Languish.org

I wanted to comment on an ongoing discussion from the Paris debate thread, but that has become really diffuse, so I wanted to try to re-focus the discussion a little bit.

One thing I've been trying to elucidate (poorly, I realize) is that I am concerned at the idea that seems to pervade discussion on the topic that Islamic radicalism/Jihadism/etc. is not really a religious problem - that reason people engage in these behaviors is not REALLY religious, despite their vehement, consistent, and clear claims that they are doing what they are doing because they absolutely believe that it will result in some reward or moral validation that their particular religious beliefs promise them.

There was a lot of discussion about this, but I think the point I failed to make is specifically why I see this as such a serious issue.

If we are not willing to name the problem, to recognize it for what it is (for reason that I feel are basically political and social, not rational), then we won't support and push for the right kinds of solutions. If people do not blow themselves up, or shoot up concerts, or fly planes into buildings for religious reasons, then there is no reason at all to support reformation of the religions in question. After all, if you insist that this violence is not truly religious in nature, then there is no reason whatsoever to reform that religion, or support more moderate interpretations of it, as it is not a religious issue.

As LaCroix claims, for example, this is a problem of Western Imperialism. If those men walked into that Paris concert and lined up and executed 100+ people, then while the target of their anger is likely misplaced, the validity of it is perfectly reasonable. According to this view, it can be argued that those Parisians are simply reaping what their parents (or their parents parent's, etc., etc.) sowed.

But more importantly, it also means that not only is it the fault of the West that those men committed those acts, it is also the fault of the West when someone in Indonesia kills their daughter for refusing to marry who they wish. When some Afghani Taliban village finds a women who ran off with her boyfriend, drags her back home, digs a hole where only her head and shoulders stick out, put her in it, then smash her head in with rocks as an expression of their religious beliefs...to the extent that we accept that this is not a good thing, it is not a flaw of the religious beliefs, it is just more fallout from some ambiguous sin of the West, even though there was no Westerner involved, and even though the strictures that demand such action were written long before whatever sin the imperialists engaged in was written.

This is ridiculous on the face of it - certainly so when we look at actual acts of terrorism, but even more so when we look at the wealth of equally reprehensible behaviors engaged in in the name of this particular religion as practiced by large numbers if its more radical followers. And these are not, no matter what is claimed, some small minority. Large numbers of people in the Muslim world think death is in fact the proper punishment for adultery, as one example.

But more importantly, if we are unwilling to accept that those men and women murdered the "adulterer" for religious reasons, then there is no reason at all to expect that this will be resolved by reformation of that religion, and hence no particular reason to support moderate Muslim who are attempting to do exactly that. This is the key point - my position is not an attack on Islam in general, but rather one where I deplore our unwillingness to support those very moderate Muslims that people insist are actually the true face of the religion.

It is, at the end of the day, this bizarre combination of narcissm and helplessness. It is our own fault, and there is nothing that can be done, since "imperialism" happened long ago. Other than self-flagellation for our sins, we are helpless to do anything for the future women doomed to be stoned for reasons that have nothing to do with religion.

There's no such thing as "Islamic radicalism", just ask Obama.

Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 23, 2015, 09:39:16 AM
There's no such thing as "Islamic radicalism", just ask Obama.

Or Bush. The President cannot start slamming Islam, we have diplomatic ties to think of.

But in honesty, there's obviously problems in Islam, but there's the potential to overstate problems with "Islam" as a religion just as there is a potential to ignore completely that anything bad could ever be connected to Islam. You're taking one side of the issue and LaCroix is taking another, you've even lately taken to saying some pretty ludicrous things in the other thread like suggesting that religion is the reason for most wars (ignoring you know, Fascism and Communism--agnostic or even actively atheist beliefs, the ideologies behind the vast majority of wars in terms of body count of the 20th century.)

From the examples in your post, I would point out that violence against women does not, to me, seem intrinsically the fault of Islam. Many of the most barbaric practices in regards to women are thinly or not at all justified in the Qur'an or any of the widely accepted hadiths. What we've generally seen is, and I have no issue with this word, uncivilized peoples tend to be far more patriarchal and have far fewer protection for women, and tend to justify horrific abuse of women. Most societies still have some degree of patriarchal influences, even Europe or the United States men still have better outcomes than women due to institutional discrimination and biases. Likewise in Muslim countries you largely see better treatment of women the more civilized that country is, not the lower its percentage of Muslim practitioners.

Muslim jihadist violence on the other hand, I do think is intrinsically linked to Islam. There is a current of argument that "violent people who happen to be Muslim will use any excuse to be violent", but that kind of ignores that reality. There's lots of stories out there now of well adjusted, pretty happy kids who are turning into jihadists in their late teens. I mean, Jihadi John was a pretty model kid/teenager and only radicalized in early adulthood, he was raised in and enjoyed a comfortable life in Britain. Places with extreme poverty, men with no job prospects, constant strife, will always be ripe recruiting grounds for extremism. That's certainly the source of a lot of fighters who have signed on with say, the Islamic State. But with jihadism we have also consistently seen some of the most educated, the most comfortable, and the most wealthy Muslims playing a large role. The 9/11 hijackers (and bin Laden himself) were not impoverished Muslims with no prospects, ill educated and etc, instead they were from middle class or upper middle class backgrounds and were educated and not from war torn countries. I think that a major part of the problem are these "powerful" Muslims who are willing to engage in or to help jihadism. These people defy most of the stereotypes that the far left tries to paint about jihadism "oh, it's just poor young men with no prospects, or poor immigrants who were shut out of the economy in their host country." My belief is these educated and sophisticated Muslim jihadists are aware of history and see the writing on the wall so to speak. They have a Pat Robertson or similar view--society is going in the wrong direction, the further it goes in that direction, i.e. toward secularism, the more Islamic countries will become like the West. This means pluralistic societies in which women and other people under the thumb will have equal rights, where politics, the law, and religion will eventually no longer be linked. They view this as an unavoidable outcome of adopting Western liberal ideals, and they view those ideals as being akin to an "infection" that will spread if not fought. These Muslims believe that by funding jihad they are working to create societies that can adopt modern technology and business practices but keep any modern political/legal/cultural practices out.

Heh, not to rehash things, but it strikes me at least as interesting that the constant in the recent history of the ME has been terrorism - not Islamic terrorism. The latter is a Johnny-come-lately to the terrorism game, which used to be dominated by proto-Marxists and pan-Arabist ethno-nationalists. Whatever happened to them?

For this reason, it seems unlikely that a religious awakening will decrease the use of terrorism, because what is motivating the terrorism is some flaw inherent in the religion. Seems to me more likely that what is motivating the terrorism is a society riven by lots of problems and a lack of viable solutions, making extremism in whatever form - Marxist, ethno-nationalist, Islamicist - look like attractive opportunities. A religious reformation would, it is true, get rid of expressly Islamicist terrorism, but there is no guarantee that the discrediting of Islamicism as a plausible motive for terrorism will eliminate or even significantly dampen terrorism, any more than the discrediting of Marxism and pan-Arabism did in the past - as long as you have a significant population lacking any solutions to their perceived problems, extremism of this sort will remain popular. 

Quote from: Malthus on November 23, 2015, 10:14:13 AM
Heh, not to rehash things, but it strikes me at least as interesting that the constant in the recent history of the ME has been terrorism - not Islamic terrorism. The latter is a Johnny-come-lately to the terrorism game, which used to be dominated by proto-Marxists and pan-Arabist ethno-nationalists. Whatever happened to them?

For this reason, it seems unlikely that a religious awakening will decrease the use of terrorism, because what is motivating the terrorism is some flaw inherent in the religion. Seems to me more likely that what is motivating the terrorism is a society riven by lots of problems and a lack of viable solutions, making extremism in whatever form - Marxist, ethno-nationalist, Islamicist - look like attractive opportunities. A religious reformation would, it is true, get rid of expressly Islamicist terrorism, but there is no guarantee that the discrediting of Islamicism as a plausible motive for terrorism will eliminate or even significantly dampen terrorism, any more than the discrediting of Marxism and pan-Arabism did in the past - as long as you have a significant population lacking any solutions to their perceived problems, extremism of this sort will remain popular.

I guess the question is then: has been Islam contributing in the creation and preservacne of these seemingly deep structural problems?

Quote from: Berkut on November 23, 2015, 09:31:02 AMAs LaCroix claims, for example, this is a problem of Western Imperialism. If those men walked into that Paris concert and lined up and executed 100+ people, then while the target of their anger is likely misplaced, the validity of it is perfectly reasonable. According to this view, it can be argued that those Parisians are simply reaping what their parents (or their parents parent's, etc., etc.) sowed.

i never once said this. you took something i said and blew it completely out of proportion. it's like saying victims of the IRA reaped what they sowed or victims of WW2 deserved what they got because their ancestors allowed or facilitated the roman empire's collapse. my imperialism point is that there's a butterfly effect. history has shaped every region in the world. and you can't ignore history if you want to find a cause for what happens today. i don't mind old imperialism - it was a fascinating era that allowed the west to dominate the world.

as well, i never once argued that imperialism is the sole reason for what's going on today.

of course, this could have been established in the old thread. but instead you've now taken my point and twisted it in a third thread.  :lol:

Quote from: Tamas on November 23, 2015, 10:18:26 AM
I guess the question is then: has been Islam contributing in the creation and preservacne of these seemingly deep structural problems?

That's a complex question. From a historical perspective, the main problem with the ME in particular is that it was part of a moribund empire - namely, that of the Ottoman Turks - for so very long; the decay of that empire seems to have created a legacy of horrible problems everywhere (the ME, which is a mix but basically Islamic, is mirrored in this respect to the Balkans, which is a mix but basically Christian). No-one considers that the terrible persecution of the Serbs by the Croats during WW2, or the persecution of the Muslims by the Serbs more recently, displays some sort of inherent flaw in Christianity (though it might).

I agree that the modern tendency of the left to place all the blame for the fact that the ME is basically fucked up and backward on the Western imperialists is pretty risible (their interference was quite ephemeral, and the ME was backwards and fucked up long before they arrived).

Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 23, 2015, 09:54:38 AM
But in honesty, there's obviously problems in Islam, but there's the potential to overstate problems with "Islam" as a religion just as there is a potential to ignore completely that anything bad could ever be connected to Islam. You're taking one side of the issue and LaCroix is taking another, you've even lately taken to saying some pretty ludicrous things in the other thread like suggesting that religion is the reason for most wars (ignoring you know, Fascism and Communism--agnostic or even actively atheist beliefs, the ideologies behind the vast majority of wars in terms of body count of the 20th century.)

Hmmm, I am not sure what you are referencing here, but your own post here is mixing up your measure. Saying that religion is the reason for "most" wars, and refuting it by using body count as a measure of the number of wars, doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense. And I am not sure I would even agree with the claim that religion is the cause of most wars anyway, so I am skeptical that I said that - or if I did, I meant something else.

Quote

From the examples in your post, I would point out that violence against women does not, to me, seem intrinsically the fault of Islam.

Has nothing to do with fault - just pointing out that those engaging in this activity believe they are doing so for religious reasons.

Quote
Many of the most barbaric practices in regards to women are thinly or not at all justified in the Qur'an or any of the widely accepted hadiths.

It is great that YOU think that is the case, and it is great that there are a billion Muslims who agree with you, and disagree with the tens of millions who think that stoning women is justified by their religious views.

But you are doing exactly what I am talking about. This is not about what the reasonable Muslims believe, we all agree that they are right, or at least more right.

It is about what the non-moderates believe, and more importantly, how their beliefs drive their behavior.

Claiming that this isn't about Islam because lots of Islamic people do not agree with it is missing the point entirely, and in a really dangerous way.

It IS about Islam, and the fact that there are perfectly rational and reasonable ways to interpret the religion in a manner that does not involve these kinds of horrors is the point - but if we pretend like this is not a religious problem at all, then that fact is no longer really relevant to the problem, while I think it is probably the MOST relevant point.

Quote from: Malthus on November 23, 2015, 10:41:48 AM

Quote from: Tamas on November 23, 2015, 10:18:26 AM
I guess the question is then: has been Islam contributing in the creation and preservacne of these seemingly deep structural problems?

I agree that the modern tendency of the left to place all the blame for the fact that the ME is basically fucked up and backward on the Western imperialists is pretty risible (their interference was quite ephemeral, and the ME was backwards and fucked up long before they arrived).

Agreed on that. It would seem that the decay and collapse of the Ottoman empire ushered in the European nations to create colonies, bring stabilization to a fractured area. They colonizers didn't remain all that long either as I think most nations have been independent since after WW2 or even before that. It is said the colonizers did do a poor job of creating nations, separating some groups/tribes and forcing other groups to be together, but under the Ottomans they were all together anyway so it's likely that the powers that be had other criteria in creating nations out of the mess of the fallen Ottomans. But we can see now that some groups should be split off of others, Sunnis and Shias especially, and IMO the Kurds in Iraq should be an independent nation.

Quote from: Malthus on November 23, 2015, 10:14:13 AM
Heh, not to rehash things, but it strikes me at least as interesting that the constant in the recent history of the ME has been terrorism - not Islamic terrorism. The latter is a Johnny-come-lately to the terrorism game, which used to be dominated by proto-Marxists and pan-Arabist ethno-nationalists. Whatever happened to them?

For this reason, it seems unlikely that a religious awakening will decrease the use of terrorism, because what is motivating the terrorism is some flaw inherent in the religion. Seems to me more likely that what is motivating the terrorism is a society riven by lots of problems and a lack of viable solutions, making extremism in whatever form - Marxist, ethno-nationalist, Islamicist - look like attractive opportunities.

So this explains why British citizens are going to Syria to blow themselves up?

The "the place is a mess" explanation simply does not work, or at the least is not sufficient. Lots of places are a mess, but do not engage in this kind of extreme violence, and lots of the people who are actually engaging in the violence are not from the places that are actually a mess.

Quote
A religious reformation would, it is true, get rid of expressly Islamicist terrorism, but there is no guarantee that the discrediting of Islamicism as a plausible motive for terrorism will eliminate or even significantly dampen terrorism, any more than the discrediting of Marxism and pan-Arabism did in the past - as long as you have a significant population lacking any solutions to their perceived problems, extremism of this sort will remain popular. 

But the discrediting of Marxism, for example, has in fact reduced greatly the expression of violence for Marxist reasons. In fact, it is mostly no longer an issue. And plenty of people who engaged I violence for the cause of Marxism were not people "lacking a perceived solution for their problems". Some of them came from wealthy, democratic states where there was a perfectly viable means of expressing their political views.

Again, I don't dispute that violence can come from lots of different sources (including abject unjustness or failed states of all kinds), but the idea that since there are other sources of violence, we should or can simply dismiss the motivations of a particular and specific kind of violence while discussing the way to deal with it is fallacious, I think.

Quote from: LaCroix on November 23, 2015, 10:24:00 AM

Quote from: Berkut on November 23, 2015, 09:31:02 AMAs LaCroix claims, for example, this is a problem of Western Imperialism. If those men walked into that Paris concert and lined up and executed 100+ people, then while the target of their anger is likely misplaced, the validity of it is perfectly reasonable. According to this view, it can be argued that those Parisians are simply reaping what their parents (or their parents parent's, etc., etc.) sowed.

i never once said this. you took something i said and blew it completely out of proportion. it's like saying victims of the IRA reaped what they sowed or victims of WW2 deserved what they got because their ancestors allowed or facilitated the roman empire's collapse.

Yes, I agree that in fact bringing up the ancestors of the victims of WW2 as the "reason" for why Germany attacked everyone is pretty ridiculous, just like bring up "imperialism" as any kind of meaningful explamation for terrorism is both ridiculous and contemptible, Mr. Chomsky.

If this is NOT what you meant, then I am not sure what you DID mean by bringing it up as evidence that people who murder other people because they believe their god wants them to are lying, and the reason is...well, imperialism and the mess it made of their countries.

So yeah, I get that you are all offended that I followed you ridiculous reasoning to its obviously ridiculous conclusion.

It is a like a caricature of everything that is wrong with the modern "Left".

Quote
my imperialism point is that there's a butterfly effect. history has shaped every region in the world. and you can't ignore history if you want to find a cause for what happens today. i don't mind old imperialism - it was a fascinating era that allowed the west to dominate the world.
p/quote]

That is inane though. You might as well say that terrorism is the result of hurricanes in the Pacific, since the "butterfly effect" says that everything influences everything else.

That is empty rhetoric, and has no value in discussion at all, unless your overall point is that it is all chaos theory, and there is no cause or effect, or none that can be analyzed or acted upon.

I am not convinced that there is a complex issue behind why European muslim youth go to fight for ISIS.

I think it is similar in many countries, but take Hungary, for example, where the radical right is the most popular among the young generations. I mean, most of them is apolitical, but those are into it, prefer the radical right.

Why? Probably because it gives them a) identity, a sense of belonging, b) offers easy answers to complex problems, c) is agressive and offers a pressure valve for frustrated young people, especially if they are poor and uneducated.

In other words, it is prime material for the hopelessly naive and the frustrated loser.

Now, if you take the same demographic among the Muslim population of European countries, what option do they have? The national far right is straight out of question, because those guys pinpoint them as the main source of everything that is bad. No other frustration-relieving identity remains, really, unless you count the far left.

However, they do have a ready-made source of identity in their religion/religion of their parents/grandparents. It already defines them in the eyes of the society they live in, and indeed seems to be a big source of identity for their families as well - why else would the headscarf and such survive?
(It is worth noting this is definitely NOT a unique Muslim thing).

So, if we take for granted, that a portion of young people in general are vulnerable to various radical ideas, I don't see how the Muslims in Europe would NOT be gravitating towards Muslim extremism.

Quote from: Berkut on November 23, 2015, 10:54:07 AM
So this explains why British citizens are going to Syria to blow themselves up?

The same sort of people were once attracted to blow themselves up against Israel for quasi-Marxist reasons: namely, people looking heroically for a cause. Marxism was the popular one du jour. Mind you, Islamicism has exactly zero traction in Japan as far as I know.

Why did several Japanese people shoot up Ben-Gurion Airport?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lod_Airport_massacre

The Japanese had nothing to do with the ME - but the instability and problems in the ME offered them a venue to display their commitment to the cause (presumably, in their case, world revolution).

QuoteThe "the place is a mess" explanation simply does not work, or at the least is not sufficient. Lots of places are a mess, but do not engage in this kind of extreme violence, and lots of the people who are actually engaging in the violence are not from the places that are actually a mess.

But the discrediting of Marxism, for example, has in fact reduced greatly the expression of violence for Marxist reasons. In fact, it is mostly no longer an issue. And plenty of people who engaged I violence for the cause of Marxism were not people "lacking a perceived solution for their problems". Some of them came from wealthy, democratic states where there was a perfectly viable means of expressing their political views.

Again, I don't dispute that violence can come from lots of different sources (including abject unjustness or failed states of all kinds), but the idea that since there are other sources of violence, we should or can simply dismiss the motivations of a particular and specific kind of violence while discussing the way to deal with it is fallacious, I think.

Well, perhaps a silly analogy would help to illustrate the point (I know how much Languish loves silly analogies  ;) ): The ME situation is like a rotting wound, and caring overmuch about Islamicism is like being particularly concerned that the wound is infected with bot-flies, as opposed to some other species of maggot or disease. Killing all the bot-flies will usefully kill all the bot-flies it is true, but unless the wound is actually healed, it is likely to simply attract some other species of infection or vermin: it is, in the case of the ME, no advantage to the Israelis (for example) that they were able to successfully undermine the Marxists and Nationalists who were committing terrorism against them - only to see them replaced in popularity with the Islamicists of Hamas.

Now, it may be argued that the bot-flies are the current aggravation and so we must fight that, and I would agree - but not to lose sight of the big picture and the long view: success against the bot-flies is likely to provide only temporary relief.

I hope I am not derailing this thread by posting it here (rather than in the Paris attacks debate thread which became a discussion about Raz and whether religions is the only thing keeping him from suicide), as this has just been published by Zizek. It is VEEEEERY long and he gets off the tangent perhaps too often, and gets into his favourite Marxism, but lots of interesting stuff there. I highlighted so (but by no means all).

QuoteSlavoj Zizek: In the Wake of Paris Attacks the Left Must Embrace Its Radical Western Roots

Zizek responds to his critics on the refugee crisis.

In the first half of 2015, Europe was preoccupied by radical emancipatory movements (Syriza and Podemos), while in the second half the attention shifted to the "humanitarian" topic of the refugees. Class struggle was literally repressed and replaced by the liberal-cultural topic of tolerance and solidarity. With the Paris terror killings on Friday, November 13, even this topic (which still refers to large socio-economic issues) is now eclipsed by the simple opposition of all democratic forces caught in a merciless war with forces of terror.

