muslims Sam Vaknin They inhabit self-imposed ghettoes, subject to derision and worse, the perennial targets of far-right thugs and populist politicians of all persuasions. They are mostly confined to menial jobs. They are accused of spreading crime, terrorism and disease, of being backward and violent, of refusing to fit in. Their religion, atavistic and rigid, insists on ritual slaughter and male circumcision. They rarely mingle socially or inter-marry. Most of them - though born in European countries - are not allowed to vote. Brown-skinned and with a marked foreign accent, they are subject to police profiling and harassment and all manner of racial discrimination. They are the new Jews of Europe - its Muslim minorities. Muslims - especially Arab youths from North Africa - are, indeed, disproportionately represented in crime, including hate crime, mainly against the Jews. Exclusively Muslim al-Qaida cells have been discovered in many West European countries. But this can be safely attributed to ubiquitous and trenchant long-term unemployment and to stunted upward mobility, both social and economic due largely to latent or expressed racism. Moreover, the stereotype is wrong. The incidence of higher education and skills is greater among Muslim immigrants than in the general population - a phenomenon known as "brain drain". Europe attracts the best and the brightest - students, scholars, scientists, engineers and intellectuals - away from their destitute, politically dysfunctional and backward homelands. The Economist surveys the landscape of friction and withdrawal: "Indifference to Islam has turned first to disdain, then to suspicion and more recently to hostility ... (due to images of) petro-powered sheikhs, Palestinian terrorists, Iranian ayatollahs, mass immigration and then the attacks of September 11th, executed if not planned by western-based Muslims and succored by an odious regime in Afghanistan ... Muslims tend to come from poor, rural areas; most are ill-educated, many are brown. They often encounter xenophobia and discrimination, sometimes made worse by racist politicians. They speak the language of the wider society either poorly or not at all, so they find it hard to get jobs. Their children struggle at school. They huddle in poor districts, often in state-supplied housing ... They tend to withdraw into their own world, (forming a) self-sufficient, self-contained community." This self-imposed segregation has multiple dimensions. Clannish behavior persists for decades. Marriages are still arranged - reluctant brides and grooms are imported from the motherland to wed immigrants from the same region or village. The "parallel society", in the words of a British government report following the Oldham riots two years ago, extends to cultural habits, religious practices and social norms. Assimilation and integration has many enemies. Remittances from abroad are an important part of the gross national product and budgetary revenues of countries such as Bangladesh and Pakistan. Hence their frantic efforts to maintain the cohesive national and cultural identity of the expats. DITIB is an arm of the Turkish government's office for religious affairs. It discourages the assimilation or social integration of Turks in Germany. Turkish businesses - newspapers, satellite TV, foods, clothing, travel agents, publishers - thrive on ghettoization. There is a tacit confluence of interests between national governments, exporters and Islamic organizations. All three want Turks in Germany to remain as Turkish as possible. The more nostalgic and homebound the expatriate - the larger and more frequent his remittances, the higher his consumption of Turkish goods and services and the more prone he is to resort to religion as a determinant of his besieged and fracturing identity. Muslim numbers are not negligible. Two European countries have Muslim majorities - Bosnia-Herzegovina and Albania. Others - in both Old Europe and its post-communist east - harbor sizable and growing Islamic minorities. Waves of immigration and birth rates three times as high as the indigenous population increase their share of the population in virtually every European polity - from Russia to Macedonia and from Bulgaria to Britain. One in seven Russians is Muslim - over 20 million people. According to the March-April issue of Foreign Policy, the non-Muslim part of Europe will shrink by 3.5 percent by 2015 while the Muslim populace will likely double. There are 3 million Turks in Germany and another 12 million Muslims - Algerians, Moroccans, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Egyptians, Senegalese, Malis, or Tunisians - in the rest of the European Union. This is two and one half times the number of Muslims in the United States. Even assuming - wrongly - that all of them occupy the lowest decile of income, their combined annual purchasing power would amount to a whopping $150 billion. Furthermore, recent retroactive changes to German law have naturalized over a million immigrants and automatically