There is more in common between Jews and Palestinians ....

Yes, there's a definite affiliation between them , they both want money and goods to help their "causes" and defeat the other side. :shrug:

 

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Haha, shows how much I know then

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Of course they weren't subtle however you are talking about centuries past, (in fact a whole different millennia) Lets use the UK as an example (as it's easier), The country was made up of lots of little "Kingdoms", that while being individual kingdoms actually had relation to one another. Each kingdom was run likely by the head of a house, so politics would have been dealt with by inter-kingdom marriages to keep the peace (after all if everyone is related in some way, then they are all family right?).

The problem was that these thriving kingdoms managed to develop trade and exploit the resources available on this island and that is what came to the intention of Rome as they were Annexing Europe. They picked the spot for a centralised fort built with a natural berthing area (Londinium).

Now they could have just maintained a fort and traded with the indigenous people, however historically Caesar's had a habit of envisioning themselves as "gods" (not "vessels of gods"), this meant that they believed everything that they saw or controlled was there's which they then shared with Rome.

So rather than see these peoples of this foreign land trading and doing what they did with the resources, the Caesar decided that the land was there's and everyone that already existed here should be annexed.

As you can guess that didn't bode well for some; there were internal conflicts, assassinations, sackings. Those that bowed to Rome were annexed and were then subjected to an overhaul in their political and religious beliefs/methods. Rome was already aware that a multicultural religious harmony was impossibly (Rome itself had originally been a Polytheism and it had struggled with many adopted religions from the annexed countries)

So one of their Emperor's made the (ill-fated?) decision to back Christianity as it's state religion. They subjected all annexed countries to adopt the same religion and the indoctrination process must of utilised all number of methods to get the indigenous people to convert. Incidentally the state religion was "taxed" by the state, so converted religious orders would be used as a method to tax indigenous people for the state. (Later on in time when you have the Dark Age's and the Spanish Inquisition, the indoctrination methods had snowballed into a history of fear mongering amongst superstitious people. With Churches used as Tax collectors and strong houses for tax collections.)

During the reign of Henry VIII, due to his aggressive obsession with birthing a son, he found the catholic church wouldn't allow him to remarry or realised that every marriage would likely have a tariff for each annulment. So with that decided that the Catholic church wasn't for him and created his own Protestant branch, since it was his, then he wouldn't have to pay a tariff, it also meant that he could directly tax the people of the country without having to pay tribute to the Roman Catholic Church.

So in essence you can suggest "Christians were subtle" because they used Millenniums to convert the state religion. (Subtle as in they took there time, not as in they clandestinely placed up places of worship)

Some of the other religions have been subtle because they don't encroach upon the adopting country. So they can quietly exist, going about their thing for enough time to not suddenly be sprung as a problem child.

No I mean the immigrants expect things that they would expect as a native resident, however they will not have endured the hardships of the indigenous people and have little to no history. (Yes they might have endured other hardships, however it's like going for a job, you might be more qualified as a new employee, however the other guy has experience, trust and loyalty and has been waiting on that promotion for years. Who's going to get it?)

You just have to look to how the Ancient Romans attempted to deal with different countries to understand that multi-culture is what breaks the back of civilisations in regards to fundamentalism.

My perspective is, There should be NO religion at all for this reason. You see if you pick ONE religion, then you are always going to have problems with people disagreeing with the one you picked, if you pick NONE then you've balanced the problem, no religions are "the one", none of them are right, they are all inherently flawed and false.

Obviously though I can't tell people what they believe, in fact I encourage them to attempt to work that out for themselves, that's why they have a brain, that's why they can think and even have the capacity to formulate individual opinion. It's what differs them from me (along with the myriad of other individual points)

 

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They are not circular, they are pointed - and you have not dealt with them at all. You have not even, as yet, shown that you recognize them.

Nothing to add, no.

All the adherents of fundamentalist Abrahamic religions have a good deal in common, but the idea that adherents of different ones, or even different sects of the same one, should or could therefore get along peacefully within one egalitarian society is a strange conjecture with no visible basis in reason or observation.

 

Thanks

 

? Any pleasure of dismissal was all mine, I assure you.

 

So basically it took a long time for Christianity to spread through the UK? What was the response of the people to the advent, evangelism and promotion of the new religion? How did natives react to the construction of churches for example? Were they involved in the process or was it imposed from without with force?

