quote:A friend of mine is a retired chief of police, who used to be in charge of the security of a major city in the south of France. He reported to me that his men had to face an average of 10 rapes a week, 80% made by Muslim young men. 30% being what we call, in French, a “ tournante “, meaning that the victim is being raped by an entire gang, one after the other, often during an entire night. My friend reports that, in many cases, he was able to locate and arrest the rapists, often very young ones, and, as part of the investigation, call the families. He was astonished that, in most cases, the parents not only would back up their rapist children, but also would not even understand why they would be arrested. There is an instant shift in the notion of good and evil as a major component of culture. The only evil those parents would see, genuinely, is the temptation that the male children had to face. Since in most cases the victims were not Muslims, the parents’ answer and rejection was even more genuine: how could their boys be guilty of anything, when normally answering to a provocation by occidental women, known for their unacceptable behavior?
I know very little about Muslim immigration, but I've heard snatches of conversation on the subject -- colorblind immigration policies weaken European ability to monitor and limit certain types of immigrants, the cartoon riots, the (Swiss? Norwegian?) murder of a director critical of Muslims, and of course, the huge French riots over three Muslim men who electrocuted themselves during a police pursuit. I know there've been similar problems in Australia, with widespread rape and race war by Lebanese immigrants.
Does anyone here live in Europe, or know more about the subject than I do? How serious is this problem, and do these immigrants stand out in particular from, say, Chinese or Italian immigrants? Will they be slower to assimilate, or resistant to Western culture entirely? What should Europe do, if anything?
I'd be interested in any information, or links to information, on the subject.
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I have little idea what Europe can do with it's assimilation problems.
In broad terms, it's been said that multiculturalism and tolerance break down when a subculture refuses to respect other cultures and show tolerance.
Lalo, the director murdered by a Muslim you're thinking of was Dutch, Theo van Gogh , the g'g'great-nephew of Vincent. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the screenwriter of Submission, the short film that apparently led to Van Gogh's murder, has received numerous death threats and fatwas from Muslims for her criticism of Islamic culture, including one pinned to Van Gogh's corpse with a knife. Ali, a Somali political refugee, was a member of Dutch parliment until this year when she resigned after the government threatened to revoke her Dutch citizenship.
She has since moved to the US where she works at a think tank.
Edit:in reading Van Gogh's bio in more detail at the wiki link, he wasn't tolerant of Jews or Muslims. But he didn't deserve to be shot in the street for his views.
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I don't know about Europe specifically, but I can tell you that locally in Sri Lanka, the predominant view of locals is that all western women are loose. Hollywood shows it, therefore it must be true.
I've been told - by many many locals - that it is not safe for any white women to take public transportation because they will be sexually assaulted. Not might, but will.
One white woman told me of a bus trip she took, where the man she sat next to unzipped his pants, took out his penis, and positioned himself to lay it on her lap. The man taking the fares knew what was going on, as did the driver, and they laughed. Because foreign white women are all loose.
It is common here for white women to be sexually assaulted. Sometimes it's only grabs or verbal, but still.
I've been told that similar attitudes exist throughout the region.
As well, a woman is considered, oh, tainted and shameful if she's been raped, never mind that she had no control over the circumstances. She is now inferior and not suitable marriage material. Women are, in some countries/cultures, expected to kill themselves since they've brought shame on their parents, family, and community. Women who don't kill themselves are seen as different and socially unacceptable.
All of the above is without reference to any specific religion and of course, this being a generality, does not apply with every single person or in every single circumstance. Some people are enlightened enough to know that this is crap.
As for the Muslim part of things... It is against Muslim beliefs to engage in sex outside the bounds of marriage. There are supposed to be equal punishments for both men and women (or girls and boys as the case may be) who engage in such acts. Rapists are supposed to be punished even more so. Rape victims are not, according to shari'a.
Culturally, however, it's a different story and varies from area to area. Unfortunately. But like all things, it's people exercising unrighteous dominion over others to their own nefarious ends. And in the region, women tend to have far less power than men, so of course men will, well, you get the idea.
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I read this article yesterday. It was written by Timothy Garton Ash in the “Guardian Unlimited” (link below excerpt)
“In a poll conducted for the Channel 4 documentary, only half the British Muslims questioned said they thought of Britain as "my country", whereas nearly a quarter said they thought of it as "their country" - meaning someone else's. The younger respondents were, the greater the alienation. Shockingly, one in three British Muslims aged between 18 and 24 said they would rather live under Sharia law than under British law. In a Pew poll of Muslims worldwide, a gob-smacking 81% of British Muslims said they thought of themselves as a Muslim first and a citizen of their country only second. This is a higher proportion than in Jordan, Egypt or Turkey, and exceeded only by that in Pakistan (87%). By contrast, only 46% of French Muslims said they were Muslims first, compared with 42% who felt themselves first and foremost citizens”
If these poll numbers are valid and show a fair cross section of the Muslim folks living in these countries mentioned, then it is kind of troublesome to contemplate.
