discussion Muslim extremists intimidate and chase out LGBT students at a high school in Belgium

[Samsara]

1 minute ago, Delirious said:

" During the beginning of his political life, Hitler publicly expressed favorable opinions towards Christianity.^[3][4] Some historians describe his later posture as being "anti-Christian".^[5][6] He also criticized atheism.^[7]"

 

 

Hitler was born to a practicing Catholic mother, Klara Hitler, and was baptized in the Roman Catholic Church; his father, Alois Hitler, was a free-thinker and skeptical of the Catholic Church.^[8][9] In 1904, he was confirmed at the Roman Catholic Cathedral in Linz, Austria, where the family lived.^[10]

He was the same as the atheist Mussolini who was also a fascist leader. They had to pander to Christians in order to be democratically-elected in Christian-majority nations. But they both ultimately turned out to be anti-Christian. Also you’re ignoring the fact that communism and atheism are inextricably intertwined.

[Talento]

Disgusting  Their parents should be held accountable.

[LikeATattoo]

3 minutes ago, Headlock said:

X1000000000

[Elusive Chanteuse]

12 hours ago, LikeATattoo said:

This thread…why do gays do this? I get that most queer people are left-leaning and as such, will discourage seemingly sweeping generalisations of other marginalised groups (Islam obviously being marginalised in the West). That being said, at what point do you stand the hell up and recognise the reality of a situation for what it is?

 

There are really people in this thread shouting, “But what about white Evangelicals being awful too?”, as though that group of bigots isn’t even more called out for their awfulness than Muslims are lol.
 

By and large, these “kind, warm, open-minded” Muslims that y’all are waxing lyrical about in here, only make nice with y’all because they’re constricted by the societal rules of the West. The grand majority of your Muslim friends are not willing to defend people like you (even passively) in Islamic spaces. Most of them won’t even make the grand leap to defending you to their families.

 

!!!!!!!!!!

 

This has been experience with my family as well who are muslim. Its so much hostility. My uncle (the so called openminded elder) won't drink or eat from cups and plates I eat from because I'm gay. He said it to my face. Like its a different kind of ignorance and hatred....

 

[LikeATattoo]

There’s been as much criticism in this thread of people’s justified grievances with Islam as there has of the actions committed by the boys in the video LOL. We are so, so badly finished. 

Edited May 15, 2023 by LikeATattoo

[LikeATattoo]

1 minute ago, Elusive Chanteuse said:

!!!!!!!!!!

 

This has been experience with my family as well who are muslim. Its so much hostility. My uncle (the so called openminded elder) won't drink or eat from cups and plates I eat from because I'm gay. He said it to my face. Like its a different kind of ignorance and hatred....

 

…My goodness. I can’t verbalise how sorry that I am that you’ve had to deal with that.

 

[Delirious]

8 minutes ago, Samsara said:

He was the same as the atheist Mussolini who was also a fascist leader. They had to pander to Christians in order to be democratically-elected in Christian-majority nations. But they both ultimately turned out to be anti-Christian. Also you’re ignoring the fact that communism and atheism are inextricably intertwined.

LMFAO

 

Wasn't the whole point of the war was the fact that he hated judaism? Doesn't that make WW2 automatically about religion?

 

Also imagine thinking communism and atheism are inextricably intertwined.

 

98.5% of Nazis were religious:

 

A census in May 1939, six years into the Nazi era^[1] and after the annexation of mostly Catholic Austria and mostly Catholic Czechoslovakia^[2] into Germany, indicates^[3] that 54% of the population considered itself Protestant, 41% considered itself Catholic, 3.5% self-identified as Gottgläubig^[4] (lit. "believing in God"),^[5] and 1.5% as "atheist".^[4]

 

[Delirious]

Like seriously no wonder some people absolutely hate atheists.

 

Imagine, just imagine comparing atheists to communism.

 

A joke. A literal joke.

[Communion]

5 minutes ago, LikeATattoo said:

even misinterpreted

How do you get "0 respondents were queer" from "8% of respondents identify as queer"?

 

You clearly assumed "gay" in the headline was used *in-place-of* "queer" because you literally asserted such when linking to it - that 0% of Muslims polled identified as queer, and used this as evidence for your claim.

 

You literally have kept shifting the goal posts of your claims.

 

"Muslims are universally not accepting of gay people"

->

"American Muslims may not be violent against gays, but they don't actually accept them."

-> ->

"Even if ONLY HAKLF of American Muslims say they accept gays, they'll never allow gay Muslims to be out!!"

