The German Plot

Some points in the wake of Germany's apparent foiling of an apparently serious terrorist attack:

• We're seeing here once again that the big risk factor is the presence of a large, deeply alienated Muslim population in your country. That means the locus of the short-run problem is Western Europe rather than the United States. It also means that we need to put a high premium on understanding the aspects of America that make the country relatively friendly to Muslim integration and strengthen them.
• It seems slightly perverse to worry that an al-Qaeda sanctuary might emerge in some part of Iraq when, right now, there are al-Qaeda sanctuaries in Pakistan where it seems these guys trained.
• Stopping terrorist plots turns out to involve an awful lot of police and intelligence work. You can't take these guys down with a DD(X) or an Osprey or a Raptor.
• It still seems to be the case that nobody is anywhere near approaching the sophistication or lethality of a 9/11-scale plot. Back in the fall of 2001, I, at least, was very afraid that there might be much worse things in the works.

Other than that, who knows? Oftentimes, these stories have ended up looking different a week after the arrests than they did on the day of, but it seems legit to me.

Comments

The bullet font sucks. If Atlantic tech can't fix it, maybe Tom has a suggestion?

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | September 5, 2007 12:54 PM

The only quibble I have is that the article says the two Germans arrested were converts to Islam, which makes me think it wasn't the "large, deeply alienated Muslim population" of Germany that was the cause of this plot. not sure what it does mean, though; maybe these were people who were alienated for some other reason then turned to Islam. Interesting fact, though, in my opinion.

Posted by Goldberg | September 5, 2007 1:01 PM

Yeah, that's interesting about Fritz Gelowicz and the other convert. But I don't think it invalidates the point about the oppositional culture of European Islam. Alienated people looking to engage in redemptive violence don't convert to the religion of a group that's well-integrated and happy.

Posted by brooksfoe | September 5, 2007 1:09 PM

true: they're called Fritz and Daniel, no kidding ;)

Posted by novakant | September 5, 2007 1:10 PM

I don't get the second point: do you think it would be perverse if the FBI worried about the Crips and the Bloods establishing gang affiliates in New York City, since they are already established in Los Angeles? Let's note that Iraq is a lot closer and more accessible to Western Europe than is Pakistan. More generally, having one bad thing is not usually a good reason not to worry about a second bad thing.

On the first point, I suspect most people here won't want to hear that the high levels of religiosity in America enable Muslims to fit in, whereas the militant secularism of European elites alienates them.

Posted by y81 | September 5, 2007 1:33 PM

What Goldberg and brooksfoe said. In addition, the zeal of the converted is probably a factor. The highest-ranking American member of al-Qaida is a former evangelical Christian. The most radical form of Islam in the US grew out of racial discrimination against African-Americans, some of whom then turned to Islam as a way out of that predicament. Even then, our country was able to claim the late Malcolm X as our own.

Posted by Reality Man | September 5, 2007 1:40 PM

We're seeing here once again that the big risk factor is the presence of a large, deeply alienated Muslim population in your country. That means the locus of the short-run problem is Western Europe rather than the United States. It also means that we need to put a high premium on understanding the aspects of America that make the country relatively friendly to Muslim integration and strengthen them.

This why it drives me crazy why people like Glenn Beck or Marty Peretz or that frothing dog named Christopher Hitchens insist that we are involved in a cultural (or even holy) war against Islam. I would argue that it is precisely the tolerance of and institutional protections for minority religions which have allowed our American Muslims to maintain largely pro-American and decidedly moderate. One of the great misconceptions about the European radical Muslim problem is that it exists because Europe is more tolerant and accepting of Islam than the United States. But that simply isn't true. France, for example, is one the whole quite hostile to its Muslim minority. And France has an enormous problem with radical, anti-Western Islam. "Multiculturalism" became anathema in this country following September 11th, and yet I would argue that it is our multicultural nature that gives us the best chance to respond to the real, but largely inconsequential, threat of Islamic terrorism.

I don't get the second point: do you think it would be perverse if the FBI worried about the Crips and the Bloods establishing gang affiliates in New York City, since they are already established in Los Angeles?

It's a question of application of resources and strategic focus. We are devoting a truly incredible amount of resources to Iraq on the understanding that, in part, the mission is to prevent a "safe haven" for Al Qaeda. But, look; they already have a safe haven in Pakistan, and an established money generating capacity in Saudi Arabia, two of our ostensible allies. If there's no limit to the amount of resources we are willing to devote to the mission (such as it is) in Iraq, why is there apparently no amount of evidence that will persuade us to take a different diplomatic approach to those two allies?

