Hass Dellal, executive director of the Australian Multicultural Foundation, which promotes awareness of cultural diversity within Australia, said that history might make Americans more resistant to Islamic State recruiting.What does Dellal mean? Does he mean that if Australia had not banned Muslim immigration to Australia until the 1970s, we would have less ISIS recruiting, because they, Muslims, had been around longer and were more numerous?
Dellal also said public discussion of issues around radicalization and extremism is more balanced in the United States than in Australia, which effectively banned Middle Eastern Muslims from immigrating until the 1970s. [link]
But the evidence in the west, in Europe and the US, is that the problem with Islamic radicalism is with second and third generation Muslims, not with the original immigrants. So, if we'd had earlier Muslim immigration to Australia, we would, logically, have more of the second and third generation and more of a problem, not less.
In the US, Muslims are around 0.7% of the population and in Australia 2.2%. Three times more, per capita.
The issue is numbers.
