The problem of Islamic radicalism

[Razgovory]

Alright Berkut, *these* particular people commit terrorist violence because their god tells them to, as you say.

Well no, I say they do it because they believe that their god tells them to - personally, I don't buy it. But I believe them when they say that they do...

What do we do with this conclusion?

Not sure - the "correct" response is not easy to figure out, and lots of people smarter than myself have tried, and are trying.

What I do know though is that your odds of coming up with a workable solution are greatly diminished if you insist on pretending that the motivations of the people we are trying to influence are something other than that they actually are...

I think in the back your mind you have an idea what to do, but you are still decent enough to know it is wrong.

[Berkut]

I don't have to make that argument - I just have to take the people who engage in the behavior at their word when they say why they do the things that they do - they say it is because their god wants them to do so. I have heard nothing that suggests that they are lying about it. All of them. 

So what? 
Baruch Goldstein said the same thing.  Yigal Amir said the same thing.  Plenty of mass murderers have invoked God to justify what they do, all sorts of evil has been done, is done and will be done in the name of God.  Deus vult is the best excuse for evil ever invented.

If someone murdered tons of people and claimed to be doing it in defense of the US Constitution, what would that prove about the US constitution?  Timothy McVey said he was defending American liberty against a tyrannical government.  He claimed to be defending the Constitution, and that his mass murder was fully justified by the Constitution and the laws of treason and sedition.  I have no reason to think he wasn't entirely sincere in that belief. 

Then we don't have an argument - there are plenty who think that Islamic terrorism is not about Islam - that their religious beliefs is NOT what is motivating the actions of the people in question. THAT is what I am arguing against - the claim that they are NOT sincere in their belief, or that their belief, despite what they say, is not what motivates their behavior.

[Valmy]

I think in the back your mind you have an idea what to do, but you are still decent enough to know it is wrong.

Hugs and orange slices for all the children?

[Berkut]

Again you are conflating lots of things here from "violence" (which can cover many things) to "Sharia law practices that are abhorrent" (which also could mean a lot).

I am not conflating anything, I am explicitly stating that they are both examples of the same problem/issue. I think *I* get to define what *I* am talking about.

Take the question of adultery.

The question is not about adultery, it is about human beings smashing in the skulls of other human beings with rocks because they think they deserve it because their god said so for committing adultery.

  Adultery is a crime in Iran, but that is not new to the Islamic Republic.  It was defined as a crime in the Penal Code enacted by the secularizing Reza Shah, and the Islamic Revolution actually had the effect of moderating that law by putting in place the much stiffer evidentiary requirements under Sharia and providing for reduction of punishment if mercy (remorse) is sought. Of course it is ridiculous that adultery is a criminal offense at all.  Then again, we don't spend much time expressing outrage over criminal laws against adultery in 20+ US states, or the fact that our allies in Taiwan or South Korea give prison terms to adulterers.  Criminalization of adultery was indeed the norm nearly worldwide until quite recently but now in our minds this has become a problem of "Islam"

We don't go on about them because they are not smashing in anyone heads over it.

I don't find the idea that adultery is criminal to really be a abhorrent injustice. I don't agree with it, but it is hardly equivalent to the idea that it is ok to kill someone for it.

And again, that is just an example. Are you similarly ok with a death sentence for apoststay? Not religious, we can find all kind of examples of that we aren't worried about as well? Or honor killing? Or the myriad of lesser examples that are not quite so horrifying but still problematic from any kind of liberal viewpoint?

Similarly we have had a thread here about systematic outrages against women  in non-Muslim parts of India and while it is good that we discuss these kinds of problems, it isn't usually phrased as a problem with "Hinduism" - indeed it would seem a bit silly to do so.

It would be more silly not to if in fact the people doing so claimed consistently that they acted as they do because of their religious views.

To the radically lesser extreme extent that we see people even here in the US justifying treating women poorly because God said they should (or even more extremes like Mormon cultists marrying teenaged girls against their will), then I have no problem noting that this is a *religious* problem, and trying to pretend like it has nothing to do with religion because somewhere else someone else might do the same thing for non-religious reasons is just as spurious.

The issue that gave rise to this thread, however, was not Sharia, or punishments for theft and adultery, or the veil, or polygamy.  It was terrorism.

I think I know better than you what my views on the issue are, and what they encompass.

You have advanced a theory of terrorism - namely that the cause of terrorism is Islam,

No, not at all. I have advanced no such theory, nor do I believe that is the case.

because Islam commands and justifies terroristic acts.  A number of us have pointed out this doesn't fit the facts: e.g., it doesn't explain why "Islamic" branded terrorism is so recent and why non-Islamic terrorism was so ubiquitous before in the same region or the fact that Islamic scholars and leaders - including hardline literalists - claim that terrorism violates Islamic tenets and laws.   And when we point these facts out, you don't respond to the point.

Probably because it isn't relevant to my point, and I've said so many times now.

[crazy canuck]

Sure Berkut, what you think you are talking about, only you can know.  We can but read your words and make comment about what you say.  And what you are saying has some significant flaws.

