
In Germany, Syrians find mosques too conservative - imartin2k
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-migrants-germany-mosques-insig-idUSKCN12S0HE
======
tormeh
I have no idea what Saudi Arabia thinks it's doing with salafism, but between
them and Russia I feel like governments increasingly are spending money on
"soft power", and in increasingly dangerous ways.

~~~
Luc
Turkey, too, finances mosks and the education of imams in Europe, to keep the
flame of nationalist pride burning among Turks who've been here for three or
four generations.

------
lolc
Pretty harsh to flee from Salafists only to be greeted by them at the local
mosque of your new place.

~~~
raverbashing
And the west is full of "naives" (let's keep it at that) that think Salafism =
All of Islam and that think we should tolerate foreign financing of mosques,
segregationist preachers and other BS coming from _any_ religion

~~~
imaginenore
The west is not full of naives. You simply start asking questions to your
regular muslims, and all kinds of crazy answers come out.

52% of British muslims want homosexuality made illegal.

16% of French Muslims support ISIS, 27% among aged 18-24.

31% of Belgian Muslims support ISIS.

47% of Quatar Muslims support ISIS.

37% of young British Muslims want Sharia law in Britain.

36% of young British Muslims think apostates should be killed.

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/10/half-of-
british-m...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/10/half-of-british-
muslims-want-gay-sex-banned-says-poll/)

[http://europe.newsweek.com/16-french-citizens-support-
isis-p...](http://europe.newsweek.com/16-french-citizens-support-isis-poll-
finds-266795)

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1540895/Young-
British...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1540895/Young-British-
Muslims-getting-more-radical.html)

These are just a few polls, there are tons more online, and they are all full
of crazy crazy numbers.

Islam is simply not compatible with the western values, and the left is
refusing to acknowledge it.

~~~
mcguire
I'll see your crazy answers and raise you...Donald Trump.

It appears that much of the west is not compatible with western values.

~~~
dep_b
You played the Trump card. I see what you did there.

But even in places where you can choose between many parties there's a really
strict code that if you have any "Islamophobic" standpoints you will not be
accepted by the "correct" parties. So you end up choosing between the one
rightwing nutcase party or all the other ones that are in denial. The "cordon
sanitaire" is a real thing. The majority of the political parties and seats in
parliament reflect the opinion of a minority of the people nowadays.

I still can't vote for people like Le Pen or Wilders because I'm usually more
progressive / liberal but I simply cannot and will not blame the people that
do.

I want to live in a country where we can make a "Life of Brian" like movie
about Muhammed, where women and gay people have equal rights not just in law
but also within the community. If a multicultural, progressive society is too
complex / modern / intimidating to stand there are plenty of other places to
go and build your own life to your own believes.

They're hanging gay people in Saudi Arabia and Iran, I heard they're really
welcoming countries and a paradise to live in.

If that's the thing that gets you off, go there.

I've seen an amazing amount of Muslim people just cope fine with Western
society over the years so I'm sure it's not Muslims as a group, just the guys
that went 11 on the scale of Westboro Baptist Church.

------
throw2016
Isn't it strange that the West's so called best friend in the middle east is
by far the most regressive and primitive regime in the region that is allowed
to willy nilly spread terrorist idealogy for 30 years.

Western governments, media and institutions then rant and rave against human
rights but tip toe around the Saudis and instead dismantle other regimes in
the region inimical to the Saudis throwing millions of lives in the middle
east into chaos and leaving gaping power vacuums for extremists to fill.

And then simultenously spend billions of dollars building surveillance states
at home making a mockery of our own commitment to democracy to deal with the
fallout of the Saudi financed spread of wahhabism.

There is something extremely rotten at work here unless one supposes our
foreign policy apparatus is naive.

~~~
pmyjavec
Sadly, it's because we're all fed nonsense and propaganda, constantly by our
governments, corporations and media outlets. People are way to entertained and
comfortable that it's just all too convenient to ignore.

Even people's social media feeds can be tweaked to change people's views
enmasse,not saying they are, but it's a real possibility.

I stopped reading "The Guardian", Facebook and most main stream media sites
and my mental health is much better for it.

There is a serious war going on in which innocent civillians are dying and we
don't actually, fully understand why, but it's being funded with our tax
money. We need to wake up.

I honestly believe the current implementation / configuration of western
democracy in the west has been failing us for far too long, the system needs a
major overhaul.

~~~
nickik
Please don't spread the idea that its all funded by the west. Local actors are
the most imporant players, not the global powers.

The war in Syria and Iraq is financed by a hole variaty of countries,
organisation and people. ISIS gets money not from Saudi Arabia but by
taxation.

I have also stopped reading mainstream media on these subjects. Fortunatly you
can still find experts on these subjects, writting articals, blogpost or give
talks.

~~~
pmyjavec
How do you actually know how the money flows in that mess, I'm genuinely
curious ?

By the way, you're right, I'm not saying it's entirely funded by the west, but
those weapons are coming from somewhere.

