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Is Islam right for Ireland?
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Weapons from a faraway, long-ago war are flowing into immigrant neighborhoods here, puncturing Swedes’ sense of confidence and security. The country’s murder rate remains low, by American standards, and violent crime is stable or dropping in many places. But gang-related assaults and shootings are becoming more frequent, and the number of neighborhoods categorized by the police as “marred by crime, social unrest and insecurity” is rising. Crime and immigration are certain to be key issues in September’s general election, alongside the traditional debates over education and health care.
Continue reading the main story
Part of the reason is that Sweden’s gang violence, long contained within low-income suburbs, has begun to spill out. In large cities, hospitals report armed confrontations in emergency rooms, and school administrators say threats and weapons have become commonplace. Last week two men from Uppsala, both in their 20s, were arrested on charges of throwing grenades at the home of a bank employee who investigates fraud cases.
An earlier jolt came with the death of Mr. Zuniga, who on Jan. 7 picked up the grenade, which the police believe had been thrown by members of a local gang targeting a rival gang or police officers.
Paulus Borisho, 55, was in his kebab shop around 50 feet away, and the explosion made his windows shudder. He ran outside to see a thin column of black smoke rising. Mr. Zuniga lay on the bike path, curled on his side.
Like many of his neighbors in Varby Gard, Mr. Borisho had sought asylum in Sweden to escape a war. He knew what a grenade sounded like. As a commando in a Lebanese militia, he had handled grenades, and remembered the strict protocols he complied with, locking up the weapons for safe keeping the minute he returned to camp.
That a grenade should be found on the sidewalk outside a kebab shop, a few steps from an elementary school, was difficult for him to take in.
“Now, when I think of the future, I am afraid,” he said. “I am afraid for Europe.”
Illegal weapons often enter Sweden over the Oresund Bridge, a 10-mile span that links the southern city of Malmo to Denmark. When it opened, in 2000, the bridge symbolized the unfurling of a vibrant, borderless Europe, but in recent years it has been more closely associated with smuggling, of people, weapons and drugs.Last year, Peter Springare, 61, a veteran police officer in Orebro, published a furious Facebook post saying violent crimes he was investigating were committed by immigrants from “Iraq, Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, Somalia, Syria again, Somalia, unknown country, unknown country, Sweden.” It was shared more than 20,000 times; Mr. Springare has since been investigated twice by state prosecutors, once for inciting racial hatred, though neither resulted in charges.Sellers in Bosnia and Serbia have networks in Sweden’s diaspora and are so eager to unload excess grenades, often rusted from decades in storage, that they throw them in free with the purchase of AK-47s, Mr. Appelgren said. In Sweden the street price of a hand grenade is 100 kroner, or $12.50.
“It’s odd,” said Manne Gerell, a lecturer in criminology at Malmo University. “I don’t know of any Western country with a similar use of hand grenades. Our hypothesis is that they are used to send a message. Not so much as a weapon, as a tool for intimidation. You don’t need perfect aim. You are not trying to kill a particular person.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/03/world/europe/sweden-crime-immigration-hand-grenades.htmlIT WAS supposed to be a sneaky afternoon cigarette break. Then a gunman in black appeared and shot 15-year-old Robin Sinisalo in the head. His older brother Alejandro was shot four times. Robin died immediately on the doorstep of his home in north-west Stockholm. Alejandro was left in a wheelchair for life. Two years later, the boys’ mother, Carolina, says the police still have no leads.
Robin’s fate is increasingly common in Sweden. In 2011 only 17 people were killed by firearms. In 2017 the country had over 300 shootings, leaving 41 people dead and over 100 injured. The violence mostly stems from street gangs running small-time drug operations in big cities such as Stockholm, the capital, Malmö and Gothenburg.
Now here is the real kicker
https://www.economist.com/news/europe/21738389-young-men-kalashnikovs-have-upset-swedish-sense-security-why-are-young-men-sweden. Most gang members are indeed first- or second-generation immigrants—72% of them, according to one report, but they tend not to be new arrivals. It takes years for migrants to be settled enough to be sucked into crime, says Amir Rostami of Stockholm University. Sweden accepted lots of asylum-seekers in the 1980s and 1990s from countries like Iraq, Somalia and the former Yugoslavia.
^^ The current massive wave hasnt even really hit yet0 -
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Deleted User wrote: »Thanks for that post. It's been a very interesting reading too as well as advisable. I have never been outside of Europe myself, never had the desire to.
