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What it means to be integrated in a country?

Last posted Mar 31, 2016 at 06:13PM EDT. Added Mar 28, 2016 at 02:24PM EDT
21 posts from 8 users

Just in a German minister wants make a law were emigrants who does not integrate loose the right to residency . he wants emigrants to learn the German language and get a job in tree years(the article does not specify if is from arriving into Germany)

So KYM what it means to be integrated into a country?Learn the language is a must of course.But what about beyond that?Like cultural incompatibilities that someone might have with the country they are emigrating to(the article talks about the women or girls that some relative may not them to learn anything,therefore losing the right to residency )?

Speak the language, know and obey the laws, want to be there. You can't integrate if you came to a country just to get a job to ship money back to your family in your real home country, or to bring the rest of your family over with no intention of cultural change because you can go to religious tribunal courts to get around human rights and equality in countries who have ratified treaties which guarantee them. If you come here or to Europe thinking you can get a job and have a nice house while keeping a wife who is no more than a slave and physically assaulting your daughter for talking to boys, you need to be promptly sent back to the desert where wild animals are in control of legislation.

"Cultural incompatibility" is another liberal buzzword meant to stop legitimate criticisms of Islam. No, no, they're not trying to rape little girls in swimming pools, it's just a cultural difference, someone just needs to explain to them that in Germany we don't rape little girls in swimming pools, that's all! Women in Cologne who were sexually assaulted en masse, please try to stay an arm's length away from the Muslims, not because we're victim blaming or anything, but you have to respect their culture, they can't help it!!

Speak the language, know and obey the laws, want to be there.

Not even people who were born in a first world country can check all those boxes lawl.

@Lisa Cultural incompatibility is when you come from a country that some customs(good or bad) are forbidden / unusual in the country someone is emigrating to. Those customs can be related to religion or not .

{ Not even people who were born in a first world country can check all those boxes lawl. }

People who are born into a country and people consciously choosing to immigrate have different motivations and standards, they can't and shouldn't be compared in this discussion.


{ Cultural incompatibility is when you come from a country that some customs(good or bad) are forbidden / unusual in the country someone is emigrating to. }

Okay, list some cultural incompatibilities that aren't religious. As you say, these aren't cultural quirks that can be practiced freely wherever you are, but incompatibilities where the law of a country is incompatible with the practice.

People who are born into a country and people consciously choosing to immigrate have different motivations and standards, they can’t and shouldn’t be compared in this discussion.

Well yes, but I just found it funny how you made precisely that your standards.

But this is SD, so don't feel the need to continue on my reply.

Last edited Mar 28, 2016 at 03:16PM EDT

I sort of agree with Lisa, however I'll take it to slightly less degree:

Speak the language (which I had to learn), respect the laws and customs, (even if you don't agree with them), the desire to be part of the country in a positive way.

Every culture, has something positive to bring, and those positive things should be incorporated into the greater whole. Cuisine, clothing, a cultural attitude or view of things like education, community, etc. Those things should be fostered and incorporated. But cultures can also bring with them negative things, a cultural view that is incompatible with the native laws or cultural norms of the land. Those cultural traits should go out the door as much as possible, and I strongly believe that society as a whole shouldn't tolerate this.

Learning the language I think is the most important and essential step, it shows desire to be part of the society and the community. And it is also far more likely you'll succeed in the native country when you speak it's native language.

It's not hard to integrate to a new society, it can be horribly embarrassing, at times, such as when I came to the US and was accustomed to a standard greeting with friends being a kiss on the cheek, and finding out that's a little taboo here in the States.

And if you don't like the society you live in, then try to find a way out, there are many ex-pats out there for many reasons-and it's not that difficult to emigrate if you are patient and willing to take the time to do so…just you know, Dont blow the people up because you dislike the society.

Those are precisely the standards of an immigrant trying to integrate into a country as opposed to someone being born there………. which is the discussion. An immigrant who doesn't want to integrate would go to a country for benefits though it's not the one they want to live in, would refuse to learn the language, and would refuse to obey laws, as we're seeing in "multicultural success story" Europe atm, so these strike me as three very easy and obvious standards to set.

Okay, list some cultural incompatibilities that aren’t religious.

