We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13939333 and marked it off-topic.
I've lived in Canada, I did not notice any culture that I should respect other than to learn the language and obey the laws. In other countries that I've lived in (Poland, Romania) it was much the same. And that's being an atheist in countries that were fairly religious.
Do you want refugees to start acting like the locals in every respect? Do you want them to start wearing local traditional dress and pretend that they're part of something they do not feel in their hearts? Do you feel threatened by people that you can't easily communicate with, that have different customs than you do and that pray to different gods? Should they convert to some local religion?
> In other words: don't let them in.
Why?
Refugees are the people that will help your descendants a few generations down the line when the tides have turned. Likely they or their children will be the ones to wipe your ass when you're old and gray and unable to do so yourself.
All this fearmongering and irrational angst of other cultures isn't doing any good whatsoever.
In the same spirit:
In the case of the U.S. that culture would be the WASPy social ethic of the original elites, which was carried forward until recently. That's more Puritan in New England, less so in Virginia, and non-existent in the Deep South. I'd call it the protestant work ethic, but I think there's something much more distinct in the U.S. Whatever Canada has going on is also distinct, though definitely seems close to the U.S. Mid-Western Lutheran culture.
The irony is that these days I'd argue it's immigrants that come closest to exemplifying the traditional, dominate U.S. ethic. Previous immigrant groups, like the Irish and Italians, didn't bring that culture but merely adopted it--in some cases poorly. (Maybe because they were less educated than the current influx, or because the British Empire left such a tremendous technocratic legacy throughout Asia, especially compared to Southern and Eastern Europe.) The past 50+ years a poor, white, Southern ethic seems to have come to dominate popular U.S. culture. That culture emphasizes the pursuit of wealth and the trappings of wealth rather than valuing work for it's own sake, despite the rhetoric. It also emphasizes blue collar "authenticity" over respecting the dictates of the elite, which on balance is a net negative. This is why that culture looks down on education, and why it's lost on so many people that so-called "book learning" is actually a kind of labor--a labor that alot of people dislike just as much as mopping floors, but something you endure nonetheless because it's what the WASPy work ethic demands, especially in the current economic environment. A college education is for many people the same kind of sublimation of personal aspirations that going straight to the factory was for people a few generations ago.
It's a shame we don't accept more Syrian refugees. By and large they're the middle class of Syria--educated, family-oriented, and instinctively averse to radicalism and fundamentalism. They've spent decades learning to avoid dependencies on political solutions and to grow business organically rather than through rent seeking. Syria's loss could be our gain. Such a wasted opportunity. It's especially egregious given how grim and horrendous the situation is there.
Or you could increase your own birth rates, so your descendants can help your other descendants.
Birth rates are a result, not an input.
By death count? Even if this is so, there are vastly more white people in the US. What's important are the per capita numbers.
and the people pushing to make their religion the basis of law are also Christians, not Muslims.
Why would you expect Muslims to try to impose their law on a society when they haven't got anywhere near the political power to succeed? How dumb do you think they are? The important questions are whether they'd try to impose their religion if they had much more political clout, and what the outcome of a successful imposition would be for the people here (hint: not awesome).
Also, fwiw, Islam is not a race, hence you can't be racist for criticizing it. It is an ideological system. In that way it is no different than Democracy, Communism, Buddhism, Capitalism, Mormonism, Anarchism, etc, etc. Race doesn't define any of those ideologies either. In a free society we must be allowed to criticize ideas.
I'm allowed to criticize Islamism and its practices and beliefs. I'm also allowed to criticize Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, et al. However only one of these ideologies regularly/commonly threatens to kill (and actually will kill) people who leave the faith. Only one of these ideologies has a large constituency who condones the intentional targeting of innocent civilians. It isn't a majority, but it isn't a fringe 1% either. Pew Research Surveys show the number to be 20-30% of these practitioners worldwide. (http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religi...)
http://www.vintag.es/2014/09/pictures-of-tehran-iran-ca-1960...
The problem with all this is if it achieves escape velocity then it can take a long long time to undo the damage. We're almost four decades into Iran being an Islamic state and I wonder how that would have all ended if there had not been so much meddling in Iran and Iraq (and less money flowing to the house of Saud).
Quite possibly Iran (then Persia) would have been a real powerhouse in the region, highly educated citizenry and vast natural resources.
Very appropriate that the US had a huge hand to play in dislodging the normalcy of life in both of these places.
[1] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/travel_news/article-340480...
Here is Ethiopia for instance:
http://addisairport.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/addisabab...
Highrises are simply a function of the price of ground in cities going up dictating more use per square unit of area.
And FWIW the roots of most of our civilizations lie in the Arab world, at some point in time those regions were the moderns and our regions were backwards.
To directly answer your question: Major cities like that have existed all over the globe for many centuries, the 'modern' look as you call it was most likely inspired by looking abroad but that has never stopped anybody from imitation.
Turkey was well underway to becoming a very modern state, Iran ditto. All this long before we began propping up the Shah and destabilizing the region around Turkey. The meddling began roughly around the time oil became important and really took off after World War II, in part accelerated because of the cold war.
Yes, Islamic fundamentalism is the anomaly, and it would not nearly be as powerful as it is without the CIA and the Saudi's funding and arming their initial round.
Let's just use this as an example, from the website you linked to above: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-yOvi_Hupn0M/VA34gNyV1DI/AAAAAAAA8R...
Do you think that kind of thing was "normal" for the Islamic middle east?
Turkey was well underway to becoming a very modern state
The temporary modernization of Turkey was a result of having rulers and elites who looked to the west to copy their success. It was absolutely not a result of a popular movement. Modernization was not supported by the bulk of the population at any point in time.
You mean collaterals and the US ?