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Crazy Extremists
These Islamic extremists have some serious anti-social issues. It is unfortunate that too many people in this world are willing adherents to rigid dogma.
It is disturbing how many willingly sacrifice their lives for someone else's objectives, all in the name of religion. Or could it be something else?
Could it be for the state and a sense of patriotism?
Could it be over land and/or other resources?
Or could the objective be to settle an old score?
If it is always about and "eye for an eye" we will have constant war. Yes, there sure are lots of ways adherence to rigid dogma and unquestioning loyalty lead to bloodshed.
Please check out OhioDem1's How to Sell a War for more on this topic.
QuestionItNow Blogs
It is disturbing how many willingly sacrifice their lives for someone else's objectives, all in the name of religion. Or could it be something else?
Could it be for the state and a sense of patriotism?
Could it be over land and/or other resources?
Or could the objective be to settle an old score?
If it is always about and "eye for an eye" we will have constant war. Yes, there sure are lots of ways adherence to rigid dogma and unquestioning loyalty lead to bloodshed.
Please check out OhioDem1's How to Sell a War for more on this topic.
QuestionItNow Blogs
posted by DTW 06 | 8/27/2006 11:40:00 PM
15 Comments:
Sorry, but until you've read the 9th Surah of the Quran your question is about as ignorant as saying "Dale who?" at a NASCAR race.
You just DONT GET ISALMIC EXTREMISM if you think if its like a different brand of extremism from say being a Mennonite, loving America, or fervently wanting to end global warming.
Be educated. Go to jihadwatch.org.
I have always thought there were some important economic factors. For instance if you ask Arabs how many brothers and sisters they have, they will usually say something like 5 brothers and 6 sisters. Now, if the economy is only growing at a rate of, say 3%, then gets further depressed by a small war, these 12 kids can't get married because there are no jobs. In the Arab world, no marriage, no sex. The pressure can be intense. Then, say you can't get married anyhow, and someone comes along and offers you a job with an extremist organization and they seem to have plenty of money....
http://irregulartimes.com/diaries/2006/08/bush-plan-more-troops-to-baghdad-vs-biden-plan-dividing-iraq-to-hold-it-together/
"I have always thought there were some important economic factors. For instance if you ask Arabs how many brothers and sisters they have, they will usually say something like 5 brothers and 6 sisters. Now, if the economy is only growing at a rate of, say 3%, then gets further depressed by a small war, these 12 kids can't get married because there are no jobs."
This is another good example of trying to assume the Arabs think like us. Most terrorists are well-educated and middle-class. Bin Laden was scion of millionaires. They dont do this out for economic reasons, but because they adhere to an ideology that makes them do extreme things.
Islamofascist extremism is a mix of modern politicla extremism and Jihadism and the root of Jihadism is Islam. Or rather, Islam was and is a religion that advocates violence against "Kufr" enemies.
Surah9:5-29 in the Quran says:
".. kill the idolaters wheresoever ye
find them, take them prisoners and besiege them,
and lay wait for them in every convenient place.
But if they repent, and offer up the appointed Prayers, and pay the
legal Alms, then dismiss them freely, for God is gracious
and merciful.... Fight against hose who believe not in God,
nor in the last day, nor forbid that which God and his Apostle have
forbidden, and profess not the true religion, namely,
of those to whom the Scriptures have been given, until they
pay tribute by the hand, and be reduced low. "
So, according to Islam, God himself told Mohammed to lead his men to kill Jews and Christians and other 'infidels' who would not submit to the rule by Mohammedan Arabs.
... And what Muslims says about that Surah today:
"In order to prepare the Muslims for Jihad against the whole non-Muslim world, it was necessary to cure them even of that slight weakness of faith from which they were still suffering. For there could be no greater internal danger to the Islamic Community than the weakness of faith, especially where it was going to engage itself single-handed in a conflict with the whole non-Muslim world. That is why those people who had lagged behind in the Campaign to Tabuk or had shown the least negligence were severely taken to task, and were considered as hypocrites if they had no plausible excuse for not fulfilling that obligation. Moreover, a clear declaration was made that in future the sole criterion of a Muslim's faith shall be the exertions he makes for the uplift of the Word of Allah and the role he plays in the conflict between Islam and kufr. Therefore, if anyone will show any hesitation in sacrificing his life, money, time and energies, his faith shall not be regarded as genuine. (vv. 81-96). If the above-mentioned important points are kept in view during the study of this Surah, it will facilitate the understanding of its contents."
Economics has nothing to do with it. The source of the violence is the ideology, and the root of the ideology is Islam.