You should. It broadens the mind and makes you see Western culture in a very different way.So my knowledge about far away countries isn't based on experiences such like yours. There are many things on which I agree with you. One thing in your post reminds me on the meaning of 'internationalism' in the old Communist Eastern Bloc states. In fact it is a sham cos in reality, regarding how they treated their own ethnic minorities and preferred their majority nationals, it was always 'us and them' no matter how much one was on their political line, the different ethnicity was always enough reasons for suspicion and discrimination. Because of that I am not surprised about what you said from your experiences in China.
And you're describing pretty much everywhere that is not Europe (or the US 30 years ago). It's only westerners that expect to integrate so much into other societies, and tolerate other cultures not doing the same in their own countries.In your case you're a foreign national with foreign citizenship, in the example I refere to it was about people of different ethnicity but same citizenship with generations living in that area for generations, just that the country has changed due to the aftermath of WWI and WWII.
I know an English man who has lived in Tokyo since before WW2, speaks better Japanese than the locals, married to a Japanese woman, was imprisoned in Japan during the war, and has children living there. He's still a foreigner and always will be.Anyway, I assume that you all adopted that in China because either you like it or you saw it necessary to get on with your life there, for practical reasons. It wasn't quite clear to me whether you intend to settle there permanently and that would make a difference. People who migrate to other countries because of work but with no intention to settle there for the rest of their lives have a different attitude and have therefore less interest in integration when they think that they will go back to their home country some time anyway.
Yes and no. I never intended to settle forever in China. TBH I'll probably never settle anywhere. I immersed myself in Chinese culture because traditional Chinese culture is mostly dead, and the modern Chinese culture changes so often... I'm fascinated by the contradictions within their own society and how they perceive their own culture. It's interesting to see how superficial everything is... and that, in turn, helps me to see western culture better.
People are people. In reality we should be talking about individuals, since what drives people to live and do things is usually a personal experience. However, It's impractical to talk about the individual when talking about Immigration, or... deeply religious people, which most Muslims are.Therefore, to lead a life in a foreign country as you did in China is very recommendable as it can keep one out of trouble. I think that I would try to follow your example, with some exceptions (I am not fond of Asian food, therefore I would barely travel to such countries, the climate is another aspect I might have problems to cope with), but in principle and principal I would certainly do likewise as this is reasonable.
Now my time is running out for today and I'll be back after the weekend. Have a good time.
Um. I suspect I've been "in trouble" more than most people...
And don't judge Asia based on what you think you know. It's the same with pretty much any country or cultural group outside of the West. You can assume certain things when talking about Europe, or the US, because they share a value system and other cultural indicators (and you grew up in a western nation). You can't really do the same when you're talking about other places.
For example. I talked to dozens of expats before I went to Iran. The thought of going there filled me with dread based on past experiences in other Muslim countries, but the experience itself was brilliant. Wonderful country, and fantastic people. I wouldn't want to live there myself, but a great experience. Same with dozens of other countries I've stayed in. I don't mean traveling for a week or two, but staying in one city for a few months or a year. Gives you a much different perspective on everything. Highly recommended.
Sure, there is a certain difference between making first hand experiences oneself in contact and interaction with local people abroad and staying for longer than the average tourist does. It does give one a different perspective and thus a different angle from which to look at the differences between countries and cultures.
As I said, some health reasons deter me from going in such climate zones, let alone the long distant flights to get there. My approach to understand Chinese and partially also Japanese culture was through history and their philosophy. This was for me enough to compare that with Western culture, as far as it is comparable. Similar with other continents and cultures, though I would say that the comparisons are often done with much intent as this is often the case in a rather automatical way. But in such cases I first try to understand their culture and history before making comparisons.
China and Japan are some good examples for how radically their culture has changed due do WWII and since. Curious enough is that Confucius is still high regarded and admired in China and even the Communist Party of China didn't dare to have too much a go against it, in other words, it survived the Culture Revolution from 1967 which was anything than a 'cultural' revolution but a 'cleansing' of the society by the Communist Party, in other words, another time for mass murder by Mao committed on his own population which went along with it. I admit that the political matters are more in my focus and that is of course a way in which the individual and the way it is affected by that is at the edge of the centre, but not entirely blinded out. How much deep religious the Chinese People are is not for me to say, you might have a more straight insight into that. However it shows that some things can't be removed by any political ideology entirely as they are very deep rooted in the culture and collective mindset of the people themselves.
