Denmark passes law banning " garments that cover the face"


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I can't find any source that talks about why they're doing it.   Can anyone find one?

I do see that France, Austria, and Belgium already have these laws on the books.  

One might think that there's some sort of reasonable, or at least arguably defensible explanation behind all this, since four first world nations have managed to do it...

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4 minutes ago, NeuroTypical said:

I can't find any source that talks about why they're doing it.   Can anyone find one?

I do see that France, Austria, and Belgium already have these laws on the books.  

One might think that there's some sort of reasonable, or at least arguably defensible explanation behind all this, since four first world nations have managed to do it...

It's because they are afraid of mass Muslim immigration and terrorist attacks. They foolishly think that this will somehow lower the risk of acts of terrorism. 

I'm not naive to the danger Europe is facing right now, but if a government can go after outward displays of religion, you (generic) would be foolish to think yours won't be on the list. 

 

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2 hours ago, NeuroTypical said:

I can't find any source that talks about why they're doing it.   Can anyone find one?

I do see that France, Austria, and Belgium already have these laws on the books.  

One might think that there's some sort of reasonable, or at least arguably defensible explanation behind all this, since four first world nations have managed to do it...

i read a book recently called "Rescued From ISIS" - about a father whose son was recruited by Muslim extremists and eventually convinced to go over to Syria and fight.  The father went over there and convinced the son to come back.  Though the son was never the same - and even served prison time.  Lots of other kids though apparently are getting recruited.  i think the symbols of Islam have become corrupted, in much the same way America's confederate flag has - and they are responding accordingly.  Perhaps the people feeling extreme social unrest need places to go.  In American, that's often the alt-right/white supremacy, and in Europe, maybe it's extreme cults arising out of Islam.

And Europe has had a lot more terrorists attacks than we have since 9/11.  People driving cars into crowds, bombing subways, etc.,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_terrorism_in_Europe_(2014–present)

Despite all that, like @MormonGator - i think this is a pretty terrible idea.  It's like trying to extinguish a fire by pouring gasoline on it.  

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3 minutes ago, lostinwater said:

i read a book recently called "Rescued From ISIS" - about a father whose son was recruited by Muslim extremists and eventually convinced to go over to Syria and fight.  The father went over there and convinced the son to come back.  Though the son was never the same - and even served prison time.  Lots of other kids though apparently are getting recruited.  i think the symbols of Islam have become corrupted, in much the same way America's confederate flag has - and they are responding accordingly.  Perhaps the people feeling extreme social unrest need places to go.  In American, that's often the alt-right/white supremacy, and in Europe, maybe it's extreme cults arising out of Islam.

And Europe has had a lot more terrorists attacks than we have since 9/11.  People driving cars into crowds, bombing subways, etc.,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_terrorism_in_Europe_(2014–present)

Despite all that, like @MormonGator - i think this is a pretty terrible idea.  It's like trying to extinguish a fire by pouring gasoline on it.  

Have you read "While Europe Slept" by Bruce Bawer? Written by an out gay man who fled the USA to get away from "fundamentalist Christians" (his words, not mine). He then went to Europe and was shocked and appalled by the Islamic influence on their generally much more liberal values. Amazing book. 

 

 

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5 minutes ago, MormonGator said:

Have you read "While Europe Slept" by Bruce Bawer? Written by an out gay man who fled the USA to get away from "fundamentalist Christians" (his words, not mine). He then went to Europe and was shocked and appalled by the Islamic influence on their generally much more liberal values. Amazing book. 

  

 

Thanks.  Haven't.  Looks interesting.  i would, but it isn't in audio :(   Will try and find a summary though.  

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Considering the actual reasoning for this, I highly doubt a ban on endownment clothing would work. Despite the fact that Pennsylvania and Nebraska ban public school teachers from wearing religious clothing on the job, I highly doubt this has ever been used to restrict endowed Mormons from being teachers there. 

