[submeta]

Totally disappointing. But coming from Germany, no surprise. German intellectualls and media totally ignore the suffering in Palesine. And fully suppress any solidarity with Palestine. By defunding, by cancelling, by smear campaigns (look up how they--overnight--deligitimised Greta Thunberg), by basically not reporting about what's going on there. And if you are state employed, you can basically bet on it losing your job once you show soliarity with Palestine.

[holgerschurig]

"and media totally ignore the suffering in Palesine"

That is a rather absolute state and easy to falsify. Just 2 days ago I heard a report in "Deutschlandfunk" about how israel settlers killed palestinians (basically: they let their cows go onto the fields the palestinians owned. Which come from their village to chase the cows away. And then a settler in a israel military uniform used his storm rifle to kill one, injure one heavily and one lightly).

We also seen the fields of rubble the israel armed forces produced in the Gaza strip.

What we however can see: the media coverage of the Hamas attack where they killed and abducted so many people was extensive (rightfully so, as it was an abhorrent act). However, the systematic destruction of lifing quarters into huge fields of rubble by the IDR was mostly only mentioned. It got coverage, but not really that extensive.

And yet, in "Tagesschau" and "Zeit" you could all the time hear about the issues the reporters had about actually reporting from there, since Israel controlled most information channels.

What also is a very german thing: any critic on the israel governments doing is sooner or later "conquered" with some "this is antisemitic" claim. However, few are actually antisemitic (yep, there are yew haters here, especially after we've got so many arab immigrants). But there are also many people that can separate between a religio, the very diverse people groups living in Israel and the current israel governement.

[ks1723]

This is utter nonsense. I have seen and read many reports and articles about the suffering in Gaza and the West Bank in the mainstream media! And you won’t loose your job when expressing solidarity.

[inglor_cz]

Europe also has a non-trivial problem with both Islamic terrorism and cultural clash between indigenous Europeans and newly settled Muslims.

That reduces empathy towards other Muslims quite significantly.

[submeta]

Why did muslims have to leave their countries? The "cultural clash" didn't appear out of thin air. Muslims are in Europe in large numbers because of wars that Europe and the West either started, fueled, or failed to prevent.

To name a few conflicts incited by the West: The Nakba in 1948 displaced 750,000 Palestinians and created a refugee population that still hasn't been resolved.

The Soviet-Afghan War displaced 6M+ people.

The US invaded Iraq in 2003, directly creating the vacuum that spawned ISIS.

NATO bombed Libya into a failed state.

The US and Israel spent years destabilizing Syria long before the civil war made it the worst refugee crisis since WWII.

Europe's closest allies armed all sides of Yemen's proxy war.

=> Every single wave of Muslim refugees into Europe traces back to a conflict the West had its hands in. Blaming Muslims for being here while ignoring why they had to leave is not a serious position.

And now Iran, a country with 90+m population. And noone stops US/israel. What do you think will cause the next flow of refugees?

[holgerschurig]

"Muslims are in Europe in large numbers because of wars that Europe and the West either started"

That's an interesting claim. The biggest muslim community in Germany is from Turkey. They came all here because of economic reason.

I'd even go so far that it's their religion that holds muslim states in a terrible economic situation. If you look down at 50% of your population (females), treat them unequal because of some ancient sharia feelings, sometimes even keep them away from good education ... then surely your car doesn't go fast, because the hand brake is still set!

The islamic culture was once renowned for education (e.g. look at Ibn Sina or why we today use "Algorithm" as word, or our numbers). But that's long gone. Even before islamists took over in Iran they seized the oil industry before they had the educated people to run it. In essence the country destabilized itself in the Mossadeqh time. But todays islam ... is more often than not demagocial instead of scientific. They dislike knowledge. The more islamic a country is, the more this is visible. Nothing of this creates good living condition to people, I'd say. And nothing here is in influence from "the west". Or Russia or China.

Now, the civil war in Syria ... I'm quite unsure if that has been instigated mainly because of the west. If anything, I'd say that the east (Russia) bolstered the syrian dictator. That most syrian people hated the torturing regime has IMHO nothing to do with "US and Israel spent years destabilizing Syria".

On your point that the US and USSR inventions only created destabilization with their wars... on this I agree. I can see the liberation of Kuwait from Saddam as a worthy war. But not the others.

"And noone stops US/israel" because no one has love the the Iranian regime, which kills its own people, allows Hamas to rain rockets on Israel (even when I don't like the israel government, the israel people don't deserve these attacks either!). It supports Yemenitic pirates. So it's an awful government, not righteous at all -- not even in a spiritual sense. There's a german saying: how you shout into the forest it will come back.