Ignore reality at your own risk.
www.jihadwatch.org
Anonymous,
I must respond to your post. Are you saying that these people go into crowded streets full of women and children and blow themselves up because they can't get married and have sex? Or because thay can't find a job? This is naivety to the extreme.
When someone is killed they are dead. It does not matter to the dead what motivated the killer. However, when someone is killed it sends shock waves throughout families and across communities. When many people are killed, as in Darfor, 9/11/01, Iraq, Katrina, and Lebanon great upheavals of grief, post traumatic stress disorder, anger, frustration, and resentment spill over into further bloodshed.
We are in a new world order since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Old tribal rivalries and clan divisions are exploding all over the globe. In the cold war, these divisions were brutally supressed.
At the same time, the technology boom of the information age is confusing and overwhelming to many in the world. They are looking for simple black and white answers.
Into this world progagandeers and exploiters of every stripe manipulate emotions and enflame passions for their own goals.
This is the essence of the post. Anonymous was speaking to a subset of this reality. However, he forgot to mention the promised seven virgins waiting for suicide bombers in paradise.
I have often wondered what a female suicide bomber has waiting for her on the other side.
This is another good example of trying to assume the Arabs think like us. Most terrorists are well-educated and middle-class.
This is probably the single stupidest thing I've ever read.
Anyone who knows anything at all about the Taliban, or Hezbollah, or Fatah, wouldn't even think about putting something like this out in public.
And you have the audacity to tell OTHER people to "learn?!?"
Jolly Roger,
Thanks for the comment. It is amazing how simplisticly too many people label one of the most complex webs of hate, anger, frustration, and violence we are witnessing with terrorism and sectarian battles all over the world.
"This is another good example of trying to assume the Arabs think like us. Most terrorists are well-educated and middle-class."
"This is probably the single stupidest thing I've ever read. Anyone who knows anything at all about the Taliban, or Hezbollah, or Fatah, wouldn't even think about putting something like this out in public."
Just because something factual doesn't conform to your prejudices doesn't make it any less true.
1. Khalid Sheik Mohammed: Educated in College in the U.S. with degree in Mechanical Engineering. Worked in a decent job in Qatar while becoming a terror mastermind.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalid_Shaikh_Mohammed)
2. Osama Bin Laden: Came from Saudi multi-millionaire family. Collge-educated in London.
3. Richard Reid, English shoe bomber, was radicalized in a mosque in London, Findlay Park, that was run by a terrorist-inciting one-eyed cleric named Abu Hamza. This British citizen was neither impoverished nor in the third world; it was indoctrination by a radical muslim cleric that did it.
4. Academic studies have confirmed that terrorists from many different countries and movements are "overwhelmingly well-educated ... two-thirds are with some university training ... more than two-thirds of arrested terrorists came from middle or upper class families". This was true of most of Palestinian and Hezbollah terrorists, true of leftwing terrorists in Europe in 1970s, true of the 9/11 terrorists, true in general. This study directly supports the conclusion wrt Fatah, Hezbollah, Palestinian terrorists etc:
http://www.krueger.princeton.edu/terrorism2.pdf#search=%22terrorists%20education%22
5. The Islamofascist Prime Minister of Iran, the guy who want Israel "wiped off the map", is openly giving arms to the Hezbollah terrorist group, and covertly supporting insurgent violence in Iraq with minutions and terrorist financing - is this terrorist-master uneducated?
Actually, his occupation is College Professor!
If we want to understand the mind-set of the 'crazy extremists' that are Islamic Jihadist terrorist, you can't fall for the simplistic and wrong argument that it is simply poverty and lack of education that makes people radicalized; facts easily debunk that canard. Poverty doesnt make people fly to other countries and try to blow up buildings and kill people. The 'crazy extremist' Jihadists do it because they adhere to a radical Islamicist ideology. Their hateful violent actions are driven by an evil ideology, not by individual circumstance, and to deny that is to deny reality.
Here is an historical example of "Suiciders" Kamikaze
"Who could have imagined terrorists would crash airplanes into a building." - Condie 2001
It is amazing how simplisticly too many people label one of the most complex webs of hate, anger, frustration, and violence we are witnessing with terrorism and sectarian battles all over the world."
I agree with this rather ironic comment.
It is amazing how a complex and hateful Islamic-based ideology, rooted in a major religion and made more dangerous by modern radicalized and extremist political concepts, is simplistically reduced by some to a simple matter of poverty and education, or not getting marriage/job/sex/money. That view is simplistic and wrong. Poverty and ignorance have been endemic in human history; terrorism has not.