 

However I think both those laws and this one are clear violations of religious freedom. The fact that the Pennsylvania and Nebraska laws have never been declared unconstitutional, although they have existed for 90 years, were passed to make sure Catholic nuns could not teach in public schools (back then all nuns worehabits, not as much so now), and ban Sikhs and Muslim women from being teachers at present, is itself disturbing. The fact that the ACLU advocates for such laws shows to what extend it is an enemy of individual freedom.

 

I work as a substitute teacher,. In some of the schools I work at in metro-Detroit I can have a class where all the students are girls (these are charter (public) schools that have sex specific classes), in one school I subbed at by my count of the probably 150 girls in that middle school only one didnt wear hijab, and about 20% wore burkhas. Whatever one thinks of Brukhas you should realize banning them is a huge violation of religious freedom. It is also probably the worst move for those who feel they are a step too far in covering a person. The best way to make someone cling to an item of clothing is to pass laws against it.

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1 minute ago, John_Pack_Lambert said:

Considering the actual reasoning for this, I highly doubt a ban on endownment clothing would work

My fear is that a European nation will punish Christianity/Mormonism because of our views on homosexuality and abortion. I can easily see it happening. 

 

2 minutes ago, John_Pack_Lambert said:

However I think both those laws and this one are clear violations of religious freedom.

Agree 

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If the concern is with terrorist attacks, laws like this are the worst possible response. Same with laws banning government officials from wearing hijab on the job such as France passed, banning hijab in school and on and on. Laws like this do not lessen the behavior, they increase it. They also, but declaring societal war on such behaviors, make those who engage in them feel more isolated from the larger community, and fuel the very feelings that lead to terrorism. 

 

To be fair, much of what leads to violent terrorist acts is related to narratives of greivance, some of which are false. Some of the cartoons used to spur the mass hate of Denmark when a newspaper there published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad were not in the original set of cartoons. These were the most disrespectufl and vicious, while the real ones were more true political commentary. The cartoon that portrayed Muhammad as a pig was created by a Muslim Imam deliberately to increase the level of anger and invective spurred by the incident.

 

In a similar vain the craven abandonment of religious freedom and freedom of speech by US government officials to attack the pastor of a small independent Pentecostal Church who dared to burn the Qu'ran did nothing to stop the terrorist attacks half a world away and in many ways fueled them by creating a false sense that the government had any control over private action and by fueling the belief that US officials were weak willed and would respond to violence.

 

To properly talk about the violent actions by Muslims since about 1980 on, we need to speak of them as what they are, hate crimes. Some are hate crimes against political oppoents. Some are hate crimes to advance a cause. Some, especially in France, are hate crimes aimed at the people the Muslims hate the most, Jews.The same is true of many of the hate crimes that have happened in Sweden.

 

Lastly, it should be kept in mind that most of the rhetoric about anti-Muslim crime is just plain false. In southern California there was a killing about 5 years ago that was initially claimed to be motivated by the woman wearing hijab. Eventually that story unraveled and the anti-hijab actions were shown to be a cover lie, invented by the husband, who killed his wife to stop him leaving her. This is not the only such lie crime, over and over agin for the last 40 years there have been hoax racist incidents. Even more disturbing is the coverage of these incidents by the anti-hate lobby, such as the SPLC, usually avoids admitting how many are hoaxes.

 

This leads to the last lie of the SPLC. They will call "hate groups", individual (odd in its own right) former Muslims who speak out against the negative aspects of Muslims culture. Yet they do not include in their hate group list ISIS and other groups that actively seek to kill people. If the SPLC was consistent it would call the LDS Church a hate group because we excommunicate people who enter same-sex marriage and other similar policies. However SPLC is not yet bold enough in their lies, and will only call hate groups marginal religious sects. Thus they call the Apostolic United Brethren, a splinter polygamous sect that claims  to follow the teachings of Joseph Smith a hate group. Their evidence, a report by an ex-AUB member of arguably racist remarks made in a religious class of the AUB sometime in the 1980s. I can however site explicit statments agianst inter-racial marriage made by a BYU religion professor in the summer of 2002. Does that make the Church racist? To be fair that professor didnt explain how he reconciled his statments with Spencer W. Kimball's 1956 statement "interracial marriage is no sin" and I was not bold enough then to confront such ill informed statements. With one of the members of the quorum of the 12 having a wife of a different race, such statements would seem to have even less credence now than they did in 2002. Although the first general authority who had a wife of a different race was possibly Jacob de Jager called I believe in the 1970s. 

