Whats your experience with Muslim neighborhoods and Muslims in your country ?

[abaris]

There is no such thing as muslim neighbourhoods in my country. There are muslims of course. They're an official religious community since 1912, if memory serves. A political decision back then, since Austria had just annexed Bosnia Herzegovina and it was a way to welcome the population to the fold.

I have neither positive nor negative experiences with our muslims. Also there aren't any political problems with them other than our rightists playing the Islamophobic card. There have been no incidents since 1985 and that was when muslim terrorists were still political rather than religious.

[Regina]

I live in a UK city which has a very large Muslim minority. On the whole they are fine (because as I insist my problem with religion isn't with religious people, it's with religion itself).

I don't think I've ever had any real issue with an individual Muslim (not because of their religion I mean), although going to my Nan's neighbourhood (which is almost exclusively Muslim apart from her now) is uncomfortable because we get stared at like "what you doing here?". The area she lives in has streets that are only one step above a slum if I'm honest, and apparently it never used to be that way when the area was more diverse, don't know if there's a connection there. That said, there are some horrible neighbourhoods in my city (local to my area even) that are not Muslim at all so I'm not going to pretend this is just Muslims. There are also Muslims in my city that have great jobs, work hard and live in huge houses, so it's not all Muslims and I won't generalise.

[Mister Agenda]

Most of the Muslims I know are Somali Bantu refugees. They are among the nicest, most hospitable people I've ever known. They have maybe part of a neighborhood in low-cost housing--the kids talk about getting out of because of the gang activity in the neighborhood. Their parents work hard and have high expectation of their children, who study hard.

http://www.wistv.com/story/16107596/year...e-thriving

On the other hand, the local Imam is an Egyptian fellow who is quite the fire-and-brimstone type, the Bantus have become a little bit more conservative under the guidance of the local American mosque than they were when they got here. The young girls have started wearing hijab where they previously only wore scarves. I don't find him particularly more obnoxious than some of the local Pentecostal preachers who admonish women not to wear makeup or jewelry or pants or cut their hair.

[Fidel_Castronaut]

I'm friends with a lot of Muslims. I work with a guy who is Muslim and he's down to earth and engages in good banter.

My problem has never been with Muslims..it's with islam and the increasing segregation of communities that define themselves as 'Muslim' from wider society. Indeed my real problem is with increased social segregation per se in England and the rest of the UK (Northern Ireland is a special case), and the inability of parliament to confront it or address it in any meaningful way.

There's a distinct ghettoisation of social groups occurring here now, which has arguably been going on for over 50 years. 'Muslim' communities (and I hate hearing that definition because it's totally bogus) are just one of if not the most prominent example.

Bah. I didn't want to write an essay, but I'll pin my blame on a few issues.

1. Lack of town and City planning to accommodate new migrants who were flocking here after being invited To fill labour shortages
2. Failure of multicultural norms (not fact! Important distinction) to foster community cohesion (tag line here was 'a community of communities', which is contradictory to the aforementioned goal).
3. Failure to confront the causes and symptoms of extremism - widening social divide in terms of economics, health and education followed by inability to call a duck a duck.

Sorry!

[zebo-the-fat]

My 92 year old mother is living in an area which has become mainly muslim. As she lives about 85 miles away I can only get to see her once a week, she is practically housebound but none of her white neighbors seem to visit, the only person who does is a muslim from the next street. He checks she is ok everyday, does shopping for her and a month ago he phoned me to say she had had a fall, but he had called an ambulance and everything was being taken care of. So I would say that I have never had any problems (I have also worked with them without any issues)
They are like any other group of people, most are fine but a few idiots give the rest a bad name.

[Norman Humann]

No muslims around here. Except the ones stopping at Starbucks.

[Aisha]

I live in Marseille, we have a huge diversity of all religions. (Though I must say in general the French do not seem to discuss religion much).
Most of the muslims I meet are nice, polite and reasonable people. For a while I had language courses, and some of the classmates came from strict muslim countries without having been in the western society much. One guy from Sudan told me about harsh punishments in his country for stealing, he found it completely normal. Though after some discussion he was turning around and understanding that maybe the laws in his country are a bit too much. Another guy from Somalia did not give better stories, but was less open to ideas and changes. There was also a Russian girl from the Dagestan area who was very kind but had some strong opinions about her faith and things to do and not to do. All the people only gave responses to this if asked how things were done in their country, or if it had to do with the lesson we got for that day (discrimination, law, religion, women rights). There was not much preaching going on.

On the street I do not notice much for extremists or people in favor of sharia law. I think once I came across an pro ISIS demonstration, and once across a pro Palestine demonstration. Both of them made me want to get away from that place as soon as possible. There have been quite a few anti ISIS demonstrations as well, mostly organized by Kurds and mostly for the battle of Kobani. When I came by the old port last Tuesday there where loads of them singing and dancing because of ISIS losing Kobani.

I can say I have not been to the Norther quarters much. Apparently it is a dangerous place to go, I have been there twice (mostly passing trough in the bus) and had no real problem. The problems there are caused mostly by drugs gangs, and not by extremist Muslims.

[Mister Agenda]

Most American Muslims seem pretty happy with their situations. We haven't had the same kind of ghetto-izaton some parts of Europe have gotten...but possibly that's because our ghettos are already occupied.

[Aisha]

Most American Muslims seem pretty happy with their situations. We haven't had the same kind of ghetto-izaton some parts of Europe have gotten...but possibly that's because our ghettos are already occupied.

This might be far fetched, but I think that maybe a lot of refugees enter Europe via Italy and Greece. Loads of them being Muslim and coming from conflict area's or area's with loads of poverty. It might be that the Muslims in the US made a real decision to go to the US, and the fact that they got a green card might mean that they have high education or a job there for them already. Whereas the refugee Muslims in Europe did not really aim for a specific place, just somewhere saver. But I think in the last year there were more than 100.000 refugees entering Italy alone.

I have to be careful here, I do not want to say that these people are savages that turn good neighborhoods in to ghettos. But they are people arriving with nothing, from a very different culture than ours. Most of them are very willing to learn the language and adapt, but it is not an easy task.

I am not really talking about immigrants here. Just about refugees. Of course Muslims have been in Europe and the US for many many years, but I guess those who have been there longer are not the ones noticed so much.

[Mister Agenda]

Good point, Aisha. Most Muslims have to cross an ocean to arrive in America, and unless they are refugees, that implies some resources compared to an overland or short boat trip.