It is easy to imagine what will follow: paranoiac search for ISIS agents among the refugees. (Media already gleefully reported that two of the terrorists entered Europe through Greece as refugees.) The greatest victims of the Paris terror attacks will be refugees themselves, and the true winners, behind the platitudes in the style of je suis Paris, will be simply the partisans of total war on both sides. This is how we should really condemn the Paris killings: not just to engage in shows of anti-terrorist solidarity but to insist on the simple cui bono (for whose benefit?) question.

There should be no "deeper understanding" of the ISIS terrorists (in the sense of "their deplorable acts are nonetheless reactions to European brutal interventions"); they should be characterized as what they are: the Islamo-Fascist counterpart of the European anti-immigrant racists—the two are the two sides of the same coin. Let's bring class struggle back—and the only way to do it is to insist on global solidarity of the exploited.

The deadlock that global capitalism finds itself in is more and more palpable. How to break out of it? Fredric Jameson recently proposed global militarization of society as a mode of emancipation: Democratically motivated grassroots movements are seemingly doomed to failure, so perhaps it's best to break global capitalism's vicious cycle through "militarization," which means suspending the power of self-regulating economies. Perhaps the ongoing refugee crisis in Europe provides an opportunity to test this option.

It is at least clear that what is needed to stop the chaos is large-scale coordination and organization, which includes but is not limited to: reception centers near to the crisis (Turkey, Lebanon, the Libyan coast), transportation of those granted entrance to European way stations, and their redistribution to potential settlements. The military is the only agent that can do such a big task in an organized way. To claim that such a role for the military smells of a state of emergency is redundant. When you have tens of thousands of people passing through densely populated areas without organization you have an emergency state—and it is in a state of emergency that parts of Europe are right now. Therefore, it is madness to think that such a process can be left to unwind freely. If nothing else, refugees need provisions and medical care.

Taking control of the refugee crisis will mean breaking leftist taboos.

For instance, the right to "free movement" should be limited, if for no other reason than the fact that it doesn't exist among the refugees, whose freedom of movement is already dependent on their class. Thus, the criteria of acceptance and settlement have to be formulated in a clear and explicit way—whom and how many to accept, where to relocate them, etc. The art here is to find the middle road between following the desires of the refugees (taking into account their wish to move to countries where they already have relatives, etc.) and the capacities of different countries.

Another taboo we must address concerns norms and rules. It is a fact that most of the refugees come from a culture that is incompatible with Western European notions of human rights. Tolerance as a solution (mutual respect of each other's sensitivities) obviously doesn't work: fundamentalist Muslims find it impossible to bear our blasphemous images and reckless humor, which we consider a part of our freedoms. Western liberals, likewise, find it impossible to bear many practices of Muslim culture.

In short, things explode when members of a religious community consider the very way of life of another community as blasphemous or injurious, whether or not it constitutes a direct attack on their religion. This is the case when Muslim extremists attack gays and lesbians in the Netherlands and Germany, and it is the case when traditional French citizens view a woman covered by a burka as an attack on their French identity, which is exactly why they find it impossible to remain silent when they encounter a covered woman in their midst.

To curb this propensity, one has to do two things. First, formulate a minimum set of norms obligatory for everyone that includes religious freedom, protection of individual freedom against group pressure, the rights of women, etc.—without fear that such norms will appear "Eurocentric." Second, within these limits, unconditionally insist on the tolerance of different ways of life. And if norms and communication don't work, then the force of law should be applied in all its forms.

Another taboo that must be overcome involves the equation of any reference to the European emancipatory legacy to cultural imperialism and racism. In spite of the (partial) responsibility of Europe for the situation from which refugees are fleeing, the time has come to drop leftist mantras critiquing Eurocentrism.

The lessons of the post-9/11 world are that the Francis Fukuyama dream of global liberal democracy is at an end and that, at the level of the world economy, corporate capitalism has triumphed worldwide. In fact, the Third World nations that embrace this world order are those now growing at a spectacular rate. The mask of cultural diversity is sustained by the actual universalism of global capital; even better if global capitalism's political supplement relies on so-called "Asian values."

Global capitalism has no problem in accommodating itself to a plurality of local religions, cultures and traditions. So the irony of anti-Eurocentrism is that, on behalf of anti-colonialism, one criticizes the West at the very historical moment when global capitalism no longer needs Western cultural values in order to smoothly function. In short, one tends to reject Western cultural values at the very time when, critically reinterpreted, many of those values (egalitarianism, fundamental rights, freedom of the press, the welfare-state, etc.) can serve as a weapon against capitalist globalization. Did we already forget that the entire idea of Communist emancipation as envisaged by Marx is a thoroughly "Eurocentric" one?

The next taboo worth leaving behind is that any critique of the Islamic right is an example of "Islamophobia." Enough of this pathological fear of many Western liberal leftists who worry about being deemed guilty of Islamophobia. For example, Salman Rushdie was denounced for unnecessarily provoking Muslims and thus (partially, at least) responsible for the fatwa condemning him to death. The result of such a stance is what one can expect in such cases: The more Western liberal leftists wallow in their guilt, the more they are accused by Muslim fundamentalists of being hypocrites who try to conceal their hatred of Islam.

This constellation perfectly reproduces the paradox of the superego: The more you obey what the pseudo-moral agency that the sadistic and primitive superego demands of you, the more guilty you are of moral masochism and identification with the aggressor. Thus, it is as if the more you tolerate Islamic fundamentalism, the stronger its pressure on you will be.

And one can be sure that the same holds for the influx of immigrants: The more Western Europe will be open to them, the more it will be made to feel guilty that it did not accept even more of them. There will never be enough of them. And with those who are here, the more tolerance one displays towards their way of life, the more one will be made guilty for not practicing enough tolerance.

The political economy of the refugees: Global capitalism and military intervention

As a long-term strategy, we should focus on what one cannot but call the "political economy of refugees," which means focusing on the ultimate causes underlying the dynamics of global capitalism and military interventions. The ongoing disorder should be treated as the true face of the New World Order. Consider the food crisis now plaguing the "developing" world. None other than Bill Clinton made it clear in his comments, at a 2008 UN gathering marking World Food Day, that the food crisis in many Third World countries cannot be put on the usual suspects like corruption, inefficiency and state interventionism—the crisis is directly dependent on the globalization of agriculture. The gist of Clinton's speech was that today's global food crisis shows how "we all blew it, including me when I was president," by treating food crops as commodities instead of as a vital right of the world's poor.

Clinton was very clear in putting blame not on individual states or governments but on U.S. and EU long-term global policies carried out for decades by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and other international economic institutions. Such policies pressured African and Asian countries into dropping government subsidies for fertilizer, improved seed and other farm inputs. This allowed the best land to be used for export crops, which effectively compromised the countries' self-sufficiency. The integration of local agriculture into global economy was the result of such "structural adjustments," and the effect was devastating: Farmers were thrown out of their land and pushed into slums fitted for sweat-shop labor, while countries had to rely more and more on imported food. In this way, they are kept in postcolonial dependence and became more and more vulnerable to market fluctuations. For instance, grain prices skyrocketed last year in countries like Haiti and Ethiopia, both of which export crops for biofuel and consequently starve their populations.

In order to approach these problems properly, one will have to invent new forms of large-scale collective action; neither the standard state intervention nor the much-praised local self-organization can do the job. If the problem will not be solved, one should seriously consider that we are approaching a new era of apartheid in which secluded, resource-abundant parts of the world will be separated from the starved-and-permanently-at-war parts. What should people in Haiti and other places with food shortages do? Do they not have the full right to violently rebel? Or, to become refugees? Despite all the critiques of economic neo-colonialism, we are still not fully aware of the devastating effects of the global market on many local economies.

As for the open (and not-so-open) military interventions, the results have been told often enough: failed states. No refugees without ISIS and no ISIS without the U.S. occupation of Iraq, etc. In a gloomy prophecy made before his death, Col. Muammar Gaddafi said: "Now listen you, people of NATO. You're bombing a wall, which stood in the way of African migration to Europe and in the way of al Qaeda terrorists. This wall was Libya. You're breaking it. You're idiots, and you will burn in Hell for thousands of migrants from Africa." Was he not stating the obvious?

The Russian story, which basically elaborates Gaddafi, has its element of truth, in spite of the obvious taste of pasta putinesca. Boris Dolgov of the Moscow-based Strategic Culture Foundation told TASS:

That the refugee crisis is an outcome of US-European policies is clear to the naked eye. ... The destruction of Iraq, the destruction of Libya and attempts to topple Bashar Assad in Syria with the hands of Islamic radicals—that's what EU and US policies are all about, and the hundreds of thousands of refugees are a result of that policy.

Similarly, Irina Zvyagelskaya, of the oriental studies department at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, told TASS:

The civil war in Syria and tensions in Iraq and Libya keep fueling the flow of migrants, but that is not the only cause. I agree with those who see the current events as a trend towards another mass resettlement of peoples, which leave the weaker countries with ineffective economies. There are systemic problems that cause people to abandon their homes and take to the road. And the liberal European legislation allows many of them to not only stay in Europe, but also to live there on social benefits without seeking employment.

And Yevgeny Grishkovets, the Russian author, playwright and stage director, writing in in his blog agrees:

These people are exhausted, angry and humiliated. They have no idea of European values, lifestyles and traditions, multiculturalism or tolerance. They will never agree to abide by European laws. ... They will never feel grateful to the people whose countries they have managed to get into with such problems, because the very same states first turned their own home countries into a bloodbath. ... Angela Merkel vows modern German society and Europe are prepared for problems. ... That's a lie and nonsense!

However, while there is some general truth in all this, one should not jump from this generality to the empirical fact of refugees flowing into Europe and simply accept full responsibility. The responsibility is shared. First, Turkey is playing a well-planned political game (officially fighting ISIS but effectively bombing the Kurds who are really fighting ISIS). Then we have the class division in the Arab world itself (the ultra-rich Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and Emirates accepting almost no refugees). And what about Iraq with its tens of billions of oil reserves? How, out of all this mess, does there emerge a flow of refugees?

What we do know is that a complex economy of refugee transportation is making millions upon millions of dollars profit. Who is financing it? Streamlining it? Where are the European intelligence services? Are they exploring this dark netherworld? The fact that refugees are in a desperate situation in no way excludes the fact that their flow into Europe is part of a well-planned project.

Sure, Norway exists

Let me address my so-called leftist critics who find my breaking of the above-mentioned taboos in articles published in the London Review of Books and In These Times problematic. Nick Riemer, writing in Jacobin, condemns the "reactionary nonsense" I am "promoting":

It should be obvious to Zizek that the West can't intervene militarily in a way that avoids the "neocolonial traps of the recent past." Refugees, for their part, aren't wayfarers on someone else's soil, present only under sufferance and, as such, the objects of "hospitality." Regardless of the customs they bring with them, they should enjoy the same rights as the members of the diverse communities that make up Europe—a pluralism entirely ignored in Zizek's astonishing reference to a unique "Western European way of life."

The claim that underlies this view is much stronger than Alain Badiou's qui est ici est d'ici (those who are here are from here)—it is more something like qui veut venir ici est d'ici (those who want to come here are from here). But even if we accept it, it is Riemer who entirely ignores the point of my remark: of course "they should enjoy the same rights as the members of the diverse communities that make up Europe," but which exactly are these "same rights" refugees should enjoy?

While Europe is now fighting for full gay and woman's rights (the right to abortion, the rights of same-sex married couples, etc.), should these rights also be extended to gays and women among the refugees even if they are in conflicts with "the customs they bring with them" (as they often obviously are)? And this aspect should in no way be dismissed as marginal: from Boko Haram to Robert Mugabe to Vladimir Putin, the anti-colonialist critique of the West more and more appears as the rejection of the Western "sexual" confusion, and as the demand for returning to the traditional sexual hierarchy.

I am, of course, well aware how the immediate export of Western feminism and individual human rights can serve as a tool of ideological and economic neocolonialism (we all remember how some American feminists supported the U.S. intervention in Iraq as a way to liberate women there, while the result is exactly the opposite). But I absolutely reject to draw from this the conclusion that the Western Left should make here a "strategic compromise," and silently tolerate "customs" of humiliating women and gays on behalf of the "greater" anti-imperialist struggle.

Along with Jürgen Habermas and Peter Singer, Reimer then accuses me of endorsing "an elitist vision of politics—the enlightened political class versus a racist and ignorant population." When I read this, I again could not believe my eyes! As if I hadn't written pages and pages on criticizing precisely European liberal political elite! As for "racist and ignorant population," we stumble here upon another Leftist taboo: Yes, unfortunately, large parts of the working class in Euroope is racist and anti-immigrant, a fact which should in no way be dismissed as as the result of the  manipulation of an essentially "progressive" working class.

Riemer's final critique is: "Zizek's fantasy that refugees pose a threat to the 'Western' 'way of life' that may be remedied by better kinds of military and economic 'intervention' abroad is the clearest illustration of how the categories in which analysis is conducted can open the door to reaction." As for the danger of military interventions, I am well aware of it, and I also consider a justified intervention almost impossible. But when I speak of the necessity of radical economic change, I of course do not aim at some kind of "economic intervention" in parallel with military intervention, but of a thorough radical transformation of global capitalism that should begin in the developed West itself. Every authentic leftist knows that this is the only true solution—without it, the developed West will continue to devastate Third World countries, and with fanfare mercifully take care of their poor.

Along similar lines, Sam Kriss' critique is especially interesting in that he also accuses me of not being a true Lacanian:

It's even possible to argue that the migrants are more European than Europe itself. Zizek mocks the utopian desire for a Norway that doesn't exist, and insists that migrants should stay where they're sent. (It doesn't seem to occur to him that those trying to reach a certain country might have family members already there, or be able to speak the language, that it's driven precisely by a desire to integrate. But also—isn't this precisely the operation of the objet petit a [the unatainable object of desire] ? What kind of Lacanian tells someone that they should effectively abandon their desire for something just because it's not attainable? Or are migrants not worthy of the luxury of an unconscious mind?) In Calais, migrants trying to reach the United Kingdom protested against their conditions with placards demanding "freedom of movement for all." Unlike racial or gender equality, the free movement of peoples across national borders is a supposedly universal European value that has actually been implemented—but, of course, only for Europeans. These protesters put the lie to any claim on the part of Europe to be upholding universal values. Zizek can only articulate the European "way of life" in terms of vague and transcendent generalities, but here it is in living flesh. If the challenge of migration is one of European universalism against backwards and repressive particularism, then the particularism is entirely on the part of Europe. ... "The Non-Existence of Norway" isn't a theoretical analysis, it's a gentle word of heartfelt advice in the ear of the European bureaucratic class, one that's not particularly interested in Lacan. For all his insistence on "radical economic change," this epistolary structure ensures that such a change is, for the time being, entirely off the table. Hence the insistence that there is not, and can never be, a Norway. The capitalists do not intend to make one, and Zizek does not intend to address those that could. To which the Marxist response must be that if there is no Norway, then we'll have to build it ourselves.

"Migrants are more European than Europe itself" is an old leftist thesis that I too have often used, but one has to be specific about what it means. In my critic's reading, it means migrants actualize the principle—"freedom of movement for all"—more seriously than Europe. But, again, one has to be precise here. There is "freedom of movement" in the sense of freedom to travel, and the more radical "freedom of movement" in the sense of the freedom to settle in whatever country I want. But the axiom that sustains the refugees in Calais is not just the freedom to travel, but something more like, "Everyone has the right to settle in any other part of the world, and the country they move into has to provide for them." The EU guarantees (sort of, more or less) this right for its members and to demand the globalization of this right equals the demand to expand the EU to the entire world.

The actualization of this freedom presupposes nothing less than a radical socio-economic revolution. Why? New forms of apartheid are emerging. In our global world, commodities circulate freely but not people. Discourse around porous walls and the threat of inundating foreigners are an inherent index of what is false about capitalist globalization. It is as if the refugees want to extend the free, global circulation of commodities to people as well, but this is presently impossible due to the limitations imposed by global capitalism.

From the Marxist standpoint, "freedom of movement" relates to the need of capital for a "free" labor force—millions torn out of their communal life to be employed in sweatshops. The universe of capital relates to individual freedom of movement in an inherently contradictory way: Capitalism needs "free" individuals as cheap labor forces, but it simultaneously needs to control their movement since it cannot afford the same freedoms and rights for all people.

Is demanding radical freedom of movement, precisely because it does not exist within the existing order, a good starting point for the struggle? My critic admits the impossibility of the refugee's demand, yet he affirms it on account of its very impossibility—all the while accusing me of a non-Lacanian, vulgar pragmatism. The part about objet a as impossible, etc., is simply ridiculous, theoretical nonsense. The "Norway" I refer to is not objet a but a fantasy. Refugees who want to reach Norway present an exemplary case of ideological fantasy—a fantasy-formation that obfuscates the inherent antagonisms. Many of the refugees want to have a cake and eat it: They basically expect the best of the Western welfare-state while retaining their specific way of life, though in some of its key features their way of life is incompatible with the ideological foundations of the Western welfare-state.

Germany likes to emphasize the need to integrate the refugees culturally and socially. However—and here is another taboo to be broken—how many of the refugees really want to be integrated? What if the obstacle to integration is not simply Western racism? (Incidentally, fidelity to one's objet a in no way guarantees authenticity of desire—even a brief perusal of Mein Kampf makes it clear that Jews were Hitler's objet a, and he certainly remained faithful to the project of their annihilation.) This is what is wrong with the claim "if there is no Norway, then we'll have to build it ourselves"—yes, but it will not be the fantasmic "Norway" refugees are dreaming about.

Ritualized violence and fundamentalism

Along these lines, in his attack on me, Sebastian Schuller raises the question: "Is Zizek now going over to PEGIDA [Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the Occident]?"

Schuller's blog post even attributes a statement to me that, of course, I never made: "I no longer know any classes, only Europeans." What we must do is move beyond the cliché of refugees as proletarians with "nothing to lose but their chains" invading bourgeois Europe: There are class divisions in Europe as well as in the Middle East, and the key question is how these different class dynamics interact.

This brings us to the reproach that, while I call for a critique of the dark underside of the Islamic right, I remain silent about the dark underside of the European world: "And what about Crosses in the school? What about the church tax? What about the diverse Christian sects with absurd moral ideas? What about the Christians who announce that gays will be barbecued in hell?" This is a weird reproach—the parallel between Christian and Muslim fundamentalism is a topic over-analyzed in our media (as well as in my books).

Be that as it may, let's recall what happened in Rotherham, England: At least 1,400 children were subjected to brutal sexual exploitation between 1997 and 2013; children as young as 11 were raped by multiple perpetrators, abducted, trafficked to other cities, beaten and intimidated; "doused in petrol and threatened with being set alight, threatened with guns, made to witness brutally violent rapes and threatened they would be next if they told anyone, as the official report put it." There had been three previous inquiries into these goings on that led to nothing. One inquiry team noted a fear among council staff that they'd be labelled "racist" if they pursued the matter. Why? The perpetrators were almost exclusively members of Pakistani gangs and their victims—referred by the perpetrators as "white trash"—were white schoolgirls.

Reactions were predictable. Mostly through generalization, many on the Left resorted to all possible strategies in order to blur facts. Exhibiting political correctness at its worst, in two Guardian articles the perpetrators were vaguely designated as "Asians." Claims were made. This wasn't about ethnicity and religion but rather about domination of man over women. Who are we with our church pedophilia and Jimmy Saville to adopt a high moral ground against a victimized minority? Can one imagine a more effective way to open up the field to UKIP and other anti-immigrant populists who exploit the worries of ordinary people?

What is not acknowledge is that such anti-racism is in effect a form of covert racism since it condescendingly treats Pakistanis as morally inferior beings who should not be held to normal human standards.

In order to break out of this deadlock, one should begin with the very parallel between the Rotherham events and pedophilia within the Catholic Church. In both cases, we are dealing with organized—ritualized even—collective activity. In the case of Rotherham, another parallel may be even more pertinent. One of the terrifying effects of the non-contemporaneity of different levels of social life is the rise of systematic violence against women. Violence that is specific to a certain social context is not random violence but systematic—it follows a pattern and transmits a clear message. While we were right to be terrified at the gang rapes in India, as Arundhati Roy pointed out, the cause of the unanimous moral reaction was that the rapists were poor and from lower strata. Nonetheless, the world-wide echo of violence against women is suspicious, so, perhaps, it would be worthwhile to widen our perception and include other similar phenomena.

The serial killings of women in Ciudad Juarez at the border are not just private pathologies, but a ritualized activity, part of the subculture of local gangs and directed at single young women working in new assembling factories. These murders are clear cases of macho reaction to the new class of independent working women: The social dislocation due to fast industrialization and modernization provokes a brutal reaction in males who experience this development as a threat. And the crucial feature in all these cases is that the criminally violent act is not a spontaneous outburst of raw brutal energy which breaks the chains of civilized customs, but something learned, externally imposed, ritualized and part of the collective symbolic substance of a community. What is repressed for the "innocent" public gaze is not the cruel brutality of the act, but precisely its "cultural," ritualistic character as symbolic custom.

