Fifth of the European Union will be muslim by 2050

I understand what you are saying in relation to the last half of your post concerning Partition, Iraq and Afghanistan- why I mentioned Iraq and Afghanistan is because there were no bomb blasts etc. before you lot (US, UK etc.) came in.

Yes OK fine there weren't any forced conversions supported by the state but nevertheless the phenomenon did exist. Also you seem educated about the topic and must know how many of the countries treasures the British stole while they were there. You probably also know of the other "killing of innocent scenarios" except the Amristar massacre.

I have no problem if Europe was made up of 20% Sikhs or Hindus. I am disgusted with the possibility of 20% of my European homeland being made up of Muslims. A people so alien and different to us that it threatens our existence. Your people have a track record of not integrating and imposing your disgusting beliefs on us.

Muslims belong on muslim countries, muslims do not belong in secular, democratic europe. You are an insult to everything my ancestors fought for.

Yeah no bomb blasts just 1,000,000 dead in the iran-iraq war.

I think we must first dedifferentiate between "radical" and "orthodox" Islam, Salafism is split between countless groups some more political than others and Sufi can be both conservative and liberal in equal measure.

You're right in pointing out most terrorists are from either prosperous families or well-integrated ones (which yes, I did touch upon), but much of that rage stems from material rather than purely theological underpinnings; can we be certain of predicting the political climate in the Muslim world in 2059? All trends seem to indicate liberalization (albeit at snails pace), and that still doesn't account for those who are genuinely integrating and will be taking on leadership positions. The Muslims who rioted in Paris' banlieues rarely if ever attended mosques. And apart from hot spots like Helmand and Swat valley, radical Islam is increasingly loosing support as a legitimate form protest, I would look at Harvards Pluralism projects recent studies for Obama.

Ultimately integration in Europe will only prove to be insurmountable if liberal Europeans demand all Muslims share the same moral values on hot topics like homosexuality. I am not suggesting that there aren't legitimate concerns (quite the opposite), just that these kinds of stories are often accompanied by hysterics. Perhaps a sensible public debate on Islam in Europe (Britain) which involved Muslim voices would be helpful.

P.S Hope that makes sense, it's a challenge expressing myself in English and my TSR preview post isn't working

Which we supported, financed and encouraged.



Which we waged to ensure Dollar hedgemony.



Again we supported and financed him for a period while he was in power including the gassing of the kurds in 1988. Then for the other ten years we enforced an embargo which killed double thae above figure, not to mention the decade of bombings.

So im not sure what your point is.

My point was that things were not fine and dandy before the invasion. Surely even you can't disagree with that?

"much of that rage stems from material rather than purely theological underpinnings"

This bit I don't agree with, I think the western mind is inclined to overlook the primary importance of religious ideas, and to suppose that all problems in the world come down to rational discernible grievances which can be addressed to resolve such problems. There is no rational underpinning for suicidal martyrdom on the level of the individual, it is entirely rooted in religio-ideological belief. I think your nuanced analysis fails to recognise a kind of conveyor belt towards extremism, in which more 'mainstream' beliefs have a relationship to more radical beliefs that ultimate lead to violent acts. There is a spectrum of support, empathy and rationalisation of violent acts which mean that its not conclusively meaningful to simply speak of a huge panoply of difference or of simple binary analytical categories.

What you are saying is very reasonable and well expressed, but I think too reasonable, just as you think others are too alarmist. What you are saying does not bear enough resemblance to the realities of simplistically minded youths turning to straight forward, unnuanced and hateful ideas.

1) If ur prejudiced against a religion you can be defined as racist.

A lot of you could stop yourselves from being quite so offensive if you just put "radical" before Muslim in front of your anti-muslim rants. That's not directed to those of you who are arguing reasonably, but just those suffering from islamophobia.

I imagine we would be quite offended if we were all treated as though we were members of the Westboro Baptist Family.

What's the difference between a 'radical' Muslim and a 'non-radical' Muslim?

I think it's quite the opposite, western establishment discourse is often susceptible to dismissing political grievances (some legitimate, others not) as contributing factors to global ills. There's a palpable, and tbh snooty attitude toward the developing world which goes something like this: "I know what your problem is, you don't. I don't even have to listen". Despite the overwhelming evidence it took decades for the west to move on admitting there could be some correlation between Palestine and radicalization.

Am I suggesting religion has no baring? No. but you simply can't look at religion in isolation, it's interwoven into clusters of geo-socio-political issues, but that's precisely how the categorisation you refer to is often employed; focusing only on what is politically convenient like "ideology" which is easy to differentiate from your own in simple terms, or "martydom". Without much consideration for it's wider context it is unsurprising "martydom on the level of the individual" is inexplicable, what else could it be? All of which contribute to spinning a narrative which is then entrenched in society, and simply accepted as truth. I would go as far as to say religiously so.

Whether consciously, or not. Thats the desire because inexplicable is easy, and easy to dismiss, and doesn't "rock the boat" but it doesn't lead to solutions either. Thats reverse side of the conveyer belt, equally leading to a predetermined destination, which fails those youth simple minded, or not.

Personally believe humans are capable of more, and can, do, and will jump off.

A lot of you could stop yourselves from being quite so offensive if you just put "radical" before Muslim in front of your anti-muslim rants. That's not directed to those of you who are arguing reasonably, but just those suffering from islamophobia. I imagine we would be quite offended if we were all treated as though we were members of the Westboro Baptist Family.

The clue is in the word "radical".

And you've personally asked all one billion of them?

As horrifying as it sounds, most Muslim scholars believe that gay people should be murdered; they merely disagree on the method of the killing - i.e. whether gay people should be thrown off a cliff or instead beheaded.

