@nagareboshi - Although there is truth in what you say, I think it is hard to have respect for the Islamic culture looking backwards and in comparison to other societies. You could looking forwards, because Islam was better than what it replaced - the law of the pagan desert.
As someone whose Christian ancestors lived in The Caliphate for several hundred years it is hard to see this beautiful tapestry of the best of different cultures through the weeds of devshirme, centuries of slow annihilation, losing your homeland and being a dhimi. From the perspective of the blacks, you also have the 1,300 years of them being castrated and enslaved in huge numbers with very high death in transportation rates.
I am familiar with the arguments that Islam now has somehow been bastardised and radicalised by Western interference. As if there was a period where Islamic countries were better than they are judged through various Western lenses. They weren't. They are by and large at their best judged through Western lenses - today. Things Westerners consider barbaric like being able to kill your wife if she commits adultery and stoning were fairly common place, while they are are largely pushed back to tribal frontiers. It is true the owners of The West have poked the nest, but there is not a strong moral case that these countries were ever better for the most part.
@Alb92 - My position on Islam has completely changed over the past 12 months. I used to see it as the biggest problem in the world. But with the leftist insanity of the past year, it is too obvious that the left and their globalist backers are the number one problem. But that is also because they are the most powerful force in both The West and the world; and the most powerful force has the most power to be abusive. Islam has little power in The West, but only because it lacks the numbers. If my home country became 66% Muslim over night then Islam would be the most powerful force and thus the demographic that can be most abusive. Abuse would not stop, it would just change dramatically.
We currently live in a post-Christian world. The institutions and culture of earth are primarily shaped by the tail-end of Christianity. In comparison to the endless past centuries of overt empire, slavery, feudal-like systems - few would trade the past of their own culture for the fruits of what the tail-end of Christianity has brought. We have absolutely no idea what the world would look like if Islamic power became as potent as The West at its peak. Thus we are unable to judge Islam in the same way The West is judged. But the nature of most Islamic countries today and in the past does not suggest non-Muslims would get a good deal.
I have observed certain aspects of Islam today, including things I was induced to think were terrible, and it is increasingly difficult to see Islam as worse that the modern left, with its destruction of women, insane feminism and turning everything it touches to effluence. That is not to say I agree with Islamic approaches - they are just less bad than atheist modernity. As such the negative energy I used to harbour for Islam has disappeared.
I am aware there are a few different threads of Islam:
African Islam (East, West)
Maghrebi
Gulf/Egypt
Levant
Turkish
Bosnian/Albanian
Turkic
Persian
Afghan/Pakistan
Dharmic-origin (India/Bangladesh)
Indo-Malay
A thread that binds, and runs to greater and lesser extents, is the phenomena of society being controlled by a chain of despotism. In this the method of control is men who do nothing, sitting on top of others who do all the work, showing them complete contempt, being decadent and oblivious to anything but their own wants. In such structures the underlings consciously hate these men, but they are thoroughly demoralised. Resistance is seen as futile.
I have met a lot of Muslim women and I speak to them freely on my thoughts. I've not come across one who does not have serious misgivings of their own men. I posted a few quotes in another thread...
"I hate them" (Arabs) - Turk
"We're not real Muslims" - Bengali
"We're not full Muslims" - Bengali
"That's what you get with Islam" (reference to a stone age society) - Turk
"Don't beat me! Don't hit me!" (reference to expectations of Muslim men) - Bengali & Malay
"Don't make me into a maid!" (ditto) - Bengali & Malay
"Oh my god, I am so embarrassed by our men" (reference to rapey reputation of their men) - Turk
"50% of them are rapists." - Turk (on Syrians)
"I am an agnostic Muslim" (wore a hijab) - Malay
"I am a deist" - Turk
"Maybe you know someone I can marry" (straight off, fishing for a non-Muslim husband) - Bengali
"If he beats me I will cut off his penis" (reference to potential domestic violence expectation from Muslim men) - Malay
"OMG. I hate Arabs mens!" - Moroccan
"I don't want to marry Morroccan mens. I want to marry Europu mens!" (sic) - Moroccan
"I am looking to marry a Westbener" (sic) - Moroccan
Muslim men have a reputation and they got it because of their behaviour. There are many Muslim women who want to marry a European man, but it's highly suppressed by their men. I don't want my daughters to live in a culture like this. I want them to look to their men for protection, not scuttling about for one who is not a despot. Every culture has failed in this regard; and Western culture is failing in a very new way. But no one would look to the Islamic model in this regard.