[Valmy]

Sure Berkut, what you think you are talking about, only you can know.  We can but read your words and make comment about what you say.  And what you are saying has some significant flaws.

Is all he is saying is that Islamic terrorism is Islamic? Seems pretty straightforward. I have no reason to believe the KKK didn't think they were doing God ordained holy work as well.

[crazy canuck]

Sure Berkut, what you think you are talking about, only you can know.  We can but read your words and make comment about what you say.  And what you are saying has some significant flaws.

Is all he is saying is that Islamic terrorism is Islamic? Seems pretty straightforward. I have no reason to believe the KKK didn't think they were doing God ordained holy work as well.

Yeah, I made that point up thread.  If all Berkut was doing is commenting on the fact that Islamic terrorists happen to also be Islamic then there would be no need for a stand alone thread.   But he argues that further conclusions should be drawn about the causes of terrorism (in the case of his argument the cause of terrorism).

[Razgovory]

I think in the back your mind you have an idea what to do, but you are still decent enough to know it is wrong.

Hugs and orange slices for all the children?

Well, if he's serious about everything he says that Islam is the problem then the solution is clear.  We need to stop their religion.  But that puts us in crazy grallon territory, and I don't think Berkut is a closet totalitarian or interested in waging religious war.  Oh we can pretend that nonviolent NGO will simply "educate" the Muslim people in the joys of Atheism and give out free "Darwin fish" to put on their cars, but we all know that will won't accomplish anything.

[viper37]

So no surprise I basically agree with the Canadian lawyer contingent.

As we've collectively pointed out before, this regional terroristic phenomenon has been around for a while, and its Islamic coloration is pretty recent.  There is always a certain subset of young people who are drawn to radical and violent messages, and under the right historical conditions they will take the next step.  The ideology may not be pure superstructure in the Marxist sense but what matters more than the specific content is that it "fits" a particular historical moment and can be shaped to justify violence.  Islam fits that criteria but it by no means unusual in that respect.
[...]
All these contingent historical forces are driving a supply and demand for a very small minority of extremely violent, Islamist extremists and a somewhat larger minority of passive sympathizers.

Ok, Islam is no more to blame for terror than Judaism is to blame for squeezing the Palestinians into a smaller&smaller territory after every war.
I get that easily enough.

We fight an ideology, like we fought nazism.

We purge most of our societies from nazi symbols and nazi speech.  Even with the free speech laws in the US, a politician would not make much milleage today by blaming Jews for the problemes of the world.  Even blaming muslims is touchy, I still can't decide if he's popular for saying what many people secretly think or because his saying of absurdities is what make him popular of if its simply a case of a popular person, in the age of reality tv, who seem loved no matter what he says.

But, if we look at more civilized countries, like Canada , there are anti-hate speech laws pretty well enforced that in practice don't put much of a limit on our ability to use freedom of speech to deliver powerful political arguments.

How do we crush an ideology based on religion?  Crushing atheists is easy.  Crushing radical theists though?  You'll have tons of people claiming their freedom of religion is attacked and tons of their supporters on the left and the right, depending which extreme beliefs you attack.  No one cares that police infiltrate a bunch of neonazis to prevent an attack.  Do the same with a leftist group and you have 3000 newspaper articles about facist cops.  Try banning extreme religious symbols from aspect of the government work and you're called a nazi, with people proudly telling you their grandparents were killed/tortured for their Faith.

So, how do we crush murderous idelogies?

[Berkut]

Sure Berkut, what you think you are talking about, only you can know.  We can but read your words and make comment about what you say.  And what you are saying has some significant flaws.

Is all he is saying is that Islamic terrorism is Islamic? Seems pretty straightforward. I have no reason to believe the KKK didn't think they were doing God ordained holy work as well.

Yeah, I made that point up thread.  If all Berkut was doing is commenting on the fact that Islamic terrorists happen to also be Islamic then there would be no need for a stand alone thread.   But he argues that further conclusions should be drawn about the causes of terrorism (in the case of his argument the cause of terrorism).

Fuck off CC.

I've *explicitly* denied that I make any claim that Islam causes terrorism, and yet you repeat it again as if I said exactly the opposite.

[viper37]

As evidenced by this contingent, who (as an example) were just insisting that radicalism is a small fraction of the Islamic community, which we shown to simply be untrue. When majority populations of large countries believe that Sharia law (to include the death penalty for apostasy and adultery) is the way the state should be organized, you cannot possibly argue that the issue is a minor problem of some small minority of view "like Fred Phelps".

Yet nobody who made that analogy has even acknowledged how terrible flawed it is...

A majority of Syrians voted for Assad, just like a majority of Iraquis voted for Saddam and a majority of Koreans approve Kim Jong Un.

Look at Raif Badawi:

Secularism respects everyone and does not offend anyone ... Secularism ... is the practical solution to lift countries (including ours) out of the third world and into the first world.

