Danger From Islamic Extremist?

Revolutionary wrote:

Any information about the dangers from these groups in Vietnam?

I could not find any information pertaining to Vietnam on the passport site in the USA while they did have information on several other countries.

Honestly saying, I doubt there are any imminent threats from such groups on Vietnamese soil (they're too busy elsewhere).

Theoretically, the VN government is an enemy of Al Qaeda or ISIS as they have always denounced and rejected all terror acts of such groups and clearly expressed their support of the GWOT and that they share the values of the civilized world (except maybe freedom of speech).

I am aware that anytime, anywhere attacks could occur, especially in near proximity of potential targets, such as Israeli, US, British, and now also Russian... (etc) installations (Embassy, Consulate, large corporations, etc).

Furthermore, "soft targets" are also a potential danger area. Also any airport with low/bad security becomes a place of concern as they might be targets for infiltrating into secure areas (to hijack planes, smuggle stuff on planes etc).

Hostage snatching/ kidnapping certainly can't be ruled out completely as the waters in the South China Sea are known for piracy (incl Gulf of Thailand) and we know how far they occasionally travel and which religion they also often "submit" to.

If you think like a terrorist who's about to inflict mass death and violence, you'll suddenly see that there would be thousands of "nice" targets and target areas in Vietnam. So if it ever would happen, anything from an embassy bombing, hotel/resort attack, bombs in bars/malls, shootings like Paris, knife stabbing attacks like in Israel etc... it would never surprise me. Just because there is no evidence or logical reason, dose not mean there is no threat!

But in any case, even if something would happen, what are the chances that you'd personally be involved? I'd say about 0,00001 or something like that.

AND even if the risk were much, much higher, that would just make it an even bigger reason to come here, drink a few beers and eat some of those delicious Heo Quai sandwiches!

BTW, I am sure some think this is a ridiculous question. I don't and I am sure every Embassy or 5 Star Hotel has asked this question and is constantly re-evaluating the situation.

The only fear you have to fear is FEAR itself. What's the chance of an Arabic person walking around Vietnam and not raising suspicion? I'm sure anyone who dresses Muslim-like including Asian Muslims from Indonesia and Malaysia are being monitored at their every move. It's a safe country.

i read a report in the newspaper that 93% of black people in Vietnam are engaged in criminal activities. This was a government conclusion after doing a study. In Canada or America this report would not be allowed even if true. What I'm saying is, if there were potential terrorists in Vietnam, the government would not be shy about dealing with them unlike Canadians or Americans.

Is there a problem with terrorism in the world?
Of course there is.

Is Islam a problem?
No, just the minority idiot extremist end.

As for Vietnam, why would they attack a country that has never attacked them?

ISIS has stated aims, none of them mention Vietnam.

Hypothalamus wrote:

The only fear you have to fear is FEAR itself. What's the chance of an Arabic person walking around Vietnam and not raising suspicion? I'm sure anyone who dresses Muslim-like including Asian Muslims from Indonesia and Malaysia are being monitored at their every move. It's a safe country.

Does not have to be an Arabic person... and in any case, just see the latest bombings in South East Asia, or elsewhere, they usually try to disguise themselves and blend in.

But I agree, fear is wrong, however, situational awareness is something different.

Fred wrote:

Is there a problem with terrorism in the world?
Of course there is.

Is Islam a problem?
No, just the minority idiot extremist end.

As for Vietnam, why would they attack a country that has never attacked them?

ISIS has stated aims, none of them mention Vietnam.

I think there is no point in debating if Islam is a problem or not and in any case, here's not the place to argue over it. The focus shall be on the group of how you call them "minority idiot extremist", or how the OP named them "Islamic Extremist" and if there is any danger in Vietnam.

I agree VN is as safe as any other place in the world, including Paris, or Kenya, Tanzania, Bali... Those countries (except for France) also didn't attack ISIS or Al Qaeda, but we all know who was the target there. This can happen again, anytime and any place, period.

Thank you for the thoughtful insights.

The good thing about America is they keep good statistics. lol Even if the government can't say something, its not like we citizen's can't.

