Why won't Europe let Its Muslims Build Mosques?
 

This seems to be an ongoing issue in Europe. There are quite a few muslims in European countries left-overs from the colonial days and of course a surging refugee population as a result of terrible wars and destruction..

This growing Muslim population in Europe has been trying to legitimize itself in building mosques to accommodate worshipers, and instead many many European communities have resisted and blocked these developments.

Attention Europe, don't you realize that in doing this, you are only further stoking the fires of radicalism, and to further disenfranchise European muslims, being they immigrants or homegrown, will only come to burn Europe in the end?

In the US, people may be racist but the freedom to worship and build places of worship is relatively well-enforced (after all, it has a perk for the government in promoting diversity which can result in division ie, divide and conquer ;) )

where? when? too much generalization.

well, as an american you're not in a position to criticise people's muslimphobia.

given that, although you're "entitled" to be a muslim in the us territory, a significant part of the population had no problem declaring war against islam (oh yeah i know civilians get killed but look at what they've done to us, we're scared and they hate us) and absurd institutionalised discrimination at anyone that remotely resembles a muslim (change your name to mohamed, grow a beard and try to travel through american airports).

also, i'm not sure if you're aware, europe is not a country. so i don't even know ehat exactly you're talking about.

lol then how come when you look at a map it says 'Europe,' just like that, with borders and everything?

i for one support Europe's king's decision to not allow for terrorist nurseries.

he referred to Auschwitz as 'disneyesque' so we are not dealing with the sharpest tool in the shed.

All hail King Europe! I'm attending a protest in Brighton pavillions against the influence of Islamic architecture.

There have been some recent protests here in NYC against a mosque being built near the World Trade Center hole and also another at a empty convent on Staten Island (who after the outcry from the neighbors decided to not sell).

Sounds more like Islamobashing, if you ask me.

Wouldn't it be a bit daft if Africa suddenly decided to demolish all of it's colonial architecture that dots the landscape throughout the continent?

The bullshit story that mosques pollute a city's skyline only shows how fearful some people still are of loosing their identity.

The world has become a diverse melting pot of allsorts, people!
Wake up and smell the foreign coffee.

is that not a valid worry?

No one is talking about the actual issue.

Christians and Christianity are currently AT WAR against Muslims and Islam itself.
No matter how much peopl say this is a war on terrorism, or a war about oil, or a war about power politics, it is NOT. This is a war begun by a militant religious fundamentalist (Bin laden) and escalated by a militant religious fundamentalist (George W. Bush).

In their hearts, they KNOW this "war" is a continuation of the centuries old battle between religions. The crusades continue, except instead of religious relics, we are bringing back valuable black gold, texas tea, which, by removing it from Muslim hands, takes the power away from those hands.

and there are many governments through Europe that see Islam as a spreading viral danger. It speaks a lot when fundamentalist christianity and fundamentalist islam are the two fastest growing religions worldwide. One will beat the other.

I've never felt intimidated by it, if that's what you're asking.
Then again, I'm not a nationalist, which kind of helps.

hopefully they both wipe each other (religions) off trhe face of the Earth without killing the millions and billions that do not give a flying fuck about their goddamn supertitious nonsense. That will not happen though. The people who are actively pursuing this religious war will stop at nothing short of total annihilation of the enemy, and if it takes the total anihilation of themselves to do it, so what? they don;t give a fuck because like the good stupid brainwashed ignorant fundamentalists they are they believe that their side will automatically eneter heaven in death. It is win-win for them. these peiople are still running the USA by the way.

Obama distanced himself but he ahs always attended an apocalyptic church. he does niot talk a bout it now.

Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah

YEAH

did you not sing the national anthem at school tsc

I live in a place where at least 9/10 of the population are muslim of from that religious background. I'm yet to witness these alleged acts of widespread bullshit extremism the media and many of the internet people seem so keen on discussing all the time. And to be honest I wouldn't be surprised if this constant finger-pointing and hysterical attitudes will drive certain individuals that way.

i lived in an area that was also mainly muslim (the london 7/7 bombers made some of the bombs they used within a few streets of me) and apart from those idiots i never saw anything but good community relations and after that happened people from all religions joined and marched through the streets in a show of unison.

religion is now cooler than sonic youth. bet that keeps Rob awake at night

It does.

we will all die at the hands of "true believers."

I'm with Herrs Boy and Death on this - I've had nothing but positive experiences with Muslims. I've also found that 'Islamophobia' only really happens when someone doesn't know any Muslims, ie, white-bread arsewash nowheresville. The hysteria in the popular press about it is preposterous. But we're talking about the UK - I think suchfriends is talking about somewhere else in Europe. Herr Death may know more about it, but I think there were objections to mosques being built in Rome at some point?

i think there is a tendency to paint everyone with the same sweeping generalized brush just because of the actions of a minority. especially if the tabloid press are anything to go by. take that tosser amjem choudery, his views are taken (by the press) and therefore the uneducated masses of being by all muslims but thats like saying nick griffin is the same for the english.

it is true that only the worst news and the worst groups are focused on in the media, but it does not discount the fact that hard-line Muslims are not only waging active war against the western world /Christianity, but against the moderates and progressive branches of their very own religion.
Just last week over a dozen were killed by Muslims at a Sufi mosque. Makes no fucking sense at all unless it is viewed as a purely religious war of ideology.

they are all after you you you!