Terrorism and Islamic extremism have conjoined to attempt to challenge Western Democratic civilization for specific historical reasons having to do with Islamic belief in the need for Islamic law (Sharia) and rule (The Caliphate) over Muslim society that are being challenged with moving to modernity.
The Wahhabists, Jihadists, Qutbists, and Al Qaeda and Hezbollay ("party of God") style terrorists simply do NOT BELIEVE IN WESTERN FREEDOM, DEMOCRACY, AND OUR CULTURE. Bush was right when he said after 9/11: "They hate us for our freedom."
We know this because the terrorists have been open about what they believe and what their program is - we are the fools if we don't understand.
Sheik Ikremeh Sabri, the highest ranking cleric in the Palestinian Authority preached in Al Aqsa mosque ‘They think they scare people. We tell them: In as much as you love life, the Muslims love death and martyrdom’
They want to remake the Islamic world in the image of the 9th century caliphate and expel Western influence on the politics and culture. Their 'poster child' for this rule once was the Taliban in Afghanistan. Their Jihad can't be an open war, so they choose terrorist violence to advance the cause. They also believe, as Iran's PM openly said, that "Islam is ready to rule the world."
"Here is an historical example of "Suiciders" Kamikaze."
Yergin's "The Prize" make an important point, that our successful blockage of oil to Japan forced the Japanese military to turn to Kamikazes as a solution, since they by 1945 had more planes than they had oil and trained pilots. The analogy wrt modern Jihadist terrorism is apt in one respect: Islamicist extremists turn to terrorism because it both *works* (thanks to media) and because they have few other options in forcing their extremism on people.
So, did Kamikazes do it because:
A) They were indoctrinated as adherents Japan's extremist militaristic ideology and were willing to die for their Emperor and Japanese empire like good Samurai-warrior-admiring soldier s
B) They were poor and ignorant and that always makes people do 'desperate things'.
Patrick,
Your Kamikaze comment helps illustrate how complex the web of violence can be. Yes, these pilots were convinced to throw away their lives due a distorted view of honor and militaristic endoctrination. However, the fuel shortages and desperate strategies to protect the homeland are what motivated their superiors to resort to using suicide bombers.
While your Jihadist arguments make sense when describing the 9/11 terrorists, it breaks down when discussing Iraq. This is because violence in Iraq is perpetrated by different groups for different reasons. It is not only about Islam. In fact, some of the most extreme violence is being delivered by Sunnis against Shiites and visa versa.
Your argument also fails to account for the vast majority of Muslims around the world who do not subscribe to radical Jihadist dogma. Still, inflamatory rhetoric and invading Muslim countries will likely push more into the terrorist ranks. I ask again, how would you react if an occupying force dropped a bomb on your house and killed your family?
Hey I followed you over to Crazy Extremists. I, too, have just posted something about suicide bombers over at my site. Please go and check it out. Yours is an interesting discussion and here is my take.
While there is a unity in the over-reaching goals of Islamicists on paper, I'm convinced each local conflict has its own antecedents or causes. In each case there is something different fueling the fight.
Palestine-Israel is obviously about conflicting claims to the same territory.
In Iraq, the fight revolves around fear. Namely, each group fears that the other will come to power. These are groups that a generation ago co-existed peacefully. See Dr Stephen Biddle's article at Foreign Policy, entitled "Seeing Baghdad, Thinking Saigon."
Islamicism is, in effect, an organizing and fundraising tool to get many disparate groups under the same umbrella. More or less. But they typically operate independently of each other, unless it is politically or financially convenient to do otherwise.
This is why Islamicists are like a many-headed hydra, impossible to decapitate. In the name of Islamicism these groups always have at their beck and call funding and experience and personnel for their operations. The internet and other technologies have made sharing this idealogy and the expertise needed for operations a very simple matter.
At any rate, I'm sure you could all think of some more examples. It's very complicated, but bears careful thinking.
An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth?
"And the whole world will be blind and toothless!" Reb Tavye, Fiddler on the Roof
Head on over to my brand new blog for a discussion on suicide bombers.
Here's that link I mentioned:
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20060301faessay85201/stephen-biddle/seeing-baghdad-thinking-saigon.html
Hello Believer,
I skimmed your in-depth analysis and will circle back for a full reading. From what I have seen, you have a refreshingly insightful perspective on the mess we have created in Iraq.
BTW - your link was truncated in the comments section, so I providing a link here Seeing Baghdad, Thinking Saigan.
Thank you for sharing. Please visit QuestionItNow - Still In Iraq and share some more of your thoughts.
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