The Student Room Group

Why Islamophobia is not the answer

Let's be honest, when people are blowing themselves up somewhere in Iraq, it's not our problem. We acknowledge on a factual level how horrible it is but we don't have a significant emotional reaction. When these animals are running innocent people over with trucks and shooting random people on streets and it's happening in places you went just last month and that you know and love, it provokes a completely different reaction.

And people in the western world realise that no amount of intelligence is going to save you from these kinds of attacks. When some random person , that is well integrated into society, decides they don't care about their life, then they can do whatever they want. People instinctively feel that the only way to stop them is to systematically exclude and remove all people with a certain belief or opinion from society. Like removing all a lung or kidney to remove the few cancerous cells. They feel that this is the only solution to this problem. This is how have morons like Donald Trump and idiotic ideas like Brexit become so popular. Because people are scared and when people are scared they will make irrational decisions.

The problem is that if we do this, we only alienate and hurt the already angry fundamentalist terrorists even more. We create a situation where they feel they have nothing to lose and you only get more attacks. This creates more irrationality - "let's monitor mosques" and "create bans on Muslims in public places" - more alienation and more terrorism. It's a cycle and it's only getting worse. If I had said that a man that suggests we should "build walls to keep Mexicans out" and "stop Muslims from entering the USA" could have a 46% chance of being the next US president, five years ago - people would laughed at the idea.

So, don't vote for Donald Trump, if you voted Brexit to keep immigrants out - feel ashamed of yourself and don't hate on Muslim people.

Scroll to see replies

Reply 1
Original post by Arbe
Let's be honest, when people are blowing themselves up somewhere in Iraq, it's not our problem. We acknowledge on a factual level how horrible it is but we don't have a significant emotional reaction. When these animals are running innocent people over with trucks and shooting random people on streets and it's happening in places you went just last month and that you know and love, it provokes a completely different reaction.

And people in the western world realise that no amount of intelligence is going to save you from these kinds of attacks. When some random person , that is well integrated into society, decides they don't care about their life, then they can do whatever they want. People instinctively feel that the only way to stop them is to systematically exclude and remove all people with a certain belief or opinion from society. Like removing all a lung or kidney to remove the few cancerous cells. They feel that this is the only solution to this problem. This is how have morons like Donald Trump and idiotic ideas like Brexit become so popular. Because people are scared and when people are scared they will make irrational decisions.

The problem is that if we do this, we only alienate and hurt the already angry fundamentalist terrorists even more. We create a situation where they feel they have nothing to lose and you only get more attacks. This creates more irrationality - "let's monitor mosques" and "create bans on Muslims in public places" - more alienation and more terrorism. It's a cycle and it's only getting worse. If I had said that a man that suggests we should "build walls to keep Mexicans out" and "stop Muslims from entering the USA" could have a 46% chance of being the next US president, five years ago - people would laughed at the idea.

So, don't vote for Donald Trump, if you voted Brexit to keep immigrants out - feel ashamed of yourself and don't hate on Muslim people.




I will not vote for Trump because I am not American, but I am a great fan.
I voted OUT mainly on immigration and I am not ashamed

Have a lovely day
Oh so we shouldn't offend and hurt the terrorists that want to kill us? Why don't we bake them some cookies as well? And of course, let's continue to allow these wonderful people into our country by the bucketload. After all, they've enriched our society so much with their peaceful, tolerant religion.
(edited 7 years ago)
While banning Muslims is clearly not the answer, I don't see what's bad about some initiatives such as monitoring certain mosques that are known or suspected to be harbouring extremist imams and allowing them to preach their poison to the local community. This problem must be snipped in the bed, which is the ideology, and just ignoring the whole problem and saying "it's none of our business" is not helping and could in fact be making it worse.
Reply 4
The moment we start to treat a significant portion of our population differently just because of their religion, we foster more hate and create a larger pool of potential recruits for organisations like ISIS.
Reply 5
Original post by Plantagenet Crown
While banning Muslims is clearly not the answer, I don't see what's bad about some initiatives such as monitoring certain mosques that are known or suspected to be harbouring extremist imams and allowing them to preach their poison to the local community. This problem must be snipped in the bed, which is the ideology, and just ignoring the whole problem and saying "it's none of our business" is not helping and could in fact be making it worse.


See, what I think the terrorist attacks in Nice, Paris and some of the other gun-related mass shootings in Ameria have shown is that if someone who is already a well-established citizen feels strongly enough about something and is willing to die, they can do ridiculous amounts of damage quite easily.

You have to remember, France was already in a "state of emergency" when yesterday's attack happened. The attack still happened. This was a man that lived in France for many many years. And it doesn't take the kind of sophiscated planning and networking which will be picked up by intelligence to buy a truck and run people over.

