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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 1, 2024

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Good question, and one I have been thinking about for some time. There does seem to be a larger semblance of integration that Islam seems to be achieving in the west in certain circles, and Muslims seem to be the only religious/ethnic group that is reproducing over levels of replacement. Like you said, I think it's adherence to a strict dogma and it's insane ability to deflect liberal criticisms make it extremely likable/humorous if you are in any way a dissident to liberal orthodoxy. Muslims seem to be the only group of people that simply tell the emperor he has no clothes on. I find the recent uptick in social media celebrities to be more generally influenced by political reasons than religious ones. Andrew Tate for example made a large deal about his Islamic religious conversion, but did not seem to make any tangible behavioral changes that usually result from genuine conversions. He still promotes having pre-marital sex with multiple women and engages in alcohol consumption.

On the other hand, Islam has number of problems which make it difficult for it to fundamentally ingratiate itself within personal imagination and cultural relevance.

  1. It's aesthetics are terrible. From a purely outsider perspective, Muslim appearance is extremely unappealing. The long gowns and unkempt beards are extremely unattractive for the average white/western person. In both my WASP and secular social circles it comes with an extreme amount of mockery. They are constantly made fun for "looking like they smell" and seemingly having no social awareness of public norms. No white male (even if he was a genuine religious believer in Islam) would ever be caught dead looking like a traditional Islamic man, simply because it would be absolute social suicide and would act as pussy repellent for the vast majority of white women. Since the connotation in the western mind (even if most wont outwardly admit it) is the degradation and subjugation of women, it is extremely difficult to imagine it would ever lead to genuine conversions for both white men or women. Now i understand that traditional Islamic garb is not primarily worn by most Muslims in most social settings, but it is worn regularly enough in their religious practice that it is attached to it within the western mind.

  2. In a more technical aspect, the theological implications of Islam are extremely radical compared to more traditional Christianity, and also much more confusing. The Quran is considered to be exclusively revealed in Arabic, and as such any translation of it to other languages are not considered to be as 'legitimate' as in the original. Compared to the christian bible, all translations are considered to be as genuine as one another, and still transfers the message of Christianity as authentically as each other. If a genuine Muslim upheaval was undertook in the west it would require millions of people to learn Arabic, something which is almost more ridiculous to imagine then swarms of white men wearing thobes. There is also a strong semblance within Islam to have the government and religious system be thoroughly connected with one another, and even among most religious believers that does not seem to be a desire they have, and among secular people that is literally something i feel they would go out and die to prevent.

It is true that Islam seems to be far more comfortable than it was in previous decades, but just like western hegemony is hell bent on destroying christian moral attitudes, they will do the same to Muslims through the next generation. While fundamentalist Muslims may resist the more outlandish demands of modern liberalism, they will still have control over their children and they will be just as thoroughly indued with materialist attitudes, sexual liberation and consumerist pop-culture like the Christians were who proceeded them.

You overstate the degree both to which beards and Muslim robes are "pussy repellent" and the difficulty of spreading Islam for linguistic reasons.

I think your tirade about how Islamic men are aesthetically unappealing looks like projection. Apparently they are unappealing to you. People used to say similar things about black men (some still do), and yet black men have no trouble attracting white women in the west (another contentious culture war issue). If Islam were to become truly popular, I don't think women would be going "Ewww" at beards. (And Western Muslims generally do not walk around in thawbs and kaffiyehs.)

As for Arabic, what you say is true, but only to a point. Translations of the Quran are allowable for people who can't read Arabic, it's just understood to be an imperfect approximation. Serious converts are expected to try to learn Arabic, but trust me, Muslims will welcome a convert whose Arabic is shitty or nonexistent. Islam achieved spectacular success in spreading itself even in non-Arabic-speaking countries. Iran and Indonesia and Malaysia are not Arabic-speaking countries, and while most do learn some Arabic for religious purposes, very few are fluent. A spread of Islam in the West would result in a lot more Arabic classes and many more Americans and Europeans knowing a smattering of Arabic, but mostly getting by with translation apps.

Now, whether a real Western Islamic wave could survive contact with liberalism and wokeness is an interesting question. We've seen the friction in a few places (the much-mocked "Queers for Palestine", the shock of liberals in Loudon County, Virginia discovering that Muslim parents weren't keen on their kids being transed, etc.).

Right now, Islam in the West is very much a youth movement, in the current moment largely motivated by sympathy for Palestine. A lot of young people are posting their TikTok and Instagram "reversion" stories about how after seeing the beautiful strength and resilience of the Palestinian people they decided to "research" (pardon my mocking laughter) Islam and took the shahada like, a week later. Yeah, once they are actually told they need to follow Islamic rules about dress (and the hijab stops being cute and fashionable), sex, alcohol, gender roles, and attitudes towards queerness, we'll see which one bends.

and yet black men have no trouble attracting white women in the west

Yes they do. Miscegenation in the USA is overwhelmingly white man/minority woman and blacks are less likely to miscegenate than other races anyways.

There’s lots of black men who claim to have slept with white women, but I think that AADOS culture is big on promiscuity as a male status symbol and sleeping with white women as a particular example, so this is probably lies.

While most interracial relationships involve white men, most interracial relationships involving black people involve a black man and white woman. Class differences essentially lead to soft segregation, but it wouldn’t surprise me if the average black man in the PMC/UMC has been in a relationship with a white woman, just because they’re the vast majority of women in those circles.

most interracial relationships involving black people involve a black man and white woman.

this is evidence that black women have very large troubles attracting anyone rather than "black men have no trouble attracting white women in the west"

It's not so much that they have large troubles attracting anyone as that they have large troubles attracting non-Africans. The old OKCupid data showed a huge effect of non-African men finding African women less attractive, but it didn't apply to African men.

The old OKCupid data showed a huge effect of non-African men finding African women less attractive, but it didn't apply to African men.

Look at the numbers again, it did apply.

Okay, I looked again. "Black" (which I will take to mean sub-Saharan African here, this being largely US data and all) men rated "black" women about the same as other women (varied between -4% and +1% over the years, whereas e.g. white men rating "black" women ranged from -25% to -17%).

(I use the scare quotes and distinguish "African" because there are South Asians and Aboriginal Australians with similar skin tone to sub-Saharan Africans - and the latter are even called "black" - but the face shape is very different and that almost certainly affects these kinds of figures.)

I use the scare quotes and distinguish "African"

Thanks for clarification.

I don't quite understand what QuickMatch means.

"black" men rated "black" women about the same as other women

You can say that, or you can say that for every single year between 2009 and 2014 black men rated black women below both Asian and Latina women and that Black men are the only group of men who didn't not rate their women positively.

If you scroll down page to DateHookup data, it is worse for Black women: here Black men prefer White women over Black.

I guess reply rates, female sender is closer to actual rather than stated preference, black males respond only to 37% messages from black females, and 46..57% to other categories, it's not even close.

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