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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 1, 2024

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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?

The adaption of Islamic catchphrases and memetics is not just due to the integration and adoption of Islam and Arab communities onto the western internets, but also a subversive statement against both Red and Blue political bastion. The Red tribe, especially evengelical christians, are way too pro-Israel for the average terminally online pro-Palistinain. On the other hand, Islam's patriarchial beliefs also appeal to the anti-woke pro-feminist movement while also still being Blue coded, as Blue tribers are overwhelmingly on the side of Palestinians, which was demonstrated recently in the city I reside in.

Islam is still a significant threat to Western values, though these values are being abandoned as quickly in modern 1st world governing bodies. A lot of the appeal of Islam is aligned to the exhaustion of devalued men and workers in modern society. Using force when reason doesn't work to achieve your goals, trodding on rights of individuals for the sake of self-preservation and the patriarchy and finding an ideology not of mutual servitude but of domination and strength has a lot of appeal to disaffected western men.

I agree with this. Islam is one of the few cultural forces which is clearly and squarely outside the usual red/blue tribe dichotomy, while also being organized and coherent as its own ideology (of course with many internal divisions and disagreements, but everything else does too). "grey tribe" is barely meaningful, and everything else requires a lengthy essay where you have to explain all your beliefs and make up a term for them.