How Widespread is this Point of View?

[Flymo]

Your review of the author's character is zero value added.  I believe I covered his bias in my opening remarks.  What are your feelings on the issue he addresses, that of Europeans indulging in cultural self hate, or self deprecation?

The article is not one I'd write.  We would both agree that he is unsympathetic to Muslims in his outlook, and he has little time for Muslim apologists.  For purposes of this discussion, I would ask you to limit your remarks to this article.

From a cultural point of view, I am personally unsympathetic to Islam as it exists in the modern world, and how it has shaped various societies and cultures that exist in the present.  I've been dealing on and off with the so called "war on terror," or rather, the Modern/Western civilizations attempts to deal with Muslim terrorists since 1983.  The issue has been of significance since 1972, Munich, Black September, slaughter of Olympic athletes for political purposes. 

I do not blieve that Islam has had its Rennaisance, as Christianity has, that opened a pathway for it to integrate into the modern world.  FWIW, Christianity still has its hands full in dealing with The Modern World.  Cultures based in Muslim cultural norms and habits are to some extent trapped in a medeival paradigm.  This handicaps their ability to fit into the modern world, which so far has been formulated under an olio of Western European Enlightenment thought.  Any culture with Islam so embedded is going to have a similar handicap.

That in and of itself is an interesting socialogical point, and hardly "a problem" except for the matter of where cultures intersect.  That dynamic often leads to conflict.  Read again my opening remarks about NATO strategic concerns, dating back to 1993.

The importation of Muslim norms into Europe is not particularly welcome to many, is welcomed by some, and of course treated with "ho hum" by others.  Did you miss the news about the hubub in Paris last week?

I appreciate that you don't care for the author's background: could you please, without resort to "discredit the author and thus relieve myself from thinking about the issue involved" replies, comment on the article for its own sake?

Thanks.

Occhi
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Europe is what it is because of millennia of invasion and immigration. It has absorbed, been absorbed by, and integrated with countless other cultures. If it hadn't been Europeans would still be sacrificing virgins in stone circles; Christianity is itself an import from the middle east. Spain was under Islamic rule for centuries.

Each time a new wave of migration comes it is faced with the fear and prejudice that Wolfgang Bruno disguises as "nationalism", and often this leads to pogroms, race riots, or other violence. Ultimately the migrants are accepted and integrated and European culture is the stronger for it.

My part of London has had strong Turkish Cypriot immigration for some years but the only outward sign is the three Turkish restaurants in the high street. You cannot tell who is Turkish because they look, talk, and act like everyone else (and Turkish women do not wear the burka as Bruno seems to think they do). Turkey is no threat.

It is also not right to blame the recent tube bombings on a lack of British chauvinism. The bombers were indoctrinated in Pakistan, not Britain, and their terrorism was motivated by religion, not nationality.