granted its much-coveted citizenship to the 160,000 Muslims born in Germany every year. Between 2-3 million Muslims in France - half their number - are eligible to vote. Another million - one out of two - cast ballots in Britain. These numbers count at the polls and are not offset by the concerted efforts of a potent Jewish lobby - there are barely a million Jews in Western Europe. Muslims are becoming a well-courted swing vote. They may have decided the last election in Germany, for instance. Recognizing their growing centrality, France established - though not without vote-rigging - a French Council of the Islamic Faith, the equivalent of Napoleon's Jewish Consistory. Two French cabinet members are Muslims. Britain has a Muslim Council. Both Vladimir Putin, Russia's president and Yuri Luzhkov, Moscow's mayor, now take the trouble to greet the capital's one million Muslims on the occasion of their Feast of Sacrifice. They also actively solicit the votes of the nationalist and elitist Muslims of the industrialized Volga - mainly the Tatars, Bashkirs and Chuvash. Even the impoverished, much-detested and powerless Muslims of the northern Caucasus - Chechens, Circassians and Dagestanis - have benefited from this newfound awareness of their electoral power. Though divided by their common creed - Shiites vs. Sunnites vs. Wahabbites and so on - the Muslims of Europe are united in supporting the Palestinian cause and in opposing the Iraq war. This - and post-colonial guilt feelings, especially manifest in France and Britain - go a long way toward explaining Germany's re-discovered pacifistic spine and France's anti-Israeli (not to say anti-Semitic) tilt. Moreover, the Muslims have been playing an important economic role in the continent since the early 1960s. Europe's postwar miracle was founded on these cheap, plentiful and oft-replenished Gastarbeiter - "guest workers". Objective studies have consistently shown that immigrants contribute more to their host economies - as consumers, investors and workers - than they ever claw back in social services and public goods. This is especially true in Europe, where an ageing population of early retirees has been relying on the uninterrupted flow of pension contributions by younger laborers, many of them immigrants. Business has been paying attention to this emerging market. British financial intermediaries - such as the West Bromwich Building Society - have recently introduced "Islamic" (interest-free) mortgages. According to market research firm, Datamonitor, gross advances in the UK alone could reach $7 billion in 2006 - up from $60 million today. The Bank of England is in the throes of preparing regulations to accommodate the pent-up demand. Yet, their very integration, however hesitant and gradual, renders the Muslims in Europe vulnerable to the kind of treatment the old continent meted out to its Jews before the holocaust. Growing Muslim presence in stagnating job markets within recessionary economies inevitably generated a backlash, often cloaked in terms of Samuel Huntington's 1993 essay in Foreign Affairs, "Clash of Civilizations". Even tolerant Italy was affected. Last year, the Bologna archbishop, Cardinal Giacomo Biffi, cast Islam as incompatible with Italian culture. The country's prime minister suggested, in a visit to Berlin two years ago, that Islam is an inherently inferior civilization. Oriana Fallaci, a prominent journalist, published last year an inane and foul-mouthed diatribe titled "The Rage and the Pride" in which she accused Muslims of "breeding like rats", "shitting and pissing" (sic!) everywhere and supporting Osama bin-Laden indiscriminately. Young Muslims reacted - by further radicalizing and by refusing to assimilate - to both escalating anti-Islamic rhetoric in Europe and the "triumphs" of Islam elsewhere, such as the revolution in Iran in 1979. Tutored by preachers trained in the most militant Islamist climates in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and Iran, praying in mosques financed by shady Islamic charities - these youngsters are amenable to recruiters from every fanatical grouping. The United Kingdom suffered some of the worst race riots in half a century in the past two years. France is terrorized by an unprecedented crime wave emanating from the banlieux - the decrepit, predominantly Muslim, housing estates in suburbia. September 11 only accelerated the inevitable conflict between an alienated minority and hostile authorities throughout the continent. Recent changes in European - notably British - legislation openly profile and target Muslims. This is a remarkable turnaround. Europe supported the Muslim Bosnian cause against the Serbs, Islamic Chechnya against Russia, the Palestinians against the Israelis and Muslim Albanian insurgents against both Serbs and Macedonians. Nor was this consistent pro-Islamic orientation a novelty. Britain's Commission for Racial Equality which caters mainly to the needs of Muslims, was formed 37 years ago. Its Foreign Office has never wavered from its