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Originally Posted by SuchFriendsAreDangerous
Sure, there are mosques being built in plenty of European communities, but that is not the beef that Muslims have there, their beef is with the communities that won't let mosques be built, and whether its a mosque or a church or a synagogue to prohibit its building is negative and intolerant. With European Muslims, it can be out right dangerous, and the history of Islamic radicalism and its tendency for violence is evidence enough (after all, this issue is not merely religion vs religion, but in reality is a complex mesh of history, colonialism, bad-blood, disenfranchisement, politics etc etc), I thought it was self-evident but I guess I am just a silly american overstepping my boundaries.. I will back off and let y'all do y'all thing, time will reveal itself in the end.
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It's not really a question of you overstepping your boundaries - you have a valid point in that there's an increased resistance to certain high-profile Islamic activities. The problem is more in your tenor and presentation. Also, as a few have pointed out, it's well worth mentioning that the last decade of militant, radical 'Islamic' (I use that term very loosely) activity was focussed first on the states; it was only the later realisation that parts of Europe (Spain, England, Germany etc) were complicit in the US's foreign policy that lead to activities such as the July 7th bombings - and even so, there was nothing like the scale of activity that took place on September 11th.
Islamic radicalism is, to my mind, a mis-nomer. Islamic radicalism might mean the '77 revolution, or the Iranian guard, but there are very few vistas of orthodoxly Islamic thought that venerate groups such as Al-Quaeda; even in Radical Islamist Pakistan there's a desire to be separated from an internationally vilified terrorist organisation, and that includes those radicals who which to militate against the 'Westernisation' of Pakistani polity. There's a worrying trend of far-right Western politics that seeks to align terrorism with the more right-ist concerns of Islamic thought. The (apparently) popular resistance to a Sharia court comparable to London's Beth Din is much more denigrating to Islamic 'integration' (which has already happened in most senses) than the odd rejection of planning permission.
I can, however, only really speak for the UK, and even though the UK is a big territory, the problems in my locale are very, very different to the problems in, say, Blackburn or Penzance.
The article you linked above mentions Serbian nationalists; if you really think that the problems besetting Bosniaks at the moment (and for the last 30+ years) are in any way comparable to a Muslim in Hackney (east-London), then you really are way off-mark. I don't know the States, at all, but I'd imagine that's like comparing Alaska to Alabama. If it's not, then I apologise - just as you seem to assume Europe is a single, homogeneous territorial culture, I assume that USA is a massive and diffuse set of cultures, bound not even by geographical demarcation (the struggles of a NY Jew are doubtless completely different to a NY Shinto).