Posted by Freddie | September 5, 2007 1:48 PM

"I suspect most people here won't want to hear that the high levels of religiosity in America enable Muslims to fit in, whereas the militant secularism of European elites alienates them."

You're right, most people here don't want to hear this, because it's a profoundly silly comment.

As we all know, the religious right is deeply committed to ecumenical "religiosity" and they gladly welcome their Muslim brethren into this land with open arms. When they demand to post the Ten Commandments in schools and courtrooms, we all know they'd gladly share the space with the Koran, to help our Muslim friends "fit in.".

True, our Muslim minority is considerably smaller than that of most European nations, and our nation is more ethnically diverse and traditionally welcoming to immigrants... but these can't possibly be the reasons. It's because Muslims feel welcomed by the people who run around calling this a "Christian Nation." And they probably love to watch Glenn Beck on TV, too.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | September 5, 2007 1:50 PM

It also means that we need to put a high premium on understanding the aspects of America that make the country relatively friendly to Muslim integration and strengthen them.

Why does this follow? Perhaps the Europeans aren't any worse at integrating Muslims -- after all, the recent Pew poll showed that a significant percentage of American Muslims condone terrorism in defense of Islam. And we have had incidents of Muslim terrorism here since 9/11 that our media has played down, e.g., the shooting at the Seattle Jewish center, the D.C. snipers, the recent shooting by the Bosnian Muslim at the mall in Denver or wherever it was, the Iranian student who ran over pedestrians in his car at UNC while chanting "Alahu Akbar", etc. Perhaps the problem in Europe is simply one of critical mass.

If that's the case, the solution should be a moratorium on new Muslim immigration to the United States and Europe, and a financial incentive program (Steve Sailer's idea) to encourage European Muslims to leave Europe and move to Muslim countries.

Posted by Juan | September 5, 2007 1:56 PM

You missed one more, Matt: American foreign policy is still the big driver of Jihadist terrorism in the West. The plot was hatched in Germany by alienated Muslims and would have happened on German soil, but everything we know so far indicates that their targets were American.

Now, it's pretty obvious why American Muslims are less likely to engage in terrorism against American targets than non-American Muslims are: they're Americans. You don't shit where you sleep.

Posted by Jim Henley | September 5, 2007 2:03 PM

And we have had incidents of Muslim terrorism here since 9/11 that our media has played down, e.g., the shooting at the Seattle Jewish center, the D.C. snipers, the recent shooting by the Bosnian Muslim at the mall in Denver or wherever it was, the Iranian student who ran over pedestrians in his car at UNC while chanting "Alahu Akbar", etc. Perhaps the problem in Europe is simply one of critical mass.

To call any of those incidents genuine acts of terrorism is the height of dishonesty. The truth of the matter is, the number of people killed by Islamic terrorism on American soil since September 11th is precisely zero. The risks of terrorism to the average American is incredibly, incredibly small, far smaller than the risks posed by, among other things, bees, lightening, or batht tubs.

When you adopt a vision of terrorism that is so inclusive and vague that you include any crime committed by any ostensibly Muslim or Middle Eastern criminal, you have distorted the issue so thoroughly that you will never effectively confront it.

Posted by Freddie | September 5, 2007 2:18 PM

Matt writes:

"We're seeing here once again that the big risk factor is the presence of a large, deeply alienated Muslim population in your country. That means the locus of the short-run problem is Western Europe rather than the United States. It also means that we need to put a high premium on understanding the aspects of America that make the country relatively friendly to Muslim integration and strengthen them."

The key word to understanding is "large." There are far more Muslims in Europe than in the United States and they are much more densely populated than in large groups. It's easy to name a half dozen Muslim terrorist attacks in the US since 2001, but they've generally been on a small scale, either individual or a few incompetents -- it's hard to form groups of extremists out of small groups of local Muslims.

The best way to prevent incremental Muslim terrorism in the United States is to not let in incremental Muslims.

Posted by Steve Sailer | September 5, 2007 2:50 PM

Freddie,

The incidents I referred to were all acts of terrorism by any reasonable definition of the term; not merely violent acts committed by individuals who happened to be Muslims. The terrorists themselves cited religious and political motivations for their attacks.

