> If you marginalize people, mistrust them, do not make an effort to integrate them, and make them feel like the only place where they are welcome is segregated communities, don't be surprised when they radicalize. This has happened all throughout history, and will continue without changes.

@deanCommie

Please, stop with the excuses , nobody marginalized anybody. The terrorists are not victims , the islamists are not victims. so don't give them excuses. The wide majority of muslims in France are integrated, they are bakers, plumbers , computer scientists , my baker is a muslim , so stop with that bull. There is no excuse none.

10% of the french people are muslims, that's a fact, out of that fact it increases the chances of people chosing an extreme vision of islam. There was attacks in Spain , UK and obviously USA, is it because muslims were marginalized ? so stop please, you are ignorant trying to apply your post modernist canvas on things when some people are still taken hostage as we speak, you should be ashamed of yourself.

FYI : I'm black and come from a muslim family though i'm not muslim, those who fail are those who don't try hard enough, nobody said it will be easy. Everything is "free" in France, education , college, healthcare , you feel "marginalized" , well there is Europe and you can basically pick and choose the country you want to live in today. So no excuses, enough.

These are not excuses, these are explanations. Because we need to understand how to defuse radicalization.

I'm not excusing the terrorists. I'm trying to keep in check the people who are commenting on this and just saying "well yeah, this is what happens when you have 10% muslims in your country".

I'm not defending the terrorists. I'm defending people like your family who will be lumped in with them in the next couple of weeks as people blame all of this on immigration and islam, like they do every time.

The fact is, we are living in an age of muslim extremism and sympathies are at an all time high. We could look at it at that fact and blame 1.57 billion people for all sharing this radical ideology, or we could look at what other forces are nudging a small section of those people to radicalize. And avoid denial.

> I'm not excusing the terrorists. I'm trying to keep in check the people who are commenting on this and just saying "well yeah, this is what happens when you have 10% muslims in your country".

You're not trying to keep people in check, you are as ignorant as the people saying racist comments with your stupid pomo explanations.

> I'm not defending the terrorists. I'm defending people like your family who will be lumped in with them in the next couple of weeks as people blame all of this on immigration and islam, like they do every time.

I won't be lumped in with anybody because most of the french can tell the difference and I don't need anyone defending me, thank you, i'm capable of defending myself. You're talking about a problem you know nothing about, with a specific school of thinking that is stupid at first place. You want to talk about a population that is really marginalized in France? talk about the Roma, I didn't see anyone of them killing 50+ people because of it. and they have it much , much worse than any arab or black in France.

France is not an apartheid where blacks, arabs and white people are separated and often ,those who claim being victim of society are the one with an intolerant and bigoted mindset. People like you give the crazies ammo to fuel their hatred toward a country that feed them , treat them , give them an education for free and a whole lot of percs. And again ,don't like it ? move , Europe is huge and go see if the grass is greener elsewhere.

these toy post-moderns don't notice that they are infantilizing muslims with all their bullshit. you are 100% correct: being marginalized is no excuse to become a monster.

>The wide majority of muslims in France are integrated

Sooooo many studies have been done where the same resume gets shown to recruiters, except one has a French name and the other has an Arabic name. The results were an overwhelming amount of french resumes were chosen over the Arabic one. Not to mention constant issues like police harassment

The issue of integration of purely the fault of a country that pretends that race doesn't matter while simultaneously punishing minorities every step of the way

> Sooooo many studies have been done where the same resume gets shown to recruiters, except one has a French name and the other has an Arabic name. The results were an overwhelming amount of french resumes were chosen over the Arabic one. Not to mention constant issues like police harassment

Sure, but it doesn't make my point false. Is there some discrimination going on ? absolutely we need to fight it. Is it widespread absolutely not, I've been victim of racism in France because of the color of my skin , and you know what ? we have a lot of charities , organizations , and anti discrimination laws to fight against it. So what does it have to do with people killing 50+ innocents ? nothing.

And the racism I endured didn't make me want to join ISIS or some bullshit Islamist movement, because I knew that for every racist ahole there are 10 000 people that are not and don't care about the color of my skin.

But people like the OP and their "oppressor/oppressed" mindset are just giving excuses to the crazies , but there is no excuse , there is no explanation other than the terrorists a f.ed up and part of a death cult.

