Causes of antiislamism in the West

[ingemann]

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.

[ingemann]

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)

[ingemann]

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).

Yes to some degree I agree with you and most of your earlier points, but I think that the primary problem isn't the new waves of immigrant, but that the earlier waves has stayed so distinct (and poor), that people talk about all Muslim as one group. The three biggest "immigration" groups as example in Denmark the last 10 years has been Iraqis, Poles and Germans (around 30 000 of each). The Iraqis as refugees and Germans and Poles as blue-collar workers (much as the earlier Turks). But it has not resulted in Poles and Germans being singled out (through Romanians a much smaller group have). Much of it is because many Danes have a Polish or German grandparent or great grandparent so there are a unwillingness to single these groups out, even after the crisis have begun and some employers has kept importing them even with rising unemployment among Danish blue-collar workers. If a lot of Danes had Middle Eastern grandparents, I think we would see a greater tolerance toward new immigration waves.
Of course it doesn't help that many Middle Eastern immigrants have social attitude which can mildly be described as disgusting from a European POV, and a willingness to be completely open about their disgusting attitudes.