"Americans will come to believe that the only people hard-headed enough to fight the religious lunatics of the Muslim world are the religious lunatics of the West."

-- j blount (jamesbloun...)

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Which leads us onto: Is it right to fear radical Islam, or should we adopt a bolder, more dominant attitude to this plague? It's not as if we're THAT scared (in fact, we're generally derisive and scornful) of radical right-wing Christianity, despite certain moral similarities to its eastern counterpart!

STFU ABOUT THAT MOTHERFUCKER MORAINE BTW

If so, then let him explain to us why we don't strike for example - Sweden? And we know that freedom-haters don't possess defiant spirits like those of the 19 - may Allah have mercy on them.

No, we fight because we are free men who don't sleep under oppression. We want to restore freedom to our nation, just as you lay waste to our nation. So shall we lay waste to yours.

No one except a dumb thief plays with the security of others and then makes himself believe he will be secure. Whereas thinking people, when disaster strikes, make it their priority to look for its causes, in order to prevent it happening again.

But I am amazed at you. Even though we are in the fourth year after the events of September 11th, Bush is still engaged in distortion, deception and hiding from you the real causes. And thus, the reasons are still there for a repeat of what occurred.

So I shall talk to you about the story behind those events and shall tell you truthfully about the moments in which the decision was taken, for you to consider.

I say to you, Allah knows that it had never occurred to us to strike the towers. But after it became unbearable and we witnessed the oppression and tyranny of the American/Israeli coalition against our people in Palestine and Lebanon, it came to my mind.

The events that affected my soul in a direct way started in 1982 when America permitted the Israelis to invade Lebanon and the American Sixth Fleet helped them in that. This bombardment began and many were killed and injured and others were terrorised and displaced.

I couldn't forget those moving scenes, blood and severed limbs, women and children sprawled everywhere. Houses destroyed along with their occupants and high rises demolished over their residents, rockets raining down on our home without mercy.

The situation was like a crocodile meeting a helpless child, powerless except for his screams. Does the crocodile understand a conversation that doesn't include a weapon? And the whole world saw and heard but it didn't respond.

In those difficult moments many hard-to-describe ideas bubbled in my soul, but in the end they produced an intense feeling of rejection of tyranny, and gave birth to a strong resolve to punish the oppressors.

And as I looked at those demolished towers in Lebanon, it entered my mind that we should punish the oppressor in kind and that we should destroy towers in America in order that they taste some of what we tasted and so that they be deterred from killing our women and children.

And that day, it was confirmed to me that oppression and the intentional killing of innocent women and children is a deliberate American policy. Destruction is freedom and democracy, while resistance is terrorism and intolerance.

This means the oppressing and embargoing to death of millions as Bush Sr did in Iraq in the greatest mass slaughter of children mankind has ever known, and it means the throwing of millions of pounds of bombs and explosives at millions of children - also in Iraq - as Bush Jr did, in order to remove an old agent and replace him with a new puppet to assist in the pilfering of Iraq's oil and other outrages.

So with these images and their like as their background, the events of September 11th came as a reply to those great wrongs, should a man be blamed for defending his sanctuary?

Is defending oneself and punishing the aggressor in kind, objectionable terrorism? If it is such, then it is unavoidable for us.

This is the message which I sought to communicate to you in word and deed, repeatedly, for years before September 11th.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/79C6AF22-98FB-4A1C-B21F-2BC36E87F61F.htm

why the fuck am i arguing with you?

(some dickwad would have gone 'Hydrogen, helium, berrylium...' if i hadn't CHECKED THEM with this)

uh wow, just wow. have you never heard of fln or shining path or the contras or the anti-castro nutcases or any number of latin american terrorist groups?

-- j blount (jamesbloun...)

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UH

look, i'm going. i've had enough of this personal bullshine.

-- hstencil (hstenc!...), September 18th, 2006.

none (haha okay maybe one) of these has acted on non-latin-american soil though.

Yeah, it's just stupid, that bit.[The part about Israel having the moral high ground]

To say you can kill 1000s of innocent civilians, in the full knowledge that you will do so with the tactics that you are using, then hide behind the figleaf that you did not 'intentionally' target them is an intellectual absurdity and moral cowardice. Ha, then he blames the victims for their own deaths! So the Lebanese are responsible for the "collateral damage" that the West and Israel caused. If it wasn't so grim it would be hilarious.

