Sam Harris is fully supportive of the latest bigotry craze sweeping the country.
Is it crazy to express as Ted Cruz did, a preference for Christians over Muslims in this process? Of course not. What percentage of Christians will be jihadists or want to live under sharia law? Zero. And this is a massive, in fact the only, concern when talking about security. If we know that some percentage of Muslims will be jihadists, inevitably we know we cannot be perfect in our filtering, if we know that a larger percentage, if not jihadists, will be committed to resisting assimilation into our society, then to know that a given refugee, or family of refugees, is Christian, is a wealth of information, and quite positive information, in this context. So it is not mere bigotry, or mere xenophobia, to express that preference.
(He then says he’s not endorsing all of Cruz’s politics, he just thinks Cruz is right on this one thing.)
The fact that we have a president who will not even name the problem is giving the right enormous energy that we really don’t want them to have.
No, guy, making the assumption that being Muslim, the group most lethally targeted by ISIS, makes one more likely to sympathize with fanatical jihadists, is most definitely bigotry. It doesn’t even make sense. Complaining that being Muslim automatically makes one less likely to assimilate assumes that Americans can’t really be Muslim, and is also bigotry.
You need something to cleanse your brain of that awful man now. Here’s John Oliver on refugees.
Feel better now?
Letter to a Christian Nation, 2nd edition: Y’all rock, we need to import a bunch more of ya.
Because, of course, Christians *absolutely never* harm people, right Harris?
yegads, what a fucking asshat.
Letter to a fascist Sam Harris: Fuck off
I like the fact that this guy along with Bill Maher, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Maajid Nawaz are being hailed as reformers. This shows something is fundamentally wrong with our society. I am really really sick of their attempts to constantly dehumanize Muslims. I am truly tired of them focusing on rhetorical gymnastics to show “Islam isn’t a race” or “Islamophobia is an attempt to suffocate legitimate criticism of Islam”. Well, guess what? the same people are true Islamophobes who are constantly demonizing a large population, feeding into narrative of fascists, and some of them have constantly called for actions against Muslims. Sam Harris has called for torture, profiling, installing dictators in Muslim countries, now he is calling for preventing refugees from coming into the country so that they die in the hands of ISIS. If this is “legitimate criticism” of Islam, then fuck him and his fanboys who constantly ignore his fascistic views because he uses a pseudo-rational language. Maybe people should go read some other rational works such as Ayn Rand’s or Alfred Rosenberg’s who were really good at justifying horrific acts against “the other”, because “reason”
Here is Hitler talking like Sam Harris:
There’s only one duty: to Germanize this country by the immigration of Germans, and to look upon the natives as Redskins. If these people had defeated us, Heaven have mercy! But we don’t hate them. That sentiment is unknown to us. We are guided only by *reason*. …
What in the world is Maajid Nawaz doing in that list? Liberal, secular Muslims arguing for reform from within Islam are not voices we should be shutting down. He may have co-authored a book with Harris, but Nawaz’s role in that book was to rebut Harris’s simplistic, incorrect, and bigoted view of Islam being inescapably more dangerous than other religions.
When even the Republican “voices of reason” like Jeb Bush are spouting this horseshit, it is a pretty sure sign that we are screwed one way or another come next November. Guess I’ll see everyone in the Canadian refuge camps (and be thankful they aren’t complete, paranoid asses like we are about the subject).
Interesting that it takes an immigrant to this country to show the real truth behind immigration.
100% of X sympathisers are Y, but the assumption that being Y makes you more likely to sympathise with X is bigotry!
I don’t get it. Are you really this confused? How do you, like, do science and stuff?
I think by “terrorists” the president meant refugees committing acts of terrorism in the U.S.
You’re doing it wrong. You’re overlooking the sneaky game he played.
100% of communion takers are Christian, but the assumption that being Christian makes you more likely to sympathise with Westboro Baptist is bigotry.
Which is true.
This shit is so disheartening to me. I felt a few years following 9/11, we had made some progress on this front in the U.S.
Turns out people just needed a couple of racist assholes to get enough national coverage and it’s all started back up again. If anything, it feels more hateful and dangerous now than it did before.
He does not assume that being Muslim makes anyone more likely to be a sympathizer or a jihadist.
He merely notes that Christians make up zero percent of that group. If vetting refugees to identify who is entering the country is a prudent thing to do, this information is relevant. The determined distortion of Harris’ arguments in order to prop up the vile slander of racism is contemptible and requires willful ignorance of his support for accepting refugees and his opposition to the naked bigotry of the political right.
What percentage of Christians will assault a spouse? What percentage will drive drunk and kill someone? What percentage of Christians will bomb an abortion clinic? What percentage will run guns to today’s equivalent of the IRA? What percentage of Christians will be serial rapists or even serial rapist-murderers?
Non-zero.
But don’t worry, there’s only one concern when talking about security. And Sam Harris says that it’s not Sam Harris’ bigotry.
cousinavi, #11
Nope. Been through this already. He has explicitly called for ethnic profiling of Muslims (look it up yourself) and wrote in defense of torture (look it up yourself) when torture by America of Muslims was going on.
This has been done many, many times already. Pretty much everytime there’s a Sam Harris thread here.
I’m not worried about getting hurt by Jihadists. Some Xians, on the other hand, who are at the top of Homeland Security’s list, and are raving paranoid bigots, yes, there is a minor fear there
Zero percent of Falangists are Muslim.
Zero percent of the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army are Muslim.
Zero percent of the Ku Klux Klan are Muslim.
Telling me that zero percent of Christians are Muslim fanatics doesn’t tell me anything about whether Christians are less likely to do violence than Muslims.
@cousinavi
Which is a stupid and bigoted train of thought. It’s in the premise – only muslim violence is bad. He has one security concern, “jihadists”. A jihadist is by definition muslim. What percentage of muslims were Crusaders or sympathized with the Crusades? Get it?
Even beyond that:
What percentage of refugees today sympathized with the Christian ethnic cleansing of Balkan muslims in the 1990s? What percentage of refugees today would be happy to use the freedom from IS oppression that they might experience in the US to buy a gun and “take revenge on all muslims” by shooting up a mosque?
I guarantee the percentage of muslims who support these gargantuan acts of genocide and venal acts of vengeance is zero. And isn’t that the only security concern?
Valid security concerns exist when a massive influx of people show up at the border, especially when we now have a bad actor who exploited the humanitarian emergency faced by Syrians by using a fake Syrian passport to enter with legit refugees in order to kill massive amounts of people in Paris.
Now, take the fact that unfortunately large percentages of Muslims living in Europe who have been polled (by Pew) take positions that are radically opposed equal treatment of women and the LGBT community. They also support the death penalty for apostasy in percentage and restrictions on freedom of speech in large numbers. If even if some of the immigrants entering hold these views (and they can and do regardless of if they have been persecuted or threatened by ISIS), they may fail to integrate well with European societies (this is a problem recognized by legit social science). Take the long view: their children may be isolated and are prime targets for radicalization by organizations that seek out 1st and 2nd generation muslim immigrants to prey on. This is a security consideration we must recognize, and more people will die if we do not.
Unfortunately, Harris is right when he points out that if a refugee can reliably be determined to be a Christian, we know that the probability they will go on to commit terrible acts of terrorism are almost zero. I’m not sure how that could be controversial. I did a cursory search for acts of terrorism committed anywhere in the world by a immigrant to that place who was Christian. Didn’t find anything of note. Willing to change my mind on this if someone has an example (before you try the Norwegian shooting, the perpetrator was not an immigrant, and self identifies as an “Odinist”).
I’m also really not sure how it can be controversial after Paris, after Beruit, after the Russian jetliner, after the aborted attack in France by the American servicemen, after Charlie Hebdo, after the London bombings in 2005 to say that non-integrated and/or radicalized Muslims pose a serious threat to the civilized world.
I like John Oliver even more than I did a few minutes ago.
I am all for secularism, but I’m opposed to bigotry, especially bigotry in the name of reason.
Do you want to know the real reason I avoided calling myself an atheist for most of my life?
Because I thought all atheists were Ayn Rand worshipers, dirty commies, or amoral people who could philosophize themselves into to justifying a nuclear war.
When I see Harris I always think of what my grandpa used to say about people like him:
“I’d like to buy him for what he’s worth, and sell him for half of what he thinks he’s worth.”
(Not a justification of slavery!)
BTW, I love how all these “rational guys who are never wrong” skeptics tell us to trust experts when it comes to just about everything, but we have to ignore what the majority of Middle East experts and scholars of religion would say about the nature of Islam and how it relates to terrorism.