 

Due to race being an inprecisely defined social construct, I can not gaurantee that was the earliest case of such. In the 1850s Brigham Young openly advocated to missionaries sent to Native Americans that they should take Native American wives. Spencer W. Kimball did in 1956 duiscourage inter-racial marriage while declaring it "no sin", but that was purely from a sociological standpoint, and mainly in the context of white men raised in suburban American marrying Native American women raised on the reservation. Although I had a classmate at BYU whose stake president father had done exactly what President Kimball discouraged. 

 

Being a white man who grew up in the Detroit suburbs, my high school graduatng class of over 300 had one African-American, and I would deal with more African Americans at stake youth events than at high school. Despite the fact that I would regularly dance with the one female African-American senior in the whole stake at stake youth dances, it was my supposedly liberaly high school councilor who once discoursed to me on the ills of inter-racial marriage, not any of my Church leaders. This may or may not have been a reaction to my having written two stories for my creative writing class involving a wite man marrying a black woman. My high school was not overwhelmingly white by any measure, we had lots of Indians (from India, or children or immigrants), Pakistanis, Filipinos, Chinese, Vietnamese and Korean students. We had a handful of Hispanic students, most with one non-Hispanic parent. We also had a huge number of Chaldeans and Arabs who no one but the census thinks is white. Our Albanians and Macedonians did not self-identify as white, and even some of our descendants of immigrants from Greece and Italy didnt self identify as white, but that was a bit more borderline. Back to my stories of inter-racial marriage, One of them involved our main protagonists being students at BYU in June 1978. Anyway next month I marry in the Detroit Michigan Temple an African-American woman who grew up in (and still resides in) Detroit. She got a GED, but if she had graduated high school it would have been in a virtually all black class with a few Hmong students, whose families have all since fled to the suburbs, although dwarfed by black flight to the suburbs in the last 25 years. Me and my fiancee clearly come from different cultures, a little less because she has been a Church member since 14, although her activity rates have not always been high, she was not endowed until she was 36 or so. It also helps that I have taught mainly in Detroit for the last 5 years, mostly at schools where 95% or more of the students were at least partially African-American. I think the stat at the last school I taught at was 100% of the students were African-American. Even at BYU I had more blackclassmates than in high school. I finished my undergrad at Wayne State, with its disturbing racial polarization but tried to overcome it. Wayne State is a university in the heart of Detroit. Lower level undergrad classes had lots of African-Americans, but many were not ready for university level work and dropped out. I had some upper level classes with no Afircan-Americans in them. This may also be because African-Americans were more focused on majors that clearly lead to jobs, and so chose nursing, mortuary science and engineering over history, my major. Most history classes had some African-Americans, but they were never close to a majority, which was the case for some general ed classes I took. I tried my hardest to bridge the campus race divisions, but didnt feel I made much progress. 

 

There are exampkles that call for even more thought. Such as Kirstie Stanger-Weyland who is one of the authors of an article in the June 2018 Ensign. She is phenotypically black, but was raised by her adopted white parents, has a white husband, and if I read between the lines right is a BYU student and for sure a returned missionary. From most cultural perspectives she probably has more in common with her white husband not just than most African-American males, but even than most African-American male members of the LDS Church.

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36 minutes ago, MormonGator said:

My fear is that a European nation will punish Christianity/Mormonism because of our views on homosexuality and abortion. I can easily see it happening. 