The same perverted social-ritual logic is at work when Catholic Church representatives insist that these intercontinental cases of pedophilia, deplorable as they are, are the Church's internal, problem, and then display great reluctance to collaborate with police in their investigation. Church reps are, in a way, right. The pedophilia of Catholic priests is not something that merely concerns the persons who accidentally (read: privately) happened to choose the profession of a priest. It is a phenomenon that concerns the Catholic Church as an institution, and is inscribed into its very functioning as a socio-symbolic institution. It does not concern the "private" unconscious of individuals, but the "unconscious" of the institution itself. It is not something that happens because the institution has to accommodate itself to the pathological realities of libidinal life in order to survive, but something that the institution itself needs in order to reproduce itself. One can well imagine a "straight" (not pedophiliac) priest who, after years of service, gets involved in pedophilia because the very logic of the institution seduces him into it. Such an institutional unconscious designates the disavowed underside that, precisely as disavowed, sustains the public institution. (In the U.S. military, this underside consists of the obscene sexualized hazing rituals that help sustain the group solidarity.) In other words, it is not simply that, for conformist reasons, the Church tries to hush up the embarrassing pedophilic scandals: In defending itself, the Church defends its innermost obscene secret. Identifying oneself with this secret side is key for the very identity of a Christian priest: If a priest seriously (not just rhetorically) denounces these scandals he thereby excludes himself from the ecclesiastic community. He is no longer "one of us." Similarly, when a US southerner in the 1920s denounced the KKK to the police he excluded himself from his community by betraying its fundamental solidarity.

We should approach the Rotherham events in exactly the same way since we are dealing with the "political unconscious" of Pakistani Muslim youth. The kind of violence at work is not chaotic violence but ritualized violence with precise ideological contours. A youth group, which experiences itself as marginalized and subordinated, took revenge at low-class girls of the predominant group. It is fully legitimate to raise the question of whether there are features in their religion and culture which open up the space for brutality against women without blaming Islam as such (which is in itself no more misogynistic than Christianity). In many Islamic countries and communities one can observe consonance between violence against women, the subordination of women and their exclusion from public life.

Among many fundamentalist groups and movements strict imposition of hierarchical sexual difference is at the very top of their agenda. But we should simply apply the same criteria on both (Christian and Islamic fundamentalist) sides, without fear of admitting that our liberal-secular critique of fundamentalism is also stained by falsity.

Critique of religious fundamentalism in Europe and the United States is an old topic with endless variation. The very pervasiveness of the self-satisfactory way that the liberal intelligentsia make fun of fundamentalists covers up the true problem, which is its hidden class dimension. The counterpart of this "making-fun-of" is the pathetic solidarity with the refugees and the no less false and pathetic self-humiliation of our self-admonition. The real task is to build bridges between "our" and "their" working classes. Without this unity (which includes the critique and self-critique of both sides) class struggle proper regresses into a clash of civilizations. That's why yet another taboo should be left behind.

The worries and cares of so-called ordinary people affected by the refugees are oft dismissed as an expression of racist prejudices if not outright neo-Fascism. Should we really allow PEGIDA & company to be the only way open to them?

Interestingly, the same motif underlies the "radical" leftist critique of Bernie Sanders: What bothers his critics is precisely his close contact with small farmers and other working people in Vermont, who usually give their electoral support to Republican conservatives. Sanders is ready to listen to their worries and cares, not dismiss them as racist white trash.

Where does the threat come from?

Listening to ordinary people's worries, of course, in no way implies that one should accept the basic premise of their stance—the idea that threats to their way of life comes from outside, from foreigners, from "the other." The task is rather to teach them to recognize their own responsibility for their future. To explain this point, let's take an example from another part of the world.

Udi Aloni's new film Junction 48 (upcoming in 2016) deals with the difficult predicament of young "Israeli Palestinians" (Palestinians descended from the families that remained in Israel after 1949), whose everyday life involves a continuous struggle at two fronts—against Israeli state oppression as well as fundamentalist pressures from within their own community. The main role is played by Tamer Nafar, a well-known Israeli-Palestinian rapper, who, in his music, mocks the tradition of the  "honor killing" of Palestinian girls by their Palestinian families. A strange thing happened to Nafar during a recent visit to the United States. At UCLA after Nafar performed his song protesting "honor killings," some anti-Zionist students reproached him for promoting the Zionist view of Palestinians as barbaric primitives. They added that, if there are any honor killings, Israel is responsible for them since the Israeli occupation keeps Palestinians in primitive, debilitating conditions. Here is Nafar's dignified reply: "When you criticize me you criticize my own community in English to impress your radical professors. I sing in Arabic to protect the women in my own hood."

An important aspect of Nafar's position is that he is not just protecting Palestinian girls from family terror he is allowing them to fight for themselves—to take the risk. At the end of Aloni's film, after the girl decides to perform at a concert against her family's wishes, and the film ends in a dark premonition of honor killing.

In Spike Lee's film on Malcolm X there is a wonderful detail: After Malcolm X gives a talk at a college, a white student girl approaches him and asks him what she can do to help the black struggle. He answers: "Nothing." The point of this answer is not that whites should just do nothing. Instead, they should first accept that black liberation should be the work of the blacks themselves, not something bestowed on them as a gift by the good white liberals. Only on the basis of this acceptance can they do something to help blacks. Therein resides Nafar's point: Palestinians do not need the patronizing help of Western liberals, and they need even less the silence about "honor killing" as part of the Western Left's "respect" for Palestinian way of life. The imposition of Western values as universal human rights and the respect for different cultures, independent of the horrors sometimes apart of these cultures, are two sides of the same ideological mystification.

In order to really undermine homeland xenophobia against foreign threats, one should reject its very presupposition, namely that every ethnic group has its own proper "Nativia." On Sept. 7, 2015, Sarah Palin gave an interview to Fox News with Fox and Friends host Steve Doocey:


"I love immigrants. But like Donald Trump, I just think we have too darn many in this country. Mexican-Americans, Asian-Americans, Native-Americans—they're changing up the cultural mix in the United States away from what it used to be in the days of our Founding Fathers. I think we should go to some of these groups and just ask politely: "Would you mind going home? Would you mind giving us our country back?"

"Sarah you know I love you," Doocey interjected, "And I think that's a great idea with regards to Mexicans. But where are the Native Americans supposed to go? They don't really have a place to go back to do they?"

Sarah replied: "Well I think they should go back to Nativia or wherever they came from. The liberal media treats Native Americans like they're gods. As if they just have some sort of automatic right to be in this country. But I say if they can't learn to get off those horses and start speaking American, then they should be sent home too."

Unfortunately, we immediately learned that this story—too good to be true—was a hoax brilliantly performed by Daily Currant. However, as they say, "Even if it's not true, it is well conceived." In its ridiculous nature, it brought out the hidden fantasy that sustains the anti-immigrant vision: In today's chaotic global world there is a "Nativia" to which people who bother us properly belong. This vision was realized in apartheid South Africa in the form of Bantustans—territories set aside for black inhabitants. South African whites created the Bantustans with the idea of making them independent, thereby ensuring that black South Africans would loose their citizenship rights in the remaining white-controlled areas of South Africa. Although Bantustans were defined as the "original homes" of the black peoples of South Africa, different black groups were allocated to their homelands in a brutally arbitrary way. Bantustans amounted to 13 percent of the country's land carefully selected not to contain any important mineral reserves—the resource-rich remainder of the country would then be in the hands of the white population. The Black Homelands Citizenship Act of 1970 formally designated all black South Africans as citizens of the homelands, even if they lived in "white South Africa," and cancelled their South African citizenship. From the standpoint of apartheid, this solution was ideal: Whites possessed most of the land while blacks were proclaimed foreigners in their own country and treated as guest workers who could, at any point, be deported back to their "homeland." What cannot but strike the eye is the artificial nature of this entire process. Black groups were suddenly told that an unattractive and infertile piece of land was their "true home." And today, even if a Palestinian state were to emerge on the West Bank, would it not be precisely such a Bantustan, whose formal "independence" would serve the purpose of liberating the Israeli government from any responsibility for the welfare of the people living there.

But we should also add to this insight that the multiculturalist or anti-colonialist's defense of different "ways of life" is also false. Such defenses cover up the antagonisms within each of these particular ways of life by justifying acts of brutality, sexism and racism as expressions of a particular way of life that we have no right to measure with foreign, i.e. Western values. Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe's talk at the UN general assembly is a typical anti-colonialist defense used as a justification for brutal homophobia:


Respecting and upholding human rights is the obligation of all states, and is enshrined in the United Nations charter. Nowhere does the charter arrogate the right to some to sit in judgment over others, in carrying out this universal obligation. In that regard, we reject the politicization of this important issue and the application of double standards to victimize those who dare think and act independently of the self-anointed prefects of our time. We equally reject attempts to prescribe "new rights" that are contrary to our values, norms, traditions, and beliefs. We are not gays! Cooperation and respect for each other will advance the cause of human rights worldwide. Confrontation, vilification, and double-standards will not.

What can Mugabe's emphatic claim "We are not gays!" mean with regard to the fact that, for certain, there are many gays also in Zimbabwe? It means, of course, that gays are reduced to an oppressed minority whose acts are often directly criminalized. But one can understand the underlying logic: The gay movement is perceived as the cultural impact of globalization and yet another way globalization undermines traditional social and cultural forms such that the struggle against gays appears as an aspect of the anti-colonial struggle.

Does the same not hold for, say, Boko Haram? For certain Muslims the liberation of women appears as the most visible feature of the destructive cultural impact of capitalist modernization. Therefore, Boko Haram, which can be roughly and descriptively translated as "Western education [of women specifically] is forbidden," can perceive itself as a way of fighting the destructive impact of modernization when it imposes hierarchic regulation between the two sexes.

The enigma is thus: Why do Muslim extremists, who were undoubtedly exposed to exploitation, domination, and other destructive and humiliating aspects of colonialism, target what is (for us, at least) the best part of the Western legacy—our egalitarianism and personal freedoms? The obvious answer could be that their target is well-chosen: What makes the liberal West so unbearable is that they not only practice exploitation and violent domination, but that, to add insult to injury, they present this brutal reality in the guise of its opposite—of freedom, equality and democracy.

Mugabe's regressive defense of particular ways of life finds its mirror-image in what Viktor Orban, the rightwing Prime Minister of Hungary, is doing. On Sept. 3, 2015, he justified closing off the border with Serbia as an act of defending Christian Europe against invading Muslims. This was the same Orban who, back in July 2012, said that in Central Europe a new economic system must be built: "And let us hope that God will help us and we will not have to invent a new type of political system instead of democracy that would need to be introduced for the sake of economic survival. ... Cooperation is a question of force, not of intention. Perhaps there are countries where things don't work that way, for example in the Scandinavian countries, but such a half-Asiatic rag-tag people as we are can unite only if there is force."

The irony of these lines was not lost on some old Hungarian dissidents: When the Soviet army moved into Budapest to crush the 1956 anti-Communist uprising the message repeatedly sent by the beleaguered Hungarian leaders to the West was: "We are defending Europe here." (Against the Asiatic Communists, of course.) Now, after Communism collapsed, the Christian-conservative government paints as its main enemy Western multi-cultural consumerist liberal democracy for which today's Western Europe stands, and calls for a new more organic communitarian order to replace the "turbulent" liberal democracy of the last two decades. Orban already expressed his sympathies towards cases of "capitalism with Asian values" like Putin's Russia, so if the European pressure on Orban continues we can easily imagine him sending the message to the East: "We are defending Asia here!" (And, to add an ironic twist, are, from the West European racist perspective, today's Hungarians not descendants of the early medieval Huns—Attila is even today a popular Hungarian name.)

Is there a contradiction between these two Orbans: Orban the friend of Putin who resents the liberal-democratic West and Orban the defender of Christian Europe? There is not. The two faces of Orban provide the proof (if needed) that the principal threat to Europe is not Muslim immigration but its anti-immigrant, populist defenders.

So what if Europe should accept the paradox that its democratic openness is based on exclusion. In other words, there is "no freedom for the enemies of freedom," as Robespierre put it long ago? In principle, this is, of course, true, but it is here that one has to be very specific. In a way, Norway's mass murderer Andres Breivik was right in his choice of target: He didn't attack the foreigners but those within his own community who were too tolerant towards intruding foreigners. The problem is not foreigners—it is our own (European) identity.

Although the ongoing crisis of the European Union appears as a crisis of economy and finances, it is in its fundamental dimension an ideological-political crisis. The failure of referendums concerning the EU constitution a couple of years ago gave a clear signal that voters perceived the European Union as a "technocratic" economic union, lacking any vision which could mobilize people. Till the recent wave of protests from Greece to Spain, the only ideology able to mobilize people has been the anti-immigrant defense of Europe.

There is an idea circulating in the underground of the disappointed radical Left that is a softer reiteration of the predilection for terrorism in the aftermath of the 1968 movement: the crazy idea that only a radical catastrophe (preferably an ecological one) can awaken masses and thus give a new impetus to radical emancipation. The latest version of this idea relates to the refugees: only an influx of a really large number of refugees (and their disappointment since, obviously, Europe will not be able to satisfy their expectations) can revitalize the European radical Left.

I find this line of thought obscene: notwithstanding the fact that such a development would for sure give an immense boost to anti-immigrant brutality, the truly crazy aspect of this idea is the project to fill in the gap of the missing radical proletarians by importing them from abroad, so that we will get the revolution by means of an imported revolutionary agent.

This, of course, in no way entails that we should content ourselves with liberal reformism. Many leftist liberals (like Habermas) who bemoan the ongoing decline of the EU seem to idealize its past: The "democratic" EU the loss of which they bemoan never existed. Recent EU policies, such as those imposing austerity on Greece, are just a desperate attempt to make Europe fit for new global capitalism. The usual Left-liberal critique of the EU—it's basically OK, except for a "democratic deficit"— betrays the same naivety as the critics of ex-Communist countries who basically supported them, except for the complaint about the lack of democracy: In both cases, the "democratic deficit" is and was a necessary part of the global structure.

But here, I am even more of a skeptical pessimist. When I was recently answering questions from the readers of Süddeutsche Zeitung, Germany's largest daily, about the refugee crisis, the question that attracted by far the most attention concerned precisely democracy, but with a rightist-populist twist: When Angela Merkel made her famous public appeal inviting hundreds of thousands into Germany, which was her democratic legitimization? What gave her the right to bring such a radical change to German life without democratic consultation? My point here, of course, is not to support anti-immigrant populists, but to clearly point out the limits of democratic legitimization. The same goes for those who advocate radical opening of the borders: Are they aware that, since our democracies are nation-state democracies, their demand equals suspension of—in effect imposing a gigantic change in a country's status quo without democratic consultation of its population? (Their answer would have been, of course, that refugees should also be given the right to vote—but this is clearly not enough, since this is a measure that can only happen after refugees are already integrated into the political system of a country.) A similar problem arises with the calls for transparency of the EU decisions: what I fear is that, since in many countries the majority of the public was against the Greek debt reduction, rendering EU negotiations public would make representatives of these countries advocate even tougher measures against Greece.

We encounter here the old problem: What happens to democracy when the majority is inclined to vote for racist and sexist laws? I am not afraid to conclude: Emancipatory politics should not be bound a priori by formal-democratic procedures of legitimization. No, people quite often do NOT know what they want, or do not want what they know, or they simply want the wrong thing. There is no simple shortcut here.

We definitely live in interesting times.

Berkut, I agree that it is important to attempt to analyze root causes but I think that by focusing exclusively on religious beliefs you are missing other important factors. I think the factors that motivate people are a lot more complex than just their religion.  Your proposition seems to be that if we can only help the moderates in the current religious conflict within the Muslim then there will be no more terrorism.  But there has been extremist religious beliefs for a very long time (within the Muslim world and in other religious beliefs) which have not resulted in the kind of terrorism we are seeing now.  I am not denying that religious ideology and indoctrination has played some part but I think it would be an error to identify it as the exclusive causal issue.  I think the deeper causal issues are political, economic and cultural.

To use one of your example, are the honour killings that rightly horrify us the product of only religious belief or are they also caused by strongly held local cultural beliefs and societal norms.  The fact that honour killings occur across multiple religious faiths and cultures gives us some indication that it is not an exclusive problem of radical Islamic beliefs.   Our society is so strongly influenced by liberal democratic norms that we have a hard time understanding behaviors that fall outside those norms.  To be clear I am not arguing that we should for a moment accept those other behaviors.  I think we should do what we can to spread liberal democratic values.  But that is an example of where blaming only the religious aspect will not get at root causes.

And plenty of people who engaged I violence for the cause of Marxism were not people "lacking a perceived solution for their problems". Some of them came from wealthy, democratic states where there was a perfectly viable means of expressing their political views.

I think this is important to realize with Islamic radicalism. We see statements by people in the West saying that these people need jobs or better education or whatever other rationale, but it ignores that the movers and shakers of this extremism believe fervently in their extremist ideology. The leaders and many followers are well educated and prosperous and aren't doing this out of a sense of impoverishment; it's the lifestyle and culture they support and desire. However of course, many of the rank and file are attracted to this ideology/cause because they are poor or alienated from the societies they're part of, and then again many also just fervently believe in the ideology.

Quote from: KRonn on November 23, 2015, 11:30:45 AM
And plenty of people who engaged I violence for the cause of Marxism were not people "lacking a perceived solution for their problems". Some of them came from wealthy, democratic states where there was a perfectly viable means of expressing their political views.

I think this is important to realize with Islamic radicalism. We see statements by people in the West saying that these people need jobs or better education or whatever other rationale, but it ignores that the movers and shakers of this extremism believe fervently in their extremist ideology. The leaders and many followers are well educated and prosperous and aren't doing this out of a sense of impoverishment; it's the lifestyle and culture they support and desire. However of course, many of the rank and file are attracted to this ideology/cause because they are poor or alienated from the societies they're part of, and then again many also just fervently believe in the ideology.

The true believers often aren't looking for an answer to the problems of a fucked up society (even if they say they are) - they are looking for a cause to embrace. The fucked up society provides the excuse for the cause.

Look at it this way: to use these people are terrorist scum, but in their own eyes, they are heroes. A big part of what motivates them is a desire for heroism. Living a comfortable humdrum wealthy or middle class life, many people find alienating and lacking in point (particularly if they grew up as kids who didn't have to work to earn it). Add a grievance based on ethnicity or religion, plus the chance to embrace a cause that demands absolute devotion, and a certain number will jump at the chance -- and a fucked-up situation breeds plenty of such grievances. The attraction is going, in their eyes, from a worthless drone to a hero at the very cutting edge of world affairs.

Quote from: crazy canuck on November 23, 2015, 11:25:23 AM
Berkut, I agree that it is important to attempt to analyze root causes but I think that by focusing exclusively on religious beliefs you are missing other important factors.

Let me stop you right there.

I am not at all arguing that we should focus exclusively on religious beliefs.

I am arguing that ignoring religious beliefs as a motivating factor is a mistake - and that is what the left wants to insist on - not that religion is not the only factor, but rather that religion is not a factor at all, or at best is a minor factor, to be dismissed.

I think the term "islamofascism" has been abandoned too soon. I think this ideally describes the ideology that is espoused by Islamic right wingers (which includes but is not limited to the violent extremists) - Islam is a component but not the only one.

Quote from: Malthus on November 23, 2015, 10:14:13 AM
Heh, not to rehash things, but it strikes me at least as interesting that the constant in the recent history of the ME has been terrorism - not Islamic terrorism. The latter is a Johnny-come-lately to the terrorism game, which used to be dominated by proto-Marxists and pan-Arabist ethno-nationalists. Whatever happened to them?

For this reason, it seems unlikely that a religious awakening will decrease the use of terrorism, because what is motivating the terrorism is some flaw inherent in the religion. Seems to me more likely that what is motivating the terrorism is a society riven by lots of problems and a lack of viable solutions, making extremism in whatever form - Marxist, ethno-nationalist, Islamicist - look like attractive opportunities. A religious reformation would, it is true, get rid of expressly Islamicist terrorism, but there is no guarantee that the discrediting of Islamicism as a plausible motive for terrorism will eliminate or even significantly dampen terrorism, any more than the discrediting of Marxism and pan-Arabism did in the past - as long as you have a significant population lacking any solutions to their perceived problems, extremism of this sort will remain popular.

Marxist/Pan-Arabist terrorism may or may not be present (or something akin to it for the 21st century) if Islamic jihadism magically went away, but what we can be pretty sure of is ideological jihadism is what attracts Muslims from Southeast Asia and Europe to travel to the Middle East to fight. They wouldn't have nearly the same cause to identify with other types of violence.