Given that such a significant number of people with this ideology exist, the only way to stop the problem from getting worse is to stop alienating and enraging them ever further. There is literally nothing else that we can do.
(edited 7 years ago)
Reply 6
You can do what Canada is doing. More integration of the different communities. So everyone is a compassionate citizen. UK hasn't really tried to do that.
Original post by Arbe
See, what I think the terrorist attacks in Nice, Paris and someone the other gun-related mass shootings in Ameria have shown is that if someone who is already a well-established citizen feels strongly enough about something and is willing to die, they can do ridiculous amounts of damage quite easily.

You have to remember, France was in a "state of emergency" when yesterday's attack happened. This was a man that lived in France for many many years. And it doesn't take the kind of sophiscated planning and networking which will be picked up by intelligence to buy a truck and run people over.

Given that such a significant number of people with this ideology exist, the only way to stop the problem from getting worse is to stop alienating and enraging them ever further. There is literally nothing else that we can do.


No, that's not the answer. It was intelligence of this kind that prevented at least 6 terrorist attacks in London/UK recently if the media is to be believed. And monitoring extremists preachers is not targeting a community.
Reply 8
Original post by Plantagenet Crown
No, that's not the answer. It was intelligence of this kind that prevented at least 6 terrorist attacks in London/UK recently if the media is to be believed. And monitoring extremists preachers is not targeting a community.


Of course you shouldn't reduce intelligence activities. They prevent many of the organised, "professional" attacks. You can even increase if you want. But that won't stop the "suicidal man with a gun/truck" type attacks. I don't think you can even stop them. But if you make an organised, public effort to target islamic people, it only worsens the problem.

A very good practical example of this is a vote for Donald Trump. So this moron says we should "ban all Muslims from the United States". A vote for him is a vote for Islamophobia. Because firstly a Muslim can say they are a Hindu at an airport and also there a millions of Muslims already in the US. So it doesn't prevent anything. What it does do though is make people think "I Iive in a country where the ideology is that we are banned from entering...what does this say about my future". Then they have nothing to lose, so they go and kill themselves along with many others.
(edited 7 years ago)
Original post by Arbe
Of course you shouldn't reduce intelligence activities. They prevent many of the organised, "professional" attacks. You can even increase if you want. But that won't stop the "suicidal man with a gun/truck" type attacks. I don't think you can even stop them. But if you make an organised, public effort to target islamic people, it only worsens the problem.


Who's saying intelligence will be able to stop every attack? That is a nonsensical argument. As you say, if someone wants to blow themselves up then they will, regardless if their community is being monitored or not. But that's not an excuse for the authorities to turn a blind eye to potential extremist activities that are going on in these communities.
Reply 10
Original post by Plantagenet Crown
Who's saying intelligence will be able to stop every attack? That is a nonsensical argument. As you say, if someone wants to blow themselves up then they will, regardless if their community is being monitored or not. But that's not an excuse for the authorities to turn a blind eye to potential extremist activities that are going on in these communities.


The authorities should target extremism wherever that have information to believe it occurs. If that's in a mosque, so be it. If it's a flat in Newcastle, so be it. But it would be wrong to target somewhere simply because it is a mosque.
Original post by offhegoes
The authorities should target extremism wherever that have information to believe it occurs. If that's in a mosque, so be it. If it's a flat in Newcastle, so be it. But it would be wrong to target somewhere simply because it is a mosque.


I agree with you, I never said anything about targeting a mosque just because it's a mosque.
Islamophobia is a form of scaremongering. Scaremongering has never been the answer to anything.
Reply 13
Original post by Arbe
See, what I think the terrorist attacks in Nice, Paris and some of the other gun-related mass shootings in Ameria have shown is that if someone who is already a well-established citizen feels strongly enough about something and is willing to die, they can do ridiculous amounts of damage quite easily.



Most terrorists in France were thugs. The terrorist in Nice was a Tunisian immigrant with a criminal history, not an "established citizen".
So basically you're saying we shouldn't speak out against Islam or do anything to upset them because it will lead to more terrorism? Sympathising with terrorists and self-censoring ourselves isn't the answer either. People like you are part of the problem. As a society we're too scared to 'offend', so we just sit quietly waiting for the next terrorist attack, then come out with hastags condemning 'Islamaphobia' when the root cause of all this mess is the religion you so proudly defend.
No matter what we do terrorism on any level will always exist.

As said above the only thing not attempted is managed integration.

Atm it is too easy to live in a community where everyone else has the same believes/religion/experiences.

