PoorOldPo

This is a very complicated subject. Europe is definitely in a difficult time at the moment. Like most things, the truth is not on the right or left, but somewhere in the middle. There is so much propaganda floating around right now, sometimes it is difficult to identify critically.

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Lisnaholic

Great to see a post from PoorOldPo again - and what a relief to see such a balanced statement about Islam in Europe!

There have been Muslims in Europe for something like one and a half thousand years, so in addition to the complex moral issues and statistics of the situation today, there is a long, long back story too. Being unsure or ambivalent about your position is a very sane response imo, although to judge from the posts here, most people have formed an adamant opinion before joining the thread. Perhaps that's why this "debate" has degenerated into slinging mud and statistics at each other.

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rostasi

Yes, its history is complex, but what some people are emotionally involved in here is the immediacy of now - the carefully chosen aspects of terrorist attacks that instill an immediate response to shout "ISLAAAAM!!!" and then when it is overwhelmingly shown that religion was not the cause or that the perpetrator wasn't even a Muslim, the dichotomy apparently doesn't matter when their position is one born of rage and emotional instability sometimes coupled with an outside social influence that's appallingly ignorant or manipulative - especially when its prey is the under-developed prefrontal cortex of a young person. You are right tho that statistics can't penetrate a mind so mired in such an emotional quagmire. For example, if you tell them that in 2013, there were 152 terror attacks in Europe and that only two of them were “religiously motivated,” while 84 were predicated upon ethno-nationalist or separatist beliefs, the comeback (as we've seen here) is along the lines of "Hey, how about after 2013!" Even if you were lucky enough to have someone put together a lock-tight investigation that included 2016 (which would be a challenge), they would still state that you're still 4 months short - 'cause, you know, that's when terrorism really picked up - or some such nonsense. Take a flat-earther in a boat around the Earth and, at best, you'll convince him that the Earth is cylindrical. It's easy to give up.