Significant numbers of non-Islam subscribers hold ideas that are incompatible with an open society too. All these people have at least one thing in common: they would like to change society to suit their ends.
And a very large number of people in my country would happily throw back those fleeing the carnage to become victims of that 40%. Which in my opinion makes them just about as bad.
That statement really doesn't make much sense at all. People are fleeing a war, among them people from the 40% and the 60% group alike. And no one in Europe is advocating throwing anyone back into a war zone. Many want the refugees stay somewhere in the region instead of letting them come to Europe by the millions.
It's not my opinion, but please don't compare that opinion with people who advocate that homosexuals, adulterers and apostates should be put to death. There is no 40% group of the population in Europe that holds views that are anywhere near as disgusting as that. Your relativism goes too far.
[Edit] And just to make it clear, I do not believe that it is really 40% who really hold those opinions. It's probably less. I hope.
Ah, you must be a bit out of touch with recent developments in NL. We're soon to have elections and it looks like we'll have Geert Wilders for prime minister, his main motto is 'close the borders', the secondary one is 'the problem is the foreigners' and the third is 'let's throw all those refugees out'. And whether it is exactly 40% or not is immaterial, the numbers are scary.
http://gatesofvienna.net/2015/09/geert-wilders-party-is-the-...
That's 30% declared right there, another 10% undeclared would not surprise me at all.
I'm not out of touch enough to have missed this opinion. But that is not the same as saying that people should be sent back to war zones. We don't have borders with Syria.
But you are right that I don't know specifically what that Dutch politician actually demands other than closing the borders.
But as all seemingly extremists becoming prime ministers, he'll eventually learn to see a bit more of the bigger picture and cool down if he gets in office.
That's incredibly depressing. I only know of Geert Wilders from the court case (it was part of a law class), but I always assumed he was some uber-fringe politician who would never get anywhere near high office.
The world is entering a new period of radicalization and I'm very worried about the consequences.
But then again these are just polls. And then there needs to be a majority coalition.
But it's a far cry from the Netherlands I knew in the 90's.
Back on the topic: there are some really disturbing messages on social networks and in politician mouths regarding the refugees (who are called migrants here).
Threatening to close your border to incoming foreigners is nothing like like closing your border, enslaving locals trying to flee you, and murdering them systematically.
And there's a difference between a leader being elected once on a wave of fear and the leader declaring themselves god's representative on earth - let the slaughter begin.
There was a boat of Jewish refugees that Roosevelt hoped would be accepted to Cuba but whom the United States was unwilling to accept. 254 of those refugees ended up murdered in the Holocaust: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_St._Louis#.22Voyage_of_the_....
Well, only 50+ years ago there was an over 40% population in the US that thought that blacks were inferior and shouldn't sit in the same restaurants/hotels/schools with whites. In fact it was even law in some states.
Beyond that, there were about all major western countries, France, UK, Belgium, Holland, Italy, etc, that had other people enslaved in colonies up until the sixties. 2+ billion people had their countries managed by foreigners, and their fellow countrymen tortured and executed when asking freedom (and sometimes, just killed for fun).
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/apr/18/britain-destroyed-...
http://www.monbiot.com/2005/12/27/how-britain-denies-its-hol...
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/inside-france...
http://www.theplaidzebra.com/human-zoos-one-europes-shameful...
Heck, even in Paris itself, the French police famously killed over 200 Algerians marching for their country's freedom in a single day in 1961 -- and it took them 40+ years, after all officials were dead or too old, to finally admit it and ask for an apology.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_massacre_of_1961
These countries also thought that they should have a say as to whether a remote country should have this or that president or regime -- to the point of toppling legitimate regimes, bombing those countries, coming to assist one party or another in a civil war, etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...
There have been over 2 million victims of those interventions in the last 10 years alone. Every despicable hit by muslim terrorists (and we all agree its despicable) was met with 4-5 orders of magnitude many more innocent victims on those countries.
If some muslim country managed to harm 1/100 that number of, say, Texans, where would the percentages of "tolerance" and "acceptance" towards them go?
We should condemn all violence -- not forgive the one that has better PR and is done by cool looking people who have the same background as us.
I suspect you too have a bulging bookmark folder like I do of hypocritical western behaviour.
However the battle against militant jihadi extremists is one issue where 'we' are completely in the right. Completely.
No need to apologise for past wrongs. If we have regarded life as too cheap in the past, that is irrelevant to ensuring your own family cannot be killed.
Now prior actions of our own may have exacerbated, strengthened and accelerated the militant jihadis ( Iraq, Afghanistan ). But even without our own errors and crimes militant jihadis would have arisen eventually.
The jihadis have so many 'reasons' to kill us. If some 'reasons' did not exist because we didn't invade Iraq say, or we addressed other 'reasons' ( say for example we disbanded Israel ) there are just so many more 'reasons' left for the jihadis that single us out for killing.
Lets say Iraq was still under Saddam and Syria under Assad. No ISIS perhaps. What then about al Qaeda, the Taliban, al Qaeda in the Yemen, Boko Haram, Jemaah Islamiyah.
And the militant jihadis have found a brainwashing method that repeatably draws from a small but replenishing minority of evil, vain and stupid young people.
I was comparing social attitudes not counting casualties of armed conflict and its repercussions. Comparing these two things quantitatively makes very little sense.