I'm fed up with these people.

Also, who gives a monkey's who has the moral high ground in the conflict between Israel and Hamaz & Hizbullah. Surely the question is how can we stop it? Or how can they stop it? Or how can the US stop it? And perhaps what might be a just outcome in terms of land/powers/return of refugees etc.

As to the first bit, I think these people actually want some sort of global conflict. They find it all very exciting.

He criticises conspiracy theorists and then falls into the same trap (as you did re: West Ham) as they do, finding connections that aren't there (it's called apophenia), seeing only a totalized reality rather than the disparate events and situations, the conicidental and random and contradictory stuff that actually makes up the world.

I find it depressing.

"a variety of schisms that exist even among Islamists" - no sh!t, sherlock!

"The same failure of liberalism is evident in Western Europe, where the dogma of multiculturalism has left a secular Europe very slow to address the looming problem of religious extremism among its immigrants." Er, yeah. That's France, where all religious symbols are explicitly banned in schoold, which has explicitly practised assimilation, not integration.

The guy is, as usual, an ill-educated moron, mouthing off on subjects he knows little or nothing about and managing to get paid for it. Tw@t.

do we? really?

we've done it for years, by proxy. the support of puppet regimes around the world (esp in the middle east).

and i'm beginning to side more with my second interpretation of the article (the first being a hastily-written and thought 'Hurray'), in that it seems unnecessarily pessimistic and afraid.

otm x 10

Besides, I don't even think the mindset of suicide bombers is the thing to combat: the real unique element IMO is the men who find the kids with the right mixture of idealism and depression, nurture them, and send them off. For every bomber you have to imagine a whole lot of older men, managers, confidants, involved in it who will never strap on a vest themselves.

So, yeah, only the conservatives(or at least, those currently holding american office) can save us from the bad brown men, evidently by ignoring/defunding/de-emphasizing any nuclear proliferation, which is kinda odd, seeing as he then goes on about this:

We are entering an age of unchecked nuclear proliferation and, it seems likely, nuclear terrorism. There is, therefore, no future in which aspiring martyrs will make good neighbors for us. Unless liberals realize that there are tens of millions of people in the Muslim world who are far scarier than Dick Cheney, they will be unable to protect civilization from its genuine enemies.

so, we should bomb the fuck out of people before they get their hands on the bad shit? hey, remember them debates two years ago? remember how that one liberal guy said without hesistation that nukes were the greatest threat to stability? remember how all them liberals have been spending the last few years continually trying to get funding for these programs from the "hard-headed" "religious lunatics of the West" currently in power?

and this bit:

Unfortunately, liberals hate the current administration with such fury that they regularly fail to acknowledge just how dangerous and depraved our enemies in the Muslim world are.

is straight TNR/NRO bullshit.

So, this guy's saying that we're surrounded by threats and shit, so we should just kill the lot of them? An F16's real good at taking out terr'ist cells in Hamburg and London, now, isn't it? The neocons are right and the only acceptable strength is thru military show of force.

oops, this should have been in the form of a question

And you know, there are quite a lot of muslims who are more interested in their breakfast, or what's on TV, or the premiership than anything like this.

That's a lousy definition of radical islam, as well. Lots and lots of different currents withing islam that could be described as radical that have nothing to do with violence. (Including, say, Islamic feminists like Amadiume (sp?). Lots of lots of currents within fundamentalist islam that have nothing to do with violence, too.

I think Islam is such a BIG religion, and is so varied culturally, doctrinally and every other which way that there is almost no meaningful sentence that would start with the words " Muslims are ..." and would be true. Until people get that into their thick heads and stop these ludicrous over-blown generalisations, I don't think we're getting anywhere.

as much as i think all religion is irrational horseshit, suicide bombing & asymmetrical warfare isnt caused by & doesnt require belief in 72 virgins & all that other shit white ppl love to mock

BUT this thread has seen me work my way through a series of contrasting thought-processes, spilling my demons unchecked, and coming to an uncomfortable conclusion. I now see that the article, although seductively-written, contains more than a little underinformed hysteria, and that my 'radical Islam' has a counterpart (I knew this already, as I said upthread when advocating that we show less terror for radical Islam, especially considering our attitude towards radical Christianity).

