Majorian posted:

This would suggest that Islam, in and of itself, isn't really the problem here, though. There are other cultural, historical, and social factors at play, as you seem to acknowledge here. One of those is likely the fact that Somalia has been the dictionary definition of a failed state since the 80's, with a civil war that hasn't stopped for thirty years.

as halfway crooks posted:

zzz

Ddraig posted:

Do you perhaps think, maybe, just maybe, that the fact they have moved from their original home, thousands of miles, to a different country, might show a slight desire to integrate?

the trump tutelage posted:

Desire to escape one place doesn't necessarily mean a desire to embrace another.

Frosted Flake posted:

I'm saying broadly the failure of a group to integrate into society, and the negative results of that are not society's fault.

quote:

In particular, Belgian jihadism is concentrated in Molenbeek. It’s a neighborhood of nearly 100,000 people in Brussels, northwest of the city center, which has had a large Muslim population for many years. There are 22 known mosques in the district. Molenbeek shares some characteristics with the banlieues in French—densely populated, large immigrant populations, very high unemployment, complaints of inadequate government services, isolation from the central city and corridors of power.

quote:

“Daily life in Molenbeek works well—but that’s maybe what has fooled us: that in ordinary life, there are no difficulties,” [Françoise] Schepmans, the mayor, said. “And next to that, there are people living in the shadow. And we have left them living in the shadow. We didn’t ask ourselves the right questions.”

quote:

Behind the facades, however, Molenbeek has been in trouble for years. Poverty levels are high, and street and drug crime are common. With a reputation for gun crime, the media started calling it “Chicago on the Senne” (a reference to the Brussels river) as early as 2010.

These problems go hand-in-hand with a bleak outlook for residents. Local Muslims, who form 25 to 30 percent of the area’s population, talk in particular of limited educational and economic opportunities, as well as employment discrimination. As of January this year, 350 Belgian residents are known to have joined ISIS in Syria—a minuscule fraction of the country’s Muslims, but nonetheless more per capita than any other state in Europe.

This trend can in part be explained (albeit, of course, not justified) by conditions in places like Molenbeek. As one young man told Le Monde:

“Please understand that if lots of young people have left for Syria, it’s above all because no one’s ever paid them any attention, until these fanatics gave them the impression that at last they were going to truly exist. Me, I study and I speak French, Arabic and Dutch. But to look for a job I give the address of a friend, who doesn’t live in Molenbeek.”

shrike82 posted:

isn't amy chua the tiger mom woman?

From Wikipedia on the book in question posted:

According to the preface, the authors find that "certain groups do much better in America than others—as measured by income, occupational status, test scores, and so on— [which] is difficult to talk about. In large part this is because the topic feels racially charged." [1][page needed] Nevertheless, the book attempts to debunk racial stereotypes by focusing on three "cultural traits" that attribute to success in the United States.

Wiki again posted:

Following her widespread fame with Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother in 2011, Chua wrote this book with her husband Rubenfeld after observing a more prevalent trend of students from specific groups achieving better academic results than the rest. For example, a striking demographic pattern that more Mormon students in Yale are emerging than a couple years ago. According to an interview conducted by Harry Kreisler from the Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley, the authors explained such phenomenon prompted them to “look further into how those groups perform outside of school, and come to a conclusion that for some reasons, those groups have a tendency to experience most upward social mobility than others.” [2]

GaussianCopula posted:

https://twitter.com/tarapalmeri/status/712689204308926465

Crain posted:

So not a refugee.

Although I'm sure the right wing will spin it into: HE SNUCK INTO TURKEY PRETENDING TO A 4 YEAR OLD GIRL REFUGEE BUT TURKEY WAS TOOOOOOOOO SMART FOR THAT AND SENT HIM BACK BUT LIBERALS IN BELGIUM PICKED HIM UP IN A GOLD PLANE AND BROUGHT HIM BACK!

Crain posted:

So not a refugee.