The article goes on to talk about some of the possible reasons. It was an interesting article.
The reason I mention it is because back in 1982 or 83, when it was first published, I read Heinlein’s novel “Friday.” Below is an excerpt from the book. Back then I didn’t really take it too seriously, thinking it was just one of those things a novelist makes up to add richness to the plot.
Then I started to wonder if Heinlein maybe had something when we in the USA stared using that politically correct hyphenated-American nomenclature nonsense. I’ve always viewed that as more of a divisive than descriptive way to refer to people. Although it does at least have the name “American” attached to all of them. And that is something positive, I guess. (You probably all know what I’m talking about - that Mexican-American, African-American, Uruguayan-American, British/Polish/Italian/Hungarian-American sort of thing.)
But any worry over that hyphenated-American thing is nothing compared to that above poll. I also heard on the news yesterday that some of those people involved in the plot to blow up those airplanes were 2nd and 3rd generation British citizens. Ouch.
Anyway, in the book the heroine is assigned by her boss to do a bunch of research and correlate what she finds. At one point the boss asks her to describe some of the symptoms of a sick country that is on the skids. One of the things she said was, “It is a bad sign when the people of a country stop identifying themselves with the country and start identifying with a group. A racial group. Or a religion. Or a language. Anything, as long as it isn’t the whole population.” (“Friday” by Robert A. Heinlein chapter XXIII page 233 in my HB copy)
P.S. Two paragraphs later Friday says, ". . . Dominance of males over females seems to be one of the symptoms. I suppose the reverse would be true but I haven't run across it in any of the history I've listened."
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quote: As well, a woman is considered, oh, tainted and shameful if she's been raped, never mind that she had no control over the circumstances. She is now inferior and not suitable marriage material. Women are, in some countries/cultures, expected to kill themselves since they've brought shame on their parents, family, and community. Women who don't kill themselves are seen as different and socially unacceptable.
This is a significant part of keeping women enslaved in the sex trade, from what I understand.
Lalo, your link is very troubling. I don't even know what to say.
Samuel Bush, The Atlantic ran a short blurb about that study in its most recent issue. From what I recall, I believe both Christians and Muslims had fairly high percentages of people who saw themselves as Christians or Muslims first and citizens of their country second. This isn't to take away from the insanely high rate for Muslims in Britain and Pakistan which, from what I recall, significantly exceeds rates for Christians anywhere.
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quote:Originally posted by quidscribis: I don't know about Europe specifically, but I can tell you that locally in Sri Lanka, the predominant view of locals is that all western women are loose. Hollywood shows it, therefore it must be true.
By that reasoning, I should expect all Indians to break into song every five minutes.
Even if their assumption were true, "loose" still doesn't mean they have an open door policy. I'm annoyed at Hollywood for giving American women a bad reputation, but I'm just plain angry at people who think because they saw a couple movies that they have an excuse to racially target women for sexual abuse. That's sick, and I think there's something wrong with a culture that raises men to think that's okay.
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Just out of curiousity, for the Christians among you - are you Christians first, or Americans first? And if you're about to answer 'American', does that mean that you'd fight for your country against your faith? If not, just what does it mean?
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Lyrhawn, our culture does it too. Rapes by strangers are quite often cross-racial. It is easier to justify inhumanity of all sorts to someone you can think of as "other".
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I'm Christian first, definitely, though also strongly self-identified as American. But, put it this way... if faced with a situation where there were children dying whom I could save, I would help those most in need first, without any consideration of whether or not they were Americans. Because they are all equally my kin and my responsibility. Does that make me dangerous to society?
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I don't know, does it? I was just responding to the statistic about people being 'Muslims first'. After all, they were apparently not given the chance to clarify whether they would consider all people their kin and responsibility.
Now, I personally think that people shouldn't be either Muslims or Christians at all, never mind it coming before their nationality. But that's me, and an opinion few people share. The point is, being 'Religion first' is not so unusual as all that, unfortunately. Even in the West.