Quite a few black people in America are involved in some form of criminal activity. I feel such would be lower if they had better job opportunities available to them.

And with all that said.....

There would be much less criminal activity here in America if there were less things against the law here. It is estimated that everyone here breaks about 17 laws a day and does not have a clue about doing so....nor would they care even if they know. Some of the laws here are down right idiotic and nothing more than someone's ideology that got out of hand.

The paranoia in the newspapers just leads to fear and hate.

I've been watching the number of flights cancelled and diverted, and the numbers of passengers removed or refused flights because they looked wrong or spoke the wrong language.
Shopping centres closed and abandoned town centres along with armed troops on the streets and who knows what else.

Yes, of course these silly buggers are out to kill, but all this stuff is just helping their idiotic cause, an attempt to create a war between Muslims and the rest of the world.

We absolutely must stop this paranoid silliness if we don't want the evil gits to win.

Could there be another set of Paris style attacks? Yes.
Is it likely to be in Vietnam? Fat chance.

These B*ds go for publicity, and they aren't going to get that with an attack in a country that has been rather stupidly seen as "The enemy" for decades.
No, they'll go for London or a major city in whatever other country has been bombing them long before they do anything in Vietnam, but they'll probably hang around until this round of publicity has calmed down.

The UK government's travel site

https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advic … /terrorism

Low risk

Revolutionary wrote:

Quite a few black people in America are involved in some form of criminal activity.

Quite a few white people in America are involved in some form of criminal activity.

Let us all have a little fun and blame whole groups for the actions of some of that group - or we could always turns our brains on and realise all groups are made up of individuals, all with individual thoughts, most of whom are far more interested in looking after their families than they are in doing something nasty.

.

The fear of terrorism is rooted in a profound lack of understanding of religions. The Christian, Jewish and Islam are ALL based on exactly the same 10 religious truths:

1. One God
2. Divine assistance
3. Daily prayer
4. Weekly worship
5. Fasting
6. Almsgiving
7. Holy places
8. People of the Book
9. Abraham
10. Jesus and Mary (yes, that's right)

This article by a Catholic, Msgr. Joseph M. Champlin explains it much better than I could:  http://www.americancatholic.org/Messeng … ature2.asp

Our blind fear of Islamic extremists is based on our misunderstanding of the word "infadel" (non-believer). The Curan defines an infidel as someone who is not among the "People of the Book", it mentions many times as Christians, and Jews as being "People of the Book" just like them.

The problem is not Islam, but rather EXTREMIST groups, and there are extremist groups in every religion on earth, including Christianity, Judaism and Islam. The idea that all Muslims are terrorists is absurd and just as wrong as the idea that all terrorists are Muslims. Every religion and every nation has their own "homegrown" terrorists and we all know that to be true, whether or not we choose to admit it.

Regarding Vietnam, there is a far greater chance of terrorist attacks here in Brazil than there ever would be in Vietnam. Neither country has ever attacked ISIS, neither country is of real interest to them. However unlike Vietnam, the 2016 Summer Olympic Games will be held here in Rio shortly and all of the "sworn enemies" of ISIS will be here concentrated in one place, with the whole world watching. ISIS knows that this country, to date, has absolutely no anti-terrorism laws, can't stop arms from flowing into the country through its porous borders, and is full of disenfranchised poor young people, ripe for the cult-like online recruiting tactis ISIS is expert at using to convert local wack-jobs to their brand of extremist ideologies.

Should you be worried? Hardly, and I'd be happy to change places with you rather than being stuck here so close to Rio right now.

Cheers,
James
Expat-blog Experts Team

Here is my take from Malaysia.

ISIS is spreading fast, including SE Asia. Almost two years ago everyone laughed at me when I mentioned ISIS, especially as a threat.

But here, look for yourself, this article is only from a last week but there are many more.
https://sg.news.yahoo.com/malaysian-tri … 19392.html

Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, as mentioned in the article, always had extremists, its nothing new, nor is Malaysian government support of separatist factions in So. Thailand and Mindanao. But ISIS is the first time the extremists can organize in a superior way.

