25 thoughts on ““Islamaphobia””

  1. The refrain of “we better avoid criticism of those good people or they may decide to turn around and kill us” never was very convincing.

    It’s really an incredibly racist and egocentric viewpoint. Muslims are not actually sentient and autonomous creatures. They are merely animatronic props. Make sure you push the right buttons, and avoid the wrong ones, or an accident may happen (passive voice intentional).

    Criticism is, in fact, part of the feedback loop that allows a sentient and autonomous being to adjust his or her behavior to optimal levels. When you break that feedback loop, the individual is operating open loop, and open loop systems tend to wander aimlessly until a hard limit is encountered.

  2. I heard the same thing. So I thought, where are the majority of terrorists who support ISIS and ISIS fighters? They are in Muslim countries. How exactly does this support the ‘reasoning’ that Islamaphobia creates terrorists?

    The bottom line is that this thinking, that somehow America is always to blame, is the root of the teaching of radical Islam. America and its citizens just want to be safe from these radical terrorists. We don’t hate Muslims (like some/many Muslims hate Americans). The Muslim community in America doesn’t want to look inward because (a) they are in denial and more likely (b) don’t want to see what they may uncover.

    1. The US used to ban entry to members of the Communist Party at one point. Or at least to screen them on entry. Why not do the same for Muslims. I think the argument back then was that Communism was inherently anathema to the US Constitution because of the intent to make the global revolution. Well I don’t know about you, but I think the idea of the Global Islamic Caliphate isn’t that different.

      1. Actually, Trump had a great reply in this area (that was ignored by the Media because it was too sensible and rendered their attacks on him useless):

        Before being accepted, applicants would submit to an “ideological certification” that would ensure that those who are admitted “share our values and love our people”. Trump said immigrants would face questions about honor killings, their view on “women and gays and minorities” as well as their attitudes on “radical Islam”.

        So, he just outflanked the Dems. Ask about how immigrants treat women and homosexuals. Bar those who follow Islamic practices. No problem.

        1. I like it: When a muslim wants admission to the US ask them if the support a global caliphate or transformation of the US into a theocracy. Correct answers are self evident to anyone with a lick of sense.

          1. Oh, but that would be “discrimination”, and nothing is more evil than “discrimination”.

            /sarc, in case that is necessary

          2. Fine but how do you know whether or not they are lying?

            A committed jihadist would give all the right answers – they are just as obvious – to get himself in.

          3. A committed jihadist would give all the right answers

            The easy parts are easy, the hard parts are hard.

            If you can be bothered to ask things like “What do you think the appropriate response to defamatory speech is?” Or “Will you swear allegiance to the US flag?” Observe their reaction, you’ve at least made a start on weeding.

            2000 muslims, 200 jihadist-sympathizers, 20 committed jihadists. Weeding that -middle- block is useful even if it blocks exactly zero ‘committed jihadists’. Think in terms of FBI/NSA manpower trying to suss out who is who.

          4. To amplify Al’s comment, these questions need to be asked in person, by someone with authority to say No. The non-verbal response may say much more than the verbal response. And terrorists can’t readily operate without being surrounded by people willing to turn a blind eye, so filtering out those people helps a lot.

      2. When my wife was working on becoming a naturalized US citizen, she had to complete a lot of paperwork. I don’t recall any direct questions on communism but there were questions about being a member of a group that advocated an overthrow of the US government. Communism would apply on that question, as would radical Islam. There was also at least one question about membership in the Nazi party, so explicitly prohibiting a named organization was permissible. The problem, of course, is that people can easily lie on these applications.

        What Trump did call for was a moratorium on immigration from places like Syria where doing a thorough background check is not possible. The FBI admitted as much earlier this year but the Clinton campaign disagreed. I guess they believed it was possible to go to a country experiencing a civil war (and where the US was siding against the current government) and access police and intelligence records on people from that country. That’s magical thinking at its best.

  3. Discussion about how “Jihadist” as a label allows concrete statements about them mostly deleted.

    If you don’t think you are a jihadist, then why would you assume I’m talking about you?
    If you are a jihadist, then you look foolish attempting to claim persecution, because you’d default to admitting you’re a member of the group.
    If you are a useful idiot, then you have the choice of defending jihadists – which is useful to -me-. Or -not- defending jihadists, which at least gets them to shut up for a second.
    If you attempt the insane ‘cultural appropriation’ defense… well, that will be fun.