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Historically, the Mormons all moved to Mexico when the US Government would not protect their precieved right to worship. Yes they did take the flag along and ultimatly provided troops for a US invasion of Mexico. But, the original plan involved leaving the country and settling in Mexico. Mormon first US citizen second. Another interesting trivium. At the start of WWII, the US Government attempted to overcome a wide-spread reluctance on the part of Mormons to enlist in the Armed Services, by recruting for a "Mormon Batallion" of Marines. They were largely recruited from Southern Utah. Objections by Evangelical Protestant groups sidetracked the effort. Most of the enlistees ended up in various units of the Third Division and served in the South Pacific theater. They had Mormon Marine reunions at General Conference time until recent times.
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I am reminded of the quote from Treebeard: "I am not altogether on anybody's side, because nobody is altogether on my side."
Personal loyalties can be a complicated business. Who you are "first" is frequently a matter of personal experience.
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quote:Originally posted by me: Edit:in reading Van Gogh's bio in more detail at the wiki link, he wasn't tolerant of Jews or Muslims
It's not clear to me in the wiki link where this is stated?
Storm, I meant Theo, not Vincent. My link went to Theo, and from it:
quote: He incurred the anger of leading members of the Jewish community by making comments about what he saw as the Jewish preoccupation with Auschwitz. This quote from a 1991 magazine interview is a typical example of such commentary. Van Gogh explained a "smell of caramel" by stating that "today they're only burning diabetic Jews." When he was criticized by the Jewish historian Evelien Gans, he wrote in Folia Civitatis magazine: "I suspect that Ms. Gans gets wet dreams about being ____ed by Dr Mengele." He also expressed the wish that she would sue him so that she would have to explain in court why his remarks were false.
Van Gogh rejected every form of organised religion. In the late 1990s he started to focus on Islam. He caused widespread resentment in the Muslim community by consistently referring to them as geitenneukers (goat-____ers). Although it is not clear whether Van Gogh actually coined the term geitenneukers, he certainly popularized it.
quote:Originally posted by Tatiana: Lyrhawn, our culture does it too. Rapes by strangers are quite often cross-racial. It is easier to justify inhumanity of all sorts to someone you can think of as "other".
From what I thought quid meant, was that a great many of the men in eastern culture have either been taught or learned for themselves that western women were loose, and therefore it was perfectly acceptable for them to rape them.
Cross-racial rapes in America aren't done because the guy of the other race thinks the woman wants it (at least not all the time), they are acts of aggression, where the attacker knows he is doing wrong, and doesn't care anyway. There's a big difference.
My issue isn't race, it's the view of men towards women, it transcends race, it's about gender.
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: From what I thought quid meant, was that a great many of the men in eastern culture have either been taught or learned for themselves that western women were loose, and therefore it was perfectly acceptable for them to rape them.
Cross-racial rapes in America aren't done because the guy of the other race thinks the woman wants it (at least not all the time), they are acts of aggression, where the attacker knows he is doing wrong, and doesn't care anyway. There's a big difference.
Actually, I'm pretty sure that a significant portion of rapes in America are by people who do not understand what rape is, and therefore do not know what they're doing is wrong (or at least illegal).
Posts: 246 | Registered: Jul 2006
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Does anyone have any actual numbers on rape in America to back up any assertions made?
Rape intent? Racial bias? How sure they were about it being criminal or not?
I don't buy that a "significant portion" of it is by people who don't understand it. Rape is very well publicized in America, too much so for that many people to not understand what it is, and that it is wrong. I'll go looking for answers of my own, I just may be wrong.
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quote:By that reasoning, I should expect all Indians to break into song every five minutes.
Yup. There's an obvious - to me - disconnect between them knowing that Bollywood doesn't portray society as it is, that the tele-dramas (soaps to you westerners) don't portray reality, and the FACT that Hollywood does.
quote:From what I thought quid meant, was that a great many of the men in eastern culture have either been taught or learned for themselves that western women were loose, and therefore it was perfectly acceptable for them to rape them.
Yes. Because western women don't mind it and will even welcome it. And yes, I would go so far as to say that they don't understand that rape is harmful, offensive, violent, and unwanted, either by white people or by other local women who are raped. There is a huge disconnect there, as well.
There aren't that many western women actually in the country at any given time. Perhaps a couple of hundred or so in a population of over 20 million. It isn't through personal experience by and large - it's Hollywood.
Hollywood movies, due to piracy and DVDs here costing (at present) Rs.180+, or about $1.80, are easily accessible by anyone who has access to DVDs in general. Well, I should qualify that to add VCDs as well, which are also much much cheaper, and of course, you can rent them for far less than that as well. Bottom line, though, is that Hollywood movies are very accessible here. We can go out and buy any movie you name that's played in North America, including ones that had a very limited viewing audience.
