Thursday, October 26, 2006

"I have never learned to fight for my freedom. I was only good at enjoying it.”

When you're ready for a grim, Mark Steyn world view, without the humor, try the Brussels Journal.

Contemporary anti-Semitism in Europe (at least when coming from native
Europeans) is related to anti-Americanism. People who are not prepared to resist
and are eager to submit, hate others who do not want to submit and are prepared
to fight. They hate them because they are afraid that the latter will endanger
their lives as well. In their view everyone must submit.

Monday, October 23, 2006

"Gotta Let Your Hijabs Hang"

Several blogs including Powerline link to a Christian Science Monitor article about the lack of "Radical Islam" breeding grounds in the U.S compared to Europe.

In a nation where mosques have sprung up alongside churches and
synagogues, where Muslim women are free to wear the hijab (or not), and where
education and job opportunities range from decent to good, the resentments that
can breed extremism do not seem very evident in the Muslim community.

"The culture is qualitatively different [in the American Muslim community] from what
we've seen from public information from Europe, and that actually says very
positive things about our society," says Jonathan Winer, a terrorism expert in
Washington. "We don't have large populations of immigrants with a generation
sitting around semi-employed and deeply frustrated. That's a gigantic
difference."

For some reason this obvious paragraph gets overlooked:

Most Muslim immigrants came to America for educational or business
opportunities and from educated, middle-class families in their home countries,
according to an analysis by Peter Skerry of Boston College and the Brookings
Institution. In Europe, the majority came to work in factory jobs and often from
poorer areas at home.
I might also observe, based on my own experience, that US ghettos are already pretty well occupied, thank you, by some serious individuals who could teach a brother a thing or two about intimidation. Try torching a bus in Houston's 5th ward and see how long you live. Come to think of it, try torching a bus in a well-armed Anglo suburb and see how long you live. Things are different here.

Finally, I'm trying to imagine an underfed recent Muslim arrival trying to get a section-8 queen to wear a hijab if she don't wanna. He'd get bitch-slapped all the way back to Trashcanistan.