[MichaelGG]

You're right that terrorism is irrelevant as far as numbers. I do dislike how terrorism is used as a rallying cry. It's not a big enough thing to draw any conclusions; it's almost entirely an appeal to emotion.

But at what point are the views of a group or religion a problem? Suppose a hundred million members around the world are in favour of death for leaving the group. Is that enough for western countries to say hey, that's not acceptable? To note that there may be a serious incompatibilities in beliefs?

[hackuser]

> Suppose a hundred million members around the world are in favour of death for leaving the group

I'm not sure hypotheticals help here; it's hard to address issues that lack the dimensions of reality.

> Is that enough for western countries to say hey, that's not acceptable? To note that there may be a serious incompatibilities in beliefs?

In another post you said you didn't mean to troll, but I'll say that this question seems like one.

Again, I'm not sure what this question would mean in reality. Each individual has their own beliefs; democracies outlaw certain behavior; I don't see what their religion has to do with it. A person either follows the law or not, regardless of their religion. We can't imprison or punish people based on some prediction of future behavior, and that prediction based purely on religion would be absurd. Maybe we should imprison all poor people, who commit crimes at a higher rate, or all men under the age of 30 - imagine how much lower the crime rate would be then! Also, all politicians.

[MichaelGG]

Well I wanted to keep it more hypothetical to avoid offense - if we can agree in theory then that's enough for me. If we disagree that religion can be sharply criticized in any case then the data doesn't matter. It's also HN so I'm trying to be a bit more cautious; dang has been gracious enough not to kill the thread outright.

Here's Pew Research on the topic[1] I'm going off. According to this, 74% of Egyptian Muslims favour sharia. Of those, 81% support stoning for adultery, and 86% for death for apostasy. Egypt has 80M Muslims, so that's around 50M people in one country alone, that believe in death for leaving the religion.

I'm not saying anyone should be punished. Just that some groups, overall, seem to have many members with views opposite what the country wants. Is this not a fair subject to discuss when talking about integrating hundreds of thousands, or millions of people, into another country?

I am uncomfortable with a blanket ban on a particular religion, because it's not accurate enough. But to pretend there's absolutely no signal at all doesn't seem good either. I'm don't agree we should just assume everyone will put such extreme personal views aside.

Thank you for excusing my poor phrasing.

1: http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religi...

[hackuser]

I don't see where you address my points about dealing with individuals, not groups.

Generation after generation, many immigrants to the U.S. have come from poor, backward countries and brought beliefs that would horrify you (and me). The Americans who had came before had the same reaction to them you do. But don't worry: In a generation or two, the descendants of those new immigrants will say the same thing about the next group.

> to pretend there's absolutely no signal at all doesn't seem good either

Copied from a response to another post of yours:

many other factors may determine the social views, as an example: Is the group concentrated in a certain region? I'll bet Mormons have a stronger belief in democracy and civil rights than (pick some religion concentrated in a non-democratic country). Is the group disproportionately poor or rich? Old or young? Well or poorly educated? Does it have a political structure that lends itself to certain types of behavior (for example, I don't know about religions, but for nations democratic structures generally yield more peaceful behavior)? etc.

Think of it from a scientific basis: Can we control for other factors and isolate behavior down to religion? It seems almost impossible. And what is religion? Scripture? Teachings? The local clergy? Family? Personal beliefs - even those change. Within religions, there is enormous variety in observance and belief; very few if any blindly accept all their religion's teachings. It seems impossible to paint the individuals with a broad brush.

You seem like you understand data; projecting from a survey of Egyptians to the likely behavior of every U.S. immigrant of a certain religion seems like an incredible stretch.

[MichaelGG]

>projecting from a survey of Egyptians to the likely behavior of every U.S. immigrant of a certain religion seems like an incredible stretch

"36% of 16 to 24-year-olds believe if a Muslim converts to another religion they should be punished by death, compared with 19% of over-55s"[1]

"27% of the 1,000 Muslims polled by ComRes said they had some sympathy for the motives behind the [Charlie Hebdo] Paris attacks"[2]

Apostasy is also a crime in rich, well-off countries, like the UAE. Between seeing how these nice countries operate, and these surveys of UK residents, I don't think it's a stretch to think some views might come with large migration. Again, this does not require discrimination against individuals. But it should allow criticism of views/beliefs, and informing the immigration selection process, perhaps via quizzing.

And you know, it doesn't even need to be targeted. Simply knowing that there's a large enough group with such views might be enough to quiz _all_ immigrants on those topics. That way it's non-discriminatory.

But I'll turn it around: under what circumstances would you agree with more filtering, increased quizzing, or any such thing based on a group's beliefs?

1: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6309983.stm

2: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-31293196

[hackuser]

You're ignoring most of my points and responses, and just repeating yourself. I think I'm going to stop here.

[MichaelGG]

Well I guess we're talking past each other. I do appreciate the responses, but I also agree that we're unlikely to make any progress here and this thread is best killed.