Western Perceptions of Islam

[Marcus Caelius]

Four youngish UK tourists, on a tight budget, travelling across America in a hire car with no maps, only a rough itinerary and a general idea of where they wished to go.

 

Stop right there. From a completely professional point of view, given this description, I'm mildly surprised you were allowed into the country. Certainly, again working from this description, you almost certainly would not have been granted an extension to your entry permit (I-94).

 

Driving in towards New York...

 

This tells me nothing. What state were you in? How far from New York were you? There's a *big* difference between Westchester and Newark. From your description, you could've been in Burlington, Vermont.

 

Anyway, let's assume everything you say is absolutely and objectively true (almost certainly a false assumption, but let's run with it). It says absolutely nothing about "America," and there's absolutely no reason you should think a fuller account would offend Americans (actually, you've said nothing that couldn't be used to describe a waiter in a French restaurant). Your story does, however, remind me of a brief exchange from early in the movie, "Casablanca."

 

"Can you imagine the German army in your New York?"

"There are parts of New York I'd advise the German army to stay out of."

 

 

As to your comments on US perception of Muslim violence in all honesty this has only really been a major issue since Russia started to fall apart and needing something else to do with its time started actively interferring with the internal politics of Neutral Muslim countries.

 

C'mon, give us a break. You Brits have far more experience at interferring with politics in the Middle and Near East. We're really pretty new at it and could use a few pointers.

 

BTW, watch your quote attributions.

Edited December 9, 2007 by Marcus Caelius

[Melvadius]

Why we were there was irrelevant to the point of the story, which is that it is possible to go into area's in any society where a 'stranger' can be perceived as a threat becase the local s do not recognize them as part of their group. I have been in similar area's in Britain and elsewhere but the hostility I received was more marked in this instance than anywhere else and totally different to how I have been received in immigrant and/or Muslim communities in the UK.

 

You wish to guess where we were outside New York go ahead but personally I think they deserve as much privacy as any other community from outside interference and finger pointing so no I am not going to name them in an open forum. Suffice to say they were the most extreme case we encountered but not the only one while travelling through several parts of the US. In their favour once they realised THEIR mistake WE had no real problems during our stay there.

 

As to entry rights at the time, despite your assertion to the contrary, we all had indefinite right of entry to the US and were there on a three week tour so to ease your obvious confusion let us say that it was a good few years ago and before America went totally paranoid about any potential visitors.

 

If you have problems with French waiters then that is your affair in my experience I have generally found them willing to serve anyone with money and reasonably polite - admittedly that is always in their terms.

 

If you really want pointers to Middle East politics the honest answer is to stay out of them. From long experience the ideal situation is for a country to deal with it's own internal problems and the least said by biased outsiders in the aftermath of a conflict the sooner there will be a chance for a peaceful settlement.

 

BTW my attributions are my own so if you feel you have been misquoted please accept my apologies it probably occured while I was cutting down inter-refered quotes that had become unwieldy to say the least.

[Marcus Caelius]

Why we were there was irrelevant to the point of the story...

 

No one asked you that, or even mentioned it.

 

You wish to guess where we were outside New York go ahead but personally I think they deserve as much privacy as any other community from outside interference and finger pointing so no I am not going to name them in an open forum.

 

No, I don't wish to guess where you were. That's the point. It's impossible to make any judgement at all about your story without some context (and I refuse to accept it without question), and you've supplied exactly nothing. You say you were driving towards New York; that places you anywhere between Boston, Los Angeles and Fairbanks. Considering the number and diversity of groups and inherent possibilities, from Inuit to Hopi to Amish, your story has no point at all. All we have is that some kids without much money were treated rudely somewhere in North America. Big deal. It happens to everybody, at some point or other.

 

Oh, and if there's anything that you could say about them here and now that would harm them, they're already dead.

 

As to entry rights at the time, despite your assertion to the contrary, we all had indefinite right of entry to the US...

 

No, you did not. You probably had a multiple-entry tourist visa (B2) which gives you no "rights" at all, merely permission to apply for entry an unlimited number of times during the visa's validity period. The inspecting officer could have turned you away at the port of entry each and every time, had he chosen. And the basic immigration law under which we operate goes back to 1952; there are really very few changes to that law that have anything to do with 9/11.

[Melvadius]

I'm glad that you seem to have finally understood the point that I have been making. It is impossible to make a 'one size fits all' bland statement about 'Western Perceptions of Islam' - or any other racial/religious/cultural, etc. group. There are shades of meaning and perception across all strata's of any society, in some you may meet instant acceptance, in other you won't. We can only speak and write from our own experience and in most instances there is no reason or need to explain all of the circumstances for others to accept that those differences exist and do occur.

 

As to the rigour of US custom checks in the past I have had several experiences of those. Although on the face of it they were often carried out with rigour the most notable as far as I am concerned was nothing like that.

 

On a trip across the border into Mexico with two US companions we realized as we went through the turnstyle into Mexico that one of them had forgotten their passport. As the local police weren't bothered to carry out checks on entry rights and unable to do anything else we walked around for a bit and then returned to the US customs post with the knowledge that at least my forgetful companion had their driving licence. My other companion went first crying mercy for the forgotten passport and citing the driving licence in mitigation. We were instantly all assumed to be US citizens and waved through into the States without further checks being required only receiving a monologue on the 'problems' of policing the border.

 

It actually took my repeated assertion of my non-citizen status for any formal check to be made of my passport at which point suprise was expressed that I really was British. So make of that what you will but a gap of a few years does not mean that any or even all of the participants are dead but it is another example of an individuals perceptions being totally wrong.

