The claim that muslim thugs have been harassing people walking through ‘muslim areas’ of Britain has received much coverage in the UK media. I am always leery of taking such stories at face value… how prevalent is this? I do not live in an area with much in the way of a muslim population but I do regularly visit parts of London that do… and I have never seen anything like what is shown in the linked article/video happening.
That is not to say I do not think this sort of thing is at all implausible… not at all and heaven knows I am never slow to think poorly of a religion that explicitly espouses a totalitarian political order in its holy writings. But I wonder just how much of a problem it is? I am not in a position to judge for myself, but that it happens at all is intolerable.
Nevertheless, I wonder if the appearance of ‘Muslim Brownshirts’ in Britain is the sort of problem that is particularly amenable to government suppression. In truth, it seems to me it would be best dealt with at a more local and social level… no, I do not mean via some officially sanctioned ‘community outreach’ but rather by people taking a more ‘civil society oriented’ approach, which is to say confronting the fuckers on the streets, getting in their faces and if needed, replying to any violence by kicking them in the bollocks repeatedly.
Ideally, this sort of thing should be done by non-lunatic members of Britain’s muslim community, but that should by no means be seen as a prerequisite for pushing back. Indeed as they seem to enjoy picking on perceived homosexuals, perhaps some members of the typically vocal gay community might like to forcibly stick their oar in the water on this… but who pushes back matters less than someone should.
I suspect a more ‘grass roots’ approach would be vastly more effective than anything our worthless political class is likely to come up with.
I think our homosexual community will be too busy celebrating legalization of same sex marriage.
Well what better way to celebrate that than to get some quality face time with some low life islamo-fascist street thugs? Can you think of anything better calculated to enrage the bastards?
I tend to believe that the more direct, if confrontational, approach is most likely to get satisfactory results. The Islamofascist respects force. The strong horse etc. I do not think it reasonable to ask the gay community, which is what, less than 5% of the population(?), to fight the majority’s battle. This despite the evidence of their ability to change the definition of a 2000+ year old word.
Why? Do they have less of a stake in halting islamo-fascism? But as I said, I do not think it matters who confronts them (and indeed, the more the merrier), so much as they need to be confronted by, well, just about anyone. Certainly in the unlikely event I get insulted by some islamo-fascist scum, I do not plan to just keep walking… and I say ‘unlikely’ as in the area with a large islamic population that I frequent (North End Road) I have had entirely cordial relations with all the muslims I do business with.
Perhaps my statement lacked clarity. I should have said ” to fight the majority’s battle alone.” The gay community has compelling reasons to resist the rise of islamofascism. And yes, the more the merrier!
I had some experience of this sort of thing Sydney, Australia. You are unlikely to be accosted if you are going about your business in the “normal” way. However, if there is group “out for blood” as it were, looking to make a statement, you might become a target for some aggression.
In Boganstan the Islamic demographic is only noticeable in some areas of Sinny and Melbum and where the mnore radical are calling for caliphates they’re in the very small minority, so what if they have the occaisional gunfights among themselves.
I’ve heard rumours of a bit of this stuff going down in Brick Lane/Whitechapel but I find it pretty hard to believe. My own experience of those places have always been wholly pleasant and mainly spent in restaurants, the owners of which are almost certainly heavily invested in maintaining good relations with a large non-muslim customer base. That’s that damned Capitalism again for you.
Admire your sentiments, Mr deH. This isn’t particularly new, either. Saw something like this going on whilst around the Whitechapel area a few years back. Even the odd few lines in the local paper. White bloke being assaulted & warned off the area. Bit like the film but with added inducements. And it’s not only London. Lass who stayed over last year was talking about similar goings on in her area of Brum. And she’s Afrocarib so hardly little englander. Trouble is, you’re not going to go far wearing T-shirts at this lot. But a more robust alternative will get you a quote ” like the far-right Golden Dawn supporters in Greece and right-wing vigilantes in France who ran Roma families out of a Marseilles estate and burnt down their camp.” from the Torygraph article. (Having experienced the charms of the Roma at first hand I’d’ve been inclined to have been whistling La Marseillaise as well.) You want to be branded as EDL?
