With eerily apposite timing, Gallup released the results of a new poll on anti-Muslim sentiment in the US on Thursday, the same day that the British government announced that they had foiled a new home grown plot. Most news reports on this poll emphasized that 40% of Americans admitted prejudice against Muslims but that this prejudice was less amongst the 40% Americans who personally knew a Muslim. This is a positive, almost pollyanish spin on the data, one that emphasizes the precepts of the “contact hypothesis” [an argument that prejudice is rooted in a lack of daily interaction between two groups].
Other portions of this survey, however, are far more troubling. Remember that this poll was taken before the latest plot was exposed. [Both the graphics presented below are from the Gallup Organization’s own press release. To gain access, you just have to watch a brief ad.]
Americans are deeply suspicious of Muslim loyalties, with only half seeing Muslims as loyal to America, and a third seeing them as sympathetic to Al-Qaeda! This means that a sizable minority of Americans see all Muslims as a fifth column of subversion.
Given that one of the objectives that led to 9/11 was Al-Qaeda’s desire to prompt a Clash of Civilizations between the West and Islam, is this evidence that the terrorists are winning?
ennis, depends on the country. and not to get nerd, i think it is plausible that it is logonormal. and i don’t think reducing variance is possible in the modern world because of the importance of individual choice. my assertion is that the intial die must be loaded so that rebellion is canalized toward particular paths.
The fact is, although you can endlessly harp on the fact that Saudi and Pakistan have ‘distanced’ themselves from ‘true Islam’, that these ‘deviant’ interpretations of Islam DO exist, and in fact they are gaining in popularity. Sorry folks, but I just don’t know what to think when I read that an Islamic man can divorce his wife by uttering just three words, or that one man’s testimony is worth that of two women, according to Islamic law.
lognormal.
meena, those laws are not the true islam. we should mass produce buttons… 🙂
@PG
You’re just kidding, right?
Ok, couple of differences in case you didn’t notice. The victims of the priests were not murdered. Crucual difference there. And as the poll showed Catholics themselves feel the Church has done a poor job of handling the situation. That is not what the Muslim community is doing. Instead of doing some introspection and analysis of their own community, they blame a laundrylist of political and external issues for their own failings.
From the New York Times:
Not exactly a small number either…
Perhaps you missed this :
Hardly like the churches and the priests are being given a free pass.
Maybe that is what is needed here too: People filing lawsuits against the mosques where the fundamentalist ideology is taught and against the people who invite extremist imams from overseas to come and preach their hatred. Have any such lawsuits been filed ? If anything the Muslim mosques and imams have been given a free pass for their anti-social attitudes.
razib – Thanks for the correction. 🙂 Well, at least I know what lognormal is. 😉
Churches got sued not for ideology, but for 40 years of systematic cover-up. Read the wikipedia article I linked to. The refused to call police, hid priests, denied it was happening, paid people off, etc. That’s a very serious crime.
ennis,
my argument is this: if southern baptists were the normal xtian, i suspect we’d see a lot more abortion clinic shootings, because the typical xtian is more likely to start out over at one end to begin with. most radicals don’t get born in that culture, the rebel and radicalize. the key is to change the reference from which one radicalizes. e.g., i know a unitarian-universalist who scandalized her family when became a methodist. thank god she wasn’t born assemblies of god, she’d be dancing with snakes now.
Why try to change the whole distribution instead of just the incentives of the key few? Public health officials who work with STDs try to change the behavior of those who are doing most of the spreading, that’s more important than trying to change everybody’s behavior. For fighting AIDS would you rather target the high risk, or reduce everybody’s sexual partners by one?
blocquote> Churches got sued not for ideology, but for 40 years of systematic cover-up. Read the wikipedia article I linked to. The refused to call police, hid priests, denied it was happening, paid people off, etc. That’s a very serious crime.