Is that because they don't evangelise or is it because they don't challenge existing concepts about religion and God or is it because they consider religion to be a racial attribute [ie you can only be born into it, you cannot convert to it]? What do Europeans in general think about a society of multiple cultural expressions? Is it something which they feel threatens their idea of society or do they see different expressions of culture, religion, philosophy as attributes of the human experience?

Hmm, is this something novel? I grew up in cosmopolitan India. We speak [inspite of having over 200 native languages and over 2000 dialects of our own] the language of the British who came to India to trade, my best friend who lives down the street speaks Portuguese at home and is a Catholic. She goes to a nearby Anglo church in Bombay [note the name of the city, it was named by the British and has now been reverted to Mumbai, after the local deity] but in her native Goa [which name has some vague Portuguese origins] she goes to one of the basilicas built by the Portuguese, who also came to India to trade

Our laws are based on British laws, our Parliament on the Westminster system because that is what was familiar to us under the British.

I spent the last five years in the US where surprise surprise! they also speak the language of the British and my best friend was a Korean who was also Catholic, although neither the language nor the religion is of Korean origin. She was reprimanded by a professor for using her own language with her fellow countrymen because it is better for her to speak English regularly so she can assimilate well with American "culture" [he actually said that with a straight face and quite quite seriously]. My professor made lists of words which we pronounced wrongly [i.e. not in the American way] and informed us how they should be pronounced so that Americans may understand us. My Korean friend went to a local Catholic church where the preacher was Korean [there was another church for non-Catholic Koreans nearby]. The street I lived in was inhabited mostly by white people and a few students of mixed nationality. The street along it was a church street with about 10 churches of various denominations. There was a separate street where mostly black people lived - actually there were entire areas where only black people lived but I only saw them during a road construction when our bus took an atypical route. I did not see a single native American religious construction or street in the entire city. Don't know if I saw any native Americans either but its a college town so there must have been some. Most people wore western clothing and ate western style food [there were a few ethnic eating places, one Japanese, one Chinese, one Indian etc] and one or two ethnic stores for special foodstuffs. There was a small mosque for Muslims and a Hillel for Jewish students. A black community and an organisation. But not even one native American organisation or religious construction or store. Not a single one.

In the five years I spent there, the only native Americans I saw were in a theme store in the Smoky Mountains. They wore jeans and Tee shirts and spoke English. But they were the only ones I saw. And I travelled. A lot. Possibly I could have found some if I went looking and asked. But you might think it was possible to go to America and see a native not of immigrant origin without having to go hunting for them.

I spent some time in London and most of the news was about the BNP and immigration issues. People in the UK discussed frankly about the problem of immigrants taking away their jobs and reducing the quality of their lives. They wanted restrictions against Polish workers and rules to protect "their people" from "other people". All this was discussed in a serious vein emphasising the need to put indigenous people first. Most of us Indians just listen to this stuff in fascination and wonder. I'm sure that Arabs, other Asians and Africans have the same sense of distorted reality when they hear stuff like this. You know a feeling of "Wow, you really think native people should benefit from the resources/opportunities of their own society? Truly?"

I frequently visit churches with friends who are Christians in India. There are some 10-12 churches in my vicinity alone -many of them Catholic but also some Protestant. There are probably a few hundred churches in Bombay. Most of the people in Bombay/Mumbai are not Christians nor are they native English speakers. Still, most of the schools teach in English and many of them are run by various Christian orders which were installed by British and other European missionaries over the last couple of hundred years [St Theresa's, St. Lawrence, Sacred Heart, St Stanislaus, Don Bosco, Durello's convent are the ones in my locality] They all have religious prayers in the attached churches, ring bells for mass and have nuns teaching mostly non-Christian children.

And then there is Sweden where the height of the minaret interferes with the design of the locality, because well, the skyline is what is important, so what if people have to pray in a garage. Its more...aesthetic. Or maybe that was Switzerland. Right.

Actually, I don't need to go to Rome. As my previous discussion shows, I am well aware of how multiculturism works and if it does not work in your society, then maybe that is not a problem with multiculturism. Maybe you need a society with more open hearts and minds. We hear so much about the free and secular societies of Europe, but I think they have never really been challenged with diversity. Its easy to be tolerant when everyone speaks the same language, thinks mostly the same way, has -if not the same religion - at least a similar religious background. Its easy to blend in when everyone is white. I think what we will see in the next 50-100 years is how Europe copes with real diversity.