I'm not in support of the Israeli occupation of any Arab country, but at the same time I do not want to replace Israel by a religious state ... whose main concern would be spreading the culture of death and ignorance among its people when we need modernisation and hope. States based on religious ideology ... have nothing except the fear of God and an inability to face up to life. Look at what had happened after the European peoples succeeded in removing the clergy from public life and restricting them to their churches. They built up human beings and (promoted) enlightenment, creativity and rebellion. States which are based on religion confine their people in the circle of faith and fear.

For saying this, he was gound guilty and condemned to 1000 lashes, 10 years in prison and a huge fine.
How many people do you expect to answer truthfully how they feel about sharia law in such states?

I don't think we can derive that much deep meaning from a few polls conducted in non free arab worlds.  I know Saudi Arabia is a wet dream of a State for people like Raz and Jacob who believe secularism is bad, but you should not be confused as to the consequences of expressing an opinion in a poll that differs from the current laws.

[Berkut]

Sure Berkut, what you think you are talking about, only you can know.  We can but read your words and make comment about what you say.  And what you are saying has some significant flaws.

Is all he is saying is that Islamic terrorism is Islamic? Seems pretty straightforward. I have no reason to believe the KKK didn't think they were doing God ordained holy work as well.

Acccording to many on the left, the KKK were probably motivated by a hundred different reasons, none of which had anything to do with religion.

Now, in this particular instance I think you can make good arguments that religion was more of a secondary justification for their actions, whereas with Islamic extremism it seems to be much more of a primary factor.

Those guys lining people up and machine gunning them into ditches (and yes, Minsky et al I am perfectly aware that they did not invent the idea of shooting large numbers of people lined up in ditches)? They really do believe that this is necessary in order to establish Allah's version of the "correct" state.

[Berkut]

As evidenced by this contingent, who (as an example) were just insisting that radicalism is a small fraction of the Islamic community, which we shown to simply be untrue. When majority populations of large countries believe that Sharia law (to include the death penalty for apostasy and adultery) is the way the state should be organized, you cannot possibly argue that the issue is a minor problem of some small minority of view "like Fred Phelps".

Yet nobody who made that analogy has even acknowledged how terrible flawed it is...

A majority of Syrians voted for Assad, just like a majority of Iraquis voted for Saddam and a majority of Koreans approve Kim Jong Un.

Look at Raif Badawi:

Secularism respects everyone and does not offend anyone ... Secularism ... is the practical solution to lift countries (including ours) out of the third world and into the first world.

I’m not in support of the Israeli occupation of any Arab country, but at the same time I do not want to replace Israel by a religious state ... whose main concern would be spreading the culture of death and ignorance among its people when we need modernisation and hope. States based on religious ideology ... have nothing except the fear of God and an inability to face up to life. Look at what had happened after the European peoples succeeded in removing the clergy from public life and restricting them to their churches. They built up human beings and (promoted) enlightenment, creativity and rebellion. States which are based on religion confine their people in the circle of faith and fear.

For saying this, he was gound guilty and condemned to 1000 lashes, 10 years in prison and a huge fine.
How many people do you expect to answer truthfully how they feel about sharia law in such states?

I don't think we can derive that much deep meaning from a few polls conducted in non free arab worlds.  I know Saudi Arabia is a wet dream of a State for people like Raz and Jacob who believe secularism is bad, but you should not be confused as to the consequences of expressing an opinion in a poll that differs from the current laws.

These are polls being conducted in states where there is no particular reason to believe that the results are not broadly accurate.

The Pew Poll, for example, found that in Egypt 64% of respondents support the death penalty for apostasy. That means that about a third of the respondents apparently did not feel that their answers would get them in trouble.

So I guess we can argue the numbers, but frankly I find them alarming whether it is 64% or 50% or 40%.

[crazy canuck]

Sure Berkut, what you think you are talking about, only you can know.  We can but read your words and make comment about what you say.  And what you are saying has some significant flaws.

Is all he is saying is that Islamic terrorism is Islamic? Seems pretty straightforward. I have no reason to believe the KKK didn't think they were doing God ordained holy work as well.

Yeah, I made that point up thread.  If all Berkut was doing is commenting on the fact that Islamic terrorists happen to also be Islamic then there would be no need for a stand alone thread.   But he argues that further conclusions should be drawn about the causes of terrorism (in the case of his argument the cause of terrorism).

Fuck off CC.

I've *explicitly* denied that I make any claim that Islam causes terrorism, and yet you repeat it again as if I said exactly the opposite.

Really?  Maybe you should go read your OP again.  If you are not trying to say that radical muslim religious belief is the cause of the terrorism then you have not communicated what it is you are thinking very well.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

no, the keypoint here is that Mohammed was incapable of convincing the Meccans peacefully and had to wage war on them to get them convert. Just as he used violence to remove anyone who criticised/ridiculed him, like Asma bint Marwan. Murdered while holding her suckling infant to her breast.

Even junkier history. 
What is the factual, historical basis for these accounts?

It's odd to criticize a religion on the one hand, and on the other hand accept entirely uncritically every scrap of text or tradition regardless of provenance.

more handwringing in order not to admit that the core of religion is rotten, and that it has been made impossible to criticise that core unless you have a deathwish or round-the-clock-security. Something this is apparently even impossible for certain people in the West to admit.