>Those things are part of their culture -- and grassroots -- not stuff that some bad regime imposed upon the masses.

Precisely. Indoctrination literally from the moment you are born is unimaginably hard to undo. Impossible, even.

> Impossible, even.

On an aggregate level, perhaps, but on an individual level, not at all.

I actually teach a German course to a group of recognized refugees, including Syrians and Eritreans.

From what I've seen, the ability to handle the culture shock varies wildly from person to person and is strongly correlated with age.

The younger a person is, the better they adapt to the new situation. IMO the two main reasons for this are that younger people are more flexible intellectually, and that a significant number of them (but not all!) have had more exposure to other cultures due to the Internet.

I also get the impression that frustration and language skill are correlated. The ability to learn a new language is obviously also correlated with age and educational history.

Note that there are outliers in all directions, but these are the trends that I observed.

A comment that makes sense, downvoted

Oh shush. Just because the developed world has its sins doesn't mean the Middle East's cultural practices aren't immoral.

Who said that?

Cmon mate, only the most extreme or those in power actually want Sharia law. That is a real imposition, not to be confused with the cultral misogyny and such prevelant in most middle eastern cultures.

Where have you gotten that impression? Sharia support is large in most muslim countries, with a few exceptions. Some numbers on the %support of Sharia: Indonesia (72%), Pakistan (84%), Bangladesh (82%) [1]. Even in the UK the Sharia is used for certain areas of life.

[1] http://www.pewforum.org/files/2013/04/gsi2-overview-1.png

I guess I'm just wrong. My assumption mostly came from the apparent extreme resistance Isis is facing in actually creating Sharia governance from the local power vacuums. Im also having trouble finding useful information about civilian opinions of existing Sharia regemes.

People answering polls have pretty varying views of what "Sharia" means, since that name tends to be used by any system of law that claims to be based on Islam. If you ask more specific questions, like whether a rigid Saudi Arabian / Wahhabist style interpretation of Sharia should be introduced in their country, support is much lower, though it depends on the country. One example: 60% of Malaysian Muslims believe that their country's current legal system is sharia, so when they say they support sharia, they mean the system Malaysia currently has, rather than a Saudi-Arabia or Taliban or ISIS style system.

>My assumption mostly came from the apparent extreme resistance Isis is facing in actually creating Sharia governance from the local power vacuums.

ISIS is not creating Sharia in the commonly understood sense. It's creating a Nazi-version of Sharia.

[citation needed]

If you really need one, then there are literally THOUSANDS of books and papers about Sharia, both about its theory and historical implementation.

I suggest you get a few (I would also suggest from respectable universities, not polemicists) and compare what they describe to ISIS.

That doesn't mean that people can't change: as recently as 1995, the majority of Americans did not approve of interracial marriages[1].

1. http://www.gallup.com/poll/163697/approve-marriage-blacks-wh...

Sharia is not part of UK law and is not recognised by any UK court.

Sharia courts are recognized as a legally binding arbitration system when used in that way

No, they're not.

https://fullfact.org/law/uks-sharia-courts/

> While feuding couples have to at least consider mediation before going to court, it doesn't override family law. A court has to sign off on any agreement made after divorce for it to be legally binding, and won't do so if the judge thinks it's unfair.

> In 2013, the High Court was asked by an Orthodox Jewish couple to accept the ruling of a Jewish religious court on post-divorce family arrangements. The judge said that while the agreement would carry weight, it would be non-binding—neither party could get around English law by agreeing to abide by the decision of another tribunal.

So they're recognized in the same way as, say, a Jewish court would be, or in fact essentially any body would be?

Reportedly, there are places in UK which don't recognize UK laws.

edit: I mean practically, not formally. It's enough that violations of host country's laws stay unreported and violations of whatever other norms are punished unofficially.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-go_area#Contemporary_no-go_...

Getting people from oppressive cultures who end up living in isolation with others like them to suddenly start exercising their new rights is a hard problem which can't simply be wished out of existence.

'Reportedly' being the operative word. And the reporting in question coming from (to be very charitable) slightly less than reliable sources. I get what you mean, it just doesn't seem to be reflected in actuality, and you have to be really careful here: those that support what you're saying are in large part from the far right of the political spectrum, often the extreme far right (eg Tommy Robinson), and figures they pull out are utterly suspect.

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-go_area#Contemporary_no-go_...

From your link:

     Local police forces denied the claims [of no-
     go areas]

     Katie Hopkins could not name areas of Britain
     that were no-go areas because it would not be
     "legally accurate"

     British Prime Minister David Cameron described
     Steven Emerson as "clearly a complete idiot".

What else would "local police" do? Admit defeat? What the official police statements say, and reality on the streets for those living then can differ completely.

> What else would "local police" do? Admit defeat?

What else would they do if the claims are not true?

Either way, that instance was related to drug dealing, not Sharia law.

[Citation Needed]

This (certainly as far as I'm aware) isn't true. The laws and courts of England and Wales apply in England and Wales, and the relevant local laws and courts (e.g. Scottish laws in Scotland etc) apply elsewhere in the UK.

In terms of Sharia, there is a voluntary arbitration system for civil issues as an alternative to the civil courts, the same as the Beth Din Jewish courts voluntarily used for Jewish civil issues in the UK.

I think he was talking more about places like Luton, where number of times it was reported as a hostile place for britons with a message of 'this is a muslim place now' and unlawful enforcement of sharia laws on common people.

There are many reasons to consider Luton to be hostile to Britons (Ryanair and EasyJet customer service for example), but political Islam isn't one.

These claims reports are all complete nonsense and have been widely reported as such.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/anders-breivik-trial-lu...

Oh, and that too: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2519519/Muslim-Patro...

It's quite funny to say so, especially I've seen a (BBC, I think) news/document about exactly such things happening. Unless of course it was all fake, and they all were actors or it wasnt in Luton...

The daily mail article talks about two people who were arrested and charged for attempting to do this. Hardly evidence of a no go zone for police -- quite the opposite. You're repeating nonsense that's been widely debunked and not providing any sources.

It might have been reported, but it never happened.

Really? http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2519519/Muslim-Patro...

The Daily Mail is your source? You'll need to find something considerably more credible than the nonsense from that rag.