Strangely enough I think the problems of immigration in Europe have been compounded both by increasing difficulties with immigration as well as increased European interference in other societies. I think it was Lucysnow who said, who wants to live in or next to a ghetto. So the more democracy that Europeans bring with their military to other countries, the more people will need to move to find better jobs and a better standard of living. I know several hundred thousand Indians who are out of jobs in Iraq. Where do you think they will go? Ditto for all the professionals who escape the Afghan war. Unless Europeans wake up and realise that their own standard of living depends on other societies being both functional and secure, there is not much they can do with the immigrants who escape their own crumbling societies to look elsewhere. And yes, it is very sad for Europeans that they have to deal with the refugees they create, but if they don't who else will?

Because, while it is sad for the Europeans, it is criminal for the refugees:

So whose problem are these immigrant wannabes?

Who takes responsibility for these immigrants? Perhaps, if NATO spent its gazillions on building societies instead of tearing them apart, these people would not need to look elsewhere for safe, secure lives.

Even the kind of immigration has changed. In the 60s and 70s, people from Asia and the Middle East moved west only to work, not to settle and hence there were no issues with the immigrants of the time. The difference in the values of currencies meant that they could work in Europe to provide a better standard of living at home. Europeans were happy enough with those immigrants because they could do all the down and dirty stuff that Europeans did not want to do and for less pay - it was a win-win situation. But now with difficulties in immigration, people have to think about the future of their children and they no longer immigrate only to work. Now they immigrate and get as much family with them as they can. Then when immigrants have to think about housing, education, employment and long term benefits - thats when they become a problem. Now they no longer work in Europe and get paid in a currency which multiples by 50 to 80 when they send it home. And they don't want their families to "make do". So they want more pay and better living conditions. Now, they compete with Europeans.

In fact, if you compare figures of immigrants in the 80s when it was easy to immigrate with figures from the 80s onwards when anti-immigration legislation became more and more restrictive, you'll probably find that the immigration increased by leaps and bounds and was mostly of the non-working family variety, quite unlike how it used to be.

And working men, as you know, will make do with anything. But add women and children to the equation and well, they are not going to be satisfied until they have everything the way they like it. Especially the women.

You are entitled to your perspective - but I live in a multireligious, multicultural country and I disagree. I see all the societies where religion is mocked or not tolerated for whatever reason [and by this I include places like Saudi Arabia, Denmark, Russia, China] and it seems to me, they miss out. A lot. I'd rather live in an India than in a China. What is the point of being human if you cannot enjoy the breadth of human diversity? You might as well be a machine.

Well never fear. No matter how many communities pop up which are intolerant to some religion or any religion, there will always be communities where people don't give a damn either way.

 

In the part of the US you were in, there was and is no such thing as a "Native American religious construction" that you could have seen. Sweat lodges and such are all temporary structures, quickly and loosely put together from easily gathered branches, vines, etc, as found in the woods where they are made.

And of course no stores.

College towns have few reds - on average. The cost of living tends to be higher, and the economy lacking in favored opportunities. For similar reasons, "organizations" of reds (?) are found on reservations, where taxes and prices and the like are lower.

Unless you regard the entire continent as one place, and all the red tribes on the whole continent as one people, almost all the reds you see would have been fairly recent immigrants to the region you saw them in. After the epidemics that destroyed the large red civilizations in the 1500s, the introduction of the horse in the 1600s, and the introduction of European trade wealth including firearms throughout the initial contact, the red tribes moved a lot. Various tribes invaded and occupied, displacing or destroying the resident tribes and altering themselves and their own culture, much of the continent. Later on the even more dramatic invasion and occupation by the Scotch Irish and similar white tribes scattered the reds even more.

You have no idea what you are talking about. You are confusing consequence with cause.

Perhaps they will learn from the examples of India, Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan, Armenia, Kurdistan, etc, what to avoid.

 

No I don't think so. Most European societies are so homogenous that immigrants at 4-10% of the population are considered as a threat. What is the largest percentage of non-native immigrants in any European country?

 

The appearance of a lack of diversity in European countries is a consequence - they have dealt with great diversity, over the centuries. Their current situation is a consequence of those dealings.

And immigration is not the same issue - the perceived threat depends more on who the immigrants are, than the presence or absence of diversity in the resident population.

 

What do the perceived threats constitute?