Causes of antiislamism in the West

[Gustaf]

It's generalized hatred of a vague other, since most people haven't ever seen one of them in the flesh.

Lol. Maybe that is true of the US, but hardly in Europe. In Sweden I imagine pretty much everyone who lives in a city must have seen plenty of Muslims.

There are a multitude of reasons. Fundamentally, a lot of people have negative experiences with Muslim immigrants.

There's partly general xenophobia, partly the socio-economic conditions that result from rigid labour markets. But there are also cultural issues. When Muslims demand to set up their own parallell legal structure with sharia law (like the main organization has in Sweden, for example) or when the many incidents with things like honour killings or demands for tolerance of intolerance float about, a lot of people in the West are put off.

I also think there is a general backlash effect against the taboos surrounding immigration and Islam in general (at least here, probably not in more openly racist countries on the continent).

[Gustaf]

There are a multitude of reasons. Fundamentally, a lot of people have negative experiences with Muslim immigrants.

But that doesn't really explain anything because everyone has had negative experiences with people from the majority community as well.

Haha, yes, but most people obviously have had a lot of positive experiences with the majority community as well. In Stockholm (and here I am obviously exaggerating and generalizing quite a lot) most Muslim immigrants live in what are basically poor ghettos surrounding the city. These areas have nothing that would make anyone from the city ever go there. Since many are either old, young or unemployed not that many come into the city either. So, those you do see tend to very disproportionately be gangs of young men coming into town to have fun. And running into gangs of young men is often a negative experience.

And in schools there is a strong tendency to form ethnic gangs as well.

I myself got punched in the face once by such a guy. Of course, many of my best friends are Muslims and all that so it didn't make me a Sweden Democrat but I don't think it is an uncommon process for many others. In the especially bad areas where they attack the police and even the fire brigade the impression that most other people will have will obviously become rather negative.

[Gustaf]

Haha, yes, but most people obviously have had a lot of positive experiences with the majority community as well. In Stockholm (and here I am obviously exaggerating and generalizing quite a lot) most Muslim immigrants live in what are basically poor ghettos surrounding the city. These areas have nothing that would make anyone from the city ever go there. Since many are either old, young or unemployed not that many come into the city either. So, those you do see tend to very disproportionately be gangs of young men coming into town to have fun. And running into gangs of young men is often a negative experience.

So what you're saying is that most people don't have many positive experiences of Muslim 'immigrants' because mostly they don't have any actual experiences of them as anything other than 'people who are not like us'. Which isn't so far off Xahar's argument, really.

I think the difference is that what I'm talking about is linked to real problems. Immigrant groups that aren't living in isolated ghettos and don't have high unemployment rates naturally meet people in normal settings a lot more often.

It's always hard to have this kind of discussion without accusations of racism being thrown about, but I think there are a number of tangible problems with muslim immigration that contribute to islamophobia in Europe (and, no, it's not exclusively muslim immigration, it's just the main migration flows here happen to be from pre-dominantly muslim countries). That doesn't justify it or anything, but I do believe some of these root causes need to be adressed.

[Gustaf]

I was referring to the United States; should have made that clearer. As I gather, in Europe it's much more similar to the American experience with blacks or Hispanics.

Yeah, I think the analogy with blacks in the US is fairly decent.

[Gustaf]

There's the big difference that anybody who grew up urbane and was born before, oh, 1993 or so, will remember a time, if he is not actively trying not to as a lot of people seem to be, when "muslim" had nothing whatsoever to do with it but the stereotypes and problems were otherwise quite identical.
Which tells you all you really need to know about "antiislamism".

Ok, I fit those criteria and I think I know what you mean. I believe the closest translation of the Swedish term would be "blackhead"

Of course, they WERE muslim to a large extent back then as well. And perhaps more importantly it was much less of an issue, at least as far as I can recall. At least in Sweden, xenophobia in general is a lot higher now.

Generally a lot of things, like 9/11 but not just that, has made people a lot more aware of islam  as a phenomenon and obviously most of this awareness has been in connection with negative stuff.

[Gustaf]

Just today the headline in Sweden's largest newspaper concerns so-called honour crimes. I should start with the caveats that a) the media reporting has its problems and b) I'm well aware that honour crimes are a product of the Middle East culture rather than of the islam religion.

The articles relates a couple of stories. Sara from northern Iraq was 15 when social services took her away from her family (her father had beaten her because he suspected she had a boyfriend). After a week 4 men armed with axes and guns arrived and abducted her from where she was placed and she's been gone ever since.

Fatima who was 19 was almost killed by her father and had to be hospitalized, again based on the suspicion that she might have a boyfriend. She was later sent by her family back to Iraq to marry her 30-year old cousin who prohibited her from reading. The last that was heard of her was a message where she said she was being raped every night.

And so on. Now, before the PC brigade jumps in, of course I am well aware that these stories are not representative of Muslims in general. In Sweden, however, the vast majority of Muslims  immigrants come from countries like Iraq, Turkey and Somalia (with those from the first 2 countries very often being Kurds). Within those groups these issues are quite real - Sweden's most well known Kurdish politician (who is the chairwoman of the Social Democratic Women's organization) moved out of one of the immigrant-heavy suburbs with precisely the motivation that the dominant view of women there created a bad environment for her children.

