statements like "Western civilization is the only true civilization, we Arabs are so backwards that we don't even know we're backwards", "Everything good in our society came from the West", "Islamic conquests constitute colonialism", "Arab culture is bloodthirsty and oppressive and has done nothing good for humanity", etc etc.

These people are still in the extreme minority, but it does give me hope.

How does stopping Muslim immigrants help to stop radicalism? Most of the shooters in the Paris/Bataklan massacre and the Charlie Hebdo shootings were either born in France or Brussels. The Orlando shooter was born in the States. They weren't immigrants.

^No, they weren't immigrants, but their parents were, and it has been well-noted and commented upon that the 2nd generation is apparently more easily radicalized than the 1st.

The mere fact of being born in a Western country doesn't guarantee that individual will consider themselves a Western person, or allied with Western culture & civilization.

Most kids who are radicalised feel that they don't fit in the country of their birth. Trump banging on about not letting any more Muslims into the country would exacerbate a situation like this rather alleviating it.



This statement still doesn't make a difference when it comes to letting more Muslims in, unless they end up having kids. If we were going to use that argument wouldn't it be better just to expel all Muslims (even the good Western ones) just in case their kids become terrorists??? Better safe than sorry.....

Most Muslims do have kids, and several of them. According to the non-partisan Pew Reserch Center:






No-one in favor of the immigration ban has suggested that, and no reasonable person wants to do that.

If 2nd generation European immigrants to Saudi Arabia starting shooting up the marketplace, or plowing a truck into a crowd of people while shouting 'Praise Jesus', a Christian immigration ban would come into force real quick, don't you think?

Oh they can't enforce that. The weapons of Christians are far superior. Just look what happened to Iraq when he stopped playing by the rules in 2003 (hint: it's oil, not WMD), the West (especially the US and more generally the Commonwealth) fucks up marketplaces whenever he pleases and Western values (the precious dollar) are in danger.

Probably. But, according to those guys you linked to earlier, Arabs are bloodthirsty, oppressive, backwards and have done nothing good for society. Whereas Western civilization is the true civilization, therefore we should be being more civil and thinking a little more critically about the causes of radicalism rather that just blaming it on religion and banning Muslim migration.

Any old fool can see that the West's aggressive foreign policies has a massive amount to do with where we are at today and as far as the current mass migrations and refugee crisis goes we have to let them in. We owe it to them.

The Iraq War was a neo-conservative endeavor. Most everybody who would identify as a traditional convervative, nationalist, or on the alt-right thought it was a mistake. (including Trump, btw).

(That's one thing about the Right, is that there is far more internal disagreement and schism than exists in the homogenous, lock-step Left.)

Apparently there are some Iraqis who don't think it was a terrible mistake.
Reality is never as black & white as one might wish:

Iraqi MP Ayad Jamal Al-Din: Iraqi Political Process Was Made Possible Solely by the US; Iraq Is Better Off with US-Sponsored Democracy

250 years from now humans will all be caramel/tanned skinned, English speaking, polyamorous, plant-drinking, cyborgs laughing in uniform synchronisation about the notion of historical identity as they read about the 20th century. All hail the ant-people!!

Trump thought it was a mistake after the war had started but was more pro at the beginning.



Some.... As opposed to the 165 000 (minimum) dead civilians and their relatives who probably thought it was a pretty bad idea.....

If Ayad Jamal Al-Din thought the Yanks had done such a good job in bringing democracy to Iraq
why did he have to send letters to the U.N. declaring the presence of massive fraud in the elections and the need for a complete recount in 2010? (the same year as that video of him you linked ).

He didn't say that the US had done a "good job" bringing democracy - he said that a democratic political process was rendered a possibility by US intervention, and that Iraq would be better off with a US-style democracy.

If you would stop subtly twisting the meaning of someone's words you might better understand their position.

250 years from now humans will all be caramel/tanned skinned, Mandarin speaking, polyamorous, plant-drinking, cyborgs laughing in uniform synchronisation about the notion of historical identity as they read about the 20th century. All hail the ant-people!!

Let me first say that i also believe that an 'age of enlightenment' should and will take place within the islamic world.

About your first statement/question regarding the degree of moderacy of the majority of muslims...I think that if history, as well as experiments such as millgrams or the stanford prison experiment, teach us one thing, it is that under the right circumstances EACH of us could radicalize rather easily.
So if we take that into consideration, i think the major question would be how we could expect anything good coming from it, if we would start treating muslims as second grade people?

But let me go along with the argument that many moderate muslims aren't so moderate after all. I think that could be true, although i like to remind you that, if we have to bring up the Iraq invasion, the majority of the americans initially was for it and only started questioning it when their own sons and daughters where coming back in body bags. When the French questioned the plans for invading Iraq, i believe the major american response was anger and renaming French fries. So maybe the majority of americans isn't that moderate either when it comes to foreign politics.

But i don't want to dodge the point you make. Yes, i think it's fair to say that the majority of the muslims is not very sophisticated. Not in how they feel about women in general, jewish people, homosexuality, religious freedom, etc.
However, islamophobes are almost by definition not any more sophisticated, as categorically labeling people as inferior is about one of the least sophisticated forms of behaviour.
I would say that donald trump is even one of the most sophisticated islamophobes, and i guess few people here would argue that donald is a very sophisticated man.

Yes, i think that western society is in many ways, much better than most islamic society's are. But if we where to conclude from that that we should be treating muslims as second grade people, then the west would become just like saudi arabia or pakistan.

I am not saying that you are suggesting that we should be treating muslims as such. But most of the islamophobic folks are. In europe far-right politicians are openly speaking about ethnic cleansing and so on. And as shock and awe is the Donalds major political tactic, i wouldn't rest assure that he or any of his populist successors wouldn't ever resort to any of those type of 'solutions' either.
Any islamic terror attack ignites radicalisation on the far right, and islamophobia will on it's turn ignite islamic radicalisation, so we risk ending up in a downward spiral.

250 years from now humans will all be caramel/tanned skinned, Mandarin speaking, polyamorous, plant-drinking, cyborgs laughing in uniform synchronicity about the notion of historical identity as they read about the 20th century. All hail the ant-people!!

So everyone will be one color, articulating one ideology in one language. I suppose one gender and one government too?

How strange that people who claim to celebrate diversity and alterity envision a utopic future where there is none.
'Save diversity - destroy difference!' is your battle cry.

Shall we reduce all birds to their sum average, with one plumage and one song?
All blossoms to one hue and scent?

Sorry ant-people, Nature doesn't work that way.

Yeah, better keep differences and diversity by building walls.