-> -> ->

"Who cares if 8% of American Muslims are openly queer? We're talking about BELGIUM here!!!"

 

 

14 minutes ago, LikeATattoo said:

No queer person who harbours mistrust of Islam is unjustified in doing so

Anyone who believes that a minority religious community in their country - often ranging from 5% to even less than 1% - with largely no political power - is somehow a destructive force that will not only single-handedly undue LGBT equality but completely "destroy our way of life as we know it" is a bigot.

 

There's no debate. There is no nuance to explore.

 

Logic requires reasonable evidence. Not fearful paranoia of a mysterious unknown.

 

This is of course if we buy your premise that European Muslims are somehow uniformly conservative.

 

Quick research would reveal to us in places like the UK things like Muslim MPs often being uniformly pro-LGBT equality in their voting records while far-right ethnic English who fearmonger about borders and "every nurse being now brown!" also being the ones concerned with committing a trans genocide.

 

You can of course disagree with something without transforming it into something it is not. I'm a gay atheist communist in America. Of course I don't like organized religion or its tenants. I could easy say I disagree with things like Hindu nationalism because, as a leftist, it's logical to me to not agree with right-wing beliefs. But it'd also be nonsensical for me to claim Hindutva is somehow "on the verge of destroying our American life".

 

There is no "invasion". There is "no mass changing of demographics". There is no European nation outside of Turkey where conservative ~Islamism~ is a meaningful political movement. 

 

Seeing more kebab shops in your neighborhood and right-wing media highlighting instances of homophobia by Muslim individuals does not, in fact, make this delusion of an invasion an actual reality.

[karma police]

7 hours ago, Communion said:

Why is the presence of homophobic 2nd-generation migrants deadly to the way of life of Europe but not the presence of racist migrants?

Maybe because Ukrainians are not migrants, but war refugees and you're on purpose mixing those two terms in order to create your straw man argument, thinking no one will notice this "mistake" in those ChatGPT-like paragraphs full of projections and delusions.

Anyway, it's always funny how you defend one group of people from generalisation, by... generalising other group of people.

[san784]

18 hours ago, Leppie said:

That's the difference. The younger generations have not become more accepting/tolerant. They have the same view as their grandparents when it comes to LGBT. It's scary...

Some of today’s generation have the same views as their grandparents but the majority do not. If they did the world would look a lot different for the lgbt

[Communion]

Just now, karma police said:

Maybe because Ukrainians are not migrants, but war refugees

Quickly, what massive geopolitical event was occurring in 2015 to the east of Europe? 

[Riverbank]

24 minutes ago, Samsara said:

He was the same as the atheist Mussolini who was also a fascist leader. They had to pander to Christians in order to be democratically-elected in Christian-majority nations. But they both ultimately turned out to be anti-Christian. Also you’re ignoring the fact that communism and atheism are inextricably intertwined.

Religion and imperialism are even more intertwined, so what point are you trying to make? 

[Samsara]

1 minute ago, Delirious said:

LMFAO

 

Wasn't the whole point of the war was the fact that he hated judaism? Doesn't that make WW2 automatically about religion?

 

Also imagine thinking communism and atheism are inextricably intertwined.

 

98.5% of Nazis were religious:

 

A census in May 1939, six years into the Nazi era^[1] and after the annexation of mostly Catholic Austria and mostly Catholic Czechoslovakia^[2] into Germany, indicates^[3] that 54% of the population considered itself Protestant, 41% considered itself Catholic, 3.5% self-identified as Gottgläubig^[4] (lit. "believing in God"),^[5] and 1.5% as "atheist".^[4]

 

Nazism is an antisemitic and white supremacist racial ideology. Hitler persecuted Jews as an ethnic group and not for their religious views. A conflict about hating religion would make it an ANTI-religious conflict and not a religious one. It doesn’t matter what the purported nominal religions of Nazis when they were literally following an anti-Christian ideology. Nazism is even more (pseudo)scientific than it is religious.

 

Nazism subscribed to theories of racial hierarchy and Social Darwinism, identifying Germans as part of what Nazis regarded as an Aryan or Nordic master race.[2] It aimed to overcome social divisions and create a homogeneous society, unified on the basis of "racial purity" (Volksgemeinschaft). The Nazis aimed to unite all Germans living in historically German territory, as well as gain additional lands for German expansion under the doctrine of Lebensraum, while excluding those deemed either to be community aliens or belonging to an "inferior" race.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazism

 

In the early 1930s, the Nazis used racialized scientific rhetoric based on social Darwinism to push its restrictive and discriminatory social policies. 