And, as with all things, there won't be that many news stories about all the normal Muslim families who don't have bizarre attitudes towards their daughters.

I think that plays a fairly large part in anti-muslim sentiment in Sweden. Especially because the establishment discourse wasted a lot of time trying to deny this as being a problem.

[Gustaf]

Angus, I think you might have a point with certain parts, like Eastern Europe but I don't think it's very valid for a country like Sweden. Muslims weren't very important to us until rather recently.

[Gustaf]

I did find that Dearborn, Michigan had the most Muslims, by percent, among US cities, and in that city, according to Zogby, Muslims claim not to feel isolated.  In fact, more generally, Zogby states that "Unlike Muslims in Europe, American Muslims do not tend to feel marginalized..."   Pew research has similar findings.

That's mostly because Muslim immigrants to the United States are much richer than European Muslims.

And why are they richer?

[Gustaf]

I did find that Dearborn, Michigan had the most Muslims, by percent, among US cities, and in that city, according to Zogby, Muslims claim not to feel isolated.  In fact, more generally, Zogby states that "Unlike Muslims in Europe, American Muslims do not tend to feel marginalized..."   Pew research has similar findings.

That's mostly because Muslim immigrants to the United States are much richer than European Muslims.

And why are they richer?

Countries of origin, I thought?

Not entirely. A Turk in the United States will generally be much richer than a Turk in Germany, because only skilled workers go from Turkey to the United States. The American supply of unskilled labor comes from parts southward and not from the Muslim world.

So what you mean is that there is a selection bias going on - different groups of people go to different countries. That's probably true.

I've been thinking a bit more about the whole interaction with Muslims thing. In my high school class of about 27 people there were 3 Muslim kids. One Iranian guy who was very stereotypically Iranian - quite, career-focused and not allowed to have a girlfriend. One Bosnian girl who was very nice and whom of course no one thought of as Muslim since she was white (until she shocked everyone in religion class by quoting the Quran in Arabic). And then a Turkish guy. Who was reasonably nice and all (I remember watching Dr. Strangelove with him at my home once. He ate all my candy). He did say that he would never allow his wife to work and that he hated Jews and wanted to see all Jews dead. So that wasn't very nice. He also once attacked another kid in school and tried to strangle him (to be fair, the kid had said a racial slur, or so he claimed at least).

There was another Iranian guy in a parallell class who was an outspoken Nazi who supported the Holocaust. And I think a bunch of Iranian girls who were all working hard to be doctors.

Of course, my high school was a bit on the posh side - I think there only 2 violent incidents during my 3 years there and none of them were particularly serious or led to any real bodily harm.

I guess the point is that if one wanted to, it wasn't hard to find some negative traits there. And while there were plenty of perfectly native Swedish assholes to dislike as well, the dislikeable Muslims tended to be so due to things that were linked to their religion or culture (anti-semitism, conservative views on women). Of course, once a negative stereotype is established it tends to become self-reinforcing. The Turkish guy was a lot more outspoken in his identity as a Muslim and probably affected most people in the class more in their impression of Muslims than the nice Bosnian girl.

[Gustaf]

Haha, yes, but most people obviously have had a lot of positive experiences with the majority community as well. In Stockholm (and here I am obviously exaggerating and generalizing quite a lot) most Muslim immigrants live in what are basically poor ghettos surrounding the city. These areas have nothing that would make anyone from the city ever go there. Since many are either old, young or unemployed not that many come into the city either. So, those you do see tend to very disproportionately be gangs of young men coming into town to have fun. And running into gangs of young men is often a negative experience.

So what you're saying is that most people don't have many positive experiences of Muslim 'immigrants' because mostly they don't have any actual experiences of them as anything other than 'people who are not like us'. Which isn't so far off Xahar's argument, really.

I think the difference is that what I'm talking about is linked to real problems. Immigrant groups that aren't living in isolated ghettos and don't have high unemployment rates naturally meet people in normal settings a lot more often.

It's always hard to have this kind of discussion without accusations of racism being thrown about, but I think there are a number of tangible problems with muslim immigration that contribute to islamophobia in Europe (and, no, it's not exclusively muslim immigration, it's just the main migration flows here happen to be from pre-dominantly muslim countries). That doesn't justify it or anything, but I do believe some of these root causes need to be adressed.

It's not so much that the main immigration flow came from Muslim countries, in fact outside a few countries it didn't, but Muslim have had a much lower intermarriage rate so while Yugoslavs, Italians and Finns has begun to disappear in the mass of the majority, Muslims has stayed distinct.

Well, I'm not really counting Scandinavian immigration because they're pretty much the same people - there is no issues with integration or anything there. And most other groups came in the past, so current immigration includes a lot of Muslims.

[Gustaf]

Haha, yes, but most people obviously have had a lot of positive experiences with the majority community as well. In Stockholm (and here I am obviously exaggerating and generalizing quite a lot) most Muslim immigrants live in what are basically poor ghettos surrounding the city. These areas have nothing that would make anyone from the city ever go there. Since many are either old, young or unemployed not that many come into the city either. So, those you do see tend to very disproportionately be gangs of young men coming into town to have fun. And running into gangs of young men is often a negative experience.