Can’t let facts get in the way of hipster secular bigotry.
lemurcatta @17
Ed Brayton has an answer to your worries about Muslim terrorists.
I wonder why Harris doesn’t advocate for profiling the most dangerous demographic of all: men.
https://youtu.be/wxlhyX-4qKI
Wow, it didn’t take long for the Harrisites to come with their usual accusations of misquoting or whatever.
On topic: fuck Harris.
Harris is just unbelievable on this — it really lays out his bigotry perfectly. What he’s done, as PZ noted, is pick out, of all the reasons why we might not want to let someone into the country, the one that only applies to Muslims. So sure, 100% of jihadis are Muslim because only Muslims use that word to describe themselves. But on the matter of terrorism, jihadism is not the only game in town.
Going through Wikipedia’s list of terrorist attacks in the US since 2010…
1. Austin suicide attack — anti-government
2. Pentagon shooting — anti-government
3. Discover Communications hostage crisis — environmental activism
4. Wisconsin Sikh temple shooting — white supremacist
5. Boston Marathon bombing — Islamic but not jihadist (the motivation was revenge for civilian deaths in US military actions overseas)
6. 2013 ricin letters — motivation unclear, but not jihadist
7. 2013 LA airport shooting — anti-government
8. 2013 Wichita bomb attempt — jihadist (net-radicalised US-born perpetrator)
9. Overland Park Jewish Community Centre shooting — white supremacist/neo-Nazi
10. 2014 Las Begas shootings — anti-government
11. NYC hatchet attacks — sort-of jihadist (net-radicalised US-born perpetrator)
12. 2014 Austin shootings — anti-government
13. Guardians of Peace cyberattack on SONY — not worthy of inclusion on this list unless you think SONY has human rights, and not jihadist anyway
14. Bed-Stuy police shooting — anti-police (the perpetrator was Muslim, but his motivation was revenge for the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, not jihadism)
15. Curtis Culwell Centre shooting — jihadist
16. Charleston church shooting — white supremacist/neo-Nazi
17. Chattanooga shootings — jihadist
18. Failed hospital bomb — probably jihadist
So, in the last five years jihadism has been the root of 4 or 5 out of 17 terrorist incidents (I’m not counting SONY), and of those more than half were home-grown American citizens who basically self-radicalised. Harris’s “plan” is just a cover for anti-Muslim bigotry. He’s basically looking for reasons to treat Muslims like sub-citizens without the full gamut of constitutional rights.
The lack of big-picture thinking among the howling anti-refugee crowd is quite astounding.
Accepting and looking after refugees from the Middle East is exactly what we should be doing. As gladly and as fulsomely as possible. Mainly because they’re, y’know, human beings too, but even if you don’t have a shred of compassion for your fellow man in you, it’s a good idea. Why? Because these are the people whom the ISIS fanatics and corrupt regimes are forcing out. These are the people with the strongest reason to despise fanaticism and the loudest voice to raise in opposition to it. In the long term they are the ones who can rebuild the Middle East into a peaceful and prosperous region that does not hate the West for all its interference and intervention. And in the short term, the more people who flee the region the less powerful the fanatics in power will become. The less popular and appealing their message will be. The fewer people will be radicalised and head over to join them. A huge influx of Middle Eastern refugees provides us with a golden opportunity to build real bridges and forge real links of gratitude – to upset the “clash of civilizations” narrative that the ISIS recruiters rely on to polarise opinion and attract support. Provided we also stop the drone strikes and meddling and warmongering of course. That’s important too.
Masses of people fleeing their regime to a respectful and supportive West is about the worst publicity that people like ISIS can get – and they rely on publicity to stay in power. Angry xenophobic bigots rattling their sabres and refusing to help Muslims because they are Muslims writes their recruitment videos for them.
Claimed, but not verified….What is your real problem? Scared of imaginary demons?
When you see people running from the crater that is Syria, you don’t stop them at the border and give them a religious test: you take them in and give them a home. Why is this not common sense? What is this, the first year America has ever taken in refugees? The first time we’ve taken in muslim refugees? It’s certainly not the first times half this country has angrily shaken their fists at those darn foreigners, who dare to run from horrible places to a nation advertising itself as the world’s beacon.
lemurcatta @17
I’m really not sure how it can be controversial after the ozone hole, after acid rain, after global warming, after the Iraq wars, after the 2008 global recession, after Greece and Portugal and Ireland and Iceland and Cyprus to say that integrated and/or radicalized neo-liberals pose a serious threat to the civilized world.
Personally, I’m not so sure how it can be controversial after the Trail of Tears, after the financial exploitation of Southeast Asia and Africa, after the trans-Atlantic Slave trade, after worldwide European imperialism, after numerous cases of white domestic terrorism, to say that, well, any kind of white person poses a serious threat to the world.
PZ: –
Yes, of course it also becomes a nice self fulfilling prophecy. If you treat muslims or anyone who looks like they might be muslim like shit for years or decades on end, then they are unlikely to assimilate and they or their children may well become disenchanted and open to radicalisation. Thing is, if you behave that way as a nation, as a nation you are to blame. Harris and his cohort are fighting fire with kerosene.
Nerd@26: France claims that two of the bombers were fingerprinted in Greece, traveling on Syrian passports together. As I understand they know this because they fingerprinted the bodies in France and they match the Greek prints. One of the passports has been found and is almost certainly fake — possibly planted in order to cause paranoia.
Four bombers were French. One is unidentified.
The head of the operation was Belgian. He was killed in a police raid, along with his cousin. Another person blew himself up in that fight, and is unidentified.
Clearly, the solution is to close US immigrations to all French and Belgian citizens — particularly the ones coming in on fake Syrian passports.
@lemurcatta #17,
What about the security risk of allowing millions of displaced people to languish and suffer? What are their chances of radicalization growing up in that environment? ISIS is hoping for that exact situation. They want the west to turn their backs on refugees so that it will be easier to radicalize more Muslims. Responding with bigotry to cries for help is aiding ISIS to achieve their goals.
Just how will we know which people are Christians and should be let through? Sprinkle them with holy water and see who burns? Test them on the New Testament — bearing in mind that research shows that atheists actually know more about Christianity than the average Christian?
Does Harris think a potential Islamic terrorist is willing to fake being a refugee and could successfully get through 18 months of screening, but couldn’t possibly pull off the whole “I was a wretched sinner, and then Jesus came to me and cleansed me!” routine that even our dumbest politicians can spout?
Even George W. Bush knew better than this nonsense.
@33
Harris’ whole methodology is a combination of bigotry and underestimation. It’s just like his TSA screening idea, that assumes international terrorist groups would be too stupid to strap bomb vests to old ladies.
@ Al Dente (post #20)
I substantially agree with Brayton re: the US, and I wholly support bringing in as many refugees as we can take after vetting them. When I said “the border” in my original post I meant any border, but especially those of the European nations facing the brunt of the crisis. But while we take them in, we *must* work hard to address integration issues both here and in Europe. The need for Muslim immigrants to feel they have a place and opportunity in their new countries is urgent, and without that, they will continue to be radicalized. We must also address the very bad ideas in the religion that call for oppression of women, honor killings, opposition to liberal democracy, etc. And we must not be afraid of liberals who will calls us bigots for criticizing bad ideas.
@ toska #32
Using the word “bigotry” like you do robs it of any real meaning. Let me help.
“I think we shouldn’t accept any of the refugees cause most of them aren’t white, they dress weird, I can’t understand their language, and they believe in the wrong god.”
“I think we should be careful about who we let in because it isn’t easy to vet these people. We should spend more time thinking about how to handle this because historically Muslim immigrants haven’t adapted well to the European way of life, which can lead to situations like we had in Paris”
Are we no so devoid of real bigoted monsters in the world that we need to turn our shaming and ire towards those who might articulate a position like the latter?
You should be utterly afraid of fascists like Trump and Carson who demonize the total religion. Liberals who say you shouldn’t show paranoia to the religion, and respect a vast majority of practitioners, should be listened to, as Xians in the US of A are far more likely to cause problems here. You are just trying to rationalize, without actually justifying, your Islamophobia.
@ Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls #26
This fact has been widely reported. Are you a conspiracy theorist?
Funnily enough, you give a handful of white protestants a trans-atlantic boat ride and some muskets, and they end up committing genocide. Give them some isotopes and two rockets and they wipe two cities off the map just to show off.
It’s almost like making broad generalizations about demographics based off a small portion of that total demographic is bad.
