how falling birth rates will get fixed in the end?

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I can't really take you seriously with that comment.

So only white people can be racist?
If non-white people are just as racist it doesn't count because it isn't really racist to use racist insults directed at white people?
Equality doesn't apply if you are white?

Wow, this thread is way off track. Oh well.

"Slut" is misogynistic hate speech.
"White slut" implies all white women are sluts, and is therefore both a racial slur and a gender slur.
I would say that makes it at least as serious an insult as "Paki bastard".

Why does a low birth rate need fixing? The world could use fewer people.

I thought the world was over populated...so wouldn't a lesser birth rate be a good thing? I guess I am just not all that upset about there being less people on the planet, it would be less crowded.

If any section of the world's population has to go, can it be Salafi and Wahhabi Muslims (and other totalitarian fanatical scum, I'm really not picky) and EU bigwigs? Ta.

Birthrates can't save bankrupt ideas ... the only one thing that can is oppression, martyrs, and enemies/external threats.

I didn't say that. As a matter of fact, I said the opposite.

"White slut" is a racist insult. It's just "white" doesn't have the same meaning attached to it as "Paki". "Asian bastard" is equal to "white bastard", which are both less offensive than "Paki bastard" or "yiddo bastard" or "poof bastard". Similarly, "black slut" is no more or less offensive than "white slut"- but I would consider "Paki slut" more offensive, because "Paki" is an offensive word but "black" and "white" are not.

No it doesn't.

I reckon you can determine how offensive a word is by how willing common people are to throw it around in casual conversation. I hear "slut" said casually a lot, "bastard" rarely. Therefore I think the consensus, at least among my peers, is that "bastard" is more offensive.

If I had friends who used to word 'slut' all the time to refer to actual people, they wouldn't remain my friends.

I don't think its up to me.....or that it would be a specific section.

Fine, your point is conceded. Sharia is bad, but how is it any more indicative of radicalism than Beth Din?



Islamic schools, should they continue to exist, need to be inspected by OFSTED, or they should be closed down. The same goes for fundamentalist Christian schools. What I meant was that you can't whinge about the existence of Islamic schools, and call for their closure, without also suggesting the same for all faith schools. It seems queer to target Islamic school in particular.



The problem regarding acceptance of homosexuality is the faith itself. In the context of Abrahamic religions, though, such an opinion is not radical. It's only radically different from liberal Western culture (which I am a huge proponent of, btw). What do you propose we do about this? You can't limit immigration from 'Islamic countries' purely because they have a majority of Muslims. Most of the issues relating to this in the UK involve people who already have extensive family connections over here, and people who already have citizenship or were born here. Unless you go for the mass deportation route (unethical, expensive and will cause a huge international outcry), then the only viable strategy is to play the waiting game and let the effects of affluence take their course. In the meantime us liberals need to defend our values, but that doesn't include labelling large numbers of people radicals. The meaning of which, I will get to later.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not very confident in the efficacy of 'the waiting game', I just think it's the best of a bad bunch of choices. I'm expecting the world to go tits-up financially again in a more serious way, so that Islam will become more dominant. It might just be my pessimism, but I think an impoverished, superstitious world is on the horizon whatever we do. I hope I'm wrong.


As per your given definition:
1. There's nothing innovative about sharia courts and Islamic schools as per Islamic tradition. Wahhabism is radical and innovative, but not a majority of Muslims in Europe are Wahhabis. These radicals have far too much influence on mainstream Islam and it is growing, but it's still not a majority.
2. If all Muslims want to fundamentally alter every aspect of society, they're doing a pretty crappy job of it. All missionary religions have that as an end goal though. Since evangelism plays a role (no matter how tiny) in every single branch of Christianity (the precedent was set with the Apostles), then using your logic, every single branch of Christianity is radical. Fear those crazy Quakers!
3. see above

The thing is, Muslims don't completely reject the norms of society. They reject certain ones in very visible ways. The problem with the 'radical' label is that it means different things to different people. It's possible to be very radical and relatively harmless at the same time, in the manner of those weird eco people who live self-sufficient lifestyles, or on communes. According to the dictionary definition they are radical. Some Muslims who are very devout but not Wahhabi fall under your definition of radical. They're not integrating into Western culture, but they don't wish us any harm. When we discuss Islam and Muslims, the 'radical' label takes on an extra meaning. Due to the state of world affairs and because news reporters use the word 'radical' when discussing terrorists. We're not playing with dictionary definitions here, we're playing with a label that in this context is tantamount to calling people terrorists (another hotly contested word).



We had them until 4 years ago. Many 'Christian' countries in Europe still have them.




I wasn't attempting to say that it had nothing to do with religion, I was asking for clarification on your point, which you have provided, thank you.

What I had in mind regarding human rights violations was things like forced marriage, which are cultural issues. So, it's not 100% a religious issue.

I'm aware that I'm being repetitive, but the other 3 Abrahamic religions and quite a few of the others aren't hot on human rights, either. The problem is that religion and government don't mix, but many of the faithful insist they should.

