What’s Wrong with the World

This blog becomes more and more hilarious every day. Good show, I say!

Thanks for defending (un)common sense on this matter, Lydia.

Thanks, Maximos. I wonder if you saw the "compliment" to y'all here in the previous thread:

http://whatswrongwrongwiththeworld.net/2009/05/stop_muslim_immigration_for_th.html#comment-55862

Zippy's amusing response a bit further down was that he resents being called one of the saner contributors. :-)

Lydia,

Could we not mention the man's name and simply allow him (or, rather, his pseudonym) to rest in peace as a memento mori? Cheers.

Lydia - in the U.S. & Canada, the downside of mass Muslim immigration is mostly confined to minor domestic tragedies of this sort.

It's in Europe that the bigger fish will first begin to fry.

That's an interesting thesis, Steve. I guess it depends on what one means by "mostly." I was keeping things relatively light in this post, but of course there have been plenty of deaths in the U.S. as a result of Muslim immigration. One of my points in this post was to draw attention to the variety of ways in which society is affected. That is, it isn't just terrorism or even just honor killings. It's a whole bunch of stuff.

I certainly agree with you that Europe and England have lots more fish frying as of now. I'm assuming myself that this is mostly a result of numbers and percentages of the population. But we in America seem to be determined to do nothing to prevent ourselves going the same way in the long run.

The incident started an awkward feud which has involved warnings not to repeat my indiscretion and one face-to-face shouting match, which included allusions to my impending death.

I expect the battle will wage on, as we appear to be stuck at an impasse.

His Muslim upbringing has ingrained in him a sense of entitlement to demand I not speak directly to his wife; and my prairie upbringing has ingrained in me a duty to strive for polite cohesion with my neighbours.

Yes, it's his duty to say hello. No matter what. And if anything gets in the way of his duty to say hello, he'll indulge in a shouting match.

This is pretty clearly a two to tango situation.

On a different note, I'd like to see a Catholic contributor like Beckwith or Feser explain why it is that the Catholic Church usually seems to end up on the side of the state, not the individual, on matters like this. At a time when the older generations are literally spending their children into debt slavery, the Pope is focused on maximizing tax revenues "for the benefit of society," instead of denouncing the practice by which the older citizens and the less productive citizens tax the young and the productive at crushing rates for something that is of dubious value to the public.

Rubbish, Mike. (Not Mike T, of course.) I could use a stronger word. But rubbish will do for now. What sort of ideologue do you have to be to make an equivalence here? A threatens B with death for saying hello to his wife, and B goes on saying hello to the wife? And you say it's a "two to tango situation." You are a hopeless liberal ideologue. You are so sunk in your ideology that even your (presumed) feminism goes to the wall. The h*ll with the wife. It's not such a bad thing if people receive death threats for treating her as something other than invisible when she walks through the halls of her own building, if they are friendly to her. Enforced purdah in Toronto? Hey, it's no different from the friendly guy from the prairie who thinks he should say hello to people. And the change this is a symptom of in Canadian society? You couldn't care less.

You liberals make me ill.

This is pretty clearly a two to tango situation.

Obviously Canadians should change their ways so that third world savages don't have to change theirs when visiting Canada. How insensitive of the man to expect the Muslim man to "do in Canada as the Canadians do."

Don't need to go to Canada for this tale.

My story didn't end with merely a "can't say hello."

The tale I can relate is of a whacked out muslim kicking in a back door, rushing inside a house, waving and brandishing a loaded revolver at a man, all because he asked a woman whether or not she was "OK," {and had the brazen nerve to ask the assailant in question whether he was lifting his morning newspaper or not........ he was......}.

Who were the players in this nauseating little drama, all brought upon us by liberal immigration insanity, and a host of multiculturalists who don't know spit about the other cultures they're seemingly so fond of, --------------- but that's the peanut gallery..........

Player 1: Black muslim convert, {one time resident of North American prison systems...}.

Player 2: His wife, again black muslim convert, {featuring a face that looked like it had been beaten repeatedly, bruises all over, ---- the typical}.

Victim: Would be black preacher, who had the untoward temerity to actually ask a woman how she felt.

Me: Neighbor, who heard the ruckus and fracas in question.

Locale: Pennsylvania, one of the 13 original colonies, about 20 minutes driving time away from Independence Square, {an independence the woman in question clearly does not experience}.

The drama, ------------------- well why bother relating it? Isn't it something that many have now heard of, become familiar with. But it wouldn't mean a thing, wouldn't sway some not one whit, because they're immersed in the liberal lore, the multicultural fantasy.

Facts? Who cares?

Truth and experience? Racist and anachronistic!