The reason the media in here has largely avoiding calling these terrorist incidents what they are is because it offends the sensibilities of ideologues on the left and the right. On the left, the idea that any religious or cultural group might be more inclined to commit acts of terrorism is verboten. How many times have we been told that we have as much to fear from Christian Fundamentalists as we do from Muslim Fundamentalists?

On the right, adherents to Bush's Wilsonian form of egalitarianism are similarly disinclined to believe Muslims are more prone to commit terrorism. The problem, they believe is the lack of democracy, not Islam per se, which is a religion of peace. Also, acknowledging acts of terror on American soil since 9/11 invalidates the claim that we haven't had any terrorist attacks since 9/11.

Posted by Juan | September 5, 2007 2:53 PM

Juan is right. For example, on July 4, 2002, an Egyptian who was in America because his wife was a winner of Ted Kennedy's Diversity Visa Lottery shot up the Israeli El Al airline counter at Los Angeles International, killing two Jews before being gunned down himself.

There have been quite a few similar attacks, typically using guns. Perhaps the supposed difference between America and Europe that Matt wants to find is that we've got tons of guns, so that's what Muslim terrorists use here? But the media have decided not to count gun attacks as terrorism, so we here lots of nonsense about no Muslim terrorism in America since 9/11.

Posted by Steve Sailer | September 5, 2007 2:58 PM

Matt shouldn't stereotype Europe's treatment of Muslim immigrants. It varies dramatically from country to country.

Approach #1: Multiculturalism. The Northwestern Europeans, such as the Scandinavians, Dutch, and British, have tried multiculturalism, subsidizing cultural diversity.

Approach # 2: Ignore them. Germans aren't that much more enthused about assimilating the descendants of the gastarbeiters of the 1950s than these Turks are interested in becoming assimilated. If the German public could, it would prefer to ignore the foreigners in its midst.

Approach #3: Move ‘Em On! Southern European countries such as Italy not only don't try to assimilate immigrants, they'd really like to treat them the same way the sheriff in a Steinbeck novel dealt with a freight train full of hobos. Italy encourages asylum seekers to keep moving north toward the European Union's more generous welfare states. In effect, the Italians are telling the immigrants that northern Europeans are more apt to believe strangers' hard luck stories than seen-it-all-before Mediterraneans. They’re right.

Approach # 4: La Mission Civilitrice. Finally, the French have traditionally tried to do with their immigrants almost exactly what the neocons recommend here: cultural assimilation, education in civics theories, monolingualism, meritocracy, separation of church and state, and all the rest.

This may seem ironic, because nobody in Tikrit hates anybody worse than the neocons hate the French.

What's the common denominator? None of these policies have worked well (with the possible exception of Italy's). The bottom line is that if you import a lot of low skilled immigrants, their descendants will tend to stay at the bottom of society and resent their position and cause trouble.

Posted by Steve Sailer | September 5, 2007 3:08 PM

Perhaps Matt could next study why the children of Mexican immigrants in Holland have done so much better on average than in America: one is a conceptual artist, another owns a flourishing Mexican restaurant, and the third is studying for her Ph.D. (I just made that up, but the situation isn't all that far removed from my joke.) Compare that to the high crime rates and and dropout rates of the children of Mexican immigrants in the U.S. Obviously, Holland must have a better policy for treating immigrants than the U.S. has!

Posted by Steve Sailer | September 5, 2007 3:15 PM

The underlying point is that everybody should stop and ask themselves about just about every social phenomenon: "Is there a selection effect at work here?"

Obviously, there is with Muslim immigrants in America vs. Europe.

America's immigrant Muslims tend to have gotten into America because they were well-educated or related to well-educated people. Many of them come from India, rather than Islamic countries. They tend to be fairly dispersed across the U.S. (the hospital intern system, for example, distributes Muslim med school grads almost at random), so there aren't many big Muslim neighborhoods, much less huge Muslim slums, like in Europe.

In contrast, Muslims in Europe are largely descended from people who were brought in to do the jobs that Mexicans are brought in to do here.

Indeed, a fair percentage of the rioting West Africans who burn cars in France are Catholics. They're just at the bottom of society and they don't like it.

Posted by Steve Sailer | September 5, 2007 3:30 PM

Steve Sailer and Juan merely illustrate their own lack of understanding of what terrorism entails.