Nazi Germany's racially based social policies placed the improvement of the Aryan race through eugenics at the center of Nazis ideology. Those humans were targeted who were identified as "life unworthy of life" (German: Lebensunwertes Leben), including but not limited to Jewish people, criminals, degenerate, dissident, feeble-minded, homosexual, idle, insane, and the weak, for elimination from the chain of heredity. Despite their still being regarded as "Aryan", Nazi ideology deemed Slavs (i.e., Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, etc.) to be inferior to the Germanic master race, suitable for expulsion, enslavement, or even extermination.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism#Nazi_Germany

 

Laurence Rees noted that "emphasis on Christianity" was absent from the vision expressed by Hitler in Mein Kampf, in which the universe is ordered around principles of struggle between weak and strong, rather than on conventional Christian notions.[261] Rees argues that Hitler's "bleak and violent vision" and visceral hatred of the Jews had been influenced by quite different sources: the notion of life as struggle he drew from Social Darwinism, the notion of the superiority of the "Aryan race" he drew from Arthur de Gobineau's The Inequality of the Human Races

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Adolf_Hitler#Social_Darwinism_as_a_source_of_Hitler.27s_racism

[Communion]

2 minutes ago, karma police said:

Anyway, it's always funny how you defend one group of people from generalisation, by... generalising other group of people.

Also, I understand English will not be everyone's first language, and someone being rhetorical can be obscured on the internet by virtue of it being a medium we read and not hear, but this inability to understand tone is.. a lot.

 

The entire point of the post is that such an absurd generalization (generalizing all Ukrainians) is made knowingly and flagrantly to point out the absurdity in the original thing being compared (generalizing Muslims). 

 

If someone goes: "If we take your logic to generalize Muslims, surely then can't we generalize Ukrainians? And then you can see why both generalizations are wrong- yes?" and your response is "no! Ukrainians are different!!!" you're literally proving that it was a mistake to give you the benefit of a doubt. 

 

Like you GENUINELY felt so happy thinking you had some moral high ground only to reveal.. you think millions of refugees that entered Europe due to war in the Middle East somehow deserve to... what? DIE because...they're not European? Huh?  "Muslim migrants are not like Ukrainians. Ukrainians are REFUGEES!!" - HUH????

[sxhunluv]

Muslims always want others to respect their religion but they never respect other's culture... 

[Samsara]

9 minutes ago, Riverbank said:

Religion and imperialism are even more intertwined, so what point are you trying to make? 

I’m just addressing what was initially claimed that religion is the worst thing that happened on earth. I’m not disputing that religion caused horrible things but that it’s the worst. Nazism & Communism are far worse.

[Orsay]

I hope the school cracks down and gives all these kids suspensions (or whatever the equivalent of that is in Belgium). This **** isnt ok..

[Harrier]

6 hours ago, Communion said:

 

 

A majority apparently are.  and that such doubled in the span of 10 years would debunk the claims that younger generations of Muslims are becoming more conservative. 

 

So if your only response will be, since I have a hunch it will be, that American Muslims are different than European Muslims, I have two things:

1) Notice how quickly suddenly your "generalizations work!" mind set crumbles.

2) If we are doing generalizations, why not ask why the US approach of diversity and integration has succeeded in comparison to the European model of forced assimilation that has clearly failed?

 

Why do the more pro-diversity policies in America produce objectively more progressive and less reactionary migrant communities than what the anti-diversity, assimilationist and ghettoizing policies across Europe do to Muslim migrants?

Anyone with any knowledge of this conversations knows that US Muslims are an outlier community. Muslims in the Islamic world, in Europe, and in my country as well are on average much more conservative. I'm very glad you seem to have an acknowledgement of that . For the record, this is a problem across cultural background too, such as with recent Ukrainian migrants. Another good point you brought up.

 

I would argue that the reason for this difference is that US Muslims are better assimilated. You argue this is due to 'pro-diversity policies' - but is it? What does that mean?

 

There are many more recent immigrants in Europe compared to in the United States, where we are more so talking about multiple generations of Muslim Americans. Additionally, a higher percentage of Muslims in Europe are refugees or poorer economic migrants: it's much more expensive and difficult to migrate to the US from a country like Syria than to Europe. That's common sense. This means that there are more educated Muslim Americans as a percentage, which of course correlates with tolerant social values.