Surprised the story’s got as far as the national media, though. There was some sort of godawful ruck down Wapping way, early 2000s. Pakistani/Bangla turf fight. Seriously tooled up. Far as the media were concerned, might never have happened. Not communities they like mentioning except for their enrichment capabilities.
(Conflict of interest warning- this is my family’s ancestral manor)
Counter-vigilantism usually devolves quickly into gang warfare. It’s the uncivil brutes who leap at the opportunity to “fight for their people”.
Then there is the problem of fighting a distributed, dispersed enemy. Islamist vigilantes don’t march about in big squads of (color)shirts. They roam in small packs or even singles, harassing vulnerable targets with petty violence.
Let’s suppose some counter-vigilantes enter the area. How many, and in what size groups? Individuals are vulnerable to beatings. Let’s say a group of four or five. What do they do? They can stop Islamist harassment where they are, but that’s just whack-a-mole. They can try to deter harassment by punishing harassers with beatings… if they can identify harassers, and any errors would be disastrous. And if the Islamists don’t mass counter-force for retaliatory violence that could be legally justified.
Or they could stage provocative displays in the area (public drinking, homosexuals kissing, perhaps a pig roast), either to ambush responding Islamists, or to demonstrate anti-Islamist control of the “turf”. The latter would have to be continual – an occasional show would mean nothing, and everyone would know it.
ISTM for counter-vigilantism to be effective, it would have to be based in the area. That is, brave and hardy individuals would have to live there, publicly defy the Islamists on a daily basis, and brawl with them as necessary. They’d have to be tough enough and trained enough to win the brawls.
Furthermore, these people would have to be very disciplined, so they would not be baited into “unprovoked” assaults on the Islamists. And they would have to be very brave, because they would probably incur attacks from mobs or Islamists with guns or other arms (acid, for instance).
Where would you get such people, in sufficient numbers to change the conditions in a whole district of 20,000 to 40,000 people?
I don’t see it. In fact, I don’t see any good way for a free society to cope with infection by a toxic culture maintained by violence.
Whats so bad about gang warfare? The cops are a gang, the govt. is a gang. Lets us libertarians form a gang and start kickin ass in every which way possible. It’s About time.
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure.
Th. Jefferson
Although I think that any attempt to introduce Muslim morality police (which exist in certain Muslim countries) should be strongly resisted in the UK, but resorting by establishing counter-groups is only likely to lead to ever escalating violence as it did in the 1930’s during the Battle of Cable Street and other anti-fascist protests.
In this vein, the police do have a community role to play by supporting the Muslim community in controlling their own members.
Ultimately, there are enough laws on the statute books to go after these groups if they do exist, it’s just that the police need to be given clear instructions that it is NOT RACIST to force these groups to obey the law.
Humans are tribal creatures, at root. This is what happens when you let large numbers of aliens settle in your country.
Predicable and.. wrong. This behaviour is no different from Nazi Brownshirts in Germany… i.e. German thugs in Germany… it just happens that these particular thugs are Muslims in Britain… but as The Battle of Cable Street mentioned above shows, such behaviour has happened here in the UK before without any need to import the thugs from overseas. And might I point out that the anti-fascists at the Battle of Cable Street are generally lionised these day. Food for thought, no?
Clearly true, but I my suspicion is that the current political class are so intellectually debased, not to mention divorced from common sense, that it would be very unwise to assume anything useful or effective will come from that direction… and if that indeed proves to be the case, well the Plod is by no means the only way to oppose these thugs.
Muslim countries have ghettos where nonmuslims live, so it might seem natural to them to recreate that here, with themselves forming a separate enclave in England.
“Humans are tribal creatures, at root. This is what happens when you let large numbers of aliens settle in your country.”