 

Agree 

I have to admit I can see a European nation wanting to punish the LDS Church for our vies on homosexuality. However since our views are virtually the same as the Catholic Church at present, this is much more a threat in Scandanavia than any where else in Europe. In fact it may be a big threat in Scandinavia and the Netherlands. 

 

That said, for a lot of reasons, I doubt this punishment would be in the form of trying to ban activities by individual members. It much more likely would involve revoking tax exempt status (something MormonLeaks and their attempts to quantify the investment holdings of the LDS Church and Karcher's attempt to claim the Church engages in tax evasion is clearly aimed at). Another possiblity would be attempting to stop missionary visas. This is why it is key that the EU become missionary self-sufficient.

 

The radical, try to portray church leaders as dishonest, group will stop at nothing though. I once read something where someone was trying to portray the directive to mission presidents that they not claim the residence they are provided as income for tax purposes as something the IRS would object to. This is the most uninformed attack on the integrity of LDS Church leaders I have ever seen. The home of a mission president clearly is a parsonage, not even a parsonage allowance. The ownership of the home is retained by the Church, so there is no way at all it could come under tax provisions. Even if the parsonage allowance is declared unconstitutional, which would be a clear travesty of justice, the mission home is an assest of the Church, owned by the Church, and could never be taxed to the mission president. Add to this that the mission home is clearly used for the benefit of the mission. Generally the first and last meal of a missionary in the mission is held at that home. In many cases missionaries will stay a night or two at the beginning and end of their mission. What next, will we tax full-time missionaries for their mission cars? That would make as much sense.

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https://www.politico.eu/article/denmark-burka-bans-in-public/The Danish government has proposed a ban on Islamic full-face coverings in public spaces. “It is incompatible with the values in Danish society and disrespectful to the community to keep one’s face hidden when meeting each other in public spaces,” said the justice minister, Søren Pape Poulsen.

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I think that people fear a covered face. I used to go for walks in Ottawa in winter. In the evenings, it was paralytically cold. I would wear two or three polypropylene masks. One day a neighbor recognized my coat, called out and tapped my shoulder, I turned round forgetting about the masks. I really frightened her. 

Should we ban face coverings? Well, it is a lot easier to commit crimes with covered faces. Covered faces frighten people.

i don’t have the same view of freedom as do some others. I love the idea of cameras monitoring streets. 

An interesting debate.

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11 hours ago, Sunday21 said:

https://www.politico.eu/article/denmark-burka-bans-in-public/The Danish government has proposed a ban on Islamic full-face coverings in public spaces. “It is incompatible with the values in Danish society and disrespectful to the community to keep one’s face hidden when meeting each other in public spaces,” said the justice minister, Søren Pape Poulsen.

I appreciate the link and the quote, but I'm not buying Mr. Poulsen's justification.  This doesn't pass the smell test - it is what he spun for the cameras.  I'm still looking for a source where the people who are enacting these laws in country after country, give a cogent justification.  

(Yes, I disbelieve much of what any politician says on camera, just out of habit.)

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8 minutes ago, NeuroTypical said:

I appreciate the link and the quote, but I'm not buying Mr. Poulsen's justification.  This doesn't pass the smell test - it is what he spun for the cameras.  I'm still looking for a source where the people who are enacting these laws in country after country, give a cogent justification.  

(Yes, I disbelieve much of what any politician says on camera, just out of habit.)

Yes you may be right. The Danes May be enacting this policy to suggest that their country is not Muslim friendly.

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11 hours ago, Sunday21 said:

https://www.politico.eu/article/denmark-burka-bans-in-public/The Danish government has proposed a ban on Islamic full-face coverings in public spaces. “It is incompatible with the values in Danish society and disrespectful to the community to keep one’s face hidden when meeting each other in public spaces,” said the justice minister, Søren Pape Poulsen.

 Islam is incapable with Danish values. They were among the first countries to legalize gay marriage and are notoriously socially liberal. Which is fine with me, but probably not fine with more orthodox Mormonism or Islam. 