 

Where the US has gone right is in preventing ghettoization. It's done a better job than Australia and NZ on this too. What I'm not very clear on is how this was achieved - perhaps you can shed some light? I just don't understand what you mean when you say 'pro-diversity policies'. 

 

But my broader point is I'm not sure it's entirely fair to blame Europe for its conservative Muslims. There is an element of inevitability when taking a large number of people from conservative countries at once, as opposed to the more gradual process with US Muslims. 

 

This is not to say European countries shouldn't have done that. My position is that there needs to be more acknowledgement and deliberate policy around this. The first step is to prevent ghettoization. And perhaps assimilation programs aren't such a bad idea.

 

Otherwise we're relying on generational change as happened in the US, and that isn't going to protect LGBT people or women from dangerous conservative forces within these communities.

[Delirious]

5 minutes ago, Samsara said:

Nazism is an antisemitic and white supremacist racial ideology. Hitler persecuted Jews as an ethnic group and not for their religious views. A conflict about hating religion would make it an ANTI-religious conflict and not a religious one. It doesn’t matter what the purported nominal religions of Nazis when they were literally following an anti-Christian ideology. Nazism is even more (pseudo)scientific than it is religious.

 

 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazism

 

 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism#Nazi_Germany

 

 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Adolf_Hitler#Social_Darwinism_as_a_source_of_Hitler.27s_racism

This does not change the fact that 98.5% Nazis were Christian

 

Also a copy and paste: Being something physically and claiming to believe something is quite different. We can see visual and physical facts/proofs but nobody can say you are thinking or believing in something or not. I can't say you do or don't believe in something. If you claim to believe in whatever then you believe in whatever, regardless if you are right or wrong. If, indeed, he needed Christianity only for political purposes, then why-oh-why does he continue with the charade after he has established himself as absolute dictator?????

 

The evidence shows that:

Hitler was born and baptized into Catholicism

His Jewish antisemitism came from his Christian background.

His early personal notes shows his interest in religion and Biblical views.

He believed that the Bible represented the history of mankind.

His Nazi party platform (their version of a constitution) included a section on Positive Christianity, and he never removed it.

He confessed his Christianity.

He tried to establish a united Reich German Church.

Hitler allowed the destruction of Jewish synagogues and temples, but not Christian churches.

He encouraged Nazis to worship in Christian churches.

He spoke of his Christian beliefs in his speeches and proclamations.

His contemporaries, friends, Protestant ministers and Catholics priests, including the Vatican, thought of Hitler as a Christian.

The Catholic Church never excommunicated Hitler. He died a Catholic.

 

-----

 

Hitler's entire crusade was set forth by Martin Luther himself, after getting thoroughly educated as a Catholic in his youth, and then furthering his education with reading Martin Luther's book "On the Jews and Their Lies," as explained by Julius Streicher, an Adolf Hitler admirer, and Nazi member since 1922, during the Nuremberg trials:

    "Dr. Martin Luther would very probably sit in my place in the defendants' dock today, if this book had been taken into consideration by the Prosecution. In the book 'The Jews and Their Lies,' Dr. Martin Luther writes that the Jews are a serpent's brood and one should burn down their synagogues and destroy them..."

As for Hitler, he has plenty of quotes, both before and during the Third Reich, which more than proves his justification for such savagery:

    "My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice... … And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly, it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people. And when I look on my people I see them work and work and toil and labor, and at the end of the week they have only for their wages wretchedness and misery. When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil, if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom today this poor people are plundered and exposed."

-[Adolf Hitler, in a speech on 12 April 1922 (Norman H. Baynes, ed. The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922-August 1939, Vol. 1 of 2, pp. 19-20, Oxford University Press, 1942)]

    "We are a people of different faiths, but we are one. Which faith conquers the other is not the question; rather, the question is whether Christianity stands or falls.... We tolerate no one in our ranks who attacks the ideas of Christianity... in fact our movement is Christian. We are filled with a desire for Catholics and Protestants to discover one another in the deep distress of our own people."

-[Adolf Hitler, in a speech in Passau, 27 October 1928, Bundesarchiv Berlin-Zehlendorf, [cited from Richard Steigmann-Gall's The Holy Reich] ]

    "The Catholic Church considered the Jews pestilent for fifteen hundred years, put them in ghettos, etc, because it recognized the Jews for what they were".... I recognize the representatives of this race as pestilent for the state and for the church and perhaps I am thereby doing Christianity a great service by pushing them out of schools and public functions."