Look, simply citing religious or political justification for acts of violence does not qualify an act as terrorism. Terrorism is the use of violence by an ideologically-minded group to create fear of future acts of violence. That fear is in turn designed to leverage political goals.

Let's look at the DC-area snipers. To begin with, both John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo show significant signs of mental illness. They were connected to no larger political group. The plot involved an effort to extort $10 million dollars from the United States government. In 2006 Lee Boyd Malvo testified that this was, in fact, the primary goal of the killings all along. John Allen Muhammad was not a jihadist, a Wahabbi, or even a practicing Muslim in any meaningful sense. Lee Boyd Malvo was not a Muslim at all. They had no political goals whatsoever, surely the most basic and elementary criteria for participating in terrorism. These men were, by the best definition, somewhat successful serial killers, motivated by mental instability and an effort to extort money. They had no real political agenda, no ability to achieve that agenda through terrorism, no larger coordination with others, no connection to terrorism in any honest sense whatsoever. The long and the short of it is, one of the killers last name was Muhammad. These guys were crooks, thrill killers, serial killers. They most certainly were not terrorists.

You guys are taking isolated incidents by lone wackos who have no political goals, no meaningful demands, no larger organizations or connections to real terrorist groups, and no genuine connection to even an expansive definition of terrorism. And you're doing it, of course, to advocate anti-Muslim policies and terrorism hysteria. The truth is that Islamic terrorism poses a minimal threat to our country. It is a threat, sure, but it is not even approaching an existential threat, and is not even close to the threat posed by, for example, wild animals. The fact that you have to stretch to make such ridiculous claims of terrorism demonstrates the fundamental bankruptcy of your opinion.

Posted by Freddie | September 5, 2007 3:34 PM

Several terrorist plots that have been thwarted in the United States seemed very scary at first but then turned out to be basically all talk and no action. Two recent examples are the pizza delivery boys who wanted to attack Ft. Dix and the old men who schemed to blow up JFK Airport's fuel pipeline. It could well be that this latest German plot will turn out to be a whole lot of nothing.

Posted by Peter | September 5, 2007 3:37 PM

The root cause of this latest terrorist plot in Germany and Denmark is Islam. To try and write it off as some sort of disenfranchised immigrant problem is crap. I lived in Germany and there are a lot of immigrants that aren't doing too well; Bosnians, Russians, Africans, etc. None of them are trying to blow things up. I can cite you chapter (surah) and verse from the Koran that encourages these attacks. Call it a perversion of Islam or not but that is where it emanates from. Bin Laden and Zawahiri (sp?) were not disenfranchised. That American spokesman for Al Queda was not disenfranchised.

Posted by danceswithgoats | September 5, 2007 3:41 PM

The root cause of this latest terrorist plot in Germany and Denmark is Islam.

You are arguing a point that I don't think is being argued. I would never claim that Islam has nothing to do with the current Islamic terrorism, or that Islamic terrorism isn't a particularly problematic form, or that Islam isn't uniquely culpable for political violence among current religions. Islam, in many parts of the world, desperately requires reform.

But look. When you say that the root cause is Islam, what do you mean? If you mean that Islam inspires violence, the question is, among who? Half the world's Muslims live east of Pakistan. Islam is as much an East Asian religion as it is a Middle Eastern religion. The vast majority of these people are moderates. Does Islam's holy works contain incitements to violence? Sure. Do Muslims seem unfortunately malleable when it comes to using religion to inspire violence? Yes. But when you say you can read the chapter and verse of the Koran that incites violence, I invite you to read the Torah.

And if you say that the disenfranchised are not particularly susceptible to incitements to violence, I think that's just not consistent with history. Political violence has always been made possible with appeals to the downtrodden. Islam focuses and enhances that anger, but I don't believe the problem would be nearly as wide-spread without the economic conditions.

Posted by Freddie | September 5, 2007 3:57 PM

The French car-burning riots of 2005 (which sputter nightly on even now) didn't seem to have much to do with Islam. They appear to have been more similar to the 1992 LA Riot: a lot of gangsta rap fans having fun overwhelming the police and running amok.

Posted by Steve Sailer | September 5, 2007 4:15 PM

Freddie - so these "half the world's Muslims" that live East of Pakistan; they are a peaceful, prosperous lot, no?

I think that MY has it right when he states "We're seeing here once again that the big risk factor is the presence of a large, deeply alienated Muslim population in your country". Having a deeply alienated Mexican or Roma population carries a lot less risk. As the thread progresses the focus goes to alienation and disenfranchisement. The root cause of the problem is Islam as it is written and interpreted.