The problem seems to me to be that a very small minority of gullible people wants to make their mark on society, and since they have no way to do that in a positive way they use a negative one.

Just like there will be people blaming 'all of Islam' for this atrocity there will be people on the other side that blame 'all of the West' either for their own inability and failure or as as a reaction to the inequalities in the society they are a part of an which they will find it hard to overcome. It is these people that are at risk of being radicalized, the smart ones (like yourself) never were at risk in the first place, have found their niche and simply want to live their lives as good as they can, like everybody else.

It's a pity because these few would be harmless fools if they weren't given the tools and instructions with which they then proceed their crimes, and probably they relish at the thought of the headlines they will be making.

Unfortunately there is no shortage of people that would very much like to blame their own personal failure on others or that would exact blind revenge on innocents for perceived or real sleights instead of seeking redress in a less violent manner.

What does "backer" mean? Edit: Ahh, you changed it to baker. My mind was wandering all over but there.

sorry i meant baker, corrected.

A different take ... from 1899 ...

"Individual Muslims may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome."

-Winston Churchill, from "The River War"

source : http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/churchillislam.asp

I don't think Churchill is the best benchmark for such matters:

"starvation of anyhow underfed Bengalis is less serious than that of sturdy Greeks"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943#Suppli...

And definitely not a benchmark for the 21st century.

Churchill was fighting the Nazis at the time and prioritized shipping to best defeat the enemy.

At the expense of millions of what he should have considered his own people. I'm stretching the analogy a little here, but I'm sure you can think of another Allied leader that did the same.

And the other allied leader has (deservedly) an awful reputation. Definitely a reputation which is worse than Churchill's.

Mao? Chang Kai Chek? De Gaulle?

Uh huh. Must be why America is constantly terrorized by mass killings committed by Hispanic immigrants or poverty stricken blacks.

I'm sorry but you can't just say "this is the inevitable outcome of marginalization". There are plenty of marginalized groups that choose not to commit mass murder in the name of justice.

Those groups do not have well funded organizations attempting to recruit their easily influenced youths into their ranks to do deeds against their fellow men.

Fair argument.

How many citizens show we permit to be slaughtered in the name of unwavering tolerance?

EDIT: There is preventing integration as a host nation's people, and refusing to integrate as an immigrant. One can only do so much to make a person feel welcome in a country as their new home. You may bring your beliefs, but you'll follow the laws and human rights expectations of your host country. Otherwise, stay at home, war torn or not.

Disclaimer: American who is unwilling to watch first world country progress move backwards due to political correctness.

Are you referring to the western powers which have killed millions of Muslims this last decade?

Western powers? Not so much.

"Al-Qaida Kills Eight Times More Muslims Than Non-Muslims"

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/surprising-study-o...

"ISIS’s Gruesome Muslim Death Toll: The group’s killing of Westerners gets attention. But ISIS has killed far more Muslims, and publicizing that fact would harm it more."

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/10/07/isis-s-grue...

"Well, if spilling Muslim blood is the deciding factor for us Muslims to decide who we should take vengeance against, then al-Ansi and others in al Qaeda should immediately go into hiding. Simply put, al Qaeda has been slaughtering Muslims for years. Islamic clerics, doctors, nurses, women, children, etc. -- you name any type of Muslim, and al Qaeda has butchered them.

In fact, a report released in 2009 by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point documented the people killed by al Qaeda between 2004 and 2008. It found that only 12% of the victims of al Qaeda were Westerners. That suggests that al Qaeda has killed seven times as many Muslims as non-Muslims. And these attacks were just the ones for which al Qaeda had publicly claimed responsibility."

http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/15/opinion/obeidallah-al-qaeda-hy...

It's not whether Al-Qaeda or ISIS kill more Muslims or non-Muslims. Is how many Muslims or Arabs are dead as an effect, direct or indirect, of the Western interventions in the area.

US-backed Iraq against Iran war: some 1/2 million - 1 million deaths.

Desert Storm: 20-30 thousand

Operation Desert Fox (1998): 600 (in 4 days)

Iraq War: 30-40 thousand

Sanctions against Iraq: somewhere between 150 and 500 thousand deaths.

And this is Iraq (and Iran) alone.