PLZ NOW stop going on about Ian Reese-Moraine. I've not articulated myself here as well as I could have, but I'm admitting here that I haven't thought about this as much as I should have done.

And FUCK definition, what matters is the actual content.

-- Ian Riese-Moraine eats nation-states for breakfast! (eastern_mantr...), June 25th, 2005.

Moves for "sharia zones" outside a nation's legal system, Ayan Hirsi Ali, the "racaille"... he's right to mention Europe.

I don't read this piece as (that much of) a neocon endorsement at all, let alone an endorsement of Iraq (no idea what Sam Harris thinks of Iraq, probably "oh it's real bad and we've got to do it right amirite"). The problem with the neocons is that they WERE rousseuian multiculturalists! They thought if you knocked off a bad government a good one would just pop up, regardless of history, culture, mistakes, etc...

The supposedly clear-headed conservative approach is to identify problems here and then say "we'll make them go away," just by sheer force and will. That's not so much a plan. The liberal approach we're talking about here -- to look at our own actions -- doesn't stem from a desire to blame America, but a desire to figure out what actions and changes we actually have within our power to achieve certain objectives. Bush talked quite a bit during his first campaign about running the country with the acumen of a CEO, but if any CEO took that first approach to sales -- "we'll make them buy it" -- he'd be gone in seconds; the second, the "what can we do to change this," is the accepted wise route in pretty much every other sphere of life.

can someone with Photoshop skillz and a photograph of nabisco please take appropriate action

http://www.panoptika.net/por_harold_pinter.jpg

You won't eliminate the drive that some have towards fundamentalism/authoritarianism, but you probably will not have the same amounts of people pissed off.

Oh yeah, and if you don't torture folks.

I think the left (and a good deal of the right as well) in europe have the same problem with Islam that they have with the Christian religiosity in the US. It is an incredulity, a disbelief that anyone can reject the achievements of the chain of history from Reformation to Enlightenment to Industry to Liberalism to Socialism and the post-war social contract. 'Why would anyone throw that away for a fantasy that belongs in the 12th century?'. There is a lack of understanding as to what would possess someone to possess 'outmoded belief'. I have thoughts like that all the time.

The idea that there is a logic that compels people into suicide bombing just doesn't fit with that mindset and by and large I think that even idea of fighting to the death for a cause is pretty dead in most Left leaning western minds.

Perhaps the religious left of centre (Tony Blair) and the Right have a better handle on how to deal with the problem of militant Islam. I for one can't see how a solution that has brought so much death and destruction can be the right one, but also I can't see now how a socio-economic solution would be effective now, 30 years ago, maybe. Maybe if the Shah hadn't been so corrupt or the US had kept out of Afghanistan in the 70s and 80s, then what? Who knows, it doesn't really help us now.

If socio-economic factors don't play a role in creating militant islamists then what factor mean that indonesia and malasiya (reasnobly economically developed nations with less inequality than Saudi Arabia or and without the low economic circumstance Muslims in Britain compared with the rest of the population) appear to produce fewer militant islamists?

Leftists must ascribe economic motivation to Jihadists because they see world through the lens of economic opportunity

It would be pretty odd if to be left wing meant simply to reduce everything to questions of money. This ignores huge parts of leftism. Something like Marxism contains a politics, a philosophy and an anthropology as well as an economics, and there's clearly a cultural left being left out of Vic's picture, a left for whom Islamism is a struggle for cultural particularity, otherness, identity, and so on.

And in fact it's very easy to see how this "cultural left" can sympathize with the Iranian revolution of 1979, as justified by the Ayatollah Khomeini in his interview with John Simpson, reported here. Simpson says:

"For almost 30 years, the West has concentrated on the religious, fundamentalist aspect of Iran's Islamic Republic... We have forgotten that Khomeini's revolution was also a declaration of independence from British and American control... For [President Ahmadinejad] it is all part of the same process that Ayatollah Khomeini started, 27 years ago, when he overthrew the American- and British-imposed Shah."