I don't buy the whole equivalence argument between the Torah and the Koran or the Bible for that matter. Where do we see the Torah being used to justify violence? Perhaps Orthodox Jews are using it to justify their territorial aspirations in Israel but I don't see Rabbis calling for death to Muslims.

Posted by danceswithgoats | September 5, 2007 4:21 PM

Freddie,

You are dancing on the head of a pin here, trying to define "terrorism" so narrowly that obvious acts of terrorism committed by Muslims in America don't count. One of the few papers in America to call these acts for what they are was Investor's Business Daily, in their editorial Sudden Jihad Syndrome.

That editorial was written in the wake of the shooting attack by the Bosnian Muslim earlier this year (it was actually in Salt Lake City, not Denver), but it references eight other attacks by politically and or religiously motivated Muslims. Read this and then let us know if you still believe none of these attacks counts is an example of terrorism.

As for your point about the number of Muslims living East of Pakistan: Islamic terrorism exists east of Pakistan too. Muslim terrorists have been active in the Philippines, Thailand and even in China, among its Uighur minority.

Posted by Juan | September 5, 2007 4:23 PM

Let's note that Iraq is a lot closer and more accessible to Western Europe than is Pakistan.

Perhaps its unfair to single out one ridiculous statement for comment in a thread full of them. Nevertheless . . .

Are you under the impression that Islamic terrorists are going to arrive in Europe on foot? Because if they're coming by airplane, the extra distance doesn't matter much, does it?

Posted by rea | September 5, 2007 4:29 PM

Freddies rather desperate efforts to rehabilitate terrorists in the US into less-threatening "criminals" wears thin. Not quite as much as his effort to rehabilitate them as "poor, mentally ill Muslims", but thin...Why are Lefties so desperate to deny the obvious? Because it doesn't fit into their neat tidy pre 9/11 world when only America was evil and hateful Muslims were just misguided souls not salvaged by the Religion of Peace?

People in the US screaming "Allah u Akbar!" and trying to kill people are Muslim terrorists on Jihad. Pure and simple.

Freddie is welcome to look up reports for illegal alien and muslim convert "Sniper Boy" Lee Malvo. How he does great hand-drawings of his "master killer" Osama bin Laden that were confiscated before trial, and his disappointment that none of the people he shot were Jewish - but pleased that he got a lot of "white devil infidels and one Uncle Tom"..(Evil little shit. Hope he now likes all the infidel cock shoved into his rectum and mouth...)

*******************
Matt's quest to say that what AQ called it's "Central Front" in Jihad - Iraq - is not the real problem but Pakistan is because "terrorists train there" is also thinly reasoned. We also know terrorists have used training camps in the Philippines, Indonesia, Lebanon, Oregon, Virginia, and Brazil.

Nor were these Islamoids AQ. According to news reports they were not AQ, only part of the 60 other Islamist groups "inspired" by AQ.

From Die Welt: "The three suspects - two Germans, ages 22 and 28, and a 29-year-old Turk - first came to the attention of authorities because they had been caught observing a U.S. military facility in Hanau, near Frankfurt, at the end of 2006, officials.
All three had undergone training at camps in Pakistan run by the Islamic Jihad Union, and had formed a German cell of the group, which officials said was influenced by al-Qaida.

The Islamic Jihad Union was described as a Sunni Muslim group based in Central Asia that was an offshoot of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, an extremist group with origins in that country.

"The group, which is influenced by al-Qaida, set up a German cell in winter of 2006 with the goal of finding recruits here to carry out attacks," Harms said."

The problem a lot of Lefties seem to have is refusing to believe we are at war with a global ideology, not a small band of criminals who did 9/11. It is a global ideology employing illegal enemy combatants from 60 separate militant Muslim terror groups and also relying on the ideology creating "spontaneous convert terrorists" from Jihadi materials they see on tape or on the Internet. AQ is just one of the "better ones" at infidel killing, and unfortunately for them, with their best forces now being routed in Iraq and money drying up as Sunnis have become repulsed at what AQ did in Iraq...

Matt is also wrong about the utility of DDX, Osprey, and F-22s. They are quite useful in all the non-terrorist missions the US military now has for national security matters. Deterring Rising China, ability to defeat Iran and reopen the Gulf, ability to bring our force and unique logistics supply network anywhere on the planet where a hotspot like Kosovo or Grenada or a Tsunami happens. All the stuff OTHER than terrorism. It is a big Lefty mistake to think that the military is like political controversy and only the last, most recent one matters.

