I don’t trust any religion and I certainly don’t want anyone who thinks their religious laws outweigh the ones in existence.

I grew up in a Muslim country (a nice one, btw). They were not trusting most neighboring Muslim countries and the people from those countries. They know what they know and act accordingly.

In my native country, people did not like Gypsies (that was quite a long time ago, now it's no longer the case). This is because of the quantity of negative experiences with them, not because they are of a certain race or religion. The situation changed a lot when the number of negative incidents decreased, which confirms that the criminality is the factor, not something else.

Why do we think religion is such a sacred cow (no pun intended)? Why is criticizing a religion any different from criticizing let say, capitalism and billionaires?

Basically we decided to grandfather in ideas that don't really have a place in a modern liberal society.

With that said, I have no issues with reformed muslims that keep the community/"civilized" cultural aspects of Islam, but yes, of course i'm suspicious of anyone who thinks that they are ordered by god to something (and that's true to all religions)

Because freedom of religious persecution is enshrined in a large number of core laws simply because we have already seen what can happen if you don't have that kind of provision.

Freedom of religion has nothing to do with criminality of some people that may also have that religion, but where the religion is not the correlation, but a coincidence.

And freedom of religion does not impact the freedom of opinion, so one can criticize any religion without affecting the freedom of religion.

GP asked a question: that was an answer to that question. That there are other factors at play is pretty obvious but if you want to target one religion you will have to target all religions. And that's not going to happen. Hopefully.

Freedom of religion doesn't mean we:

1. Can't question religious values, the religions themselves.

2. Have to welcome people with extreme religious ideas that put religion over the ideas of a liberal democracy.

Of course you can. But if you know a little bit about how religion works then you will realize that it is strongly coupled to the identity of the person. Someone isn't a carpenter or a baker in the same way that they are Hindu, Muslim, Christian or Jew. They can't just turn off that chunk of their identity while you question their religious values or their religion, they will interpret it as an attack on them. And that's half the problem.

The other half is that any religion - and therefore most of its adherents - are conservative and static. They would like things to stay the way they are. Obviously this is at extreme odds with emigrating from one place into another. People not only bring their culture with them but also some of their luggage. But the locals would do well to realize that they too are usually not exactly paragons of virtue and that there are plenty of things where they would feel personally offended if an outsider pointed out to them that they were maybe not all that level headed about something.

For instance: in NL we have this crazy confrontation about St. Nicholas, which arguably is a racist display in the guise of a childrens festival. Or maybe it really is just a childrens festival. Everybody has an opinion and it is always either the one or the other but never anything with some nuance. So fights break out and everybody feels like they are the ones in the right.

That's what identity will do for you.

If you want to question religious values and religions themselves then you're going to have to start by planning something that will take decades. It took some small parts of 'the West' about 100 years to go from majority strongly Catholic or other Christian denominations to being more accepting of atheists and that in turn led to those places eventually losing a lot of religion. And that's with a religion that went through the enlightenment, which isn't the case for most religions practiced outside of Europe, and only then because the main centers for religion in Europe all were subject to this (and to the horrors that came before).

So in a way all this feels like a step back. But fixing it will take at least 100 years and probably more. Without an actual solution in the form of education, massive funding and housing and healthcare improved at a scale that no country in the West could afford based on their present day budget it may well never be solved at all.

As for whether or not I'd be suspicious of a person who belongs to a cult, my grandmother belonged to the cult of Catholicism, and we didn't see eye to eye on a great many subjects. But I didn't have a problem with it, she was my grandmother. Neighbors are practicing Muslims, I don't have any problem with that, it's their heads and their houses.

And then we come to your 2.

If you move to a country I think your first and foremost pledge should be that you are not going to put your past to work to recreate the place that you fled from in the place that you've arrived at. But people are hardly aware that this is what they are doing, they are so immersed in this that it is invisible to them. And that's a serious problem that I think will only be solved in many generations, and possibly never.

You can probably sense that I don't have a high regard for religion, not because I don't think people should not be able to believe whatever they want to believe but because it brings so much misery. I've seen plenty of this up close to know that most of the people that do this do it from the conviction that they - and not you or I - are in the right. And that's a very difficult thing to repair because then we're back at identity again.

> If you want to question religious values and religions themselves then you're going to have to start by planning something that will take decades

Exactly why we need to start that process now.

I'm not saying we should treat all immigrants as terrorists or anything, I'm just saying that we should recognize that a large influx of people who don't share Western values is a danger to western society and we need to think how to handle it instead of just saying "be inclusive" and hoping that nothing bad happens.

