Are we at war with Islam? [Archive] - Page 2

D9 (RIP)

10-13-2004, 14:44

One relevant point that I have not seen made yet relates to the lack of a political/religious dichotomy in Islam, which you had in Christianity. It is said by many that we are not at war with Islam, but with a political ideology. But I think this puts a Western lens on the Islamic world that blurs, rather than sharpens, the issue at hand.

To suggest we are at war with a political ideology as against a religion is to suggest that there is a seperation between them. It suggests that among those we are describing, there is a distinction between religion and politics. This is a very natural way for Westerners to look at the situation. In Christianity - from the beginning but especially since The Reformation - just such a dichotomy exists. It is very natural in America for the question, "What religion are you?" to be considered seperately from the question, "Who will you vote for?" One influences the other, for sure, but a catholic republican is no more a contradiction in terms than a catholic democrat.

I'm not a biblical scholar, but I've read some good analyses that attribute this dichotomy in Christianity to Jesus himself, when he said, "give unto God what is God's, and unto Caesar what is Caesar's." This is considered, by my readings, to be the Biblical origins of the Western idea of a division between one's spiritual and material life. Maybe some of our more astute biblical scholars can fill in some more background on this aspect of Christianity. This dichotomy in Christianity left a deep imprimature on the Western consciousness, so deep that today it is often taken as a universal fact of religions as such.

If you're dealing with a Western country with a tradition like this, such as the Nazis, then it is useful to distinguish the politics from the ideology. But what if you are dealing with a religion that recognizes no such distinction? Or, more specific to this case, considers such distinctions virtual apostasy? In this case the value of discriminating between the religion and the political manifestation of it is questionable.

If, as most proponents of labels like Islamofacism suggest, the problem is a politicized variation of an otherwise peaceful religion, then how does one explain the utter lack of reaction against it by the Islamic majority? It is not only a question of a lack of reaction against it by Muslims, it is also a question of why there is actually broad sympathy for the "terrorists" at worst, and ambivalence or mixed sympathies at best. If the "militant Islamists" were truly a real fringe minority among an otherwise peaceful group, then a good litmus test of this theory would be to imagine a similar scenario within another relatively peaceful group. But it's hard to imagine general sympathy and support for the depredations of this kind of terror among other communities.

The nature of the problem is that the "terrorists," as they say themselves, are really just taking Islam very literally, and attempting to apply it in its unadulterated 7th century version. Like any other religion, Islam has evolved over the centuries. Under the practical pressure of day to day crises through the centuries, Caliphs and relgious scholars issues edicts and interpretations that form a large part of the modern Islamic dogma. UBL and company are old-fashioned purists in this respect. They reject many of the rationalizations of modern clerics trying to find practical solutions to cope with an overpowering West. In this sense, and to speak literally about it, it is the moderns who have perverted Islam from its roots, and the terrorists who are closer to the pure interpretation.

I think this explains the general sympathr or ambivalence towards the terrorists in the Islamic world. The reality is, despite the protestations of Western politicians to the contrary, the message of the terrorists actually does resonate with what most Muslims have read in their Quran, have heard in their madrassas or mosques, and have understood about their religion. There is no basis in their faith to seperate out the political moves of the "terrorists" from the religious justification. In Islam, the two are inextricably intertwined.

I wouldn't have said so a year ago, but I am becoming more convinced that we really are, in the broad sense, at war against Islam. Until that religion changes from within, or is marginalized or wiped out, we will still face threats from those, like UBL, who intend to take its message very literally.

Roguish Lawyer

10-13-2004, 15:07

D9:

What a pleasure to read substantive posts from you again. Are you no longer in training? ;)

Sacamuelas

10-13-2004, 15:09

Damn... this thread is getting good again. Nice post D9.

One bonus point for causing me to have to look up a word:
For the lesser educated individuals like myself....

apostasy: The word itself in its etymological sense, signifies the desertion of a post, the giving up of a state of life; he who voluntarily embraces a definite state of life cannot leave it, therefore, without becoming an apostate. Most authors, however, distinguish with Benedict XIV (De Synodo di£cesanâ, XIII, xi, 9), between three kinds of apostasy: apostasy a Fide or perfidi£, when a Christian gives up his faith; apostasy ab ordine, when a cleric abandons the ecclesiastical state; apostasy a religione, or monachatus, when a religious leaves the religious life.