Beating up children with the intention of behaving them is big example of being not religious motivated @Lisa.
FMG (even though some religious leaders in Africa enforce it, it's a patriarchal act ) is another one.
Some activities that are considered being uneducated in western society, like throwing used water on the street (this is something that happens here in Cape Verde a lot…even in apartment buildings).
I could go on forever with this.

FGM is (still!) an Islamic custom, the spread of Islam into Africa is why it's prominent there. { The 86th conference of Malaysia’s Fatwa Committee National Council of Islamic Religious Affairs announced that female circumcision is part of Islamic teachings and it should be observed by Muslims, with the majority of the jurists in the Committee concluding that female circumcision is obligatory (wajib). }

Dumping grey water isn't a cultural norm, it's a necessity because they lack plumbing. It's also not against the law here to reuse grey water (it's even less against the law to dump it in the street where it will go down the sewer), they're actually pushing it federally as part of water conservation efforts, so that would be compatible if it was a cultural norm anyway.


Child beating is a bit of a gray area in this discussion because, besides black communities (who still defend child beating to this day as a necessary reminder that they can't even slip up once in this world where it's so dangerous to be a black child, and the severity of the beating matches the parents' fear for the child), where is beating your child a cultural norm? Beating is also very different from spanking and other forms of physical discipline, which are used universally, making it even more of a gray area.


The concept of incompatible cultures literally originated in reference to Islam when the first world started trying to spread multiculturalism, look it up.

Child beating is a bit of a gray area in this discussion because, besides black communities (who still defend child beating to this day as a necessary reminder that they can’t even slip up once in this world where it’s so dangerous to be a black child, and the severity of the beating matches the parents’ fear for the child), where is beating your child a cultural norm? Beating is also very different from spanking and other forms of physical discipline, which are used universally, making it even more of a gray area.

That ain't just black communities, that's the whole South. Child beating is still common across the southern US, despite mountains of evidence that it creates passive, insecure, and emotionally stunted children (see: yours truly). Even the "nice" parents still spank their children.

Spanking =/= beating, which is the problem with a lot of the evidence (most of which shows short-term compliance CAN be achieved by spanking, it's the long term that's up for debate and that obviously requires considering factors far beyond spanking alone).

I only single out the black community because they still admittedly "whoop" their children in large percentages across the country, which undeniably crosses the line from spanking to beating. This is also common in the South as a region, but southern white people are less likely to consider it cultural while the black community says they whoop their kids because of culture.

Malaysia’s Fatwa Committee National Council of Islamic Religious Affairs announced that

It's one religious association or leader that says something about FGM that clashes with other religious leaders that are against it and issued fatwas against it and others say that FGM is not obligatory.
FGM is a Patriarchal act to make women have less pleasure in sex.
And by the way even crhistians in Africa do that


Beating is a cultural thing because it's something normal to some countries and you admit that by bringing up black people.


Cultural incompatibilities is really something that was brought with the issue of Islam, you are right.

Last edited Mar 28, 2016 at 05:52PM EDT

The requirement for migrants to get a job in three years sounds odd. How many of them aren't trying to get a job if they don't have one already? And wouldn't that be putting even more pressure on the job market away from native Germans?

bruh it's culturally ingrained in Africa because of the complete dominance of Islam in the country shortly after it was first introduced, look up the history of FGM and how it spread from Egypt.

It's not just one religious association who has issued FGM fatwas, either. It wasn't even until 2006 that an anti-FGM fatwa was issued for the first time.


{ Beating is a cultural thing because it’s something normal to some countries and you admit that by bringing up black people. }

In what countries is beating children normal? Pretty much every single country in existence has child abuse laws, beating your children is not a part of anyone's culture. Using physical punishment on children is universal, it's not specific to a culture any more than drinking water is. You can go visit any culture and nobody would think it was weird if you smacked your kid for misbehaving, so at the very least it's not relevant to this conversation of integration.

jarbox wrote:

The requirement for migrants to get a job in three years sounds odd. How many of them aren't trying to get a job if they don't have one already? And wouldn't that be putting even more pressure on the job market away from native Germans?

Yeah it's odd but think they are associating emigrants with people on unemployment.