pro-Arab bias. Germany established a Central Council for Muslims. Both anti-Americanism and the more veteran anti-Israeli streak helped sustain Europe's empathy with Muslim refugees and "freedom fighters" throughout the 1960s, 70s and 80s. September 11 put paid to this amity. The danger is that the brand of "Euro-Islam" that has begun to emerge lately may be decimated by this pervasive and sudden mistrust. Time Magazine described this blend as "the traditional Koran-based religion with its prohibitions against alcohol and interest-bearing loans now indelibly marked by the 'Western' values of tolerance, democracy and civil liberties." Such "enlightened" Muslims can serve as an invaluable bridge between Europe and Russia, the Middle East, Asia, including China and other places with massive Muslim majorities or minorities. As most world conflicts today involve Islamist militants, global peace and a functioning "new order" critically depend on the goodwill and communication skills of Muslims. Such a benign amalgam is the only realistic hope for reconciliation. Europe is ageing and stagnating and can be reinvigorated only by embracing youthful, dynamic, driven immigrants, most of whom are bound to be Muslim. Co-existence is possible and the clash of civilization not an inevitability unless Huntington's dystopic vision becomes the basic policy document of the West. 031014 ... - above by By Sam Vaknin, 3/6/2003 http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/3-6-2003-36808.asp?viewPage=4 031014 ... - Copyright Notice This material is copyrighted. Free, unrestricted use is allowed on a non commercial basis. The author's name (and a link to this Website) must be incorporated in any reproduction of the material for any use and by any means. http://samvak.tripod.com/europemuslims.html 031014 ... pipedream What bigoted bullcrap! "atavistic and rigid"? What the heck are you saying?! Islam been giving its community rights and liberties non-Islamic socities only dreamt of at the time- women have full rights to property, have the right to divorce, be anything they want to be- everything feminists yak about Islam's already given to its women! and as for "ritual slaughter and male circumcision", it sure as heck does NOT 'insist' on slaughter- the slaughter itself is the mainstay of a once-a-year religious holiday commemorating Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son for God, not because killing animals is fun. Male circumcision- sure it does. Judaism says so too, and its part of being hygenic, not enthusiasm for penis-chopping. As for refusing to inter-mingle and/or inter-marry, that's another misguided generalisation. What do you think Muslims are doing in non-Muslim countries if they had such issues intermingling? I've got cousins who are married to Christian Americans, Indian Hindus; my grandmother is Iranian! I've friends with Danish, German, Scottish mothers and grandmothers. What ARE you saying? And since when does brown skin and a foreign accent become a stigma? I don't have brown skin and my accent is more American than anything else. I am Muslim. Where does that place me, and my family, and the people I know? I suppose by that you also lump together all of the world's population that has an accent and brown skin- hello, Latin America, Asia, Africa. Ignorance doesn't belong on blather, keep your misinformed notions to yourself. I don't think anyone has the right to criticise anyone's religion unless you've read about it and know about it in depth and detail; otherwise you just sound ignorant and narrow-minded beyond belief. 031015 ... minnesota_chris if you read through to paragraph 5, he says that those are all stereotypes, and wrong, that we should have more Muslim immigrants around, because they are smart and hardworking. 031015 ... Dafremen There is something about these people that smacks of brotherhood and community.(Ever notice how the word COMMUNITY begins with C and ends in UNITY?) Their cooperation with one another and with the rest of humanity is appalling. How dare their belief system honor the mothers of their children before the men! How DARE they say that young people should focus their minds on things other than sex until they are ready to have children and start families! Where do these thugs come off claiming that we have a responsibility to raise responsible citizens and leaders, by raising children in a loving, but disciplined environment? Who ON EARTH DO THEY THINK THEY ARE FOOLING? Why can't they be more like those who claim to be muslims but who go AGAINST the teachings of the Quran by killing and maiming? Why can't they get the definition of jihad...a holy WAR rife with slaughter and prejudice, RIGHT? Do they honestly believe that anyone's going to respond to their respectful regard for others' beliefs, when they insist on accompanying that regard with a stubborn refusal to assimilate those beliefs into their own culture?! How insincere is THAT? Why can't they say Merry Christmas, just because they believe that Allah has told them