:munchin

D9 (RIP)

10-13-2004, 15:17

D9:

What a pleasure to read substantive posts from you again. Are you no longer in training? ;)

Thanks.

LOL, believe me, I'm still in training up to my ears.

I'm just trying to slip in a few intellectual push-ups on the side, LOL.

:lifter

QRQ 30

10-13-2004, 15:24

Well D9: I'm not one for long verbose dissertations. To cut to the core, everything said about Islam was also true of christianity. Whole ethnic groups were wiped out in the name of Christianity. Now, if we want to talk about atrocities look at the middle-age church. They invented numerous "cute" means of exorcism and conversion -- the rack, drawing and quartering, burning at the stake, etc. Givin the choice between having my head loped off and watching my entrails boil in oil I think I'd take the knife.

Simply put: war is war is war -- two peoples trying to put the other down. No need for philosophical, or meta-physical excuses - er reasons. :boohoo

Jimbo

10-13-2004, 15:26

Welcome back, D9. Hope the training is going well.

Your last post was wrong on many counts. See this webpage (http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/GLOSSARY/VELIFAG.HTM) for an exploration of the subject you are talkig about.

D9 (RIP)

10-13-2004, 15:27

Just to clarify, I have zero sympathy for the Islamic world and am making no excuses for them.

D9 (RIP)

10-13-2004, 15:45

Your last post was wrong on many counts. See this webpage (http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/GLOSSARY/VELIFAG.HTM) for an exploration of the subject you are talkig about.

Just read that, and I don't have any dispute with his points. But I don't think it's different from what I'm saying either. The particulars of the militant Islamists politics are new, and for sure are influenced by the Revolution, 19th c. European nationalism, and others. No disagreement there.

But as the website says, even before the 'ulama the political and religious life of Muslims were inseperable. Historically, the Islamic world has been ruled by a Caliph who was conjointly the religious and political authority, as the two were viewed as one indifferentiable approach to life. This is emblematic of the unity of politics and religion I am referring to. In this kind of society, I personally think there is limited value in viewing the politics apart from the religion.

Jimbo

10-13-2004, 16:00

In this kind of society, I personally think there is limited value in viewing the politics apart from the religion.

Ok. I think that is very dangerous. I am very confident that with very rare exceptions, most influential clerics have politics that are markedly different than their faith.

D9 (RIP)

10-13-2004, 16:08

Ok. I think that is very dangerous. I am very confident that with very rare exceptions, most influential clerics have politics that are markedly different than their faith.

How about an example so I can better see your point.

Jimbo

10-13-2004, 16:36

_Sistani_.

NousDefionsDoc

10-13-2004, 16:36

To suggest we are at war with a political ideology as against a religion is to suggest that there is a seperation between them. It suggests that among those we are describing, there is a distinction between religion and politics.

I think that's spot on. The other thing is you can't blame it off on a minority if the minority is the face that we have to deal with - it becomes Islam - at this time as practiced by these people. Drug dealers in Colombia are a very small minority of the population. They were, however, the face (may still be externally) of Colombia that the rest of the world had to deal with. Therefore, all policy decisions were driven by it. Not just US policy - their neighbors too.

qrq - in my opinion, your statement is off. It should read "Everything that is true of Islam was true of Christianity." And therein lies the problem. Even in the days of the Vatican's call for Liberation Theology, there were never more than a handful of adherents and no major wars were fought because of them.

Good to see D9 and Jimbo arguing again.

casey

10-14-2004, 10:02

Outstanding post by D9.
In a true Islamic state the sacred will always control the secular, without fail.
When the "talib", or students of Islam pushed forth their extremist interpretaions, they became the political embodiment of those ideals - the Taliban, not the other way around.

_Sistani_. "most influential clerics have politics that are markedly different than their faith".

I have to disagree with Jimbo here. I don't believe that one can become an influential cleric anywhere nowadays without adhering to strict Sharia Law. That same law is the overt driving force behind all political decisions. Understanding that their power and influence is derived from the religion first and foremost, they must rule accordingly.

D9 (RIP)

10-14-2004, 10:31

"most influential clerics have politics that are markedly different than their faith".

I have to disagree with Jimbo here. I don't believe that one can become an influential cleric anywhere nowadays without adhering to strict Sharia Law. That same law is the overt driving force behind all political decisions. Understanding that their power and influence is derived from the religion first and foremost, they must rule accordingly.

I agree.

