Germany shocked by Cologne New Year gang assaults on women

Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you:

No adverts like this in the forums anymore.
Times and dates in your local timezone.
Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance.
Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely.
Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net.

If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

**Iron_Captain**

AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Iron_Captain wrote:
AlmightyWalrus wrote:
On my phone, so no long rant, but treating "Arab" culture or "Islamic" culture as if it's a homogenous blob is actually racist*, since it attributes certain values to people based solely on their geographical origin.

*Note that there's a difference between an argument being racist and the person making it being racist. It's quite possible to make racist arguments without being a racist (hell, I'm guilty of it myself), but that does not change that the argument is rubbish.

Neither arab nor islamic are geographical terms. Arab is an ethnical term, it refers to a people sharing a common language, culture and self-identification (and yes, I am aware that there are significant regional differences between Arabs, but that is true for most peoples, languages and cultures). Islamic is a religious term referring to any of the many diverse religions originating from the writings of the Prophet Muhammad. Neither is bound to geography. Treating them as if they are homogenous blobs is technically wrong, but it is extremely common not only with arabs and islam, but also with all other groups such as christians, russians, americans, homosexuals etc. That is the problem of groups and subgroups being made up of individuals. That is just the way people think. People automatically divide everything in groups. If that is racist, than everything is racist. Not that "racism" still means anything nowadays... It has been thrown around so much and used to refer to so many completely different, distinct things that it has become wooden language.

You're right, I should've written "the culture of Arab countries" as opposed to just "Arab", and ditto for "Islamic". The point still stands though, making assumptions of homogenity in heterogeneous societies (i.e. pretty much everywhere) is silly at best, and dangerous at worst.

I do not think generalisation is dangerous per se. It is neccessary for abstraction. It only gets dangerous when you take this "group thinking" too far and you see individuals no longer as individual people, but just as abstract parts of their group, as "arabs" or "muslims" rather than an individual etc. That unfortenately happens a lot in conflicts.

**Smacks**

Wulfmar wrote:
Are you other guys not tired of trying to score points against each other over definitions and ignoring the actual discussion?

It's actually quite relevant to the discussion. If someone says "I don't like a group of people" then it's kind of important to be able to define who exactly is in that group, and what exactly you don't like about them. Even though Muslims and Arabs are not distinct groups, there is unquestionably a lot of overlap. If someone says that they don't like something about one group, but they really mean the other group, then that person might be racist... Or just too ignorant to differentiate.

**AlmightyWalrus**

What was Merkel supposed to do in order to handle it "well"?

**Shadow Captain Edithae**

A local law enforcement event exacerbated by a national crisis and massive influx of immigrants deliberately encouraged by Merkel.

If law enforcement is overwhelmed as a result, Merkels policies are a direct factor.

**motyak**

The number of rude comments in this thread and warnings that have had to be given for this thread means we're done here