I am deeply afraid of Carson and Trump.
Yes you are completely correct, Christians overwhelmingly are the problem in the United States when it comes to the project of securing rights and dignity for all of our people. Also, I am mainly speaking about Europe in my previous posts.
If your definition of Islamophobia is the act of criticizing the content of the religion then I am guilty as charged.
@lemurcatta #36,
So you completely ignored my questions in order to be condescending about a single word choice instead (and by the way, many people ARE responding with bigotry, and it IS exactly the reaction ISIS wants us to have. Your little lecture does not change the meaning of what I said at all). It really convinces me that you want to have a real conversation about security issues regarding refugees (not).
lemurcatta, #35
Please briefly describe a practical plan for how this will be carried out. Muslim refugees enter the country through the legal process. Now what? At what stage are they getting this horrifically condescending lecture?
This is not even to mention the racism of making the blanket statement that Muslims in America in general need to be told about oppression of women, honor killings (what’s the rate of honor killings in the U.S. btw?) and opposition to democracy.
And the assimilation thing is a stupid myth. Muslims have been and continue to assimilate just fine in the U.S. Is there a reason to think Muslim immigrants assimilate to a lesser extent than any other immigrants?
Vivec, #39
Well said!
I just fail to see how any of the metrics people are using to try and bar Muslim refugees couldn’t equally apply to white people.
In terms of “population-halving atrocities” white people more or less have a monopoly on it. Looking at things historically, the most dangerous thing you could do for your country is let white people in. Who knows, they might pull a Russian revolution on you while your back is turned and establish an autocracy.
I mean, it happened once, right?
@ Saad #42
Jesus Christ, how many times have I pointed out that I am speaking mainly of Europe? Muslims seem to do just fine in the United States. There are a variety of reasons that have been posited for that. But in Europe, this has not been the case.
Oh, and your charge of racism aside, I was thinking the lecture would be given by a hologram of Sam Harris, probably on Ellis Island or maybe on the ferry over to the mainland. Or, perhaps it would be via mandatory online module a couple of months after they get settled.
lemurcatta @17:
What is with this assumption on the part of so many if you take a Muslim and a Christian that the former will be more likely to be a terrorist than the latter when the United States has a history of Christians being terrorists? I’m talking about the Ku Klux Klan here. And they’re still around. Being a Christian *might* make one less likely to be the equivalent of a jihadist, but it doesn’t mean an individual is not dangerous.
@36:
Only in your eyes, because you’re one of the many people that argues against Sam Harris being the sexist anti-Muslim bigot that his words demonstrate him to be. You’re a Harris apologist.
Have you not read of his support for profiling Muslims at airports? That’s pure bigotry because he treats a Muslim as someone who can be visually identified. Given that not all Muslims are of Arab descent (some are white, some are black), there is no one physical characteristic that all Muslims share. And then there’s the fact that some people mistake Sikh’s for Muslims.
Also, have you not read of his support for torturing terrorists to acquire information? Given his anti-Muslim bigotry, it’s no great stretch that when he’s talking about terrorists, he’s talking about Muslims.
@38:
I suspect what is being questioned is if the terrorist with a fake Syrian passport entered with refugees. That, I haven’t heard.
@42:
Twice, so far that I’ve read. And given that Sam Harris is in the US and is referring to policies in the US, Europe is not relevant to the immediate discussion.
****
astearacae @21:
In particular, white men. At least in the United States.
****
lemurcatta
Hmmm, let me see, what did most of those bringing islamist terror to Europe have in common?
Oh, right. They were born and raised in those countries, citizens of those countries. The things that went wrong with them didn’t go wrong in Syria or Iraq. It went wrong in Brussels, in Paris, Lyon, London…
What about the few thousand European nationals who are fighting for Daesh right now? Syria has way more reason to mistrust people with European passports than vice versa. BTW, being “of muslim origin” is not even a good predicator. You know who’s the most reliable group of informants on islamist extremists in Germany? Their mothers and sisters. They’Re the ones who turn to the police and authorities, saying that their sons and brothers are espousing twisted and horrile ideas.
You know, if you stopped suspecting every muslim to be anti-women, anti-LGBT, anti-democracy because “it’s in their religion”, that would be a very good first step. Because all those things are, of course, in the Bible as well. And please, can we do away with this “honour killing” bullshit? It’s a crime that apparently only exists when commited by muslims or maybe HIndus. When a white non-muslim man kills hie (ex) wife/partner and children, that’S called a “family tragedy” with a serious side-order of “what did she do to drive a good man to such deeds”. When a muslim man does it, it’s an “honour killing”, evidence that “they” are not like “us” and is used to further discrimination against muslims. In short, the oppression of women is used to justify further oppression against them as muslims.
This is, of course, complete bullshit. It’S not he generation of immigrants that is being radicalized. It’s not even only young men from muslim families. Claiming that those muslims aren’t European is the same as going by skin colour, just more nicely wrapped.
So, are you European? Are you living in one of the countries that is currently taking the lion’s share of those refugees who make it to the EU? No? Thought so.
I am, and I am not afraid of our long time muslim citizens nor of the Syrian refugees. I’m afraid of the rise of western fascism. I’m afraid of right wing terrorists who have committed 600+ attacks against refugees, their homes and their helpers this year. Who are posting “wanted” posters with personal information of pro refugee people, who have hunted elected officials out of their office because those people were afraid of their safety and that of their family.
Oh, btw, one of the organisations doing huge and good work helping the refugees to integrate and also, yes, to accept that some things are different here when it comes to gender, seperation of church and state, LGBTQ issues, is the central council of muslims, who provide interpreters, religious service, information…
numerobis
Actually, his cousin wasn’t killed in the Saint Denis raid. They found her passport and simply assumed it was her, but later found that the body was bepenised. That’S what I find the most worrying: There has by now been so much information spread without confirmation, so much false information (so much for the guy’s in Syria), so many false arrests where people are released the next day with an official “sorry” that my confidence in the security agencies is really low.
Leeeeet’s see:
39% of American adults lean Republican: that’s 96 million people, give or take
57% of Republicans want to dismantle the secular state and make Christianity the state religion: that’s approximately 55 million people
70,6% of the American population are Christians, that’s 226 million people.
So, 24-25% of American Christians want to live under Sharia law. They won’t call it Sharia law, because their brand of clerical tyranny invoke the name of a levantine carpenter-turned-preacher instead of invoking the name of an arabic merchant-turned-preacher (totally different ma bonne dame), but it’s essentially the same.
http://usuncut.com/news/breaking-several-black-lives-matter-protesters-were-just-shot-by-white-supremacists-in-minneapolis/
White supremacists are Christians, but we call them “white supremacists”, not “Christians”.
It is heartening to see a fellow atheist standing up to the heartless bigotry of another. Thank you, PZ!
F.O., not all white supremacists are Christian; some are neo-pagan and others are atheist.
Did it occur to you that this might have more to do with how the media classifies people and events than with reality? A lot of the IRA bombers in the UK were Christian citizens of the Irish Republic (and a number of entirely innocent people of the same description suffered persecution because of attitudes like Harris’s). I’d be surprised if none of those involved in “unofficial” bombings and shootings in the later years of apartheid in South Africa – both in the liberation cause, and from the far-right – were not immigrant Christians. Others have pointed out that mass killings far worse than anything jihadists have achieved were carried out by white Christian immigrants to places outside Europe in the era of colonial expansion. And then there was some Catholic immigrant from Austria to Germany whose name for the moment escapes me.
I agree; nor of the bogeyman under the bed, nor the monster in the wardrobe.
Thing is, those who “might articulate a position like the latter” are not the targets of shame and ire, unless they are using it as a cover for their real position: “keep Muslims out.” You began with something much closer to that; only after you were challenged did “let’s think about how to improve integration” appear. I’m not saying the latter is insincere – but you should be able to see how some might think so.
One more point: some of the jihadi terrorists in Europe have been converts, in some cases the children of Christian immigrants.
On one point you’re right, and Nerd of Redhead is wrong: it has been confirmed that at least one of the Paris terrorists is the same person who entered Greece on a false Syrian passport. It’s likely this is deliberate strategy on the part of Daesh to stir up hatred against the refugees, since the evidence is that they’d have no trouble recruiting enough European residents and citizens. Part of their ideology is that Muslims should not live among non-Muslims. Now where else have I come across that idea recently?
In his manifesto he identifies as a “cultural Christian”, and pretends to be a member of a modern Crusader order. It’s true he now identifies as an Odinist, but we have nothing but his rather obviously unreliable word that he did so at the time of his murders.