I think you're misreading me, Jimbo. I'm trying to highlight the dichotomy that exists in the West and not in the East. As an example of that, can you imagine Sistani standing up before his followers and announcing that he wants them to forget about Allah for a second, because he has a purely political point to make?

NousDefionsDoc

10-14-2004, 10:57

Islam invades their other philosophies the same way Nazism or imperialistic fascism did in WWII.

Jimbo

10-14-2004, 11:00

I agree.

I think you're misreading me, Jimbo. I'm trying to highlight the dichotomy that exists in the West and not in the East. As an example of that, can you imagine Sistani standing up before his followers and announcing that he wants them to forget about Allah for a second, because he has a purely political point to make?

And you didn't read that article. There is a history of that same dicotomy in Islam. For example the Arab Nationalist movements of the early 1970s. It was not until the failure of Arab nationalism and the success of the Iranian revolution that we saw a sharp rise in ruling ideology that was BASED in Islamic law.

I don't get the sense from you that you have a good understanding of the basic history of the region.

NousDefionsDoc

10-14-2004, 11:05

Jimbo, what does that have to do with today and the war we are fighting now?

Jimbo

10-14-2004, 11:46

Jimbo, what does that have to do with today and the war we are fighting now?

The failure of Arab nationalism is critical to understanding the political environment int he Middle East. I don't have time to get too in depth at the moment, but perhaps I can put something up later.

The ideology of those we are fighting today extremely similar to the ideology that was behind the Iranian revolution. I know we will win because the ideology behind the Iranian revolution did not transfer to a new generation. Since 1988, there has been no compelling reason to call us the Great Satan. AQ and some other groups are trying to keep the same spirit going. Keepers of the flame, the vanguard, etc...these are all old concepts in revolutionary ideology.

Also, we really, really need to stop not knowing who our enemy is. Everytime someone pops up and says that we really are fighting Islam and not a bunch of idiots, we extend the war by a generation (not literally, but...).

Bringing into your lingo, NDD, not understanding this stuff is like not understanding what role Marx, Castro and the Pope played in Latin America.

NousDefionsDoc

10-14-2004, 12:11

Bringing into your lingo, NDD, not understanding this stuff is like not understanding what role Marx, Castro and the Pope played in Latin America.

And there you have it. To understand the FARC or AUC (arguably the two biggest threats in the region), you don't have to understand Marx, Castro or the Pope. You have to understand Pablo Escobar and simple supply-demand economics. Hell, to understand the AUC, I'm not even real sure you need to even understand Carlos Castano anymore.

In the case of the FARC, it is an interesting academic exercise and worth the effort inc ase they change again when the old man dies. But they are no more communist than Greenhat anymore. The FARC of today bears very little resemblance to the FARC of the 60s, 70s or even 80s.

D9 (RIP)

10-14-2004, 12:15

And you didn't read that article. There is a history of that same dicotomy in Islam. For example the Arab Nationalist movements of the early 1970s. It was not until the failure of Arab nationalism and the success of the Iranian revolution that we saw a sharp rise in ruling ideology that was BASED in Islamic law.

I don't get the sense from you that you have a good understanding of the basic history of the region.

Jimbo, I am pretty familiary with the history of the region. Anyway, no reason to throw around insults like the above. How about we stick to the argument?

I did read the article. The Arab Nationalism of the 1970's is a small and, I agree, unusual period that stands out in 13 centuries of history. But it is notable not because it is charactisic of the history of the region, but because it stands in contrast to the history of the region. You have to go back to the Abassid Dynasty to find any situation in the region where the politics of the region were not rooted inextricably in Islam (and although that was probably the most secular period in Islamic history, it was still under a Caliphate). Honestly, Islam even plays a minor role in the rise of Arab-Nationalism, as Arabs sent many of their children to Europe for educations in the 19th C. hoping to reverse the fortunes of the failing Islamic world in comparison to the West.

Jimbo

10-14-2004, 13:31

Jimbo, I am pretty familiary with the history of the region. Anyway, no reason to throw around insults like the above. How about we stick to the argument?

I did read the article. The Arab Nationalism of the 1970's is a small and, I agree, unusual period that stands out in 13 centuries of history. But it is notable not because it is charactisic of the history of the region, but because it stands in contrast to the history of the region. You have to go back to the Abassid Dynasty to find any situation in the region where the politics of the region were not rooted inextricably in Islam (and although that was probably the most secular period in Islamic history, it was still under a Caliphate). Honestly, Islam even plays a minor role in the rise of Arab-Nationalism, as Arabs sent many of their children to Europe for educations in the 19th C. hoping to reverse the fortunes of the failing Islamic world in comparison to the West.

