Quote:As was already posted in this thread, the number of murderous acts committed in the name of Islam far exceed other religions. My experience with the Bible when I was young was that although church bored me to death I never remember any scripture being quoted that advocated violence or murder. I haven't looked at a Bible in a long time as an Agnostic. If the Bible is innately more violent then I guess we'll just have to chalk it up to the West being innately more civilized as a people and collectively more mature than our generally more prone to violence Muslim cousins. There's a correlation here regardless of whether some choose to ignore it or not. Do we not do anything with that knowledge?

 

Well, my initial thought is to wonder whether you are including war in your definition of violence. This is not to say that war is always wrong, but it is usually violent. Also, do you consider Germany, Russia, Japan, Western? Not sure, but Stalin alone might outrank all Muslim killers combined in the last 100 years. 



My point on assimilation is best illustrated in a hypothetical example of the U.S. deciding to allow 50 million immigrants over the next 5 years from either Muslim or non-Muslim population samples but not both. Logistics aside, which one would present the smallest threat to this country as it currently stands and which would present the greatest threat and would the threats each one posed be significant in their differences? I think the answers to those questions are obvious and I think it's ok to identify that and choose what's in this country's current citizens' best interest. This is an extreme hypothetical I know, but I use it to illustrate the point that immigration isn't necessarily and automatically a good thing. There are immigration policies that could be used to, in essence, conquer a nation.

 

Well, I am not sure, but I think that the total number of deaths caused by Muslim immigrants is greater than other immigrants. I draw this sketchy conclusion from the list
here
 .  I think one of the killers in the 2015 California killings was an immigrant. I am not aware of any of the others on the list being immigrants of any kind. So I guess it is Muslim immigrants 1, Non-Muslim immigrants 0. How you get conquering a nation from that I have absolutely no idea. Allow me to put it this way - If there were 70,000 cases such as San Bernardino, the number of civilians killed would not equal the number of civilians the U.S. has killed in Iraq since 2000. Yet Iraq is still around. Dysfunctional yes, but still there.



Regarding your Ginger example, it's apples to oranges, no pun intended. Perhaps my use of the word trait was incorrect or misleading, but equating a belief to a physical characteristic for comparison purposes doesn't hold water in this instance. One is a choice the other is not. I also get how difficult it would be to prove that someone is a Muslim that didn't admit to it upon entry especially one that means to do harm once inside our borders. I'd like us to be more selective on who is allowed in but maybe that's not feasible in the generalized way I'm describing it. I'd prefer policies that enable people that want to come here and be a part of what has been built over generations and contribute to that rather than enabling those who want to turn us into their homeland or their father's homeland. I'm not one that believes there isn't an answer to this problem, but it's clear there is a problem in the Muslim community.

 

From what I understand, the San Bernardino example is a case where an immigrant was granted residency based upon marriage. I also believe they were planning the attack prior to the engagement. I am wondering, though, are you stating that you believe it should be the U.S. policy not to allow citizens to ever marry Muslims of a different nation? Or they can marry, but not allow the spouse into the U.S.? I really don't quite get that based on one example.

 

Even if you go back generations, I guess you then include a few others. But we are all descended from immigrants. Does the Virginia shooting mean we should exclude Asians? I also didn't see any weighing of the benefits of immigration. What if we lost a few current citizens but save the lives of 10-fold new citizens. 100-fold? I realize this is a hypothetical, just trying to get an understanding of your thoughts on relative values.