In the period spanning 2006 to 2008, only 0.4% of terrorist attacks in Europe were committed by muslims. In the period 2009-2010, only 4 of the 543 terrorist attacks in Europe were committed by muslims (that’s 0.7%). So a ‘preference’ for Christians over Muslims, when taking in refugees doesn’t seem all that rational to me. Besides, how would one go about checking the religion of refugees anyway? It’s not exactly difficult to pretend you’re a christian, now is it. And then there’s the fact that, as far as I’m aware, there have been zero reports of Syrian refugees committing terrorist attacks. Oh, and, even if some percentage of muslim refugees ‘will be committed to resisting assimilation into our society’, you’re denying aid to thousands upon thousands of innocent, desperate people – people risking everything they’ve got to get away from terrorism and war- by only accepting christian refugees. That’s not something I’m willing to accept.
Wat a bullshit. There are plenty Christians who are jihadists and want to impose sharia law. They just call it differently.
@Giliell #47
And the irony is: it’s not being recorded as terrorism. Of course it would be different if the culprit were Muslim…
But but but but but…..he’s just criticising beliefs. He’s got nothing against Muslims as people.
he just thinks Cruz is right on this one thing
Actually, no, before that Harris mentioned that he finds Cruz’s statement crazy. But then goes to implicitly endorse him. This “masterful” philosopher is as confused as a novice.
However, then at the end of the interview Sam Harris said that “he prefers Ben Carson to Noam Chomsky [for becoming the president], because crazy Carson is, he at least understands this issue.” (http://www.samharris.org/podcast last podcast, 1:47:00 ish point).
Harris is digging himself deeper. He is definitely hurt because recently Chomsky kicked his intellectual butt in a series of email correspondence that they had and revealed Harris to be a flyweight philosopher.
@58
Yup. It’s similar to when he endorsed Jerry Fallwell and Pat Robertson’s understanding of violence in the ‘Muslim world’.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/page3/20060403_sam_harris_interview1
Even leaving the bigotry and the bad statistics aside, there’s another fundamental problem here, as with all of Harris’ ideas on this subject: how do you distinguish Muslims from Christians? It’s not like a blood group or a halpotype – there is no objective test. You just have to ask people. So, assuming that there are jihadists trying to sneak in as refugees (itself a very questionable proposition), does anybody honestly think that people willing to kill and die for their cause are going to baulk at lying to an immigration official about their religion, when they’re almost certainly travelling on fake passports anyway? Seriously, you might as well just cut to the case and ask them “are you a terrorist?” – at least you’ll get fewer false positives.
Harris isn’t just wrong on this, he’s fractally wrong.
@59:
Technically no, he just said he agrees with their “analysis” that there is a link between Islam and “the kind of violence we see in the Muslim world”. Funny that nobody denies that there is a link. Of course there is a link, Sunni/Shiite conflict is completely 100% religious sectarian war.
But his endorsement of Carson over Chomsky is really just childish. And this comes from the same interview where he calls Carson and Cruz crazy. So basically, Harris would rather have a dishonest crazy Christian lunatic lead US than a respected intellectual and very smart atheist academic; all because he got his ass handed to him in a debate against Chomsky, otherwise there was no need for him to name drop Chomsky in this debate. The guy is just like a big child.
rietplum
Well, it’s not even called “right wing”. German state prosecution has decided that just because somebody (who is, btw, a firefighter) disables the smoke detectors of an inhabited refugee shelter and then sets fire to said shelter because he hate foreigners does not mean that he is “right wing” nor that he attempted murder.
By now “right wing extremist” or heavens forbid “fascist” are words you must never say to anybody no matter what they themselves say or do. They’re concerned citizens or, in the case of HUngary’s Orban “great European democrats”.
Ironically, the same crowd howling like dogs* whenever you use those terms quite accurately are the same people who will also whine about how they’re no longer allowed to have a “Z*** (anti romani slur) Schnitzel” or to use the n-word…
*There’s a German saying: getroffener Hund bellt. The dog that got hit barks
PZ, I’m pretty certain your mind is closed on this issue and I’m not going to persuade you, but this line of reasoning is pure nonsense. Sure, ISIS is killing more Muslims in Syria and Iraq than they have killed Westerners/Christians in France or Tunisia or Egypt. It is also irrelevant. How many Christians are in Syria or Iraq? Very, very few. Why? Because Muslims in those countries have targeted them for decades.
If you adhere to their brand of Islam, ISIS or these other terrorists groups have no interest in killing you. Take the Bali hotel attack – those who could recite verses of the Koran were allowed to live (http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/mali-hotel-terror-attack-al-qaeda-linked-extremist-group-claims-n467531). Being a fundamentalist Sunni Muslim absolutely makes one more likely to sympathize with fanatical jihadists. It doesn’t mean you are necessarily a fanatical jihadist, but nearly all of the terror attacks this year have been committed by fundamentalist Sunni Muslims. ISIS, Al Qaeda, Boko Haram – these are Sunni Muslim terror groups.
Think about your personal situation – you received a considerable amount of backlash for your communion wafer stunt, but are you today concerned that a fanatical Christian terrorist, educated and encouraged by the Vatican in Rome, will rush into Skepticon weilding an AK-47 and gun you and the rest of the athiests down? If the pictures you posted are any clue I would say you’re not too concerned. You consistently describe where you live and work. Someone who lives in fear does not do this.
But consider the people who do live in fear: Salman Rushdie. Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Molly Norris. Lars Vilks. Kurt Westergaard. Pamela Geller. Geert Wilders. And many, many others. What do all these people have in common? They criticized Islam. Many of them have full time security and can’t publicly disclose their location for fear of being killed. Their ‘crimes’ do not match yours in magnitude – an arguable point but one I’ll stand by – but the fact that they live in real fear and you don’t should tell you something about the disparity between Christianity and Islam right now.
All religions have their problems. But right now the Muslim religion is special. They are breeding fanatical terrorists in a way no other religion is doing. This isn’t bigotry, this is reality. It doesn’t mean the west has to treat all Muslims as terrorists or stop Muslim immigration or isolate Muslims in camps or indescriminately bomb Muslim countries. We can argue about what the right policy response, if any, should be (I don’t think there needs to be a policy response). But to deny the root cause of this terrorism (religion!) is not simply simply intellectually dishonest, it is madness.
Actually, about 10% of the Syrian population are Christian, which is about 1.8 million people: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/sy.html
@chrislawson And not all terrorists are Muslim.
@Penny L:
All religions have their problems. But right now the Muslim religion is special. They are breeding fanatical terrorists in a way no other religion is doing. This isn’t bigotry, this is reality.
Criticizing Islam is not bigotry.
It doesn’t mean the west has to treat all Muslims as terrorists or stop Muslim immigration or isolate Muslims in camps or indescriminately bomb Muslim countries. We can argue about what the right policy response, if any, should be (I don’t think there needs to be a policy response). But to deny the root cause of this terrorism (religion!) is not simply simply intellectually dishonest, it is madness.
Um, then why the hell do you have a problem with people criticizing Harris on statements that at least appear to target muslims as a whole?
Bullshit.
Seriously, when atheists agree with religious fanatics that it’s all in the text. All of a sudden.
Usually atheists use the way 500 members of a religion have 600 opinions on the text as evidence that those texts are:
1) so open to interpretation that there cannot be any true meaning be discerned in them, let alone some eternal truth
and that
2) the interpretation of those texts usually allign with the political, philosophical and ethical values held by the person doing the interpretation. Sure, that’s a bit of a hen and egg conundrum, but just look at people like Kim Davis who happily use the Bible to justify their bigotry against gay people but who also happily ignore all those passages that refer to things like adultery, divorce, etc.
I said it before: the rise of Wahabism and Salafism are current phenomena. Their existence can therefore not be sufficiently explained with a 1400 years old text.
Here’s a wonderful text by a liberal muslim about this guilt by association
He’s not the first to confuse sophistry with philosophy and to believe that low slyness is the sign of a towering intellect.
***
Indulging in religious and cultural determinism is.
And that’s precisely what Harris and his apologists are doing.