The Taliban is somewhat interesting an example. While they've long flirted with associations with international jihadist groups the reality of the Taliban is it's a largely Pashtun extremist group fighting a civil war in Afghanistan and any interest it shows to "jihadism" outside of Afghanistan appears to mostly be minimal and for show. The Taliban since it was driven from power has never attracted international jihadists like al-Qaeda in Iraq (and now ISIS) have, it did initially have tons of supporters from Pakistani madrasas, but those were typically Pashtun "fellow travelers" (and were largely facilitated in crossing over to join the Afghan Taliban by Pakistani security forces.) All this being said, the larger Middle East region may indeed have violence but like the Taliban's quest, it wouldn't be attracting Indonesians and Malaysian and Filipinos without the Islamic component. Those people don't care, for example, about carving out territory in Afghanistan or pan-Arabism.

Quote from: Berkut on November 23, 2015, 11:40:09 AM

Quote from: crazy canuck on November 23, 2015, 11:25:23 AM
Berkut, I agree that it is important to attempt to analyze root causes but I think that by focusing exclusively on religious beliefs you are missing other important factors.

Let me stop you right there.

I am not at all arguing that we should focus exclusively on religious beliefs.

I am arguing that ignoring religious beliefs as a motivating factor is a mistake - and that is what the left wants to insist on - not that religion is not the only factor, but rather that religion is not a factor at all, or at best is a minor factor, to be dismissed.

Ok then.  But since I think I am on the "left" on this issue I don't think you are fairly characterizing the argument.   It is not that religion should be ignored as a motivating factor.  It is that people on the other side of the issue seem treat all of Islamic belief as being the problem.  And so we have people like Yi saying that Muslims need to rethink their religion or get a new one.  To the extent that radical Muslim belief and all the other factors intersect with terrorist ideology that is obviously an issue and should not be ignored as we think about these things.  The error is focusing too much on the religious factor to the exclusion of all the others. 

Quote from: crazy canuck on November 23, 2015, 11:25:23 AM


To use one of your example, are the honour killings that rightly horrify us the product of only religious belief or are they also caused by strongly held local cultural beliefs and societal norms. 

I don't think it is really possible to separate "religious belief" from 'strongly held cultural beliefs and societal norms" especially in societies where the religion defines to cultural and societal norms.

These societies do not have the separation between religious belief and their cultural norms that would be necessary to evaluate them separately....which is the entire problem!

QuoteThe fact that honour killings occur across multiple religious faiths and cultures gives us some indication that it is not an exclusive problem of radical Islamic beliefs.   

Again, just because a problem happens for reasons other than some particular reason, is not a justification to not worry about said specific reason. Just because people die in car crashes because they are texting is no reason to dismiss the problem of drunk driving. And noting that lots of people die because of drunk driving is NOT an argument that nobody dies from texting while driving.

I keep saying this, and then having to say it again, so I suspect that the problem is on my end, I cannot seem to communicate this idea for some reason.

The fact is that the people I am talking about who stone women (and that is just one example, you can pick plenty others, and it is likely that none of them will be the sole provence of Islamic radicalism, its not like they invented the various ways humans can be inhumane) *believe* that the act they are engaging in when they smash some womens brains out is a religious act.

And we need to understand that if we want to try to stop the behavior. The behavior is motivated by their religious beliefs, so if we want to change the behavior, we have to at least be willing to acknowledge that they truly believe they are doing what their god wants them to do - if we try to find a bunch of other reasons because we don't want to accept their word for their motivations, we are going to end up taking a lot longer to resolve the underlying issue.

There are, of course, other contributing factors. Social development, education, equal representation, lots of secular issues that need to be addressed as well - but lets not kid ourselves, because THOSE issues in these places are all tied up into religion as well. Education? Of course that is critical. But in many of these places, education is provided by religious teachers. Ooops. So we cannot educate our way out of that in those places, at least not without addressing the religious issue first, otherwise we are just educating them in how to be intolerant.

Political voices? Equal representation for women? Also critical....and also tied up into the religion that pervades the culture.

You see where I am going here - yes, it is not ALL about religion, but it is a LOT about religion, and religion pervades these cultures so thoroughly that it is really tough to get at a solution without running straight into it...

Quote from: Berkut on November 23, 2015, 10:45:14 AMHmmm, I am not sure what you are referencing here, but your own post here is mixing up your measure. Saying that religion is the reason for "most" wars, and refuting it by using body count as a measure of the number of wars, doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense. And I am not sure I would even agree with the claim that religion is the cause of most wars anyway, so I am skeptical that I said that - or if I did, I meant something else.

Because I'm more interested in the damage inflicted by war, not a large number of arbitrarily declared and barely fought wars. The "War of Jenkins Ear" isn't the same as World War II or the Seven Years War or the Thirty Years War in terms of the number of deaths or the amount of destruction it caused. Most of the large destructive wars for the past two hundred years have been called by expansionist political ideologies (not religious ones), rampant nationalism, and Great Power politics in the multipolar era.

QuoteHas nothing to do with fault - just pointing out that those engaging in this activity believe they are doing so for religious reasons.

It is great that YOU think that is the case, and it is great that there are a billion Muslims who agree with you, and disagree with the tens of millions who think that stoning women is justified by their religious views.

But you are doing exactly what I am talking about. This is not about what the reasonable Muslims believe, we all agree that they are right, or at least more right.

It is about what the non-moderates believe, and more importantly, how their beliefs drive their behavior.

Claiming that this isn't about Islam because lots of Islamic people do not agree with it is missing the point entirely, and in a really dangerous way.

It IS about Islam, and the fact that there are perfectly rational and reasonable ways to interpret the religion in a manner that does not involve these kinds of horrors is the point - but if we pretend like this is not a religious problem at all, then that fact is no longer really relevant to the problem, while I think it is probably the MOST relevant point.

The point to me is that these terrible practices towards women would be happening in very backwards countries regardless of the religion. We know this because such terrible practices are seen in lots of very uncivilized countries that do not practice Islam. That makes them not really a good example to me of an "Islamic problem." Because I don't think Islam is any particular cause of societal backwardness in places that have never had running water. International jihadism, on the other hand, is something unique and specific to Islam and cannot be logically divorced from the religion since it crosses racial, economic and political boundaries.

Quote from: Berkut on November 23, 2015, 11:51:24 AM
These societies do not have the separation between religious belief and their cultural norms that would be necessary to evaluate them separately....which is the entire problem!

You are missing the point.  You blame a particular religious belief for, as an example, honour killings.  But honour killings are committed by people in other religions as well.  Therefore, as a matter of basic logic, there is something else going on then just that particular religious belief.  Honour killings also, for example, committed by men who are Hindu and Sihk.  This seems to just be another formulation of your other thread that all religious belief is bad.

Quote from: Malthus on November 23, 2015, 11:39:36 AM

Quote from: KRonn on November 23, 2015, 11:30:45 AM
And plenty of people who engaged I violence for the cause of Marxism were not people "lacking a perceived solution for their problems". Some of them came from wealthy, democratic states where there was a perfectly viable means of expressing their political views.

I think this is important to realize with Islamic radicalism. We see statements by people in the West saying that these people need jobs or better education or whatever other rationale, but it ignores that the movers and shakers of this extremism believe fervently in their extremist ideology. The leaders and many followers are well educated and prosperous and aren't doing this out of a sense of impoverishment; it's the lifestyle and culture they support and desire. However of course, many of the rank and file are attracted to this ideology/cause because they are poor or alienated from the societies they're part of, and then again many also just fervently believe in the ideology.

The true believers often aren't looking for an answer to the problems of a fucked up society (even if they say they are) - they are looking for a cause to embrace. The fucked up society provides the excuse for the cause.

Look at it this way: to use these people are terrorist scum, but in their own eyes, they are heroes. A big part of what motivates them is a desire for heroism. Living a comfortable humdrum wealthy or middle class life, many people find alienating and lacking in point (particularly if they grew up as kids who didn't have to work to earn it). Add a grievance based on ethnicity or religion, plus the chance to embrace a cause that demands absolute devotion, and a certain number will jump at the chance -- and a fucked-up situation breeds plenty of such grievances. The attraction is going, in their eyes, from a worthless drone to a hero at the very cutting edge of world affairs.

This is a pretty damn good counter point Malthus, thanks.

I don't think we really disagree all that much.

One thing we need to do better is counter the kind of propaganda that appeals to these people, or the propaganda that appeals (as another example) to young women being enticed to going to ISIL.

And we need to be as brutal in our portrayal of what awaits you should you make these choices as ISIL is in their propaganda.

You are thinking about going to Syria to be married to some freedom fighter? How about some counter propaganda showing what is really awaiting you - rape, torment, and a very likely end in a ditch somewhere.

You want to consider being a suicide bomber for Allah?

How about we show what you really will become  - another pawn killed to expand and extend the power and wealth of a bunch of power crazed assholes with a god complex.

How about we have some moderate Muslims saying in no uncertain terms that people who kill for Allah are going straight to hell? And saying so with the passion and conviction that the radicals display?

The problem is that to take the gloves off, we are inevitably going to "offend" people who will claim that we are attacking Islam...which brings us back to this discussion, and this frankly bizarre unwillingness to name Islamic terrorism for what it actually is...

Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 23, 2015, 11:53:34 AM
International jihadism, on the other hand, is something unique and specific to Islam and cannot be logically divorced from the religion since it crosses racial, economic and political boundaries.

Sure, if you narrow something to Jihadism which is itself exclusive to Muslim belief.  But there have been international terrorist groups that were not based on or motivated by religious belief.

I agree backwardness is not an Islami-specific thing (of course).

However we are talking about a larger region that is the cradle of civilisation and was largely at par with Europe in terms of societal and scientific development up until some centuries following the Islam conquest.

We cannot dismiss the notion that Islam had an influence on how these countries developed, when they have been islamis countries for the past, what, 1500 years.

Quote from: crazy canuck on November 23, 2015, 11:55:40 AM

Quote from: Berkut on November 23, 2015, 11:51:24 AM
These societies do not have the separation between religious belief and their cultural norms that would be necessary to evaluate them separately....which is the entire problem!

You are missing the point.  You blame a particular religious belief for, as an example, honour killings. 

No, no, NO!

I do NOT blame the religious beliefs for "honour killings" in general, I blame them for those honor killings where the people doing the killing say "I am doing this because god told me to".

Fuck, you keep cutting out my explanations, and then pretending like the only thing I post is the little snippet you quote.

Quote
But honour killings are committed by people in other religions as well. 

I addressed this. Several times.

Quote
Therefore, as a matter of basic logic, there is something else going on then just that particular religious belief.

That would be a great response to an argument someone might make of the form "Honor killing are particular to Islam". Since nobody is making that argument, I don't understand why you've cut out one little piece of my post to imply that I am, and ignored the rest.

Quote
Honour killings also, for example, committed by men who are Hindu and Sihk.  This seems to just be another formulation of your other thread that all religious belief is bad.

Not at all. If you want to discuss why honor killing by people for religious reasons other than Islamic ones are bad, then fine, but that isn't the subject here.

If you want to discuss why honor killing is bad even if done for non-religious reasons (although I think you will be hard pressed to find significant examples of that), then that is fine as well, but again, not the subject in question.

I've never claimed that Islam invented humans doing terrible things. So pointing out that other humans do terrible things for reasons having nothing to do with Islam is both irrelevant, and, well, kind of obvious.

Quote from: Berkut on November 23, 2015, 12:04:58 PM

Quote from: crazy canuck on November 23, 2015, 11:55:40 AM

Quote from: Berkut on November 23, 2015, 11:51:24 AM
These societies do not have the separation between religious belief and their cultural norms that would be necessary to evaluate them separately....which is the entire problem!

You are missing the point.  You blame a particular religious belief for, as an example, honour killings. 

No, no, NO!

I do NOT blame the religious beliefs for "honour killings" in general, I blame them for those honor killings where the people doing the killing say "I am doing this because god told me to".

Fuck, you keep cutting out my explanations, and then pretending like the only thing I post is the little snippet you quote.

But again there is something else going on then just religious belief but you insist on focusing on religious belief.  You claim to have addressed the point many times but your argument is circular and really ends up concluding religion is the problem.

Quote from: Tamas on November 23, 2015, 12:00:38 PM
I agree backwardness is not an Islami-specific thing (of course).

However we are talking about a larger region that is the cradle of civilisation and was largely at par with Europe in terms of societal and scientific development up until some centuries following the Islam conquest.

We cannot dismiss the notion that Islam had an influence on how these countries developed, when they have been islamis countries for the past, what, 1500 years.

I think this is a good time to mention once again the work of Bernard Lewis who examined that issue in depth and most certainly did not conclude it was a problem of religious belief.

http://www.amazon.ca/What-Went-Wrong-Between-Modernity/dp/0060516054

Then again I am not sure I understand your term "religious belief" Nobody is attacking religious belief in general. The discussion is about aspects of Islamic radicalism that may be detrimental to the Islamic world and beyond. This is rather specific compared to your seeming defense of religious belief in general.

Quote from: crazy canuck on November 23, 2015, 12:16:34 PM

Quote from: Tamas on November 23, 2015, 12:00:38 PM
I agree backwardness is not an Islami-specific thing (of course).

However we are talking about a larger region that is the cradle of civilisation and was largely at par with Europe in terms of societal and scientific development up until some centuries following the Islam conquest.

We cannot dismiss the notion that Islam had an influence on how these countries developed, when they have been islamis countries for the past, what, 1500 years.

I think this is a good time to mention once again the work of Bernard Lewis who examined that issue in depth and most certainly did not conclude it was a problem of religious belief.

http://www.amazon.ca/What-Went-Wrong-Between-Modernity/dp/0060516054 (http://www.amazon.ca/What-Went-Wrong-Between-Modernity/dp/0060516054)

Is this non-fiction or CC non-fiction.

Quote from: crazy canuck on November 23, 2015, 12:08:28 PM

Quote from: Berkut on November 23, 2015, 12:04:58 PM

Quote from: crazy canuck on November 23, 2015, 11:55:40 AM

Quote from: Berkut on November 23, 2015, 11:51:24 AM
These societies do not have the separation between religious belief and their cultural norms that would be necessary to evaluate them separately....which is the entire problem!

You are missing the point.  You blame a particular religious belief for, as an example, honour killings. 

No, no, NO!

I do NOT blame the religious beliefs for "honour killings" in general, I blame them for those honor killings where the people doing the killing say "I am doing this because god told me to".

Fuck, you keep cutting out my explanations, and then pretending like the only thing I post is the little snippet you quote.

But again there is something else going on then just religious belief but you insist on focusing on religious belief.  You claim to have addressed the point many times but your argument is circular and really ends up concluding religion is the problem.

Religion IS the problem when it comes to people who cause problems because of their religion.

When someone kills someone because they believe that their religion demands it, pointing out that other people kill for reasons other than religion is not a counter argument to the observation that there is a problem of people killing others for religios reasons.

If the argument you were arguing against was that the ONLY reason people kill others is religion, then you would have a point.

Yes, I am coming back to religion, because that is the topic of the discussion!

This is like me claiming that drunk driving is a problem, and you responding that it isn't really, because people die in cars for all kinds of other reasons. Then insisting that I am not willing to see other reasons because I want to talk about drunk driving. Yes, you are right - people engage in honor killings for reasons other than because they think Allah wants them to (Islam). So what? I never claimed that only Islam has honor killings, I just used honor killings as one of many, many examples of horrible things done by those who think that Islam demands it of them.

Quote from: Tamas on November 23, 2015, 12:28:44 PM
Then again I am not sure I understand your term "religious belief" Nobody is attacking religious belief in general. The discussion is about aspects of Islamic radicalism that may be detrimental to the Islamic world and beyond. This is rather specific compared to your seeming defense of religious belief in general.

I suspect this is the fundamental issue in fact.

The idea that religion is "special" as a belief system to the extreme (even, dare I say, radical?) extent that one must be ever so careful even when talking about the most radical of religious extremists. This apologism is a matter, I suspect, of habit.

Quote from: Tamas on November 23, 2015, 12:28:44 PM
Nobody is attacking religious belief in general.

Not in this thread anyway :P

Quote from: Valmy on November 23, 2015, 12:38:27 PM

Quote from: Tamas on November 23, 2015, 12:28:44 PM
Nobody is attacking religious belief in general.

Not in this thread anyway :P

:P

I am happy to engage in THAT argument as well, but it is not specific to this argument at all.

QuoteThe fact is that the people I am talking about who stone women (and that is just one example, you can pick plenty others, and it is likely that none of them will be the sole provence of Islamic radicalism, its not like they invented the various ways humans can be inhumane) *believe* that the act they are engaging in when they smash some womens brains out is a religious act.

You know who also stones women in a religious act? Yazidis from Sinjar. Why on earth did we got more directly involved in Iraq because of them is beyond me. I don't have a problem with ISIS eliminating fellow backwards Arabs.

Quote from: LaCroix on November 23, 2015, 10:24:00 AM
i never once said this.

I read it the same way Berkut did.

You said the original idea of violence only arises in broken/culturally backward lands.  What makes countries culturally backward?  Imperialism.

So, no comments on Zizek? And after I read through it and bolded parts.  :Embarrass:

Quote from: Martinus on November 23, 2015, 01:01:29 PM
So, no comments on Zizek? And after I read through it and bolded parts.  :Embarrass:

I had go back to look at your post.  What is wrong with you?  Can you not understand the words I write?  They aren't big words, you shouldn't have this much trouble.

Quote from: Martinus on November 23, 2015, 01:01:29 PM
So, no comments on Zizek? And after I read through it and bolded parts.  :Embarrass:

I thought it was pretty interesting, but he kind of went on and on.

Yes, I do realize the irony there.

Everything cast in the framework of "class struggle" made it a bit hard to take too seriously though.

Quote from: Tamas on November 23, 2015, 11:10:04 AM
I am not convinced that there is a complex issue behind why European muslim youth go to fight for ISIS.

I think it is similar in many countries, but take Hungary, for example, where the radical right is the most popular among the young generations. I mean, most of them is apolitical, but those are into it, prefer the radical right.

Why? Probably because it gives them a) identity, a sense of belonging, b) offers easy answers to complex problems, c) is agressive and offers a pressure valve for frustrated young people, especially if they are poor and uneducated.

In other words, it is prime material for the hopelessly naive and the frustrated loser.

Now, if you take the same demographic among the Muslim population of European countries, what option do they have? The national far right is straight out of question, because those guys pinpoint them as the main source of everything that is bad. No other frustration-relieving identity remains, really, unless you count the far left.

However, they do have a ready-made source of identity in their religion/religion of their parents/grandparents. It already defines them in the eyes of the society they live in, and indeed seems to be a big source of identity for their families as well - why else would the headscarf and such survive?
(It is worth noting this is definitely NOT a unique Muslim thing).

So, if we take for granted, that a portion of young people in general are vulnerable to various radical ideas, I don't see how the Muslims in Europe would NOT be gravitating towards Muslim extremism.

I don't disagree with much of this, but it's only one half of the trade or market, the supply side perhaps, there has to be a demand side, which I take to be people who intentionally radicalise them, brainwash them and organise their trips to the warzones and/or onto their 'missions' ie fascistic imans, terror groups, some intelligence agencies and political leaders.

Alternatively think of those sad individuals you talked about as the water, it also requires someone to turn the tap on.

That is a good point mongers, and one I really was getting ready to make in response to Malthus.

I don't buy the idea that absent Islamic jihadism, Jihadi John would have simply latched onto some other terrible thing that would allow him to go murder a bunch of people.

I understand the basic idea that failed states provide fertile ground for all kinds of extremism, and there is no doubt that is very true and must be accounted for in any attempt to address these kinds of problems.

But absent a religiously based death cult handy, I am not sure that it is really true that everyone who finds that appealing would simply find something else equally as abhorent appealing.

The film Four Lions summed it up perfectly (and hilariously) for me. Many (and let's not pretend that there is a one size fits all explanation) of these guys are, as Malthus says, looking for a way to belong, to be a hero and to vent their aggression (we used to have a really bad problem with football hooliganism for the same motivations). They aren't necessarily well-versed in theology. But if they look in the Koran they can easily find justification for their actions.

Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 23, 2015, 09:39:16 AM
There's no such thing as "Islamic radicalism", just ask Obama.

ISIS is not Islamic.

Quote from: Gups on November 23, 2015, 02:12:32 PM
The film Four Lions summed it up perfectly (and hilariously) for me. Many (and let's not pretend that there is a one size fits all explanation) of these guys are, as Malthus says, looking for a way to belong, to be a hero and to vent their aggression (we used to have a really bad problem with football hooliganism for the same motivations). They aren't necessarily well-versed in theology. But if they look in the Koran they can easily find justification for their actions.

Yes it's an excellent film, both entertaining and darkly true. As to be expected for something from Chris Morris, I urge our Americans cousins to watch it.

Quote from: Martinus on November 23, 2015, 01:01:29 PM
So, no comments on Zizek? And after I read through it and bolded parts.  :Embarrass:

I skimmed it and gave up when he started to wander off into Marxist nonsense.

QuoteAgain, just because a problem happens for reasons other than some particular reason, is not a justification to not worry about said specific reason. Just because people die in car crashes because they are texting is no reason to dismiss the problem of drunk driving. And noting that lots of people die because of drunk driving is NOT an argument that nobody dies from texting while driving.
I keep saying this, and then having to say it again, so I suspect that the problem is on my end, I cannot seem to communicate this idea for some reason. 