You said “Do we walk around asking priests to condemn sexual abuse and ask them why they aren’t doing so more loudly”
And my answer was, yes, to the tune of a billion dollars. The church is being taught a harsh lesson that their 50 years of cover up will not be excused. They have been forced to clean up their organization if they will not cooperate by legal means. And it is not as though they teach the priests to abuse children in the churches, unlike the hatred being taught in the mosques by the extremist imams. Hasn’t there been a coverup in the mosques when they have known about extremist groups using the cover of the mosque to coordinate their activities ? Haven’t undercover news reporters in the US and Europe secretly taped Imams calling for the death of the “kuffars and infidels” ? And until those tapes were aired, nobody bothered to inform the authorities ? isn’t that a coverup too ?
Why try to change the whole distribution instead of just the incentives of the key few?
that’s a brush fire strategy. i’m looking at “root causes” here. i don’t think terrorists are that strange, i think they are normal people who respond to particular contextual cues. one of those is the social milieu in which they develop. here is an assertion i once heard (1990) at a dinner party of brown scientists and doctors of the muslim faith: “i agree with khomeini’s intent, but not his methods.” most people agreed, while a few people wanted to assert some of his methods were acceptable. my point is that you have a weirdo listening to this, and they might take the next step and thing, “well, perhaps his methods are OK.” (methods meaning terrorism) you need to change it so that the average european and american muslim would never think of praising khomeni’s ideals as opposed to the dirty reality.
(i am aware khomeni is not satan, but, i do think that his regime turned nasty and brutish after 1981 or so)
p.s. i think there is a different between the brit-bombers and al aqsa martyers brigade. the former are far more unpredictable and ‘nihlistic,’ they are products of the west rather than a regional conflict.
For fighting AIDS would you rather target the high risk, or reduce everybody’s sexual partners by one?
to transform this analogy to what i’m getting at: reduce the median number of sexual partners from 6 to 3, and the “high risk” category of more than 20 will drop A LOT. or, more likely, “high risk” will get redefined to 16.
Ismat, you stated:
I appreciate your dissent, and I understand where you’re coming from. Sure, it makes a better headline to say “Freak Christian Organization Protests Soldier’s Funerals” and focus on the few while not necessarily focusing on the much larger body of Christians who shake their heads in shame and anger at Fred Phelps actions, but as some others have pointed out, and I have, the Spanish Muslim leaders didn’t issue a fatwa against bin Laden until a year after he’d had trains in Madrid blown up. Does it really take a year to get people to agree that they should denounce bin Laden in the strongest religious terms possible if he’s really flying in the face of Islam as much as we hear? The CAIR jointly issued a fatwa last year with the Fiqh Council of North America (http://www.cair-net.org/includes/Anti-TerrorList.pdf) issued a fatwa 4 years after 9/11 against terrorism. Again, if the Koran is so vehemently against violence and terrorists are anathema to Islam, it shouldn’t take that long to make a statement against terrorism.
Couple that with, as others have pointed out, the nature of how people are treated in the Muslim world, often in the name of Allah, and people in the US get worried. It’s one thing to point out what the Koran says and another to see how people act in the name of Allah.
But I hold the same concern about fundamentalist Christian sects that share many of the same traits as fundamentalist Islamic sects. If Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell were to grow a beard and start preaching the Koran, their thinking and preaching would fit in nicely in Iran, and Muqtada Al-Sadr, shaved and in a suit would fit in nicely in some backwater Baptist church.
But I hold the same concern about fundamentalist Christian sects that share many of the same traits as fundamentalist Islamic sects. If Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell were to grow a beard and start preaching the Koran, their thinking and preaching would fit in nicely in Iran, and Muqtada Al-Sadr, shaved and in a suit would fit in nicely in some backwater Baptist church.
i think this is a non-trivial point, so i will make it explicit: i do not believe islamic radicals would fit into most baptist churches psychologically. i think a better analogy is christian reconstructionism. i think the problem is that most ‘moderate’ muslims have opinions which would make a southern baptist comfortable.