Tony Blair and the BBC led media establishment have pretty much always been convinced of the link with the Arab-Israeli conflict, a link which I think they overstate - it helps to convert young Muslim men to radical Islam, but it is not the cause of radical Islamic beliefs and its resolution will not destroy the intellectual edifice of radical Islam.

The British intellectual establishment has generally understood the post 9/11 world through the prism of the Northern Ireland conflict, which although characterised by a religious sectarian divide was both localised and rooted in specific historical grievances and politically realisable objectives. Very few people in the British establishment are fervently religious, and so they find it hard to put themselves into the mind of someone prepared to die for a religious belief. I cannot speak for continental Europeans, but I believe that post-Enlightenment secularists also find it hard to take religious beliefs seriously enough. The British establishment generally believes, and there has not been much dissent across the political spectrum, that Islamism is rooted in specific grievances connected with the Arab-Israeli conflict and western foreign policy (both current and historical).

I think that you need to divide the question into the ideas themselves and converting more followers for these strains of political Islam. The ideas themselves have little or nothing to do with specific grievances or realisable objectives in the way that IRA terrorism for example did, and that is were the British establishment has got it completely wrong. In terms of attracting more followers to the banner of political and radical Islam, there are endless causes in the world and in history which presented within the Islamist narrative are effective - the most potent of these being the Arab-Israeli conflict and the recent wars carried out by the Soviets and the West in Afghanistan and the Middle East.

The flaw in logic in the British assessment is the supposition that resolving these issues will extinguish the threat from Islamic terrorism. It would only deprive terrorists of part of their support base and recruiting pool - which isn't entirely insignificant, but is far from decisive - these things are not the cause of the ideas which underpin Islamic terrorism so they cannot be the solution.

The arrogance of the west is not in dismissing political grievances, it is in entirely failing to listen to what Islamists and their ideologues actually say. I take very seriously what the Islamists are saying, I think we ought to believe what they profess to believe rather than just ridiculing or ignoring it as the only-half-serious juvenile rantings of some kind of wacko fringe. And if you listen to what they are saying, you'll see that its a comprehensive ideological political-military programme for hummanity.

Their literalist attention to the Qu'ran has led them to believe the following: that there should be one Islamic state under the Sharia, which will eventually conquer and subdue the whole world and thus bring about peace through submission to Allah; that for the present the world is divided into the Dar al-Islam (the House of Islam, within which there is submission to Islam and accordingly peace) and the Dar al-Harb (the House of War, the land of infidels where Muslims can at most only temporarily coexist peaceably beside unbelievers, and where there is ultimately war until these lands are brought under the Islam); that the covenant of security with western governments has been broken, and so Muslims who feel able should wage violent Jihad against the unbelievers; that non-Muslim states should be progressively brought under the tenants of Islamic law and their democratic systems should ultimately be dismantled; that blasphemy against Islam and the prophet, apostasy and homosexuality should be punishable by death and all the other delightful aspects of the Sharia (as practiced under the Taliban) be applied such as the stoning of adulterers etc; and that martyrdom attacks against non-Muslim civilians should be carried out as a means to immediate salvation for the martyr.

That is the reality of the ideology we face, that the British establishment has yet to really face up to. And Wahhabism out of which the doctrine of violent Jihad against the West has arisen is not an aberration that can simply be dismissed, it has a state - the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, it possesses the land at the religious core of the Muslim world and their most holy city - it wields incredible influence in Mosques across the world backed by billions of Saudi PetroDollars. The political arm of this movement has very serious objectives in Europe parallel to acts of terror and violence, to progressively convert the populations by proselytisation, migration and other means not merely to Islam but to Wahhabi version of Islam.

I don't see this through the prism of post-Enlightenment Europe, I see this as really something more akin to the wars of religion in Europe following the Reformation. Having spent quite a lot of time studying the Reformation I would argue that the modern world does not really get the independent power of ideas and particularly religious ideas beyond all other considerations. When Martin Luther refused to accept any ideological compromise or even ambiguous fudge with Zwingli at the Marburg Colloquy, when all other factors and considerations desperately necessitated that they agree in order to form a Protestant-Reformed alliance against the Catholics, it showed just how much religious ideas matter irrespective of all material and political considerations. People in Europe spent centuries killing and torturing each other largely over the nature of an abstract doctrine about the real or symbolic presence of Christ in the Eucharistic bread and wine. Most modern Europeans would find that hard to understand if it were taking place somewhere else in the world today, it has become entirely alien to the Western way of thinking about religion.

The Islamists do not have realisable objectives, or at least objectives which we can allow them to realise, because their grievances do not stop with Palestine, with non-Islamic governments in Muslim countries, with the presence of Western troops on Muslim soil, the independence of any Muslim region ruled over by a non-Muslim state, or even with the recovery of any territory that has ever been considered, however briefly, as part of the Dar al-Islam. These things merely help them recruit followers, but the power of their dangerous ideas would remain and increase the more of these objectives they could actually achieve. Something is either a grievance or it is a triumph of overturning that grievance, not through the reasonable acquiescence of others but through the will of Allah and the strength of his followers. Their march would continue and they would be stronger. Appeasement cannot win peace from an ideology which plans to subjugate the entire world in the cause of religious beliefs.

That doesn't answer my question so I'll ask again: what is the difference between a 'radical Muslim' and a 'non-radical Muslim'? I pose this question because it seems rather clear to me that the distinction between 'moderate', 'extremist' and 'radical' religious believers in religions such as Christianity and Judaism has simply not surfaced in Islam. In this sense, most Muslims are fundamentalist (or radical or whatever word you want to use). They really appear to believe that the Quran is the literal and inerrant word of 'god'.