not to? How UNAMERICAN ARE THESE PEOPLE FOR CLINGING TO THEIR QURAN'S TEACHINGS, INSTEAD OF EMBRACING COMMERCIALISM DURING THE HOLIDAYS LIKE THE REST OF US?! If you can't be a part of the melting pot, at the cost of your own personal beliefs and your God...what the f*ck are you doing here?! These muslims need to be more like us. More materialistic. More focused on themselves and less focused on each other and the people around them. They need to ignore their children in favor of their own personal satisfaction, and ignore the future..sh*t isn't NOW good enough for them? What does any good American give a f*ck about the future, when we have all of this self indulgent living to do right NOW?! These muslims need to get with the program or get the f*ck out!!! America love it, trash it, or LEAVE it! 031015 ... Lemon_Soda People are people. You live in your world. Let others do the same. The person one should most contemplate is ones self. 031015 ... Dafremen I am hoping that you aren't responding to my blathe, and that if you are, you are KIDDING. You are kidding right? (Should I have labelled it sarcasm?) 031015 ... black there's something inherently wrong with a system that allows so many to pervert and use it as a tool for facist rule muslims are fine, it's the fanatics of every cause that mess it up for everyone regardless, the fear makes it hard to not feel hatred it's hard to keep an open mind i don't like muslims, because i'm scared of muslims, which is a fault of mine, but still a fear that has basis and boy do they want all us americans dead - just watch their television 031015 ... pipedream sometimes i think i love you, daf :) 031015 ... Lemon_Soda Actually, when I read your post I assumed it was sarcasm. What I posted is just my attitude towards any argument over discrimination, not a retaliation to your own words, Dafremen. 031016 ... pipedream um. daf WAS being sarcastic, wasn't he? 031016 ... oldephebe in his own redoubtable inimitable style..yes ... 031016 ... Dafremen Yes he was, and thanks for clearing that up LS.. : ) I actually think that of all of the major religions out there, those muslims that are TRUE to their Quran, are the closest thing the human race has to hope for a better future. They cling so tightly to the old values (the family FIRST sort, not the bigotry sort, that's a product of our "proud" european heritage), because the alternative is to embrace the new ways, and quite frankly...the new ways SUCK and haven't done much to add to the fabric of human society. There is a book called Book of Inquiries by Ahmad H. Sakr Ph.D. ISBN: 0911119833 Where most of the questions concerning proper conduct according to the teachings of the Quran are discussed in length. If you are unfamiliar with the Muslim faith, or have only read non-Muslim produced literature on the subject..give this book a try. It reveals a people who embrace all humanity, do NOT believe in killing, have the UTMOST respect for women and for family, but who put God first in their lives. P.S. This has been a non-denominational endorsement of the Muslim faith. 031016 ... a thimble in time Are there any Moslim blatherers out there? If so, please blather because I really don't no much about you. 031016 ... oldephebe the british ex-jesuit nun and theologian/scholar - katherine armstrong - has written eloquent primers on the moslem as well as buddhist tradition, she also has drawn an interesting portrait of the christain and jewish tradition as well in addition to a seperate tomb delineating the dissonance and diachotomies and the shared heritage of the two .. her writing remarkably does not bear the taint of a euro-centric or catholic/christian/greek orthodox inculcation and withering dogmatic and doctrinaire perspective..hmm perspective is not the word i'm looking for.. ah it's kind alike her conclusions have not been sifted through the "christian" spectography of fealty to some paternalistic tsk tsk tomb of ..okay look she doesn't waste time in spouting her personal philosophical divergences from these various traditions.. i've read a bit of her tomb on buddhism .. so.. oh and thanks to pd for sharing the authority of her personal experiences.. i really have been meaning to pick up a copy of the Quaran .. I've been told that it is a beautifully written tract of faith ... ... 