Not to change the channel or nothin’, but this really irked me…… wtf!? http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/14/AR2006081400589_pf.html
To borrow a phrase you used once, your “robotic repetition” of your blonde fetish always works itself into several threads regardless of its relevance… however is she being any different in her attitude towards you based on what she superficially perceives about Muslims than you towards her based on the superficial persona of the good looking blonde stereotype ? Your comments hardly show any great interest in her beyond the way she looked.
however is she being any different in her attitude towards you based on what she superficially perceives about Muslims than you towards her based on the superficial persona of the good looking blonde stereotype
you missed my point. normally people assume i’m hindu. she was being knowledgeable in ascertaining my origins must be muslim from my surname. and of course there is a difference between being a smokin’ blonde and being a muslim.
Your comments hardly show any great interest in her beyond the way she looked.
nod and your point being?
Vikram: Quit hating on the blondes 😉
Point being her interest in you was affected by your being a Muslim, just as your interest in her was affected by she being a blonde (bottle or natural). Both superficial reasons. Neither one of you had any great interest beyond that one attribute in each other. Kind of fitting in that way…
Nothing against blondes artificial or natural…just don’t know what the fascination with a hair color is… 😉
Point being her interest in you was affected by your being a Muslim, just as your interest in her was affected by she being a blonde (bottle or natural).
what, are you a mind reader? we’d been friends for several years before she brought that issue up 🙂 so if my being muslim (i’m not) was an issue it didn’t surface verbally for several years.
yes, i have a fixation on blondes, but you shouldn’t read too much into it or assume that it can be used as an analogy in a social discussion.
Ok, for someone who doesn’t want “too much” read into their pet fetish, you sure make it quite widely known in several of your posts. Then why do you mention it at all ? And would you have been friends with her is she wasn’t a “smokin’ blonde” (sic) ?
And would you have been friends with her is she wasn’t a “smokin’ blonde” (sic) ?
as long as she wasn’t fat, probably. and i’ve been making my fetish widely known since the initiation of this blog in the summer of 2004. it really isn’t worth comment. just like my perpetual use of the term brown.
Yeah, is all fine to diss the fatties and the non-blondes, till the blondes diss you… waaaah 😉
I haven’t read through all the posts as i’m falling asleep but I’ve heard the “why haven’t the good ones spoken out” question a lot… one answer was “their organizations” but I’ve got another and a cool list detailing it!
http://www.juancole.com/2005/07/friedman-wrong-about-muslims-again-and.html
The problem however is that whatever these organization or individuals say, it never gets any media coverage…so how’s the ‘average american’ supposed to know? It’s a big, sad, uninformed and illinformed cycle.
Razib’s point about “root causes” is spot-on.
Either the jihadis and their supports are hypocrites in a religious sense;
Or there is something fundamentally wrong with the teachings of orthodox Islam, if the faith is triggering such behaviour on such a wide scale.
Or maybe both are correct in some measure, depending on the specific teaching, its interpretation, and the specific Muslim. I don’t know the definitive answer.
In any case, someone on the Pickled Politics discussion blog recently made an excellent analogy, about how taking out the mosquitoes isn’t good enough; in order to really solve the problem, you have to drain the swap. Ties into Razib’s comment about “root causes”. I think that this is the fundamental issue.
Pickled Politics does currently have some excellent parallel discussions underway here, here and here, so please do check them out if you happen to have some spare time.
PS : I also made some remarks about the need to address the root causes on the recent “Statistics of Fear” thread here on SM, as summarised here and here in case anyone missed it.
this was a really fascinating discussion. i am not big on reading through a whole thread of comments in one go, but i did just that.
razib, i do have an out for you on the apostasy thing.
under islamic law, there is no rule against a non-believer, jew, christian, hindu being a Muslim jurist. muslim legal jurists have been pragmatic enough to accept (for some part in the classical age) that you don’t have to believe in God to follow the right methods and derive islamic law. as such, if you studied enough legal theory you could defend your self quite ably from charges of apostasy. if, in the event, that a muslim tells you that it IS not allowed for a non-believer to be a jurist, you then can ask them to prove it, in which case the burden of production shifts to them.