Saying most of our military is useless for terrorism is like saying most hospital resources are useless to a woman having a baby. Military is like a hospital, multi-role, multi-purpose, with certain high tech stuff only there for specialized use, but absolutely essential to have......

Posted by Chris Ford | September 5, 2007 4:30 PM

It's important to remember that when (up through the 1973 economic downturn) the Europeans decided to import large numbers of unskilled Muslim immigrants to do the jobs they didn't want to do ... it seemed like a good idea at the time.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Islam was exhausted, defeated, out of fashion. The hot new fads in the Middle East were nationalism, socialism, modernization, and secularism. At least one form of Middle Eastern terrorism -- skyjackings -- was pioneered by a Christian Palestinian, George Habash. All that religion stuff was out of date, over the hill.

In that era, the notion that the descendants of the docile, submissive Muslim immigrants from the Middle East would someday become terrorists within Europe seemed as crazy to Europeans then as the idea in the 1940s and the 1950s that the sons of the docile, submissive internal black migrants from the American South would riot in the cities of the North sounded to enlightened Americans. Or that the offspring of today's docile, submissive Latino immigrants we import to replace the scary black guys that white people don't want to employ anymore would ever get tired of doing the jobs Americans don't want to do and take direct action about it.

That was just crazy talk. Everybody knew that today's docile, submissive migrants will always remain docile and submissive and happy about their position at the bottom of society.

Posted by Steve Sailer | September 5, 2007 4:32 PM

This isn't to say that Islam isn't a big part of the problem today. But, just as the Middle East's past panacea fads such as Pan-Arabism, nationalism, socialism, Baathism, etc., which caused lots of problems in their day, ended up on the junk pile of history because they didn't succeed in making Middle Easterners rich, powerful, and dominant, it's quite possible that Islam will go out of fashion again because it's not noticeably succeeding either.

In the meantime, the most practical solution for America's problems with the Middle East is twofold:

1. Don't invade the Middle East.
2. Don't invite Middle Easterners here.

With apologies to E.M. Forster, "Just disconnect."

Posted by Steve Sailer | September 5, 2007 4:58 PM

Steve - your previous post was pretty good. I got the sarcasm in the last paragraph. Not sure if the last paragraph in your latter post is sarcastic or not.

Posted by danceswithgoats | September 5, 2007 5:25 PM

What's the common denominator? None of these policies have worked well (with the possible exception of Italy's). The bottom line is that if you import a lot of low skilled immigrants, their descendants will tend to stay at the bottom of society and resent their position and cause trouble.

Really? How did all my Irish ancestors suceed so well in roughly two generations then? (not really Irish pride, the Italians, Poles, Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese, etc. seem to have done fine here - and many of them where dirt poor off the boat as well).

Posted by TomTom | September 5, 2007 6:38 PM

TomTom's comment is a good example of how Ellis Island Nostalgia gets in the way of rational thought and keeps us oblivious to the obvious.

In reality, in 2007, there's a strong correlation with how well an ethnic group is doing in the West and how well it is doing back in the Old Country. Japanese-Americans are doing fine and so is Japan. Italian-Americans are doing fine and so is Italy. Hispanic-Americans are doing mediocre and so is Latin America. African-Americans are doing mediocre and Africa is doing badly. Muslims in Europe are doing mediocre to poor and so is the Muslim world.

There are two adjustments that need to be made to this correlation.

- Communist and ex-Communist countries are still dealing with the damage done by Marxism. Thus Korean-Americans are doing fine and so is South Korea, but not North Korea.

- You have to exclude carefully selected immigrant groups (e.g., legal Indian immigrants to America are not at all representative of the Indian population, but instead represent the best educated; Cuban-Americans in Miami were much more from the white upper class than the average Cuban in Cuban; etc.).

How does this affect our topic of Muslim immigrants to America and Europa? A large fraction of the Muslims in America are Indians who got in the same way as other Indians -- they were either highly educated or related to somebody got in because he was highly educated. Other Muslim immigrants tend to be the cream of the cream of their countries too. In contrast, Muslims in Western Europe were mostly peasants and laborers brought in to do the jobs Mexican peasants and laborers are brought in to do here.