-[Adolf Hitler, 26 April 1933, [cited from Richard Steigmann-Gall's The Holy Reich] ]

    "We are determined, as leaders of the nation, to fulfill as a national government the task which has been given to us, swearing fidelity only to God, our conscience, and our Volk.... This the national government will regard its first and foremost duty to restore the unity of spirit and purpose of our Volk. It will preserve and defend the foundations upon which the power of our nation rests. It will take Christianity, as the basis of our collective morality, and the family as the nucleus of our Volk and state, under its firm protection....May God Almighty take our work into his grace, give true form to our will, bless our insight, and endow us with the trust of our Volk."

-[Adolf Hitler, on 1 Feb. 1933, addressing the German nation as Chancellor for the first time, Volkischer Beobachter, 5 Aug. 1935, [cited from Richard Steigmann-Gall's The Holy Reich] ]

    "I believe today that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator."

-[Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf, pp. 46]

    "I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so"

-[Adolph Hitler, to Gen. Gerhard Engel, 1941]

    "…the personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew."

-[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 11]

(The idea of the devil/Jew relationship started with medieval anti-Jewish beliefs, based on interpretations from the Bible. Martin Luther, and teachers after him, continued this "tradition" up until the 20th century, which was where Hitler learned such ideas.)

    "We were convinced that the people needs and requires this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out."

-[Adolf Hitler, speech in Berlin, October 24, 1933]

    "National Socialism neither opposes the Church nor is it anti-religious, but on the contrary, it stands on the ground of a real Christianity. The Church's interests cannot fail to coincide with ours alike in our fight against the symptoms of degeneracy in the world of today, in our fight against the Bolshevist culture, against an atheistic movement, against criminality, and in our struggle for the consciousness of a community in our national life, for the conquest of hatred and disunion between the classes, for the conquest of civil war and unrest, of strife and discord. These are not anti-Christian, these are Christian principles."

-[Adolf Hitler, speech in Koblenz, August 26, 1934]

    "I believe today that I am acting in the sense of the Almighty Creator. By warding off the Jews I am fighting for the Lord’s work."

-[Adolph Hitler, Speech, Reichstag, 1936]

    "*It matters not whether these weapons of ours are humane: if they gain us our freedom, they are justified before our conscience and before our God.*<

-[Adolf Hitler, in Munich, 01 Aug. 1923]

If you have evidence to the contrary, or sources/citations for where you claim he was not religious, or that WWII was not a modern day Christian crusade, please, feel free to rewrite the history books.

Otherwise, to put it in short, from all of his collective speeches and writings...

    "I am now, as before, a Catholic, and will always remain so... I believe today that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator... our movement is Christian... I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom today this poor people are plundered and exposed.

    I recognize the representatives of [the Jewish] race as pestilent for the state and for the church and perhaps I am thereby doing Christianity a great service by pushing them out of schools and public functions.

    Christianity is the basis of our collective morality, and it matters not whether these weapons of ours are humane: if they gain us our freedom, they are justified before our conscience and before our God."

-[Adolf Hitler]

[CottageHore]

Organized religion is the biggest threat to humanity, truly. I want all religious extremism outlawed 

Edited May 15, 2023 by CottageHore

[Sugden]

trash religion, people excuse their vileness by saying there is gays muslims yeah that is called stockholm syndrome

 

[Samsara]

2 minutes ago, Delirious said:

This does not change the fact that 98.5% Nazis were Christian

 

Also a copy and paste: Being something physically and claiming to believe something is quite different. We can see visual and physical facts/proofs but nobody can say you are thinking or believing in something or not. I can't say you do or don't believe in something. If you claim to believe in whatever then you believe in whatever, regardless if you are right or wrong. If, indeed, he needed Christianity only for political purposes, then why-oh-why does he continue with the charade after he has established himself as absolute dictator?????

 

The evidence shows that:

Hitler was born and baptized into Catholicism

His Jewish antisemitism came from his Christian background.

His early personal notes shows his interest in religion and Biblical views.

He believed that the Bible represented the history of mankind.

His Nazi party platform (their version of a constitution) included a section on Positive Christianity, and he never removed it.

He confessed his Christianity.

He tried to establish a united Reich German Church.

Hitler allowed the destruction of Jewish synagogues and temples, but not Christian churches.

He encouraged Nazis to worship in Christian churches.

He spoke of his Christian beliefs in his speeches and proclamations.

His contemporaries, friends, Protestant ministers and Catholics priests, including the Vatican, thought of Hitler as a Christian.

