Outcome of anti-Muslim politics in Europe

[EPG]

Believe it or not, this is a sincere attempt to understand. Many European political parties are now organised around anti-Muslim politics. To go further, many Europeans on this forum of all parties participate in anti-Muslim politics, e.g. by documenting crimes committed by Muslim criminals. One question I have is what is the aim these politicians / supporters have by participating in anti-Muslim politics?

Reduction of Muslim presence in public life or the public sphere? Discrediting Islam as an idea? Or discrediting other, non-religious aspects of cultures with lots of Muslims? Yet there are a billion of them and Moroccans, Levantines, Indonesians are starkly different.
Reduction of immigration from Muslim countries? But there are big Muslim populations in Europe, who are usually included indiscriminately in anti-Muslim politics?
The standard Netanyahu line on LGB etc? But it seems that women's and LGB rights are held in more regard than ever before in Europe, and many participants seem to be young men on the Internet.
Judaism and Christianity have some adherents with odd attitudes to women, gays, etc., but is Islam somehow stronger or more likely to influence mass (non-Islamic) culture than Christians?
Conversion of Muslims to atheism, Christianity?
Something else? Outcomes from European opposition to minorities have traditionally ranged from failure in the face of public opinion, to internment and mass murder, but I feel most Europeans have historically wanted something in between those.

I personally don't care to fight for any of those outcomes or I don't think they are credible, so I have a weak insight. I also fear long-lasting bitterness if you target Muslim fellow citizens.

[Tender Branson]

Don't get me wrong: I don't have anything against Islam as a religion itself (well, actually I do - because I'm no fan of either religion and want people to get rid of it in general). I have a problem with how it is interpreted and currently, about 90% interpret it very extremist and fundamentalist, anti-Jewish, misogynistic and in an Islam-above-all manner that wants to destroy or convert non-believers. That is not something I want here, as most of these believers also want to establish a Sharia law above the state law. The state law always has to trump any Sharia (or fundie Christian) law and we need to assimilate or integrate these Muslims as best as possible, educate them with our liberal values, or if they don't agree with them ... deport them. Or not leave them in in the first place. Summed up: I oppose any form of religious extremism or extreme forms of conservativism (many Austrians even roll their eyes when they see Catholic nuns with headscarfs on the street), but they are at least no political extremists. With the Muslims that were coming in the past 20-30 years, it all just got much more extreme here. Many of them even are criminals, just look at all the young males that came recently. Why import such a violence-prone group ? I'd have absolutely no problem by letting in very liberal Muslims, who quickly assimilate into Austrian culture, but not the 90% who are not. This will take another 100-200 years.

[DavidB.]

Believe it or not, this is a sincere attempt to understand. Many European political parties are now organised around anti-Muslim politics. To go further, many Europeans on this forum of all parties participate in anti-Muslim politics, e.g. by documenting crimes committed by Muslim criminals. One question I have is what is the aim these politicians / supporters have by participating in anti-Muslim politics?

Reduction of Muslim presence in public life or the public sphere? Discrediting Islam as an idea? Or discrediting other, non-religious aspects of cultures with lots of Muslims? Yet there are a billion of them and Moroccans, Levantines, Indonesians are starkly different.

I don't really care that much about Islam itself. I absolutely think Islam is "inherently" more violent (in terms of scripture) than Christianity or Judaism, and I think this is the main reason why once "progressive" areas in the Levant and the Middle East started declining in terms of civilization following Islamization while previously backwards areas in Europe thrived following the turn towards Christianity. However, ultimately, from a social perspective, a religion is what its followers make of it. In case of Islam, the picture ain't pretty. Almost all Muslim countries are thoroughly unfree and terrible countries to live in.

Reduction of immigration from Muslim countries? But there are big Muslim populations in Europe, who are usually included indiscriminately in anti-Muslim politics?

Yes: an end to mass immigration, and remigration of those immigrants and descendants of immigrants who refuse to accept our values and spit on our countries. This is the main point.

The open disrespect for (and sometimes crimes against) women, gay people, Jews, and native Europeans in general all stem from a mindset of Muslim supremacy -- often held by people who are barely observant and not "traditional" in any meaningful sense, but who have utterly failed to integrate in our society.

Is it their "fault"? Partly yes, because as a minority they are supposed to accept the rules and values of their host country, but on the other hand, those who do not break the law and have passports cannot reasonably be "blamed" for anything, and our governments should have been clearer in their expectations from the start (for example, the Dutch government literally followed the model of "pillarization" and let Turkish and Moroccan communities organize themselves similarly -- no wonder integration does not take place!). In the end, I think we have to conclude that the cultural gap is just too big, which inevitably leads to tensions: "blaming" anybody really isn't fruitful, but that does not mean we do not have an enormous problem on our hands. A problem that is only exacerbated as more and more Muslim immigrants are taken in.

[ingemann]

Every European country have it own model of integration. All these models just have one thing in common, for some reason Muslim specific have been very hard to integrate in the different countries. You have the Swedish model of being nice, Dutch pillarisation, French assimilation etc. None of these models works very well on Muslims, while they work fine on other groups, in fact if we look at Sweden they have two suburbs of Stockholm with a majority from the Middle East, Rinkeby and Södertälje, one is well functioning and one is not, one is Muslim majority and one is not. Arab Christians and other Arab non-Muslim minorities do very well in Europe.

This is not unique for Sweden.

[EPG]

Thanks for replies. I have specific responses to some statements but probably not productive to outline them all here. It looks to me like Arabs in the Peninsular / Levantine sense do fine regardless of religion. It also seems to me that Britain is way better at Muslim inclusion and integration than any other country nearby, though it's also better at including black people and (for very different reasons) Jewish people. I don't have useful conclusions to draw from that, except it seems that the end goal of assimilation is still ill-defined. It seems to mean taking more "woke" positions than the average voter on attitudes toward gay people, Jewish people etc. which are still pretty cool in most of Europe. One question outstanding is what it is about Islam that is scarier for most people than, for instance, diabetes, which really scares me to the point of wanting political action about it.

[dead0man]

wait wait wait....you want political action against diabetes?  How you going to do that?  Using the govt to starve fat people won't work man.

[Person Man]

wait wait wait....you want political action against diabetes?  How you going to do that?  Using the govt to starve fat people won't work man.

Or could just blame poor people and cancel the SNAP program. Then you can declare victory in our "war" on diabetes.