We are the People!

[Zabuza825]

I'm sorry but the level of misunderstanding here is ludicrous so I'm going to have to respond.

"You know, there's this region of the world absolutely filled with conflict, violence, and instability. The dominating religion of this region is one which promotes violence against nonbelievers. You know what would be a great idea? Bring in hundreds of thousands of military age, single males from this region and locate them strategically throughout our country."

This is precisely the populist rhetoric I mean. Aside from that this kind of logic would have prevented the US from taking up hundreds of thousands of Jewish Holocaust survivors in 1945-48, it makes one false assumption after another - all based on the idea that everyone is screwing Us, the People, over.

''the dominating religion of this region is one which promotes violence against nonbelievers'', seems to suggest as if there is some permanent religious war going on between Muslims and Christians. Thats what ISIS wants you to believe, which is what Al Qaeda tried to ignite with its 2001 attacks, etc. There is no religious war. There is only ISIS, about 20,000 religious lunatics, murdering anyone. They've murdered many more Muslims so far than Christians.

No, it actually just states a fact. Islam promotes violence in general, but especially against nonbelievers, "hypocrites," and apostates; why do you think so much terrorism comes out of Islam?

It's not Islam that promotes violence, it's the ideology of the people that we call ISIS, or Al Qaeda, or Al Nusra, or Boko Haram, or anyone else. It's not the religion, it's their interpretation of the religion. In the case of Islam, when most people argue that the religion promotes violence their evidence is the blood-curdling verses of the Quran.

However, we can take this to extremes for any religion, if we ignore the historical context during which the texts were written. In the case of Islam, the historical context in which most blood-curdling verses of the Quran were written is simple - war. The entire Muslim community (or "ummah" as Muslims call it) was at war with a lot of their neighbors. As such, those verses reflect this reality.

You can argue similar things about any religion if you remove the context from the holy texts. Every Christian that I know personally are non-violent and peace-loving people. But, they believe in the Bible, yet in Deuteronomy 13 it says, AND I QUOTE, "If your very own brother, or your son or daughter, or the wife you love, or your closest friend secretly entices you, saying, “Let us go and worship other gods” (gods that neither you nor your ancestors have known, 7 gods of the peoples around you, whether near or far, from one end of the land to the other), 8 do not yield to them or listen to them. Show them no pity. Do not spare them or shield them. 9 You must certainly put them to death." I know that none of the Christians I know personally would EVER even consider doing this.

This quote from Deuteronomy was written in a historic context where it made sense, but in modern society it would be appalling. Therefore to condemn all of Christianity for a passage such as this is unfair. When people point out verses of the Quran to claim that Islam promotes violence they are doing the exact same thing to modern Muslims. That's not fair.

I condemn, ISIS, and Al-Qaeda, and Al-Nusra, and Boko Haram. But I also condemn groups like Aum Shinrikyo (for their 1995 Tokyo subway sarin gas attack), or those Buddhists in Burma who want to kill Muslims, or the leaders of the Peoples Temple (that did the Jonestown massacre in the 70's), or the Lord's Resistance Army (remember Kony 2012?). The list can go on and on, probably every religion has it's own version of extremism that commit atrocities. But it's wrong to condemn everyone who follows the broader religion because of the actions of a small minority.

''You know what would be a great idea?'', this is another false sentence, hinting that the governments of Europe actually like to take up refugees. The reality is that the UN treaty, designed in the wake of WWII, obliges governments to give refugees asylum. Nobody likes this situation however. Populists want you to believe that only they are sane and that only they dislike this situation, and that evil Merkel wants to create a country full of refugees.

Merkel has been bringing in far more refugees than would be considered necessary. The German government has gone above and beyond its call of duty in this matter, if you actually believe they have a duty to take in these refugees. Most of them aren't actually refugees, by the way. Most of them are simply immigrants.

How did you get to the conclusion that most of those people aren't refugees but are migrants? The statistics that I've seen make the opposite conclusion. As a matter of fact, take a look at this BBC article (link). The top three countries in this list (Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq) are all countries that have major problems with terrorism. The other countries on the list have major issues too (Kosovo has tensions between the Albanians and Serbians, Pakistan has terrorism problems, Eritrea has an oppressive government that observers have ranked to be as bad as the government of North Korea, Nigeria is where Boko Haram is based, Iran has the issues with their government, and Ukraine has the crap going on in it's east). The only one I can't explain is Albania, and someone smarter than me will probably do that.

''Bring in hundreds of thousands of military age, single males from this region and locate them strategically throughout our country.'' Another typical example of Populism. With ''military age'' the hint is given that an army is coming over, while in fact, most of these people are simply fleeing violence themselves. ''Locate them strategically'', more military references to cast vigilant suspicion against a bunch of refugees.

Most of these people are not fleeing violence. A lot of them are coming from countries experiencing economic upswings. This is an army. There are no "poor women and children," it's almost entirely young men. The vast majority are not refugees.

I'm not sure how you got to this conclusion either. Leaving aside the "almost entirely young men" (which I don't think is relevant to whether or not they are refugees), in my previous paragraph I brought up statistics that show that the biggest sources of migrants are almost all from countries that have major issues with violence or an oppressive government.

Populism is so obvious that I cannot understand people cannot see through its simple manipulations to get your vote. The content of the message is not even Populist. There are valid reasons to argue that Europe should close its borders to refugees from the Middle East, or at least Syria. But in the formulation above, it casts suspicion against the political leaders as if they willingly sacrifice security just to let in more refugees. The Populist message is that the ''elite'' is aiding the enemy.

In this case, that's exactly what they're doing. They are putting their own people at risk (notice the vast increases in crime and terrorism) for no evident benefit.

I'll leave this to Nents (who is Dutch) to argue against this, if he even wants to. It's not my position to judge as someone who lives in the US.