“Predicable and.. wrong. This behaviour is no different from Nazi Brownshirts in Germany… i.e. German thugs in Germany… it just happens that these particular thugs are Muslims in Britain… ”
How is it wrong? Whatever your position on immigration, if large numbers of Muslims were not allowed to settle in the UK there would not be Muslim thugs enforcing sharia in English neighbourhoods.
If I argue that crime and welfare spending would be lower without Muslim immigration because Muslim immigrants commit crime and live off welfare in numbers disproportionate to the general population, is this ‘wrong’ because you know some local chavs who collect the dole?
Rich Rostrom wrote:
I think a free society would cope with it quite handily. People would be armed, have a sense of their own responsibility to defend themselves and an awareness of their right to behave however the hell they want to, as long as it causes no material harm to anyone else.
It’s our modern social democratic society, with its “leave it to the authorities” mentality and its PC sensibilities, that struggles with it.
It’s a pity we live in the latter.
Because that is not predicated on some intrinsic ‘tribal’ nature that the commenter prefaced his point with. Indeed Islam is the antithesis of tribalism as it is a universalist totalitarian belief set.
Then the issue is not islam or immigration per se, it is the distorting effects welfare. So yes I am all for open immigration… and no state ‘welfare’ system that will attract the ‘wrong sort’ of immigrants… but I am not just against state ‘welfare’ for immigrants, I am against it for anyone.
A belief in god is a universal concept but it doesn’t mean a group of people won’t take that belief and form a tribe around it, which is whats happening in this neighborhood.
And just because you’re against all welfare has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that certain cultures embrace welfare more readily than others, just like certain cultures interpret the concept of god more violently than others.
These are rather simple empirical observations but I think you’re too blinded by absolute principles to see.
Maybe I am altruistic, or naive, but I rather suspect that a few confrontations along the lines of this screenplay would solve this problem (if it is indeed a problem) almost overnight.
He – Infidel woman, cover your hair! The Prophet (pbuh) demands it!
She – F88k off and die, chum – I’ll dress as I please!
He – Insolent Blasphemer! I shall now proceed to beat you for your impudence! (produces cane and advances)
She – Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. (sound of JetLoader) Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Damn. Should have brought two! (It’s a J-frame).
He – (Sound of falling body).
Police Officer – what happened here, ma’am?
She – Well, I was walking down the street, minding my own business, and then he started yelling at me, and he threatened to beat me, and then he pulled out that cane that’s laying next to the gurney, and he came towards me brandishing it. So I stopped him doing that.
PO – Hmmm. Well, we’ll take some evidence, and look at some video, and the prosecutor will have to review it, but if it’s as you say, ma’am, there won’t be any charges. Your CPL is current, this looks pretty clear-cut. We can’t have people attacking other people in the street for no reason. (Behind hand) Nice group!
Wash, rinse, repeat as necessary.
Screenplay can, of course, be customized for any number of different players of all genders, orientations, etc.
Nothing reduces the urge to impose your will upon others by force so much as a brisk and effective response, with force as required.
I live not a million miles from Dearborn, MI, a suburb of Detroit, which has the largest concentrated Muslim population anywhere outside the Middle East. The whole area is majority Arabic/Islamic, by a wide margin.
The idea of some religious enforcer approaching anybody on the streets of Dearborn and attempting to impose Islamic dress or mores upon them – even with the tacit or not-so-tacit approval of every bystander and resident – is completely unthinkable. Un-Thinkable. And there is one single and sole reason for that – anyone dumb enough to try it could only be unaware that there’s a pretty good chance that his proposed victim will play the exact screenplay shown above.
llater,
llamas
Indeed Perry.
If it were just that societies are tribal then we would be having an even bigger problem with “Polish patrols”.
In the few years since Poland got full travel rights within the EU more Poles have arrived than have come from the Indian subcontinent in 60 years (including 2nd and 3rd generations). They have caused remarkably little trouble considering their sheer numbers.
