202. CoralReef - Dec. 10, 1998 - 7:19 PM PT
btw, this week there has been a very long, well written and detailed series of articles in the Houston Chronicle on Europe's struggle with immigration. The newspaper is on the web for anyone interested.
203. CalGal - Dec. 10, 1998 - 7:23 PM PT
Well.
I'm sure there are more Arabs in France than there are Muslim Nubians in the Netherlands.
That's probably what she meant.
204. RyckNelson - Dec. 10, 1998 - 7:32 PM PT
I'll bet there are more relatives of Pinochet in the Netherlands than there are Muslim Nubians.
205. pseudoerasmus - Dec. 10, 1998 - 7:34 PM PT
Have you noticed Jenerator always talks about Muslims as if they were a menacing species of vermin?
206. JefferySteele - Dec. 10, 1998 - 7:36 PM PT
What is a "Meghrebin"?
207. Jenerator - Dec. 10, 1998 - 7:37 PM PT
Saying that there is a large population of Muslims in France somehow implies that I think they're vermin? Are you getting desperate PE?
208. Jenerator - Dec. 10, 1998 - 7:37 PM PT
It's French for Muslim.
209. JefferySteele - Dec. 10, 1998 - 7:37 PM PT
And if there are really 4 million of them (whatever they are) in France, then that exceeds the number of Turks in Germany (which is 2 million, I believe).
210. Jenerator - Dec. 10, 1998 - 7:38 PM PT
There is always Musulmann too.
211. JefferySteele - Dec. 10, 1998 - 7:44 PM PT
According to the _World Dictionary of Minorities_ (1997), France had 614,000 Algerians, 572,000 Moroccans, and 208,000 Tunisians in 1994.
Germany had 1.6 million Turks and Kurds (which according to this dictionary, German statistics do not usually differeniate between Turks and Kurds)
212. RyckNelson - Dec. 10, 1998 - 7:47 PM PT
What! No lone surviving Kosovan?
213. MrSocko - Dec. 10, 1998 - 7:51 PM PT
Well, it doesn't matter about Turks in Germany. Britain has a higher Muslim population than either Germany or France. France's distinction, oddly enough, is that it boasts the most Jews in Western Europe. It's the third-largest diaspora community in the world after America and Russia.
214. Jenerator - Dec. 10, 1998 - 7:52 PM PT
Another relating quote
"Aujourd'hui, l'Islam est la deuxième religion pratiquée en France, après la religion catholique et avant les religions protestantes et juives. Il ya 600 mosquées en France et 4 millions de Musulmans."
p.298 "A Votre Tour", source Quid, 1993.
215. Jenerator - Dec. 10, 1998 - 7:53 PM PT
oops, that should be
Il y a...
216. MrSocko - Dec. 10, 1998 - 7:55 PM PT
Message #214:
"Another *relating* quote"?
Good grief.
217. pseudoerasmus - Dec. 10, 1998 - 7:59 PM PT
The tart has got it wrong. "Méghrebin" is French for "Maghrebi" or North African, not "Muslim".
218. Jenerator - Dec. 10, 1998 - 8:01 PM PT
PE,
I'm a tart now?
Mr. Socko, PE, why are you being so nit-picky? Don't you have anything better to do or better to say?
219. AdamSelene - Dec. 10, 1998 - 8:13 PM PT
Get rid of the geographical identification with citizenship and you get rid of the immigration "problem." You figure it out.
220. JefferySteele - Dec. 10, 1998 - 10:16 PM PT
Mr Socko --
I'm not sure that the facts support your Message #213. The information I have on the United Kingdom's minorities is:
Scots 5.1 million
Welsh 2 million
Northern Irish 1.5 million
Indians 840,800
Afro-Caribbeans 499,100
Pakistanis 475,800
Jews 300,000
Africans 207,500
Bangladeshis 160,300
Chinese 157,500
Roma/Gypsies 90,000-120,000
ALSO MANX-SPEAKERS, IRISH, CYPRIOTS, AND VIETNAMESE
Even if we assumed that all of the Africans in the UK are Muslim, and added their numbers to the Bangladeshis and Pakistanis, you would still be short of the numbers of North Africans in France.
France does seem to have a large population of Jews though. According to this source, 500,000 to 700,000 (0.9-1.2% of France's population).
221. pseudoerasmus - Dec. 10, 1998 - 10:31 PM PT
Here is a table of the populations of Muslims in Muslim-majority and Muslim-minority countries. One thing I find hard to believe is the alleged 100 million Muslims in China, which despite Sinkiang can't have that many. I had always imagined it was 30 million or so.