Now, is that about "paradise" or about "dollars"? It escapes the binary altogether. It's about politics and culture and the quest to have an independent identity. To respect and sympathize with that side of the story is to be a "cultural leftist".

That's not contra Momus at all, it's completely a "cultural leftist" line to take, and I agree with it, although it's an argument I'd personally associate with Akbar S. Ahmed's book Postmodernism and Islam.

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bit early for that

I want to clarify that I never meant to say that whatever we are calling "Islamic fundamentalism" (aye - at the time of this posting I realize how bothersome such semantics are going to get) is not at ALL related to "socioeconoimics." I think it partially may be. But I really want to emphasize the other aspects of what constitutes a desire to take it on, that are seemingly not discussed enough.

I'd like to asnswer in depth, again - particularly on what M. White picked up as "nationalism" in his post, since it especially has to do with the present re-awakening of Persian identity and Iranian national consciousness (as opposed to "Arabization," = "Islamification," a conflation Persia has struggled with for the last 1300 or so years) - but I likely won't be back for 12 or so hours.

But very quickly: 1) Momus, you don't have to oversimplify what I was saying , I know there are cultural components to Marxism, and I didn't mean to slander the Left; I apologize if I made it sound like "all Leftists..." when I meant "some" (and I WASN'T talking abt anyone on ILE, Marx forbid, anyway). But Horseshoe's conjecure about I mean, it's worth examining how the West became secular when thinking about how the values of the Muslim world might possibly change. is striking...

...since in my opinion, Marx definitely, as well as Freud, had a great deal to do in making the West secular in the first place, after the first wave of 18th cent. rationalist philosophy. And again, you're just NOT going to get that ("progression" - again, _you're_ defining it as "progression," I could very well call it apostasy) in another civilization by either hope or force, one that has adamantly followed its own cultural dictates, and fantasizing about how their values "might possibly change," not only sounds fantastical or naive, but kind of wrongheaded. Isn't there a value judgment being made here - why should anyone's values match yours for convenience, even if they are a millennium and a half "outdated" (Allah probably hasn't changed his mind just because you invented I Dream of Jeannie)? We already know that modernization doesn't have to = complete westernization, for Japan has maintained its own identity by design but there remains a subtext of "these people will stop killing and become 'more civilized',' like us!" that I find bafling here. (And Japan in no way comes close to equaling any aspect of Islam)

Attempting to communicate value-laden concepts to a whole other civilization can sometimes seem impossible (an exprience I know in depth from whenever I attempted to explain Hindu astrology's cosmology in a mere theoretical manner on here...in vain, the divide unable to be breached )(but that's probably my own limitations), when one is unfamiliar with what the other values in the first place. It's like communicating with people onanoher planet, and hey really might as well be in another world, as their conception of it is so different than yours. A Jihadist is not desiring for "puppies and roses," (as per Nabisco's suggestion), and " peace and prosperity"shall be doled out to the merit-earning faithful on "Qayamat - Judgment Day; a Jihadist wants glory. nd yes, Momus, of course in many instances their are manipulations, and some are earning dollars here and there both by inciting and profiteering off of jihad....but does the Jihadist himself, the shaheed that has sacrificed all for Allah's name and safety...does he enjoy the dollars after his act?

No. He either risks it all in vain (assuming, um, the Qu'ran is "wrong"), or enjoys Paradise (the Qu'ran ain't wrong, foo!). And even if the Left picked up on some admirable traits in 1979 or got a boner when it heard the word "revolution," (even if unpredictably attached to "Iranian,") I can assure you, that in those sorts of Islamic eyes the "cultural sympathy" of any Maxists would be met with alarm, along with justified suspicion.

For me, everything comes down to civilizational differences; those who harbor (oil) pipe dreams that Western-style "democracy" or whatever-"ism" (modern, secular, etc) will "take root," in Islamic countries, wheher they're George Bush or die-hard libertarians or libberals or Momusians etc., are living in the fool's Paradise. Even the value of "life" as you experience it is a modern/Western construction (no option of Everlasting Life! ever. after....), and therefore suicide is no longer considered an honorable way to die, as in Roman times... whoa, there is no concept of "honor" either, that could explain why some would kill their families/themselves to preserve "izzat" (save face, honor) (and that's not just in Islam, but elsewhere). But the very notion that the word "socioeconomic" is used when talking about all this, and descrbing it all as a, um, "problem" - well..it's very Western-centric. Why would becoming shaheed ever be considered a "problem," ? You're an infidel; I'm going to take care of you and my glory both with one stone. Do you see what I'm getting at? It's very simple. This nagging notion that somehow, it is not my Faith in Allah that compels me but some "disenchantment," - it's ludicrous...