The change in Japan after WWII was extreme in the light of the decades that passed since. I think that the Americanisation there was pushed that far with more fierce than in Western Europe. Another aspect is, like in China a growing overpopulation. The 'one child' per family restriction in China, the more people getting and leading lonely lives in Japan, preferring some artificial substitude for human company in their private lives (like holograms and robots). Such developments are frightening and I wouldn't assume that it would take place in Europe, but one never knows by that rapid pace technological developments are proceeding.
You have the advantage of your profession that enables you to go to and work in different countries as English is per se the world language number one (that is to say in international affairs and interaction between the Western World and the other parts on this planet). I think that this is an important point for many others don't have that and are bound to stay where they are, for various reasons which apart from the occupation are family reasons. With growing age it gets even harder to change places.0 -
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China and Japan are some good examples for how radically their culture has changed due do WWII and since. Curious enough is that Confucius is still high regarded and admired in China and even the Communist Party of China didn't dare to have too much a go against it, in other words, it survived the Culture Revolution from 1967 which was anything than a 'cultural' revolution but a 'cleansing' of the society by the Communist Party, in other words, another time for mass murder by Mao committed on his own population which went along with it. I admit that the political matters are more in my focus and that is of course a way in which the individual and the way it is affected by that is at the edge of the centre, but not entirely blinded out. How much deep religious the Chinese People are is not for me to say, you might have a more straight insight into that. However it shows that some things can't be removed by any political ideology entirely as they are very deep rooted in the culture and collective mindset of the people themselves.
The PRC or the Communist party never tried to remove Confucius, because what he proposed is firstly interwoven within their personal identity, and secondly, because his idea encourage people to accept their authority in all things. China is interesting, but Chinese people are far more interesting. You can see Confucius in almost every aspect of their culture. The way that children behave towards their parents. The way anyone younger behaves towards any age older. It's most notable when you see how females are expected to behave towards males, and it's reinforced everywhere.
Mao was God, but Confucius is the universe. It's a funny country. They've placed their "ancient" (pre-PRC) on such a pedestal of worthiness, while also abusing the tenants of those periods. And the cultural revolution was very successful in destroying their knowledge of their past, and cutting their ties to it. Which makes the Partys fascination with that period all the more interesting, since they're actively encouraging people to consider it. Funny country. They really don't think like we do.
It's something that you've got to experience firsthand. Chinese logic. It's not the same as the Logic westerners use.The change in Japan after WWII was extreme in the light of the decades that passed since. I think that the Americanisation there was pushed that far with more fierce than in Western Europe. Another aspect is, like in China a growing overpopulation. The 'one child' per family restriction in China, the more people getting and leading lonely lives in Japan, preferring some artificial substitude for human company in their private lives (like holograms and robots). Such developments are frightening and I wouldn't assume that it would take place in Europe, but one never knows by that rapid pace technological developments are proceeding.
Japan is a culture that has proven very good at pretending to be something else. Americanisation in Japan is skin deep. It's obvious in the Youth culture, but the moment those kids start working, they immediately switch to being far more traditional in their thinking. It's partly the reason why they embrace so many wacky cultural groups. To compensate for the incredibly stifling nature of the traditional expectations. Still, as a westerner, I love Japan. And Japanese women. Not the cute culture, but they're the last real bastion of women being women as a "lady". Truly wonderful women.You have the advantage of your profession that enables you to go to and work in different countries as English is per se the world language number one (that is to say in international affairs and interaction between the Western World and the other parts on this planet). I think that this is an important point for many others don't have that and are bound to stay where they are, for various reasons which apart from the occupation are family reasons. With growing age it gets even harder to change places.
My profession? Hmm... I was a credit controller in Australia, so that was as far as that got me. Then I switched to English teaching, then to management consulting, then back to English teaching, then to teaching Business Ethics at university level, and now I'm a freelance programmer, along with a 'amateur' novelist.
My career is dead. :pac:. Now, I do reasonably okay scrambling at work which allows me to live the life I want. Hopefully, some trees I planted will bear fruit but I'm gambling in a major way with my income streams. Still, I wouldn't change it, since I've seen more of the world than most people, and experienced some truly wonderful women. 0 -
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