The Catholic Church never excommunicated Hitler. He died a Catholic.

 

-----

 

Hitler's entire crusade was set forth by Martin Luther himself, after getting thoroughly educated as a Catholic in his youth, and then furthering his education with reading Martin Luther's book "On the Jews and Their Lies," as explained by Julius Streicher, an Adolf Hitler admirer, and Nazi member since 1922, during the Nuremberg trials:

    "Dr. Martin Luther would very probably sit in my place in the defendants' dock today, if this book had been taken into consideration by the Prosecution. In the book 'The Jews and Their Lies,' Dr. Martin Luther writes that the Jews are a serpent's brood and one should burn down their synagogues and destroy them..."

As for Hitler, he has plenty of quotes, both before and during the Third Reich, which more than proves his justification for such savagery:

    "My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice... … And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly, it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people. And when I look on my people I see them work and work and toil and labor, and at the end of the week they have only for their wages wretchedness and misery. When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil, if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom today this poor people are plundered and exposed."

-[Adolf Hitler, in a speech on 12 April 1922 (Norman H. Baynes, ed. The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922-August 1939, Vol. 1 of 2, pp. 19-20, Oxford University Press, 1942)]

    "We are a people of different faiths, but we are one. Which faith conquers the other is not the question; rather, the question is whether Christianity stands or falls.... We tolerate no one in our ranks who attacks the ideas of Christianity... in fact our movement is Christian. We are filled with a desire for Catholics and Protestants to discover one another in the deep distress of our own people."

-[Adolf Hitler, in a speech in Passau, 27 October 1928, Bundesarchiv Berlin-Zehlendorf, [cited from Richard Steigmann-Gall's The Holy Reich] ]

    "The Catholic Church considered the Jews pestilent for fifteen hundred years, put them in ghettos, etc, because it recognized the Jews for what they were".... I recognize the representatives of this race as pestilent for the state and for the church and perhaps I am thereby doing Christianity a great service by pushing them out of schools and public functions."

-[Adolf Hitler, 26 April 1933, [cited from Richard Steigmann-Gall's The Holy Reich] ]

    "We are determined, as leaders of the nation, to fulfill as a national government the task which has been given to us, swearing fidelity only to God, our conscience, and our Volk.... This the national government will regard its first and foremost duty to restore the unity of spirit and purpose of our Volk. It will preserve and defend the foundations upon which the power of our nation rests. It will take Christianity, as the basis of our collective morality, and the family as the nucleus of our Volk and state, under its firm protection....May God Almighty take our work into his grace, give true form to our will, bless our insight, and endow us with the trust of our Volk."

-[Adolf Hitler, on 1 Feb. 1933, addressing the German nation as Chancellor for the first time, Volkischer Beobachter, 5 Aug. 1935, [cited from Richard Steigmann-Gall's The Holy Reich] ]

    "I believe today that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator."

-[Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf, pp. 46]

    "I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so"

-[Adolph Hitler, to Gen. Gerhard Engel, 1941]

    "…the personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew."

-[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 11]

(The idea of the devil/Jew relationship started with medieval anti-Jewish beliefs, based on interpretations from the Bible. Martin Luther, and teachers after him, continued this "tradition" up until the 20th century, which was where Hitler learned such ideas.)

    "We were convinced that the people needs and requires this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out."

-[Adolf Hitler, speech in Berlin, October 24, 1933]

    "National Socialism neither opposes the Church nor is it anti-religious, but on the contrary, it stands on the ground of a real Christianity. The Church's interests cannot fail to coincide with ours alike in our fight against the symptoms of degeneracy in the world of today, in our fight against the Bolshevist culture, against an atheistic movement, against criminality, and in our struggle for the consciousness of a community in our national life, for the conquest of hatred and disunion between the classes, for the conquest of civil war and unrest, of strife and discord. These are not anti-Christian, these are Christian principles."

-[Adolf Hitler, speech in Koblenz, August 26, 1934]

    "I believe today that I am acting in the sense of the Almighty Creator. By warding off the Jews I am fighting for the Lord’s work."

-[Adolph Hitler, Speech, Reichstag, 1936]

    "*It matters not whether these weapons of ours are humane: if they gain us our freedom, they are justified before our conscience and before our God.*<

-[Adolf Hitler, in Munich, 01 Aug. 1923]

If you have evidence to the contrary, or sources/citations for where you claim he was not religious, or that WWII was not a modern day Christian crusade, please, feel free to rewrite the history books.