Another part of this is we see people/pundits talk of how Islamic extremism is no worse than other types of violence and ideology. They seem to try and find justification or parallels. Someone will invariably mention Tim McVeigh and the Oklahoma bombing as a parallel and similar occurrence. But he wasn't part of a wide spread radical ideology, nothing close to the scale and scope of the methods and goals of Islamic extremist ideology. Same for when someone will say that today's Catholics or Christians are just as bad as the extremists of ISIS. Again wrong and off the mark. There's no comparison to Islamic extremism's actions, goals and methods.

Quote from: Berkut on November 23, 2015, 01:24:36 PM

Quote from: Martinus on November 23, 2015, 01:01:29 PM
So, no comments on Zizek? And after I read through it and bolded parts.  :Embarrass:

I thought it was pretty interesting, but he kind of went on and on.

Yes, I do realize the irony there.

Everything cast in the framework of "class struggle" made it a bit hard to take too seriously though.

I think it's kinda useful to see that you can be sensible and (extreme) leftist at the same time. :P

Zizek is the European equivalent of Chomsky.

Quote from: derspiess on November 23, 2015, 02:19:12 PM

Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 23, 2015, 09:39:16 AM
There's no such thing as "Islamic radicalism", just ask Obama.

ISIS is not Islamic.

And the Confederate flag is not about racism.

Quote from: Berkut on November 23, 2015, 09:31:02 AM

One thing I've been trying to elucidate (poorly, I realize) is that I am concerned at the idea that seems to pervade discussion on the topic that Islamic radicalism/Jihadism/etc. is not really a religious problem - that reason people engage in these behaviors is not REALLY religious, despite their vehement, consistent, and clear claims that they are doing what they are doing because they absolutely believe that it will result in some reward or moral validation that their particular religious beliefs promise them.

There was a lot of discussion about this, but I think the point I failed to make is specifically why I see this as such a serious issue.

If we are not willing to name the problem, to recognize it for what it is (for reason that I feel are basically political and social, not rational), then we won't support and push for the right kinds of solutions. If people do not blow themselves up, or shoot up concerts, or fly planes into buildings for religious reasons, then there is no reason at all to support reformation of the religions in question. After all, if you insist that this violence is not truly religious in nature, then there is no reason whatsoever to reform that religion, or support more moderate interpretations of it, as it is not a religious issue.

Frankly, I think that their motivation is largely beside the point.

People like those who carry out attacks like the ones in Paris or the ones on 9-11 and their supporters need to be put in 6-foot holes, and we need to keep digging those holes until there are no more terrorists or supporters of terrorism.  Islamic, Marxist, nationalist, whatever, it doesn't matter.

As far as Islamic terrorism in particular goes, it's a cancer within Islam.  You don't argue or debate or negotiate with a cancer--you destroy it if you can, before it destroys the patient.

Quote from: Berkut on November 23, 2015, 09:31:02 AM
I wanted to comment on an ongoing discussion from the Paris debate thread, but that has become really diffuse, so I wanted to try to re-focus the discussion a little bit.

One thing I've been trying to elucidate (poorly, I realize) is that I am concerned at the idea that seems to pervade discussion on the topic that Islamic radicalism/Jihadism/etc. is not really a religious problem - that reason people engage in these behaviors is not REALLY religious, despite their vehement, consistent, and clear claims that they are doing what they are doing because they absolutely believe that it will result in some reward or moral validation that their particular religious beliefs promise them.

There was a lot of discussion about this, but I think the point I failed to make is specifically why I see this as such a serious issue.

If we are not willing to name the problem, to recognize it for what it is (for reason that I feel are basically political and social, not rational), then we won't support and push for the right kinds of solutions. If people do not blow themselves up, or shoot up concerts, or fly planes into buildings for religious reasons, then there is no reason at all to support reformation of the religions in question. After all, if you insist that this violence is not truly religious in nature, then there is no reason whatsoever to reform that religion, or support more moderate interpretations of it, as it is not a religious issue.

As LaCroix claims, for example, this is a problem of Western Imperialism. If those men walked into that Paris concert and lined up and executed 100+ people, then while the target of their anger is likely misplaced, the validity of it is perfectly reasonable. According to this view, it can be argued that those Parisians are simply reaping what their parents (or their parents parent's, etc., etc.) sowed.

But more importantly, it also means that not only is it the fault of the West that those men committed those acts, it is also the fault of the West when someone in Indonesia kills their daughter for refusing to marry who they wish. When some Afghani Taliban village finds a women who ran off with her boyfriend, drags her back home, digs a hole where only her head and shoulders stick out, put her in it, then smash her head in with rocks as an expression of their religious beliefs...to the extent that we accept that this is not a good thing, it is not a flaw of the religious beliefs, it is just more fallout from some ambiguous sin of the West, even though there was no Westerner involved, and even though the strictures that demand such action were written long before whatever sin the imperialists engaged in was written.

This is ridiculous on the face of it - certainly so when we look at actual acts of terrorism, but even more so when we look at the wealth of equally reprehensible behaviors engaged in in the name of this particular religion as practiced by large numbers if its more radical followers. And these are not, no matter what is claimed, some small minority. Large numbers of people in the Muslim world think death is in fact the proper punishment for adultery, as one example.

But more importantly, if we are unwilling to accept that those men and women murdered the "adulterer" for religious reasons, then there is no reason at all to expect that this will be resolved by reformation of that religion, and hence no particular reason to support moderate Muslim who are attempting to do exactly that. This is the key point - my position is not an attack on Islam in general, but rather one where I deplore our unwillingness to support those very moderate Muslims that people insist are actually the true face of the religion.

It is, at the end of the day, this bizarre combination of narcissm and helplessness. It is our own fault, and there is nothing that can be done, since "imperialism" happened long ago. Other than self-flagellation for our sins, we are helpless to do anything for the future women doomed to be stoned for reasons that have nothing to do with religion.

most of these things are rooted in cultural traditions that predates the conversion of these people to Islam.
Islam, and other religions, have mixed themselves with local traditions to better convert people.
And then you have scholars writing other texts that become semi-religious to further reconcile those traditions.

Islam is no more violent than Christianity, lots of things we blame on Islam happen in other non islamic cultures.  Gentical mutilations, for example, is practiced by Christians as well.  Honor crimes can be done by Christians or Jews in the middle east, or by Hindu practioners.

The problem arise in trying to define radical islamism as one thing, as one religious thing.  The problem with religion, especially Islam, is that there is not one Religion, that are many religion.  I'm Catholic by birth, even though I don't practice, I know the rites, the prayers, the scriptures.  A Catholic from Spain would have different traditions, probably slightly different scriptures and different prayers he learnt as a kid.  A Catholic mass in the US is very different from a Catholic mass in Quebec.

With Islam, you got a religion that insists on your personal fight to find the truth.  There are certain rules you must respect, but outside of that, the way you chose to become a good muslim is yours to pick. 
Some believe in violence, some believe in peace.  Doesn't matter what one things of the other, both see themselves as right.  As such, it serves nothing to dismiss one or another as not religious, they feel they are right and that's the end of it.

Unto the issue at hand, trying to force a religion to change and hoping it will, that will never work.  Christianity replaced paganism by expanding itself with sword and fire, that's how it convinced pagans to ultimately change their ways, and it then enforced orthodoxy for the next thousand years in the same way.  And when Protestantism appeared to reform religion, it erupted in bloody wars, with cruelties on both sides.  And with the French Revolution pushing back religion where it belong, far from power, it went screaming and kicking.  In Quebec, with the Quiet Revolution, the Church went to near extinction because a new generation of people just started saying "fuck you" to the Church and its rules.  Then, the Church started to change, in a less heartless, milder form of religion.  There aren't many priests today in Quebec to argue that more religion in government is a necessity.  They exists, but they are a dying race.

The Protestants have a ton of sects, some willing to commit mass suicides, most only intent on stealing your money.  Scam artists like the Scientology guys pose as anti-religion while replicating the same behaviour.  Doesn't matter if you or I consider them a religion, they will not reform because of us.  And it is the same with Islam, practionner of the religion will not listen to anyone outside their Faith calling for the reformation of their Faith.  Those that do not support terrorism do not see the point as the terrorists are not of their Faith.  That's like asking the head of the Anglican Church to apoligize for pedophile Catholic Priests.
Those that believe are acting for God will not listen to moderates of their religion as they don't even recognize them as their equals.  Salafist preachers have explicitely stated it was ok to enslave non salafists, while the Coran forbids slavery of muslim.  So everyone comes with their own interpretation of the religious rules, and that becomes mixed with the local culture.

Sunnis will encase Salafism in a little box saying the problem is these people speaking in the name of Islam.  Shiites will point Sunnis saying they created the monsters by their teachings.  Salafists will say they are the true Islam and quote you texts from the middle ages to prove it.

For my part, what I have seen of Islam, is that it became dangerous when it mixed with politics.  The hard left merged itself with the extreme versions of Islam and it gave birth to an hybrid child that has an easier time to accept the atrocities committed agains the occident and non followers, because that's basically what the left does.  A good beating will always remind one of how to make to good choices when choosing where to work and which union to subscribe to.  Money will losen politician tongues and make them defend absurb rules in the name of "public security" and "fighting against inequalities".  And the radical islam has adopted this, and integrated it into their teachings.  They hate the Western values of Freedom and tolerance but will never hesitate to use them to achieve their objectives, and they can count on the support of myriad of leftists identifiying themselves with their objectives as well as millions of muslims seduced by this simple ideology: whatever shit they find themselves into, it s not their fault.

Israel has been an excuse for terrorism for a while.  Leftist will always be quick to point that, how it is humiliating for the Arabs to live in a colonized country.  What we have here is thinly disguised anti-semitism.  Palestinians don't hate Israel because they were forced out of their home, Palestinians don't fight to have a Palestinian territory they call home, they fight for the end of a Jewish state.  That is the insult they feel, that there would be something else than an arab/muslim state in the Middle East.  Short of exterminating 90% of the Jews of Israel and creating a Palestinian State on the entire territory, there is no way to solve this problem in a manner that will satisfy a majority of Arabs, muslims and leftists of the world.  A significant minority would be pleased by a viable two state solution, but that's not happenning anymore, no one wants it.

Then, there was the excuse of Saudi Arabia.  Here, it is twofold.  One, by sending troops over there, the Americans defiled the sanctified sacred grounds and gave rise to Al-Queida.  By supporting Saudi Arabia and Koweit we apparently alienated secular muslims by siding with religious extremists.  By not eliminating Saddam in 1990, we sent the message we were willing to compromise with dictatorships despite our calls for democracy.  No matter what we (the West) do, the hard left and the muslim extremists will use that as propaganda against us.

Of course, we ain't perfect, we make mistakes, we make dumb moves.  Eliminating democratic government to replace them with our kinds of son of bitches during the Cold War was totally dumb, in retrospect.  Democratic governments can be reasoned with.  Dictators and religious leaders can not.

The Irak war of 2003 was a mistake, not in that the country was invaded, but in that the US had no plans for the aftermath, except to pray that things go well.  When you create a power vacuum, anarchy ensues, and out of anarchy rise extremism.  It is no wonder that Al Queida first sought refuge in war thorn Somalia than Afghanistan, than firmly established itself in Irak 6 months after the invasion.

The US and its allies failed Afghanistan in the 1990s by packing and leaving, instead of negotiating a truce between the factions, one of which had lost its Soviet support.  The US (and everyone) could have helped rebuild the country, but instead, we let them organize themselves.  And the US&Britain redid the same with Irak in 2003, not having any plan, improvising on the go, and just when things were starting to go in the right direction, pack&leave instead of pressuring the government in adopting a tolerant policy toward sunnis.  France left Tunisia to herself, and radical religious rapidly gained grounds.  Libya was bombed and everyone went away as soon as Ghadafi was killed, instead of helping the country make a transition to democracy.

Yes, the left will call this colonialism.  But we should not listen to the morons insisting we repeat history ad nauseam.  We cannot reform Islam, it can only do it itself, and right now, Islam is mixed with extreme leftist ideology pushing them to refuse modernity instead of embracing it.

We can not "leave them alone", because we need to buy their products.  Any commerical interaction will be seen as imperialism by the newborn commies and their newfound allies.  And they an insane amount of useful idiots willing to give them credance.  Globalization has helped reduced poverty in the world, but it's a slow process and we have a lot of local resistance to free market change.  In the mean time, there is not much to do else than killing terrorists.  And we won't be liked for it.

Quote from: dps on November 23, 2015, 03:18:13 PM
As far as Islamic terrorism in particular goes, it's a cancer within Islam.  You don't argue or debate or negotiate with a cancer--you destroy it if you can, before it destroys the patient.

chemiotherapy kills a lot of goodcells too in the process.
And in this case, the cancer always grows back, so we do have to find way to stopped its spreading.  We can not succeed 100%, but we can certainly marginalize the hard left and the ultra religious.

Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 23, 2015, 12:59:00 PMI read it the same way Berkut did.

You said the original idea of violence only arises in broken/culturally backward lands.  What makes countries culturally backward?  Imperialism.

i never said/meant to say violence only arises in broken/culturally backward lands. i think you've got the gist of what i was saying, but i wanted to correct this in the event you roll with it later on...

imperialism really helped stifle the opportunity for progress in islamic countries. partially as a result, lots of islamic countries are pretty backward places. lots of people in those places see their lands/people as under besiege by the west. some people form violent groups. those violent groups get a following.

that's not the same as imperialism pulled a gun out and killed the 100+ people in france. the french deserved it because they were accomplices. that's taking my point and twisting it to an extreme level.

Quote from: LaCroix on November 23, 2015, 04:08:24 PM
imperialism really helped stifle the opportunity for progress in islamic countries.

Yeah the Ottoman Empire was pretty corrupt and decadent in its last few centuries.

Anyway Imperialism is the thing that people have always pretended to despise but in fact dearly love for thousands of years. I would like to think that the European Nations taking it a bit too far soured everybody on it but hey what does Daesh dream of doing? Building an empire. What do the Chinese claim? Their natural imperial right to dominate Asia that the West disrupted. We never learn.

Quote from: Berkut on November 23, 2015, 11:04:37 AMSo yeah, I get that you are all offended

i wasn't really offended. i was more ":wacko:." you seem more offended than me because you appear to be taking this discussion really personally. i mean, you've gone on a rant, mocked me in a few posts in the prior thread, taken my point past a thread and into two other threads, etc. i wouldn't minimize your actions here. they've been pretty funny

Quote from: LaCroix on November 23, 2015, 04:08:24 PM
i never said/meant to say violence only arises in broken/culturally backward lands. i think you've got the gist of what i was saying, but i wanted to correct this in the event you roll with it later on...

imperialism really helped stifle the opportunity for progress in islamic countries. partially as a result, lots of islamic countries are pretty backward places. lots of people in those places see their lands/people as under besiege by the west. some people form violent groups. those violent groups get a following.

that's not the same as imperialism pulled a gun out and killed the 100+ people in france. the french deserved it because they were accomplices. that's taking my point and twisting it to an extreme level.

This is all nicely qualified and everything, but IIRC the starting point for your sermon about the ills of imperialism was my rhetorical question about the role of religion in causing societal backwardness.  So it seems that there are factors which in your view are more and less acceptable as contributing factors to the backwardness of certain cultures, and hence ultimately root causes of violence.

this (http://www.doorbraak.be/nl/nieuws/de-islam-geweld-hervorming) was an interesting text (it's in Dutch, translated from original German, apparently from the Neue Zürcher Zeitung: http://www.nzz.ch/feuilleton/der-islam-gewalt-oder-reform-1.18647391)

Quote
De islam heeft als religie gefaald. En dat al van in het jaar 622 in Mekka. Mohammed kon de inwoners van Mekka niet overtuigen van zijn deels mystieke openbaringen, en moest zich in Medina terugtrekken. Daar vervelde hij tot krijgsheer en werd zijn boodschap een machtsideologie. Hij en zijn volgelingen begonnen er nu mee, naar het heet in naam van Allah de wereld te veroveren en de tegenstanders te vernietigen. Dat hebben zij met veel succes gedaan, en hun ideologie was lange tijd aan de winnende hand. Wat IS doet, verschilt in principe niet veel van wat de machthebbers van Saudi-Arabië of Iran doen: zij gebruiken de koran als wapen. De koran is het rokende pistool

basically Necla Kelek says that Islam as a religion failed, and it failed in 622 in Mecca when Mohammed failed to convince the inhabitants of the city to convert. After his retreat to Medina he transformed into a warlord after which he proceeded to force his religion -a powerideology (is that even a word in english?)- upon the people. Convert, submit or die. They did so successfully for a long time. What IS does, is no different from what the Saudis or Iran does: they use the Quran as a weapon. The quran is the smoking gun.

She then goes on to state that the muslims themselves need to free their faith from the political ideology, followed by some things that muslims themselves could do to help this along, as well as things Europe can and should do until the faith has been tamed.

Interesting, but pigs might fly sooner.

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.

I do think there is an Islam "problem" but it's a different problem.  The Islam of the Qur'an is essentially progressive for its time and place, and many of the problematic passages are not so troubling in context (for example, there was some debate over whether during wartime blood could be shed in sacred precincts - the Qur'an says this is permitted - hence the various references to "killing 'X' wherever they may be found" - that isn't a warrant to kill the Other at all times, but simply saying that if there is a state of war or an attack that takes place in a sacred area, it is permitted to engage in warfare and there no requirement to withdraw.).  Historically in Islam as in Christianity or Judaism there have been swings back and forth between more traditionalist/literalist interpretations and more allegorical/spiritual ones.  The scientific revolution came to the Islamic world somewhat later than in the Christian West, but it did come, and let's not forget that witches were still being burned after Newton in the West, and western systems of criminal and civil justice still bore strong imprints of traditional Christian notions well into the 20th century.

If you look at the Islamic world in the early 20th century, you would see mostly a mix of: (1) modernizing Islams that are compatible with the new rising secular states in places like Turkey or Iran, (2) traditional Islams that are essentially non-violent and political quiescent and which incorporate various folk traditions - some harmless and picturesque, some retrograde, (3)traditional academic Islams associated with the Azhar (Sunni) or Qom/Karbala (Shia) schools.   There are also the Wahabbi reformationists, pushing a highly stringent, formalist, and literalist interpretation of Islam but numerically they are not significant.  Finally, beginning in the late 19th century and continuing through and past the mid-20th century, there is a strong current of (secular) anti-imperial and anti-Western literature. 

A few key things happen in the mid-to-late 20th century to change this picture:

(1) huge oil deposits are discovered in the Wahabbi heartlands.  By the latter part of the century the Saudis are pouring huge resources into promoting their sect.  These Salafi schools aren't necessarily useful for teaching students useful skills for the modern world, but do fill their student's heads with propagandistic nonsense.  And they are scattered all over the Islamic world.

(2) Some of the more virulent strains of anti-imperial and anti-Western thought became Islamized - the Muslim Brotherhood in the Sunni world and the alliance that took down the Shah in  the Shi'a world are examples.

(3). There great promise and expectations raised by post war nationalist moments -- Nasser and the Baath - were horribly disappointed, leading to disillusion of secular alternatives to the old imperial and monarchical regimes.

(4) The secular liberation and revolutionary organizations that formerly attracted youth prone to revolutionary violence either fell apart as the Cold War wound down or were co-opted by practical considerations - e.g. the PLO engaging into the peace process and assuming responsibility for territorial rule.

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.

Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 23, 2015, 04:39:03 PMThis is all nicely qualified and everything, but IIRC the starting point for your sermon about the ills of imperialism was my rhetorical question about the role of religion in causing societal backwardness.  So it seems that there are factors which in your view are more and less acceptable as contributing factors to the backwardness of certain cultures, and hence ultimately root causes of violence.

there are always root causes of violence, but i don't think it's ever appropriate, for example, to blame the parents for a kid shooting up a school. the person is, at the end of day, responsible for his own actions. just like if you believe islam is the root cause of violence, why are you blaming islam? do you cheer when one muslim kills another because the other supported islam by being a practicing member of the faith?

Quote from: LaCroix on November 23, 2015, 05:04:00 PM
there are always root causes of violence, but i don't think it's ever appropriate, for example, to blame the parents for a kid shooting up a school. the person is, at the end of day, responsible for his own actions. just like if you believe islam is the root cause of violence, why are you blaming islam? do you cheer when one muslim kills another because the other supported islam by being a practicing member of the faith?

It's a question of collective guilt in any form. It's never valid and trying to redress wrongs against those who weren't responsible only creates new wrongs.

Quote from: Crazy_Ivan80 on November 23, 2015, 04:51:02 PM
basically Necla Kelek says that Islam as a religion failed, and it failed in 622 in Mecca when Mohammed failed to convince the inhabitants of the city to convert. After his retreat to Medina he transformed into a warlord after which he proceeded to force his religion -a powerideology (is that even a word in english?)- upon the people. Convert, submit or die. They did so successfully for a long time.