I don’t know why the average Muslim, with bills to pay, children to feed, has to be blamed for ‘not speaking out’ – blame the Muslim intelligentsia, Muslim power elites, Muslim oilmen, Muslim nobility, the hypocritical Bin Ladens who livee Westernized lifestyles and do nothing to change the mores of Saudi Arabia, blame these people – don’t blame Joe Muslim. When some Hindu dopes go and torch the house of a Muslim, or rant about Valentine’s Day, or tear down a mosque, does anyone expect Joe Hindu to speak up? Hell no. What is Joe Muslim supposed to do, anyway? Picket by himself on some corner?
Major typo in my post #76: that should have said “…..you have to drain the swamp“.
Well, why shouldn’t Americans be suspicious of Muslims? They’re different religiously and ethnically from us — the classic causes of human violent conflict — and 19 of them bombed us on 9/11. Who knows how many terrorist plots hatched by Muslims on U.S. soil have been prevented since then.
If I were Muslim (living in a Muslim country), I’d be suspicious of Americans, too, for the same reasons (different ethnicity, religion, and cultural values), and wouldn’t want millions of them moving to my country.
So the simple solution is: severely restrict Muslim immigration to the U.S., and the U.S. (and rest of the West) quit attacking Muslim countries at home. Then no one has to worry about racism, religious discrimination, terrorism, or war. Different peoples, different countries. Real simple.
It’s not wanting to keep people who are different from you religiously and ethnically out of your country that’s weird or creepy. It’s thinking you can let them in and have everyone get along fine that’s weird and creepy.
Any thoughts? Go ahead and call me a racist, I don’t care. How many of you would’ve voted for Sonia Gandhi as India’s prime minister? Yeah, didn’t think so.
Bryant, your analysis is simplistic and severly misguided. Those who seek (from the Islamic world) to pick a fight with us will not stop if we restrict immigration and stop ‘attacking’ them. It may mitigate some risk, but there are larger forces in play (and over many decades) which simple isolationist or segregationist policies can solve. IF it were that simple, it would have already been employed.
Global economics and flow of information means there is no way one can isolate themselves, ducking their head into sand and consider the problem solved. This conflict festers on many levels – religion, power, internal-external politics, economics, etc.
Terrorist acts are tactical/strategic events having greater designs that ‘we are different therefore we hate each other’. It is about gaining power among locals (Salafists attempt to coopt their own populations), it is about convinient eexcuses and rationale to wage war. War is merely the physical manifestation of this conflict and it is impossible for either side to ‘disengage’ themselves. Conflict is natural and it must be resolved using all tools in one’s poesssion – education, economics, aid, military, propoganda, etc. Using the right tool in the apprppriate is something that can be debated, but the conflict has always existed and despite American strength, through our own short sighted policies, particularly from the 70s on with major steam picking up in the 90s, we have allowed this threat to grow right under our noses.
It isn’t that simple and I would recommend picking up many books to study this subject in depth and breadth from multiple sources to give yourself a more well grounded base of information to draw your conclusions from. By the way, Sonia Gandhi would have become Prime Minister, though, moving to that position she would draw more fire and set herself up for failure.
GujuDude wrote:
“Those who seek (from the Islamic world) to pick a fight with us will not stop if we restrict immigration and stop ‘attacking’ them.”
Why don’t we try it and see? OBL himself said the reason for 9/11 was the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, plus the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. Attacking Iraq isn’t helping. They are attacking the West because the West is attacking them.
“Global economics and flow of information means there is no way one can isolate themselves, ducking their head into sand and consider the problem solved.”
You’re the one ducking your head in the sand if you think large numbers of people of different races, cultures, and languages can live peacefully and profitably together in one political entity. History doesn’t give many examples, and is rife with counterexamples. Constant ethnic conflict is the norm in such situations, and we sure have it here in the U.S. now. Why people think America is not subject to the biological loyalties of its citizens is a mystery.