  4. I never once heard the term “Islamophobia” before 9/11. In fact, if Americans really did have an irrational fear of Islam, 9/11 would never have happened because nobody from Muslim countries would have ever been allowed into the USA.

  5. “To keep you is no benefit. To destroy you is no loss.”

    Some ideologies make it quite clear that they are toxic to everyone. Islam is not the worst out there. But it routinely institutionalizes stuff like the dhimmi tax or punishing the victim which are reprehensible to democratic and just societies.

  6. Fact is that the majority of dead Muslims in the last 8 or so years were killed by….Muslims.

    So stupid headlines such as “Muslims Fear Backlash after Ohio State attack” are just that…stupid.

    So is any talk about moves that we make being recruitment posters for radicals.

    1. On the other hand, “Muslims Fear Backlash after TOMORROW’S terrorist attack” is spot on.

    2. “So stupid headlines such as “Muslims Fear Backlash after Ohio State attack” are just that…stupid.

      So is any talk about moves that we make being recruitment posters for radicals.”

      But in both cases these statements are useful for those who believe that the US is the root cause of what is wrong with the world. That being the unwillingness of all those who do not have college degrees to fit in their place in the proper hierarchies, as determined by those who *do* have such degrees.

      1. Who cares if they consider them apostates or not? It’s Muslims killing by almost all the dead Muslims.

  7. The problem is an unwillingness to face the problem. The solution is simple and easy if the problem is dealt with squarely.

  8. The lady professor quoted some statistic that more people have been killed in terrorism recently by white supremacists than Muslims. Who knew? Tucker Carlson asked her a few times how in the world she thinks anyone could believe that. You’ve got to be counting funny for that to even be imagined.
    But even if it were true, most of us Americans would have very little trouble agreeing that KKK members (all six of them?) are dangerous and should be profiled as well. How about showing that _normal Americans_ are, on the average, more likely to be terrorists than Muslims? Not by a few orders of magnitude.

    Exactly the kind of presentation that has convinced a whole lot of people that average Muslims are scary too, because they are “human shields” who are helping to hide terrorists. Remember the story of the _American-born_ Japanese couple in Hawaii who hid a stranded Pearl Harbor attacker and aided and abetted him in committing murder (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niihau_incident).

  9. I have a Muslim coworker. Cute single mom, who truly believes in her religion. No hijab, and obviously as a single mom; she’s not into the whole honor killing thing. She doesn’t talk much about her religion, but then again, neither do Jews or Christians at work. The people who seem to talk most about their beliefs are the socialists and progressives, which includes the global warmers. Most everyone else keeps to themselves. The only violent people I’ve met are the ones who don’t get their way, and those people have had a variety of beliefs with at least one that didn’t conform to rest of society near them.

  11. A Markovian perspective on immigration policy:

    Suppose we build a multi-generational starship to go to Alpha Centauri, and we populate it with members of the Church of the SubGenius (CotSG). Suppose that there are two kinds of SubGenius, the good kind (“Praise ‘Bob'”) and the bad kind (“Kill ‘Bob'”). Good SubGenii smoke “frop” and write computer programs. Bad SubGenii take LSD and sometimes want to open windows and drill holes in the wall. If the population on board our starship ever becomes more than 5% bad SubGenii, they will destroy the ship, so to prevent this, we make sure that the original population of the ship are 100% good SubGenii. So, using Matlab syntax, the initial probabilities of someone on board being good or bad, respectively, are P = [ 1 ; 0 ] .

    Whether someone who is raised in the CotSG turns out good or bad is random, and depends partly on his parents and partly on the contents of _The Book of the SubGenius_. (If the parents differ, they flip a coin, and one of them converts.) Children of good SubGenii are 99% likely to be good, and children of bad SubGenii are 91% likely to be bad, so the Markovian transition matrix is M = [ 0.99 0.09 ; 0.01 0.91] .
    ( P(n+1) = M * P(n) .)

    What is the equilibrium proportion of bad SubGenii? Will the ship be destroyed, and if so, after how many generations?

    I get equilibrium P = [ 0.90 ; 0.10 ] .

    The ship will be destroyed after seven generations.
    P = [ 0.947830 ; 0.052170 ] .

    (Have a nice day.)

    1. Realistically the probability of a child ending up bad increases with N_bad in the population.
      Of course the probably outcome greatly shifts if there’s an active effort to identify and remove bad SubGenii from influence and the gene pool.

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