Observer? Clearly a "whitey" with issues, AWAY WITH HIM!

For all of its purported evils, if you'd beaten the black Muslim man half to death in defense of his wife and the black preacher in Dixie, you'd be hard-pressed to find a prosecutor willing to take the case outside of a few liberal urban enclaves.

Here's an interesting thing. (I hereby burnish my fair-mindedness credentials.) There may be a case of causal over-determination here. Black ghetto culture also tends to excuse and even glorify wife/girlfriend abuse and also has a "tradition" of threatening or beating up, even killing, anyone whom one can conclude, by however strained an interpretation of his actions, has "disrespected" the dominant male. No doubt the Muslim radicalization in prison exacerbated these cultural tendencies, but they may have been enough to create the scene even without it.

The liberal hearing this anecdote is in a bit of a bind. He can downplay the Muslim angle only by admitting the black cultural angle, so he must be, by his own lights, either a religious bigot or a racist. All in all, the liberal will probably opt to blame white racism for the entire incident.

Incredible. And did ya hear the one about the Asian fellow who emigrated to the US then murdered his wife and got off because, he said, you can do that in his country and it ain't no big thang.

Rex, believe it or not we around here are able at least to suspect trolls pretending to agree with us. No, actually, I don't know of any case exactly like that, though I do know of an honor murderer in Texas who has disappeared after (allegedly) killing his two daughters. The police suspect that at least for a time he was hidden within the Egyptian Muslim community here in the U.S. He has now probably escaped abroad. Meanwhile there have been at least two cases involving domestic violence (one beating a wife and one beating a daughter) in Europe where judges have excused or mitigated the action on the grounds of culture. If I recall correctly, the people involved were Moroccan in both cases. One was in Italy, the other in Germany.

And "Asian" is confusing and inaccurate. If you mean "Pakistani" or "Afghani," say so.

But meanwhile, if you are indeed a pretender, don't waste my time.

What sort of ideologue do you have to be to make an equivalence here?

And what sort of ideologue do you have to be to see that the writer doesn't exhibit the slightest concern for the wife, only for his precious "prairie law"? One has the distinct feeling that he'd rather see the situation end in violence rather than simply stop saying hello. If that writer had a shred of actual integrity, the "hello" matter would have been covered in a sentence or two and the article would have been about domestic abuse. But no, he has an axe to grind. He reduces the woman to a pawn in his stupid little power struggle with the husband.

The "hello" matter is not small. One can argue about whether or not it's wise to keep on saying "hello" after the troglodyte husband has made an issue of it. But a) it certainly didn't originally take "two to tango." Originally the author simply treated them--as I suppose liberals would tell us he _should_ treat them--in a friendly manner as he would treat anyone else, and this horrible husband complained about him, to his great astonishment, b) if indeed the author must _now_, now that this unacceptable situation has been created by the husband, kow-tow to his unreasonable demands out of prudence, that is a dreadful comment on what Muslim presence in his building is doing to the atmosphere of his building and is a microcosm for what it is doing to his society. You may not care about the point concerning cultural change, but men of good will _should_ care. This is not what Western society should be like, where friendly people are intimidated by the sadistic threat that an innocent woman will suffer if they go on being friendly. What a nightmarish world men like that husband are trying to make in Toronto. And how legitimate and praiseworthy it is for citizens to stand up and say, "We don't want our country changed in this way."

You, of course, don't like that. You just want virtually the whole article to be about "domestic abuse." Uh-huh. Because that plays into your "narrative" in which no other point arises from any "domestic abuse," in which the abuse itself doesn't arise from a specific religious culture, and in which it isn't changing Toronto. Well, too bad. The author knows better than that, even if he is now placed in such a situation that it may be too late for him to do anything but stop saying "hello" to the wife. What a sick tragedy, and what a bad man his neighbor is. It doesn't take two to tango.

I was wrong to use the phrase domestic abuse - I'm not trying to claim this should be an apolitical matter.

Who said anything about kow-towing out of fear? This doesn't need to be a power stuggle. That is all you are making of this, and you are completely leaving aside the wife's plight and the white neighbor's wounded masculinity. The article leaves no doubt in my mind that this is a pissing contest between the writer and the husband, and true to WWWtW fashion, you are turning it into a new Crusade.

No one wants Canada changed in that way - least of all me, an actual Canadian. But you don't need to be a Christian or a Spinozist to realize that shaking your fists at the evils of rebuffed greetings is stupid and counterproductive.

You would suggest, perhaps...

slipping her the address of the local women's shelter? That's even more radical than saying "hello."

That is a possibility, yes, and it least it recognizes that the writer's hurt feelings, his "prairie law" and the clash of civilizations are the least important things about this story.