....and all the subtext in these discussions is that, well, if you think my Faith, my Faith in Allah which compels me to give my life for Him, is symptomatic of
a PROBLEM. A problem that could be solved if onlyI were better off - why, THAT'S INSULTING.

But it is logical. From where you're sitting. Certainly logical. The Western mind (again, I'm using brush strokes, again forgive me - I'm not meaning ALL esterners when I say that) is incapable of understanding why, if one is materially comfortable, one would renounce his life and material possessions, those "puppies and roses," for no apparent reason. It gives the greatest importance to economics; it can't understand why some haven't, as Ed put it succintly, moved "past" the pull of Faith.

If I was a Jihadist, this would hurt. To imply that my Faith is simply a medieval aberration can be bought off - well, if I was a Jihadist (for real =) and I heard this, not only is the West coming across now as corrupt and decadent, but disgustingly vulgar and venal as well.

2) Kingfish, yr an old friend, but man if you didn't give me a perfect example of much of what I was trying to express:

There are both direct and indirect reasons for this thing, i.e. that you can cut down on the numbers on the disenchanted & disenfranchized(sp) if they actually have, y'know, enough food/running water/electricity/decent employment.

You won't eliminate the drive that some have towards fundamentalism/authoritarianism

Wow. So only people who are starving/thirsty/ hounding in darkness and unemployed...only they will turn to one of the most cherished lionizations in islam to express their Faith?? Your words are a perfect example of trying to confer causality to materialistic factors - in effect, it says that rich, well-adjusted Muslims have no need to become shaheed since roses, puppies, Coca Cola and pink-pastel GIFs of Jenna Jameson should make them happy/CHEERY - but discredit all practitioners of Jihad as being poor retarded bastards. There is only something "wrong" with Jihad in the non-Islamic world; it isn't a "problem" in Islam, comprehende ? Some of the most successful Jihadist movements were formed under quite wealthy auspices - the Ummayad Caliphate or Emperor Aurangzeb, anyone? - and again, on its own terms, there's a bit of dissonance when discussing such a spiritual goal in clinical materialst terms.

It's worth repeating:

This underlying belief that what you are calling "fundamentalist" or, um, "problematic," I tried to explain is a central tenet in the Islamic belief system, even if isn't practiced by most of the religion's moderates...Jihad is NOT some sort of "fringe" David-Koresh-like reinterpretation of the Qu'ran; it has been practiced since day one by "mainstream" adherents, but in the two few centuries, it waned under imperialism, coinciding with Islam's temporary lull in growth. Which leads to

3) No. I sharply disagree. In response to some other posts which ponder whether Jihad is a "modern invention" of the 20th centiury. Sure the olfder tenets have been exploited by those with 20th century intentions (including wealth or power), but remember in my first post I attempted to a) differentiate between the "masterminds," who may ber responsible to introducing the young'n'impressionable to Jihad, and those who actually practicei it, with their often stark difference in motive (respectively - and not always - material gain/profit vs. salvation), and b) state that Jihad is _flexible_ and has been used as a pretext or justification for a LOT of things, always using the rallying cry that "Islam is under attack!" Whether it be for land stabilization (kashmir, Palestine), or evangelical expansion (where hasdn't it been?) or whatever reason, the same verses can be quoted, the same scriptures can be cited to instill the motivation unto others.

Remember that there are the non-literailsts too, and that in Sufi terms "jihad" was often described as the death of the ego in relation to Allah's all-encompassing being. But when it was necessary, the metaphorical can always be emphasized into being literal; sound familiar? Ideologies always come in handy when they can be bent.