From days long gone by – this is in the late 80’s, now.
Yes, Virginia, there really is a Pontiac, MI – it’s a rather-gritty industrial town, now essentially a northern suburb of Detroit. Lots of auto plants and concrete plants. It’s in termninal decline now.
Back then, it had a small ‘tenderloin’ district at the southern end of Saginaw Street. There were several bars and clubs that catered to a bohemian clientele.
The Pontiac PD was on Pike Street, just a couple blocks East.
There began to be a problem with blue-collar louts getting a skinful in the gritty bars around the heavy plants North of town, and then coming down to Saginaw and rolling the clientele of the ‘tenderloin’ bars. And naturally (as louts tend to do) picking their victims according to their ideas of who would be an ‘easy mark’.
Pontiac PD didn’t do much about it. There was a certain amount of the ‘well, if they walk down the street dressed that way, they have only themselves to blame’ mentality.
Came the day when the louts picked on the wrong queen at the wrong time. And six or seven very buffed young men rolled out of an adjacent bar, all flannel and engineer boots and pencil-thin mustaches (the Boston Blackie kind) and proceeded to administer a severe and prolonged beating to all visible within the zipcode. Apparently, the louts failed to appreciate the changing lifestyles that were taking over their selected victim group.
(They knew Pontiac PD wouldn’t respond, except by chance. Just another queer getting slapped around on Saginaw, let’s go 10-8.)
I wasn’t there, but I heard it was quite the party. Oakland County was actually the first on scene. I heard various stories, of one victim duct-taped to a municipal light pole, face in and sans pantalons, and of others beaten to within an inch of their lives. And of a derisory, hooting mob laughing and catcalling at them outside the various bars, as the deputies were mopping up the mess.
I’m not an advocate for street justice, as a general thing, but I have to admit that the occasional outbreak can have a very beneficial effect on the commonweal.
llater,
llamas
I should probably admit that my estimates of the number of Poles in the UK was rather optimistic. I had based this on a recent report that Polish was massively outstripping languages like Punjabi and Urdu to become the number 2 spoken language.
In fact looking at the figures there are officially around 600,000 Poles in the UK, whereas there are just under 2,000,000 Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshi’s.
Nope. God does not matter, the universalist political order in the Koran is the issue, so you have that 180 degrees the wrong way around. If it was only a tribal thing, well I have yet to hear of gangs of jewish thugs in Bethnal Green (oopse.I mean Golder’s Green) threatening people. Why? Because the Jewish religion is indeed a ‘tribal’ religion and as a result Jews are not trying to foist their values on non-Jews in the UK. Islam on the other hand is the absolute opposite of a tribal religion… it is evangelistic and universalist, which means muslims try to impose their ways on everyone else. I really wish Islam *was* merely a tribal religion. Sadly it ain’t.
Well are socialist welfare systems particular prevalent in Muslim countries? My guess is you don’t know the answer to that question, so let me help you out… no, they are not. So what Britain’s socialist welfare system does is it attracts and then supports people who like the idea of ‘free stuff’ at other people’s expense. We have enough of those amongst indigenous Britons without importing more from elsewhere, but inevitably such state distributed largess *will* attract people from elsewhere who want to be supported by other people, in effect skimming off the scum rather than the cream from other societies… and moreover it removes the imperative to assimilate in order to get a job and make a living, which is a terrible idea on so many levels.
And you also make incorrect deductions from your ‘rather simple empirical observations’, presumably because you regard ‘immigrants = bad’ as axiomatic, but then I am just guessing as you do not really say why you think the things you do. However I would be surprised if there is more to it than that.
Llamas, maybe I’m mistaken but wasn’t there a foofurah in Dearbourn fairly recently regarding Christians being prevented from proselyting in a public street during a Muslim festival?
And if I’m not mistaken, it was with the cooperation of the police. So CCW wont help you there.