Again, my point is: the risk/reward ratio of Western societies allowing large numbers of Muslims in is weighted heavily in favor of severe immigration restriction. The risks are enormous, and the rewards are few (and can be attained through highly selective immigration easily).
that’s an ill-informed statement. in a parliamentary democracy, the base criterion she needed to meet to be appointed the pm was … getting elected to the parliament by her constituency . she did so. the machinations to get to the PM’s post are party politics and another matter.
a word of advice from a graybeard.
often times it makes sense to step back – and look not at the content – but at the forum, the framing, the background – to grasp the message – it’s what’s called looking at the big picture.
sometimes, when it seems difficult to extricate oneself from the situation – step back and look back into history or people’s memoirs.
in context of this discussion i woudl strongly recommend obasan, by joy kogawa – memories of her family’s internment in canada as enemy aliens through the last few years of ww ii.
hairy-d:
According to Wikipedia:
“During her campaign, her opponents (mainly the Bharatiya Janata Party) played up her foreign birth…In May 1999, Sonia Gandhi offered to resign from the Congress Party leadership after three senior leaders (Sharad Pawar, Purno A. Sangma and Tariq Anwar) challenged her right to try to become India’s Prime Minister, given that she was not born of Indian blood or soil.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonia_Gandhi
My point is that it’s hypocritical for South Asians on this website to cry “America’s so racist!” when their society is just as “racist” as the U.S. The only difference is that very, very few Westerners actually want to live in South Asia, so desi “racism” doesn’t get tested much. When it is tested, as with Sonia Gandhi, it fails.
Not that I have a problem with that. Why would Indians want to be led by an Italian, or vide versa? “Racism” is just the simple, eternal reality that people tend to care more about those who are biologically closer to them than those that are further away. As evidence, I offer the existence of this weblog.
Sigh.
Conflict exists at every level. The bloodiest war the United States fought was its own civil war. History is rife with examples of people fighting for any and every reason. Your reasoning can be applied to boat loads of Irish who came to these shores to be greeted by the abuse and mistrust of the local population and so on.
OBL’s excuse for attacking the United States was just a reason to pick a fight. Their goal has matured (with strong influence for the EIJ/Zawahiri) to establish a Caliphate and Islamic dominion. Disengaging and segregating, limiting immigration won’t work. Plus, this country isn’t being flooded by muslim immigrants.
Strategically, your propositon is a static solution to a dynamic and evolving world. It’s like the French Maginot line. Static. Those holding off in siege warfare are doomed to fail. This war/conflict is very fluid and challenges all dimensions of where war can be fought.
Seperating the people as you ask only delays the inevitable. What do you do when people from these places put strain on YOUR homelands via their interal policies? I’m not going to call YOU names becames that doesn’t further discussion here. Your positions are based upon personal bias rather than information drawn from various sources. I didn’t say your head was in sand, I said that policy you propose would be analogous to it on a mass scale. My head isn’t in sand either.
The United States has had a selective immigration policy, Europe hasn’t. Combine that with local European prejudice and socio-political systems, it hasn’t created the best environment for integration. From all facts, the United States has been pretty successful in integrating differen populations here. The problem isn’t here locally.
at heart of all the babble is the desire to make america a better place than it is today. what’s wrong with that?
as a general comment – the bulk posts are usually a gab and wank fest but they are the necessary manure from which the leaders draw sustenance – the leaders of tomorrow need to believe that their actions are driven by a higher purpose and representative of their communities at large – gandhi and mlk couldnt have emerged had they not been able to capture the aspirations fo their core communities – and that’s what i see happening on this forum. so keep it up y’all.
My point is that it’s hypocritical for South Asians on this website to cry “America’s so racist!” when their society is just as “racist” as the U.S. The only difference is that very, very few Westerners actually want to live in South Asia, so desi “racism” doesn’t get tested much. When it is tested, as with Sonia Gandhi, it fails.
Which do you think is a better term for South Asians to refer to themselves? 1) “brownz” 2) sand n*** ? 3) or should we just merge with African Americans, viz. “blackz”
We have an identity issue at the moment, and it would be interesting to hear a persepctive from the majority community.
thx.
GujuDude writes:
“Conflict exists at every level. The bloodiest war the United States fought was its own civil war. History is rife with examples of people fighting for any and every reason.”
Most of history’s big wars have been ethnic battles over resources, not civil wars among ethnically similar populations. You’ve chosen an anomalous example and presented it as typical.
“Plus, this country isn’t being flooded by muslim immigrants.”