Of course, more innocent people have been killed in drone strikes than in other terrorist attacks. How do I know that? The criterion the US uses is whether the killed were “military-aged males” (13-50 years old). Being a “military-aged male” doesn’t make you a terrorist. It was exactly the same criteria used by the Bosnian Serbs during the Srebrenica massacre, which the courts deemed to be genocide. It can’t be counterinsurgency on the one hand and genocide on the other. My point is that the concern over ISIS terrorism (horrible crimes all) misses this fact. Who is going to stop the drone killers? How? Should airports profile anyone who “looks American” (they could be painting targets for the drones after all). Considering that Harris defended killing tens of thousands of Sudanese people by blowing up a pharmaceutical plant, who is the bigger terrorist? Do the solutions you prescribe apply to your own society? When human life is just so much dog shit under the shoes of the West, how can we wonder why people support terrorism against the West? It can not be the method of targeting civilians that is abhorrent when we employ this method ourselves. The West claims loss of innocent lives are “collateral damage”, “human shields” or “errors”. How do we not that it is not? No one is ever punished for these “mistakes” (cf. US obliteration of MSF hospital). We don’t have to wait for a Snowden to deliver a signed confession from the White House before acting.
I also find it hard to respect the opinion of a guy (Harris) that obviously fried his brain with too many hallucinogenics.
It doesn’t appear to be Islam driving the ISIS fighters, it’s drugs.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-11-24/captagon-the-drug-that-kept-the-paris-attackers-calm/6970464
Aaaand it’s Penny L again… With the exact same arguments as always. Yaaaaaay!
Which you don’t. You suspect, based on your bigoted prejudices, but you don’t know it.
See previous answer.
The assumption that muslim refugees won’t want to assimilate, but that christian ones will just instantly melt into a particular type of american culture is beyond stupid. It’s not just insulting and wrong because he assumes muslims can’t or won’t assimilate, it’s also fucking stupid because it assumes that specific culture as “the american culture” and particularly because he assumes christian refugees will just chuck out their entire culture and way of life and assimilate based on the fact that they love that guy Jesus. Because there are never any tensions or divides between christian groups and syrian christians are guaranteed to get along with baptists just fine.
I used to think Harris was an arsehole…but as of late i’m starting to think he is an arsehole AND an idiot.
Well now Sam, which is more likely in, say, the next 50 years: the imposition of Shariah in the USA, or that of a Christian theocracy? Who is more likely to support the imposition of a Christian theocracy: a Muslim, or a Christian? Apply that massive brain to those questions Sam, then tell us again whether it’s rational to prefer Christian refugees over Muslim ones.
(I should perhaps note that I’m not advocating applying any religious test to refugees, or preferring any refugees over others on religious grounds. Refugees are morally entitled to our help because they are refugees.)
The whole assimilation thing is bullshit to begin with when talking about terrorism.
Are you saying the European Muslims who have committed terrorism in Europe were not assimilated? What’s that based on? You need to define assimilation then because right now it’s sounding like by assimilation you mean “will not commit terrorism”, which makes your whole point circular.
Penny L
Yeah, Geller and Wilders ‘just’ criticised Islam. Granted, even though they go a lot further and spout fascist bullshit, that still doesn’t mean they should fear for their lives, but it shows your dishonesty, again.
Still not seeing how any of the arguments in favor of opposing letting in muslim refugees couldn’t also be applied to white people.
I mean, if we’re counting bombings and mass shootings as the metric, America wiped two cities off the map just to show off and killed 105 thousand people instantly. If we’re counting targeted attempts at ethnic cleansing, the Holodomor blows Isis’s campaign out of the water.
Historically speaking, letting white people into your nation is the most dangerous thing you could ever do.
Geez, even this isn’t exactly right. Of course, the vast majority of Muslims in the US are doing “all right”. So are the vast majority in Europe. But the implicit claim that the US just makes everything better and everyone great is false. Remember the Times Square bomber? Heck, the 9-11 attackers had been in the US for years. There’s assholes in every group and keeping out one group because it contains a few assholes won’t work and will only make your group’s asshole quotient higher.
I’m always ondering what people mean by “criticizing Islam”?
Are they doing a literary analysis of the text? Or are they talking about beliefs, values, ethics, etc.? In which case “Islam” is simply as nonsensical as “Christianity”.
Penny L, #63
Faulty analogy.
ISIL* is not to Muslims as the Vatican is to Catholics.
* Or Al Qaeda or TTP or LaT, etc.
Wrong again.
Islam is not special. It’s just another stupid religion. The place Islam presently has in Muslim countries and societies is what’s special. When those countries have a mostly secular and stable government and the control religion has on public life diminishes to a significant degree, you’ll see religion playing a much smaller role in these things. Right now Islam serves as a very useful catalyst and mobilization tool to get vile people to commit these acts.
Don’t forget a few centuries ago, mainstream Christians (governments in fact) were doing heinous stuff (domestically and otherwise) in the name of Christianity. What was it that caused that to stop? Did the Bible have to be banned? Did Christianity have to be outlawed? The same goes for Muslim countries.
I am concerned about fanatical Christian terrorists, educated and encouraged by the Vatican and other institutions and groups, gunning down health care providers or bombing clinics in the name of “saving babies”. Are you telling me that that fear is irrational?
As many have said in the comments above mine, Harris is just a White man supporting anti-Brown people racism under the guise of caring about security. Not sure why it’s so hard for him to admit that most of the violence we see in the U.S. when it comes to mass shootings are by White men. Just last night, BLM protesters were shot at by White Supremacists — not Muslim jihadists. I’ve yet to hear of an incident involving a Muslim jihadist entering into an American church and gunning down worshippers. I have heard about at least two incidents involving White men entering places of worship for people of color and shooting worshippers (South Carolina church and Wisconsin Sikh temple).
Harris should acknowledge that Republican politicians, by dehumanizing all Muslims, are encouraging White Supremacists to engage in violence towards Muslims and people mistaken for Muslims. He should be part of the solution instead of supporting such hateful rhetoric.
https://www.rt.com/usa/323148-muslims-attacks-violence-america/
Just to confirm: Harris means actual Christians not people who ‘look Christian’?
I’m taking a moment to enjoy the delicious flavor of the hypocrisy of a famous staunchly pro-secularism atheist calling for the United States government to conduct religious tests on people. Yum, yum, yum.
1) Telling Muslims that they cannot be both Muslim and Western is giving enormous energy to the jihadists we really don’t want them to have. Give them a stark “with us or against us” choice and some of them will not choose as you wish them to choose.
2) Who the fuck do you think “the right” is? Look in the fucking mirror.
The CIA is predominantly christian and is the world’s most prolific exporter of terrorism. They make everyone else look like amateurs in comparison. Sam Harris, are we done?
Just to confirm: Harris means actual Christians not people who ‘look Christian’?
No, he means specifically Christian Bale, the actor. You are mischaracterizing Harris.
On the subject of integration: I imagine that it’s quite difficult to integrate with people who hate you. You know, despite initial difficulties, we Irish, with our funny papistry and weird accents, had a comparatively easy time integrating into US society because, well, we’re white.
But if you’re not white you’re all out of luck kid. And yeah, I can see why living in a society, even being raised in one, in which you are vilified and ostracised because of your skin colour or supposed religious beliefs, might make you somewhat resentful of that society. Might make you scoff at the whole notion of integration…
Thing about racism here in Europe, and in Ireland in particular, is that, for most of my life, I never seen it. That’s some white privilege for you there. But, as demographics began to shift, and my social circle (limited as it was) began to include people who weren’t all white and Irish, I began to see the racism that’s deeply embedded in Irish society and it was (and is) horrific. And that’s to say nothing about the awful way members of the travelling community are treated in this country.
But anyway my point is that saying a group ought to be targeted with harsher treatment given past failures to “integrate” while ignoring the reasons why integration was made difficult in the first place (hint: RACISM) is actually contributing to the racist narrative.
It’s a giant catch-22 situation. I’ve seen it again and again. Bigotry pushes people to the margins of society, ghettoises them, pushes them beyond the realm of law, and then the bigots use this marginalisation to further justify their bigotry and the cycle continues. The cycle has to be broken and all the refugee screening in the world won’t fix that problem.
Keith
QFMFT
In Germany you can be born in Germany, to parents born in Germany, but to most people you’ll still be “the Turk” if your name is Özdemir.
Immigrants can only find room in mainstream society if the mainstream moves a little to make space for them.
Yep, you hate people. YOU won’t integrate into civil society. Give up and move back to where you came from.
Don’t like it? Shut the fuck up. You have nothing cogent to say.
Nerd, #89
Wait… what?
@87
Minor quibble, but there was a pretty long stretch where anti-Irish bigotry was in the vogue, complete with the familiar adage of comparing them to apes or by portraying them as hairy brutes lusting after white women. It was a fairly common “scientific” theory at the time that Irish were genetically closer to blacks than to Anglo-Saxons, and thus degenerate
Granted,this was less than that towards people of color, but I’d consider it a tad more of a complicated issue than White/Non-White when it comes to the history of US bigotry.
