I don’t spend much time thinking about Muslim suffering so I don’t expect Muslims to spend much time thinking about non-Muslim suffering.
The Los Angeles Times reports today:
French Muslims resent scrutiny after Charlie Hebdo attack
“To be honest, most people [prisoners] were happy about what happened at Charlie Hebdo,” Sofian said. “I felt much worse about the children killed in Gaza, their bodies placed in plastic bags — that made me cry. But no one marched in support of those kids here like they did for those journalists.”
That makes perfect sense. Muslims side with their own, such as fellow Muslims in Gaza.
Given that most people tend to side with their own (be that bond genetic or religious or otherwise), it is a disaster to increase diversity in a society.
Chaim Amalek: “I have attended lectures at a local Scandinavian Church where the Norwegian pastor extolled African and Muslim immigration into Scandinavia and demanded more. This pastor was no crypto-Jew or Zionist, he was a pure-blooded WASP. And not one of the other WASPS in attendance even rolled their eyes. So it is with sunset peoples.”
Jason Richwine wrote for the American Heritage Foundation Aug. 12, 2009:
Science is telling us that ethnic diversity causes significant problems by diminishing valuable social capital. What then should we do about it?
It was not the kind of message a Harvard seminar expects to hear. Ethnic diversity causes a lot of problems, our guest speaker told us. It reduces interpersonal trust, civic engagement, and charitable giving. It causes us to disengage from society, like turtles shrinking into their shells, reducing our overall quality of life. The more diversity we experience in our lives, the less happy we are.
I came to Harvard to study public policy in the fall of 2004. All of the first-years like me had to take a special seminar class where we would discuss the philosophy of science and the nature of good research. The best class days featured established scholars who would come to present their own papers, which were real-life examples of good research.
The guest speaker who came to discuss diversity was political scientist Robert Putnam, who is something of a celebrity in academic circles. With the publication of his 1995 article “Bowling Alone,” Putnam helped bring the issues of social trust and civic participation to the forefront of social science. His article became a popular book, also called Bowling Alone, in 2000. Written for a general audience, the book chronicled the rapid decline in civic engagement that had taken place in the United States since 1950, and argued that communities without strong social ties are less happy and less successful. The article and the book garnered Putnam numerous media appearances and spawned reams of response articles in academia.
Putnam began by telling us about one result he encountered that was thoroughly upsetting to him—the more ethnically diverse a community is, the less social capital it possesses. When a person lives in a diverse community, he trusts everyone less, including those of his own ethnic group.
So how did Putnam come to conclude that ethnic diversity is so problematic? The answer begins with the notion of “social capital,” which Putnam defines in simple terms—“social networks and the associated norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness.” Social capital turns out to be an exceptionally valuable commodity. Building complex networks of friends and associates, trusting others to keep their word, and maintaining social norms and expectations all grease the wheels of business by enabling cooperation.
