This can unsurprisingly rub their hosts the wrong way

Sunday, February 26th, 2017

If our first impulse is to call immigrant-skeptics bigots, we would do well to step back and take a fuller look at the data, M.G. Miles suggests. After presenting many, many graphs of the data, he shares these conclusions:

On the contrary, as we have seen, there is a real civilizational divide between what we think and what Muslims in their homelands think about the proper place of government, women, religion, and morality in public life. They also show far lower levels of out-group trust than we do in the West.

And when they come to our countries, it is often with the hope that we change our habits and customs, not the other way round. This can unsurprisingly rub their hosts the wrong way.

And despite a bourgeois class who both adopt western values and obey the law, there are a great many who fall prey to social dysfunction. The latter tend to commit more crime, use more welfare, and do less well in school than their hosts. This patchwork of anti-social behavior and rejection of Western values has made Muslims undesirable immigrants in the eyes of many.

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Whatever the ingredients in the cake may be, the evidence is stacking up that Muslim immigrants to the West, even the ‘moderates,’ feel deeply uncomfortable here. Even as they walk among us, they seem to remain stuck on the far side of a civilizational gulf.

So if our first impulse is to call immigrant-skeptics ‘bigots,’ we would do well to step back and take a fuller look at the data. The discomfort our Muslim newcomers feel is palpable, it is measurable, and it is long-lasting. As its destabilizing effects are becoming more intense, it should come as no surprise that many of us are reluctant to usher even more, refugees or not, into our rapidly fraying societies.

Comments

  1. Lu An Li says:

    It needs to be repeated over and over: a temporary ban until things can be sorted out.

    And since so much of American culture is repulsive to the devout Muslim, you do have to ask the question, why would they want to come here in the first place?

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