The issue is not about building mosques.
It's about minarets, which are 30m towers, where some dude sings very loud so that everyone knows it's time to go to the mosque and praise Allah.
These things are not welcome in atheist/christian Europe.

the muslims i know are all terrible muslims... they don't eat pork. lol. thats it. they get drunk more than i do.

I haven't read or heard of anything like that happening in Rome, which already has one of the biggest mosques in Europe. Wouldn't be surprised if it happened, though. In 2008, there was strong opposition to the building of one near Tuscany's Siena. The whole controversy around this ended up with Soaud Sbai, who's the leader of the Islamic Women of Italy and a member of the PDL, a civil liberties party, working side to side in its favour with Khaled Fouad Allam, an academic, and bizarrely Gaetano Quagliarello, who's a member of right wing party Forza Italia.

so where in Europe is this objection happening?

i've seen objections to people wearing any kind of religious symbol (be it crusifixes or the muslim headscarf) in schools and work places but nothing to do with mosques

saying that in the uk we have planning laws to make sure that developments are suitable so there may have been issues around that...but certainly not islamaphobic

And do you live near enough a mosque to know that's really true? I do, and even have several recordings of it. Nobody around here really cares.

No. I didn't know this tradition was tolerated outside of islamic countries.

exactly i dont anywhere that mosques have been banned. another ill conceived idea from someone who doesnt know what they are talking about.

i lived near three and never got bothered at all, i could hardly hear them. church bells on a sunday morning however...

Oh how politically correct of you, Guardian reader.

duh.

mmm yeah muslim people are good.

except when they gave me a bashing for helping their teenage daughter wax her legs.

or when i thought one of them was hot but apparently he had to marry his cousin.

but some of the modern ones have taught me great things about life and giorgio armani.

Chip On The Shoulder Alert! Chip On The Shoulder Alert! Chip On The Shoulder Alert! Chip On The Shoulder Alert! Chip On The Shoulder Alert! Chip On The Shoulder Alert! Chip On The Shoulder Alert! Chip On The Shoulder Alert! Chip On The Shoulder Alert! Chip On The Shoulder Alert! Chip On The Shoulder Alert! Chip On The Shoulder Alert! Chip On The Shoulder Alert! Chip On The Shoulder Alert!

well, specifically the incident that sparked this thread was a news report about a potential cathedral-sized mosque to be built in Marseille, but the locals are protesting vehemently..

also some recent problems in a similar vein in Belgium, Switzerland, France, England, Germany etc etc...

the reason I was so general, was because as I said, it seems to be a general problem occurring in European countries, and Europeans across borders seem to be united against mosque building, which as I said, will only come to bite them in the ass in the end.


surprisingly, while most americans are rather racist and xenophobic against muslim-americans, they are rather tolerant of mosques. Freedom of worship and religious persecution are a strong thread in american culture, and as also said above, the fascist government in US likes to give religious freedom, it is part of their divide and conquer strategy.

I will stand by those words for i-ver, sorry if you don't like it. I would like nothing more in the world then to see all vestiges of the Nazis to be wiped out, destroyed and buried.


Yeah, that was a silly move my New Yorkers.. If US follows the European strategy of discrimination and disenfranchisement it will provoke more violence in the long run..


Rob, seriously? That was cold-hearted. We should hope for peace, not more eye-for-an-eye violence.. how could you possibly hope that the 2 billion christians and the 1 billion muslims mutually eradicate each other?

Surely if one unanimously-accepted religious belief has to be the dominant one, a fair amount of ethnic cleansing would have to be done for that to happen?

They are going to do it anyway man, regardless of how I feel about it.
There are 7 billion people on Earth. around 1.7 billion give or take of Islam (all varieties, none agreeing) and 2 billion christians (all varieties, none agreeing).

There are 1.1 billion at least who state themselves as agnostic or athiest BTW.
(see http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html )

Taht leaves around 3 BILLION peopel (4 billion if you count the irreligious) who could give a flying fuck about either the cares of Muslims or the cares of Christians. Yet both these groups are in a real and true WAR against each other which could easily wipe all 7 billion humans off the face of the Earth should it escalate to it's seemingly likely end. religions do not compromise. They do not defer. They will kill until there are none left.

I hope for peace, but there is no such thing. In the history of humanity the only "peace" was either between wars, preparing for the new one while cleaning up the old one, or it was just a situational peace, like how the USA has not had a war fought on it's own soil in 100 years (pearl harbor notwithstanding) but yet has engaged in war in at least 10 different nations during that time.

maybe they can just stop being religious.

rob & knox fascism against religion.

and how many of those folks are Buddhist? Hindu? How many practice 'traditional' or (for a lack of better terms) 'animist' religions? The reality is that people with a religious side outnumber folks like yourself well over 10-1 and so we can't hope to eradicate religion (ask Comrade Stalin or Chairman Mao about what happens when you try such things) only intolerance, racism and bigotry.

People will be intolerant, racist and bigots whether they are religious or not, and these are an entirely separate problem from religion.

We must work towards peace through unity, not division. If you are divisive against religions, you are only part of the problem, which is division. ini is aiming to be a part of the solution, unity is strength.

I love you my man, but if you really think religion is not DIRECTLY to blame for much of the world's intolerance, racism, and bigotry then you may need to rethink yr positions!