Do local players have fighter jets, drones etc ?

~~~
nickik
Well I can only trust experts on these things. You can find these stuff from
different people and organisation. Its sometimes hard to figure out who to
believe but I think you can find a reasonable amount of agreement.

> By the way, you're right, I'm not saying it's entirely funded by the west,
> but those weapons are coming from somewhere.

Yes they do, but there are a lot of actors in play, the west are just one of
the players, and not the biggest one. Western weapons get resold quite a bit
as well.

The Syrian war is so complex because the huge amount of local, regional and
global actors. All have different goals and values. Almost all regional and
global actors provide some form of assistant to the groups they prefer. Often
in the form of money or weapons of course.

I would say in all of the West was comparatively hesitant in doing to much.
Mostly because they like non of the people fighting and those they like, some
of their allies don't like. The US for example, would love to support the PYD
(even more), but Turkey essentially says PYD=PKK and the US has the PKK on the
terror list.

It seems that even most Foreign policy experts are highly unsure how to handle
the current situation.

> Do local players have fighter jets, drones etc ?

No, but most fighting is not done with fighter jets and drones. Also, regional
players, such as Jordan, Turkey, Iran and so on DO have fighter jets. The US
could of course stop selling jets to Jordan but that would not change the
current situation very much. Plus it would have many other effects.

In my opinion the hole ME policy should be rethought but that needs a larger
context.

------
dominotw
This is true in America too. Most of mosques here were setup here by people
who immigrated here in the 70's and their ideologies never went through the
reforms that happened elsewhere even in countries like Pakistan.

Middle-class Pakistani parents here are more fundamentalist and repressive
than say Pakistani middle-class parents .

~~~
dep_b
You see the same with immigrants in Europe. (descendants of) Turkish and
Moroccan immigrants are more fundamentalist and repressive than in those
countries. This is because a lot of people are explicitly trying to not fit in
with Western values that are frowned upon, while in their native countries
nobody feels that pressure.

"We" always assumed they would eventually adapt to our lifestyle within a few
generations but the opposite is actually happening.

There is no clear reason why this is specifically happening with them and not
to earlier waves of immigrants like Spanish, Italians or Greeks.

But also the Islamic world as a whole was much more modern 40 years ago.
Photos of pretty girls in mini skirts in Kabul or Teheran really look alien
now.

~~~
dominotw
> Photos of pretty girls in mini skirts in Kabul or Teheran really look alien
> now.

I would argue that it was alien even back then. The pictures often see are
Shah's elites not common people of Iran by any means, they were still mostly
conservative Muslim. Forced westernization and humiliation of muslims was one
of the reasons Shah was kicked out.

------
wazoox
Our dear Saudi friends....

------
wfeui3
Syria was fairly liberal and diverse country before all this started.

~~~
jonyt
Really? I think it's more accurate to say that Syria was a repressive, violent
dictatorship before all this started[0]. Since the war started the government
has slaughtered more of its citizens than the rebels have.

0 -
[http://www.refworld.org/docid/4a1fadbcc.html](http://www.refworld.org/docid/4a1fadbcc.html)

~~~
didgeoridoo
Country != Government. Through much of the latter half of the 20th century,
Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan were relative beacons of liberalism and diversity.
Makes the current catastrophe all the more gut-wrenching.

~~~
jonyt
Relative to what? Do you have citations for this claim?

~~~
didgeoridoo
Relative to the far more fundamentalist peoples of Saudi Arabia, Oman, Yemen,
UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait.

I'm not sure how I could provide a "citation" for a vague and judgment-based
claim, other than to encourage you to read up on the history of the region in
the 20th century and decide for yourself.

------
TazeTSchnitzel
Is this due to the effect where immigrants from a country, and their
descendents, end up more conservative than people in the country they came
from?

You see this in other places too. (American Irish Catholics are more
conservative than modern Irish Catholics, for instance.)

~~~
woodpanel
Germany has a weird way of integrating its religious institutions: The state
collects taxes for the churches.

With muslim guestworkers arriving in the 50's it was clear that theses guests
weren't staying for long and subsequently a) muslim religious institutions
weren't (for a long time) included in this "state-collects-the-moneys"-Scheme
and b) thus it was welcomed that they'd be financed and run by foreign
institutions.

In the result you typically have mosques that are either exclusive on grounds
of ethnicity (eg the mosques run by the turkish state)* or inclusive on
grounds of the interpretation of islam (sadly the Saudi funded radicalist ones
are very inclusive).

* since interpretation often is a cause of dispute within regions you can have more inclusive interpretations like the Alavites that are usually ethnically homogenic.

~~~
pluma
Actually the reason they weren't included has more to do with them not having
organized in a way that allows them to comply with the legal requirements to
claim that status.

There's actually an organized Muslim church in two states (Ahmadiyya Muslim
Jamaat) that has managed to fulfil the requirements but they represent a
minority sect (i.e. not Sunni or Shia -- approximately 35k members in all of
Germany).

There's nothing preventing e.g. Sunnis from forming such an organisation,
really.