031016 ... pipedream i am. and 'phebes, DO give that a whirl, a good translation of the Qura'an is indeedy food for the soul. 031017 ... mon i like watching: 'let the quran speak' with shabir ally (on tv here in canada) also available online: http://www.quranspeaks.com/main/ loves everybody 031017 ... Dafremen The true beauty of the Quran can only be experienced in Arabic, however. Still, any attempt at reaching outside one's personal box is to be appreciated and speaks volumes about the maturity and depth of the person reaching. THE FOLLOWING IS IN ANSWER TO THE DIPSH*TS WHO INSIST ON CALLING ANYONE WHO SEEKS AFTER TRUTH FROM WHATEVER SOURCE, BE IT RELIGIOUS OR SCIENTIFIC, A FANATIC OR A CULTIST. WITH ALL DUE RESPECT, FROM MY EGO AND NOT MY HEART..F**K YOU! Ok where were we? Oh yea. I just picked up Book One and Book Two of the Shariyat Ki SUGMAD which means "Way of the Eternal" at the thrift store for a dollar. This is the oldest Holy Work known to man, predating the Vedas and Upanishads of Hinduism by what some estimate is over 10,000 years, they date to antediluvian times. These books come from Tibet, and were dictated by an ECK Master of the Katsupani Monastery in northern Tibet. I have ALWAYS searched, ALL books of data and knowledge, seeking the truth between the lies. I have over 300 volumes in the most recent incarnation of my library, ranging in subject from Einstein's Ideas and Opinions to Uncle John's Bathroom Reader. I have almost exclusively filled this collection with books of information and knowledge, be it true or false knowledge. THAT has been my quest. To read between the lines..to determine the common thread and throw out the sh*t that just didn't hold water. I would welcome ALL of you to do the same. Those that tell you that you must focus on ONE truth, unless they were speaking of Universal Oneness and Unity, were lying to you by insisting that THEIR TRUTH be your understanding's tomb, as well as theirs. Plain and simple. Straightforward as hell. The absolute truth lies between the lines, within the layers upon layers of opinion and ego that have served to obscure the facts. When someone comes up to you and tells you something that makes no sense to you, you have TWO choices: You can see them as the ignorant child and yourself as the smart, informed one, or you can see them as the teacher who knows something that your experience has yet to introduce you to and you can LISTEN. It would behoove you to do the latter, then test their truth out for yourself. If it does not hold water, then you have at LEAST formed a belief in regards to that subject based on something other than ignorance. If instead, you choose to point and laugh, or shake your head at the "poor deluded soul", you are little more than one in a group of children, laughing at that which is foreign to you. Know now, that your laughter and your arrogance serve only to draw attention to your ignorance. 031017 ... pipedream will you marry me, daf? 031017 ... Lemon_Soda All about the experience. Some people have shattered, skewed, off, incorrect, dumb stupid, degenerate..pick a word/throw a rock ideas on how the world should be. As if anyone's world could really be the same. Point is, they follow rules you don't for what you believe to be a good reason. Some poeple, though, somepeople have got that rule you've been looking for. That experience. That boundry. That crucial piece of emotional input. Who knows. You know the way. you know what you need to hear to make it where you want to be. Just listen more than you talk. You'll find um. And if you do... LISTEN! ...you'll get to where you want to be. 031017 ... a thimble in time thanks o'phebe, daf', p'd for the info. 031017 ... a thimble in time Thanks for the info guys. 031017 ... smurfus rex i love finding truly interesting reading here. Daf, I have to say that I had to double-check for your sarcasm in your first post...mostly because I thought it was quite out of character for you to go on such a tirade, and as for the post about ECK, I didn't think I'd run across anyone else besides my uncle who had heard of it. :) Anyone ever really looked at Islam and thought seriously of converting? 031018 ... pipedream i was born one, so no, but i really really admire converts; their faith is this incredibly strong, vibrant thing. being born a certain person is easy; making the jump is awe-some. 031019 ... Dafremen I have. I've considered it very very seriously. The way of the Sufi seems particularly appealing. 031019 ... pipedream i think so too, i have a strong pantheist leaning...but the only thing not-so-right about the Sufi element is their detachment from the world...in Islam you aren't supposed to do that, really, which is why we don't have any concept of nuns/monks either. the world is your ultimate test; you have to stand up and deal with liars and scumbags and evil nasty folks...retreating from society is kind of like running away from all that. tolerance, patience, etc. Islam expects one to 'be a man!' (or woman!). no wishy-washyness. 