It's not more indicative, but it exists on a much larger scale in Europe than anyone would like to admit. And if you address these things in public without apologising in advance, you risk execution in the name of Islam. There was a man, Theo van Gogh, who made a movie about women's rights in Islam. He shouldn't have done that - he was murdered, or 'executed', for insulting Muhammad. Thankfully, the murderer was sentenced to life in prison. It's much better than the man who murdered Pim Fortuyn for political reasons ("scapegoating muslims", among other claims) and was sentenced to a lousy 18 years in prison.



Ouch. They tried to use the results of nationwide tests here to determine which schools were very bad. Islamic schools came out right at the bottom, followed closely by 'multicultural' public schools. At the top were mostly semi-secular protestant schools and some catholic and semi-private schools. One problem that many islamic schools in the Netherlands seem to have is that they don't always speak Dutch during lessons. They're taught to read and write, and to discuss a little, but apparently, a sizeable amount of islamic schools carry out their daily business in other languages. One of them has a logo that says 'El Wahda', and the same name in Arabic.

What's most frustrating is that we pay for it. We pay for them to speak, read and write a language we don't understand, and a language that's going to set them up for failure in later education and employment, if they even reach that. By the end of primary school, they're able to recite several Qur'an verses in Arabic, but they're often not able to spell the name of their hometown or answer simple maths questions. The El Wahda school I mentioned before is complaining that the government won't fund a school for 130 muslim children who now have to go to a neighbouring town for islamic education. They say every child has the right to education in their area. Well, they do, because the area is full of public schools - it's their parents' choice that forces them to travel for an hour a day just so they can learn to recite the Qur'an.

They also had a quaint team building exercise. The children had a Qur'an recital contest, and were taught about islamic poetry.



In fact, most large denominations of western christianity don't really oppose homosexuality that much. Some might dismiss it a bit, or frown upon it, but a majority of them seem to accept, tolerate, and sometimes even support gay marriage and adoption. Even the pope isn't calling for homosexuals to be executed, castrated or imprisoned, as is law in several islamic countries. Muslims do tend to reject and condemn homosexuality, and that's not incidental - I'd say that's a sizeable majority of muslims worldwide, reflected in their laws, religious practices and public outcries and executions.



Any measures beside border controls, a strict immigration policy, and a choice between forced assimilation or return to their country of origin are a case of fighting the symptoms. A few years ago, the Dutch government finally accepted the fact that islamic immigrants were pouring in at a much faster rate than even the most basic and sloppy integration courses could handle. However, we can't close the tap - Brussels is in charge of that.

This is one of the few instances where I'm happy we have Moroccans and Turks. Both of them are born, even here, with a Turkish or Moroccan passport. Unfortunately, that means some other things. They're obliged to swear loyalty to the King of Morocco and the government of Turkey, respectively. Turkish young men are also called up for Turkish conscription, unless they pay a large amount of money to the government of Turkey. Money they usually don't have, but we do - and that's where another interesting idea comes in. They once proposed that our government should pay the government of Turkey (~$10k for every young Turkish man) to buy them off conscription lists.



It's a pessimistic outlook, but it's happening in our backyards precisely because we're forced to play the waiting game. We're forced to accept hundreds of thousands of muslims who immigrate to Europe each year. We know most of them won't find work, most of them aren't educated beyond secondary school - and often not even beyond primary school - and we know a lot of them diametrically oppose our values. Thanks to Brussels, and our own political elites, we're forced to put on a false smile as we welcome them, knowing they're a net expense, knowing they didn't flee starvation or war, and knowing many of them make no secret of wanting to subject us to their rule.



That sounds an awful lot like "there were cockroaches, and I got food poisoning, and we were robbed by hotel staff, but at least the view was nice."



We still have them. In 2004, they wanted to abolish blasphemy laws because one fundamentalist muslim had taken them too far and murdered a man for insulting Muhammad, but they decided not to because "just like women and homosexuals, religious people have the right not to be offended". Yes, we still have blasphemy laws so that we don't accidentally offend the type of people who see extrajudicial executions as a method of forcing their religion upon people. Christians don't care about blasphemy laws, and jews are mostly concerned with Moroccans driving them out of their houses and threatening to murder them. It's muslims who stir up trouble in this case.



None of them - no other religion in the world, Abrahamic or not - comes even close to the size and intensity of violence and intolerance perpetrated in the name of Islam.

And how do you, personally, know this?

Granted, when fleeing starvation or war, the tendency is to go to neighbouring countries and you do get fakes. However, I've worked with a few who were the real deal. They included Christians from Islamic countries (the ones you want to close the border to) and gay people fleeing persecution. I'm glad my country provided these people with asylum.




The last time anyone tried to use blasphemy laws in this country was when some Christians tried to get Jerry Springer the Opera banned. Blasphemy laws when they existed in this country were explicitly about protecting Christianity because we still have a state religion.