Otherwise, to put it in short, from all of his collective speeches and writings...

    "I am now, as before, a Catholic, and will always remain so... I believe today that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator... our movement is Christian... I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom today this poor people are plundered and exposed.

    I recognize the representatives of [the Jewish] race as pestilent for the state and for the church and perhaps I am thereby doing Christianity a great service by pushing them out of schools and public functions.

    Christianity is the basis of our collective morality, and it matters not whether these weapons of ours are humane: if they gain us our freedom, they are justified before our conscience and before our God."

-[Adolf Hitler]

It doesn’t matter what Hitler was born into but what he ended up. You’re quoting Hitler’s earlier speeches when he’s trying to gain Christian sympathy and support but you’re ignoring his later anti-Christian speeches and what Nazism is all about. There’s nothing remotely Christian about Nazism. Nazism is largely based on Social Darwinism. Darwinism is rejected by Christianity up until recently.

[LikeATattoo]

6 minutes ago, Communion said:

How do you get "0 respondents were queer" from "8% of respondents identify as queer"?

I read the 0% and skydived from there.

 

 

11 minutes ago, Communion said:

You literally have kept shifting the goal posts of your claims.

 

"Muslims are universally not accepting of gay people"

->

"American Muslims may not be violent against gays, but they don't actually accept them."

-> ->

"Even if ONLY HAKLF of American Muslims say they accept gays, they'll never allow gay Muslims to be out!!"

-> -> ->

"Who cares if 8% of American Muslims are openly queer? We're talking about BELGIUM here!!!"

Excepting the last one (which by the way, remains valid), the first three literally didn’t happen. This is what I was talking about when I cited your projection of other arguments (or personal hang-ups, I really don’t know) onto me.

 

1. I never said that Muslims are universally non-accepting of queer people at any point. Never even insinuated it. Although it is worth noting that violently homophobic will always be a majority within Islam. So there’s that.

 

2. This is such a sinisterly manipulative twisting of what I actually said, but I’m catching on to that just being your personality LOL. The reality is, most Muslims (in the West at least) won’t attack queer people in the street, but most of them also dislike and shun queerness). How is that not correct?

 

3. I just never said this lol.

 

4. I mean, this happened in Belgium and evolved into a great conversation about Muslims in Europe. My wondering how the hell I got pulled into a discussion about goddamn America was perfectly reasonable.

 

(And for the record, it’s really only 4%. We don’t know how the “Something else” and “No answer” people identify or what they evolved to identify as.)

 

22 minutes ago, Communion said:

Anyone who believes that a minority religious community in their country - often ranging from 5% to even less than 1% - with largely no political power - is somehow a destructive force that will not only single-handedly undue LGBT equality but completely "destroy our way of life as we know it" is a bigot.

1. The people who believe that all homosexuals are mistakes who should be eternally tortured to death are more bigoted than anyone in fear of them could ever be, sis.

 

2. Who in this thread even mentioned Muslim immigrants destroying the Western way of life? Tag or quote them. I’m tired of being expected to answer for other people tbh.

 

3. Queer people have every right to view Islam as a destructive force tbh. I don’t view it that way myself, but I’m not going to oppose any queer person who does.

 

30 minutes ago, Communion said:

This is of course if we buy your premise that European Muslims are somehow uniformly conservative.

Once again, that wasn’t my premise. It was yours.

 

33 minutes ago, Communion said:

Quick research would reveal to us in places like the UK things like Muslim MPs often being uniformly pro-LGBT equality in their voting records while far-right ethnic English who fearmonger about borders and "every nurse being now brown!" also being the ones concerned with committing a trans genocide.

Oh for crying out loud, most of those Muslim MPs are pro-LGBT equality because they have to be in order to get anywhere lol. Muslims are even more harshly stereotyped for violent homophobia in the UK than they are in the US. Muslim Brits seeking to hold any kind of office would be stupid not to publicly support LGBT communities, considering how quickly and ferociously demonised that they tend to get when they’re even implied to be “traditionally” Muslim.

 

41 minutes ago, Communion said:

There is no "invasion". There is "no mass changing of demographics". There is no European nation outside of Turkey where conservative ~Islamism~ is a meaningful political movement.

1. Again I ask, where in this thread have you seen people parroting rhetoric about Islam’s imminent destruction of the West? Cos it sure as **** wasn’t said by me, yet you keep telling me about it.