Posted by Steve Sailer | September 5, 2007 7:06 PM

The difference between Muslims in the US and Muslims in Europe is obvious - it's easier to make a buck in the US than it is in Europe. A decent buck.

The bottom line is that the wealthier you are, the less likely you are to be a religious fanatic. Religious fanaticism in the US is generally (if not entirely) limited to poor white trash in blue states. The same is true everywhere else. You turn to religion when you haven't got the money to do other things.

It's that simple.

Therefore, there's no particular reason not to allow, if not encourage, Muslim immigration here as long as they are treated like everybody else and not made "suspects" every time some "Muslim terrorist" group surfaces somewhere in the world.

As for the religion encouraging violence, while Islam is technically a "militant" religion, the reality is that it is no more "militant" than Christianity - especially Christianity in the hands of Christian Zionists as the freaks here demonstrate with every post.

The only difference is that militant Muslims want to blow up a building while militant Christians want to nuke Tehran and kill a few million people all at once.

The Zionists are always screaming about "anti-Semitism" being under every rock here in the US and Europe, while at the same time promoting the notion that "every Muslim everywhere is by definition a potential violent terrorist".

Fucking hypocrites is the appropriate term here.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | September 5, 2007 7:19 PM

R.S. Hack:

Not everyone has the chops to climb up the rungs of the economic ladder in a first world country, even if they are treated the same as everyone else. That's why so many third- and fourth-generation Mexican Americans are high school dropouts. That's also why the grandchildren of unskilled Muslim immigrants to France remain poor.

So the question remains: why import more poor people, whose descendants will resent their bottom-dwelling status?

Posted by Richard Steven Hack is Obtuse | September 5, 2007 7:53 PM

Richard Steven Hack - OBL was a hell of a lot wealthier than I but he strikes me as pretty fanatical as does his right hand man. Mohammed Atta came from a well to do family as did many of the 9-11 hijackers. I guess at some level we are all potential violent terrorists but Muslims seem more inclined than most. A casual reading of the daily news will confirm that.

I am still not buying the "religious fanatic" equivalence argument. The diffence between a Christian fanatic and a Muslim fanatic is that the New Testament explicitly forbids violence while the Koran does not. A Christian that wants to "nuke Tehran and kill a few million people all at once" is not complying with the teachings of Jesus while a Muslim that does all manner of seemingly barbaric things is complying with the teachings of Mohammed. Religion of Peace my ass. Read the book.

BTW - I am Mexican American with a Masters degree and a good job. Both of my parents have Masters degrees as does my sister and one of my brothers. One of my brothers is an MD. I guess we are refugees from the law of averages?

Posted by danceswithgoats | September 5, 2007 9:56 PM

"However, as Craig Murray, a former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, notes, the “evidence that this organization exists at all is extremely tenuous, and if it does it is almost certainly the fruit of an Uzbek agent provocateur operation.” "

http://adereview.com/blog/?p=26#more-26

Posted by suspicious | September 6, 2007 10:25 AM

Terrorism is not about 'objective' social status of an immigrant population. This is why the Turks in Germany are less disenfranchised as could be suspected and where not seen in terrorist activities till now.

The discussion of wealth as factor should generally get more specific: there are "master minds" with affluent and clearly nationalist backgrounds and foot soldiers who are usually heavily disenfranchised and crave for significance. Both has to come together.

Germans do perceive it as a problem that the Turkish minority does not care about education, Turks don't. Instead a good part of that group likes bringing in more uneducated people, aka new-wed wives from the Turkish countryside, by means of exploiting a loop whole allowing to bring in family members. Turks care about a different set of values and thus view different things as moving upward than their German hosts. Turks are fond of being industrious and hard working and driving a cool car. All very German. But they never had the 1920ies worker's movement's idea of education being key to social upward mobility, as for their values it's simply not so. They seem to bother learning German less than ever. Thus they are competing extremely hard for staying at the bottom of society which they do not necessarily rate as such since they own the cooler cars, more submissive women and bigger families. That they import uneducated women in large scale for that clearly is because the young Turkish girls are way too emancipated to stand after their mandatory years at German state run schools. The girls have the most to gain from a more blanket adaption of a German mindset and do so.

