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The fact is that, as we see here, Muslims are in denial. You can read a Koranic verse that tells men to beat their wives and Muslims will say we don’t understand the ‘true’ meaning of the text. You read a hadith about the prophet of Islam amputating hands, then burning eyes with hot nails, then finally letting the victim die from thirst and Muslims will look at you with a blank stare and say “So what?” You point that violence is characteristic of Muslims all over the world and they say that is “absurd” even as they reading about the latest (Muslim) terror. When you talk about Koranic verses justifying violence against non-believers and designating a clearly inferior role for women, they deny the obvious, or, as above, may admit that it “seems” this may be true, but then they tell us that we don’t really “understand.”

Yes, the world is wrong and only Muslims can see the true Islam, obviously. Just reading what the Koran says and judging people and a religion by that it says and what its followers do is really a really stupid idea. We all know that the Koran itself claims that it is simple, clear, detailed and perfect, so why would anybody except the obvious and actually believe what it means what it says. Like I said, it is not non-Muslims that don’t understand Islam, it is the Muslims that can’t see the obvious.

Kactuz

I meant to day these are not historical legacies. They are ongoing realities.

Which of the schools are you going to accept in precendence over the others then ? Where is the one true interpretation that every Muslim subscribes to ?

“Abuse of maids happens in many cultures, regardless of the employer’s ethnicity or religion.”

Abuse of maids happens in many cultures and is rooted in the power imbalance implicit in such a relationship. However, when it happens disproportionately and in greater extremes in one particular nation one can legitimately ask ‘Why?’.

“I think these countries have a moral obligation to allow in immigrants, especially people from those countries where their legacy of exploitive policies, colonisation, destruction, etc are still a living reality.

I am sorry, but you are a kid.”

There is a historical moral obligation. However, at the same time I am not the person who was exploited, neither are those ethnic English around me the ones who did the exploiting. There are obligations on both sides, they might be unequal because of historical context, but to assume that they are a zero sum game is pretty childish.

None of your points come across to me as rooted in any context. They seem to be rooted only in the material advantage you have gained by living as an immigrant in the US. Contrary to your thesis, I think these countries have a moral obligation to allow in immigrants, especially people from those countries where their legacy of exploitive policies, colonisation, destruction, etc are still a living reality.

I am sorry, but you are a kid.

Somehow we tend to think that Europe and America owe it to us to allow us entry into their lands, but they could easily have gone the way of Japan, no? Despite labor shortages and a rapidly aging population, Japan has so far steadfastly refused to allow large-scale immigration of culturally dissimilar people.

Alas, countries like Britain and The Netherlands are now finding out that too much of a good thing can be a bad thing — by allowing all sorts of people to pour in, they are now witnessing serious strains in the social fabric of what used to be relatively homogenous populations. So now if these countries decide to start closing the gate, I for one won’t be blaming them.

As for the Emma Lazarus poem, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses…etc., it was written two hundred years ago (I’m not sure about the exact date, forgive me). A lot of water has flowed down New York harbor since then. In light of events since 9/11, I think they should change the words to: “Give me your fanatics, your crazies, your murderous zealots….” How does that sound?

That’s sad!

Abuse of maids happens in many cultures, regardless of the employer’s ethnicity or religion. One of the more recent and infamous cases of maid abuse happened last year in Malaysia, where Chinese housewife Yim Pek Ha was charged with multiple counts of abuse against Indonesian maid Nirmala Bonat.

“Bonat, 19, is being treated in Indonesia for second- and third-degree burns to her chest, back and legs caused when she was allegedly burned with an iron and scalded with boiling water.” (Source)

“But if you saw folks coming to your country with a view to living there permanently, wouldn’t you feel the slightest tinge of contempt or hostility? I would.”

You must not be American. “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Could the nice treatment be because the Westerner is white? Whites get good treatment everywhere, whether they go to a Muslim country or a non-Muslim country. Also, Westerners usually go to other countries as tourists or short-term visitors. They usually don’t go there to settle. It’s entirely appropriate to treat a guest with hospitality. But if you saw folks coming to your country with a view to living there permanently, wouldn’t you feel the slightest tinge of contempt or hostility? I would.

The other side of the coin is, white Westerners apart, foreigners are not always well-treated in Muslim countries. Newspapers in South Asia are always full of sad tales of Indian, Pakistani or Bangladeshi expatriate workers getting exploited, beaten, starved, ill-paid or not paid at all by their Gulf Arab employers. Even you must’ve heard of the many cases of mistreatment of Sri Lankan or Filipina maids, no?