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Notes -
What is the future of Islam in the West and the future of the West with Islam?
Popular youth figures Andrew Tate and Sneako became Muslims and made it a part of their media personality, which frequently gets millions of unique views with the audience mostly impressionable young boys.
Muslim memes are becoming popular online. Muslim terminology is becoming popular online — I have seen cases of Muslim expressions like inshallah and mashallah entering terminally online lexicon (which is the first step to normie lexicon).
Unlike Christianity, there is a confluence of significant factors that lead to Islam retaining strict behavioral and cultural rules. Mosques and scholars are funded by wealthy Arabs who have a monetary, political, and genetic influence in the spread of the religion; imams have children, the more strict the imam the more children, and dynastic imam families are not uncommon; the center of the religion is the Middle East where there is a constant threat of violence if leaders stray far enough from orthodoxy; the practice of excluding women from decision-making means that feminine-coded tolerance is sidelined; the religion itself highly emphasizes the following of strict tradition and punishments for “innovation”.
We are seeing the influence of Muslims in the criticisms against Israel, in a London street draped with Ramadan signs on Easter, and so on.
It’s interesting that “Islam is a threat” discourse has died down relative to a decade ago, despite the influence of the religion increasing. Is it because so many people have lost faith in both liberalism and liberal Christianity that they no longer care? I think that could play a part. Is it just laziness? Has there been a fundamental shift in assessment of Muslims?
This street is like 5 minutes from my house lol. It’s at the corner of Edgware Road (Marble Arch), which is the main Arab neighborhood in London. Arabs are a small proportion of Muslims in England, Edgware Road is a wealthy Arab neighborhood, it’s mainly shisha cafes and ice cream stores open until 3am where Muslim teens can ‘date’ with plausible deniability in a location that technically doesn’t serve alcohol (I once walked past a Muslim couple having sex next to a dumpster behind the Hard Rock Hotel next door). I stop by on occasion because I have a weakness for Belgian waffles with Nutella after coming back from work at midnight.
I do think Islam is an inherently appealing religion. There is a reason that, even at the height of the British Empire, some British aristocrats converted or certainly developed a fascination with Islam. That’s to say little of the widely-publicized views of Hitler and others of Islam. Islam lacks a Christianity’s guilt, its humiliation rituals in front of other humans, its contradictions around violence. It’s pure, absolute submission, which is attractive even divorced from every other aspect.
A friend of mine at college updated her LinkedIn picture recently. Italian-American from Long Island, pretty, smart, moderately promiscuous at college (though not extremely so). No religious views. A secular, urban liberal, who went into international diplomacy / think tanks on foreign policy. Socially she was a pretty generic upper middle class New Yorker. In her new LinkedIn picture she wears a Hijab and no makeup. Islam has its draws, for sure.
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