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Old 11-11-2004, 11:22 AM   #73 (permalink)
Dragonlich
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Location: The Netherlands
Roachboy et al.

I'd say most Dutch people and most Muslims want to live in peace. I'm pretty sure most Muslims even share a lot of our values. It's not the mainstream that's the problem, generally; it's the extremists on both sides that fuck things up for the rest of us. A problem when dealing with this particular situation is that most of the extremists have no problems whatsoever of blending into the mainstream crowd. That makes it nigh impossible to find them and stop their lies. One solution is to talk to the moderates, and hope they'll betray/change their extremist brothers, one solution is to kick them all out. The former solution is the way of political correctness, the left, the liberals, etc - it takes a long time, and doesn't appear to work because of that. The latter solution is the direct "easy" approach, which appeals to a lot of people because of it's supposed simplicity and timespan.

Ustwo and others also seem to feel that the problem with Islam in the west goes deeper than that. They seem to say that there is a fundamental difference between the Islamic culture and the European culture, a difference that is so great that it is (nearly) impossible to bridge.

I feel that there might be such a fundamental difference; if it is there, it's religion, and the history of that religion. Europeans have been moving to a secular society since the middle-ages, whereas the Muslims have not. The difference may seem small, but after centuries of cultural development, it's become huge.

It may be possible to find common ground, as we are all fundamentally humans, but that takes time. We might need to compromise on some of our most deeply-rooted ideas, something that's hard, if not impossible. For example, when we look at the position of women in society, it's kind of hard to compromise - either she's equal to men, or she's subordinate. I can't see how there can be a compromise over that... The same goes for many different subjects.
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