The Power of Popular Culture Chapter 8 Part # 5 Islam in American Culture Criminality and Islam The problem with Muslim immigration in Europe is far deeper than the fact that many or most of these newcomers are essentially clueless about Western values. They certainly did not grow up with them and their religion essentially teaches the opposite of those values as "good." Among more mature immigrants this may not be a major concern simply because this is to speak of people who often have families and are primarily concerned with finding some kind of source of income for survival purposes and maybe to 'get ahead.' They may want to "fit in" and learn how westerners think and what values are acceptable to them. But these considerations may not apply to young Muslim men, often teen agers, who resent their second class status in a society that they believe is morally depraved. Therefore, as young Muslim males see it, they have all the justification they need in order to organize into gangs and carry out a wide variety of criminal acts which, in any case, either are sanctioned by their religion or about which their religion is silent. A complicating factor -there are reports about this from time to time- is the matter of unrealistic expectations. Many Muslim immigrants are told tales of easy welfare, how simple it was for someone to get set up with an apartment or free family services or other welfare benefits. While such things may be available in various locations there is no guarantee; they may or may not be obtainable from country to country. When expectations are not met there may be resentment, regardless of the lack of merit of the demands being made. If there also are relatively few jobs for young men this can contribute to feelings of frustration also. And who is to tell immigrant youth that because they are such boorish idiots no-one wants anything to do with them, anyway? This issue is discussed in an article by Timon Dias, "Gangster Islam: The Problem Europe Ignores," dated February 5, 2017, and found at the site: Gatestone Europe. It was re-published by Daniel Pipes for Mid East Forum.
What has happened in Europe even if the picture is somewhat different from one nation to the next, is that young Muslim males, in large numbers, are organizing into gangs that cause havoc in cities from one part of Europe to another. Basically there are two kinds of gangs, those that are explicitly Muslim and that are based on strict observance of Muslim religious norms and those that, while they are essentially secular nonetheless rely on Muslim identity for group cohesion. These two types of gangs work independently of each other but generally have the same goals. The common characteristics of each type of gangs are: 1. They seek to exploit and harm European societies 2. They make the most of the fact that they are Muslims 3. They glorify violence and base their lives on the streets in carrying out acts of intimidation and mayhem. 4. They are overtly anti-Semitic and have little or no reluctance to express their rampant Judeophobia. On this unsavory subject, the extent of Muslim bigotry against Jews is at what may be called "Nazi levels." The young Muslims not only have "sociopathic tendencies," they are open about their hatred. As Timon Dias said, "it’s not exactly as if they’re trying to hide it either. Examples of youths saying things like “whenever I see them [Jews] I want to stab them“, performing Nazi salutes at Jews, or plainly saying that they hate Jews, are numerous. The main difference between the gangs, besides the fact that secular gang members drink alcohol, is that the Islamists have a religious agenda and they proselytize for Islam, an activity called Dawah. The more secular Muslim gang members simply want to gain whatever advantages they can from robberies, extortion, and selling drugs. They also are "angry at their non-Muslim environment for thinking they’re hard to live with, and acting out frustrations over their alleged “exclusion and disenfranchisement” by being even more insufferable manifests itself as a crime wave that undermines the general sense of security and social cohesion to the point where people are terrorised out of their neighbourhoods, or preemptively leave by choice." Some gangs, like Syrian Muslim young men, specialize in raising money to support jihad. Hence crimes by Syrians are not acts of terrorism so much as they are a criminal fund raising enterprise. There are different profiles in different countries, with young Muslim men in France pretty much evenly divided between those who are partly acculturated to all things French, vs. those who utterly hate everything about the West and regard themselves as exiles in a foreign land they despise. A Pew study cited in the article informs us that: "The level of Muslim identification in Britain, Spain, and Germany is similar to that in Pakistan, Nigeria, and Jordan, and even higher than levels in Egypt, Turkey, and Indonesia." It is no wonder that all the men involved in these gangs, whether they are religiously observant or not, "view themselves as a part of the worldwide Islamic nation (Ummah)..." So far these gangs have been largely successful, partly because Left-wing regimes in Europe have proven to be accommodating. Secular police and other law enforcement agencies seem to be flummoxed. What can they do that will not inflame Muslims at large? Even older Muslims who are outside the purview of gangs as such, generally share the same values. Hence one expedient has been to compromise on the issue of Shariah Law, the Muslim based system that replaces secular law, if not in all cases, a good percentage of cases. An example is The Hague, the Dutch city, which "actively allows a Salafist mosque to patrol the streets" for the purpose of keeping a semblance of law and order and to prevent gangs from taking over from civil authority altogether. These things are not part of Muslim life in America. At least not yet. Where there are parallels are in the realm of Popular Culture. Which is to say that the more "tame" version of Islam in America has some of the ingredients that exist across the ocean and just might metastasize into a semblance of the European version of Islam if conditions change. The best guess is that matters will not get that far but it would not be smart to assume that it is impossible. What is very popular among young European Muslims is rap "music" (to call it that) and rap videos. Rap has proven to be an ideal vehicle to transmit spoken word sentiments that revile Western values and simultaneously extol the worldview of militant Islam. -- -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