031020 ... Dafremen Let me read something to you pipedream: "The whole fabric of mankind is in the prison of society and self. This is a tragic existence controlled by [insert your word for dark forces here] in life after life. [Again your word for dark forces] is the prison warden, and those who attempt to escape are usually independent. They believe in God, are stubborn and rambunctious; yet they, too, imprison themselves ever more securely in the prison of the [dark forces.] Man is both an exile and a prisoner, and his blindness is a darker imprisonment still. The inescapable confinement of the Soul within this world is due mainly to the religion it follows. The church has become man's illusion and comfort. He parades before all people as righteous and spiritual, but he is likened unto a rotten apple where the peel has a glossy shine but the inner part is filled with worms." Perhaps this is why they separate themselves. Perhaps it is because they must serve God first to save their souls, and count on God to save the rest of humanity. As much as I have dedicated my life to promoting unity and cooperation, I only do so for so long as my ego realizes that I am only capable of planting a seed, not of making it grow. The minute I believe myself to be the gardener, rather than a simple laborer in that garden, I have failed and so will anything that has been planted by my hand. The purpose of religion is NOT to save souls or even humanity, love. Its purpose is to plant seeds. Only God saves souls. 031020 ... pipedream absolutely, i don't disagree with that- but what i'm also saying is that other than your bond with God you have a bond with society, and it is through interaction that your God-bond is tested and tried, because we *will* meet people who will shake our faith, we *will* meet people who remind us that God really does notice and the way we deal with life and our part in the Bigger Plan will be the way our faith will manifest itself. i hope this isn't too garbled :) 031020 ... Dafremen No, I understood completely. However I believe that what I'm saying is that by testing our ability to work within the framework of society, in a very real way, we are also giving in to our need to be a part of that society...to belong. I've seen what the extreme result of this strengthening process that you speak of is: It's people that walk around like Daniel in the lion's den, seeing everyone around them as either broken, evil or both. They look upon others with pity, self righteous piety or suspicion. Someone told me once, that you have to save yourself before you can do anything for others. Well again, I don't believe we can save ourselves..I DO believe that we can foster the sort of understanding and the state of heart that will allow us to be saved however. I would appreciate it if you would read og_mandino real quickly, not to be convinced of his techniqe, but to understand what he is saying about repetition and subliminal programming. If you are constantly bombarded by the messages of a broken society, whether or not you resist those messages, your subconscious mind is WIDE open to those messages at some level or another, whether you consciously feel you are affected or not. You ARE affected and there's really not much you can do about it except to keep those messages from reaching any of your input mechanisms (eyes, ears..etc). I believe this might be part of the Sufi philosophy. Do we strengthen our castle walls by allowing the enemy to gain access through the back gate? 031021 ... pipedream but don't you think if you strengthened your walls enough, you would also be very close to shutting people out? 031021 ... Dafremen Only if you fail to maintain control of the front gate. Programming and cultural immersion can do that to a mind. 031021 ... smurfus rex the stronger a wall is, the stronger its gate must be... the stronger the gate is, the harder it is to open... one can construct a wall so protective that it becomes unapproachable by others... the degree of protection a wall provides is directly proportionate to the degree of exclusion that comes with it... a wall without gates is impermeable, but an impermeable wall is suffocating; compare a sheet of plastic wrap and a handkerchief...both provide a certain degree of protection, but one can only breathe through the handkerchief... when one is detached from and protected against the world, one can not experience the world as it is... 031021 ... pipedream oui. precisely. i DO agree that you should fix yourself before you go about trying to fix other people, but the self-fixin' shoul be in conjunction with the world. methinks 'tis possible. 031022 ... oldephebe Is the Shariyat-Ki-Sigmad Book I and II available any where online as a readable text file? 040514 ... p2 oe i'm checking now but it helps to spell it right sugmad 040514 ... oE sugmad, yes sugmad...thanx 040514 ... somebody you might try the book that it was plagiarized from...path of the masters by julian p. johnson 040514 ... oldephebe yeah, i ah have been to about 8 or 9 different sites that pretty definitively catalogue a remarkable similarity with Mr. Twitchert's works and other holy and or guru inspired writ. I'd still like to get the book for the inherent truths it contains. like what if we found out that Pual or Saul really ripped off someone else's works. Would that change the influence, the inherent truth and power of the so called plaigerized work? Not for me. I'd just go tsk tsk... and silence the thunder in my ears with the..okay so maybe I'd be all crucible of the soul and..whatever but eventually I'd begin to feed from those streams again. ... 040514 ... oE thank you though for sharing that..I will now go in search of "Path of the Masters" 040514 what's it to you? who go blather from