If that writer had a shred of actual integrity, the "hello" matter would have been covered in a sentence or two and the article would have been about domestic abuse. But no, he has an axe to grind. He reduces the woman to a pawn in his stupid little power struggle with the husband.

Yes, let's salve the left-wing conscience by ignoring the bigger issue, and focus on an issue where we can equally blame whitey: domestic abuse. Nevermind the fact that the "hello issue" came about because the Muslim man in the article is the spittin' image of the type of man and culture that reduces women to chattel slavery that feminists always bray about, but since he is an obviously violent man, we shall ignore that fact and just focus on the superficial domestic violence issue. Again, nevermind the fact that he literally views his wife as property.

The clash of cultures (and hence the prairie culture and the ways in which it is _vastly preferable_ to Muslim culture) is by no means the least important thing about the story. Mike says he doesn't want Canada changed in that way. Yet he insists on treating any incident like this as if it were isolated and uncaused, has nothing to do with Islam or the husband's perverse and twisted mindset (fostered by Islam and his cultural background), because that would be to focus on a "clash of civilizations," that would be to make a "crusade" out of the story, and that might lead us to think unthinkable thoughts about what we could _do_ to prevent having Canada or any other country changed in this way.

Mike, if you ever run into a case like this, good luck helping the woman even more courageously and in ways even more objectionable to the husband (as you seem to imply you would try to do) and keeping your head. Meanwhile, at least the woman in the story knows there's a friendly face about her in her own building. It may give her somewhere to run someday.

Yet he insists on treating any incident like this as if it were isolated and uncaused, has nothing to do with Islam or the husband's perverse and twisted mindset (fostered by Islam and his cultural background), because that would be to focus on a "clash of civilizations," that would be to make a "crusade" out of the story, and that might lead us to think unthinkable thoughts about what we could _do_ to prevent having Canada or any other country changed in this way.

That treatment is dishonest since it is demonstrably normal in a significant portion of the Islamic world. It's only on the periphery of the Islamic world in countries like Albania and Turkey where there is even a reasonable competition of ideas between the views on the treatment of women.

Absolutely, I'm not pretending. The case was real. I described the man as "Asian" because I can't remember, precisely, if the man was Chinese or Japanese or Korean. He and his wife emigrated to the US some years ago and he, in fact, killed her. His defense was, truly, that in 'his country' murdering one's spouse was legal. Obviously, the prosecution argued that well, in this country, murdering one's wife is not at all legal under any circumstances--but to no avail. The man was acquitted of the cold blooded murder of his wife.

I was being sarcastic, and obviously, too much so, but I was incensed by such insanity. I am in complete agreement with your article.

Lydia,

Absolutely, I'm not pretending. The case was real. I described the man as "Asian" because I can't remember, precisely, if the man was Chinese or Japanese or Korean. He and his wife emigrated to the US some years ago and he, in fact, killed her. His defense was, truly, that in 'his country' murdering one's spouse was legal. Obviously, the prosecution argued that well, in this country, murdering one's wife is not at all legal under any circumstances--but to no avail. The man was acquitted of the cold blooded murder of his wife.

I was being sarcastic, and obviously, too much so, but I was incensed by such insanity. I am in complete agreement with your article.

Rex, as they say on the internets, "pics or it didn't happen."

Again, nevermind the fact that he literally views his wife as property.

Mike T, the writer of the article offers no indication that this is a priority problem for him. His problem is that the husband is trying to tell him what to do, and he ain't gonna take orders from no man!

And to head off the inevitable dumb criticism - I'm not claiming the writer doesn't care that the wife is treated as chattel, I'm claiming that the article highlights the writer's hurt feelings instead of the wife's plight.

Lydia, you've claimed I'm inserting this story into some kind of "narrative," in all its full scare quotes glory. I don't know what you think that word means, but anyone in this thread can go back over and see that I haven't made the slightest move towards placing this story in a larger cultural context. Whereas you have all but said that if the writer cannot say hello, then Muslim law will conquer Canada BY NEXT WEEK! dun dun dunnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn

You're right, Mike. I hate the word "narrative" and used it only because you're a postmodernist. So let's put it this way: Your view of the matter, as far as everything you've said here indicates, is that the Muslim cultural context is something we should be downplaying. Instead, we should be talking about wife abuse as some sort of far more general problem. That's how the story should have been written. Otherwise it looks like a "crusade," etc. And we shouldn't worry about the fact that this isn't what we want our apartment buildings to look like and that Muslim immigration is making it more likely that more of our apartment buildings will look like this. Or at least, we shouldn't talk about it.