On homegrown terrorism: the name Fritz Gelowicz ist a weird mixture of a proto-german first name and a strongly contrasting slavic last name in its original writing. 'cz' does not exist in German, it is not even obvious how to pronounce cz in German and early assimilation would have had it spelled Gelowitz or Gelowitsch instead by now. It was rather rare to name a son 'Fritz' in Germany 1970-90 as it sounded very old fashioned then (it's a top 100 name again only since recently). Immigrants with past German roots tended to give such names, and the name points to a second generation immigrant from Slovakia, named as German as possible.

Turkish boys stand and talk in the streets, spit when you walk by, make the metro an unpleasant place at night - but so do skinheads.

Giving money as incentive to leave Europe was a success in the 1980s, sums in the magnitude of $10,000 made some tens of thousands families go 'home' usually to discover they where not really at home anymore in their countries of origin.

Germans are leaving their country in a rate not seen since the 19th century when everyone in their right mind moved to America. After a lot of talk about Germany having to admit to itself that it is an immigrant country, she now awakens to the fact that it is an emigrant country: no less than 0.3% of the population, 250.000 souls, are estimated to be leaving each year to find better conditions abroad, taking their entirely free, state sponsored education with them.

Posted by Shy Born | September 6, 2007 3:40 PM

"no less than 0.3% of the population, 250.000 souls, are estimated to be leaving each year to find better conditions abroad, taking their entirely free, state sponsored education with them."

I don't know the exact statistic you lean on, but I can guess: It's the official statistic showing how many people give up their residence in Germany and move abroad. This is not a good indicator for "well educated people fleeing the country" because

a) it doesn't say who they are and why they leave (People marrying foreigners? Pensioners wanting to live in a warmer country? People moving across the border because of lower living costs but still working in Germany? Foreigners returning to their home country?)

b) it doesn't say if they really leave for good (exchange students? People temporarily assigned to work abraod?)

c) it doesn't take into account the numbers of people moving from abroad (back) to Germany (the same groups cited under b and a))

And as I understand it, if you take the respective numbers for the UK, they are even higher.

I don't say that there is no problem, but it has been blown out of proportion because it fits so nicely with the whole "oh it's so bad here, the country is going down the toilet" thing we Germans have had going on in recent years (not to speak about the neocon "Eurabia" crowd).

Posted by Patrick | September 6, 2007 4:08 PM

Re: For example, on July 4, 2002, an Egyptian who was in America because his wife was a winner of Ted Kennedy's Diversity Visa Lottery shot up the Israeli El Al airline counter at Los Angeles International, killing two Jews before being gunned down himself.

This is no more "Islamic terrorism" than the guy who shot up Virginia tech was an example of "Chinese terrorism". These are simply cases of lone nutcases committing murder and mayhem, something that is regretably common the USA.

Re: I don't buy the whole equivalence argument between the Torah and the Koran or the Bible for that matter.

Islam is simply younger than Christianity or Judaism (and until very recently Judaism was not in a position to engage in serious violence as it controlled no states or governments). Four hundred years ago calling Christianity a "religion of peace" would have meant sweeping a lot of bloody corpses under the rug too. But seen any auto da fes lately?

Re: In reality, in 2007, there's a strong correlation with how well an ethnic group is doing in the West and how well it is doing back in the Old Country.

Unless you can show how one group of people influences the other (and in the case of African Americans and Africans we are talking about peoples separated by centuries), you are proposing a form of cauastion Einstein once dismissed as "spooky action at a distance", and one more proper to voodoo than to rational thought.

Re: You have to exclude carefully selected immigrant groups

Of course-- any evidence that dispoves your voodoo theory.

Re: A large fraction of the Muslims in America are Indians who got in the same way as other Indians --

Huh? ever been to Dearborn MI? That isn't the Devangari syllabary that's on all those "Little Arabia" billboards.
Most American Muslims are Middle Easterners, plain and simple.

Re: The diffence between a Christian fanatic and a Muslim fanatic is that the New Testament explicitly forbids violence

Apparently no one told Torquemada or Cromwell that. And the Bible does not begin with the NT. The OT has some pretty blood-curdling stuff in it. Ever hear "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live"? How many thousands of innocent people were roasted alive because of that one?

Posted by JonF | September 6, 2007 9:10 PM

"Yeah, that's interesting about Fritz Gelowicz and the other convert."

There isn't anything particularly new about this: One of those arrested in the post-7/7 bombings in the UK was a convert (son of the Conservative Party agent for the High Wycombe constituency, IIRC).

Posted by Sock Puppet of the Great Satan | September 11, 2007 10:36 AM