That's a big claim. On what do you base it?

Peers, not friends.

It's often used light-heartedly between friends.

Perhaps I should just post this from a bunch of lawyers. Read it, there is a difference.

You may also be interested in this bit.

" In Canada there was an arbitration law that permitted binding religious arbitration. It was used by Christian religious courts. In 2003 the Ontario Islamic Institute of Civil Justice announced its intention to establish a Sharia court that would offer binding family arbitration to Ontario Muslims. There was a government proposal to allow this. However after much campaigning by women's rights groups, in 2005 the government of Ontario decided to ban all religious courts/tribunals from deciding family and inheritance law matters on the basis that there was a serious risk to the rights of individuals within minority groups. As part of the process a public education programme was launched to make vulnerable women aware of their rights under Canadian family law."

What a nasty bunch of bigotted intolerant racists the Canadians are. By contrast in Britain we have just ruled that muslim men who marry multiple women are allowed to receive benefits for all their wives even though polyamy is illegal in this country.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politic ... efits.html




And I'm just as critical of crazy African preachers torturing the devils out children and bishops that cover up catholic paedophile priests in Ireland.

The BS known as religion should not get an easy ride, Christianity didn't simply die off in this country because it gave up all on it's own. It died off because rational people challenged it and exposed it for the crock of crap that it is.

Islam should get an especially hard time though just to make it clear that it is not acceptable to go around murdering people for criticising your imaginary sky fairy and paedophile warlord of a prophet.

They're mostly from Morocco and Turkey, specifically, in this country. Almost none of them are from countries affected by famine, and many who do come from countries affected by famine are linked to the organisations that made the famine worse. A lot of Somalians living here, for example, are hitched to Al-Shabaab, which has a record of denying food aid in territories it controls to anyone suspected of communicating with non-muslims. Basically, the people who take our food, then give it to people they deem sufficiently religious. The precious few people who fled famine to get here aren't generally muslims.



And those are fine. They can come here, as they've shown in the past to be much more likely to be educated and able to find employment. The problem is with the large majority, the bulk of immigration from islamic countries. They've consistently shown problems. A literal sixty-five percent of Moroccan men had been arrested by the end of their teenage years. Christians have shown in the past to be generally suitable and hard-working additions to society, unlike muslims, who've shown to be the opposite of that in general. Homosexuals, meanwhile, are much less likely to drive homosexuals out of their houses, like muslims are known to do here.

Basically, those are the groups - along with jews - who suffer in islamic countries, and suffer increasingly as the amount of muslims increases here. There are plenty of stories from the Netherlands about jews and homosexuals being harrassed by muslims until they were forced to leave their houses. Bricks thrown to windows, random acts of violence, groups of muslims standing outside their houses, people scratching their cars and occasionally even setting them on fire - those are the things we have here by now. Some neighbourhoods in The Hague now feel more dangerous than Cairo for non-heterosexuals, women or non-muslims.



Then that's a situation you needed to get rid of - and apparently you did. What was your secret to not upsetting muslims to a point where they started murdering people?



Laws that insist on capital punishment for homosexuality exist in these countries:

- Sudan
- Mauritania
- Iran
- Saudi Arabia
- Yemen
- Northern Nigeria, under local islamic law
- Southern Somalia, under islamist control

In name of Islam, more people are consistently persecuted, murdered and assaulted than in name of any other religion. Coptic Christians are fleeing Egypt in increasing numbers in the face of religious violence, and in Libya, many government officials have called for laws based strongly on Shariah while people are being murdered by militias for being black and for being non-muslim. In Somalia, there have been reports about food aid being withheld from anyone accused of communicating with non-muslims. In Pakistan, several people are apparently on death row for insulting the prophet Muhammad. Islamists have carried out political assassinations in Europe in the past ten years. Islamists have a near-monopoly on terrorism, and link it directly to their religion. Muslims in Europe apparently use their religion at times to justify rape and murder in 'honour-related' crimes against those who 'violate laws of Islam'. Apparently, 523 people have been killed in terrorist attacks worldwide during Ramadan so far in name of Islam, versus a grand total of none in name of any other religion or in name of any other ideology. There's a lovely 'Ramadan Bombathon' where anti-islamists keep track of the score each year.

http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/
http://www.politicalislam.com/blog/tears-of-jihad/

My apologies for only responding now. On my laptop earlier, my browser suddenly crashed, followed by my internet dropping.

Not rubbish, and you can't deflect this by referring to radical feminism, which is a totally different topic. You know that in this context the word radical carries the extra meaning of terrorist (unless you're unaware of the effect of the media on public perception).

Whilst it might be logically acceptable to define the majority of Muslims as radicals, doing so has unwanted consequences. That was my whole point. People communicate with words and unfortunately, they are slippery.

Unless you feel that antagonising most of the Muslims in the country is a good thing. I don't. It will just anger the liberal ones and push the conservative ones even more towards the extreme end. I understand the virtue of saying it as you see it, but it's not always productive.