So what you're saying is that most people don't have many positive experiences of Muslim 'immigrants' because mostly they don't have any actual experiences of them as anything other than 'people who are not like us'. Which isn't so far off Xahar's argument, really.

I think the difference is that what I'm talking about is linked to real problems. Immigrant groups that aren't living in isolated ghettos and don't have high unemployment rates naturally meet people in normal settings a lot more often.

It's always hard to have this kind of discussion without accusations of racism being thrown about, but I think there are a number of tangible problems with muslim immigration that contribute to islamophobia in Europe (and, no, it's not exclusively muslim immigration, it's just the main migration flows here happen to be from pre-dominantly muslim countries). That doesn't justify it or anything, but I do believe some of these root causes need to be adressed.

It's not so much that the main immigration flow came from Muslim countries, in fact outside a few countries it didn't, but Muslim have had a much lower intermarriage rate so while Yugoslavs, Italians and Finns has begun to disappear in the mass of the majority, Muslims has stayed distinct.

Well, I'm not really counting Scandinavian immigration because they're pretty much the same people - there is no issues with integration or anything there. And most other groups came in the past, so current immigration includes a lot of Muslims.

The problem is that you look at Sweden as the example of migration. In Europe Yugoslavs and Italians came at the same time as the Turks, Algerian, Pakistanis and Moroccans the  four traditional Muslim immigration groups. These latter groups has shown themselves to be much harder to integrate than the former. If we look at the intermarriage rate for Yugoslavs it's several times higher (in Denmark 66% of Yugoslavs born in Denmark marry someone from another ethnic group) than for Turk (among Turks BID only 14% marry outside their ethnic group) or Pakistanis BID (with 18% it lies sligthly higher than the Turks)

It's true that I tend to think primarily of Sweden, I guess. Although, you're obviously picking specific countries as well, since your statement can hardly apply to Italy.

Generally, I was talking more about people coming as immigrants now than the people who are currently in the country. And then I think it largely holds true that Muslims constitute a large part of that (again, discarding groups like Norwegians or American CEOs or Spanish graduate students and whatnot).

[Gustaf]

I was referring to the United States; should have made that clearer. As I gather, in Europe it's much more similar to the American experience with blacks or Hispanics.

Yeah, I think the analogy with blacks in the US is fairly decent.

I don't see how it could be.  Blacks are not considered foreign to America at all, except to a very small number of ideological racists with mythical narratives about genealogy.  Blacks are sometimes considered inferior or dangerous, but there's no doubt to most people that they are American.  (Obama here is an anomaly due to his foreign sounding name and cosmopolitan life story)

There are some parallels with Hispanics in terms of questioning allegiance, but that concern is not at the center of the public consciousness, the distinction between Islam and the West dwarfing the distinctions between Hispanics and Anglos.   The best US parallels are in the past: the Chinese and Catholic immigrants of the 19th century, for example.  There was a lot of concern about Catholics operating their own schools, having an allegiance to the Pope rather than the nation, and setting up their own social institutions - a parallel anti-society to America.  Some of the same attitudes are what we hear about Sharia taking over the US, so that laws need to be passed against it in Oklahoma, and Herman Cain needs to become President so he can stop it from taking over the country.. Yes, the fear here is over the top.
 
 I've heard that the vast majority of Muslims don't want to establish Sharia law, even in Europe - that is the kind of thing the left their home countries to avoid.  it's just a few organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood that are agitating for it, and a few well meaning public figures and academics willing to listen to them.

I think the whole loyalty thing is a very American phenomenon. In Sweden at least, people don't really think much in those terms.

Here the hostility centres around crime, cultural differences and views on women, gays, etc.

[Gustaf]

Latin American immigration to the US is on a much larger scale than Muslim immigration to Europe though, right? I mean, especially when looking at the local level.

Also, I think the problems seem a lot smaller in the US compared to Europe and more specifically seem to be about concrete problems like drug smuggling and payment for welfare services to illegals and such things.

[Gustaf]

I did find that Dearborn, Michigan had the most Muslims, by percent, among US cities, and in that city, according to Zogby, Muslims claim not to feel isolated.  In fact, more generally, Zogby states that "Unlike Muslims in Europe, American Muslims do not tend to feel marginalized..."   Pew research has similar findings.

That's mostly because Muslim immigrants to the United States are much richer than European Muslims.

And why are they richer?

Because Europe allows more low skill immigration/refugees would be my guess. Class plays a huge role in all these prejudices, and of course middle/upper class people are able to assimilate better and quicker as well. Still waiting for the answer to my previous question. Are non-muslim poorer African or Indian immigrants looked at the same way as Muslims? Of course stereotyping is the order of the day when looking at immigrant groups so it really matters more on how the group is (in terms of behaviors and class)than any one individual.

It depends on what you mean. Sweden don't really have non-Muslim immigrants from India or sub-saharan Africa. We have a fair number of Middleeastern Christians, but those are perceived by most people to be Muslims I think.