Not to derail, of course. Just an interesting tidbit I picked up from a couple sociology classes.
On topic: 100% of the atomic bombings in history were performed by white people. When will Europe start submitting white people for advanced scrutiny to avoid further bombings?
Uhm… Nerd (@89)? What the hell?
Nerd
You really got this one wrong. Keith argues that mainstream white people hate immigrants and refugees, not the other way round.
@73 Nick Gotts
This is a lovely piece of analysis. And my guess is Ted Cruz understands this better than Sam Harris.
Which brings me to what I want to say on this topic. We’ve heard the arguments back and forth, with one side saying it is more likely that a muslim refugee will sympathize with violent jihad, which in turn is countered with arguments stating the vetting process is long and hard and refugees are actually running from terrorists, not running to become terrorists. But why does this secular atheist (Harris) believe refugee christians will have a better moral compass than refugee muslims? Short answer: pure bigotry. Even if we accept that muslims are more violent than christians or atheists (I don’t), the same ‘logical’ argument goes “blacks score lower on standardized tests than whites in high school – so blacks shouldn’t really be allowed to go to university”. Bigotry glosses over the reasons behind the differences noted by the bigot. And in this case, Sam Harris’s bigotry is worse than Cruz’s.
Why? Because Harris’s bigotry is mixed with his convictions for secular atheism and cowardice. We should be no more afraid to welcome religious muslims into the US and Europe than religious christians. Because we should believe that the ideals of secular atheism mixed with humanism in a liberal democracy will win out (the atheism part being the least important and more of a consequence). To think otherwise is to be a coward. This cowardice (also sociopathy) turns people into bullies. It is no wonder that Sam Harris owns several guns and trains with them regularly. He wants to force as many cars as possible off the road before he is willing to cross it. He doesn’t believe road rules (read: the implementation of a secular society with justice for all) makes the road safe enough. So this chicken will never cross it. Because he, and others like him are cowards. Their beliefs and convictions are for shit.
Current US policy is that Bashar Assad is the bad guy, and his regime must go. Apparently a lot of Syrian Christians support his government. So surely that means you can’t let any of them into the US either, right? They might be sleeper agents for Syrian intelligence, and once inside the US attack military and intelligence installations being used to support the anti-Assad opposition. Or attempt to spy on those places.
Gee, it’s easy to come up with questionable scenarios justifying why you shouldn’t let in any group of refugees, isn’t it?
Jesus fuck. It sounds like Harris wants the States to be an insular Borg kingdom.
Current US policy is that Bashar Assad is the bad guy, and his regime must go
And, in order to effectuate that, the US (and Saudi Arabia) shipped arms, provided training, cash, and intelligence, to … jihadi
terroristsfreedom fighters. When Iran does it, it’s “exporting terrorism” when the CIA does it it’s “regime change.”The US is the prime mover behind the death and destruction currently going on in Syria. It is obscene that the cowards in Washington are posturing and blustering about the victims of US political crimes being dangerous. Those poor people are not dangerous. If they were dangerous, they’d have a CIA with a humongous covert budget, no morals, and huge supplies of untraceable weapons they could distribute to every nihilist in the US
that can’t walk down the street and buy their ownto create armed terror cells. What ISIS appears to have done in Paris: that’s “another day at the office” for the CIA.@89
Oops, I can see how what I said could be taken up incorrectly. That’s my fault. I’m a sloppy writer at best.
I said:
I meant that, generally, it must be very difficult for marginalised groups to integrate with groups that hate them. In other words, one of the reasons Muslims would find it difficult to integrate into “western” society is that western society is still hugely racist and, at the moment, full of rampant Islamophobia.
My fault. I apologise.
@91
Yup, I getcha. That’s why I said comparatively. People of Irish descent in the US had a very rough time for a long time but have had a very easy time of it in the US compared to people of non-European descent such as African-Americans for example. Indeed being Irish or having Irish ancestry is, at this point in time, something of a badge of honour in most places in the US (as far as my limited experience goes).
Um, what? Nearly all of our domestic and state terrorism (summary execution by police, international war crimes, gender-based terrorism, racist terrorism) in USA is carried out by Christians, and Harris and the like were just a few years ago pointing out the way that the small-but-politically-powerful group of Christian Dominionists were indeed trying to enact theocratic laws here (as well as how very similar those laws are to Sharia – and succeeding to some degree). This fucking guy.
@86
Hold on. He means people who look like Christian Bale or Christian Bale himself? I don’t want to misrepresent him further.
Maybe we should be profiling engineers? https://freethoughtblogs.com/singham/2015/11/24/the-over-representation-of-engineers-in-violent-groups/
Look, it’s quite clear: people who look like Christians or Jews should be accepted at face value (because, after four years in a refugee camp, and eighteen months of getting, the wearing of a cross would be the obstacle that stopped the otherwise deeply dedicated terrorist), and Muslims and anyone who looks Muslim enough should be both profiled (or anti-profiled, I can never remember) and refused entry to the western world.
Grr. Eighteen months of vetting, a word I just had to teach my phone.
@103
It’s anti-profiling. Please do not distort the Great Harris further. One more mistake like that and you will be officially branded a regressive!!!!
@ Tony! The Queer Shoop #46
Tony, you are making a number of assumptions in your post. I am not a Harris apologist. I have read what he has said about profiling, and I do not agree with it. Perhaps he could explain it better to me one day, but as it stands now, I think its an impractical and silly take on airport security.
Come on, man. Ex ante, if you take 100 christian immigrants from the Levant, and 100 Muslim immigrants from the same region, the probability of capturing someone who holds the idea that it is ok to blow oneself up in support of their ideological concerns is much higher in one group vs. the other. The KKK is a white supremacist terrorist organization who’s ranks were not filled with Christian refugees.
Except, if you listen to his podcast, the discussion was focused on Europe and not the United States. Go ahead and just listen to the first 10 minutes. And is far as I am concerned, over here we can integrate our immigrants and our vetting process is if anything, too extensive.
Excuse my language, but how the fuck do you know where I live or where I am from? I’m British of French ancestry.
lemurcatta @106:
Well, I apologize for thinking you were at all defending Sam Harris in this thread, bc that’s what I thought you were doing.
@Penny L
So… all we have to do to be safe forever is just deny men the ability to cross borders. As refugees, we can probably tolerate them because you have to go through 18 months minimum of background checks, but men coming in on a student visa or visitor visa? We just can’t take the risk.
When my mood veers to the cynical, I start wondering if the Christian Dominionists didn’t contact Harris, Dawkins & co, told them “Psssssssst, if we establish a dictatorship, we’ll only treat the dark skinned plebeians like cattle and fucktoys: rich white dudes like you will be spared so you don’t have to be afraid of us” and convinced them to focus exclusively on brown-skinned fundies
@lemurcatta:
How do you know that? Are there no Christians that have ever gone on a murderous revenge rampage against random muslims because they felt some muslims were responsible for terror in their own lives? We have public commentators in the US, politicians even, who have proposed nuking Mecca. You really think that being surrounded by violence makes one totes immune to wanting to commit violence?
If you’re not just pulling this out of your ass, please present the data that show that the belief that it can be reasonable to commit a suicide attack that kills some civilians among your chosen enemies as you die is disproportionately held by Syrian muslims as opposed to Syrian Christians.
I think it’s rather possible that discrimination against Christians, including outright bans on military service and lesser wealth, cut out opportunities to acquire the weapons of terror. I think it’s rather possible that if you’re selecting among terrorists from a certain country, finding that 90% of the terrorists are muslim when the country’s population is 90% muslim would be entirely unexceptional. Given the lesser opportunities of Christians, even if 99% terrorists from Syria were muslim, would you be able to make a valid inference of the differential prevalence of the beliefs that enable terrorism, given access to weapons?
And given that anyone *can* get powerful weapons once here in the US, it’s this belief that matters, not how likely you were able to get hold of a weapon in Syria.
I really don’t see any evidence here – just literal prejudice. How about acquiring the data first, then making a conclusion?
lemurcatta
Your posts sounded like you were American. But being British means no, you don’t live in a country that takes a huge amount of refugees at the moment. So pardon my Klatchian, you’re talking out of your ass. Or arse.
I did not know that terrorism was limited to suicide bombings and doesn’t include all that other stuff that governments do to, you know, terrorize certain populations. Maaan, you learn something new every day.