Facism was an unusual period in German history. It had a pretty profound effect on world history, though.

The dicotomy you said doesn't exist, did exist. It continues to exist in Turkey. This debate has been going on is Islam for a long time. Maybe they'll reach a resolution at some point. When they do, we will either get along with them or there will be total war with them. Until then, people should hold off on saying we are at war with the religion.

Jimbo

10-14-2004, 13:34

And there you have it. To understand the FARC or AUC (arguably the two biggest threats in the region), you don't have to understand Marx, Castro or the Pope. You have to understand Pablo Escobar and simple supply-demand economics. Hell, to understand the AUC, I'm not even real sure you need to even understand Carlos Castano anymore.

In the case of the FARC, it is an interesting academic exercise and worth the effort inc ase they change again when the old man dies. But they are no more communist than Greenhat anymore. The FARC of today bears very little resemblance to the FARC of the 60s, 70s or even 80s.

Up until very recently commie slogans and arguments were used for recruiting. The ideology seems to still appeal to some of the rank and file.

D9 (RIP)

10-18-2004, 13:40

Article Here (http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20041015/wl_mideast_afp/islam_ramadan_iraq_us_041015134736)

http://us.news2.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/afp/20041015/capt.sge.shs40.151004134729.photo00.default-384x262.jpg

Check out the above article, which is basically an interview with an imam who is in the US military stationed in Iraq. He talks about the "complexities" of being, at once, a muslim and American soldier.

I think there is some revealing content in here about whether or not we should consider the Islamic ideology, as such and not just some elements, hostile to America. After all, if there is anyone in the world who is both Muslim and who should be sympathetic to America it's gotta be this guy.

The first part of the article is, I guess, meant to be some kind of human interest story focusing on the difficulty a muslim has serving in the military, since muslims, the imam (who is a major) insists, have a hard time with killing people. I'll leave that one alone. It's the second half of the article that I find most revealing.

When asked whether or not he would label the insurgents with the presumably morally defensible title of mujahedeen, he says he wouldn't. They are not morally defensible in his eyes, but the revealing answer is his reasons for why?

"I wouldn't call them mujahedeen because they kill muslims, which is haram, forbidden in the Quran," he explains, and later, "I ask my brothers to take a look. Eight to ten million muslims live in the United States."

I think this is pretty revealing. The implication is that the primary reason their actions are not justified is because they kill some other Muslims. In other words, the reference he makes to explain the political validity/invalidity of act is not his own Constitution or the Bill of Rights he has sworn to defend, it is the Quran. And the question begged: if they did not kill any muslims, and went out of their way not to target muslims in America, what would he think of it then? After all, I'm pretty sure it is not haram to kill infidels who refuse to convert or be subjugated.

And this, from a major in the US Army. It would seem that you are going to get about as pro-American an interpretation of Islam from him as from .

I think his constant reference to the Quran as the moral authority on what most in the West would be a violation of political rights indicates the unity of religion and politics in that part of the world as well.

Team Sergeant

11-02-2004, 11:46

Write book or make a movie criticizing muslims/islam, prepare to meet your maker! Gunning down an unarmed film maker, that's what islam teaches, what a wonderful way of life.

TS

Nov 2, 7:30 AM (ET)

By TOBY STERLING

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) - A Dutch filmmaker who had received death threats after releasing a movie criticizing the treatment of women under Islam was slain in Amsterdam on Tuesday, police said.

A suspect, a 26-year-old man with dual Dutch-Moroccan nationality, was arrested after a shootout with officers that left him wounded, police said.

Filmmaker Theo van Gogh had been threatened after the August airing of the movie "Submission," which he made with a right-wing Dutch politician who had renounced the Islamic faith of her birth. Van Gogh had received police protection after its release.

Dutch national broadcaster NOS and other media reported that Van Gogh's killer shot and stabbed his victim and left a note on his body. NOS said witnesses described the attacker as having an "Arab appearance."

A witness who lives in the neighborhood heard six shots, and saw the man concealing a gun. She said he walked away slowly, spoke to someone at the edge of the park, and then ran.

"He was walking slowly, like he was trying to be cool," she said, describing him as wearing a long beard and Islamic garb. "He was either an Arabic man or someone disguised as a Muslim," she said.