Then there are: the war in Libya and its ongoing civil war, the civil war in Iraq, in Syria, the bombs on Gaza, Afghanistan... all the direct work or at least helped or backed by the Western countries.

> In fact, a report released in 2009 by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point documented the people killed by al Qaeda between 2004 and 2008. It found that only 12% of the victims of al Qaeda were Westerners. That suggests that al Qaeda has killed seven times as many Muslims as non-Muslims.

Well, if you assume that all Westerners are non-Muslims and all non-Westerners are Muslims, it suggests that.

Millions have died throughout the Middle East, millions have become refugees, millions have sufferred from the economic consequences all of which is the directly because of Americans needed to avenge the death of 3000 new yorkers.

The Western world lost all moral superiority when they decided torture and genocide were acceptable acta to commit.

The problem is integration, sure, but it's also a mountain of bad foreign policy choices that enable radicalisations.

"We" (US, UK, France, Italy, Germany etc etc) have completely destabilised an entire subcontinent in the last 25 years. "We" keep pretending that these places are far away, far removed from our shining civilisations, but they are not -- they are on our doorstep, they have been our neighbours for millennia. Rome was fighting wars in that region when ships were still powered by human rowers. Until "we" think that a few drones is all we need to solve what is now a humongous clusterfuck (mostly of our own making), "we" will suffer wave after wave of lunatics with a death wish. Unfortunately, none of the current crop of European and American leaders has the faintest clue about what to do about it, except applying short-term measures that look good on tabloids.

What are you responding to? Did someone on HN write that about Muslims?

One of the first HN comments on this was "I bet attacks like these will increase in the years ahead, since France will become 10.9% Muslim by 2050."

Yes. For instance:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10563123

It's sad to see two comments in this thread in that vein already. Being a Muslim or not has nothing to do with it.

A French news channel, BFMTV, reported that an attacker shouted Allahu akbar.

I don't doubt that. But that still does not mean that being a Muslim has anything to do with it. In fact, even if it turns out that all of the attackers were Muslims then that still holds true. How that works I'll leave as an exercise for you to work out but let's just say that the basis of a solution to this whole problem is somewhere in there and that I strongly believe that it starts with a complete lack of generalizations and a focus on people as individuals rather than as groups with shared traits. As long as that step isn't taken we will - very unfortunately - probably see more of this.

I see your point. Not that long ago a white supremacist shot up a black church in the name of America and Christianity but we aren't condemning everyone in those groups. However it would be fair to condemn the small society (ghetto if you will) that allowed this to happen. In the same way I can blame the anti-integration Muslims without blaming Islam itself.

Yes, you got it perfectly.

I don't feel sorry for individuals that take up arms against me. Every individual is responsible for his or her actions.

This goes far beyond "shared traits". They organize against us with a dogmatic reverence for violence known as radical Islam, and your dogmatic tolerance for it allows it to metastasize.

What in what I wrote makes you believe I tolerate radical Islam?

When you say "here come the..," which posts are you talking about?

It seems like your point is that the French are to blame because they didn't properly integrate Muslim immigrants?

This is shockingly bad taste. People are still dying, as we speak, and you decide to rail against a strawman and blame the victims because you are nervous about your political opponents making hay?

You can say the same about every new immigration group that arrived to the usa. Usually they are treated lot like crap at the beggining. As they integrate that marginalization disappears. I don't remember them becoming terrorist.

So no, I don't buy it you blaming the host country, in this case France.

It is imho already absolutely ridiculous that everyone here is already acusing French muslims or refugees.

There is an overwhelming likelihood that this is an attack by radical Islamists. From a purely rational probabilistic perspective, it's not ridiculous at all.

Like you need 10% of the population to be marginalized to carry out a couple of gun attacks. Smugling a dozen people and then arming them isn't exactly rocket science. Any exotic terror group could have done this even if 99% of the French were full-on patriotic right-wingers.

You are right, but acknowledging these posts does nothing to help I am afraid.

I know this is not the best place to nitpick, but I believe you should capitalize the "m" in "Muslim" when used as a noun.

Many Muslim neighborhoods are aggressive and even violent to outsiders. They are often the ones making the conscious effort not to integrate.

There is a lot wrong with this post, but really, now is not the time to victim blame or make political posts like this.