Oddbean

My city in New Zealand is one of several immigrant "dumping grounds" where immigrant refugees are resettled. As a result, we have quite a lot of muslim people here, especially from Syria. So far I have had only positive experiences and interactions with them. No street raping gangs, no knife crimes, nothing bad at all; Quality people, truly. Most of the crime in my city is theft perpetrated by motorcycle gangs largely composed of people from the local ethnicity, or traffic crime from young hoons driving far-too-loud cars at hyper speeds or doing doughnuts in the intersections. I guess this must be because there aren't any Zionist propagandists down here trying to stir up racial dissent. Zionist propagandists can't spread themselves too thin, they have to focus on the US and the UK. So while I support the free speech of people in the UK who think they are being invaded by poor-quality people, I strongly doubt their message... especially Tommy Robinson (Steven Yaxley-Lennon) who is a serial fabulist. (that being said, I believe in controlled immigration rather than wide-open borders)

And people from cultures beyond the familiar. It's the ties between cultures where the magic is going to happen. You have the opportunity to be a fulcrum, and I also don't blame you if you don't want to play that role. Meanwhile, at least find some geeks in other cultures that can share your values, and I think you'll find a precious significance in the way things sway.

Ah I get your point. Very interesting. I had (but have lost) a connection to China, to CCP aligned Beijing no less. That was interesting, to get that perspective, and to see how normal good people could be aligned with such a horrible (IMHO) authoritarian political party. There was lots to learn there that I unfortunately didn't.

There is a huge amount of propaganda about this topic and the absolute majority of immigrants are good people that want to work. I do know cases personally where this kind of things happen and I think what bother people is that a lot of this gangs are doing this with impunity. Not necessarily that they are Muslims or from the Arab world.

My brother in Christ, I'm talking about crime. If you go to places like Barcelona or Brussels you see that a good proportion of "street" crime come from certain nationalities like Marrocco or North African. If this goes unpunished people in the local population start recenting the total population of immigrants. Is this a simptom of poverty and non-integration? probably I can see similar things happening with certain of my Venezuelan countrymen in countries like the US or Peru.

It depends on where you are, and what gangs have formed there, and what kind of microculture they happen to have developed. In Barcelona, it may be Moroccans as you say. Here in my city the crime is perpetrated mostly by a small number of recidivist Maori and a small number of recidivist NZ Europeans, as well as by youth, and I haven't heard of any crimes from the Syrian immigrants (who all profess to be Muslim) as far as I can recall. So my point is that being Muslim isn't coorelated with criminal activity in general... even if it might happen to be true in certain parts of Europe for one reason or another. And therefore arguments against Islam that are based on that culture being incompatible with Western culture don't hold as much weight in my mind as they used to (although it still has some weight) because I see a counterexample right in front of me.

I think we are saying the same thing. I think what happens in Europe is that there are a lot of Mosques that are financed by extreme wings of Islam. I might be wrong here but I think what happens behind the scenes is that this mosques protect some of this criminals from punishment, so it creates an area of impunity. I'm also sure this also happens in Christianism or Judaism in other areas of the world.