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PaperclipPerfector  10d ago (text post)   25164 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 12, 2026

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The statistics i'm aware of actually seem to suggest the opposite. Pew's estimates for Europe show negative net conversion rates for Islam, IE more people leaving the religion than joining it.

The growth of Islam in Europe is largely driven by migration, and to a lesser extent higher birth rates, although even that difference seems to be disappearing quite rapidly. French statistics show fertility among the children of immigrants converging towards that of the native population already by the second generation.

Meanwhile, Muslims are secularising too. In France, for example, 28% of second-generation people of North African origin identify as nonreligious, compared with 10% of the immigrant generation.

So the overall picture seems to be one of Islam growing because of immigration, while both Christians and Muslims are losing people to secularism. There are of course strongly religious groups within both religions that are much more resistant to this, but they're not necessarily representative of the wider populations.

If anything, the statistics seem to point in the opposite direction to what you're suggesting. The big religious shift in Europe is towards secularism, not Islam, as Pew's more recent research also shows.

Also, the number of Britons converting to Islam is microscopic. For every dude like the one in your example there are like 2-3 former Muslims engaging actual apostasy, not merely secularising. Nevermind the massively larger native British population.

I do agree that Islam is a big problem but let's be clear, its largely a problem of continued immigration. Islam isn't some memetically impervious ideology, it keeps growing in the west because they're replenished from the outside.

Even a nonbelieving muslim is still culturally a muslim who associates with muslims, facilitates further muslim immigration and always has the option of painlessly re-joining his religion. Just because a muslim doesn't practise his ancestral religion properly does not mean that he's now a comitted member of the native population, or even a rootless cosmpolitan.

This is where descriptions of overt religious observance are less important, though. In many deeply Muslim countries, weekly mosque attendance (including for men) is below 50%. It’s not really about mosque attendance. It’s not really even about belief.

It’s about a much deeper cultural substrate. It’s about much deeper questions of identity and belonging. There’s that popular online meme mocking young western second and third generation Muslim men who drink, do or deal drugs, go out and hook up with (presumably non-Muslim) women, certainly don’t pray five times a day, but categorically, absolutely refuse to eat pork. The joke is the hypocrisy, but while it’s funny the irony misunderstands the point. They are still Muslims in a civilizational sense. Behaving like Baltimore gang members in St Denis doesn’t change that. Fucking a white girl doesn’t change that. A deracinated English boy who speaks Multicultural London English, goes to a 70% Muslim school, says in casual passing alhamdullilah and mashallah and inshallah brother (and versions of these boys are a feature of poor neighborhood public schools everywhere from Dublin to Vienna, by the way) is no longer a civilizational member of his ancestral culture. He may look like an Englishman, if you put him in tweed and send him to the Yorkshire dales. But he is no longer one in some real cultural sense.

It’s about a much deeper cultural substrate. It’s about much deeper questions of identity and belonging.

This sounds like The Troubles: it's often described as "Protestant v. Catholic", but the Pope and the Queen (literally the heads of the most prominent churches involved) were loudly not supporters of the conflict. But still the conflict persisted.

Uh, wasn't the main protestant church involved the wee frees, who are not headed by the british monarchy?

I'm not going to claim to be an expert on this, but all the descriptions I've read have given me the understanding that it was about religion only in the "deeper cultural substrate" sense, although not completely decoupled from the actual churches.

I recall someone here referencing a joke about whether a victim was "a Protestant atheist or a Catholic atheist". Similarly, the Unionists didn't always seem keen to listen to, well, the Union side, of which the Queen was head of state.

I’m certainly of thé impression that was true for the IRA- but Ian paisley was one of the more important unionist figures, wasn’t he?

He would definitely be an exception, sure. Looking closer, there were maybe a few others as well.

says in casual passing alhamdullilah and mashallah and inshallah brother

I'm unironically a fan of the phrase "X and inshallah", when used to refer to not having any damn plan. Sounds niftier than "X and pray".

What's wrong with "and God help us"?

I say "inshallah" casually. I remember once a bunch of people stopping and asking if I was muslim. No it's just funny

I use "God willing" in English occasionally. The meaning "except if prohibited by Providence" is otherwise a bit difficult to phrase.

This isn't about overt religious observance, which of course is far lower, it's about people actively identifying as non-religious.

The rest I'm not sure how to respond to since it's so vague and unfalsifiable. I'll note that the people you're complaining about would never have gone to the Yorkshire dale in tweed, mass migration or not. You're comparing the modern underclass with the historical upper middle class.

To be clear, I think Islam is really bad and immigration from muslim nations is bad and becoming worse; that doesn't mean people are becoming Muslim or Muslim culturally. The integration almost exclusively goes the other way. These people on aggregate just suck though.

If we were being overcome by Saladins and Ibn Khalduns and Abu Hurayras, one could - if grudgingly - accept defeat and conquest, for that is the way of things. But instead we are being choked to death by the alcohol-drinkers and the gang-rapers and the welfare-collectors, enabled by their watermelon compradors.

It makes one despair.

There is a bright side: if you were overcome by Saladins there'd be nothing to learn! Everyone understands losing to a Hannibal.

If Western civilization does die (dubious) it'll be a reinforcement of the importance of the concept of decadence which it, reasonably, thought it had demoted to the same status as polio.

My racism is a bit out of date - but isn't watermelon associated with the one of the types of black people Europe actually doesn't have problems with their integration or behavior

In the US at least "Watermelon" is a Commie who pretends to be an Environmentalist. Ie "green on the outside but a red on the inside".

Nah watermelon perjoratives have become Palestine focused due to the flag colors and some cultural connotations

Watermelon is an african-american stereotype, but I think in context it means 'commies deep down'.

Used to be, kind of still is, depending on the context? Can also refer to Environmentalist Commies (green outside, red inside), or pro-Palestinians (presumably watermelons were/are grown in Palestine, and the flag has red/green/black like a watermelon w/seeds?).

I was meaning the green-reds. But the pro-pali left is accurate, too.

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