[inglor_cz]

Most Muslims in Europe are descendants of Gastarbeiters from the 1960s and 1970s.

[submeta]

That's only partially true and it conveniently skips the last 15 years.

Yes, Germany's Turkish community largely traces back to Gastarbeiter recruitment in the 1960s/70s.

But since 2010, Germany alone received 850,000 Muslim migrants, with 86% of refugees coming from war zones like Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Between 2013 and 2019, nearly 70% of all refugees in Germany were Muslim. Across Europe, large Muslim communities in Sweden, the Netherlands, and elsewhere originate from Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and ex-Yugoslavia, not from guest worker programs.

The Gastarbeiter framing erases the millions who came because their countries were destroyed by wars the West participated in.

[inglor_cz]

Approximately 5,5 million Muslims live in Germany. If about 1 million of these came as refugees, that is still a minority within minority.

"The Gastarbeiter framing erases the millions"

Don't try this newspeak at me. I said quite clearly that majority, not all, European Muslims are descendents of Gastarbeiters.

Or OK, lets use your newspeak. When it comes to framing, your framing of the wars in the Middle East is that they are completely attributable to the West. Do the locals have no agency? Didn't they engage in wars prior to rise of Western power? Is the Shi'a-Sunni split a Western plot? Did Islam spread by completely non-violent means?

Muslims are humans, and as such perfectly capable of waging wars on their own.

[alephnerd]

In my opinion, it's not about "Islam" or the "West" - it's about institutional capacity.

In 1990, both Syria and Türkiye were roughly comparable developmentally, with HDIs of 0.563 and 0.598 respectively. Yet by 2000, Türkiye's HDI significantly outpaced Syria's (0.669 versus 0.587) despite Turkiye going through severe political, social, and economic turmoil. And by 2010 (the eve of the Arab Spring), this difference in HDI was significantly exacerbated (0.750 in Turkiye versus 0.661 in Syria). Furthermore, both Turkiye and Syria participated in the Gulf War and didn't participate in the Iraq War.

The key difference was the billions the Assad regime spent on it's occupation of Lebanon from the 1980s to the 2005 Cedar Revolution, backing the PKK to antagonize Turkiye, and embezzling into slush funds the Assad family now uses to finance their life in exile in Moscow and Dubai. Meanwhile, during the same time period, Turkiye spent similar amounts building a welfare state and investing in expanding the social safety net and investing in infrastructure.

And other Muslim majority countries that were comparable to or significantly less developed than either Turkiye or Syria in 1990 such as Algeria (0.593), Indonesia (0.526), and Iran (0.613) were able to either catch up to Syria by 2010 such as Indonesia with an HDI of 0.667 or outpace it such as Algeria with an HDI of 0.721 and Iran with an HDI of 0.756 despite either starting from a lower base and going through an economic collapse in the 1990s (Indonesia), going through a devastating decade long civil war throughout the entirety of the 1990s (Algeria), or rebuilding after a decade long war and sanctions (Iran)

Even IRAQ, despite starting at a significantly lower base in 1990 (HDI of 0.497) was able to roughly catch up to contemporary Syria by 2010 (with an HDI of 0.629) despite the Gulf War in 1991-92, the sanctions regime, the Kurdish insurgency, the Shia insurgency, the Iraq War, and the subsequent Iraqi Civil War.

Fundamentally, the Assad regime mismanaged Syria, and it's lack of institutions outside of the Army and the Baath Party along with existing social fissures due to Hafez al-Assad's brutal repression of Sunnis in the 1970s-80s meant Syria's collapse was a question of "when" and not "if".

If institutions are robust, development is compounded. If institutions are weak, development slows down and fissures in society grow larger and larger leading to a breaking point.

[holgerschurig]

Are 850000 millions muslim refugees are soooooo many more than over 5 million "Gastarbeiter".

I'm not saying those 850.000 millions are negligibe. They increase the scarce housing situation even more. They have antique idealisms (like that woman aren't equal, that woman showing their hairs are whores, that all jews must be bad). So they create a bit of trouble here, like antisemitism or even from time to time an "Ehrenmord".

But still... the millions of turkish Gastarbeiter actually changed german culture, think Döner Kebab. Which we can't say from the 850.000 recent refugees.

[fl0id]

that has nothing to do with it. you can see the same thing in other conflicts. it's just more convenient to look away.