Not yet, but the numbers are growing. Europe’s already flooded and feeling the pain in London, Madrid, Holland, France — everywhere. I assume you saw the burning banlieus and towns across the country last year? I don’t want that here, and am not calmed by reassurances that “American Muslims are nothing like European ones”.
“Strategically, your propositon is a static solution to a dynamic and evolving world. It’s like the French Maginot line. Static. Those holding off in siege warfare are doomed to fail. This war/conflict is very fluid and challenges all dimensions of where war can be fought.”
That’s all very deep-sounding, but it’s obvious that 1) severely restricting Muslim immigration to the West and 2) ceasing military attacks in Muslim lands will seriously reduce the likelihood of terrorist attacks here. If Britain didn’t have a million Pakistanis AND participated in the Iraq War, they wouldn’t have been bombed on 7/7.
“Seperating the people as you ask only delays the inevitable. What do you do when people from these places put strain on YOUR homelands via their interal policies?”
What do you consider “the inevitable”? Policy changes can lead to different results. The second sentence I don’t understand either. Clarification?
“The United States has had a selective immigration policy, Europe hasn’t. Combine that with local European prejudice and socio-political systems, it hasn’t created the best environment for integration. From all facts, the United States has been pretty successful in integrating differen populations here. The problem isn’t here locally.”
Wow, you think the US has a “selective immigration policy”? Dude, we have no immigration policy. Anyone who can get across can stay. We have huge immigration problems in the U.S., which is why Buchanan’s “State of Emergency” is the top book in the country this week.
Again, mass immigration is leading and will continue to lead to mass problems for the West. I can understand why South Asians would take the point of view that “immigration is good for the West”– there are 1.5 billion of them, and as a group they don’t have much land relative to their world population. But you can also understand why a white Westerner wouldn’t want mass immigration from South Asia — there are only about 1.1 billion of us, and we’ve snatched a lot of good land (American continents, Australia, Europe) so we want to hold onto it.
The world is like a big amoral Risk game, isn’t it? I find both your and my points of view rational on this subject. Indeed, if I was an American-born desi I’d probably see things your way, and I assume your mind stretches enough to make the reverse statement.
I like “browns” but you’ll lose people with it. They’ll assume you mean Hispanics.
“when their society is just as “racist” as the U.S.”
just a point of fact, for south asian americans their society is the US (contrary to the opinions of a few people on these boards).
I like “browns” but you’ll lose people with it. They’ll assume you mean Hispanics.
hispanics already have enough names. their various ethnicities, + hispanic + latino.
i proactively use “brown” in an white environment, and people accept it after a little confusion. i was aggressive enough that a vietnamese american friend started using it in medical school, and the brown med students also started using it after initial confusion (personal communication).
bryant
You want to restrict just muslims or every brown person outhere?
BTW, Sonia Gandhi led the party as the PM nominee and won the election and refused the PMship after the win and passed it on to Manmohan Singh. So, overwhelmingly, Majority of Indians voted for her directly or indirectly. No one knew that she would decline the position after the win, in anycase she is more powerful than the Prime Minister.
Mainly Muslims, since they have a history (recent and farther back) of conflict with white Christian countries. With the nuclear terrorism possibility it’s just not worth it from our end, though a highly selective system allowing a small number of especially useful Muslims is fine.
Hindus I don’t have a problem with in the U.S., but I definitely believe the U.S should retain its white majority in order to retain its envy-of-the-world culture. I also find it really odd that a statement like that should be controversial, since no one would argue it for other countries.
I’ve always wondered about Hindus in the US, though: how come they don’t give their kids American first names like East Asian immigrants do? I find it irritating — I know Hindu guys born in the U.S., with Hindu spouses also born in the U.S., who still don’t even consider an American name for their kids. What’s up with that? And then we’re supposed to believe these kids are just as American as white kids? It makes no sense. If you want to be part of America, do what other immigrant groups have always done — give your kids (or at least have your kids give their kids) American first names.
I (heart) Bobby Jindal for that reason.