~~~
woodpanel
Well if there's nothing preventing them, why do you believe it doesn't have
happened?

I believe, but correct me if I'm wrong, it's precisely that they are often
foreign run/influenced. If interpretations cause conflicts, these conflicts
usually run along state lines (ie. Iran/Turkey). This plus language barriers
(arabic vs. turkish vs. farsi etc.) create incentives to not be inclusive.

~~~
pluma
I believe your understanding is correct. That would explain why they don't
work together in ways that would allow them to comply with the legal
requirements for recognition (though there are large Muslim organisations that
are often treated as a substitute).

But I only said there wasn't anything from a legal perspective stopping them.
If the various sects fail to cooperate with each other in ways that prevent
them from fulfilling the requirements, that's on them, not on the government.
It's not xenophobia, just old-school sectarian disputes.

For example the Evangelical church (EKD) is a federation of mostly Lutheran
and reformed/Calvinist churches and they managed to agree on enough points to
organize beyond their sectarian boundaries. But there are of course a lot of
Evangelical or "free" churches that are not part of the EKD (nor affiliated
with the Catholic church) and they of course don't get the same status.

The problem with understanding Muslim sectarianism in the West seems to be
that we're so ignorant that we chalk about anything outrageous to religious
differences with Christianity that we don't recognize basic distinctions like
Islam vs Islamism, thinking any criticism of the latter would be a form of
hostility to the former. We lump all "Muslims" together in one group (which
some Muslim groups certainly know to use to their advantage) and then get
confused when we find out they hate each other's guts (much like Protestants
and Catholics have for a long time).

------
Kenji
It is ironic how Germany represses fascism that comes in the form of Nazism,
but not fascism that comes from Islamic fundamentalism. A clear double
standard.

------
GrumpyNl
Please inform me about all the good things Islam has brought to us.

~~~
cstross
Here are a few words/concepts for you that we in the west borrowed from the
Islamic world:

* Algebra

* Alcohol

* Alchemy (root origin of chemistry)

* Algorithm

* Azimuth

... You will note I haven't even gotten past the first letter of the alphabet
yet.

~~~
rhizome31
Note that GP asked about Islam and you're answering about the Islamic world.
One can wonder if those things you mentioned are really rooted in religion, or
were just invented in territories were there happened to be a prevailing
religion.

As an analogy, I wonder if it would be accurate to say that electricity was
brought by a given religion even though some of its most major developments
happened in territories where that religion prevails.

~~~
candiodari
It is far, far worse than that. Algebra was transported across islamic
territory by the muslim slave trade. That is the big contribution of islam.
Some Hindu priests got kidnapped by muslims during the conquest of India, and
after got knows how many abuses got sold to Venetian traders in Northern
Africa. Venetians set them free, and gave them a platform in a monastery, and
after a few decades of writing books and a number of false starts, algebra
spread (in the sense that the current digits started replacing Roman
numerals).

------
wslh
So, is there a latent real revolution in Islam?

~~~
the-dude
I do not think so, but could be wrong. What I think is happening is that
migrants who are already living abroad for a while feel a need to emphasize
their born-in-to identity to counter the immigrated-into society.

And salafists ( Saudi Arabia ) is sponsoring a lot of mosques and thus have a
say in the one who preaches there.

~~~
khnd
> migrants who are already living abroad for a while feel a need to emphasize
> their born-in-to identity to counter the immigrated-into society

This is an important point. Going further, things like Trump brand politics of
demonizing outsiders and newcomers fuels this need to emphasize born-in-
identity.

~~~
dibstern
Demonisation and labels are the death of thought and discussion.

------
vikiomega9
Would I be wrong in saying the US government sponsors in a similar fashion
Christian missionaries albeit tacitly?

~~~
mcguire
Then, there was the weird day when I learned that a local Baptist church was
sponsoring a missionary expedition to darkest Rio de Janeiro, in order to
introduce Christianity to the heathen Catholics.

No, literally. I am not joking. This is not a metaphor.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Sounds very Baptist.

------
eveningcoffee
“Weakness and ignorance are not barriers to survival, but arrogance is.” ― Liu
Cixin, Death's End

~~~
dibstern
Disagree. Counterexample: _looking down the barrel of a gun_ "I wonder what
this trigger thing does..." That quote is far too easy to find counterexamples
for, because ignorance does indeed harm. There's a reason we have Darwin
awards.

~~~
eveningcoffee
Liu Cixin was talking about the survival of the humankind in the galactic
context, but it possibly could be limited to a single localized culture on
earth.

From this perspective the example you gave does only good for the survival of
the whole.

------
cagataygurturk
Turkish government does not finance mosques in Germany, even they do not
finance them in Turkey. Mosques are built by donation money.

~~~
woodpanel
Meh... [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish-
Islamic_Union_for_Reli...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish-
Islamic_Union_for_Religious_Affairs)

Ditib runs almost all trukish-speaking mosques in Germany. (But those are
probably not the mosques the Syrians were complaining about)

~~~
dibstern
In other words, he's 100% wrong.

