Right. Because the proverbial other camp seems to be suffering from severe misunderstanding, here are my views and reasoning.
My opinion: I'm not half as racist as the people saying I'm racist.
My reasoning: I didn't bring up the issue of race. What I'm consistently bringing up, though, is culture, religion and common pragmatism. For example, in the case of withdrawing food aid, I'm saying these people should have incentives to stop growing their population ad infinitum while they're not even producing half the food they need. Did I mention Africa? It happens to be the only place in the world where that's true on such a large scale, but they have a different skin colour than me, so the real racists assume I'm racist for saying they need to control their birth rates if they ever want to break out of the yearly cycle of famine, food aid, population growth and more famine.
My opinion: Immigrants in Europe who are part of islamic religious groups are a group with a greatly-increased risk of a lot of bad things.
My reasoning: Moroccans import illiterate brides and conservative husbands from Morocco for their sons and daughters - often family members. Their offspring is known for being genetically set for having a disproportionate amount of mental and physical disorders. Their cultures are exceedingly group-bound, and people who break that tradition are at risk. A Moroccan woman was beaten so badly she had a miscarriage for dating a man who wasn't ethnically Moroccan.
Meanwhile, reports of honour killings and informal sharia courts in some European countries have emerged. Because these groups are so closed, often have their own schools, mosques and sometimes even medical clinics, watching out for dangerous developments is hard. The man who murdered a film maker for insulting Muhammed was linked to an isolationist mosque that couldn't be properly investigated until after the murder.
There is certainly some anti-democratic sentiment within large portions of several muslim populations in western Europe (Moroccans, Turks, Somalians, Iraqis, Iranians and Pakistanis). Because a lot of them, especially the young ones, completely reject western values which oppose their tight-knit group values, they're not likely to listen to that system or respect it in any way. They care more for the approval of their peers, it's been said, than they do about spending months (yes, it's that lenient) in jail for rape or purposely inflicting physical injury.
My opinion: Some cultural or ethnic groups are much more likely to be involved in crime or welfare.
My reasoning: It's the plain truth. There is no way of denying it - those are the facts, those are the figures. Moroccan young men, closely followed by Antillean young men, are exceedingly over-represented in crime and welfare.
My opinion: A political and social taboo on researching these issues has only recently been cracked open.
My reasoning: There was an article in a newspaper a few days ago. It explained how research that didn't support the idea that all cultures were equal, everyone was equally capable, problems were the result of poverty and genetic differences were only phenotypical was categorically refused funding, censored and the authors were disciplined or rejected in academic circles.
However, after some political wake-up calls (two high-profile murders and several riots in a few years), the taboo has been lifted slightly, and all results from research since then has indicated that there are differences in cultures that have a causal link with crime, welfare and rejection of democracy and western values, and that some cultural and religious groups have simply had much more of a deep-rooted conflict with our society.
It's 5 am and the sun is rising. I'll be off to bed. Goodnight - I hope this thread is still open and going when I return.
26 May 2012, 9:06 pm
