A Plea for Love and Understanding

I was recently sent this article via email, and felt compelled to write a response that's like, 3 times as long. It took a lot of work, so I'm reposting it here so more than one person reads it.

Emailed article:
Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 14:30:20 -0500 SPANISH NEWSPAPER ARTICLE.
ALL EUROPEAN LIFE DIED IN AUSCHWITZ By Sebastian Vilar Rodrigez
I walked down the street in Barcelona, and suddenly discovered a terrible truth - Europe died in Auschwitz.
We killed six million Jews and replaced them with 20 million Muslims. In Auschwitz we burned a culture, thought, creativity, talent. We destroyed the chosen people, truly chosen, because they produced great and wonderful people who changed the world.

The contribution of this people is felt in all areas of life: science, art, international trade, and above all, as the conscience of the world. These are the people we burned.

And under the pretense of tolerance, and because we wanted to prove to ourselves that we were cured of the disease of racism, we opened our gates to 20 million Muslims, who brought us stupidity and ignorance, religious extremism and lack of tolerance, crime and poverty, due to an unwillingness to work and support their families with pride.

They have turned our beautiful Spanish cities into the third world, drowning in filth and crime.
Shut up in the apartments they receive free from the government, they plan the murder and destruction of their naive hosts.

And thus, in our misery, we have exchanged culture for fanatical hatred, creative skill for destructive skill, intelligence for backwardness and superstition.

We have exchanged the pursuit of peace of the Jews of Europe and their talent for hoping for a better future for their children, their determined clinging to life because life is holy, for those who pursue death, for people consumed by the desire for death for themselves and others, for our children and theirs.

What a terrible mistake was made by miserable Europe.

____________________________________________________

My response:

An interesting point, but don't you think it's unnecessarily inflammatory and hostile towards Muslim immigrants? I mean, I have no idea what the situation is like in Spain, but the statements that they are unwilling to work and do nothing but plot murder of Spaniards all day are absolutely unfair. They are certainly not all terrorists. Just like anywhere, if there are 20 million of them and there have been two attacks in Europe in the last 5 years, each requiring no more than a few participants, then it is clearly an extreme anomaly for a Muslim to engage in this behavior. It is safe to assume that most of them are normal human beings with normal decision making processes, who would not go through the trouble of immigrating to a country just so they destroy it (and themselves). This type of behavior is reserved for a special kind of statistical outlier - someone who is mentally ill or disturbed enough to make decisions against their own self preservation. There are such types in every demographic (violent criminals, suicidal people, etc.), the only difference with Muslims is that there are elements of the culture and religion that tend to encourage and focus this type of energy to achieve massive outward destruction. Logically, if it were true that a large percentage of these 20 million Muslim immigrants were really out to destroy Europe, then Europe would be gone by now. The fact that there have only been two recent attacks absolutely speaks to how rare this condition is, and hence how unfair it is to paint all the immigrants with one brush. We can't blame a group of 20 million people for the behavior of their most disturbed members. Would you like all Americans to be judged by the actions of the Columbine and Virginia Tech shooters?

The accusation that they refuse to work also strikes me as unfair. Once again, it is very much against the normal immigrant psychology to refuse to work. While there are plenty of lazy humans everywhere in the world, my experience with immigrants to America (as well as my common sense) shows that the ones who have it in their heads to move to a new country are the ones who are the most motivated to do whatever is necessary to raise the quality of life for themselves and their families. At least in America, the notion that immigrants are flooding the country in order to go on welfare is absolutely untrue, and not supported by a shred of evidence. Because on a large scale, human psychology is the same no matter where you go, it is safe to assume that the Muslim immigrants to Europe are generally of the same disposition. If I were to hear that the unemployment rate was particularly high among Muslim immigrants to Europe, the first things I would look at was a) the strength the local economy in general, particularly as it pertains to opportunities and pay for unskilled labor, b) the ambient level of racism against immigrants (from what I hear in Europe, shockingly high, even compared to the recent anti-immigrant fervor that has taken hold over the USA) which might both make it difficult for them to get jobs and also breed animosity that would lead to an erosion of the original good intentions they had upon arrival.

I don't dismiss the entirety of what this guy is saying. I think there is a 'problem' with Muslim immigration to Europe. The riots in France a few years ago proved that. I just think it is both unfair and counterproductive to simplify the problem into a simple 'Muslim scum ruining fine European cities' paradigm. This sort of categorical thinking always leads to hate and often to violence, and never solves anything. The fact is (always is) that the situation is very complex. Muslims aren't inherently evil or lazy, but there may be outside factors - many of them - causing both the real aspects this statement is based on as well as the perceptive ones. Instead of taking the easy route and simplifying problem, why not think about what those factors are, and how we can address them? Until people's first reaction to these types of issues is one of intellectual and rational analysis instead of emotional generalizations and simplifications, we remain in danger of another Holocaust. At the turn of the century, I remember pondering all that had happened in the 20th century, and hoping that the 21st century would be an opportunity for humans to move beyond this sort of thinking that had cost unprecedented levels of suffering. Seven years in, it's already not looking good. I think this article exemplifies how much work we have cut out for us.