And as to why Indonesia or Malaysia is not as susceptible - well, tell that to the relatives of those who've died in the multiple bombings in Bali. The Jihadist movements in these countries don't get as much attention, but they do exist; they've been extensively documented even as far back as VS Naipul's "Among the believers" back in 1981 (which was inspired by the Iranian Rev.,). I again don't think this has to do with perceived economic stability as much as it does civilizational difference, for Southeast Asia never comfortably fii into Islamic civilization as even did South Asia (with its proximity to Arabia), and wasn't as influenced by tribal Arabian culture. Fuurthermore, Jihad simply doesn't have as strong a tradition here as this was _the_ furthest extent of eastward Islam anyway - nowhere left to go, to proslytize - and so the politics of evangelical reliion, or "Islam under threat," didn't ring as dramatically.

This is what I meant, when I said there is an unconscious "condescencion," with modern secularists and untenable aspects of traditional religion.

Oh, and doesn't Momus always cherry-pick his quotes? How else could he function in his free-form. line-item, pixalated post-modern way? =)

Note what happened to Iranian Communists after the Revolution.

Some of the most successful Jihadist movements were formed under quite wealthy auspices - the Ummayad Caliphate or Emperor Aurangzeb, anyone? - and again, on its own terms, there's a bit of dissonance when discussing such a spiritual goal in clinical materialst terms.

Uh, Bin Laden anyone?

I'm not necessarily espousing any of this as a solution. I don't have one.

I lean toward the second view, obviously. I think you're making a slight mistake by imagining that this just means prosperity -- like Momus says above, there is a whole lot to socio-cultural placement and group psychology than simply money. For instance, a lot of present-day violent extremists come from places that are very wealthy, yes, thanks to oil -- but there are also often places where young educated men are chronically underemployed, have no opportunity to put any of their energy into their own political processes, have no opportunity to put their energy even into arts or culture or even dating and chasing after women, until there is literally nothing there to absorb their energy, attention, and frustration other than religion, potentially with extreme results.

And I would submit, judging by what we say during the Clinton administration (w/r/t abortion-clinic shootings, white separatists, American militias, or Timothy McVeigh) that there are any number of Americans who hold very deep beliefs that could put them on the level of Islamic militants. What is it that, for the most parts, prevents them from taking violent action on the same level? It's not just money and material comfort. I'm not sure what it is, but I think it has to do with being invested in their own society to a point where they don't genuinely want to destroy it; they need it too much. The issue isn't that cash and pop culture and Jenna Jameson are going to deradicalize Islam, or even lead Muslims to change any deep radical beliefs they might have. The idea is that there's a level of opportunity and investment in one's own society that makes a person infinitely less likely to give his life over to militarism or terrorism -- even if he believes many of the same things a terrorist does.

xpost

exactly, that's what i was talking about earlier. that there are conditions that cause folks to sign up for the bombin'; you have can have a particular belief system that could allow for violent action, but it takes a bucketful of alienation before you act on it.

I think this has to be right. I've pretty much not stopped thinking about this since September 11th, because I know Muslims whose stated views/perspective on the world doesn't strike me as that much different than those of people who do desperate things (God's law > man's law; the U.S. is a diseased society, etc.) (And yes, I know many whose views are not at all scary). And even though they'd be quick to criticize many, many aspects of American society, they're far too comfortable within it and too dependent on it, in short, too much a part of it, to ever act to destroy it.

"I'm prepared!"

OTM

But isn't Vic's whole point that the ideology of Islam inherently makes it more likely to produce martyrs? When people make this argument they're usually dismissed as paint-'em-all-with-the-radical-brush types, but I'm not inclined to take it so lightly here. I don't think there can be any argument that the war, martyrdom, sacrifice, and glory are fundamentally different things in the theologies of Islam and of New Testament Christianity. The usual counterargument is that "Christians ignore and reinterpret a lot of stuff in the Bible", but I just don't necessarily believe it's a given that the Koran allows for that kind of reinterpretation, and there are a whole lot of factors -- socioeconomic, political -- conspiring against that kind of liberalism taking root right now anyway.

I also find myself wondering what Vic thinks the way forward is, because if everything you say is true, I find it difficult to imagine that WWIII -- a real WWIII, in which tens of millions of people die -- isn't on its way, as so many people want it to happen...and destruction is so cheaply sown.