JV – yes, indeed, there have been ongoing issues with an evangelical Christian group (associated with the Koran-burning ‘pastor’ Terry Jones) holding demonstrations in Dearborn. He’s a blowhard.
But I think what you’re referring to specifically are incidents at the Dearborn Arab International Festival in recent years, where evangelical Christian groups have demonstrated with anti-Islamic messages – for example, last year’s events:
http://www.freep.com/article/20120616/NEWS05/120616015/Christian-missionaries-with-pig-s-head-taunt-Arab-Americans-at-Dearborn-festival
This lot seems to be out there on the fringes with the Westboro Baptist church – they’re equal-opportunity haters, they hate all sorts of people, not just Muslims. But they weren’t prevented from demonstrating or proselytizing, by anybody, even though some aspects of their protest (the signs, and a pig’s head on a pole) were certainly meant to be provocative.
Christian missionaries have been arrested at this event in the past, for public-order issues like breach-of-the-peace and so forth. The right to express religious opinions does not extend to the right to deliberately provoke a disturbance. In some cases, thses folks were arrested for trespass after being asked to leave by private property owners. In most cases, their charges were dismissed – a not-unusual approach to defuse a potential public-order problem.
I’ve heard other stories of Christians who claim to have been ‘prevented’ from evangelizing on the streets of Dearborn, but on closer examination, most of these folks had similar issues with the police over public-order matters – blocking the streets, accosting people on the street, and so forth.
You’ll note that the last time that Terry Jones showed up in Dearborn with his travelling circus, Dearborn PD and WCSO made all sorts of preparations for his ‘event’ – none of which involved him being prevented from holding it. They shipped in truckloads of barricades and other crowd-control gear, and assigned all sorts of manpower, to ensure that the event took place peacefully. In the end, of course, it was a total snooze, with more reporters than demonstrators.
This is a long way from any sort of equivalency with the tales of (alleged) Muslim enforcers roaming the streets of the UK and applying Islamic mores by force.
llater,
allamas
On googling, the incident I was thinking of was the one involving the Acts 17 Apologetics group in 2010. No pigs heads were involved.
Although I do concede your point that Dearbourn Muslims have been less successful in enforcing Sharia than their British counterparts, but it’s not for want of trying nor a shortage of willing allies in both local government and the police.
JV wrote:
‘Although I do concede your point that Dearbourn Muslims have been less successful in enforcing Sharia than their British counterparts . . ‘
Er, that’s not quite what I was saying. Your casting of the point assumes that Dearborn Muslims have been trying to ‘enforce Sharia’ in their community, but failing. My actual point is that they don’t try in the first place, and there are many reasons for that (depending on what level of ‘enforce’ we are talking about), but one of the main reasons that nobody ever tries to use actual, physical force to impose Sharia on anybody in public in Dearborn is that their use of force has a non-zero likelihood of being met with force in return – not from some theoretical or absent police agency, but directly from the person thay try to engage with.
The reason that this sort of Sharia enforcement is even possible in the UK (assuming that it even takes place, arguendo) is that the potential victims have no practical recourse in the moment. Some self-styled imam approaches you in Southall High Street and offers you the choice of putting on a headscarf or taking a beating – your options are limited. Same moke approaches you with the same deal on a street in Dearborn, he stands a non-zero chance of being told ‘Oh, yeah? Beat THIS!’
It doesn’t have to happen very often – it doesn’t actually have to happen at all – for those with an urge to go Shariah-enforcing to find something else to do. Like most folks of this sort, they’re basically bullies who only do what they do when they have the overwhelming advantage in force and run no realistic risk of consequences.
Like the louts of Saginaw Street, if this is actually happening in the UK, I predict that all it will take to see it ended is for some self-appointed Shariah warden to get hisself a good shoeing at the hands of somebody who won’t be told what to do. Maybe two. And these Lions of Islam will melt away like an April snow.
llater,
llamas
Didn’t you mean ‘Golders Green’?