Although I'm sure the right wing will spin it into: HE SNUCK INTO TURKEY PRETENDING TO A 4 YEAR OLD GIRL REFUGEE BUT TURKEY WAS TOOOOOOOOO SMART FOR THAT AND SENT HIM BACK BUT LIBERALS IN BELGIUM PICKED HIM UP IN A GOLD PLANE AND BROUGHT HIM BACK!

The article you didn't read posted:

One of the men who carried out Tuesday’s bomb attacks in Brussels was arrested in Turkey last year and deported, but Belgium ignored warnings that he was a “foreign fighter,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said Wednesday.

The Turkish president was quoted by news agencies and Belgian media as saying that one of the attackers — whom he did not name — was detained at Gaziantep on the Turkish border with Syria last June. The following month, according to Associated Press, Turkey notified Belgian authorities of his deportation.

“Despite our warnings that this person was a foreign terrorist fighter, Belgium could not establish any links with terrorism,” Erdoğan was quoted as saying by AP.

Laphroaig posted:

Laphroaig posted:

the trump tutelage posted:

The end goal of multiculturalist Liberals and assimilationists is ultimately the same, which is the westernization of immigrants. The latter is at least honest about their intentions. There's something insidious about, on the one hand, claiming you value multiculturalism and ethnic expression, and on the other, trying to engineer society to induce a multicultural/ethnic expression that's more palatable to Western, Liberal morality. You can't talk about reforming structural inequalities specifically as an antidote to radicalization, without also talking about Westernizing Islam.

e.
"If we give you a bigger stake in Western society, then you'll see how inappropriate and problematic your beliefs are. This kebab is delicious by the way."

Pluskut Tukker posted:

I fully agree with this. But you can argue that exclusion and discrimination are problems at the same time that you can argue integration is turning out to be problematic. Or maybe we should ditch the concept of integration entirely and just focus on making sure people get an education, find jobs, are able to form a family, and let the rest sort itself out.

Doomtalker posted:

I think we're getting awfully close to "Final Solution" reasoning here. For centuries, Jews in Europe were an "other" because they dressed differently, had different laws, frequented mostly Jew owned businesses, etc. That was a big part of the origins of anti-Semitism. We all know how that turned out.

the trump tutelage posted:

The end goal of multiculturalist Liberals and assimilationists is ultimately the same, which is the westernization of immigrants. The latter is at least honest about their intentions. There's something insidious about, on the one hand, claiming you value multiculturalism and ethnic expression, and on the other, trying to engineer society to induce a multicultural/ethnic expression that's more palatable to Western, Liberal morality. You can't talk about reforming structural inequalities specifically as an antidote to radicalization, without also talking about Westernizing Islam.

e.
"If we give you a bigger stake in Western society, then you'll see how inappropriate and problematic your beliefs are. This kebab is delicious by the way."

Majorian posted:

If this were accurate, radical Islamism would be considerably more widespread than it is, and would cut across a wider swath of demographics than it actually does. As it stands, it's pretty clear that people who are recruited into Islamist terrorist groups are predisposed to being radicalized.

DarkCrawler posted:

btw. just because there isn't a national racist policy doesn't mean that minorities aren't made to feel different by individual racists. I'm pretty sure that can cause some dudes to snap and be drawn to a percieved community.

Majorian posted:

It's probably not accurate to completely say that one party does or doesn't bear full responsibility, full stop, though. This is a super complicated dynamic we're talking about here. Western societies rarely set out to do an imperfect job of integrating non-Western immigrants; no one's claiming any malice, as far as I can tell.

Let's shift the focus back to Molenbeek for a second - The Atlantic had a good piece on Islamism in Belgium in the aftermath of the Paris attack:



Phlegmish is right that the municipal government has tried to help immigrant populations integrate, but it would seem that many of these programs have barely scratched the surface (per The Atlantic's CityLab):

Majorian posted:

Given that Belgium wasn't able to establish a link between this individual and any terror groups, what, do you think, would have been the appropriate thing to do?