Like Mormon movies. The Baptists at the Barbecue. The Best Two Years. The Hometeachers. And that one that's based on the ten or so books in a series - historical fiction - that I can't remember the name of. Consider that there are less than 500 active Mormons in the country, so not a very large draw, and still, we've had all those movies.
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I can't tell if the sarcastic smiley is aimed at me, or at the culture in question. If it's at me, I don't really know why. If not, thanks for the explanation.
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Um, Lyrhawn, if you're talking about my post, that smiley is most definitely NOT at you, but at the stupidity of people believing that Hollywood=truth.
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I wasn't aware we had a problem with Dearborn. I'm still not aware of any problem with Dearborn.
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When over half the Muslim population of a heavily Muslim populated town like Dearborn have a pro-Hezbollah demonstration, yeah, it's a problem.
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I know a dozen people from the Dearborn area, mostly Chaldeans. I work with them, play cards with them, and eat at their restaurants. None of those that I know would ever support terrorism against the US.
Whether or not they support Hezbollah I really don't know, I've honestly never asked.
When an Arab-American commits a crime, or plots a crime, they'll be jailed. Until then, it's America, free speech and free thought zone.
What do you suggest be done?
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quote:Rapes by strangers are quite often cross-racial.
I don't know where you get your information, Tatiana, or what your definition of "quite often" is, but this is absolutely not true.
I refer you to The US Dept. Of Justice and their tables on victimization rates. According to what I read, (and assuming I interpreted it correctly) only 8.3 percent of sexual assaults against white women were carried out by black offenders, and the estimate of white offenders who raped black women for that time period was so low they couldn't calculate the percentage - the number was based on 10 or fewer cases. In contrast, almost 90% of the rapes against blacks were committed by blacks, and 65% of the rapes committed against whites were committed by whites. There were additional percentages for other races and cases where the perceived race of the offender was not known.
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Violent crime in general tends to be intraracial. As I recall, something like 95% of homicides fall into this category.
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quote: quote:Rapes by strangers are quite often cross-racial.
I don't know where you get your information, Tatiana, or what your definition of "quite often" is, but this is absolutely not true.
I think there needs to be a distinction between stranger rape, date rape, and other rape (ie incest). Most rapes happen by people the victim knows and usually trusts (or should trust).
Rape by strangers is a very small percentage. If we look at the small percentage of stranger rape, then their might be a case to be made about race.
If we lump it all together, then of course most blacks rape blacks, whites rape whites, et cetera. Unfortunately most rape happens in families and social circles--which often share the same race.
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I took a geography class and we discussed the strong influx of Muslims into Europe. Last Christmas I was able to meet with some friends of my parents from France on several occasions, and my aunt and uncle live in Paris as well. The general feeling I have gotten is thus:
Many muslims move to Europe for largely the same reasons people used to move to America, there were greater economical opportunities in Europe than in the Middle East. Muslims bring their culture with them and it is quite different from the culture of their European counterparts.
Muslims immigrants were not always welcome in the countries they started to move to en mass as they tend to move together and form communities, communities that often exclude outsiders and are not always appreciated by outsiders. There is alot of misunderstanding on both sides. Take France for example. Some French folks want the Muslims to fully integrate into society, which to some consitutes abandoning their faith. Some Muslims actively work towards an eventual Muslim majority that can bring the government under the reign of Sharia, and that scares the French.
Muslims like African Americans in the US are disproportionatly represented in criminal statistics by very comparable amounts.
This fuels the fire in most native Frech as they see Muslims as the dregs of society who are trying to take over the country. Naturally this leads to resentment which causes some Muslims to play the part and look at the French as snobbish infidels that are not on equal footing with them, hence more crime.
Its a serious problem, and one that does not make the news much in the US but is very much reported commonly in Europe as France is not the only problem.
I do not know how reliable this is, but according to my aunt who was in France during the World Cup, Zidane head butted Mazeratti because Mazeratti called Zidane and Zidane's (Zidane is ethnically an Arab) mother and sister, terrorists.
Zidane considers himself a Frenchman very much so, and to challenge that was very offensive in his opinion (I am not sanctioning his actions, just giving them context).
Many MANY Muslims feel that since they cannot be considered equals by the French, that they ought to stick together and grow stronger together. The French see this is Muslims trying to be stand offish until they are powerful enough to subject all French men and women to their oppressive religion. Its one of those vicious cycle things.
There are LOTS of essays and papers that have been written about the Muslim problem in Europe.
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lem, follow that link I posted - there are stats on stranger vs. acquantance rape. I haven't looked to see if they're broken up by race of the offender or not, but I'm sure that information is to be had somewhere.
I still don't buy that most stranger rapes are cross-racial either.
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