Looks like junk history to me.  There simply isn't much good historical evidence for that went on in Arabia in the 620s; it's all speculation.  But the key point here is that historically speaking centuries went by before the conquered lands became fully Islamized and while the conquered peoples might not be thrilled with their position (conquered peoples rarely are) it looked pretty good as compared to see the situation for religious minorities in Byzantine lands (or for that matter Catholic Europe).   

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on November 23, 2015, 05:03:46 PM
........

If you look at the Islamic world in the early 20th century, you would see mostly a mix of: (1) modernizing Islams that are compatible with the new rising secular states in places like Turkey or Iran, (2) traditional Islams that are essentially non-violent and political quiescent and which incorporate various folk traditions - some harmless and picturesque, some retrograde, (3)traditional academic Islams associated with the Azhar (Sunni) or Qom/Karbala (Shia) schools.   There are also the Wahabbi reformationists, pushing a highly stringent, formalist, and literalist interpretation of Islam but numerically they are not significant.  Finally, beginning in the late 19th century and continuing through and past the mid-20th century, there is a strong current of (secular) anti-imperial and anti-Western literature. 

A few key things happen in the mid-to-late 20th century to change this picture:

(1) huge oil deposits are discovered in the Wahabbi heartlands.  By the latter part of the century the Saudis are pouring huge resources into promoting their sect.  These Salafi schools aren't necessarily useful for teaching students useful skills for the modern world, but do fill their student's heads with propagandistic nonsense.  And they are scattered all over the Islamic world.

(2) Some of the more virulent strains of anti-imperial and anti-Western thought became Islamized - the Muslim Brotherhood in the Sunni world and the alliance that took down the Shah in  the Shi'a world are examples.

(3). There great promise and expectations raised by post war nationalist moments -- Nasser and the Baath - were horribly disappointed, leading to disillusion of secular alternatives to the old imperial and monarchical regimes.

(4) The secular liberation and revolutionary organizations that formerly attracted youth prone to revolutionary violence either fell apart as the Cold War wound down or were co-opted by practical considerations - e.g. the PLO engaging into the peace process and assuming responsibility for territorial rule.

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.

I've been saying this for the last quarter century, finally the mainstream and it's media are realising this is the major source of fertilizer for Islamic terrorism. 

Any solutions to this problem, other than my preferred option of B52s over administrative Riyadh ?

I do wonder that if went back 40-50 years ago whether we would be having a debate about the "problem" in materialism.  When the Vietnamese slaughter one another over the "Science of History', terrorism rocked the world as Arabs preformed the "Propaganda of the Deed" by taking hostages, and the great fighter of Religious obscurantism put men into space, financed a hundred revolutions and planned the nuclear extermination of the West.  The philosophers of the day did not apologize for this behavior but openly supported it and lamented that we didn't see more of it.

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on November 23, 2015, 05:12:22 PM
Looks like junk history to me.  There simply isn't much good historical evidence for that went on in Arabia in the 620s; it's all speculation.  But the key point here is that historically speaking centuries went by before the conquered lands became fully Islamized and while the conquered peoples might not be thrilled with their position (conquered peoples rarely are) it looked pretty good as compared to see the situation for religious minorities in Byzantine lands (or for that matter Catholic Europe).   

Considering those countries might be the most intolerant nations in the history of world when it comes to religious though that is not really a glowing endorsement :P

Quote from: Razgovory on November 23, 2015, 05:20:00 PM
I do wonder that if went back 40-50 years ago whether we would be having a debate about the "problem" in materialism.  When the Vietnamese slaughter one another over the "Science of History', terrorism rocked the world as Arabs preformed the "Propaganda of the Deed" by taking hostages, and the great fighter of Religious obscurantism put men into space, financed a hundred revolutions and planned the nuclear extermination of the West.  The philosophers of the day did not apologize for this behavior but openly supported it and lamented that we didn't see more of it.

Um didn't we? The Second Red Scare and all that?

Oh you mean the philosophers. Well if you are upset the intellectuals did not condemn the Soviets sufficiently you will get no argument from me.

Quote from: Valmy on November 23, 2015, 05:21:50 PM

Quote from: Razgovory on November 23, 2015, 05:20:00 PM
I do wonder that if went back 40-50 years ago whether we would be having a debate about the "problem" in materialism.  When the Vietnamese slaughter one another over the "Science of History', terrorism rocked the world as Arabs preformed the "Propaganda of the Deed" by taking hostages, and the great fighter of Religious obscurantism put men into space, financed a hundred revolutions and planned the nuclear extermination of the West.  The philosophers of the day did not apologize for this behavior but openly supported it and lamented that we didn't see more of it.

Um didn't we? The Second Red Scare and all that?

Oh you mean the philosophers. Well if you are upset the intellectuals did not condemn the Soviets sufficiently you will get no argument from me.

That's a little before the time and didn't last that long.  Thinking 1960's and 1970's.  Vietnam war.  And lets not restrict it to Americans.  Hell, ask a person on the street in any Western Country about what the Vietnam war was about, odds are it was about American Imperialism.

Quote from: LaCroix on November 23, 2015, 05:04:00 PM
there are always root causes of violence, but i don't think it's ever appropriate, for example, to blame the parents for a kid shooting up a school. the person is, at the end of day, responsible for his own actions. just like if you believe islam is the root cause of violence, why are you blaming islam? do you cheer when one muslim kills another because the other supported islam by being a practicing member of the faith?

I don't understand what this post is getting at.

However I do understand you're not responding to my post, which was about how on the one hand you say backwardness is caused by imperialism and other stuff, but other stuff can't include Islam.

Quote from: Razgovory on November 23, 2015, 05:28:13 PM
Hell, ask a person on the street in any Western Country about what the Vietnam war was about, odds are it was about American Imperialism.

Yes because we were desperate to conquer all that...um...whatever it was they had there and kill all those...whomever it was that lived there. I would hope most people in Western Countries know about the Cold War and are not under some sort of delusion we really gave two shits about conquering Vietnam.

Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 23, 2015, 05:38:11 PMI don't understand what this post is getting at.

you said "i thought the same as berkut." berkut said he interpreted my discussion re: imperialism to mean i felt this:

QuoteIf those men walked into that Paris concert and lined up and executed 100+ people, then while the target of their anger is likely misplaced, the validity of it is perfectly reasonable. According to this view, it can be argued that those Parisians are simply reaping what their parents (or their parents parent's, etc., etc.) sowed.

so, i thought you were saying that you also interpreted my argument to mean i felt parisians got what they deserved. having re-read berkut's comment, i see that he took a really stupid turn with the "according to this view" part and wasn't saying i said this. so, my bad re: that point

QuoteHowever I do understand you're not responding to my post, which was about how on the one hand you say backwardness is caused by imperialism and other stuff, but other stuff can't include Islam.

yes, as i've been arguing this entire time, i don't think islam or any religion causes much. we're full circle again

Quote from: Valmy on November 23, 2015, 05:41:58 PM

Quote from: Razgovory on November 23, 2015, 05:28:13 PM
Hell, ask a person on the street in any Western Country about what the Vietnam war was about, odds are it was about American Imperialism.

Yes because we were desperate to conquer all that...um...whatever it was they had there and kill all those...whomever it was that lived there. I would hope most people in Western Countries know about the Cold War and are not under some sort of delusion we really gave two shits about conquering Vietnam.

A few years back I actually posted something about European attitudes toward the American involvement in Vietnam.  http://languish.org/forums/index.php/topic,8530.0.html

Historical revisionism for the win or are you merely indulging in folk myth reformation?

Back on topic, saw a thoughtful and relatively long interview with general  McChrystal on Channel 4 news, had quite a lot of interesting views on IS, the war against them and comments apposite to this thread.

I'll see if I can find a link:

programme catch up, but probably won't work in US:
http://www.channel4.com/news/catch-up/ (http://www.channel4.com/news/catch-up/)

edit:
they put it on youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBa1EUO8lys (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBa1EUO8lys)

Nope, that link is real.  It does document we had on this board about three years ago.

Quote from: LaCroix on November 23, 2015, 07:00:46 PM
yes, as i've been arguing this entire time, i don't think islam or any religion causes much. we're full circle again

I notice you have a tendency, at least in this discussion, to deliver verdicts ex machina, without much explicit reasoning as to why you think it's true.

Well, we all do here.  I mean, this is an internet forum, I would expect his messages to come from machines.

Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 23, 2015, 08:25:42 PMI notice you have a tendency, at least in this discussion, to deliver verdicts ex machina, without much explicit reasoning as to why you think it's true.

:hmm:

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on November 23, 2015, 05:03:46 PM
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.

I do think there is an Islam "problem" but it's a different problem.  The Islam of the Qur'an is essentially progressive for its time and place, and many of the problematic passages are not so troubling in context (for example, there was some debate over whether during wartime blood could be shed in sacred precincts - the Qur'an says this is permitted - hence the various references to "killing 'X' wherever they may be found" - that isn't a warrant to kill the Other at all times, but simply saying that if there is a state of war or an attack that takes place in a sacred area, it is permitted to engage in warfare and there no requirement to withdraw.).  Historically in Islam as in Christianity or Judaism there have been swings back and forth between more traditionalist/literalist interpretations and more allegorical/spiritual ones.  The scientific revolution came to the Islamic world somewhat later than in the Christian West, but it did come, and let's not forget that witches were still being burned after Newton in the West, and western systems of criminal and civil justice still bore strong imprints of traditional Christian notions well into the 20th century.

If you look at the Islamic world in the early 20th century, you would see mostly a mix of: (1) modernizing Islams that are compatible with the new rising secular states in places like Turkey or Iran, (2) traditional Islams that are essentially non-violent and political quiescent and which incorporate various folk traditions - some harmless and picturesque, some retrograde, (3)traditional academic Islams associated with the Azhar (Sunni) or Qom/Karbala (Shia) schools.   There are also the Wahabbi reformationists, pushing a highly stringent, formalist, and literalist interpretation of Islam but numerically they are not significant.  Finally, beginning in the late 19th century and continuing through and past the mid-20th century, there is a strong current of (secular) anti-imperial and anti-Western literature. 

A few key things happen in the mid-to-late 20th century to change this picture:

(1) huge oil deposits are discovered in the Wahabbi heartlands.  By the latter part of the century the Saudis are pouring huge resources into promoting their sect.  These Salafi schools aren't necessarily useful for teaching students useful skills for the modern world, but do fill their student's heads with propagandistic nonsense.  And they are scattered all over the Islamic world.

(2) Some of the more virulent strains of anti-imperial and anti-Western thought became Islamized - the Muslim Brotherhood in the Sunni world and the alliance that took down the Shah in  the Shi'a world are examples.

(3). There great promise and expectations raised by post war nationalist moments -- Nasser and the Baath - were horribly disappointed, leading to disillusion of secular alternatives to the old imperial and monarchical regimes.

(4) The secular liberation and revolutionary organizations that formerly attracted youth prone to revolutionary violence either fell apart as the Cold War wound down or were co-opted by practical considerations - e.g. the PLO engaging into the peace process and assuming responsibility for territorial rule.

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.

Excellent summary :)

Well, i have been telling you about Islam for the last 15 years, but you guys never cared.
Now is too late to do anything about it.

Quote from: Jacob on November 23, 2015, 08:52:01 PM
Excellent summary :)

Minor point: "Islam" (which seems to be used as a stand-in for the Arab world) did not, and could not (much like "Christianity"), evolve in a silo, independently from what was happening elsewhere, presumably to different outcomes, as if these were two simultaneous parallel experiments in historical development (this is why the whole "decline" narrative of the Ottoman empire seems so unconvincing).  It may seem like a trivial point - or one worthy of antiquarianism for earlier time periods, but concepts like "the Scientific Revolution", "secularism", "nationalism" came to the Arab world already inflected with their European past and parameters. This is why imperialism matters. Not out of some desire to assign blame (it's a cheap trick on the right and on the left), but on understanding how it shaped historical possibilities and contingencies.

Quote from: Oexmelin on November 23, 2015, 09:19:04 PM

Quote from: Jacob on November 23, 2015, 08:52:01 PM
Excellent summary :)

Minor point: "Islam" (which seems to be used as a stand-in for the Arab world) did not, and could not (much like "Christianity"), evolve in a silo, independently from what was happening elsewhere, presumably to different outcomes, as if these were two simultaneous parallel experiments in historical development (this is why the whole "decline" narrative of the Ottoman empire seems so unconvincing).  It may seem like a trivial point - or one worthy of antiquarianism for earlier time periods, but concepts like "the Scientific Revolution", "secularism", "nationalism" came to the Arab world already inflected with their European past and parameters. This is why imperialism matters. Not out of some desire to assign blame (it's a cheap trick on the right and on the left), but on understanding how it shaped historical possibilities and contingencies.

Fair point.

Quote from: Siege on November 23, 2015, 08:55:35 PM
Well, i have been telling you about Islam for the last 15 years, but you guys never cared.
Now is too late to do anything about it.

Could we have done something about it 15 years ago? :hmm:

Quote from: LaCroix on November 23, 2015, 07:00:46 PM

yes, as i've been arguing this entire time, i don't think islam or any religion causes much. we're full circle again

Of course - religion doesn't cause much, but Imperialism does.

So no to blaming 100 dead concert goers on the religious views of the people pulling the trigger, yes to blaming lots of "stuff" on Imperialism, but not the dead concertgoers. They get blamed on...well, something else I guess?

Quote from: Valmy on November 23, 2015, 05:41:58 PM

Quote from: Razgovory on November 23, 2015, 05:28:13 PM
Hell, ask a person on the street in any Western Country about what the Vietnam war was about, odds are it was about American Imperialism.

Yes because we were desperate to conquer all that...um...whatever it was they had there and kill all those...whomever it was that lived there. I would hope most people in Western Countries know about the Cold War and are not under some sort of delusion we really gave two shits about conquering Vietnam.

Probably a vain hope.  I mean, yeah, they probably know about the Cold war, but many of them probably consider it solely a result of Western imperialism.

Quote from: Oexmelin on November 23, 2015, 09:19:04 PM

Quote from: Jacob on November 23, 2015, 08:52:01 PM
Excellent summary :)

Minor point: "Islam" (which seems to be used as a stand-in for the Arab world) did not, and could not (much like "Christianity"), evolve in a silo, independently from what was happening elsewhere, presumably to different outcomes, as if these were two simultaneous parallel experiments in historical development (this is why the whole "decline" narrative of the Ottoman empire seems so unconvincing).  It may seem like a trivial point - or one worthy of antiquarianism for earlier time periods, but concepts like "the Scientific Revolution", "secularism", "nationalism" came to the Arab world already inflected with their European past and parameters. This is why imperialism matters. Not out of some desire to assign blame (it's a cheap trick on the right and on the left), but on understanding how it shaped historical possibilities and contingencies.

So I guess we should just go back to the good old imperialism, given that we will be blamed whatever we do, but at least this way we can at least make life more bearable for some women, gays and freethinkers.

Quote from: Martinus on November 24, 2015, 05:31:46 AMSo I guess we should just go back to the good old imperialism, given that we will be blamed whatever we do, but at least this way we can at least make life more bearable for some women, gays and freethinkers.

why would you be blamed for imperialism?

Quote from: LaCroix on November 24, 2015, 07:02:43 AM

Quote from: Martinus on November 24, 2015, 05:31:46 AMSo I guess we should just go back to the good old imperialism, given that we will be blamed whatever we do, but at least this way we can at least make life more bearable for some women, gays and freethinkers.

why would you be blamed for imperialism?

Why not? Poland has shown several times it wants to participate as a member of the West.

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on November 23, 2015, 05:12:22 PM

Quote from: Crazy_Ivan80 on November 23, 2015, 04:51:02 PM
basically Necla Kelek says that Islam as a religion failed, and it failed in 622 in Mecca when Mohammed failed to convince the inhabitants of the city to convert. After his retreat to Medina he transformed into a warlord after which he proceeded to force his religion -a powerideology (is that even a word in english?)- upon the people. Convert, submit or die. They did so successfully for a long time.

Looks like junk history to me.  There simply isn't much good historical evidence for that went on in Arabia in the 620s; it's all speculation.  But the key point here is that historically speaking centuries went by before the conquered lands became fully Islamized and while the conquered peoples might not be thrilled with their position (conquered peoples rarely are) it looked pretty good as compared to see the situation for religious minorities in Byzantine lands (or for that matter Catholic Europe).

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.

That is the key: a violent religion with a violent man as its prophet, who created and subverted the rules to whitewash his warmongering. A man who's backrupt character is unassailable because he's the prophet, and saying anything against him gets you branded as an apostate. Game to be killed in other words.

Wether or not the Byzantines were worse is a red herring: they're long gone, but mohammed's character (and thus his actions) is still beyond reproach.
the core is rotten. And unless that core is neutralised it'll keep causing more rot.

Quote from: Oexmelin on November 23, 2015, 09:19:04 PM

Quote from: Jacob on November 23, 2015, 08:52:01 PM
Excellent summary :)

Minor point: "Islam" (which seems to be used as a stand-in for the Arab world) did not, and could not (much like "Christianity"), evolve in a silo, independently from what was happening elsewhere, presumably to different outcomes, as if these were two simultaneous parallel experiments in historical development (this is why the whole "decline" narrative of the Ottoman empire seems so unconvincing).  It may seem like a trivial point - or one worthy of antiquarianism for earlier time periods, but concepts like "the Scientific Revolution", "secularism", "nationalism" came to the Arab world already inflected with their European past and parameters. This is why imperialism matters. Not out of some desire to assign blame (it's a cheap trick on the right and on the left), but on understanding how it shaped historical possibilities and contingencies.

On the contrary: such issues as "decline" are always viewed as relative. It is exactly because (say) the Ottomans did not exist in a vacuum independent of others that it is obvious that they "declined". Staying the same while others advance (or even advancing, but more slowly in comparison with others) = "decline". This is the point Paul Kennedy made in The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, and while I don't agree with everything in that book, he makes a good case for this.

The consequences of "decline" are that the society in "decline" becomes a prey to those stonger. The history of the Ottomans demonstrates this, as they went form being very clearly predators (fir example, taking land and slaves from Christian Europeans) and "imperialists", to becoming prey, and finally collapsing.

The ME is home to a set of civilizations who have gone through this process repeatedly: the Arab empire, predators in the early middle ages, became prey - to invading Turks (who adopted Islam) and only in the last couple of centuries, to invading Europeans (who did not).

It has been a long time since non-Turkish Muslims were the predators. ISIS or Daesh is, very much, an organization set on reversing this (restoring the Caliphate), though it lacks all of the usual attributes of a successful predator - such as better technology, better organizational skills, or an ideology that is widely attractive outside of its home base.

Quote from: Malthus on November 24, 2015, 10:17:21 AM

Quote from: Oexmelin on November 23, 2015, 09:19:04 PM

Quote from: Jacob on November 23, 2015, 08:52:01 PM
Excellent summary :)

Minor point: "Islam" (which seems to be used as a stand-in for the Arab world) did not, and could not (much like "Christianity"), evolve in a silo, independently from what was happening elsewhere, presumably to different outcomes, as if these were two simultaneous parallel experiments in historical development (this is why the whole "decline" narrative of the Ottoman empire seems so unconvincing).  It may seem like a trivial point - or one worthy of antiquarianism for earlier time periods, but concepts like "the Scientific Revolution", "secularism", "nationalism" came to the Arab world already inflected with their European past and parameters. This is why imperialism matters. Not out of some desire to assign blame (it's a cheap trick on the right and on the left), but on understanding how it shaped historical possibilities and contingencies.

On the contrary: such issues as "decline" are always viewed as relative. It is exactly because (say) the Ottomans did not exist in a vacuum independent of others that it is obvious that they "declined". Staying the same while others advance (or even advancing, but more slowly in comparison with others) = "decline". This is the point Paul Kennedy made in The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, and while I don't agree with everything in that book, he makes a good case for this.

The consequences of "decline" are that the society in "decline" becomes a prey to those stonger. The history of the Ottomans demonstrates this, as they went form being very clearly predators (fir example, taking land and slaves from Christian Europeans) and "imperialists", to becoming prey, and finally collapsing.

The ME is home to a set of civilizations who have gone through this process repeatedly: the Arab empire, predators in the early middle ages, became prey - to invading Turks (who adopted Islam) and only in the last couple of centuries, to invading Europeans (who did not).

It has been a long time since non-Turkish Muslims were the predators. ISIS or Daesh is, very much, an organization set on reversing this (restoring the Caliphate), though it lacks all of the usual attributes of a successful predator - such as better technology, better organizational skills, or an ideology that is widely attractive outside of its home base.

Indeed - this is why I just get kind of fed up with whines and cries of "Imperialism!" especially as it related to the ME.