People need to be encouraged to integrated and live with different communities.
Original post by Arbe
Let's be honest, when people are blowing themselves up somewhere in Iraq, it's not our problem. We acknowledge on a factual level how horrible it is but we don't have a significant emotional reaction. When these animals are running innocent people over with trucks and shooting random people on streets and it's happening in places you went just last month and that you know and love, it provokes a completely different reaction.
actually the west has cared massively about what happens in iraq and afganistan- which is exactly why it sent armies over there. the world is a global place , apart form the fact there are millions of muslims living in the west, we know that although the islamic world, espec middle east is a mental place, what happens over there will have some influence to the muslims living here - even if thats a rather odd thing to say, its prob not true to say for most other ethnic groups who arnt causing these same problems -but appears to be the case for muslims
Original post by Arbe
And people in the western world realise that no amount of intelligence is going to save you from these kinds of attacks. When some random person , that is well integrated into society, decides they don't care about their life, then they can do whatever they want.
actually these people arnt well integrated into any society - hence why they are so easily swayed by the false dogma from likes of IS and the scores of other islamist groups round the world ( no sound minded content non-islamic person woudl be infleunced by IS) - you only have to read threads on tsr to her apologists from muslim students - who youd expect to be integrated, for many of these terrroists groups. most of these are young, ignorant and glued to islamic chat forums, hence where they develop their politics. and the mainstream authorities do nothing about this. Heck, not even TSR takes any action against their posts here. so radicalism is ineveitable. terrorist attacks are not however, seeing as Intelligence has foiled far more attacks that have actually happened. its just the case that France has a far larger islamic population than anywhere else- and its intelligence services are filing to to keep track. however - there will now come , as a result fo these tacks i suspect a differnt attitude toward tackling this issue
Original post by Arbe
People instinctively feel that the only way to stop them is to systematically exclude and remove all people with a certain belief or opinion from society. Like removing all a lung or kidney to remove the few cancerous cells. They feel that this is the only solution to this problem. This is how have morons like Donald Trump and idiotic ideas like Brexit become so popular.
certainly society in general is becoming more polarised and extreme - for various reasons - poltical islamism is one of them, which has been around for a lot longer than Trump and brexit movement. Obviously one of the effects of spread of extreme islam is that the rest of the world becomes more extreme in response
Original post by Arbe
Because people are scared and when people are scared they will make irrational decisions. The problem is that if we do this, we only alienate and hurt the already angry fundamentalist terrorists even more. We create a situation where they feel they have nothing to lose and you only get more attacks. This creates more irrationality - "let's monitor mosques" and "create bans on Muslims in public places" - more alienation and more terrorism. It's a cycle and it's only getting worse. If I had said that a man that suggests we should "build walls to keep Mexicans out" and "stop Muslims from entering the USA" could have a 46% chance of being the next US president, five years ago - people would laughed at the idea. So, don't vote for Donald Trump, if you voted Brexit to keep immigrants out - feel ashamed of yourself and don't hate on Muslim people.
the problem islamists have created globally ( not just in the west) has been around again, LONG before any trummpist movements, anti muslim feeling, moinitoring of mosques etc you have it completly backwards. islamists have been committing attrocities for decades it is in their creed. If the West is to blame for anything , its ignoreing the problems they have caused in other parts of the world for far too long, being apologists for their ideology and actions - even supplying them with arms and aid for so many decades ( ie tony blair, margaret thatcher, bill and hillary clinton supplying to directly pakistan, saudi and mujahadeens in asia and middle east - Bad political call
I largely agree.

What is needed from the Muslim community is to be open and accept that other Muslims are the perpetrators of these attacks. Yes, it's ultra-conservative wahhabism, but it's still Islam. At the other end of the spectrum, it needs to be okay for a Muslim to drink, gamble and marry a non-Muslim without renouncing their heritage. The idea of who is and who isn't a Muslim needs to be opened right up, just as the idea of who and who isn't a Christian or Jew. The ability to be a Muslim or of Muslim background needs to be not restricted to faith.

I am of Protestant background and as someone that has not been to church since my teens (I did have a very brief phase at age 12-13) admit it would not be fair to call myself a Christian. However if I were Jewish but not practising Judaism I would still be Jewish. So it's admittedly complicated.

The point I'm getting at is that in order for less offence to be instinctively felt, Islam needs to evolve as other religions have done. Women's rights need to improve. Parents should accept that their child might be homosexual, might not want to marry, might want to drink alcohol or have sex out of wedlock (it might not be appropriate to categorise the aforementioned as one homogeneous group but the point is NONE OF THEM ARE BAD IN THEMSELVES). If the five pillars aren't strictly adhered to, hey ho. They are still Muslim, or not, if they wish to call themselves non, lapsed or ex Muslim. Only at that point can Muslims turn round and say without sensitivity that yes these terrorists are Muslims just like the PIRA and UDA were Christians fighting each other. Muslims come in all shapes and sizes and it is OBVIOUS that these acts do not represent the majority. The problem is that in saying "it's not us", the question "but hating gays and subjugating women is you, isn't it?", which is an un-PC wording of a reasonable question, naturally arises. If that then becomes "not them", there becomes less of a question to answer.
Original post by mrahim
You can do what Canada is doing. More integration of the different communities. So everyone is a compassionate citizen. UK hasn't really tried to do that.


you are suggesting uk should physically stop muslims forming islamic ghettoes and force integration? you cant really force something like that - you can encoraauge , but the change has be a change of ideology and mindset of those ppl.
Original post by ZolaCFC25

Quick Reply

Latest