222. pseudoerasmus - Dec. 10, 1998 - 10:33 PM PT
I also question the figure for Thailand, which is stated as 6 million but it must be less than 3 million.
223. JefferySteele - Dec. 10, 1998 - 10:37 PM PT
PseudoErasmus --
That is an interesting table, but I also cannot believe that China has anywhere near 100,000,000 Muslims -- there is just no way.
But the table does support what I said above: France has a larger Muslim population than the United Kingdom or Germany.
224. JefferySteele - Dec. 10, 1998 - 10:39 PM PT
and 1% of Japan is Muslim?
225. pseudoerasmus - Dec. 10, 1998 - 10:39 PM PT
Well, who are the Muslims in China beside the Uighurs in Sinkiang (Western Turkestan)?
226. pseudoerasmus - Dec. 10, 1998 - 10:41 PM PT
Well, the table says 10,000 Muslims in Japan, so I suspect that this "1%" is just rounding.
227. pseudoerasmus - Dec. 10, 1998 - 10:42 PM PT
10,000 is a very believable figure just in Tokyo, what with all those Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Iranians.
228. JefferySteele - Dec. 10, 1998 - 10:45 PM PT
According to this _World Directory of Minorities_, China's Muslim population is 2.4% of the population, quite a bit less than the one-hundred million figure quoted in the table above. The population of Uighurs is just over seven million. Other Chinese Muslim groups? I don't know, but I'm working on it.
229. JefferySteele - Dec. 10, 1998 - 10:46 PM PT
But surely those are just guest workers who are not included in Japan's official statistics. Hell, they don't even include many of the Koreans who have been living there for generations.
230. pseudoerasmus - Dec. 10, 1998 - 10:49 PM PT
Message #229
True, they are either illegals or guest workers. And I severely doubt there are 10,000 native Japanese Muslims.
231. JefferySteele - Dec. 10, 1998 - 10:58 PM PT
According to this site, China only has 14 million Muslims-- a believable figure
232. JefferySteele - Dec. 10, 1998 - 11:01 PM PT
Besides the Uighurs, I cannot find any other Chinese minorities that would count as Muslims. Perhaps there are some Han Chinese converts in Sinkiang who thought it might be good for business if they prayed to Allah.
233. ChristiPeters - Dec. 11, 1998 - 12:33 PM PT
"Are immigrants a good or a bad thing for the USA?"
Yes.
(OK, you can close the thread now)
234. elliot803 - Dec. 11, 1998 - 12:56 PM PT
AGupta:
"Similarly, I am unpersuaded by claims about impending shortages of natural resources. Those claims have been circulating for many years, and the disaster is always right around the corner."
Well, complacency is a foolish attitude. The earth's resources are finite, and we are depleting them. The idea that technological advances will somehow forever allow us to produce more from less is not tenable.
235. AGupta - Dec. 11, 1998 - 1:05 PM PT
elliot -
The view that natural resource crisis does not realistically threaten us is hardly "complacent." My view depends on the continuing human impulse to innovate, to devise new and efficient ways of using resources, to dream up substitutes for those resources. Luckily, in free societies, those impulses thrive. But if the world or human nature suddenly changed, so that people stopped having new ideas and stopped feeling the need to think up new things, then I would agree with you.
Ananda
236. pseudoerasmus - Dec. 11, 1998 - 3:22 PM PT
Well, historical trends seem to support Gupta here.
In 1850, the unit of energy required to produce $1000 of goods or services (expressed in constant prices) amounted to 4.6 tonnes of petroleum equivalent. By 1900, this figure had dropped to 2.4 tones, by 1950 to 1.8, and by 1978 to 1.5. In other words, a unit of energy (whatever source used) in 1978 produced triple the value (in constant prices) that it did in 1850.
Now, although I see no reason why such efficiency trends cannot continue, I also don't know how the growth rate of productivity of energy inputs compares with the rate of depletion of energy sources. But the two are related, since the productivity of energy inputs is in part a function of energy prices.
[Source for the figures: Massimo Livi-Bacci, A Concise History of World Population]
237. FreeToChoose - Dec. 11, 1998 - 6:08 PM PT
elliot803
"The earth's
resources are finite, and we are depleting them."
What are we depleting?
"The idea
that technological advances will somehow forever allow
us to produce more from less is not tenable."
I cannot conceive of a way that we will stop progressing in that direction, short of a nuclear war, or mandating that only public schooling is allowable.