Also, are we certain he (Harris) meant Christian Bale? What about that Slater dude? There’s also a Christian with the last name of Longo, who sounds like he needs some profiling applied. And that’s just a few non-fictional Christians. Clarity, please!
@5 treefrogdundee
Hold on a minute about those Canadian refuge camps. We don’t use the term “refugee camp” up here. It is a new ruling, just passed down this morning–not sure of the new term if it exists. Plus, we have 25000 Syrians arriving any day now so please get your resevations in early. April or May look good at the moment.
Nice idea to post that lastweektonight clip again, it’s always nice to be reminded on how wrong John was. Remember him downplaying IS terrorists being among the many illegal immigrants crossing into Europe? Those were the days right! That’s what all the EU political establishment was repeating as well.
Don’t worry about it voters, just take that bullet to the head, or practice some totally unforced cultural enrichment and learn the koran by heart as an insurance policy, just kidding people, of course there won’t be any terrorists coming in, we’ll do thorough checks, like… asking them individually.
Then Paris happens, and we’ve got the first illegal migrant camp that was set up in Calais getting smaller because rumours about IS members there are going around. All enabled and made possible by the hysterical left and establishment politics who were to busy crying racism and talking down to voters respectively when sane people were asking for sensible security measures.
The establishment is full of lies when it comes to immigration in the EU. Anything they can do to destroy the social cohesion of the native populations (or “nationalism” as fascists in charge of the eu call it), and milk out the hard working voters for their pet-projects of saving the world with taxpayer money and no accountability whatsoever.
Pharyngula’s getting a record breaking amount of bigot screeds today, hot damn.
Shorter Vivec:
Saving lives is bigoted.
I rest my case.
Too bad that the point of contention is whether or not refugee restrictions actually saves lives. Gonna need to demonstrate that, not just assert it.
Ok, let me know what you find about “refugee restrictions”. I’m sure it will be very interesting.
So, not going to actually back up your claims, and just throw out assertions? Like I said, baseless bigot screed.
I made no claims about “refugee restrictions”, you did, that’s why i’m suggesting you let me know.
EU failed all around, it supposedly exists to deal with these kind of issues, and instead the problem is not tackled at all, both existing populations and newcomers are victims of such callous disregard of reality. All the while Turkey is treating 2m Syrian refugees like subhumans, which is a disgrace in itself. Not only the level of care but the numbers are pitiful compared to what turkey could handle without breaking a sweat.
What did you mean by “sensible security measures” then?
Lol. What makes you think I have expertise about specific security measures? I’m sure there is plenty of research in government drawers that can be consulted by underpaid government employees.
I’ll note you haven’t actually made your “bigoted screed” remark stick. Why do you feel the need to distract important dialogues with your personal prejudices? Do you enjoy trying to take away peoples voices with your ridiculous assertions?
You posted a dogwhistle filled screed ranting about “learning the quran just to be safe” and “taking a bullet to the head”, and then refuse to back up your claims with evidence or define your terms. Bigot or not, that’s just stupid.
True, that would be stupid, those things would be more suitable for boko-haram style attacks, and that would never happen.
Having fun nitpicking from your fainting couch?
@Dutch Delight, #115:
…..aaaaaaaand the Paris terrorists were French, Belgian, and a pair of unknown origin, but who entered Europe through Greece in a manner that would have been legal if the “Syrian” passports weren’t fake. They did not enter as migrants looking for work or housing. They didn’t enter as “immigrants”. At least one entered illegally as the Syrian passport for that person was fake (the other was suspected to be fake, but not confirmed to be so in several accounts I read), but they didn’t enter through standard channels for illegal immigration. Rather they confidently presented themselves to be fingerprinted. One or both may have posed as a refugees, but that’s not certain as far as I can tell.
…..aaaaaaaand moreover if they can get fake passports and pose as refugees, they can get fake passports and pose as tourists. Because a refugee announces an intention to stay, they are subjected to much more rigorous screening (such as the fingerprinting mentioned above). Since it comes with heightened risk, there is reason to think that the terrorists wanted to sabotage trust between European governments and refugees.
…..aaaaaaaand moreover Oliver was talking about refugees, where the people that arrived in Greece are more properly called asylum seekers as they did not pass through legal refugee channels. The colloquial and legal uses of the words are being confused.
…..aaaaaaaand moreover Oliver was talking about refugees being accepted by the United States, who would – every single one – be subjected to UN scrutiny and background checks before ever departing to come to the US.
So Oliver was not wrong. Your comment is misinformed. And if we put a big “Porte Fermee” sign on the USA, we announce ourselves as hypocrites and cowards to the world.
Penny L,
Horse apples. As somebody else pointed out, Syria is 10% Christian, and Iraq was around 6% Christian before we invaded. After we invaded, Iraqi Christians started getting heavily persecuted, largely because they had been historically allied with and protected by the Ba’ath regime. Now Iraq is less than 1% Christian.
Syria’s a little different, because there are Christian militias fighting both for and against Assad. But the majority of Christians are (reluctantly) supporting Assad because they think they’ll get the most protection from him, and native Muslim militias are attacking Christians primarily because they’re seen as backing Assad. (Also because Christians are wealthier than Muslims, on average, in both Syria and Iraq.) Meanwhile, the Daesh and Al Quaeda militias are attacking Christians just because they’re Christian, but these are not groups that had any influence in Syria before we whipped up a civil war.
This shit is happening because we’ve spent a century meddling in local politics, building and breaking alliances to try to ensure that the people in charge were always US-compliant. First, we install a regime that doles out a few favors to Christians and other minorities, because its popular support is shaky and it needs allies that are too individually weak to be any competition. Later, we turn around and try to depose that regime, and it takes those minorities with it.
Uh, did you forget that PZ desecrated the wafer and a Koran at the same time, in the same trash can?
The last time I remember him publishing a count, he’d received 12,000 pieces of hate mail from Christians and zero from Muslims. Think about that disparity.
Says you and your 4 headed non-sequitur that argues something i didn’t talk about.
There’s 501 people per square km. on average where i live, with 5-10% of those people immigrated muslims, the US has 31 people per square km and a muslim % under or around one i’m guessing?
Uhm, the rest of that #128 was supposed to be:
So yea obviously i would agree the US can take in quite a lot of refugees from Syria.
You wrote about “illegal immigrants,” Muslim ones specifically. Conflating them as you do below is uninformative and fallacious at best.
What does population density have to do with it? Also, what do the raw percentages of the population, disregarding land area, have to do with it?
Did John Oliver misrepresent any such facts or figures, and is that why you’re being a frothing racist troll in yet another thread here?
So, if they were “legal” immigrants and if they were not Muslim, then you would still object because the Netherlands already has a fairly high population density? Uh….
What exactly does that have to do with any of your bullshit about war refugees, terrorism, Islam, John Oliver, leftists, or any other fucking thing that Crip Dyke and others responded to in your comment?
To put it another way, aren’t you admitting with your pulled-out-of-your-ass statistics that being Muslim is the reason you’re objecting to helping war refugees here and now? And the idea is that you could tell us a nice story about how it’s really about Ethics In Population Density Management, to hide your real motivations, as if that would change anything about what you’re actually doing?
Leaving aside the density numbers and just considering the raw percentages you thought were relevant in this discussion (the economics of that can become a messy subject)…. You seem to believe* there’s an acceptable “maximum percentage of Muslims,” beyond which you should reject new immigrants (documented or not) — not necessarily immigrants generally, unless you conjure up more reasons to hate them too, but Muslim immigrants in particular. Because you want to ensure some kind of “racial purity” in your country, since you do not want your white supremacist blood to become too “diluted” by some kind of racist magic. Why else bring it up at all, if that’s not exactly what you’re suggesting?
*That’s an assumption you evidently think we’ll accept implicitly, perhaps because your racist friends do. But we’re not your racist friends, asshole.
White Supremacy Wednesday came early this week.
@Saad:
I love you.
Saad @133
You win one internets.
Apologies in advance for any confusion I cause with this comment. I’m catching up on the thread and attempting to consolidate a bunch of stuff into one comment.
Giliell @62
We have a similar saying in English. Actually, it’s pretty much the same — The hit dog yelps. (Or barks. It’s one of those things that varies a bit by region.)
Vivec @76
Well said.
dianne @80
This. This. THIS.
I have more to fear from fanatical Christians than I do from fanatical Muslims. Should there come a time when this changes — *shrugs* — I’ll deal with it then.
Crip Dyke @109
Oh, but that’s not the saaaaame! /s
Brilliant response, ought to illustrate the flaws in Penny’s logic. Doubt she’ll get it, though.