(not asking snarkily, I'm genuinely asking what your opinion is)

Liberal_L33t posted:

Their beliefs actually are problematic though. How does it help anyone to pretend that they aren't? And if you think the beliefs in question that are causing so much contention (which have nothing to do with loving food and thank you for at least tacitly acknowledging that, in contrast to the likes of SedanChair) aren't inappropriate and problematic, my honest and sincere recommendation to you is to get a plane ticket and go join Da'ish so as to hasten your death as much as possible.

the trump tutelage posted:

I think you're misunderstanding me.

My broader point is that we are already always engaged in a process of cultural imperialism and assimilation, even if its insidious soft pressure like rewarding the Westernized immigrants with better access to jobs, disenfranchising the less integrated, making consumerism more appealing, etc. And it's not always soft pressure -- lots of Liberals hate female circumcision and extrajudicial Shariah courts, and justified the Iraq invasion along womens rights lines. So this notion that any country has any respect for anything but a pre-approved, Westernized form of Islam is complete bullshit. But a lot of people like to pretend that multiculturalism is real in practice, and dance around implementing concrete programs to help people integrate (ie. assimilate (ie. abandon their culture and adopt ours)).

Majorian posted:

Don't be obtuse; the Western world propped up dictatorships all throughout the Islamic world during and after the Cold War.

the trump tutelage posted:

The end goal of multiculturalist Liberals and assimilationists is ultimately the same, which is the westernization of immigrants. The latter is at least honest about their intentions. There's something insidious about, on the one hand, claiming you value multiculturalism and ethnic expression, and on the other, trying to engineer society to induce a multicultural/ethnic expression that's more palatable to Western, Liberal morality. You can't talk about reforming structural inequalities specifically as an antidote to radicalization, without also talking about Westernizing Islam.

Frosted Flake posted:

So FGM is cool and good in Western countries because...? Imperialism?

I'll take whatever the Islamic equivalent of Chinese Food is. Diet Islam.

Frosted Flake posted:

So FGM is cool and good in Western countries because...? Imperialism?

I'll take whatever the Islamic equivalent of Chinese Food is. Diet Islam.

Volkerball posted:

Read from the bottom up.

That Turkey saw this person as a "foreign fighter," but Belgium didn't, is something that's going to need to be examined really closely.

The Insect Court posted:

There's no halfway honest accounting of the history of post-war American involvement in other countries that doesn't conclude that the treatment Southeast Asia and Latin America received from the US was vastly worse than what the Muslim world suffered. You need to take a revisionist accounting of history where any sort of American support for a Middle Eastern government becomes America sustaining a puppet dictator and where American intervention on behalf of Muslim nations is elided.

TheLovablePlutonis posted:

It was cool reading an article saying that Syrian refugees in Brazil thought Brazilian Muslims were weirdoes for eating cake after prayer in mosques and being socially liberal

Frosted Flake posted:

So FGM is cool and good in Western countries because...? Imperialism?

I'll take whatever the Islamic equivalent of Chinese Food is. Diet Islam.

LemonDrizzle posted:

https://twitter.com/AP/status/712719419227635712

oh good

Majorian posted:

I, too, have never heard of this Saddam Hussein. Or the Shah. Or the House of Saud.

Seriously, not only did we prop up horrific regimes in the ME for the duration of the Cold War, we continue to do so.

Majorian posted:

If this were accurate, radical Islamism would be considerably more widespread than it is, and would cut across a wider swath of demographics than it actually does. As it stands, it's pretty clear that people who are recruited into Islamist terrorist groups are predisposed to being radicalized.

steinrokkan posted:

As much as you may dislike, those people (well, maybe save for the shah) were far more than western puppets they had their origin in local phenomena and history, and their own agendas. It's nonsense to call is an extension of colonialism.

PT6A posted:

And just look at how Libya, Syria and Iraq have improved now that the Big Mean Dictators are gone! It's like a paradise, really

Majorian posted:

No one's claiming that they were - just that the US and its allies propped them up, and that accounts for at least some of the ill will that the ME feels towards us.