238. JefferySteele - Dec. 12, 1998 - 5:41 PM PT
Pseudo --
"Estimates of the numbers of Chinese Muslims vary from 10 million in some official sources to 50 million accrding to Muslim sources. Objective accounts set the number at around 20 million in 1990, mainly among the Wei Wuer (Uyger and Hui peoples). There are no mosque registers in China, making precise figures impossible. Of the 55 national minorities listed in the 1982 census, 10 are Muslim. They include six Turkic-speaking groups (the Uygur, Kazakh, Kirghiz, Salar, Tartar and Uzbek) who live primarily in Xinjiang Uyger, the large autinomous region in the north-west, and the Hui, Tajik, Dongxiang and Baoan. The Shia Tajik, people of Iranian stock who have absorbed many Turkic words into their Shigananai Tajik dialect, adhere to the Ismaili sect, while the remaining groups are Sunnis. By far the largest group in the Turkic/Tajik category are the Uygur, who according to the 1982 census number close to six million. The other groups total just over a million.'
"The Hui, the Baoan and the Dongxiang are all Sunni and the last two are of Mongolian origin. The Hui, numbering over seven million according to the 1982 census, constitute the largest Muslim group in China. They are distributed throughout the country but are found mainly in the north-west provinces of Qinghai, Gansu, and Ningxia and the south-western province of Yunnan. The Baoan and the Dongxiang, who total less than 300,000, are found mainly in Gansu province."
(Source: Islam and Islamic Groups: A Worldwide Reference Guide) published in 1992
239. JefferySteele - Dec. 12, 1998 - 5:47 PM PT
Another interesting note:
"Of the ten Muslim groups the Hui are by far the most acculturated to the majority Han Chinese. They are descended from the Arab merchants and mercenaries who settled inside the borders of present-day China as early as the T'ang dynasty, probably during the eighth century. They arrived in China by way of sea routes, crossing the Indian Ocean to the south-eastern ports, or via the Silk Road, through Central Asia and into the Central plains of China. Small Muslim communities developed which became increasingly Sinified in their dress, customs, and language but which maintained their Muslim traditions, continuing to use Arabic for prayer, marrying within their community and observing Muslim dietary laws."
240. JefferySteele - Dec. 12, 1998 - 5:52 PM PT
And this on Japan:
"There is a small native Japanese and foreign Muslim community, some of whose activities date back to the late 19th century. In recent years the immigration of Muslims from Pakistan and Bangladesh has contributed to the emergence of a more active community. About 30,000 Muslims are reported to be members of the Islamic centre in Tokyo; the community also maintains a mosque at Kobe."
241. JefferySteele - Dec. 13, 1998 - 12:17 AM PT
Scott Loar --
I would be interested in hearing if you have had any experiences with these Chinese Muslim minorities, particularly the Hui.
242. ScottLoar - Dec. 13, 1998 - 5:24 AM PT
I noted this thread rather late, but your latest information is undoubtedly the most complete. The Muslims have bedeviled the Chinese authorities ever since their defeat at the battle of Talash-kent (spelling?) in 750 A.D. (date?) which marked the furthest advance of Muslim military in the East just as their defeat by Charles Martel outside Toulouse marked their farthest advance in Europe. They have proved chronically incalcitrant to Chinese rule, usually rebelling in the waning years of a dynasty's rule, and remain to this day a problem for the central government as they will not acculturate and separatists lately have taken to bombings in Han Chinese cities to make their point. This is irrevelant to your question but I just had to mention it all.
243. ScottLoar - Dec. 13, 1998 - 5:29 AM PT
Chinese popularly note there are five peoples comprising China (yes, you know this catechism too): Han, Manchu, Mongolian, Muslim (Hui), and Tibetan, but excepting for Han those mentioned don't square with the number or proportion of minority groups. Yes, just more information irrelevant to your question but I cannot resist indulging myself to the boredom of whomever is unfortunate to stumble upon this post.
244. ScottLoar - Dec. 13, 1998 - 5:47 AM PT
But now to your question -
No, I have had no experience of these Muslim minorities, other than the infamous Muslim money-changers who would pester you outside train stations offering to change money at unfavourable rates. It seems somewhere, sometime, a foreigner must have accepted such a deal from one of these would-be money changers and this news profoundly infected their brethren. I see less of them now in major cities (maybe the window of opportunity closed) as the local police are more diligent in occasionally sweeping the streets of streetpeddlers and hawkers, and I do not travel beyond the major cities for I have no commercial prospects in the hinterlands.