 

2. I will say though, that there is a difference between being justifiably afraid of a future where a doctrine that dehumanises you is more commonplace in your home, and believing that Islam is going to crush us all Armageddon-style.

 

Now are you going to address the numerous points and questions in my previous posts?

 

[Communion]

5 minutes ago, Harrier said:

Anyone with any knowledge of this conversations knows that US Muslims are an outlier community. Muslims in the Islamic world, in Europe, and in my country as well are on average much more conservative. I'm very glad you seem to have an acknowledgement of that . For the record, this is a problem across cultural background too, such as with recent Ukrainian migrants. Another good point you brought up.

 

I would argue that the reason for this difference is that US Muslims are better assimilated. You argue this is due to 'pro-diversity policies' - but is it? What does that mean?

 

There are many more recent immigrants in Europe compared to in the United States, where we are more so talking about multiple generations of Muslim Americans. Additionally, a higher percentage of Muslims in Europe are refugees or poorer economic migrants: it's much more expensive and difficult to migrate to the US from a country like Syria than to Europe. That's common sense. This means that there are more educated Muslim Americans as a percentage, which of course correlates with tolerant social values.

 

Where the US has gone right is in preventing ghettoization. It's done a better job than Australia and NZ on this too. What I'm not very clear on is how this was achieved - perhaps you can shed some light? I just don't understand what you mean when you say 'pro-diversity policies'. 

 

But my broader point is I'm not sure it's entirely fair to blame Europe for its conservative Muslims. There is an element of inevitability when taking a large number of people from conservative countries at once, as opposed to the more gradual process with US Muslims. 

 

This is not to say European countries shouldn't have done that. My position is that there needs to be more acknowledgement and deliberate policy around this. The first step is to prevent ghettoization. And perhaps assimilation programs aren't such a bad idea.

 

Otherwise we're relying on generational change as happened in the US, and that isn't going to protect LGBT people or women from dangerous conservative forces within these communities.

I think there's two differences that have led the conversation around Muslim communities to be different here than it has unfolded over the years within Europe.

 

1) America is founded on religious liberty. Secularism in America is the inclusion of all faiths within public life. Emphasis is placed on America as a multi-faith nation. It's clear secularism in Europe means the erasure of religion from public life. Inclusionary policies like a woman's right to wear the hijab even if she holds office are often controversial and deemed as inappropriate in many places within Europe.

 

Historically, Muslim Americans have worked with Jewish Americans to stop laws that "ban Sharia" because Jewish Americans recognize such as no different than laws to ban Halakha. And that to "ban Sharia" or "ban Halakha" is really an attempt to ban being Muslim or Jewish. Religious liberty is fundamental to the American identity. 

 

The popularization of gay rights did not come from disenfranchising the religious, but public discourse that religiosity was not at odds with supporting LGBTQ people. And while the GOP in 2023 are indeed Christo-fascists, these kind of tactics are only because conservatives know LGBTQ acceptance is at an all time high.

 

2) This in turn, also deals with the way Europe has a "colorblind" approach to identity that simply does not exist in much of the way both racial justice and social justice have formed over decades in the US.

 

Look at the language used in this thread. LGBT people who willingly support and befriend Muslim people - their neighbors, co-workers, friends - are framed as "supporting an ideology that wants them dead".

 

By virtue of what unfolded in a post 9/11 America, there is an understanding of why such racializing and dehumanizing language about Muslims is inherently harmful that seems to have passed many Europeans by.

 

This isn't to whitewash America. I'm sure many Muslim Americans may have negative experiences within America, and as an atheist I wouldn't deny them those feelings. And we both know the evils behind the War on Terror.

 

But these conversations continually - ironically - expose an inexperience to coalition build with the religious, as well as purposeful ignorance to the racialization of religious minorities. "Muslims are a religion, not a race!".  This kind of discourse and 'sore spots' have simply already occurred within American progressivism around the religiosity of things like older black voters who, despite initial claims, end up supportive of LGBT people.

 

Not to be silly, but there's a reason why Gaga said "God makes no mistakes!" and not "God is a lie!".  I mentioned previously that refugees are indeed where America and Europe may greatly differ, but also take issue in those who seem to ignore that displaced people are going to be hesitant to change from a culture they didn't want to leave. See also: those fear-mongering over Muslim refugees while silent over Muslim nations being bombed.

 

These challenges will present themselves and it will take work to integrate people, but it is quite literally the responsibility of the state to ensure these outcomes and not allow things like ghettoization. And for what it's worth, American Muslims are actually largely diverse across race, ethnicity and notably class: