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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   25811 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 1, 2024

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What is the future of Islam in the West and the future of the West with Islam?

  • Popular youth figures Andrew Tate and Sneako became Muslims and made it a part of their media personality, which frequently gets millions of unique views with the audience mostly impressionable young boys.

  • Muslim memes are becoming popular online. Muslim terminology is becoming popular online — I have seen cases of Muslim expressions like inshallah and mashallah entering terminally online lexicon (which is the first step to normie lexicon).

  • Unlike Christianity, there is a confluence of significant factors that lead to Islam retaining strict behavioral and cultural rules. Mosques and scholars are funded by wealthy Arabs who have a monetary, political, and genetic influence in the spread of the religion; imams have children, the more strict the imam the more children, and dynastic imam families are not uncommon; the center of the religion is the Middle East where there is a constant threat of violence if leaders stray far enough from orthodoxy; the practice of excluding women from decision-making means that feminine-coded tolerance is sidelined; the religion itself highly emphasizes the following of strict tradition and punishments for “innovation”.

  • We are seeing the influence of Muslims in the criticisms against Israel, in a London street draped with Ramadan signs on Easter, and so on.

It’s interesting that “Islam is a threat” discourse has died down relative to a decade ago, despite the influence of the religion increasing. Is it because so many people have lost faith in both liberalism and liberal Christianity that they no longer care? I think that could play a part. Is it just laziness? Has there been a fundamental shift in assessment of Muslims?

Popular youth figures Andrew Tate and Sneako became Muslims and made it a part of their media personality, which frequently gets millions of unique views with the audience mostly impressionable young boys.

This is just grifters recognizing the market.

Lots of Muslims, even if many of them are in poorer countries and so are harder to monetize. Muslims also love to be reflected (who doesn't?) in the media they watch so they lovebomb the youtube channels of Westerners that touch on Islam even vaguely positively.

What you're seeing here is no different than when a reaction channel suddenly starts doing Bollywood videos.

In the US, no, I don’t get the sense of Islam as being a common ‘get religion’ thing at all. Most Americans still think of Islam as uniquely predisposed to violence and savagery, converts to Islam mostly come from prison, and Americans who want to make the sacrifices required by Islam can join Mormonism for something 10,000X more appealing and less foreign.

Now I don’t think the dogmas of Islam are the reason- people bring up female submission and the like but the fact remains that women immigrated to join IS from first world countries. That doesn’t happen in any other case, ever. You don’t have women immigrating to Iraq and Syria unless they plan on joining IS. Likewise Mormons have no problem getting converts who are willing to give up alcohol and caffeine.

Instead Islam is just foreign and a refuge of losers. American Islam has an uphill battle to overcome its association with criminals, barbarians, and lunatics. The Islamic terms in online discourse come from MemriTV, well known for its general insanity, after all.

Most Americans still think of Islam as uniquely predisposed to violence and savagery

Like the sixty-something year old woman I heard (IRL) expressing confusion as to why people are criticizing Israel's actions towards civilians in Gaza, when "there are no civilians in Gaza" — because, as she sees it, there's no such thing as a Muslim civilian.

A more charitable interpretation is that Muslims who don't support Hamas are rare enough that they shouldn't be taken into account when forming policy.

Nobody short of the lizardman constant means "literally no such thing" when they say "no such thing" and it's not some kind of science or math problem.

A more charitable interpretation is that Muslims who don't support Hamas are rare enough that they shouldn't be taken into account when forming policy.

If the bit I quoted was the only thing she'd said, then sure. But there was also a 'little snakes grow up to be big snakes'-type statement about how Gazan children are valid military targets because they're all "future terrorists."

Islam is fargroup to the blue tribe, so they don't see it as any threat. Whatever Muslims do is excused under the "no enemies to the left" policy. Progressives generally assume that all domestic Muslims will convert to proper progressive values in short order and ignore all evidence to the contrary.

In places like prisons in the UK it's popular to convert to Islam because it grants you protection from both the Muslim gangs there and the progressives running the prisons.

The progressive - Muslim alliance is quite old at this point.

The Toronto District School Board was letting Muslim students use the cafeteria as a gender segregated prayer room back in 2012, https://torontolife.com/city/allah-in-the-cafeteria/

Also the TDSB logo is cleverly an apple, an Islamic crescent, and a communist sickle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toronto_District_School_Board#/media/File:Toronto_District_School_Board_Logo.svg

So protection from progressives is the major thing driving Islamic conversions and their growth in culture. It'll grow until they are powerful enough to turn on the progs.

Muslim terminology is becoming popular online — I have seen cases of Muslim expressions like inshallah and mashallah entering terminally online lexicon (which is the first step to normie lexicon).

"The normalization of cyka blyat in terminally online lexicon - the first step towards Russianification of the Western mind"?

There's been decades of predictions about the weak secularized West falling prey to the Islamic influence ("strong horse defeats the weak horse"), and it never seems to materialize. The converts are the same as always - some (mostly women) converting for their spouse (and I rather believe that people tend to overestimate the number of such converts since they see white or light-skinned immigrant Muslims and confuse them for converted Western women), a smattering of criminals, a few "religious travelers" who might soon travel right out of their Islamic waystation after travelling in. It still is considerably more common for people wanting a "strong religion" to choose another variety of Christianity - say, Orthodoxy or Pentecostalism - from their usual one.

Meanwhile, at least this Substack article presented many strong arguments for Muslim integration (really secularization) continuing in France. Of course that can't be generalized, since France puts a specific attention on laïcité, and really all such statistics not only differ considerably country to country but also immigrant group to immigrant group.

Arab Christians also say “inshallah”, for what it’s worth. As somebody who has used this term ironically: yes I am making fun of Muslims (which I think is a corny death cult) and also tongue in cheek advocating for fundamentalist Christianity.

Also FWIW: far left libs are beginning to turn on Muslims. Specifically because it means that they’re probably going to lose Michigan as a democrat stronghold.

Good question, and one I have been thinking about for some time. There does seem to be a larger semblance of integration that Islam seems to be achieving in the west in certain circles, and Muslims seem to be the only religious/ethnic group that is reproducing over levels of replacement. Like you said, I think it's adherence to a strict dogma and it's insane ability to deflect liberal criticisms make it extremely likable/humorous if you are in any way a dissident to liberal orthodoxy. Muslims seem to be the only group of people that simply tell the emperor he has no clothes on. I find the recent uptick in social media celebrities to be more generally influenced by political reasons than religious ones. Andrew Tate for example made a large deal about his Islamic religious conversion, but did not seem to make any tangible behavioral changes that usually result from genuine conversions. He still promotes having pre-marital sex with multiple women and engages in alcohol consumption.

On the other hand, Islam has number of problems which make it difficult for it to fundamentally ingratiate itself within personal imagination and cultural relevance.

  1. It's aesthetics are terrible. From a purely outsider perspective, Muslim appearance is extremely unappealing. The long gowns and unkempt beards are extremely unattractive for the average white/western person. In both my WASP and secular social circles it comes with an extreme amount of mockery. They are constantly made fun for "looking like they smell" and seemingly having no social awareness of public norms. No white male (even if he was a genuine religious believer in Islam) would ever be caught dead looking like a traditional Islamic man, simply because it would be absolute social suicide and would act as pussy repellent for the vast majority of white women. Since the connotation in the western mind (even if most wont outwardly admit it) is the degradation and subjugation of women, it is extremely difficult to imagine it would ever lead to genuine conversions for both white men or women. Now i understand that traditional Islamic garb is not primarily worn by most Muslims in most social settings, but it is worn regularly enough in their religious practice that it is attached to it within the western mind.

  2. In a more technical aspect, the theological implications of Islam are extremely radical compared to more traditional Christianity, and also much more confusing. The Quran is considered to be exclusively revealed in Arabic, and as such any translation of it to other languages are not considered to be as 'legitimate' as in the original. Compared to the christian bible, all translations are considered to be as genuine as one another, and still transfers the message of Christianity as authentically as each other. If a genuine Muslim upheaval was undertook in the west it would require millions of people to learn Arabic, something which is almost more ridiculous to imagine then swarms of white men wearing thobes. There is also a strong semblance within Islam to have the government and religious system be thoroughly connected with one another, and even among most religious believers that does not seem to be a desire they have, and among secular people that is literally something i feel they would go out and die to prevent.

It is true that Islam seems to be far more comfortable than it was in previous decades, but just like western hegemony is hell bent on destroying christian moral attitudes, they will do the same to Muslims through the next generation. While fundamentalist Muslims may resist the more outlandish demands of modern liberalism, they will still have control over their children and they will be just as thoroughly indued with materialist attitudes, sexual liberation and consumerist pop-culture like the Christians were who proceeded them.

The long gowns and unkempt beards are extremely unattractive for the average white/western person.

It sounds like you think all Muslims look like Taliban elders from the videotapes from 00s? Even the Taliban government today don't look like that. Beards: kempt.

In Europe, Muslim men recognizable as recent arrivals are sharply dressed, serious about their hair and beard and clothes. The style is perhaps weird mix of the 80s, 90s and 00s, but it definitely is a style and increasingly has been converging with the overall weirdness that is style in anno domini 2024, so it is difficult to tell who is the trendsetter here. Muslim women recognizable as Muslim women wear hijab or niqab (or random variations of long dress and head scarf that may or may qualify as a hijab.)

Your two points are funny to me, because I wouldn't really care about either. I have no idea how unusual I am in this.

Of course, I have no intent to become muslim.

If a genuine Muslim upheaval was undertook in the west it would require millions of people to learn Arabic, something which is almost more ridiculous to imagine then swarms of white men wearing thobes.

I can assure you that people get by fine without learning Arabic. I honestly wonder if even the "high effort" types fully learn it (a lot of people burn huge amounts of time on phonetic memorization more than anything - the most annoying educational gauntlet with the least value).

In essence, it works on Harry Potter rules for most people: you don't need to speak Latin to cast the spells. The most important thing is to know enough to be able to pray and perform the common rituals. That can be a relatively light load (especially if praying in groups).

This can honestly be useful: you don't need to learn theologically problematic things directly.

There is also a strong semblance within Islam to have the government and religious system be thoroughly connected with one another, and even among most religious believers that does not seem to be a desire they have, and among secular people that is literally something i feel they would go out and die to prevent.

That is a real problem.

There's also the Problem of Mohammed. A person who actually had to rule combined with prophetic infallibility, so he cannot simply be hollowed out and worn as a skin by secular cosmopolitans like Jesus (who is basically just some hippie in modern Westerners' view), nor can he be treated like the fallible rulers and sometimes prophets of the Jewish and Christian tradition.

There does seem to be a larger semblance of integration that Islam seems to be achieving in the west in certain circles

I wonder if some of that is the unique geography of the Middle East? It's the only region that can claim to be African, European, and Asian, all at once! Arabs are an odd group since they're officially classed as "white" in the US census, but a lot of people think of them as a racial minority, so it kinda skates by the whole priviledge/URM thing. Meanwhile Islam also appeals to a lot of African-Americans looking for an authentic "African" spiritual identity, as well as Asians (the single largest Muslim country by population is Indonesia, and the second largest is Pakistan). It's a remarkably trans-racial religion.

Arabs are an odd group since they're officially classed as "white" in the US census

They actually got their own category last week.

OMB accepts the recommendation to create a new minimum reporting category for MENA separate and distinct from the White category, and to revise the White category definition accordingly.

‌

Middle Eastern or North African. Individuals with origins in any of the original peoples of the Middle East or North Africa, including, for example, Lebanese, Iranian, Egyptian, Syrian, Iraqi, and Israeli.

White. Individuals with origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, including, for example, English, German, Irish, Italian, Polish, and Scottish.

Comment from a person who wrote a book on the topic

The most obvious problem is that "Middle East and North African" has never been treated in the United States as a race. Beyond that, while I support the notion of the government collecting more granular data about ethnic groups, the MENA classification will not do so.… Unfortunately, rather than addressing the problem, creating a new MENA classification will create a new arbitrary pseudo-race.

Oh cool. I had heard that was on the table for a long time, but I didn't know it had actually happened. I wonder if it will take off in the popular conscious? I think most normal Americans are genuinely confused about whether Arabs are white.

You overstate the degree both to which beards and Muslim robes are "pussy repellent" and the difficulty of spreading Islam for linguistic reasons.

I think your tirade about how Islamic men are aesthetically unappealing looks like projection. Apparently they are unappealing to you. People used to say similar things about black men (some still do), and yet black men have no trouble attracting white women in the west (another contentious culture war issue). If Islam were to become truly popular, I don't think women would be going "Ewww" at beards. (And Western Muslims generally do not walk around in thawbs and kaffiyehs.)

As for Arabic, what you say is true, but only to a point. Translations of the Quran are allowable for people who can't read Arabic, it's just understood to be an imperfect approximation. Serious converts are expected to try to learn Arabic, but trust me, Muslims will welcome a convert whose Arabic is shitty or nonexistent. Islam achieved spectacular success in spreading itself even in non-Arabic-speaking countries. Iran and Indonesia and Malaysia are not Arabic-speaking countries, and while most do learn some Arabic for religious purposes, very few are fluent. A spread of Islam in the West would result in a lot more Arabic classes and many more Americans and Europeans knowing a smattering of Arabic, but mostly getting by with translation apps.

Now, whether a real Western Islamic wave could survive contact with liberalism and wokeness is an interesting question. We've seen the friction in a few places (the much-mocked "Queers for Palestine", the shock of liberals in Loudon County, Virginia discovering that Muslim parents weren't keen on their kids being transed, etc.).

Right now, Islam in the West is very much a youth movement, in the current moment largely motivated by sympathy for Palestine. A lot of young people are posting their TikTok and Instagram "reversion" stories about how after seeing the beautiful strength and resilience of the Palestinian people they decided to "research" (pardon my mocking laughter) Islam and took the shahada like, a week later. Yeah, once they are actually told they need to follow Islamic rules about dress (and the hijab stops being cute and fashionable), sex, alcohol, gender roles, and attitudes towards queerness, we'll see which one bends.

and yet black men have no trouble attracting white women in the west

Yes they do. Miscegenation in the USA is overwhelmingly white man/minority woman and blacks are less likely to miscegenate than other races anyways.

There’s lots of black men who claim to have slept with white women, but I think that AADOS culture is big on promiscuity as a male status symbol and sleeping with white women as a particular example, so this is probably lies.

This feels…weirdly uncharitable. Do you have any data to back it up?

Hmm interracial marriage rates are twice as high for black men as black women and have been pretty steadily for decades. Whereas for asians it is the other way round. I don't think that can be attributed to lies from black men particularly.

"Among blacks, intermarriage is twice as prevalent for male newlyweds as it is for their female counterparts. While about one-fourth of recently married black men (24%) have a spouse of a different race or ethnicity, this share is 12% among recently married black women."

While most interracial relationships involve white men, most interracial relationships involving black people involve a black man and white woman. Class differences essentially lead to soft segregation, but it wouldn’t surprise me if the average black man in the PMC/UMC has been in a relationship with a white woman, just because they’re the vast majority of women in those circles.

most interracial relationships involving black people involve a black man and white woman.

this is evidence that black women have very large troubles attracting anyone rather than "black men have no trouble attracting white women in the west"

It's not so much that they have large troubles attracting anyone as that they have large troubles attracting non-Africans. The old OKCupid data showed a huge effect of non-African men finding African women less attractive, but it didn't apply to African men.

The old OKCupid data showed a huge effect of non-African men finding African women less attractive, but it didn't apply to African men.

Look at the numbers again, it did apply.

Okay, I looked again. "Black" (which I will take to mean sub-Saharan African here, this being largely US data and all) men rated "black" women about the same as other women (varied between -4% and +1% over the years, whereas e.g. white men rating "black" women ranged from -25% to -17%).

(I use the scare quotes and distinguish "African" because there are South Asians and Aboriginal Australians with similar skin tone to sub-Saharan Africans - and the latter are even called "black" - but the face shape is very different and that almost certainly affects these kinds of figures.)

More comments

The main reason is that black women are substantially fatter than both white women and than black men. 57% of black women are obese, while 41% of black men are, which is closer to both white men and white women.

Certainly obesity is a factor, but black females have other traits reducing SMV: those that are considered masculine: prognatism and dark skin (remember that ancient Egyptians drew their women white and men brown). With this, Black males partially offset their SES disadvantage in SMV.

So would you say that Asian women's exogamy rates say more about how much it sucks to be an Asian man rather than them just being able to find white mates (as the stereotypes insist)?

Because I'm pretty sure it's the same dynamic with similar numbers (AA women also date out twice as much)

When did black men suddenly have no problem attracting white women? Ignoring celebrities.

In general it still seems like they tend to get the women that can’t get white men. Lower social class and chubbier.

Lower social class and chubbier.

That often describes their men, too, though. A man of an equivalent social class (say someone like [young adult] Obama at Harvard) wouldn’t have much of an issue dating women in his social class, assuming all other factors (looks, charisma etc) are there.

There's even a not-so-clever-but-somehow-still-hilarious neologism in the crimethink-sphere espoused by sexually unsuccessful black, South Asian, and East Asian males alike: Just be White (JBW). One that gets "yes_chad.jpg"'d by sexually successful and unsuccessful men all around.

Online women often shriek and fingerwag at South and East Asian men for supposed "entitlement" when it comes to white women, or supposed "entitlement" when it comes to not "losing" "their" women to white men ("you're not entitled to white women," "you're not entitled to women of your ‘race’").

However, black men are typically spared such well-poisoning and condescension. "You fucking donkey" vs. "there, there, princess" along the lines of the Gordon Ramsay meme.

You overstate the degree both to which beards and Muslim robes are "pussy repellent" and the difficulty of spreading Islam for linguistic reasons.

I don't think I do actually. I apologize if my tone seemed to be inflammatory, and It is important to note that i don't hold any personal hostility towards Muslims as a whole. But i will still stand by my previous statements that I admit are almost all influenced by my own personal experience and social circles. I don't think it is radical to notice that western women do not swoon over traditional Muslim men.

People used to say similar things about black men (some still do), and yet black men have no trouble attracting white women in the west (another contentious culture war issue).

I think this could be argued against pretty confidently as well although like you say it often comes with cultural baggage and butthurt from everyone. But 89% of all white people marry within their race and i don't think it is inappropriate to claim that ethnic men face a certain degree of hostility from white women in general. I also don't put it out of the realm of comprehension that many white women could desire to date a black or muslim man but fear the loss of social status that could come a result of it. Once again my view of this comes from both empirical data and my own personal experience. I've heard white women say absolutely insane shit that they would never say in public when they are confident it will remain in strict confidentiality. I may also be completely wrong and be biased by these experiences.

https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2017/05/18/1-trends-and-patterns-in-intermarriage/

Serious converts are expected to try to learn Arabic

You are correct in saying that Muslims will absolutely give grace to those who are genuinely attempting to learn, but thats the thing, i can't imagine in my mind a wide-scale movement of hundreds of thousands or even millions of westerners seriously attempting to learn Arabic that is motivated by genuine religious belief in Islam. If materialist/atheists can't even drum up the motivation to engage with the bible in a serious way, I don't see how they would have the discipline or religious belief necessary to engage in learning a language that is one of the most difficult for English speakers to learn, with an estimated 2000 hours to learn to even a simple degree of competency. It seems out of the range of belief for me to actually imagine.

The majority of people (of all races) prefer their own race, sure. But fifty years ago, the almost universal reaction if you asked white girls if they'd date a black man would have been "Ew." Now, the majority will at least pretend to approve and a substantial minority actually will. Likewise, fifty years ago, black culture was widely considered low class and undesirable. Now, we've had lots of culture war discussions about the elevation of African American culture, for better and for worse. So it is not inconceivable to me that the perception of Muslims and Islamic culture could undergo a similar transformation, especially given that, to be honest, Islam actually has a lot more going for it to begin with. I just don't think the disgust reaction you perceive is going to endure - the stereotype of Arabs as a bunch of bearded camel-jockeys is already pretty outdated.

As for learning Arabic, there's a huge difference between becoming conversationally fluent and learning enough to get by with praying and reciting the Quran. (You know there are a bazillion apps now to help converts with that exact thing, right?) Most atheists don't seriously engage with the Bible because they don't consider it worth their time. Someone who actually converts to Islam would have to consider the Quran worth their time. Sure, the average TikToker is not going to have the dedication or sincerity to stick with it, but "needs to learn the language" is not the huge barrier you think it is. (There are many Muslims, including Arab-American Muslims, who speak little or no Arabic.)

I have one abiding principle in life, and it's served me well. Never trust a man named "Sneako".

Also I usually see people saying inshallah ironically. Although I realize there's a pathway from ironic to non-ironic, as famously happened with "based".

Although I realize there's a pathway from ironic to non-ironic, as famously happened with "based".

Far too common than people acknowledge. A leas this is how high fashion seems operate: first the select few wear something weird or outdated ironically or jokingly. The next day, it is the trend.

It's hard for me to imagine that ironically saying inshallah will become people unironically believing in the quran though

In any mass communication, the irony is like any subtext -- it is usually lost after a couple of steps unless you filter for audience to people who get the subtext. Internet hastens this process, but it is present in all youth cultures. Nobody knows if the kid puts up the poster ironically or as a statement or they like the person in the poster, their internal motivations and rationalizations are lost to the observers. How much of the Elvis craze or Beatlemania or Lisztomania or any altCoin was 'dead serious' right from the beginning? I think quite likely most people start participating first jokingly, not so seriously, perhaps ironically because of all the excitement and "cool kids are doing it too" effect. But after you have collected enough inertia in the movement, tribal group dynamics take driver's seat and then it is serious.

Suppose some youngsters adopt saying inshallah ironically. Next they adopt the non-ironic positive cultural signifiers (excessively shaking hands and having sharp haircuts?) Soon the shared cultural context is wholly mixed to point you can't tell lapsed Muslims from the lapsed Christians and Western atheists. The Westerners themselves no longer can't tell which parts they are doing ironically. Nothing ultiamtely wrong with it I suppose, that's how cultural exchange looks like. Not infeasible that if by that point Islam as practiced by the non-lapsed Muslims is still the same puritanical form as it is currently known, it will be the stronger evangelizing force and cultural attractor.

Not the only possibility, though. Religious space is field of constant competition and evolutionary pressure. Wouldn't be surprised if the competitive forms of Christianity or the dare you call it the secular state religion of rainbow flag will adopt features that make them competitive.

Islam is subject to the same critiques that Christianity was in regards to the truth of its dogma. Granted, most atheist influencers got suspiciously quiet whenever Islam was brought up, even recently including Dawkins. But it's still there, and anyone who actually studies the subject and exerts the barest modicum of effort to have consistent worldviews will realize Islamic superstitions are just as fake as Christianity's. Granted, Islam started from a way more extremist/fundamentalist bent than Christianity did when the atheist onslaught started, but I don't really see it following a different path, it's just several decades behind.

On the vibes-based cultural aspect, I doubt we'll see Western mass-conversions. Tate et al. are clearly just cynically "converting" to exploit inconsistencies in the blue coalition. "I'm not sexist, I'm Muslim!" More power to them I say, since the white pro-Muslim feminists are some of the most obnoxious blue tribers in existence. But this pseudo conversion won't be followed on a large scale. Muslim countries are generally a lot worse places to live than Western ones, which saps its overall appeal. "Let's become just like Saudi Arabia" might appeal to a slice of the fringe dissident right, but it will turn off the vast majority of people. In terms of Westerners having some sort of non-religious cultural "religion" to attach to, I also don't see much future for Islam. The fact it's even being discussed shows how bankrupt the prospect of cultural Christianity is, and I don't see Islam getting much further than Odinism or other Paganism did. Most people don't have the energy of the militant vanguard activists, and thus aren't looking for a warlike or "masculine" culture, they just want to get on with their lives.

More power to them I say, since the white pro-Muslim feminists are some of the most obnoxious blue tribers in existence

See Pro-Muslim Slut Walk: https://youtube.com/watch?v=BTbXjksvsbI

Never heard of this act before, it's pretty funny =)

The Twitter account is run by the character's creator, Andrew Doyle, and has some funny moments. As often happens, the best stuff is the material that is JUST plausible enough to get sincere reactions. Or when reality catches up with parody:

https://andrewdoyle.substack.com/p/the-prophecies-of-titania-mcgrath

I would tend to think the strictness is probably more of a long term help than the rather lax modern Christian practice, or the even more lax pagans. The reason is that the West is losing a sense of cohesion and shared mores. A religion with shared dogma and strict practices would seem like a way to get the structure that’s lacking in the modern secular system. Thus Saith The Lord has a finality to it that “because it’s current year” doesn’t. Having a practice that gives structure to the day or week would seem to give a much stronger shared community than a loose structure.

The strictness won't stick though. Islam is being watered down slowly but surely. Again, it's going in the same direction as Christianity, and is just several decades behind. Years of fundamentalism have brought mostly just violence and secular crackdown, both foreign and domestic. Less than a third of Iranians would classify themselves as Shia Muslims, and about as many Iranians believe in genies as compared to critical religious concepts like "heaven and hell". You can't have an atheistic cultural religion. The continuing failure of "cultural Christianity" to attain widespread appeal proves this.

I don't know. To me the vast majority of this seems like sarcastic jokes which I perceive as undermining the appeal of Islam to both westerners and middle eastern adherents. It makes islam both less mysterious, less serious and less scary. It isn't great for your religion when people wear it as a costume and make fun of it.

It seems similar to the early stages of how people secularised from Christianity in the west.

It isn't great when for your religoon

At first I thought this was a 'coomer' joke ("aaahhhh im religoooooning!") but on second glance I'm pretty sure it's just a typo.

Considering Mohammed it would make some sense... And what is Ramadan if not massive religooooon sesh?

The adaption of Islamic catchphrases and memetics is not just due to the integration and adoption of Islam and Arab communities onto the western internets, but also a subversive statement against both Red and Blue political bastion. The Red tribe, especially evengelical christians, are way too pro-Israel for the average terminally online pro-Palistinain. On the other hand, Islam's patriarchial beliefs also appeal to the anti-woke pro-feminist movement while also still being Blue coded, as Blue tribers are overwhelmingly on the side of Palestinians, which was demonstrated recently in the city I reside in.

Islam is still a significant threat to Western values, though these values are being abandoned as quickly in modern 1st world governing bodies. A lot of the appeal of Islam is aligned to the exhaustion of devalued men and workers in modern society. Using force when reason doesn't work to achieve your goals, trodding on rights of individuals for the sake of self-preservation and the patriarchy and finding an ideology not of mutual servitude but of domination and strength has a lot of appeal to disaffected western men.

finding an ideology not of mutual servitude but of domination and strength has a lot of appeal to disaffected western men.

Which is ironic, given the actual level of social power and approved autonomy of young men in most Islamic societies. One of the most successful efforts of feminists has been to persuade people that, in traditional societies, the overwhelmingly significant power differential is male vs. female. The lives of young male Muslims does not seem to be defined by domination and strength.

One introduction to what life is like for most young male Muslims, at least in the Arab world, is to see what it's like to be a soldier:

https://ciaotest.cc.columbia.edu/olj/meria/meria00_den01.html

Head-to-head competition among individuals is generally avoided, at least openly, for it means that someone wins and someone else loses, with the loser humiliated. This taboo has particular import when a class contains mixed ranks. Education is in good part sought as a matter of personal prestige, so Arabs in U.S. military schools take pains to ensure that the ranking member, according to military position or social class, scores the highest marks in the class. Often this leads to 'sharing answers' in class--often in a rather overt manner or junior officers concealing scores higher than their superior's.

American military instructors dealing with Middle Eastern students learn to ensure that, before directing any question to a student in a classroom situation, particularly if he is an officer, the student does possess the correct answer. If this is not assured, the officer will feel he has been set up for public humiliation. Furthermore, in the often-paranoid environment of Arab political culture, he will believe this setup to have been purposeful. This student will then become an enemy of the instructor and his classmates will become apprehensive about their also being singled out for humiliation--and learning becomes impossible.

It's tempting to think that American-style individualism and meritocracy is universal, but the opposite is true. Power over your wife (provided her family isn't more high status than yours, within the constraints of various reprisals by her family against you etc.) is a small degree of compensation for the more general submission that Muslim men (and men in most societies) must do to their parents, in-laws, and so on. And until you are an old man, that power is mostly exercised by your parents, by-proxy, since you are expected to obey them. So your "authority" over your wife is mostly power for your parents, including your mother-in-law (dominating you and your wife is HER compensation for submitting to HER parents/in-laws in the past and her current husband).

Of course, unless your parents also convert, you are instantly suspect and low status, precisely because your parents are infidels, so a greater degree of deference and forfeiture of power is likely to be required, unless you're rich, famous etc. (in which case Western dating is probably working fine for you). I suppose you might have some success in social acceptance if your in-laws essentially take all the power over you associated with both your parents and in-laws, but I wouldn't recommend that.

Frankly, the idea of men adopting a religion named "Submission" to gain domination and strength is one of those classic "buyer beware" cases. More generally, historically what has been called "patriarchy" was primarily power for patriarchs in relation to their social status. In your case, almost certainly, you aren't close to a patriarch, and even if you were, any power you would have relative to the West would be more than compensated for by your superiors (even once you are old, there are more high status patriarchs who have deep social authority over you) to whom you would be expected to submit.

I do understand why e.g. some submissive (sexually or otherwise) men convert to Islam, since it integrates them into a system where they get thoroughly dominated by men, women, and God. This can also appeal to wayward men who feel like they can't control themselves, since Islam offers a social and religious structure in which they are thoroughly controlled by older/more powerful men and women, and God himself.

I agree with this. Islam is one of the few cultural forces which is clearly and squarely outside the usual red/blue tribe dichotomy, while also being organized and coherent as its own ideology (of course with many internal divisions and disagreements, but everything else does too). "grey tribe" is barely meaningful, and everything else requires a lengthy essay where you have to explain all your beliefs and make up a term for them.

Unlike Christianity, there is a confluence of significant factors that lead to Islam retaining strict behavioral and cultural rules. Mosques and scholars are funded by wealthy Arabs who have a monetary, political, and genetic influence in the spread of the religion; imams have children, the more strict the imam the more children, and dynastic imam families are not uncommon; the center of the religion is the Middle East where there is a constant threat of violence if leaders stray far enough from orthodoxy; the practice of excluding women from decision-making means that feminine-coded tolerance is sidelined; the religion itself highly emphasizes the following of strict tradition and punishments for “innovation”.

This all describes Christianity a couple centuries ago. How did that turn out?

Some of the listed elements describe Protestant Christianity, but certainly not (3) and (5), and I would argue not (1). Because Islam requires knowledge of Arabic and because the required pilgrimage is Mecca, the growth of Islam aids the growth of Arabs in a way that doesn’t apply to Protestant missionaries. The center of Protestant Christianity was never an area plagued by religious terrorism, although it has a history of political terrorism, because the center has been a singular church or a collection of hands-off church collectives. Protestant Christianity is a faith-based religion that promotes orthodoxy about perhaps one dozen facets of faith, whereas Islam is mainly orthopraxic with most of a person’s focus being the correct prayer routine at correct hours in correct language, fasting at correct times, etc, although it also possesses amuch stricter orthodoxy as well. Islam has significantly less leeway about interpreting rules than Christianity because it eschews parables and exaggerations. It is legalistic.

There are plainly substantial reasons why what happened to Christianity may not happen to Islam. And let’s not forget the racial angle: Islam began as an Arab supremacist religion; artifacts of that still exist today. For Arabs in America, their religion is the whole celebration of their racial achievement, which does not apply to Christian Protestants.

There's plenty of overlap with Orthodox Christianity, more than Protestantism, but much of its sphere of influence was forcibly conquered by Islam, then ground down over centuries.

So Muslims are more warlike, sure. I guess complicated by all the equally warlike Slavs taking up "Third Rome" rhetoric and putting a pretty hard stop to expansion Northward. It does seem probable that, ultimately, any civilization that doesn't want to be ruled by Islam has to physically fight it off.

Catholicism functioned, for a long time, as an effective spreader of Romance languages, which - insofar as I've heard - often differ from each other approximately similarly to Arabic dialects differing from each other.

Catholicism spread knowledge of Latin among the elite, but didn’t really spread non-Iberian Romance languages.

Of course late Medieval Latin national dialects weren’t necessarily mutually intelligible, but that’s strictly an elite thing.

My understanding is that adoption of Catholicism and Spanish went pretty much hand in hand during the Latin American colonization, and the Jesuit missions spread both.

Hence I said non-Iberian(so not Spanish and Portuguese)- and even for Spanish the situation is complicated; full-bloodedly indigenous Catholics mostly spoke indigenous languages up until independence, but mixed people and whites spoke the colonial language. Actually Latin America has plenty of mostly-indigenous speaking areas still to this day in a way the US doesn't, and that's after nominally-secular post independence governments tried their best to get Quechua and Maya speakers to switch to Spanish exclusively.

I'm less familiar with Brazilian history, but at least in the Spanish colonies- speaking mostly Spanish was a sign of having at least some Spanish ancestry and turned into a national identity marker that would be expected of everyone regardless of their place in the racial hierarchy in the 19th century. Catholicism often resulted in learning Spanish but during the colonial period the church wasn't particularly interested in replacing indigenous dialects, and sometimes inconsistently tried to provide services in Guarani and Quechua.

sometimes inconsistently tried to provide services in Guarani and Quechua.

What sort of services are you thinking of? It can’t be the mass, surely, since that wasn’t permitted to be celebrated in the vernacular until post-Vatican II. Or were exceptions made for Latin America?

Preaching and catechism in Quechua was obligatory for priests in Peru immediately after the counter-reformation- in fact, the modern dialect of southern Quechua descends from the form standardized to be taught to missionaries. Nahuatl was the standard vernacular in Spanish missions from Mexico until the very late 17th century, even when the sacraments were performed in Latin.

And, it should be noted- Catholic missionaries to animist peoples, both today in Africa and New Guinea and in the renaissance to Indians, typically try to push mass attendance but emphasize confession as a draw to new converts. Providing priests fluent in indigenous languages is obviously important to this endeavor, and early missionary accounts note Indians walking for hundreds of miles to go to confession and returning to their home villages.

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Because Islam requires knowledge of Arabic and because the required pilgrimage is Mecca, the growth of Islam aids the growth of Arabs in a way that doesn’t apply to Protestant missionaries.

It empirically isn't doing much for the growth of the Arab population right now. Most Muslims are not Arabs.

The center of Protestant Christianity was never an area plagued by religious terrorism, although it has a history of political terrorism, because the center has been a singular church or a collection of hands-off church collectives.

Northwestern Europe was ravage by religious warfare for hundreds of years. A lot of people died over this. At that time, "political" and "religious" was not a very firm distinction.

Protestant Christianity is a faith-based religion that promotes orthodoxy about perhaps one dozen facets of faith

De jure yes, but de facto Protestantism was extremely orthorpraxic. Calvinists insist that good works do not purchase salvation but are instead a product of salvation, but in practice this is a purely semantic distinction. There's a reason 'puritanical' is shorthand for 'rigid scrupulosity.'

There are plainly substantial reasons why what happened to Christianity may not happen to Islam.

It's already happening. Even Saudi Arabia, the financial powerhouse behind the spread of Wahabbism, is liberalizing rapidly. The Iranian mullahs can't even keep their country from periodically exploding into anti-regime protests. MENA fertility rates have more than halved in the past half-century.

Most Muslims are not Arab, and also empirically the Arab population grows. The population of the Arab world grows at the same time that they export Arabs overseas and despite its increasing development which is significant.

Religious warfare which involved political claims occurred. That’s like the Shia vs Sunni proxy war in Syria and Iraq, which is as political as it is religious. But there was nothing like your typical Muslim “because your congregation is liberalizing I will commit an attack” ideology. That’s novel to Islam. Protestants didn’t blow up a building when someone started teaching girls how to read.

Calvinists insist that good works do not purchase salvation but are instead a product of salvation, but in practice this is a purely semantic distinction

I don’t think you understand how orthopraxic Islam is. Calvinists don’t define hierarchies of good works versus bad works with their commensurate rewards in heaven. Calvinists don’t cling to authoritative transmissions of Jesus which make mandatory thousands of small actions and make commendable certain other actions. As an example, in Islam they legislate the direction of your pointer finger in prayer, every syllable of the Quranic reading, the upkeep of your beard. You are comparing apples to orangutans. In Calvinism, the question is “do you believe and do you behave morally according to my view”. In Islam, it’s “do you believe according to this long list and do you do these long lists of actions.” The five obligatory prayers where every syllable and movement must be precise is an example of this sort of legalism. The Muslims who do not follow legalism are called Quranists and they are not even a percent of global Islam. There’s no Muslim sola scriptura movement of note, which secularization used to desacralize.

also empirically the Arab population grows

More and more slowly, as they become more prosperous, like other ethnic groups:

https://www.prb.org/resources/fertility-declining-in-the-middle-east-and-north-africa/

https://www.statista.com/statistics/806110/fertility-rate-in-the-arab-world/

Primarily, Arab birth rates are high because most Arabs are still poor. They are about half that of the DRC, where most people are even poorer than most Arabs.

But there was nothing like your typical Muslim “because your congregation is liberalizing I will commit an attack” ideology. That’s novel to Islam. Protestants didn’t blow up a building when someone started teaching girls how to read.

They didn't have suicide belts yet but angry mobs of Catholics/Protestants going around attacking each other and destroying buildings for religious reasons were extremely common during the Wars of Religion.

Catholicism is even more legalistic than Protestantism and it isn't doing much better. So is your argument that Islam is just far enough on the hyper-legalism spectrum that it will manage to endure?

We are seeing the influence of Muslims in the criticisms against Israel, in a London street draped with Ramadan signs on Easter, and so on.

This street is like 5 minutes from my house lol. It’s at the corner of Edgware Road (Marble Arch), which is the main Arab neighborhood in London. Arabs are a small proportion of Muslims in England, Edgware Road is a wealthy Arab neighborhood, it’s mainly shisha cafes and ice cream stores open until 3am where Muslim teens can ‘date’ with plausible deniability in a location that technically doesn’t serve alcohol (I once walked past a Muslim couple having sex next to a dumpster behind the Hard Rock Hotel next door). I stop by on occasion because I have a weakness for Belgian waffles with Nutella after coming back from work at midnight.

I do think Islam is an inherently appealing religion. There is a reason that, even at the height of the British Empire, some British aristocrats converted or certainly developed a fascination with Islam. That’s to say little of the widely-publicized views of Hitler and others of Islam. Islam lacks a Christianity’s guilt, its humiliation rituals in front of other humans, its contradictions around violence. It’s pure, absolute submission, which is attractive even divorced from every other aspect.

A friend of mine at college updated her LinkedIn picture recently. Italian-American from Long Island, pretty, smart, moderately promiscuous at college (though not extremely so). No religious views. A secular, urban liberal, who went into international diplomacy / think tanks on foreign policy. Socially she was a pretty generic upper middle class New Yorker. In her new LinkedIn picture she wears a Hijab and no makeup. Islam has its draws, for sure.

Did Tate become Muslim or simply adopted a few "Islam is right about women" memes? I haven't looked too deeply into Tate but from what I've heard, his works were quite unbefitting for a faithful servant of Allah.

Yes, Tate is a very very bad Muslim because of his actions if he even recited the Shahadah and isn't just doing this as a bit to gain more followers.

Is it because so many people have lost faith in both liberalism and liberal Christianity that they no longer care.

Speaking only for myself: yes. I'll take the Taliban over the current batch of western elites.

I am very skeptical that you're actually serious. This is the sort of edgy "Well, I guess I'm on Team Sauron then" take that young people use to express their disgust with The Man. The reality is that you have a pretty good life under the Western elites, however much their policies and hypocrisy might disgust you, which you would not have under the Taliban.

"Well, they'd forcibly convert me to Islam, forbid me all Western decadences, my wife and daughters would have to stay inside for the rest of their lives or risk beatings or worse, and the economy under their management would almost certain drop below third world levels, but at least I wouldn't have to call anyone by their preferred pronouns!"

If you actually are serious, you either know very little about the actual Taliban, or you have become so blackpilled by the culture war that you've become the sort of person who will blow himself up to spite your neighbor.

You just tried to roast me for being too slow to see how terrible wokes would become once put in charge. It's hard to take seriously an assertion that the Taliban would be less bad.

If you actually are serious, you either know very little about the actual Taliban, or you have become so blackpilled by the culture war that you've become the sort of person who will blow himself up to spite your neighbor

Both of these are somewhat accurate, though only to a minor wxtent, and they're not the reasons for me holding this opinion. Though you'll probably see the actual reason as no less insane. It's not that I believe the Taliban are cool, or that I think the current state we're in is worse than Afghanistan, it's that I believe our elites actually, no shit, have a plan to abolish humanity, at least in any form I would recognize it. We've been talking about various slippery slopes, but what we've discussed is nothing compared to what's coming, and the sudden promotion of things like surrogacy and euthanasia offer a glimpse into it. Even trans issue, as controversial as they've been, are only the thin end of the wedge for transhumanism.

It's all far off into the future, so I understand anyone thinking things aren't quite so bad yet, but it seems pretty clear to me this is where they want to push us.

Even trans issue, as controversial as they've been, are only the thin end of the wedge for transhumanism.

could you please be more specific? You say that transsexuality is associated with transhumanism?

Yeah, the way I see it transsexuality is straight-forwardly a form transhumanism - you don't like the limits imposed on you by nature so you start hacking away at them until you get something you like. My point is that this idea won't stop at the normalization of transexuality. Once changing to the other sex becomes accepted, why not start pushing for the acceptance of becoming both or neither? From there it's not long until people start asking what's the point of keeping the human form at all, the goal is to have everything customizable like you're a character in an RPG. This isn't just my interpretation or extrapolation of my opponents' position, this idea is written down in manifestoes and has open advocates, including on this forum.

If you're tempted to say this is not representative of the modal transgender person, that does not matter. I fundamentally reject the democratic framework of analyzing ideas and movements. Democratic majorities only provide inertia, but ideas are driven by influential individuals and small groups.

Including... on this forum... hmm...

Wait...

Did you just say there's a clinic in Austin Texas that can give me a vagina without removing my penis? AWESOME!
Lumen! Add that to the TODO!

I kid I kid. Naturally I already knew about the existence and limitations of current gen phallus-preserving vaginoplasty tech.

Anyway. In terms of manifestos, you really have to throw the Xenofeminist Manifesto on the list!

XF seizes alienation as an impetus to generate new worlds. We are all alienated – but have we ever been otherwise? It is through, and not despite, our alienated condition that we can free ourselves from the muck of immediacy. Freedom is not a given–and it’s certainly not given by anything ‘natural’. The construction of freedom involves not less but more alienation; alienation is the labour of freedom’s construction. Nothing should be accepted as fixed, permanent, or ‘given’–neither material conditions nor social forms. XF mutates, navigates and probes every horizon. Anyone who’s been deemed ‘unnatural’ in the face of reigning biological norms, anyone who’s experienced injustices wrought in the name of natural order, will realize that the glorification of ‘nature’ has nothing to offer us–the queer and trans among us, the differently-abled, as well as those who have suffered discrimination due to pregnancy or duties connected to child-rearing. XF is vehemently anti-naturalist. Essentialist naturalism reeks of theology–the sooner it is exorcised, the better.

P.S. If you've ever seen Lumen choose that name before... Nice.

I was debating whether I should tag you or not, but I tend to err on the side of not bothering people. But since you're here, I did want to mention that even though we're probably couldn't be further away philsophically, I really enjoyed the conversations we had so far.

Linking to that old thread, I also realized I never got back to you, and was thinking of resurrecting that topic and going into details about my issues with the transhumanist approach of keeping the good bits of humanity, and discarding the rest.

Ah, yes. I am interested in those details. I do have my own reservations with discarding bits of humanity carelessly. I think there's value even, in having cultures of low tech humans.

But I believe you have more core reservations than just pragmatic concerns regarding safe exploration. When trying to relate... https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/specialization comes to mind.

But even here, I expect this world looks primarily dystopian to you, whereas to me, its a mix of dystopian and exciting. The parts of this comic where efficiency is crushing the humanity out of people distress me, but the parts where the weird individuals in the comic choose to embrace something new and alien excite me. So... my life's work tends towards struggling to thread the needle in such a way as to somehow resolve this conflict between... Art and Efficiency.

And as for not pinging me- It may be for the best. I try not to come to TheMotte too often. Its good to experience the perspectives here but there are diminishing returns and- I have a bit of an addictive personality. The easiest way for me to regulate my usage is just to block the site for weeks at a time. Which is to say it would have taken me a while to get back to you anyway.

I think the difference is that most transhumanism is grounded in reality in the present, even if it is utopian about the future. It may claim we'll be able to make ourselves into cyborgs or Gods, but in general it doesn't say we're there yet. Transsexuality claims we either can become or (in its pure modern form) actually ARE a member of a different sex, today.

I believe the current transgender advocacy, on the reverse, requires trans individuals to be recognized as such even without surgery and/or HRT, Laws requiring surgery and/or HRT, sterliziation are widely seen as transphobic.

This isn't just my interpretation or extrapolation of my opponents' position, this idea is written down in manifestoes

I don't think this has anything to do with mainstream.

I believe the current transgender advocacy, on the reverse, requires trans individuals to be recognized as such even without surgery and/or HRT, Laws requiring surgery and/or HRT, sterliziation are widely seen as transphobic.

It does both, denying blockers, hormones and surgeries to people too young to have the wisdom to make irreversible decisions is also seen as transphobic. It aims to abolish social categories as well as physical limits.

I don't think this has anything to do with mainstream.

10 years ago the current trans movement had nothing to do with the mainstream.

Ok, lobbying for unrestricted (or barely restricted) usage of blockers and hormones by youth can be seen as libertarian and transhumanist. But others? The same people push for obligatory pronouns and orwellian phrase "gender affirmative therapy" referring to transition. They make to fight for trans represenation. If I implant a multispectral camera in my body so I could enhance my vision, there people would be amongst the first for me to be punished.

I would like to believe the blue elites were as based as you're painting them, and pushed for a true shedding of human limits rather than breeding a kind of docile homo podlivingus.

The classic* elite desire is to split into two races, one shedding human limits and the other a docile homo servus to serve the former.

* See e.g. Sterling (1988)

Okay, well, I am not going to try to talk you out of this kind of irrational doomerism. I'll just point out that in the vastly unlikely event of the Taliban or their equivalent actually taking over the world, I cannot imagine their end game being any less bad than whatever bug-eating transhumanist dystopia you imagine the "western elites" are going to inflict on us.

I don't know if I'd want them to take over the world either, but on the bright side, I don't think their philosophy is particularly conducive to that. By contrast, I think transhumanist techno-surveillance states are totalizing by nature.

Interesting you say that, because I as an actual practicing muslim (and coethnic) would far rather have the current batch of western elites over the literal Taliban ruling the place.

Sharia law really isn't something you want in the modern world. The prohibitions on interest alone would destroy the economy far worse than what current elites are doing by not listening to economists/giving in to populists.

Sharia law really isn't something you want in the modern world. The prohibitions on interest alone would destroy the economy far worse than what current elites are doing by not listening to economists/giving in to populists.

I think that if sharia were to come anyways it wouldn’t be accompanied by non-collapse in any case, I’m sure that the other person who wants shariah over the current ruling of Western elites would also be fine with a collapse in order to destroy the currently crafted elite-order; you wouldn’t want to defeat the elites and then swap out them with another set of elites with beards while keeping everything else in place.