Vietnam.....here is the thing...Cham Muslim have been in VN for what, hundreds of years now (?) and havent caused any trouble that ive ever heard of. The government would be too quick to stop it. But people laughed at me because they said its impossible in Malaysia also, and the government, even in light of the article you just read, still denies ISIS is here.

My point is that wherever there are Muslim, there is potential for ISIS nowadays. They say their end game is to make the world a caliphate so why would VN be excluded? I wouldnt be worried in VN this moment because it would take time to get a foothold--which is exactly what happened in France. Nothing there, nothing there, cant see anything..... and then BAM! And not to mention the recent bomb in Thailand too, with the bomber alleged to be Turkish-ISIS.  I predict that eventually scores of countries will be battling this. Fine, Sai Gon maybe totally safe today but know its already surrounded.

But instead of worrying about ISIS, its better to spend some online time to help fight them. Yahoo and others have been putting out articles about this
https://bgr.com/2015/11/18/anonymous-vs … ing-guide/http://news.yahoo.com/here-s-the-manual … 18584.html

Worry less and work to stop them. Read, learn about them. Dont dismiss them at all, even in Sai Gon.

Dudes, there are 1.57 billion Muslims on Earth, or about 23% of the humans on this little blue ball.

It seems about 20 of them attacked and murdered a bunch of people in Paris, but the non Muslim world has gone stupid, assuming all Muslims are a danger.

Idiot politicians are making up stories about thousands of American Muslims cheering when the towers went down, Muslims are being taken off flights if they speak Arabic, and whole cities are locked down with armed troops on the streets.
Some are asking for a register of Muslims, and suggesting making Muslims carry special identity cards, all because of the stupidity of a tiny minority of Muslims.
I seem to recall that was done with Jews a while ago, but that didn't work out very well.

In America we see mosques being attacked, a taxi driver punched by a passenger who assumed the Christian man was Muslim because of his skin colour, and England is seeing Muslims accused of being terrorists by their workmates.
It seems calls to childline are up dramatically with calls from Muslim kids fearful of being attacked because of the name they use for the same God as Christians and Jews.

Seriously, of course there's a problem with some extremist elements, but where are all the stories of the  non terrorists Muslims and how they're a lot more concerned with paying the electricity bill and their kids' grades at school to even consider blowing anything up?

The extremists within Islam are trying to spark a war, and the extremists on the other side have the same interest, but so many people are too blind to see what a very few are up to.
No one ever wins any war, and it always ends with a lot of death and misery, so stuff ALL extremists on both sides.
All this uneducated hate and mistrust is working for the terrorists and extremists on both sides.
Don't play into their hands, it can only end badly for everyone.

Give hate the finger

Hello all

As you may know, here on Expat.com we prefer not to talk about religion or political issues.

We understand what is happening in the world today is horrible. But please let us avoid these topics on the forum.

Regards
Kenjee

kenjee wrote:

Hello all

You all know, here on Expat.com we prefer not to talk about religion or political issues.

We understand what is happening in the world today is horrible. But please let us avoid these topics on the forum.

Regards
Kenjee

@kenjee

You may prefer not to talk about religious or political issues but everyone else does. Why wouldn't we expats not talk about it? Who can we discuss these things with? Kenjee, perhaps you have not noticed a new trend slowly working its way into popularity; that is, it's time to throw political correctness in the garbage.

I do believe wrote:

kenjee wrote:

Hello all

You all know, here on Expat.com we prefer not to talk about religion or political issues.

We understand what is happening in the world today is horrible. But please let us avoid these topics on the forum.

Regards
Kenjee

@kenjee

You may prefer not to talk about religious or political issues but everyone else does. Why wouldn't we expats not talk about it? Who can we discuss these things with? Kenjee, perhaps you have not noticed a new trend slowly working its way into popularity; that is, it's time to throw political correctness in the garbage.

I fully agree!

I do believe and snake77,

Perhaps you haven't noticed... but it hasn't anything to do with "policital correctness", but rather with our rules. Which are clearly spelled out in Terms and Conditions of Use and in every forum's CODE OF CONDUCT.

Opinions are great, and everybody's got one. The problem is that some people get the idea that theirs is the only one that matters and tempers flare, this leads to flame wars and all kinds of problems. It is for that reason that politics and religion are two subjects that we set strict limits on.