Ok Lisa we will drop the debate on beating.

"I only single out the black community because they still admittedly “whoop” their children in large percentages across the country, which undeniably crosses the line from spanking to beating."
I have no idea who you talked to about this, Lisa, but from my experience and the people I've known, "whoop" almost always meant "spank".

{ I have no idea who you talked to about this, Lisa, but from my experience and the people I’ve known, “whoop” almost always meant “spank”. }

I've always seen whooping described as a leftover from the slave era more akin to using a switch, but I'm not sure the term is exclusive. Remember when Adrian Peterson went to court for child abuse after he broke a branch off a tree and whipped his 4 year old?


but the real reason I'm bumping this is to share a piece from a Dutch political pundit about the documented lack of integration in Europe's Muslim population and why we come up with excuses to blame ourselves instead of acknowledging their refusal to assimilate.

Copy and pasted key paragraphs below, but you should read the whole thing. It's not that long. If you can't even deal with this amount of text, I bolded the two most important paragraphs.

The first reaction to the Brussels massacres among postmodern European intellectuals was predictable: What did we, Europeans, do to them, our Muslims? How could followers of a religion that is proudly called “the religion of peace” commit these kinds of atrocities?

There is no question that unemployment is much higher among Muslim immigrant communities than among the general public. There are two possible explanations. The first goes something like this: The Belgian people are terribly xenophobic and anti-Moroccan, and deny their Moroccan neighbors opportunities to succeed in life.

The other explanation for the high unemployment figures among Muslims in Europe has nothing to do with exclusion and discrimination. A large segment of the migrant population is doing just fine, but a significant number -- some say as many as 50 percent -- have not rid themselves of the mental and cultural conditions that have kept their home country in its “developing country” status. The denial of equal rights to women, the lack of separation of state and church, bad education, excessive religiosity, patriarchal machismo -- these are all on display in areas with a high percentage of migrants, including Molenbeek.

In December 2013, Professor Ruud Koopmans of the Berlin Social Science Center published a study on “Fundamentalism and out-group hostility,” in which he compared hostility among Muslim immigrants with hostility among Christian natives in Western Europe. He writes: “Almost 60 percent agree that Muslims should return to the roots of Islam, 75 percent think there is only one interpretation of the Quran possible to which every Muslim should stick and 65 percent say that religious rules are more important to them than the laws of the country in which they live.” In regards to Christian citizens he concludes: “Less than 4 percent can be characterized as consistent fundamentalists.”

“Occidentophobia” is an interesting term. It expresses a refusal to accept the essential concepts of life in the West. Young men like the perpetrators of the Brussels attacks have refused to embrace the social codes of Belgian life. They were raised on the idea that their religious ethics trump the ethics of the infidels (close to non-existent, in their eyes, in any case). Their second-rate socioeconomic status was therefore a humiliating affront, an indignity to be destroyed.

What did “we” do to “them”? We opened up our cities, our houses, our wallets. And in our secular temples of progress -- our metro stations and airports and theaters -- their sons are killing themselves, and taking our sons and daughters with them. There is nothing for which we need to apologize. “Occidentophobia” originated in the Muslim community. We need to demand they abandon it.


I would especially like to discuss Occidentophobia vs. Islamophobia.

Which is a larger obstacle for integration?

Last edited Mar 31, 2016 at 03:40PM EDT

I would especially like to discuss Occidentophobia vs. Islamophobia.
Which is a larger obstacle for integration?

This is, actually, a very interesting topic. I'd say that both hinder the integration of Muslims into a country, similarly to a NAND logic gate.

In order for the integration to commence, the public cannot be hostile (doesn't even have to be particularly welcoming) towards the certain group, and the group itself needs to have a will of integrating into said country.

And here I am not even talking about accepting cultural/religious beliefs, but following the very basic principles of living in said country – laws, perhaps some values (or respecting them, at the very least).

It's sort of like social contract, but not between the society and an individual, but rather a group and the society. Respect has to be mutual in order for that to work. For example, Poland has a rather small (but culturally unique) group of integrated muslims, the Tatars. As far as I'm concerned, they haven't been a problem for the past two centuries or so, and behave like ordinary citizens – just of different faith and traditions. They think of themselves primarly as Poles.