Looking back over some of the comments regarding tribalism v islam as a universal faith, it’s obvious a lot of you really don’t get it. The people you’re talking about do not go in for lengthy philosophical debates. There’s various groups. All notionally Muslim. That doesn’t mean they don’t individually drink alcohol, screw chicks (or each other if no-one’s looking), do drugs, eat bacon sandwiches or any of the other things they say they object to. They’re claiming turf. The hard line Muslim orthodox stuff is a way of expressing unity & an excuse to throw their weight around. Think of rabid soccer hooligans. It’s not the team they’re fighting for. That’s the justification. They don’t give a toss about the football. It’s the colours on the scarves that are important. Who rools. And they’re just as likely to be having war with a different bunch of Mussies from another patch. Who also claim the authority of Islam. Maybe same flavour but their Imam’s harder. Or different. So all sorts of excuses. But it’s a dominance game.
@ Alisa
Stamford Hill. And some of the more active Hassidim lads have indeed got their retribution in first. On the wrong people, sometimes. Sh1t happens.
Indeed I did 😀
Apologies for the preceding – somehow the entire page got copied into the comment box, and was not visible (above/below the part shown in the box). Please delete it.
llamas @February 6, 2013 at 12:35 pm:
I rather suspect that a few confrontations along the lines of this screenplay would solve this problem…
Sure would… If the Islamists were that obvious and ham-fisted.
Consider this scenario:
Islamist vigilante to bare-headed woman: You should cover your hair, immodest slut!
Bare-headed woman: I’ll dress as I please. [places hand on concealed pistol]
Islamist vigilante #2: [body-slams BHW from behind, knocking her to the ground]
Islamist vigilante #3: [squirts motor oil on BHW’s clothes]
Islamist vigilante #4: [ostentatiously flashes shoulder holster inside coat, as IV#2 and IV#3 quickly walk away]
What’s BHW going to do? She never saw the faces of IV#2 and IV#3. IV#1 and IV#4 didn’t do anything they can be charged with. If she tries to shoot anyone at this point, she’s very likely to be killed by IV#4, who can claim self-defense. Even if she could identify IV#2 or IV#3, the most she could charge them with is simple battery or minor property damage, neither of which is likely to incur significant jail time. That’s if she can get the authorities to prosecute, and if a jury will believe her over the IVs’ alibi witnesses.
And yes, Islamist bullies do operate this way. They know exactly what they can get away with. Well, suppose BHW brings some friends along. That would deter such attacks – but it means living in fear, never going out alone. That’s a huge cost. Or she just gives in and puts on a scarf.
I live not a million miles from Dearborn, MI, a suburb of Detroit, which has the largest concentrated Muslim population anywhere outside the Middle East.
Aside from Bangladesh, Indonesia, Morocco, Nigeria… and the banlieues of Paris, Bradford in the UK…
Dearborn has only 100,000 people, and it’s only about 42% Arab, and only about half of those are Moslem. (The rest are Lebanese, Syrian, and Iraqi Christians.)
The whole area is majority Arabic/Islamic, by a wide margin.
It may seem that way, but I think that’s an artifact of the aggressive assertiveness of the Moslems. There are a lot of Arabs in Michigan, not just in Dearborn, and even though most are non-Moslem, the Moslems have disproportionate influence. That’s how I explain the recent bizarre action of Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI), who is Syriac-Christian Arab, from Grand Rapids, halfway across the state. When Ahmadinejad volunteered to be Iran’s first astronaut, John McCain joked that Iran claimed it had already sent a monkey into space – and Amash accused him of racism.
“If it was only a tribal thing, well I have yet to hear of gangs of jewish thugs in Bethnal Green (oopse.I mean Golder’s Green) threatening people.”
Perry, “ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you”: stupidity knows no (national) boundaries.
Plamus:
I hope you can see the difference.