And if we want a (silly) tech analogy, this isn't that different from tech companies who grow too quickly and perhaps lose their core values in the way. You have to have a hiring strategy if you don't want that to happen.

You'll need an ironclad definition of what Western values are and what a western society is and then you'll have to first go after everything that is homegrown that is also against those values. Ironically you'll find a ton of domestic parties that would like nothing better than to destroy their own select set of those.

And then there is the little problem that Western values and society are still so young that they haven't fully formed yet. And to an American it means something completely different than to a Canadian, a Briton, a West European and an Eastern European. And then there is the Nordics, the Baltics and so on. It will have to be a real work of art to make that workable.

To continue the hiring analogy it's better to have a few false negatives in order to avoid a false positive.

Not saying it's straightforward or anything, just that we probably need to put more effort into carving out an immigration policy as well as refining the "onboarding" process of immigrants.

Yes, absolutely but that costs money and nobody is willing to foot the bill. Also in the past such programs have been a feeding frenzy for the people on the supply side but with very little tangible effect.

I suspect that isn't going to happen.

It's interesting though how racism establishes itself by being anything but itself. And then, afterwards everybody wonders how it could have happened again.

Let me take a stab at this in a way that it is somewhat balanced: I've grown up in Amsterdam, born in a time when there were hardly any immigrants and then wave after wave of them came by. What keeps me grounded is that I've been an immigrant myself. First to Poland, then to Canada, then to Romania and with long stretches in other countries in between. But I'm not brown and I'm not religious so I don't come across as strange or off-putting. I dress like everybody else does, I try to speak the language and adapt to whatever culture I join because I don't want to stand out and I'd rather be treated like a native.

But a person-of-colour immigrating into a country that is nominally 'white' doesn't really have that option. From a mile away the 'locals' can tell that person is different in some way. And if they are religious in a different way that counts much heavier against them than my atheism ever will simply because they're not aware of it (assuming they are religious themselves).

Depending on how the person responds to it this can have all kinds of effects, but the main response is the one the locals have to the non-white, possibly religious in a different way than they are foreigner. They are not going to openly tell this person they're not welcome and that they are afraid of them and don't trust them (see your question above). But what they will do is:

- disadvantage that person and their children

- talk about them in a negative way behind their backs

- blame them for everything that is wrong with their society (housing, welfare, whatever)

- harass them, but only when nobody is looking

And so mutual resentment builds. The kids find that they and their parents are not being treated fair, still want to live the good life and before you know it you have another criminal. Or not, but then there is someone who feels that the whole of society is out to get them.

This is why the West and immigration have not worked out well so far: equal chances don't exist and the locals tend to believe that immigrants are there to do the dirty work and be kept in their place. Amazingly one of the right-wing parties in NL now has a woman and an immigrant (Turkish/Kurdish) as the party leader. To the great abhorrence of many former VVD voters, who are now likely going to move to the PVV, the even more rightwing anti-immigrant party. NL may well have its Trump moment soon.

Yep, people causing the same behavior with their prejudices that they are prejudiced against. It would be funny, if it wasn't a problem.

Even being a skilled high earning immigrant, the ones that are sought after, you will get some weird interactions. It's weird being called "one of the good ones" by a guy at a bar who was ranting about immigrants, but even interacting with nice intending people can get uncomfortable, like a native waiter telling me that once I learn the language, I will be able to get a nice paying job.

So far, things are still fine for me, I'm isolated about most of the problems, and I still find what I was looking for (a more quiet society, a less car centric infrastructure, different culture); but if the far right keeps rising, I will certainly think twice about staying. Those people will act on their prejudices, won't be able to asses if I really cause problems or not.

If you're in NL feel free to drop me an email and I'll be happy to meet.

What does democracy have to do with it? Murders happen under all political structures?

But to answer your question? Indonesia?

Can you show me a christian one? A liberal democracy without horrors of genocide and colonialism in its past? If we're meant to respect europeans despite their atrocities you must return the favor.

Technically, there’s no “Christian country” in this era because the religion adheres to separation of church and state, unlike Islam where we can find many theocracies.

But, to call a list of successful democracies where the majority identify as Christians of some sort and without colonialism in its past;

Norway

Switzerland

Denmark

Liechtenstein

Oh, Sweden too.

And it’s funny why you specifically mentioned without past colonialism and genocide, because many Muslim countries score high in this sector too.

Sweden had colonies in north America and the Caribbean. Denmark still controls Greenland. Sweden and Norway are both colonizers in the US way, expanding boarders by stealing land from the indigenous people (Sami) etc

Unlike the Islamic countries that live eternally peacefully with their neighbors I guess..not slaughtering each other like barbarians.