Most interestingly the first actual imposition of shariah on the world from the 7th century onward was seen by Christians and Jews as an instance of collapse for the greater good: God was punishing them for their decadence and heresies. The Jews thought that God was rewarding them and relinquishing their punishment from under the Christians, only for the Muslims to subsequently punish the Jews again and prevent the one thing they really wanted (building the third temple) by building the dome of the rock. The Christians thought this was variably punishment for having so many schisms or having icons or whatever. In any case everyone was basically expecting the world to end in the 7th century anyways (in fact even the Muslims did, they thought that Jesus was going to come back after they took Jerusalem), and the Muhammadan caliphate was just another extension of this apocalyptic hope. Everyone was yearning for ultimate collapse, which didn’t actually happen, only regional collapse did.

We might be seeing this yearning for ultimate collapse once again come about, hence why everyone (e.g Catgirl Kulak) seems to be saying that ‘in a couple of decades the entire economy will collapse!’ at best or ‘everyone on earth will fall dead in the same second’ at worst (e.g AI doomers). The hope for shariah is probably just another element of that Western death-drive.

All great civilisations have a death drive. Consider the fin de siècle or Edwardian obsession with the occult, or the proliferation of millenarian new age movements at the height of postwar American dominance.

Or more specifically, all great civilizations have a drive for the end of history, which would inevitably lead to the death of change and the resurrection of a perennial age from the ashes (which means that everything has to burn down first). A typical Marxist would say that the American and French revolutions were extensions of this in terms of being ‘revolutions of the bourgeoisie’, which ironically wasn’t the ending of history, but the starting of an entirely new era (the one of the subjugation of the proletariat in capitalism), but every new cycle thinks it’s the last.

What can I say? All things considered they're a bit strict for my taste, but they do what they say on the tin, which I tend to consider strictly superior to the vague and fluent rules of the west. The way of life they want to impose might not quite be my of tea either, but I recognize it as humane, while the western seems to aim for abolishing humanity.

They do what they say on the tin, meaning rule over an unproductive peasant economy that is one of the poorest nations in the world? No, it is clear modernity is still better than the Taliban if the goal of organized human society is some kind of technological or industrial advancement.

And the Taliban haven’t even been able to stop ISIS terror attacks, which continue regularly under their authority. The first duty of any state is to order; the Taliban cannot even accomplish this. You may wish to be ruled over by illiterate, destructive tribesmen descended from Buddhists converted by Arab conquerors in the distant past. That opinion may not be widely shared in the West, though.

I don't know how much clearer I can make it that they're not my first choice, but if western elites expect me to fight for them in any conflict with radical Muslims, they're in for a surprise. If they don't like that, maybe they shouldn't have imported so many of them back when people like me were saying it might not be a great idea.

Isn't that cutting your own nose off to spite your face? Your opponents finally come around to your position, to the extent they are now willing to violently oppose the Islamic people/world you also dislike and wanted to keep out, which was one of the key disputes you had with them...

And you switch sides to side with the people you were against in the first place?

Why would you expect to be taken seriously? I hate that you won't go along with my position so much, that I would side with the people that we had opposing views on? That seems like simple spite. At which point despite being correct you can't be taken seriously in any kind of political coalition. If you don't get your own way, you side with the people you were against?

Setting aside any moral issues, pragmatically there is no reason for your opponents to ever consider your ideas. If you hate them when they disagree, and hate them when they agree, then you aren't leaving much space for change, even when you are actually right.

For one, they haven't actually come around, they're still importing them wholesale.

Why would you expect to be taken seriously?

Right back at you. I don't believe the only reason we have all this promotion of "diversity" is to foment conflict in society. The fact that the progressive elites are siding with the Muslims (for example) right up until the point I decide I won't fight them in progressives' name, is proof positive I was being taken for a ride. It's your fight now, have fun.

Sure, if they don't change their mind then that makes sense. But this is predicated on them doing so.

That said I understand now I think. I'd suggest the elites wouldn't be changing their minds BECAUSE you decided you won't fight the Muslims. In fact, given I have worked with what might be called the elite in the UK, I can almost guarantee they aren't thinking about you (and your peers) at all, or that they are trying to take you for a ride at all, because they don't think about people like you or me much at all. (Which to be clear is a big problem, hence why I quit politics, its just not the same problem you think there is).

As for me, I don't think it will come to a fight at all. At least due to internal Muslims. I have extensive experience with Pakistani communities in the UK and they are being "corrupted" by western secular values quite substantially.

To be clear Islam is in my opinion a terrible religion and globally a much bigger problem than Christianity. But I expect it to lose power as its main countries advance and modernize. Reducing birth rates even in Islamic countries show it is not immune. To me the West is clearly the strong horse here. You can bribe native Pakistani and Afghani muslims with Man Utd strips. We've won so hard a tiny Westernised nation can essentially hold off the whole of the Middle East on its own.

Islam is dying. Just as Christianity is. Sunnis and Shi'ites in fight, Pakistan has problems with the Taliban. They are not united.

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but I recognize it as humane

Only someone who has never experienced the direct influence of the Taliban would think that way. The Taliban are like fire, they make good servants but bad masters (in the sense that they keep the overton window open for moderate Islam by taking all the attacks which would have come upon moderate Islam otherwise). Putting them incharge of other human beings or in general handing them any power at all ends badly (see how they commit terror attacks when handed power etc., they're even planning on bringing back stoning for adultery!). They work best as zoo specimens, not wild animals.

I remember talking to someone from Pakistan about life in a part of that country where the Taliban were active. He was threatened by armed men on the train because of a little Western apparel. He also once saw a dead man in the street, but just ran away, in order to not instigate a feud between the dead man's family and his own. Presumably the dead man stayed on the street and fed the flies, until someone from his family found his rotting corpse.

You haven't really said much about what bothers you about their way of life, and the way you talk about them seems more like a point in their favor than anything else.

see how they commit terror attacks when handed power etc

I admit to not keeping up with Afghanistan, I mostly associated terror attacks with ISIS than the Taliban...

What are you waiting for? The Taliban state has been founded. Move to Afghanistan today, while you still see things clearly.

You haven't really said much about what bothers you about their way of life

I like the people close to me having basic freedoms like my wife not needing to wear a niqab. I like being able to argue using reason and being able to counter "The good book says X, therefore you are wrong when you claim not X" without being denounced as a heretic. I like being clean shaven (yes, the Taliban imposed a beard requirement on all men the last time they were in power), I enjoy dancing and music etc. etc.

I can go on and on...

and the way you talk about them seems more like a point in their favor than anything else

Oh boy, if you don't like me you really won't like the Taliban. When I say they are my coethnics I don't just mean they have the same skin colour as me/come from the same part of the world, I mean that I, like a very large portion of them, am Pashtun (complete with tribal affiliation and all that). The values they grew up with are the same as those my parents instilled in me as a child and from where I derive my belief system today, except that I've become extremely westernised (people call me a coconut back home - brown on the outside, white on the inside - and I can't really say they are wrong). I'm like the grown up version of Kamal's son from Kipling's Ballad of East and West after the British system has completely laundered him.

Think me but fundamentalist Muslim when you think of the Taliban and then reconsider whether you want someone like that to rule over you.

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