There’s a little problem with your assertion: we didn’t whip up the civil war: the Syrian civil war happened because:
1. After decades of corruption, nepotism, and violent silencing of dissent, the Syrian people started to loudly protest when their parasitic regime proved incapable of tackling the problems brought by the massive drought that crippled the syrian agriculture.
2. The regime ordered its troops to shoot the crowds of protesters, prompting parts of its military to defect because “Fuck, I didn’t join to slaughter my own unarmed compatriots” is a feeling honorable soldiers tend to have.
Few things aggravate me more than people repeating the ridiculous fable that dictatorships are “robust” regimes and that uprising against their rule can only be caused by foreign influence: civil wars are the natural outcome of autocracy.
Me too. I am far more likely to die or have my life and liberty compromised by fanatical Christians than by fanatical Muslims. I am at even more risk of dying because some white guy with a gun and no particular political beliefs is having a bad day, but that’s yet another issue.
There are places in the world where people are more at risk from Muslim fanatics. I am in favor of letting those trying to get out of the reach of said fanatics do so by opening borders to them.
@ Tony #108
Yo mate, I’m sure I’d get along with you just fine in real life, but wtf is this? In your first post you accused me of being a Harris apologist. When I explained to you that I find some of his views fairly silly, this is your response? Heres to hoping that the internet is just a poor medium in which to have these discussions.
@crip
Oh dear me, fallacious even, do explain the relevance of your personal confusion. In the mean time, i pointed out what about Johns report i was commenting on, pay attention.
I don’t know, go and check?
@consciousness razor
1. Pulled-out-of-ass statistics are actually spot on.
2. Willfully ignores previous statements in this very thread while trying to play moral detective.
3. Pretends to know my motivations better then i do.
It wil be quite a relief when people like CR are lead away from the political buttons.
Funny how they’re poor mistreated refugees when you can blame another muslim country (but heavens forbid we do anything to help them!) but “illegal immigrants” once they decide they might want to be treated like humans and cross into the EU…
Seconding WMDKItty, dianne and CD
I’ve had bomb threats againsta location wherew e wanted to do an anti-racist performance. To put this in context, I was 12 by then. Yep, the brave whte supremacists thought that kids talking about racism was so dangerous we had to be intimidated with bomb threats.
I’ve had neonazis cometo my school and go looking for me. I lived in fear of assault for years because I was a “target”.
There are still and again lists of “left wing ticks” who need to be “eliminated”. Tens of thousands march in Dresden every week, lamenting that the Konzentrationslager are closed right now, bringing gallows to their “protests”.
Funny how they’re poor mistreated refugees when you can blame another muslim country
Yea, so funny. Done smearing?
What makes you think you are the only one with a sob story?
As I often say: in the eyes of the right-wingers, a syrian Christian ceases to be Christian to become an Arab when she crosses the Bosphorus.
Dutchdelight, demonstrating that xenophobic bigotry and rabid incoherence go together like peanut butter and jelly.
No arguments, lots of smearing from an imagined moral high ground. Cute, elections can’t come soon enough.
“smearing”
you keep on using that word…
So the far-rightists can take over, establish police states complete with Shabiha militias and rape into submission those smarter and more honest than you are, I know.
Nope, no arguments. We’ve had them already. Only stupid people expect to get different outcomes after doing the same thing repeatedly
Such an over inflated sense of importance with some of these people, lol. Do you suffer these hysterical, violent fantasies often?
Dutchdelight talking out of his ass again. And there’s Penny L, also spouting the usual nonsense. Nothing new under the sun.
@chigau
Just keeping track of all the baseless invective. You don’t like it highlighted?
@pentatomid
What a typical factfree contribution.
yawn
Well, you get as good as you give, and you’ve given us absolutely nothing but insults and hot air, although i’m sure in your head your unhinged, racist ravings constitute an air-tight rational argument.
That was me, not crip. Pay attention.
You claimed John was wrong. Was he wrong about something factual? Is this just a claim that you make any arbitrary time you feel like it? If you don’t want to (or can’t) explain or clarify your own comments, then nobody needs to check with John Oliver about anything — why should anyone bother communicating with you? Go back under your rock and shut the fuck up. I think that would solve our problem, better than me spending time trying to decipher and then verify your pointless bullshitting.
What would it take for it to be not “actually spot on”? You guessed “5-10%” for the Netherlands and “a muslim % under or around one i’m guessing?” for the US, neither of which is an actually spot-on, definite, verifiable fact about the statistics.
My question is how those numbers, if they were precise or merely definite factual claims, not merely something you pulled out of your ass and put into the form of a question, could possibly be relevant to anything here.
Your impression is that there is a larger percentage of Muslims in the Netherlands — who the fuck cares if there is, other than racist fucks like you?
Lots of empty bullshit. You may as well be unresponsive, because in fact your comment was implying that the relative sizes of the Muslim populations of the two countries are somehow relevant. There is no coherent way for you to deny that, as I already noted. If you had no reason to mention it, then it can be utterly ignored like the rest of your bullshit. And if you did have a reason — if it was doing any work at all in any line of reasoning that you’re fumbling around with — then what other one could there be than the sort of reason I described? You don’t say, presumably because I had it more or less right and because you don’t want to admit that.
You could retract your comment and its implications, you could explain how it’s supposed to be relevant if that’s what you really think (since I don’t need to pretend to know anything), or you could shut the fuck up. But simply trolling us some more doesn’t actually get you anywhere, unless your point was merely to waste time.
@42
What race are Muslims? It’s tedious watching people project their own ignorance onto others. Just because you think “brown people” when discussing Muslims, that does not mean the individual you’re engaging with is guilty of the same error.
Muslims can be any colour, gender, nationality, and so on and so forth. If someone voices a concern about the connection between dangerous religious ideas and their resulting behavioural outcomes, calling them a racist is a total non sequitur.
I love it.
@155 James MacDonald
But apparently, they can’t be progressives…they must necessarily be anti-LGBT, anti-woman and obssessed with honour.
And since we are talking about syrian refugees, it turns out that the statement “any colour, gender, nationality and so on” is not quite correct, is it?
@consciousness razor
Read what i wrote and find out?
Don’t you worry about my impressions. I’m going to ignore your arrogant whining about basic numbers, which you aren’t even contesting anyway.
Or unhinged ideologues will shout racist at me? Lol, make my day.
So far i’m getting from you that it’s not allowed to take into account demographic facts on the ground, these apparently in no way affect the success of integrating newcomers.
I think that uninterested laissez-faire attitude is exactly what voters have had enough of, so good luck with that narrative :)
@155
First off, you’re just disingenuous by pretending that anti-muslim bigotry doesn’t have a racist component. Otherwise, why do Sikhs get attacked for “being muslims”? Why does my atheistic middle-eastern family get attacked and profiled? Regardless of the truth of the matter, Muslim = “those funny brown people” in the eyes of most people.
Secondly, yes. There is no Muslim race. However, the majority of Muslims are people of color.
The largest muslim populations are indonesian, indian, and pakistani, along with massive populations in Africa and the rest of Asia.
Any bigotry aimed towards a religion that is primarily made up of people of color is going to hurt people of color way more than its going to hurt white adherents. Hence, racist.
Sorry, your “technically muslim isn’t a race so you cant be racist against muslims” attempt at a gotcha is bullshit.
This guy’s gonna get harassed so much for being Muslim.
He’s actually very, very Islamic. Makes the vast majority of American Muslims look casuals in comparison. I’m sure the white supremacists and their favorite GOP candidates have people like him in mind when they say things like Muslims can’t be trusted.
First of all, PZ desecrated an English translation of the Koran (if the pictures show the correct book), not an actual Koran. There is a difference.
Secondly, the English Koran desecration wasn’t as widely publicised as the wafer desecration, even if they happened at the same time. Likely that was purposeful.
Finally, hate mail doesn’t equate to living in real fear. It’s quite revealing that you can even make that argument – he received hate mail, the horror!!
No one ever asks Salman Rushdie how many pieces of hate mail he got after writing The Satanic Verses. The answer is irrelevant.
If PZ ever actually insulted the Muslim religion in the same way he insulted the Christian religion – by drawing Muhammed or publishing the cartoons for example – he and his family would be living in fear, on constant guard, and likely with the help of 24/7 paid security officers.
I don’t blame anyone for not wanting to deal with this real and persistent threat from Muslim fanatics.
Sam harris is such a facist piece of crap OMA! Especially when he said that all syrian refugees should be granted american citizenship immediately. Like wtf bro!