 

BTW strange as it may seem to you some people go to America out of curiosity and with no desire to emigrate there.

[Marcus Caelius]

I'm glad that you seem to have finally understood the point that I have been making. It is impossible to make a 'one size fits all' bland statement about 'Western Perceptions of Islam' - or any other racial/religious/cultural, etc. group.

 

Please quote the passage where I disagreed with that.

 

*My* point is that feelings of being perceived as an outsider are often internally generated.

 

BTW strange as it may seem to you some people go to America out of curiosity and with no desire to emigrate there.

 

Are you *trying* to be offensive?

 

1st, don't tell *me* about the comparative rates of immigrant v nonimmigrant. I help decide those numbers.

 

2nd, America did not go "totally paranoid about any potential visitors." There's a damn big hole in lower Manhatten that's still bleeding. That's not an imaginary fear.

 

ETA: FYI, in 2006, 175.1 million nonimmigrants of all types entered the United States; this does not take into account those who might later adjust to immigrant status. There's a hell of a lot of people crossing our (mostly undefended) borders, and we somehow have to find the 100 or so who are trying their level best to blend in, who want to do us harm. If we do seem to be a little fanatical about it, is it any wonder?

 

Also, in 2006, 702.5 thousand people became citizens of the United States, while another 1.266 million became permanent residents (and thus eligible for naturalization). And those are just the ones who's applications were approved. For all that's wrong with this country, there's a lot of people who seem to like it better than where they came from.

Edited December 10, 2007 by Marcus Caelius

[spittle]

In the book Mr Nice by Howard Marx he describes the years he spent in Terre Haute penitentiary.

 

he says that the hostility from the non whites dissippated the moment they realised he was foreign and not a white American.

 

Is that relevant to this or have I got the wrong end of the stick?

 

 

As for Britains position in the world... Geographically we are off the coast of mainland Europe but politically we would be mid Atlantic. We don't know whether we'are European or American in our world outlook.

[Marcus Caelius]

Is that relevant to this or have I got the wrong end of the stick?

 

Well, let's just remember that prisoners are not typical of the general citizenry.

[Melvadius]

However you appear to have again misunderstood the recurring theme of what I have been posting that prejudice on either side is unhelpful to civilized society and thereby taken insult where none has been intended. In my second sentence I reiterated my previous point about dual possibilities by saying that 'there are shades of meaning and perception across all strata's of any society, in some you may meet instant acceptance, in other you won't.' The obverse can also be true that it is your own perception at fault but is not the point that I have been making.

 

I remain convinced that 'perceptions', both internal and external, vary depending on circumstances which we often do not fully understand. this view is not inconsistent with what you have said. It is however a more inclusive viewpoint as it covers a wider spectrum of circumstances where prejudice and misconceptions MAY occur on both sides. To give peaceful co-existence a chance there are times to step back from potential conflicts rather than embracing them.

 

Spittle has suggested an answer that would be consistent with the circumstances I previously described but similar reactions and misunderstandings can occur when someone 'inappropriately' dressed walks into an expensive restaurant. Although knowing how some, so called, 'A' list celebrities dress and act that is possibly not that appropriate an example now. Possibly instead as a final example think of not letting a waiter explain that they serve quadruple sized pizzas and end up with four of you trying to each balance your 'full sized' portion on a table built for one - I've seen that done as well In those circumstances whose perception is therefore at fault?

 

If you cannot accept that there is more than one side to any given viewpoint then I can't help you any further.

[spittle]

Is that relevant to this or have I got the wrong end of the stick?

 

Well, let's just remember that prisoners are not typical of the general citizenry.

 

 

Granted. Especially the convicts in a hellhole pen like Indiana's Terre haute!

 

But the extreme sensitivity to all things racial, in America, is quite puzzling to me.

Asking someone their racial make-up can be taken as a real insult over there.

 

"I'm BLACK, you cracker, mother-f****r. Not mixed race" seems to be the attitude.

 

Public Enemy said

"Black Father, White Mother, Black Baby

Black Mother, White Father, Black baby" and it seems to be true of America.

No such thing as mixed race. Either white or black, no in-between.

No acceptance of 'impurity'.

 

Ijn the words of Halle Berry

"You can kiss my black ass"

 

She was raised by her mother, a white woman from Liverpool, England. Her absentee Father left nothing but his DNA but she classses herself as black.

 

My ex-girlfriend had a very similar parentage and described herself as 'a coconut'

Brown on the outside....

[Marcus Caelius]

But the extreme sensitivity to all things racial, in America, is quite puzzling to me.

 

I think we've done it to ourselves. In trying to respect everyone's differences, we've turned our society into a group of fortified ethnic and religious archipelagoes with virtually no bridges between them. I'm beginning to prefer the French system.

[Marcus Caelius]

If you cannot accept that there is more than one side to any given viewpoint then I can't help you any further.

 

Do you have to work at being this pompous and condescending, or does it come naturally?

[Melvadius]

Think that if you wish - it doesn't change the facts of what I and others have already said and indicated.

 

If you or anyone else always present a bigoted and prejudiced face to the world then it is higly likely that it will be returned. On the other hand by accepting both that there is more than one world view and that cuturlal/religious/ethnic differences do not mean that everyone or any one individual's way of life is under imminent danger of attack then it much more likely that it won't be.

[Ursus]

I think everyone has had their say on the issue. I don't see any productivity from letting this thread continue, so as moderator I am declaring it closed.

 

Those who wish to continue the debate may do so on private channels, or on forums actually dedicated to debating current events.

 

Or you could all get back to making UNRV a great place by contributing to Romanophile discussions.

 

Cheers.