Let me show you around London, Perry:-)
Actually Alisa, I live in Stamford Hill, home of that other big Ortho Jewish community in London. They do have gangs, they’re dispersed and don’t go around looking for trouble, but if someone gets in some bother everyone is there like a shot. A couple of weeks ago I watched the drama unfold that resulted from some (middle-eastern-looking) guy having an altercation with an OJ about a car pranging incident (famously good drivers of people carriers, the Stamford Hill OJs). It must have got a little heated berween the two drivers because literally minutes after I heard the noise of the crash there was about 100 jewish guys on the street, cars pulling up with a skid and blocking the street, the lot. Between them they totally locked down the street and were holding the guy down on the floor. The police arrived and calmly pulled the guy up (who was screaming by this point) and started to clear the mess of hastily parked cars that were all over the street and the miles of traffic that had built up because of it. It was really a fascinating spectacle. Don’t fuck with the OJs.
“Well are socialist welfare systems particular prevalent in Muslim countries? My guess is you don’t know the answer to that question, so let me help you out… no, they are not.”
Rich Muslim countries are among the biggest welfare states in the world. Poor Muslim countries are not because well, they are poor.
“And you also make incorrect deductions from your ‘rather simple empirical observations’, presumably because you regard ‘immigrants = bad’ as axiomatic, but then I am just guessing as you do not really say why you think the things you do. ”
Isn’t this just a pretentious way of saying I’m a racist?
I have an inter-racial marriage and my three kids are a roughly equal mix of ethnic Chinese, Indian and Western European.
And I think immigration can be a very positive development if, as done in Singapore, immigrants are linked to work visas and unable to draw on the state for money. In other words, they are a net benefit to the economy.
It’s rather empirical, you see.
Indeed. And most muslim countries are poor. Which is why your remarks about ‘muslim’ culture & welfare are so meaningless.
No, it says what it said and unlike you, I try not to leap to conclusions without more information. So I avoid calling you a racist even though you present many of the distinctive ‘markers’ of a racist and so perhaps you share the sort of implicit ‘hierarchy of races’ notions (indeed so often found amongst the Chinese, but you probably place yours at the top of course). But I am guessing and do not care enough to really want to know. A statist, without doubt, and a very authoritarian one (your example of Singapore is a useful clue), so a bit of a post-modern fascist I would surmise.
Nope. You seem to think your views are the product of dispassionate observation of things that are self evident, as if simple observation could produce understanding. In reality your views are loaded with debatable assumptions.
I notice you skipped away from your claim that welfare states aren’t prevalent in Muslim countries.
I’m not Chinese.
And the ‘observation’ that Muslim immigrants are disproportionately heavy users of welfare is an empirical fact.
Yet you seem somehow convinced that I’m the one suffering from debatable assumptions.
I think it’s best we stop now.
@ Rich Rostrom – well, your points are well-taken. And we can all construct different scenarios to fit our opinions.
My deeper point is that gangs of thugs such as you describe only come to pass in places where a) they are officially sanctioned by the State (the mutaween) or b) where there is no effective law AND individuals (and specifically, women) are powerless to resist them (places like the banlieus of Paris and (allegedly) the streets of the UK).
As I suggested, the mere chance of effective resistance usually makes clowns like this (whether alone or in groups) dissolve away.
If you accost a random person on the street in Michigan, the odds are about 1 in 40 that that person is licensed to carry a concealed weapon. And those are just the licensed carriers. Based on my own street experience, I would say that the odds are more-like 1 in 30. And the rate is higher in urban areas – like Dearborn.
Your figures for the population and demographics of Dearborn are no-doubt correct – but they cover the entire city, and they also ignore the adjacent muncipalities. My on-street experience is that the main corridors through Dearborn and the surrounding cities of Westland and Melvindale (Michigan Avenue and the Southfield) are majority-populated by an Arab/Muslim demographic, with Lebanese, Syrians, Iraqis and Iranians as the main ethnic origins.
llater,
llamas
Sounds quite civilized to me, although I’m not sure the term ‘gangs’ is appropriate.
Skipped away? Actually I answered it… most are poor, and thus could not be welfare states.