Bryant:
Thank you for livening up the site on a quiet Saturday. However, please be aware that this site is based in the United States and run by U.S. citizens plus one Canadian citizen. Our readers are from different places and ethnic origins, but this is an American-run site and we, the hosts, consider ourselves Americans. If you consider us any less American than you, we are not interested in hearing from you. If you do consider us as American as you, we invite you to make that clear in your comments, and we will then be happy to discuss any and all further matters with you. Peace.
Razib wrote:
“just a point of fact, for south asian americans their society is the US”
Fair enough, but what’s your opinion on the first name thing I mention in post 94? I’m much more willing to accept a “Brian Patel” or “Greg Bhatia” than I am “Rajiv Patel” or “Sathish Singh” as 100% American. (or a “Steve Chang” instead of a “Wei-Zhou Chang”, etc) It doesn’t seem too much to ask that you give your kid’s first name to the new homeland; the middle and last name I don’t demand!
Don’t I have a point?
give your kids (or at least have your kids give their kids) American first names.
Are Barack Obama, Karim Abdul Jabbar, Muhammed Ali, Shaquille O’Neal American names? They are as American as Apple pie.
I think you meant Christian/ Westernized names. Oh, well.
that, my friend, is your problem and not ours.
SM Intern writes:
“…this is an American-run site and we, the hosts, consider ourselves Americans. If you consider us any less American than you, we are not interested in hearing from you. If you do consider us as American as you, we invite you to make that clear in your comments, and we will then be happy to discuss any and all further matters with you.”
That’s kind of Soviet, isn’t it? Instead of engaging people who disagree with you, attempting to persuade, etc., you threaten.
I don’t see how someone who’s an intern at an ethnically-based South Asian site can seriously say they are as American as someone with no such overseas ethnic ties (I’ve never even visited the two European countries my ancestors came from, and have only the slightest emotional tie to them). If you’re 100% American at heart, you must be 0% South Asian, which you’re obviously not since you’re an intern here.
Immigrating is hard, I realize that, and so is having the dual affections and ties that come with the territory. My ancestors from Ireland and Germany had dual loyalties and ties, too (some of the Irish ones went back after a few years, in fact). All immigrants (and their kids, to a lesser degree) have them.
The key for a society that accepts immigrants is managing and, eventually, eliminating the dual affections and replacing them with sole loyalty to the host country. This of course is called assimilation, and it’s an admirable goal — indeed, it’s the only way immigration can work, as we’re finding out with Moroccans in Holland and Mexicans in California.
I take your post as a threat to ban my comments, which I think would be pretty shabby. I realize that some of my opinions may be unorthodox, but I haven’t been crude or obnoxious or disrespectful or anything else that gets people banned normally.
If you can refute my points re mass immigration to the U.S./Hindu assmilation etc., then do so. If you can’t, I suppose you’ll go ahead and ban me. Your move.
t doesn’t seem too much to ask that you give your kid’s first name to the new homeland; the middle and last name I don’t demand!
the point is not trivial, but, it lacks nuance. as a point of reality the popularity of first names varies in a manner that seems similar to random genetic drift over the course of american history (it isn’t, contrary to popular perception, inflenced by movie stars, or cultural winds, that much). new names are created like mutants and become popular all the time. the key for east asians, and why they change their first names, is non-east asians can’t really pronounce their tones correctly anyway, so they make sure to have a “western” name because their “real” name isn’t going to be transformed into something different no matter what.
my own children will probably have “western” names, but i don’t think that the naming issue is really anything more than a surface issue. there are regional variations in names in the USA, e.g., southerners tend to be more likely to use “last names” as first names (e.g., “Brooks” or “MacKenzie”, the vast majority of puritans had hebrew names, or names like “justice” which referred to a trait, while southerners were more likely to have classical or germanic names). mormons tend to have made up names from the book of mormon. i think the naming issue isn’t totally dismissable, but it is a symptom of difference, not a primary cause.
i tend to favor assimilation, and yes, the retention of the white anglo majority. but your arguments are dropping in like a hammer, so i don’t think you are really getting anywhere but expressing your own frustration. strategy needs to be married to tactics.