The West Is Choked by Fear

Suppose that you invite people to your house. Rules of etiquette say that the guests should not tell you how to live your life. Nobody likes to be told what to do, nor how to live. Except for Muslims in the Balkans, most Muslims in Europe are guests. Guests should keep their mouths shut until asked for their opinion.

The Muslims I know who have adapted really well to Europe are the ones who adopt the attitude: these people do not know what Islam is, they think Islam is suicide bombers... so, as an ambassador of my religion, I will tell them what Islam is, without trying to force my belief system on them, so that they get a clearer picture of the enormous complexity and diversity of the Islamic world. By contrast, the morons who claim that it's OK to kill a cartoonist, and who claim that Muslims are victims, are the ones who give a bad image of Islam.

"I frankly believe here in the U.S. we do a better job of assimilating people because we do not subscribe to "adapt to our customs, or move back to where you came from." We demand the freedom to believe whatever we want, as long as we grant others the same privilege."

I live in the U.S. now and I disagree. The U.S. is a country of immigrants, and one of the unwritten requirements to live in the American society is that you conform to the norm. You don't need to lose your culture, but you need to mellow it down in your public life. Sorry, but the U.S. being as tolerant as you claim is a nice dream, imho.

"Ironically, even with the U.S. wars in Muslim countries still ongoing, I still believe that Muslims are better integrated into U.S. society than they are in Europe."

I agree, but not for the reasons you gave. Europe has millenia of history. In Europe, nationality and ethnicity are too deeply connected. Though I am from Western Europe and lived in Denmark, I don't think I would ever feel Danish even if I lived there for 50 years. Being a U.S. citizen is much more cultural than ethnical. The U.S. is more welcoming to all immigrants because of this, not only to Muslims, but to everyone. And it has more to do with the ethnical aspect than with freedom of worship. Do you really think that Muslims in Europe have no freedom of worship?

Of course, this is typical behaviour of many of the deeply religious. Murder in the name of religion is nothing new. We're seeing it more from the Muslims than the Christians in this century but the end result is still death in the name of religion.

This isn't about freedom of speech. It's about insecure people who need to cling to fairy tales in order to get through life. It's pathetic. I pity them and their unhealthy need to believe in a fairy tale epilogue to their lives.

This is the killer argument for the "critics of Islam" side. After all, lots of Buddhists, Hindus, Christians, Native Americans etc are dirt poor, and many of them live under very oppressive regimes. They don't go around blowing up airliners or flying planes into buildings and claiming sanction from their religions. Colonialism isn't enough of an answer either. Many countries have come out of colonialism without a pan-generational rage against the west. Hindu or Buddhist immigrants to the United States don't rage against "immoral" culture and kill innocents to prove their cultural superiority.

So prima facie there does seem to be something screwy about Islam that encourages such behavior (but I won't explore this any further on this post).

This doesn't say anything about individual muslims though. Once can claim communism is a terrible way to structure a society and still believe that individual communists can be decent people. This is the subtlety both sides (Islam "bashers" and apologists) lose sight of. The bashers want all muslims to be demonized and deported and so on, while the pro Islam folks want everyone else to tread softly around Islam, refrain from criticizing its "holy" books and "prophet" and treat it with "respect". Both arguments are obnoxious.

I've noticed that people of other faiths (Christians, Hindus, Jews) tend to take their holy books a little bit more allegorically.

Personally, I believe that this unyielding approach to the Koran is a major cause in Islam's adoption into a modern day society.

Humans have a lot of fat. I suppose it is possible to sustain combustion using human fat as fuel alone. The time it takes depend on temperature, amount of fuel and availability of oxygen.

"What chemicals were used to kill"

AFAIK, Carbon Monoxide was the preferred means. It poses no great risk to the operators if properly restricted and it quickly dissipates in the environment. It's also easy to generate from internal combustion engines and it was used in mobile gas chambers mounted in trucks where the exhaust was directed to a compartment where the prisoners were killed while being transported.

As for ash disposal, not all victims were cremated. There were many mass graves identified.

"every critical scientific effort to date to investigate the above has had serious consequences for their investigators"

I know of no critical scientific effort to investigate the Holocaust. Can anyone seriously believe the surviving witnesses are victims of a collective hallucination or part of a conspiracy to hide some "truth"? Can anyone discredit the exhaustive records kept about the "productivity" of the extermination fields?

Quite frankly, when I decided to answer your questions I had no idea this trip to one of the darkest moments of history would have the effect it had on me. It saddens me my species is capable of such a cold, directed, rational and efficient genocide. The possibility it may happen again frightens me deeply.

We should never forget the terrible atrocities we are capable of doing. This memory may be the only thing that prevents us from doing it again.