The conservative advocates of Sharia who execute people for their sexual orientation are executing people who live right now in those countries. They don't execute European or American racists from the 1950s and they don't do it as an act of revenge for the Iraq war (that I strongly opposed by the way)
You are using the "someone did some bad things some time ago (and now that I've put things into perspective for you), lets be open minded about another someone doing another something bad right now, because it's only fare!" argument.
Having read various internet comments over the past few days, I'm doubting if that number has gone down any since then.
And to make it clear, I'm not concerned about the number of people coming to Europe. I'm concerned about the attitudes of conservative Islam, anywhere in the world.
If that's your contention then you'd need to account for the high terrorist attack output of Islamists vs other non-Islam subscribers.
I wonder if this is really true though. Some statistics:
https://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/terrorism-20...
While Anders Breivik was shooting kids on the island in Norway, the Norwegian media were speculating that it was most likely perpetrated by muslim extremists. Even though we've historically had way more examples of terrorism perpetrated against immigration related targets by right-wing Norwegians (which was the case with Breivik as well).
The average Norwegian won't remember any of the mosques, immigrant reception centers and immigrant stores that were bombed in Norway in the past. I guess terrorism is quickly forgotten when it isn't your own group that is targeted.
US citizens are at greater risk of far right or Christian extremists than they are of Islamist extremists - see the numbers of people injured and killed by various mass shooters or clinic bombings.
How is that a fair or even interesting comparison, though? Islamist terrorists aren't killing people ostensibly engaged in criminal acts. Islamist terrorists aren't otherwise expected to be agents of the government charged with using physical force to protect the laws. Islamist terrorists target innocents in a deliberate effort to maximize damage and loss of life. Body counts tell almost nothing of the story in an honest comparison of the threat from police officers vs Islamic terrorists.
US citizens are at greater risk of far right or Christian extremists than they are of Islamist extremists
This is a slightly more interesting comparison, but even then you have to look at who the FBI and other law enforcement agencies are watching to understand that Christian extremists are individual actors who target specifics like abortion providers. They're not looking to take down all of Western society. They aren't amassing armies in other countries to assert 6th century law on all the territories that they conquer.
So sure, Christian terrorists' kill numbers might be comparable or even greater than Islamic terrorists domestically (if you unfairly exclude 9/11) - but that doesn't mean that they're the same level of threat in a strategic geopolitical sense.
> At least 48 people have been killed stateside by right-wing
> extremists in the 14 years since since the September 11
> attacks -- almost twice as many as were killed by
> self-identified jihadists in that time.
You'll also need to explain why the FBI terrorist list doesn't show that the government has a similar concern for white supremacists.
Terrorism is what other groups do.
Besides, is it just terrorism that's incompatible with an "open society", or other acts of murder and oppression too? Because from the extermination of 6 million jews down to colonialism, slavery, the pogroms, nukes on civilians, gulags, the massacre in Manchuria, 2 world wars, etc, most western and asian countries don't look that good either.
Or is it that because Western society has had some bad actors/states, that we can never thereafter point to bad behaviors or systems of thought?
What would be those means employed by non-Muslim radicals to effect social change?
I'm inclined to say that urban warfare and terrorizing an entire population with open aggression tactics are not among them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Underground
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oktoberfest_terror_attack
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army_Faction
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Republican_Army
All these are fairly recent examples of non-Muslim radicals attempting to effect social change by the same means Muslim radicals use to try and effect such change in Western countries. That they have not succeeded in building a near-nation state out of that terrorism is largely due to the higher stability of “Western” countries compared to the middle east, though, depending on whom you ask, they were quite successful in Ukraine.
I see this line of argumentation regularly, but since those movements were brought down with significant police and military operations, I don't see them as good examples for why Muslim extremism should not be brought down by police and military operations. There are other reasons, but this comparison doesn't qualify.
Also, I have reservations including nationalist movements and lone-wolf ops in your rebuttal as the underlying nature of the struggle is completely different than that of the Islamic terrorism. You could reason with a radical nationalist and persuade them to explore other options than an armed struggle to reach political goals but good luck trying that with a faith-driven, theology-loving radical who thinks he's on some divine (read: apocalyptic) mission to cleanse the masses of their imaginary sins.
Though here that's beside the point. The Paris attacks were not because France is a free country, but because France was bombing Daesh. This is more like the Lockerbie bombing than like some sort of "clash of civilizations" that so many are implying
What a disgusting rationalization of the indiscriminate killing of innocent people.
"An online statement said eight militants armed with explosive belts and automatic weapons attacked carefully chosen targets in the "capital of adultery and vice," including a soccer stadium where France was playing Germany, and the Bataclan concert hall, where an American rock band was playing, and "hundreds of apostates were attending an adulterous party.""
Oops, they were actually "carefully chosen targets". That's better.
[1] http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/isis-statement-france-to...
Open inside (market place of ideas, secularity, people generally subscribing to the live and let live) and open outside - welcoming, letting people join or willing to help people that are not from that society.
Wanting liberal, secular and socially oriented Europe inside and sealing the borders and isolating oneself from the human suffering outside is definitely lacking empathy, but not incoherent position.
We've been refugees, have taken in refugees, have been a battle field and have waged war with neighbors and overseas creating battle fields elsewhere.
An isolationist strategy is given that history to me morally bankrupt and not an option, even if the position is coherent I find that for me personally that's not a road worth walking due to the inherent hypocrisy that would require.
There are no good answers right now. We are very deep and there will be a lot of pain in the coming years. Everything else is wishful thinking.
ISIS and their ilk kill far more Muslims than any other group.