when these people talk about the culture of northern europe, they use terms like colonialism and draw attention to the crimes of the past. however, they expect everybody to follow the rules of their culture, and complain that they're being oppressed when other people don't obey their dictates; not following their rules is oppression, but expecting people to follow our rules is colonialism. it's a double standard.

worse, it's a historical half-truth, at best. in reality, arabs invented colonialism as we understand it today (i mean, the greeks had colonies, but...) and islam is in fact the most brutally colonizing force in human history, worse than christianity by several degrees. besides, what we call "european colonialism" was carried out by the largely middle eastern in origin cultures of southern europe, orchestrated by the egyptian-origin religion of christianity and carried out primarily by olive-skinned and sometimes outright brown spanish, portugese and italians, many of whom even had some arab ancestry. when the various wars of the age of enlightenment came to an end, and the north of europe triumphed over the south, the result was that the northern europeans abolished the arab-originating slave institutions and undid the olive-skinned christian colonial projects, rather than continue or advance them. the result of white people taking over the world was the end of slavery, not the enforcement of it.

this double standard needs to be addressed and the hypocrisy needs to be deconstructed. we're long overdue for this backlash. as mentioned, quebec is ahead of the curve; this is a process that needs to happen. we need to protect our european, liberal, secular and atheist institutions and we need to make doing so a serious priority, lest we wake up in saudi arabia and not understand what happened.