And I did not say you were, indeed I assumed you were a white guy with a Chinese wife. So what? That does not mean you do not share the ‘hierarchy of races’ attitude.
Yes, but what is not an empirical fact is why that is the case and as I have said before if you bothered to read it, is that the fact they are muslims is not the reason why that is. I am told a high proportion of Romanians in the UK, who are not muslims, are also heavy welfare spongers. Welfare inevitably attracts too many of the ‘wrong’ kind of immigrants.
Indeed you are. In fact you seem to be either unwilling or perhaps incapable of making an argument rather than simply making assertions.
Dogs are the answer. A friend of mine used to come to Brum and stay with a friend in Balsall Heath. He had an impeccably behaved and trained sheepdog, which didn’t need a lead, and was as friendly as pie. As soon as he took the dog for a walk, Muslims rushed inside or on to the other side of the street. It was marvellous to behold. Muslims detest and appear to be terrified of contact with dogs. On the other hand, Sikhs are often to be seen walking their alsatians or dobermans in the area of B17 where my missus lives. There is no love lost between the two communities. So I would encourage regular dog-walking in Muslim-enriched areas, preferably a couple of blokes with nasty dogs and a couple of scantily dressed women, all carrying cans of lager.
llamas: The vast majority of people are not prepared for violence, physically or psychologically, in equipment or skills. Short of compulsory mass training, this will always be true.
Thus, those who specialize in violence will almost always have a tactical advantage. They can mass – attacking two or more to one. They can choose the time and place. They can select their targets.
What stops them? Getting caught – if not in the act, being tracked down afterwards – and severely punished. But this is only useful against criminals who commit violent acts that individually merit serious punishment.
In a law-bound society, that leaves an opening for criminals who commit small acts of violence. The costs of administering formal punishment are such that such small violence may be committed with near-impunity. And since it is rarely committed for gain, the usual legal classifications don’t fit.
Individual self-defense fails for the reasons given in the first two paragraphs. Informal counter-intimidation works; but it is a cure nearly as bad as the disease. It empowers a class of uncontrolled “enforcers”, who may turn around and demand deference and rewards from those they “defend”.
State action can work – by forcing the bullies out of public spaces, and suppressing all their ways of “marking” territory. But that is intrusive.
What’s the good answer? Is there a good answer?
Not really but there are less-bad answers. And the worse answer is to appease or tolerate or not confront them.
Our political class and institutions do not fill me with confidence so the less-bad answers need to come from elsewhere. But in truth, they usually do.
Alisa: Indeed, I was rather impressed with the whole thing
@ Rich Rostrom – your points are all well-taken.
For my response – what PdH said, plus my usual pablum about how the perfect is the enemy of the good.
One thing’s for sure – violent thugs (of whatever stripe) always flurish wherever there is a virtual guaratntee that their victims will not be able to effectively resist.
I like the dogs and cans-of-lager approach, having regard to my usual rants about keeping a dog to do what you’re not prepared to do for yourself. But it’s not always practical to take your Doberman wherever you go. Is it, Bogie?
llater,
llamas
And, as we are seeing right now in California, how can you expect the police to protect you from racially-ethnically motivated violence when the person doing the violence-ing is an (ex) police officer?
A nasty little imp sitting on my shoulder is telling me that this case wouldn’t be getting the saturation police response that it is if some of the victims/targets were not themselves police officers or their family members. We now have the Kafka-esque spectacle of police officers (who have been named as targets of the killer) being given round-the-clock police protection.
The suspect was travelling in a grey Nissan pickup. On Thursday, two women driving a blue Honda pickup were shot by mistake by officers who suspected that they woz the bad guy. Their pickup was riddled with gunfire – more than 30 bullet holes, looks like Swiss cheese – yet both women have non-life-threatening injuries. I guess in the dark, all trucks are grey.
Truly, the gang that can’t shoot straight. Or at the right car. But this is who we’re going to call to protect us?
llater,
llamas