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12 minutes ago, Sunday21 said:

Yes you may be right. The Danes May be enacting this policy to suggest that their country is not Muslim friendly.

Note... that these rash of Muslim unfriendly laws comes right after an influx of immigration/refugees.  They want to keep their country theirs...  When the USA does such... everyone calls us racist 

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2 minutes ago, estradling75 said:

Note... that these rash of Muslim unfriendly laws comes right after an influx of immigration/refugees.  They want to keep their country theirs...  When the USA does such... everyone calls us racist 

They call the Danes bigoted too when these law pass. Same with the French. 

It's geared to Islam, but it's anti all religion in the end. 

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36 minutes ago, MormonGator said:

They call the Danes bigoted too when these law pass. Same with the French. 

It's geared to Islam, but it's anti all religion in the end. 

Indeed...  that is typical leftist progressives for you...  Instead of trying to understand and tolerate someone who is thinking and acting different from them they call them names and label them "EVIL"

While I do not like the anti religion nature of the laws, the attacks against it shows how inherently contradictory their stances are. 

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1 hour ago, Sunday21 said:

Yes you may be right. The Danes May be enacting this policy to suggest that their country is not Muslim friendly.

The explanation that makes the most sense to me, is these countries (remember, it's not just Denmark, it's also France, Austria, and Belgium, with others thinking about it), are trying to send a message to potential immigrants.   It's not that they're anti-muslim, it's that they want to reduce the influx.  So they pass a big loud law that makes international news, and then quietly assure police and the public that they'll go light on enforcement.

That's just my best guess about what's happening.  It's not the sort of thing you'd find in a news story.  Not the sort of thing a politician would admit openly.

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1 hour ago, estradling75 said:

Indeed...  that is typical leftist progressives for you...  Instead of trying to understand and tolerate someone who is thinking and acting different from them they call them names and label them "EVIL"

While I do not like the anti religion nature of the laws, the attacks against it shows how inherently contradictory their stances are. 

Shockingly @estradling75....I agree with you. No one is more intolerant and angry than someone who claims to be tolerant and accepting.Hence why leftists will scream at a Christian couple denying to bake cakes for a gay couple  but if a Muslim bakery choose not to....crickets. 

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2 hours ago, MormonGator said:

It's geared to Islam, but it's anti all religion in the end. 

No it's not anti-religion. It is specifically targeted against Muslims.  No other religion covers their face as such.  

I understand why they are doing it.  In principle I disagree with laws that regulate behavior as such like this, however it is clearly a reaction over things which they have little to no control.

They CAN'T control their own immigration-if they could then laws like this wouldn't exist b/c they would severely control immigration from predominately Muslim countries.  As soon as someone enters the EU-by law (since they abolished passport controls), the person has free access to every single country in the EU.  This is a clear law that is specifically designed to say to Muslim immigrants, WE DON'T WANT YOU HERE.

They are literally trying to do everything they can to protect their own culture and to avoid being overrun by foreign nations.  It really is simple demographics:

http://www.pewforum.org/2017/11/29/europes-growing-muslim-population/

I would say the estimates are under b/c the percentage of traditional european blood that are having kids is declining quite dramatically while the Muslim population tends to have lots and lots of kids.  Denmark which has 5.5% of the population Muslim is CLEARLY seeing the massive problems Muslims are causing in the other UE countries and doesn't want any part of it.

The US has maybe 1% of the population Muslim so the left and people in general can be very egalitarian and say oh it's just nice and fine let them all in.  But that doesn't fly when you have a country like Denmark that has 4x the percentage of Muslims in their country. Right now their is ~2.5 million in the US, what would the US look like with ~10 million.  It looks small, but man it factors into EVERYTHING.  Look at France with 8.8% Muslims.

The US and the EU is extremely secular, but Muslims in general are not-they are an extremely vibrant faith-i.e. they are in general "true" believers.  What do you think happens when you have a clash of cultures as such-will they assimilate and integrate into the larger EU culture-nope, not at all.  The whole political landscape changes b/c now you have people with an entirely different set of beliefs who will be voting and electing politicians. 