Since the OP was really looking for information related to his physical safety, let's try to keep it to that. We're getting too close the the line of making political and/or religious statements and that is exactly what we don't want here. If you want to make a political or religious statement then slide on over to Facebook, there's more than enough of that there. We don't need it here.

Cheers,
James
Expat-blog Experts Team

I do believe wrote:

it's time to throw political correctness in the garbage.

I dislike PC talk because I believe it's seriously misused and causes as many problems as it solves because of that, possibly more.
I equally dislike the more right leaning types who also misuse PC speak to forward a hate agenda, claiming it stops them telling the truth when the fact is they want to lie.

However, this forum is about assisting expats, so hate speech does no good at all as it tends to create false images instead of the real situation.
As expats, we're all either trying and accepting other cultures or we're rubbish expats who should stick at home watch old Alf Garnet re-runs, hoping to hate as many people as we can.
This pointless life will stop you enjoying really good curries and staring at exceptionally cute Asian girl's arses - your loss.
(If it's Asian boy's arses - whatever floats your boat; I don't judge)

Is there a terrorist threat in Vietnam?
The answer seems to be it's unlikely, this suggestion being backed up by various government sites, including the one I posted.

A more real threat seems to be unexploded bombs from history as it appears there are still many deaths caused by them. There seems to have been around 100,000 deaths over the last 40 or so years, but this is very difficult to verify. It's clearly a concern for expats travelling in that country.

https://smartraveller.gov.au/countries/vietnam

Unexploded ordnance and landmines are a continuing hazard in former battlefields, particularly in central Vietnam and along the Laos border. Mine-free roads and paths are well marked.

It seems travellers in some areas would be strongly advised to identify these types of signs and pay heed to them.

James wrote:

I do believe and snake77,

Perhaps you haven't noticed... but it hasn't anything to do with "policital correctness", but rather with our rules. Which are clearly spelled out in Terms and Conditions of Use and in every forum's CODE OF CONDUCT.

Opinions are great, and everybody's got one. The problem is that some people get the idea that theirs is the only one that matters and tempers flare, this leads to flame wars and all kinds of problems. It is for that reason that politics and religion are two subjects that we set strict limits on.

Since the OP was really looking for information related to his physical safety, let's try to keep it to that. We're getting too close the the line of making political and/or religious statements and that is exactly what we don't want here. If you want to make a political or religious statement then slide on over to Facebook, there's more than enough of that there. We don't need it here.

Cheers,
James
Expat-blog Experts Team

James,

I agree with you. Scroll up and see, my first and second post is entirely focused on answering the OP's question.

**

However, both you and Fred have been the ones talking about Islam and Muslims or other religions, answering only little of the questions the OP asked. I have my clear opinion about reasons and faults of terrorism and Islamic extremism or for that matter RELIGION which I do not and did not  express here in public.

Personally, if I was the OP, I'd have used the expression "Terror Groups or Extremist Groups" without ISLAMIC. Not because I would want to offend anyone, but if I am serious about such threats, I should include all kinds of potential extremist groups.

Anyway, I guess we all can agree that nearly no mega city on earth is secure from terrorism, it could happen. We also seem to agree that the chance is very slim and that in a list of threat analysis "terrorism" doesn't get a high ranking position in VN.

@Fred, YES, landmines and UXO's are a greater danger, so is the traffic and many other things, but that's not what the OP asked. I think the closest would be piracy and kidnapping, a topic seldom ever mentioned but kinda falls into extremist groups. Perhaps someone has an opinion about that?

If not, I think you can close the thread.

The thread is about threats in Vietnam from Islamic extremism.

That seems to be a minor concern, that opinion being backed up by all western government sites I've looked at, none suggesting there is a problem, but all mentioning other dangers for more likely to be a problem for visitors to that country.

I would encourage the OP and other members read as many of the government travel sites as possible, decide on the likely dangers, preferably publishing the links and quotes here so that information is easily available to all forum users.

Using this thread as a platform for hate speech is not acceptable, so let's avoid doing it.