There is a gaggle of Hui (I suspect they're so judging from their features and wares) who hang out on the Bund (just around the Bank of China Building) ever ready to show you a garish carpet of rayon. And for the sympathetic there are equal numbers of Tibetans, identifiable by being overly dressed in hot weather and always revealing a bare arm, but I've never found out what they're selling or what they're waiting for. The Chinese pedestrians seem to find them slightly daunting and pay them no curious stares or comment, but I wouldn't draw any great conclusions from that. They're all part of the great stream of people from the outer provinces flowing into the coastal cities.
245. ScottLoar - Dec. 13, 1998 - 7:29 AM PT
Corrigendum Message #242): chronically recalcitrant
246. JefferySteele - Dec. 13, 1998 - 1:07 PM PT
Scott --
How can you tell the money changers who work outside the train stations are Muslims? By reputation? By Dress? Do they tell you?
247. pseudoerasmus - Dec. 13, 1998 - 1:11 PM PT
By appearance, I suspect. I've never seen an Uighur (or any other Chinese Muslim) in the flesh, but my understanding is that they look vaguely Mediterranean.
248. pseudoerasmus - Dec. 13, 1998 - 1:12 PM PT
My father, who has been in Urumchi, opines that Uighurs look southern Italian.
249. JefferySteele - Dec. 13, 1998 - 1:17 PM PT
I wasn't sure from Scott's description that the Muslim money-changers were Uighers.
250. ScottLoar - Dec. 13, 1998 - 2:07 PM PT
JefferySteele, by dress (skullcaps [I don't know the proper word], colors of their clothes) and physical appearance (hey, they're Caucasian!). I avoid conversation with touts and others I'm not interested in so I've not given time to ferret the accent. I use "Hui" in the Han Chinese sense, loosely, since all Muslims are usually popularly defined as Hui and I have no specialized knowledge or interest to discriminate otherwise.
251. JefferySteele - Dec. 13, 1998 - 2:11 PM PT
Scott --
You would think that after a thousand years in China that the Hui would have intermarried with the Han, and that the physical differences between the two would have at least narrowed if not disappeared altogether.
252. ScottLoar - Dec. 13, 1998 - 2:22 PM PT
JefferySteele, no, I would never assume Han intermarry with other races or peoples, no matter how many years past relations, and Islamic conversion or apostasy does not encourage intermarriage, yes?
I think the Han ethnocentric and the level of civilization traditionally found on Chinese borders does not encourage intermarriage. As example, even among the Peranakan (Chinese converts to Islam in Western Malaysia) intermarriage was seemingly rare enough that the Peranakan remained culturally and physically distinct for centuries until their own numbers died out to a degree that the culture could not be maintained. Rick Nelson or IrvingSnodgrass could possibly correct or corroborate me on this last.
253. ScottLoar - Dec. 13, 1998 - 2:29 PM PT
The only places in my experience (arguably limited) where I have seen the Chinese largely integrated in the local culture - culturally and physically - are Thailand by conscientious effort, and Sri Lanka by reason the numbers of Chinese are seemingly too few to support an economically viable community. And the US, although large numbers of Asian immigrants seem (I emphasize "seem") to belie that.
254. JefferySteele - Dec. 13, 1998 - 2:32 PM PT
Scott --
My mistake. I should have noted that you were using the term "Hui" in the popular sense of the word, rather than referring to the group that I described in Message #236
255. JefferySteele - Dec. 13, 1998 - 2:32 PM PT
that should be Message #239, not #236.
256. ScottLoar - Dec. 13, 1998 - 2:36 PM PT
Well, if I can sit here with Scotch in hand (not "at hand" mind you, but "in hand") and carry on with liberality I would expect the same liberality from you in interpretation, and you a younger man as well. For shame!
257. JefferySteele - Dec. 13, 1998 - 2:42 PM PT
Scott --
You are much more talented than I am. I have a difficult enough time with this keyboard (even without a Scotch in one hand to slow me down) -- to expect a greater liberality of definition from someone as literal-minded as myself is too big a stretch
258. ScottLoar - Dec. 13, 1998 - 2:50 PM PT
No, JefferySteele, I am sloppier, and so I pass off now unto that good night, perchance to dream.
Actually, I'm quittin' this 'ville and moving on to a book I gotta' finish. I got a lot of those layin' around.
Adios amigo.
259. jonesatlaw - Dec. 16, 1998 - 2:50 PM PT
"melting pot"!?, mine always burned before I could get it to melt. Can immigrants do this?