Last edited Mar 31, 2016 at 03:55PM EDT

Lisa:
I'd love to get your insight on looking at the current situation from the perspective of Arab culture being an honor-shame culture. That one of the central reasons of not integrating is based on minor to major forms of being insults to honor to adapt – what was – the dhimmis cultural norms.
One can look at the current Arab-Israeli conflict from that perspective and gain a good understanding of why peace is impossible: http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/176673/emotional-nakba

http://libertyandculture.blogspot.ae/2007/02/arab-honor-and-shame.html

http://www.zwemercenter.com/guide/honor-and-shame-9-keys/
And from Zwemercenter:

"Muslims live and die for honor.

The importance of honor expresses itself in the cultural virtues of hospitality, generosity, community, and relational loyalty. Islamic cultures highly esteem the Qur’an, Muhammad, ummah (community of believers) and even the Arabic language itself. Due to group identity, to insult one of them is to insult them all (for example, Charles Hebdo). To say honor is important to Muslims is an understatement. We must keep in mind that Arab Muslims believe the West has intentionally humiliated and shamed them throughout history. One reason young Muslims resort to terrorism is to regain honor. As an Iraqi jihadist phrased it, “When the Americans came, they stepped on our heads with their shoes, so what do you expect us to do? Christians, therefore, who minister to Muslims must be cognizant of honor-shame dynamics."

Wouldn't one think that from this view that it is in fact humiliating to subject your own native Arab culture and religion to one that is excessive, multicultural?

I'd love to know, further, how non-Arabs integrate into European society

{ As far as I’m concerned, they haven’t been a problem for the past two centuries or so, and behave like ordinary citizens – just of different faith and traditions. They think of themselves primarly as Poles. }

The Tartars in Poland had a hundreds-of-years history of mutual arrangements, military service for an area where they could keep to themselves and practice their Sunni Islam as they pleased. They've thus had hundreds of years to assimilate into the changing Western culture as Poland did, their Islam is (somewhat) reformed and those reformations took place outside of the Middle East's influence.

But now even they find themselves being pushed out by new Muslim migrants who adhere to Saudi Arabia's preferred Wahhabi.

{ There's an ongoing conflict between Polish native Sunni Muslim Lipka Tatars, who have a unique approach towards Islam and have been living in Poland since 600 years, and an increasingly vocal group of mainly foreign-born and foreign-sponsored, but also native-born convert, group of Sunni Muslims who adhere to Wahhabi movement. The conflict divides country's Sunni Muslims and causes bureaucratic confusion, as both sides lay claim to representation of country's Sunni Muslims. }


{ “When the Americans came, they stepped on our heads with their shoes, so what do you expect us to do? Christians, therefore, who minister to Muslims must be cognizant of honor-shame dynamics." }

>implying Muslims weren't slaughtering each other and everyone else for hundreds of years before "the Americans came"

The Shia have been sending lone suicide-shanking assassins to gut their enemies since 1000 AD.


Most of Asia has also been a deeply honor-based society throughout history whose lives/culture were also dramatically changed by Western intervention, why don't we see more angry Asians blowing themselves up in the middle of airports?

It's not an honor problem or a respect problem. Honor and respect to a jihadist means submitting beneath Islam and paying for your right to exist in their world. It's a culture problem. A culture of global entitlement, a culture of sexism and misogyny, a culture of pedophilia and rape, a culture of oppression and rights abuses. An Islamic culture.


Non-Arabs whose lives aren't controlled by an archaic political system have very little trouble integrating into the West today. Asians are, again, a great example of a people who were subjected to not-very-warm welcomes in Western countries, but because their culture isn't one of vengeance they were able to leave those slights in the past and now Asian countries make up some of our strongest alliances. Asian people are more often than not excluded from the "minority" label by blacks and Hispanics because they've managed to integrate so well on their own.


{ Wouldn’t one think that from this view that it is in fact humiliating to subject your own native Arab culture and religion to one that is excessive, multicultural? }

That's a non-issue if they'd stay in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia exists, they're the UN approved ISIS, very fundamentally violent/oppressive and not-multicultural at all. Immigrate to Saudi Arabia instead of Germany.

Skeletor-sm

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