There are literally no-go zones in the EU where police don't go to enforce the law in Muslim areas. 

For example, it is well documented that rape of women and young boys is very common in countries like Afghanistan and in much of the Middle East-it is fool-hardy to believe those individuals can immigrate to the West and become "Westernized".

What Denmark is doing is simply called survival.

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3 minutes ago, dellme said:

No it's not anti-religion. It is specifically targeted against Muslims.  No other religion covers their face as such.  

I understand why they are doing it.  In principle I disagree with laws that regulate behavior as such like this, however it is clearly a reaction over things which they have little to no control.

They CAN'T control their own immigration-if they could then laws like this wouldn't exist b/c they would severely control immigration from predominately Muslim countries.  As soon as someone enters the EU-by law (since they abolished passport controls), the person has free access to every single country in the EU.  This is a clear law that is specifically designed to say to Muslim immigrants, WE DON'T WANT YOU HERE.

They are literally trying to do everything they can to protect their own culture and to avoid being overrun by foreign nations.  It really is simple demographics:

http://www.pewforum.org/2017/11/29/europes-growing-muslim-population/

I would say the estimates are under b/c the percentage of traditional european blood that are having kids is declining quite dramatically while the Muslim population tends to have lots and lots of kids.  Denmark which has 5.5% of the population Muslim is CLEARLY seeing the massive problems Muslims are causing in the other UE countries and doesn't want any part of it.

The US has maybe 1% of the population Muslim so the left and people in general can be very egalitarian and say oh it's just nice and fine let them all in.  But that doesn't fly when you have a country like Denmark that has 4x the percentage of Muslims in their country. Right now their is ~2.5 million in the US, what would the US look like with ~10 million.  It looks small, but man it factors into EVERYTHING.  Look at France with 8.8% Muslims.

The US and the EU is extremely secular, but Muslims in general are not-they are an extremely vibrant faith-i.e. they are in general "true" believers.  What do you think happens when you have a clash of cultures as such-will they assimilate and integrate into the larger EU culture-nope, not at all.  The whole political landscape changes b/c now you have people with an entirely different set of beliefs who will be voting and electing politicians. 

There are literally no-go zones in the EU where police don't go to enforce the law in Muslim areas. 

For example, it is well documented that rape of women and young boys is very common in countries like Afghanistan and in much of the Middle East-it is fool-hardy to believe those individuals can immigrate to the West and become "Westernized".

What Denmark is doing is simply called survival.

 I mentioned it before-I'm not naive to the Islamic immigration to Denmark and Europe in general. Like  I mentioned,  I've read several books about it.  

Yes, I know that Mohammed is the most popular name in the UK, and probably in several other European countries. 

This law is geared towards Islam, but it raises all sorts of uncomfortable questions about freedom of religion. 

The other awkward thing to think about is why Denmark is anti Islam. It's because Islam is contradictory to the social values that 70% of residents in Denmark believe. What's awkward about that? Because Mormonism is also contradictory to the social values that 70% of residents in Denmark believe. So it starts with Islam, than it makes it easier and easier to make other governmental rules about other religions. 

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1 hour ago, NeuroTypical said:

It's not that they're anti-muslim.

I don't know why it has become so taboo to be against Muslims. It seems rather quite silly to me.  History is the story of civilizations who rise and fall. A civilization is comprised of a group of individuals who have a basic common set of beliefs, structures and ethics on how to operate in life.  I don't want to live in a Muslim country, I want to live in a predominately Christian country, I don't want to live in a Muslim neighborhood-I want to live in a predominately Christian neighborhood-why b/c there is a shared set of ethos that accompanies that, I automatically know (or should know) where the other person stands on a lot of basic issues.

I honestly fall to understand why this is so bad-I don't blame the Muslim in the least bit for wanting to live in a place that is predominately Muslim-it is the history of the world, civilizations and cultures that don't protect their own cultures eventually fade away into the dust.

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