The ME has not historically been some technologically backward areas exploited by Europeans. It isn't Africa, or North America, or South America, where guys with guns and smallpox came along and just kicked the shit out of people who had zero chance of resisting them.

The ME has a long and varied history of various and varied groups, both internally and externally, coming in, going out, kicking ass, getting their asses kicked, conquering neighbors, being conquered by neighbors, conquering each other, being conquered BY each other.

To trot out "Imperialism" as the catch all, one stop shop to explain ME/Islamic history is so ridiculous. It is picking one particular set of data points and pretending that they happened in isolation, like nothing else mattered but the particular case of some Europeans showing up and carving up some portion of the area in some fashion.

Why not blame it all on the Ottomans? Or the Mongols? Or <insert whatever historical group had a profound impact on the makeup of the region>.

Quote from: Jacob on November 23, 2015, 08:52:01 PM

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on November 23, 2015, 05:03:46 PM
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.

I do think there is an Islam "problem" but it's a different problem.  The Islam of the Qur'an is essentially progressive for its time and place, and many of the problematic passages are not so troubling in context (for example, there was some debate over whether during wartime blood could be shed in sacred precincts - the Qur'an says this is permitted - hence the various references to "killing 'X' wherever they may be found" - that isn't a warrant to kill the Other at all times, but simply saying that if there is a state of war or an attack that takes place in a sacred area, it is permitted to engage in warfare and there no requirement to withdraw.).  Historically in Islam as in Christianity or Judaism there have been swings back and forth between more traditionalist/literalist interpretations and more allegorical/spiritual ones.  The scientific revolution came to the Islamic world somewhat later than in the Christian West, but it did come, and let's not forget that witches were still being burned after Newton in the West, and western systems of criminal and civil justice still bore strong imprints of traditional Christian notions well into the 20th century.

If you look at the Islamic world in the early 20th century, you would see mostly a mix of: (1) modernizing Islams that are compatible with the new rising secular states in places like Turkey or Iran, (2) traditional Islams that are essentially non-violent and political quiescent and which incorporate various folk traditions - some harmless and picturesque, some retrograde, (3)traditional academic Islams associated with the Azhar (Sunni) or Qom/Karbala (Shia) schools.   There are also the Wahabbi reformationists, pushing a highly stringent, formalist, and literalist interpretation of Islam but numerically they are not significant.  Finally, beginning in the late 19th century and continuing through and past the mid-20th century, there is a strong current of (secular) anti-imperial and anti-Western literature. 

A few key things happen in the mid-to-late 20th century to change this picture:

(1) huge oil deposits are discovered in the Wahabbi heartlands.  By the latter part of the century the Saudis are pouring huge resources into promoting their sect.  These Salafi schools aren't necessarily useful for teaching students useful skills for the modern world, but do fill their student's heads with propagandistic nonsense.  And they are scattered all over the Islamic world.

(2) Some of the more virulent strains of anti-imperial and anti-Western thought became Islamized - the Muslim Brotherhood in the Sunni world and the alliance that took down the Shah in  the Shi'a world are examples.

(3). There great promise and expectations raised by post war nationalist moments -- Nasser and the Baath - were horribly disappointed, leading to disillusion of secular alternatives to the old imperial and monarchical regimes.

(4) The secular liberation and revolutionary organizations that formerly attracted youth prone to revolutionary violence either fell apart as the Cold War wound down or were co-opted by practical considerations - e.g. the PLO engaging into the peace process and assuming responsibility for territorial rule.

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.

Excellent summary :)

It is an excellent summary, if you start with the conclusion you want and then interpret the history to fit into that conclusion.

For me, it isn't that interesting - it is a lot of explanation for why we have the problem. That is fine, but my issue is not with the analysis for how we got here, but rather the willfull demand by many to pretend like we are not here at all.

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...

Quote from: Oexmelin on November 23, 2015, 09:19:04 PM

Quote from: Jacob on November 23, 2015, 08:52:01 PM
Excellent summary :)

Minor point: "Islam" (which seems to be used as a stand-in for the Arab world) did not, and could not (much like "Christianity"), evolve in a silo, independently from what was happening elsewhere, presumably to different outcomes, as if these were two simultaneous parallel experiments in historical development (this is why the whole "decline" narrative of the Ottoman empire seems so unconvincing).  It may seem like a trivial point - or one worthy of antiquarianism for earlier time periods, but concepts like "the Scientific Revolution", "secularism", "nationalism" came to the Arab world already inflected with their European past and parameters. This is why imperialism matters. Not out of some desire to assign blame (it's a cheap trick on the right and on the left), but on understanding how it shaped historical possibilities and contingencies.

I am pretty sure ideas such as "secularism", "the Scientifice Revolution", "nationalism" can be passed on without a European Empire necessarily having to set up shop. Indeed all those concepts were already functioning the ME before the Ottoman Empire fell. That is what the Young Turks were all about.

Quote from: Valmy on November 24, 2015, 10:36:36 AM

I am pretty sure ideas such as "secularism", "the Scientifice Revolution", "nationalism" can be passed on without a European Empire necessarily having to set up shop. Indeed all those concepts were already functioning the ME before the Ottoman Empire fell. That is what the Young Turks were all about.

But European Empires did sort of set up shop in the Ottoman Empire. :P

Quote from: alfred russel on November 24, 2015, 10:38:30 AM
But European Empires did sort of set up shop in the Ottoman Empire. :P

Only to protect them from Russian aggression. -_-

Quote from: Valmy on November 24, 2015, 10:39:30 AM

Quote from: alfred russel on November 24, 2015, 10:38:30 AM
But European Empires did sort of set up shop in the Ottoman Empire. :P

Only to protect them from Russian aggression. -_-

They also did what we might now call "the Putin move" - intervening with claims to be protecting minorities the Euro-powers had an interest in (the Russians of course did this the most  :D ).

In the history of Zionism, this is one issue the early Zionists struggled with - the Turks were happy to take their cash-for-worthless-land-in-Palestine deal, and cared not a jot for the opinions of local Arabs on the matter, but were worried that Jews would be another national minority constantly seeking (and getting) Euro-intervention (the Zionists argued to the Turks that no Euros gave a shit about Jews, so they were 'safe'  ;) ).

Quote from: Malthus on November 24, 2015, 10:45:09 AM
They also did what we might now call "the Putin move" - intervening with claims to be protecting minorities the Euro-powers had an interest in (the Russians of course did this the most  :D ).

Hey! How do you know the French DIDN'T care about all 100 Ottoman Catholics :angry:

Quote from: Berkut on November 24, 2015, 10:36:07 AM
That is fine, but my issue is not with the analysis for how we got here, but rather the willfull demand by many to pretend like we are not here at all.

Who are these people you have in mind?

Quote from: Berkut on November 24, 2015, 10:36:07 AM
It is an excellent summary, if you start with the conclusion you want and then interpret the history to fit into that conclusion.

What conclusion is that? 

Quoteit is a lot of explanation for why we have the problem. That is fine, but my issue is not with the analysis for how we got here, but rather the willfull demand by many to pretend like we are not here at all.

How can you address a problem without understanding it? 

QuoteAs 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".

This is shifting ground.  The problem identified in other thread and carried over here was the problems of terrorism, of systematic organized violence to achieve political change.  Now you are raising the issue of human rights as it relates to internal management of a state.  That's a significant issue but its manifestation goes well beyond Islam - witness the recent spate of killings in India of persons suspected of eating beef, for example -- and it conflates different problems.  Its true most of the Sunni terrorists embrace strict Sharia; the reverse however is not true.  There are strict legalist Muslims who strongly oppose the terrorists and their methods and indeed do so on the basis of Sharia itself.

Quote from: Crazy_Ivan80 on November 24, 2015, 08:42:18 AM
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.

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on November 24, 2015, 12:09:17 PM
This is shifting ground.  The problem identified in other thread and carried over here was the problems of terrorism, of systematic organized violence to achieve political change.  Now you are raising the issue of human rights as it relates to internal management of a state.  That's a significant issue but its manifestation goes well beyond Islam - witness the recent spate of killings in India of persons suspected of eating beef, for example -- and it conflates different problems.  Its true most of the Sunni terrorists embrace strict Sharia; the reverse however is not true.  There are strict legalist Muslims who strongly oppose the terrorists and their methods and indeed do so on the basis of Sharia itself.

No, the problem *I* am talking about is the general problem of Islamic radicalism - terrorism is one of many symptoms of that problem.

Terrorism is the "sexy" manifestation of that problem, but the problem is about a clash of ideas, a clash of values. The shooting of people in Paris concert halls gets all the attention, and focus our attention, but I don't consider it at all as fundamentally different from some people smashing some poor women's brains in for the "sin" of being raped, or the multiple states where they will execute you for renouncing Islam.

Quote from: Berkut on November 24, 2015, 12:25:37 PM
No, the problem *I* am talking about is the general problem of Islamic radicalism - terrorism is one of many symptoms of that problem.

Terrorism is the "sexy" manifestation of that problem, but the problem is about a clash of ideas, a clash of values. The shooting of people in Paris concert halls gets all the attention, and focus our attention, but I don't consider it at all as fundamentally different from some people smashing some poor women's brains in for the "sin" of being raped, or the multiple states where they will execute you for renouncing Islam.

Now that is what assuming a conclusion looks like.  You can make the argument that belief in a strict form of Islam is itself the cause of terrorism, and that terrorism is but an  manifestation of an undefined "clash of ideas".  But there has to be proof and facts to support that proof.  On this thread and the others, the contrary argument has been made supported by facts.  It's not sufficient to simply throw up your hands at our collective obliviousness and insist on the inherent obvious of our error.

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on November 24, 2015, 12:30:48 PM

Quote from: Berkut on November 24, 2015, 12:25:37 PM
No, the problem *I* am talking about is the general problem of Islamic radicalism - terrorism is one of many symptoms of that problem.

Terrorism is the "sexy" manifestation of that problem, but the problem is about a clash of ideas, a clash of values. The shooting of people in Paris concert halls gets all the attention, and focus our attention, but I don't consider it at all as fundamentally different from some people smashing some poor women's brains in for the "sin" of being raped, or the multiple states where they will execute you for renouncing Islam.

Now that is what assuming a conclusion looks like.  You can make the argument that belief in a strict form of Islam is itself the cause of terrorism, and that terrorism is but an  manifestation of an undefined "clash of ideas".

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.

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But there has to be proof and facts to support that proof.  On this thread and the others, the contrary argument has been made supported by facts.  It's not sufficient to simply throw up your hands at our collective obliviousness and insist on the inherent obvious of our error.

No, the contrary argument has been made that there are lots of reasons for generally why people use violence, but that does not disprove that the reasons *these* particular people use violence (or engage in Sharia law practices that are abhorrent). As I've said time and again, the fact that people die driving cars for reasons other than being drunk is not evidence that drunk driving isn't an issue. And that is all the litany of trotting out a thousand reasons why we should ignore the ONE reason the people actually doing the things in question claim is their primary reason amounts to - excuses so we can pretend that this isn't about religion.

This "reason" (religion) is special. And we should ignore it as being a reason because...we don't like the idea that religion drives these kinds of behaviors.

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

What do we do with this conclusion?

Quote from: Jacob on November 24, 2015, 12:43:17 PM
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...

Quote

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...

Quote from: Berkut on November 24, 2015, 12:39:45 PM
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. 

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No, the contrary argument has been made that there are lots of reasons for generally why people use violence, but that does not disprove that the reasons *these* particular people use violence (or engage in Sharia law practices that are abhorrent). As I've said time and again, the fact that people die driving cars for reasons other than being drunk is not evidence that drunk driving isn't an issue. And that is all the litany of trotting out a thousand reasons why we should ignore the ONE reason the people actually doing the things in question claim is their primary reason amounts to - excuses so we can pretend that this isn't about religion.

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).

Take the question of 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"

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.

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

Quote from: Berkut on November 24, 2015, 01:30:02 PM

Quote from: Jacob on November 24, 2015, 12:43:17 PM
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...

Quote

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.

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on November 24, 2015, 01:47:20 PM

Quote from: Berkut on November 24, 2015, 12:39:45 PM
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.

Quote from: Razgovory on November 24, 2015, 01:51:43 PM
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?

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on November 24, 2015, 01:47:20 PM

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.

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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.

Quote
  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?

Quote
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.

Quote
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.

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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.

Quote
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.

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.

Quote from: crazy canuck on November 24, 2015, 02:36:23 PM
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.

Quote from: Valmy on November 24, 2015, 02:40:13 PM

Quote from: crazy canuck on November 24, 2015, 02:36:23 PM
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).

Quote from: Valmy on November 24, 2015, 02:29:05 PM

Quote from: Razgovory on November 24, 2015, 01:51:43 PM
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.

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on November 23, 2015, 05:03:46 PM
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?

Quote from: crazy canuck on November 24, 2015, 02:42:26 PM

Quote from: Valmy on November 24, 2015, 02:40:13 PM

Quote from: crazy canuck on November 24, 2015, 02:36:23 PM
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.

Quote from: Berkut on November 24, 2015, 10:36:07 AM

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:

QuoteSecularism 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.

Quote from: Valmy on November 24, 2015, 02:40:13 PM

Quote from: crazy canuck on November 24, 2015, 02:36:23 PM
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.

Quote from: viper37 on November 24, 2015, 03:08:49 PM

Quote from: Berkut on November 24, 2015, 10:36:07 AM

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:

QuoteSecularism 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%.

Quote from: Berkut on November 24, 2015, 03:06:19 PM

Quote from: crazy canuck on November 24, 2015, 02:42:26 PM

Quote from: Valmy on November 24, 2015, 02:40:13 PM

Quote from: crazy canuck on November 24, 2015, 02:36:23 PM
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.

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on November 24, 2015, 12:17:10 PM

Quote from: Crazy_Ivan80 on November 24, 2015, 08:42:18 AM
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.

Quote from: crazy canuck on November 24, 2015, 03:18:53 PM

Quote from: Berkut on November 24, 2015, 03:06:19 PM

Quote from: crazy canuck on November 24, 2015, 02:42:26 PM

Quote from: Valmy on November 24, 2015, 02:40:13 PM

Quote from: crazy canuck on November 24, 2015, 02:36:23 PM
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.

Radical Muslim religious belief is what drives radical Muslim terrorism - that is not even remotely the same as saying that terrorism is caused by religion. Your dishonesty is tiresome.

Quote from: Berkut on November 24, 2015, 03:09:13 PM

Quote from: Valmy on November 24, 2015, 02:40:13 PM

Quote from: crazy canuck on November 24, 2015, 02:36:23 PM
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.

You tell me to "fuck off" and then you badly mischaracterize the argument  the "left" (a handy label you seem to use as a pejorative) is making.  At times like this you come across as a small minded small man (not in the sense of size of course).  Of course human behavior is influenced by a large number of factors.  Of course Islamic Terrorists are not terrorists just because of the form of religion they identify with and of course people didn't join the KKK just because of their particular brand of Christianity.

And yet you still insist in saying what they "really do believe" - as if you have some kind of special incite into what is really motivating those people.   

Quote from: Berkut on November 24, 2015, 03:26:06 PM

Quote from: crazy canuck on November 24, 2015, 03:18:53 PM

Quote from: Berkut on November 24, 2015, 03:06:19 PM

Quote from: crazy canuck on November 24, 2015, 02:42:26 PM

Quote from: Valmy on November 24, 2015, 02:40:13 PM

Quote from: crazy canuck on November 24, 2015, 02:36:23 PM
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.

Radical Muslim religious belief is what drives radical Muslim terrorism - that is not even remotely the same as saying that terrorism is caused by religion. Your dishonesty is tiresome.

What is the difference between saying their religious belief "drives" terrorism and saying it "causes" terrorism?

Your failure to accept that life is more nuanced then your simplistic view that a particular religious belief is the cause, or driver, of terrorism is not only tiresome it is dangerous as it seems to be what is informing the political reaction of your country. Can't let those untrustworthy Muslims in don't you know.  ;)

Quote from: Berkut on November 24, 2015, 03:17:51 PM

Quote from: viper37 on November 24, 2015, 03:08:49 PM

Quote from: Berkut on November 24, 2015, 10:36:07 AM

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:

QuoteSecularism 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%.

I wonder how many people in the US want to deport all Muslims regardless of citizenship.  Or France.  Or Britain.

Quote from: crazy canuck on November 24, 2015, 03:27:01 PM

Quote from: Berkut on November 24, 2015, 03:09:13 PM

Quote from: Valmy on November 24, 2015, 02:40:13 PM

Quote from: crazy canuck on November 24, 2015, 02:36:23 PM
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.

You tell me to "fuck off" and then you badly mischaracterize the argument  the "left" (a handy label you seem to use as a pejorative) is making.  At times like this you come across as a small minded small man (not in the sense of size of course).  Of course human behavior is influenced by a large number of factors.  Of course Islamic Terrorists are not terrorists just because of the form of religion they identify with and of course people didn't join the KKK just because of their particular brand of Christianity.

And yet you still insist in saying what they "really do believe" - as if you have some kind of special incite into what is really motivating those people.   

I don't think it takes any special insight at all into what motivates them - they've been telling us in no uncertain terms what motivates them all along.

It takes special insight, that apparently I lack, to deny that and come up with Ali Baba 1,001 Reasons Other Than Religion for what motivates them.

I am taking them at their word.

And I tell you to fuck off because I am tired of you just straight out lying about what I say, when you know you are lying, but you simply do not care.

Quote from: crazy canuck on November 24, 2015, 03:27:45 PM

Quote from: Berkut on November 24, 2015, 03:26:06 PM

Quote from: crazy canuck on November 24, 2015, 03:18:53 PM

Quote from: Berkut on November 24, 2015, 03:06:19 PM

Quote from: crazy canuck on November 24, 2015, 02:42:26 PM

Quote from: Valmy on November 24, 2015, 02:40:13 PM

Quote from: crazy canuck on November 24, 2015, 02:36:23 PM
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.

Radical Muslim religious belief is what drives radical Muslim terrorism - that is not even remotely the same as saying that terrorism is caused by religion. Your dishonesty is tiresome.

What is the difference between saying their religious belief "drives" terrorism and saying it "causes" terrorism?

The difference is between saying that specific religious beliefs drive specific acts of terrorism (what I said) and saying that religion in general drives terrorism (which is your lie you made up, since I sure as hell never said it).

QuoteYour failure to accept that life is more nuanced then your simplistic view that a particular religious belief is the cause, or driver, of terrorism is not only tiresome it is dangerous as it seems to be what is informing the political reaction of your country. Can't let those untrustworthy Muslims in don't you know

And here you repeat the lie AGAIN, despite me now disavowing it explicitly at least three times in the last hour.

And for the record, I have (as you of course know) consistently supported allowing refugees, and lots of them, into the US.

Don't let what I say stop you from lying out your ass about it though.

Quote from: Berkut on November 24, 2015, 03:30:02 PM
I don't think it takes any special insight at all into what motivates them - they've been telling us in no uncertain terms what motivates them all along.

And that is the problem.  The unthinking reaction of the right as to the causal factors of terrorism is the real problem here.  Unfortunately it is the dominant view of the nation on earth that is also the most powerful.

Since you demand a simplistic explanation for things here it is.  JR's view = double plus good.  I wish more Americans were like that.  ;)

Quote from: Berkut on November 24, 2015, 03:31:52 PM
The difference is between saying that specific religious beliefs drive specific acts of terrorism (what I said) and saying that religion in general drives terrorism (which is your lie you made up, since I sure as hell never said it).

Interesting back pedal.  My claim is that your view that a specific religious belief is the driver or cause of terrorism is overly simplistic and itself dangerous.   If you go back to my first post responding to you, you will see you are the one dishonestly characterizing my argument.   ;)

Quote from: Berkut on November 24, 2015, 01:30:02 PM

Quote from: Jacob on November 24, 2015, 12:43:17 PM
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...

Quote

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...

Okay, accepting those qualifications then, you contend that the best approach for dealing with radical Muslim terrorists is to accept that their motivation is that they genuinely believe they're doing their god's work. If I'm understanding you correctly, you're saying this is the single most significant factor, and we should base our response on that.

Given that, I'm curious about your view on a number of things that potentially follow.

For example, does the fact we hold that it's primarily an issue of Islam affect how we approach the conflicts in the Middle East? Does it change how we assess and address public safety domestically? Or is it more of an academic issue that does not have practical consequences?

There are people who agree with the basic premise you postulate, who then conclude that since Islam inherently carries danger within it, it then justifies forbidding the building of mosques/ dressing like a Muslim, or then justifies closing the door hard on Muslim refugees, or then justifies a registry of Muslim citizens since they are suspect due to their faith.

Just because the reasoning starts from a shared truth - that Islam has something about it that makes its followers especially prone to terrorist violence - does not mean you end up in the same place, of course. So what I'm curious about is where along the line of reasoning you disagree, and on what grounds.

Quote from: Razgovory on November 24, 2015, 01:51:43 PMI think in the back your mind you have an idea what to do, but you are still decent enough to know it is wrong.

