Interesting Observations

Submitted by Axel (United States), Oct 25, 2002 at 15:15

I think it's unfair to discuss Mohammad Ali dodging the draft because a variety of people dodged the draft for a variety of reasons. Ali paid a very high price for what he did, and certainly his reasons for not wanting to serve in the US army to fight communists are is not beyond the realm of rationality.

I think Islam attracts disaffected men because of three reasons:
1) it offers hope of attacking existing authority structures in violent ways
2) it promises a fantastic life in paradise (72 virgins etc.)
3) it offers the opportunity to treat women like underlings (atleast 50% of the population can be dominated by you)

I think Islam attracts disaffected black men in the US because of three reasons:
1) It preaches hatred against Christians and Jews (who are believed by them to have colluded during slavery).
2) It claims to follow the concept of equality for all men of all color
3) it was not founded by a white man...

I am a "brown" person from South Asia. I recently had a conversation with a drunk Pakistani-American Muslim man, an American citizen who has been in the US for more than twenty years. He's a successful businessman. Since he was drunk, he opened up to me more than I wished for. Despite having found business success here, he hated the USA. He told me that his goal was to make the USA non-white (heavens!). He said that Americans had no culture ...

What struck me about this whole conversation was that here was a country that had embraced an immigrant. But the immigrant was not interested in embracing the country. Here was a country that was willing to accept an immigrant for what he was, but the immigrant was not willing to accept the country for what it was. Obviously, he is only one individual and we cannot generalize to all.

However, I seriously believe that America needs to tune up its immigration policy. Only immigrants having a certain attitude should be welcome. Or at least, there should be some kind of schooling given to immigrants so that they can understand the American values that have made it such a great country. And learn to embrace the country for what it is.

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