Which brings me to one of the fundamental issues with Islam - that is its instruction and the reality of male - female relations, when compared to traditional Northern European. One of the biggest issues is the institution of polygamy. Islam is the only civilisation to have existed with any considerable polygamy (as far as I am aware). This has encouraged 1,000+ years of over-breeding of despotic males. While Europe and many other civilisations instituted very strict monogamy. That is 1,000 years of society being pushed towards more Godly relations, rather than the Islamic model, which is overly reliant on the power of despotic men to hold society together. Northern Europe had gender roles without the levels of violence and despotism that is present within Islamic culture. i.e. Europe did not need to use huge amounts of force to stop the demonic potential of wayward women. It was achieved more through a nurturing and vigilant masculinity. Feminist notions of the past in this regard are at best highly selective.
Here is a good video covering this despotic nature:
Final point. I don't have any issue with Islam as a phenomena. It can exist in it's own areas and do whatever it wants there. The problem is the large-scale immigration of Muslims into Europe. This is one-way, i.e. for every 100 Muslims who want to move to Europe, how many are there that want to go the other way? I doubt it's 1. This is not a reciprocal arrangement. See The Chatham House survey that shows 50% of Europeans want a complete end to Islamic immigration to Europe. This is situation, of course, the fault of the corrupt European leadership, and not Muslims.
If immigration continues on the scale it has (ignoring Merkel's 2015 addendum) then by 2050 most Northern European countries are in excess of 20% Muslim. If I remember correctly Sweden will be around 33%. And by the end of the century Muslims will be the largest demographic outside of gender. I see nothing positive about this. The left will destroy themselves in the coming decades, but by that time the new divide will be much more along the lines of the quickly growing Muslim population and the shrinking native/European population.
I don't know what your beliefs are OP, but I assume you'd like to pass on something from the past and establish a path into the future long beyond your own life-time. You don't want to see your heritage - genetic and cultural disappear into a void. This is what informed Europeans are facing. That is what most on the forum want, minus the encroachment of much of recent modernity. But we have forces in our own country that want the destruction of that; and those forces are very cozy with Islam, because Islam is effective in diminishing the native culture.
It's likely we have more in common than the average blue-pill normie, and certainly more than a leftist. But there are two paths Europe has:
1) leftist insanity, followed by a return to tradition
2) leftist insanity, followed be a new cultural rift with a Muslim population that is forever growing
I don't want to pass on a Muslim country to my children. I want to pass on one with all the good of the past, with moderate changes, and where my children look like me. I want it to be a high-trust society based on bonds formed outside of the state over hundreds of years; not endless animosity followed by replacement, with an insane left that waggles immigrants, Muslims and anything else they can get hold of to demolish the native culture.
There is zero Islam offers in achieving this. You have to look very hard to find somewhat harmonious societies with a mixed population; and there are and have been no cohesive ones. That is without extreme violence in smashing multiple peoples into one.
I wish the same to other cultures - that they find their own path, as free as can bee from outside molestation. This is not something that can be achieved by them moving to Europe. It is splitting societies on far more fractures than they would otherwise, when any high-functioning society needs a common culture that is broadly shared and perpetuated by custom and not force. The mass-immigration of people into Europe guarantees the amount of force used by the government will increase. Hence the new controls that are coming.