I think this is being patently unfair to Berkut.

Quote from: Crazy_Ivan80 on November 24, 2015, 03:25:39 PMmore 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.

Okay, so the core of the religion is rotten. What next?

Expulsion of Muslims from Belgium, forbidding wearing symbols - direct or indirect - of Islam, closing the doors to Muslim refugees? Something else?

Quote from: Jacob on November 24, 2015, 03:50:22 PM

Quote from: Crazy_Ivan80 on November 24, 2015, 03:25:39 PMmore 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.

Okay, so the core of the religion is rotten. What next?

Expulsion of Muslims from Belgium, forbidding wearing symbols - direct or indirect - of Islam, closing the doors to Muslim refugees? Something else?

Support moderate Muslims, take a stronger stance protecting those within the Islamic countries, cut ties to the autocratic and theocratic regimes like Saudi Arabia or Bahrain, dedicate resources to civil rights education among Muslim communities in the West, make it clear to all (including Muslims and non Muslims) that there is a certain liberal minimum that must be followed (women's rights, gay rights, ability to leave religion) and within this minimum enforce ruthlessly the right to diversity (so equally harshly punish those who would want to force a woman to wear a veil as those who would attack her for wearing one).

Ruthlessly enforce the right to diversity.  I like that turn of phrase Marti.  :)

Quote from: crazy canuck on November 24, 2015, 04:03:59 PM
Ruthlessly enforce the right to diversity.  I like that turn of phrase Marti.  :)

I am not sure if you are being sarcastic, but I think we should stick to our principles, but we should not mistake them for being soft. Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice, as some wise man once said. ;)

And one of the main compoments of this is protecting equality under law. We should be equally ruthless in protecting the right of a muslim guy to be gay or a muslim girl to abandon her religion as we should be in protecting the right of a muslim guy to pray 5 times a day or a muslim girl to wear a head scarf.

Quote from: Martinus on November 24, 2015, 03:52:21 PMSupport moderate Muslims, take a stronger stance protecting those within the Islamic countries, cut ties to the autocratic and theocratic regimes like Saudi Arabia or Bahrain, dedicate resources to civil rights education among Muslim communities in the West.

I don't have any particular objections to these actions, at least on the face of it, but I'm not sure I see how that follows from accepting that Islam carries within in it the seeds for terroristic violence to a particular degree as that, presumably, applies to moderate Muslims as well.

On the last point, we've had long discussions here about what approaches work best for integrating Muslims - and others - into liberal societies. Personally, I think the recent (well, from this summer) Ontario incident of three sisters with the surname Mohamed who were in the news for being topless on a hot summer day in spite of illegal attempts to stop them is an illustration that the Canadian approach works :)

Quote from: Jacob on November 24, 2015, 04:10:34 PM

Quote from: Martinus on November 24, 2015, 03:52:21 PMSupport moderate Muslims, take a stronger stance protecting those within the Islamic countries, cut ties to the autocratic and theocratic regimes like Saudi Arabia or Bahrain, dedicate resources to civil rights education among Muslim communities in the West.

I don't have any particular objections to these actions, at least on the face of it, but I'm not sure I see how that follows from accepting that Islam carries within in it the seeds for terroristic violence to a particular degree as that, presumably, applies to moderate Muslims as well.

On the last point, we've had long discussions here about what approaches work best for integrating Muslims - and others - into liberal societies. Personally, I think the recent (well, from this summer) Ontario incident of three sisters with the surname Mohamed who were in the news for being topless on a hot summer day in spite of illegal attempts to stop them is an illustration that the Canadian approach works :)

I think we could agree that Islamic conservatism carries within it the seed of violence.

Quote from: Martinus on November 24, 2015, 04:07:20 PMAnd one of the main compoments of this is protecting equality under law. We should be equally ruthless in protecting the right of a muslim guy to be gay or a muslim girl to abandon her religion as we should be in protecting the right of a muslim guy to pray 5 times a day or a muslim girl to wear a head scarf.

Sounds good to me.

Quote from: Martinus on November 24, 2015, 04:12:49 PM
I think we could agree that Islamic conservatism carries within it the seed of violence.

Sure, but lots of things carry within them the seed of violence. The subject of this thread as I understand it is whether Islamic conservatism carries this seed within it to a particular degree (compared to, say, Communism, environmentalism, gun rights advocacy, pro life advocacy, nationalism, white supremacy, being a football fan, belonging to a particular ethnic group, being a man, and many other political persuasions and group identities), and whether the presence of that seed is due to some inherent characteristic of Islam as a faith as opposed to the various cultural, economic, political, and social forces that have shaped particular manifestations of it.

Quote from: Jacob on November 24, 2015, 04:10:34 PM
I don't have any particular objections to these actions, at least on the face of it, but I'm not sure I see how that follows from accepting that Islam carries within in it the seeds for terroristic violence to a particular degree as that, presumably, applies to moderate Muslims as well.

On the last point, we've had long discussions here about what approaches work best for integrating Muslims - and others - into liberal societies. Personally, I think the recent (well, from this summer) Ontario incident of three sisters with the surname Mohamed who were in the news for being topless on a hot summer day in spite of illegal attempts to stop them is an illustration that the Canadian approach works :)

The Canadian approach also produced the recent attacks on members of the Canadian military.

Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 24, 2015, 04:21:56 PMThe Canadian approach also produced the recent attacks on members of the Canadian military.

True enough.

What approach do you think would have prevented those?

Quote from: Jacob on November 24, 2015, 04:23:22 PM
True enough.

What approach do you think would have prevented those?

I don't know. 

Do you think that a few attacks every few years means the approach is working?

Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 24, 2015, 04:25:18 PM

Quote from: Jacob on November 24, 2015, 04:23:22 PM
True enough.

What approach do you think would have prevented those?

I don't know. 

Do you think that a few attacks every few years means the approach is working?

My primary metric is not based on attacks, but overall integration of newcomers. So no, I don't think a few attacks means the approach is working; I think the approach is working based on overall impressions.

If you are speaking of the two attacks in 2014, I don't think the actions of two Canadian born self-converts to Islam particularly reflects on the Canadian approach, to be honest.

Quote from: viper37 on November 24, 2015, 02:48:16 PM
We fight an ideology, like we fought nazism.

"we" - the us, Canada, UK - didn't fight Nazism, we fought Nazi Germany, a state where the Nazi party was in control.
We defeated that state militarily and then proscribed the party members by force.
But the mentality of Nazism was defeated by the attractive force of alternative ideologies.

Ultimately, the only way to beat an idea is with a better more attractive idea. It can be long frustrating work but it is the only sure way.  And beating your chest and proclaiming how bad the other idea sucks may feel good but it doesn't really advance the ball.

Quote from: Berkut on November 24, 2015, 02:33:27 PM
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? 

I have huge problems with them, but they aren't inherently "Islamic" problems - for example, honor killings based on caste differences are regrettably common in India.  Stoning is not a prescribed punishment in the Qur'an at all; it found its way into some formulations of Islamic law because it was a common cultural practice.   Note that Afghanistan for example implements Sharia but prohibits stoning.  Even the Iranian judicial authorities have pronounced against the practice.  The key exception here again is the Wahabbi-dominated Gulf states.

That's not to say these things have "nothing to do" with Islam - obviously they do.  The takeaway is that those within the religion that resist such practices and denounce them as anti-Islamic deserve our support.

Side note - Apostasy is one area where Islam stands out as unusually punitive, with all the major schools of jurisprudence prescribing death after a period to allow recantation.  Although once again, the punishment is extra-Quranic and there is very lively disagreement on that point.

Quote from: Jacob on November 24, 2015, 03:45:15 PM

Quote from: Razgovory on November 24, 2015, 01:51:43 PMI think in the back your mind you have an idea what to do, but you are still decent enough to know it is wrong.

I think this is being patently unfair to Berkut.

You have no problem making that same jump in the next post talking to Crazy Ivan.

Quote from: Martinus on November 24, 2015, 04:07:20 PM

Quote from: crazy canuck on November 24, 2015, 04:03:59 PM
Ruthlessly enforce the right to diversity.  I like that turn of phrase Marti.  :)

I am not sure if you are being sarcastic, but I think we should stick to our principles, but we should not mistake them for being soft. Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice, as some wise man once said. ;)

And one of the main compoments of this is protecting equality under law. We should be equally ruthless in protecting the right of a muslim guy to be gay or a muslim girl to abandon her religion as we should be in protecting the right of a muslim guy to pray 5 times a day or a muslim girl to wear a head scarf.

Why do you think I am being sarcastic.  I am agreeing with you.  I used a nice smiley and everything.  Sheesh.

Also your view is one I have argued many times here - most recently in the Canadian politics thread during the last election.

Quote from: Berkut on November 24, 2015, 03:17:51 PM
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.

True but the same poll found little support for that punishment among Muslims in Central Asia, Europe, Indonesia, and Thailand (but 62% in Malaysia :(); it had less than 50% in Bangladesh, Tunisia, Lebanon, and Iraq.  The Pew poll missed some key countries but it is likely that overall support for the DP in apostasy is a minority position in Islam today.  Admittedly it is not cause for wild celebration but it is interesting in light of the fact that the death penalty for apostasy, despite being absent from the Qur'an, is a key defining characteristic of Islamic law and jurisprudence, and a major theme in the traditions (Hadith).  It means that a majority of Muslims are content to hold views in defiance of Sharia.

Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 24, 2015, 04:21:56 PM

Quote from: Jacob on November 24, 2015, 04:10:34 PM
I don't have any particular objections to these actions, at least on the face of it, but I'm not sure I see how that follows from accepting that Islam carries within in it the seeds for terroristic violence to a particular degree as that, presumably, applies to moderate Muslims as well.

On the last point, we've had long discussions here about what approaches work best for integrating Muslims - and others - into liberal societies. Personally, I think the recent (well, from this summer) Ontario incident of three sisters with the surname Mohamed who were in the news for being topless on a hot summer day in spite of illegal attempts to stop them is an illustration that the Canadian approach works :)

The Canadian approach also produced the recent attacks on members of the Canadian military.

You do understand that the Conservatives (a party that was happy to spout Yi friendly rhetoric) was in power then right?

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on November 24, 2015, 04:40:37 PM
But the mentality of Nazism was defeated by the attractive force of alternative ideologies.

That is somewhat disingenuous. The utter destruction of the state carrying and sponsoring the ideology in the most violent, total conflict in history cannot be neatly distinguished from "the attractive force of alternate ideologies".

Quote from: Razgovory on November 24, 2015, 05:14:19 PM
You have no problem making that same jump in the next post talking to Crazy Ivan.

I did not mean to impute those positions on him. I was asking him if those were the responses he considered appropriate, and I will happily take no for an answer.

Quote from: Oexmelin on November 24, 2015, 05:30:36 PM

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on November 24, 2015, 04:40:37 PM
But the mentality of Nazism was defeated by the attractive force of alternative ideologies.

That is somewhat disingenuous. The utter destruction of the state carrying and sponsoring the ideology in the most violent, total conflict in history cannot be neatly distinguished from "the attractive force of alternate ideologies".

Sure it can.  Nazi ideas survived the military conflict, perhaps rebranded, but they are still around today and in some places resurgent.  It's true that catastrophic military defeat, in addition to physically removing leadership, seriously discredited an ideology that glorified martiality.  But ideas can suffer those kinds of setbacks and survive - plenty of Nazi victims can testify to that.

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on November 24, 2015, 05:20:46 PM

Quote from: Berkut on November 24, 2015, 03:17:51 PM
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.

True but the same poll found little support for that punishment among Muslims in Central Asia, Europe, Indonesia, and Thailand (but 62% in Malaysia :(); it had less than 50% in Bangladesh, Tunisia, Lebanon, and Iraq.  The Pew poll missed some key countries but it is likely that overall support for the DP in apostasy is a minority position in Islam today.  Admittedly it is not cause for wild celebration but it is interesting in light of the fact that the death penalty for apostasy, despite being absent from the Qur'an, is a key defining characteristic of Islamic law and jurisprudence, and a major theme in the traditions (Hadith).  It means that a majority of Muslims are content to hold views in defiance of Sharia.

And that is certainly good to know - but it doesn't refute my point, which is that there are a shitload of Muslims who truly believe very horrifying things. And those beliefs are specifically religious in nature, and they believe those things for religious reasons.

It doesn't matter to my point if the genesis of those beliefs was the Koran or something totally sescular - NOW they are religious beliefs.

I am NOT (I am getting really tired of saying this) arguing that the ONLY way one can have crazy, fucked up beliefs is religion, or that all religious people have crazy fucked up beliefs.

I am simply stating that these particular religious people with crazy fucked up beliefs that lead them to do crazy, fucked up things like terrorism, stoning adulterers, tossing gay people from buildings, killing those who exercise religious choice, etc., etc. are doing so for religious reasons, and if we are not willing to accept that, we are not going to make good choices in how to handle it.

We have people arguing that this is NOT a religious problem at all - if that is the case, then we should not support moderate Muslims in any particular sense, since the problem is not religious, the solution is not religious. I think exactly the opposite. The problem is very much religious, so we very much need to support the non-crazy fucked up religious people in their overall community. Since it isn't realistic to just convince a billion plus Muslims to just give up their religion, we have to figure out a way to get more of them (a LOT more of them) to embrace the moderate set of their religion.

It is great ,I guess, that a majority of Muslims are not in favor of murdering apostates. However, it is terrifying that a huge number, a hundred million plus, are of the mindset that looks at a world where killing people for the crime of not being Muslim is seen as reasonable and a religious duty.

It is like noting that there are apparently tens of millions of Americans who think Trump or Carson would be a great choice to lead the country. It isn't just about that particular bit of crazy, but about what kind of thinking could produce such an obviously fucked up answer - you know that isn't the extent of their fuckedupedness.

Quote from: Berkut on November 24, 2015, 06:10:26 PM
It is great ,I guess, that a majority of Muslims are not in favor of murdering apostates.

Think of it as a glass half full.

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on November 24, 2015, 06:09:35 PM

Quote from: Oexmelin on November 24, 2015, 05:30:36 PM

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on November 24, 2015, 04:40:37 PM
But the mentality of Nazism was defeated by the attractive force of alternative ideologies.

That is somewhat disingenuous. The utter destruction of the state carrying and sponsoring the ideology in the most violent, total conflict in history cannot be neatly distinguished from "the attractive force of alternate ideologies".

Sure it can.  Nazi ideas survived the military conflict, perhaps rebranded, but they are still around today and in some places resurgent.  It's true that catastrophic military defeat, in addition to physically removing leadership, seriously discredited an ideology that glorified martiality.  But ideas can suffer those kinds of setbacks and survive - plenty of Nazi victims can testify to that.

Nazism should be seen as nationally specific form of fascism.  There are Fascist regimes in the world today, some in the Middle East and they are losing ground... to the Islamist ones.  I would say that the Nasserites, and the Baathist are Arab forms of fascism as are some groups in Turkey including elements in the CHP.  On the other hand in Europe Fascists seem to be riding propelling themselves on the issue we are discussing right now.  It's been suggested on this board a certain Presidential candidate is doing the same...

Quote from: Berkut on November 24, 2015, 06:10:26 PMWe have people arguing that this is NOT a religious problem at all - if that is the case, then we should not support moderate Muslims in any particular sense, since the problem is not religious, the solution is not religious.

:lol:

yeah, let's not support people who advocate peace

What does this support for moderate Muslims that a number of you are mentioning look like practice?

Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 24, 2015, 09:10:38 PM
What does this support for moderate Muslims that a number of you are mentioning look like practice?

A free Christmas ham?

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on November 24, 2015, 07:02:31 PM

Quote from: Berkut on November 24, 2015, 06:10:26 PM
It is great ,I guess, that a majority of Muslims are not in favor of murdering apostates.

Think of it as a glass half full.

Majority of Germans was probably against turning Jews into soap. That did not prevent us from carpet bombing Dresden.

That wasn't why the Dresden was bombed.

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on November 24, 2015, 06:09:35 PM

Quote from: Oexmelin on November 24, 2015, 05:30:36 PM

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on November 24, 2015, 04:40:37 PM
But the mentality of Nazism was defeated by the attractive force of alternative ideologies.

That is somewhat disingenuous. The utter destruction of the state carrying and sponsoring the ideology in the most violent, total conflict in history cannot be neatly distinguished from "the attractive force of alternate ideologies".

Sure it can.  Nazi ideas survived the military conflict, perhaps rebranded, but they are still around today and in some places resurgent.  It's true that catastrophic military defeat, in addition to physically removing leadership, seriously discredited an ideology that glorified martiality.  But ideas can suffer those kinds of setbacks and survive - plenty of Nazi victims can testify to that.

nazi parties were forbidden in many countries.  Displaying a nazi symbol today would land you in legal trouble in some countries, with an expensive lawsuit in some other.

I think it's time to fight against the modern symbols of fascism in our countries, and for that, we need to purge all religion from government, to make it clear we will tolerate this no more than we tolerate nazism.

Quote from: LaCroix on November 24, 2015, 08:07:55 PM

Quote from: Berkut on November 24, 2015, 06:10:26 PMWe have people arguing that this is NOT a religious problem at all - if that is the case, then we should not support moderate Muslims in any particular sense, since the problem is not religious, the solution is not religious.

:lol:

yeah, let's not support people who advocate peace

Wow, did you really miss the point that thoroughly?

Of course we should support them, because it is (despite your claims) a religious problem, with a religious foundation, and hence supporting a religious solution makes perfect sense.

It would NOT make sense if we just all said "Yeah, imperialism sure does suck! Good thing this has nothing to do with religion!"

Berkut, you're just going to have to accept there is No problem with 'Islamic radicalism'  ;)

I have listened to both sides and I'm sorry but I have to come down on the "Western imperialism did it" side. Brown people are incapable of taking any action that isn't driven by white people.

Quote from: mongers on November 25, 2015, 10:55:06 AM
Berkut, you're just going to have to accept there is No problem with 'Islamic radicalism'  ;)

Or to put it more accurately.  That there are other causes of terrorism that need to be considered rather than the very narrow view the radical Islam is THE problem.

Quote from: Berkut on November 25, 2015, 10:01:16 AMIt would NOT make sense if we just all said "Yeah, imperialism sure does suck! Good thing this has nothing to do with religion!"

I'll agree with you that that's not a particularly useful approach.

Quote from: Jacob on November 25, 2015, 12:36:39 PM

Quote from: Berkut on November 25, 2015, 10:01:16 AMIt would NOT make sense if we just all said "Yeah, imperialism sure does suck! Good thing this has nothing to do with religion!"

I'll agree with you that that's not a particularly useful approach.

Agreed.  And its a good think nobody is actually making that argument.  It would be just as unhelpful as someone making the argument that Radical Islam is the cause or motivator of the terrorism to the exclusion of other causes and motivations.  Both positions would be silly.

Quote from: crazy canuck on November 25, 2015, 12:24:25 PM

Quote from: mongers on November 25, 2015, 10:55:06 AM
Berkut, you're just going to have to accept there is No problem with 'Islamic radicalism'  ;)

Or to put it more accurately.  That there are other causes of terrorism that need to be considered rather than the very narrow view the radical Islam is THE problem.

You have no sense of shame at all, do you?

Quote from: Berkut on November 25, 2015, 10:01:16 AM

Quote from: LaCroix on November 24, 2015, 08:07:55 PM

Quote from: Berkut on November 24, 2015, 06:10:26 PMWe have people arguing that this is NOT a religious problem at all - if that is the case, then we should not support moderate Muslims in any particular sense, since the problem is not religious, the solution is not religious.

:lol:

yeah, let's not support people who advocate peace

Wow, did you really miss the point that thoroughly?

Of course we should support them, because it is (despite your claims) a religious problem, with a religious foundation, and hence supporting a religious solution makes perfect sense.

It would NOT make sense if we just all said "Yeah, imperialism sure does suck! Good thing this has nothing to do with religion!"

If the problem is religion then supporting moderates won't do any good, they'll still be religious, and that's the core problem.  If the problem is a dissatisfied population using radical religion as an agent of political change then supporting moderates does make sense.

Quote from: Berkut on November 25, 2015, 01:41:06 PM

Quote from: crazy canuck on November 25, 2015, 12:24:25 PM

Quote from: mongers on November 25, 2015, 10:55:06 AM
Berkut, you're just going to have to accept there is No problem with 'Islamic radicalism'  ;)

Or to put it more accurately.  That there are other causes of terrorism that need to be considered rather than the very narrow view the radical Islam is THE problem.

You have no sense of shame at all, do you?

Rather, I think it is a case of you not actually understanding my posts.  When hurricane Berkut forms it cares not what the obstacles in the way actually stand for.

Quote from: The Brain on November 25, 2015, 11:52:16 AM
I have listened to both sides and I'm sorry but I have to come down on the "Western imperialism did it" side. Brown people are incapable of taking any action that isn't driven by white people.

I agree. Religion is clearly not to blame for that and culture is also not to blame. The inferiority must be biological.