Another witness told Dutch Radio 1 the killer arrived by bicycle and shot Van Gogh as he got out of a car. "He fell backward on the bicycle path and just laid there. The shooter stayed next to him and waited. Waited to make sure he was dead."

The slain filmmaker was the great grandson of the brother of famous Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh, who was also named Theo. In a recent radio interview, Van Gogh dismissed the threats and called the movie "the best protection I could have. It's not something I worry about."

Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende called on the Dutch people to remain calm.

"Nothing is known about the motive," he said in a written statement. "I want to call on everyone not to jump to far-reaching conclusions. The facts must first be carefully weighed so let's allow the investigators to do their jobs."

Balkenende praised Van Gogh as a proponent of free speech who had "outspoken opinions."

"It would be unacceptable if a difference of opinion led to this brutal murder," he said.

Police spokesman Eric Vermeulen said the attacker fled to the nearby East Park, and was arrested after exchanging gunfire with police. Both the suspect and a policeman suffered minor injuries.

"They were conscious" when taken to hospital, Vermeulen said.

Van Gogh's killing immediately rekindled memories of the 2002 assassination of Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn who polarized the nation with his anti-immigration views and was shot to death days before national elections.

In addition to his film, van Gogh also wrote columns about Islam that were published on his Web site, www.theovangogh.nl, and Dutch newspaper Metro.

The short television film "Submission" aired on Dutch television in August, enraged the Muslim community in the Netherlands.

It told the fictional story of a Muslim woman forced into a violent marriage, raped by a relative and brutally punished for adultery.

The English-language film was scripted by a right-wing politician who years ago renounced the Islamic faith of her birth and now refers to herself as an "ex-Muslim."

Somali-born Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a member of the Dutch parliament, has repeatedly outraged fellow Muslims by criticizing Islamic customs and the failure of Muslim families to adopt Dutch ways.

The place of Muslim immigrants in Dutch society has long been a contentious issue in the Netherlands, where many right-wing politicians have pushed for tougher immigration laws and say Muslims already settled in the country must make a greater effort to assimilate.

Theo van Gogh, 47, has often come under criticism for his controversial movies. In December, his next movie "06-05," about the May 6, 2002 assassination of Pim Fortuyn, is scheduled to debut on the Internet.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20041102/D863NRS80.html

Jo Sul

11-02-2004, 14:43

This is a bit long, but provides an interesting perspective:

> The essay below is an extremely well formulated address which was
> given at the Weizmann Institute of Israel, by one of the foremost
> physicists in Israel. Professor Chaim Harari brings great insight and
> wisdom to his analysis of how the Third World War came about, and which
> countries are vulnerable.
>
> The essay is drawn from an address delivered by Professor Harari at
> a meeting of the International Advisory Board of a large multi-national
> corporation, April, 2004
>
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
> HAIM HARARI, a theoretical physicist, is the Chair, Davidson
> Institute of Science Education, and Former President, from 1988 to 2001,
> of the Weizmann Institute of Science. During his years as President of
> the Institute, it entered numerous new scientific fields and projects,
> built 47 new buildings, raised one Billion Dollars in philanthropic
> money, hired more than half of its current tenured Professors and became
> one of the highest royalty-earning academic organizations in the world.
>
> Throughout all his adult life, he has made major contributions to
> three different fields: Particle Physics Research on the international
> scene, Science Education in the Israeli school system and Science
> Administration and Policy Making.
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> A View from the Eye of the Storm
>
> As you know, I usually provide the scientific and technological
> "entertainment" in our meetings, but, on this occasion, our Chairman
> suggested that I present my own personal view on events in the part of
> the world from which I come. I have never been and I will never be a
> Government official and I have no privileged information. My perspective
> is entirely based on what I see, on what I read and on the fact that my
> family has lived in this region for almost 200 years. You may regard my
> views as those of the proverbial taxi driver, whom you are supposed to
> question when you visit a country.
>
> I could have shared with you some fascinating facts and some
> personal thoughts about the Israeli-Arab conflict. However, I will touch
> upon it only in passing. I prefer to devote most of my remarks to the
> broader picture of the region and its place in world events. I refer to
> the entire area between Pakistan and Morocco, which is predominantly
> Arab, predominantly Moslem, but includes many non-Arab and also
> significant non-Moslem minorities.
>
> Why do I put aside Israel and its own immediate neighborhood?
> Because Israel and any problems related to it, in spite of what you
> might read or hear in the world media, is not the central issue, and has
> never been the central issue in the upheaval in the region. Yes, there
> is a 100 year-old Israeli-Arab conflict, but it is not where the main
> show is. The millions who died in the Iran-Iraq war had nothing to do
> with Israel. The mass murder happening right now in Sudan, where the
> Arab Moslem regime is massacring its black Christian citizens, has
> nothing to do with Israel. The frequent reports from Algeria about the
> murders of hundreds of civilians in one village or another by other
> Algerians have nothing to do with Israel. Saddam Hussein did not invade
> Kuwait, endanger Saudi Arabia and butcher his own people because of
> Israel. Egypt did not use poison gas against Yemen in the 60's because
> of Israel. Assad the Father did not kill tens of thousands of his own
> citizens in one week in El Hamma in Syria because of Israel. The Taliban
> control of Afghanistan and the civil war there had nothing to do with
> Israel. The Libyan blowing up of the Pan-Am flight had nothing to do
> with Israel, and I could go on and on and on.
>
> The root of the trouble is that this entire Moslem region is totally
> dysfunctional by any standard of the word, and would have been so even
> if Israel would have joined the Arab League and an independent Palestine
> would have existed for 100 years. The 22 member countries of the Arab
> League, from Mauritania to the Gulf States, have a total population of
> 300 millions, larger than the US and almost as large as the EU before
> its expansion. They have a land area larger than either the US or all of
> Europe. These 22 countries, with all their oil and natural resources,
> have a combined GDP smaller than that of Netherlands plus Belgium and
> equal to half of the GDP of California alone. Within this meager GDP,
> the gaps between rich and poor are beyond belief and too many of the
> rich made their money not by succeeding in business, but by being
> corrupt rulers. The social status of women is far below what it was in
> the Western World 150 years ago. Human rights are below any reasonable
> standard, in spite of the grotesque fact that Libya was elected Chair of
> the UN Human Rights commission. According to a report prepared by a
> committee of Arab intellectuals and published under the auspices of the
> U.N., the number of books translated by the entire Arab world is much
> smaller than what little Greece alone translates. The total number of
> scientific publications of 300 million Arabs is less than that of 6
> million Israelis. Birth rates in the region are very high, increasing
> the poverty, the social gaps, and the cultural decline. And all of this
> is happening in a region that only 30 years ago was believed to be the
> next wealthy part of the world, and in a Moslem area, which developed,
> at some point in history, one of the most advanced cultures in the world.
>
> It is fair to say that this creates an unprecedented breeding ground
> for cruel dictators, terror networks, fanaticism, incitement, suicide
> murders, and general decline. It is also a fact that almost everybody in
> the region blames this situation on the United States, on Israel, on
> Western Civilization, on Judaism and Christianity, on anyone and
> anything, except themselves.
>
> Do I say all of this with the satisfaction of someone discussing the
> failings of his enemies? On the contrary, I firmly believe that the
> world would have been a much better place and my own neighborhood would
> have been much more pleasant and peaceful if things were different.
>
> I should also say a word about the millions of decent, honest, good
> people who are either devout Moslems or are not very religious but grew
> up in Moslem families. They are double victims, of an outside world
> which now develops Islamophobia, and of their own environment which
> breaks their hearts by being totally dysfunctional. The problem is that
> the vast silent majority of these Moslems are not part of the terror and
> of the incitement but they also do not stand up against it. They become
> accomplices by omission, and this applies to political leaders,
> intellectuals, business people and many others. Many of them can
> certainly tell right from wrong, but are afraid to express their views.
>

Jo Sul

11-02-2004, 14:45

Continued . . . (told you it was long) . . .

> The events of the last few years have amplified four issues, which
> have always existed, but have never been as rampant as in the present
> upheaval in the region. These are the four main pillars of the current
> World Conflict, or perhaps we should already refer to it as "the
> undeclared World War III". I have no better name for the present
> situation. A few more years may pass before everybody acknowledges that
> it is a World War, but we are already well into it.
>
> The first element is the suicide murder. Suicide murders are not a
> new invention but they have been made popular, if I may use this
> expression, only lately. Even after September 11, it seems that most of
> the Western World does not yet understand this weapon. It is a very
> potent psychological weapon. Its real direct impact is relatively minor.
> The total number of casualties from hundreds of suicide murders within
> Israel in the last three years is much smaller than those due to car
> accidents. September 11 was quantitatively much less lethal than many
> earthquakes. More people die from AIDS in one day in Africa than all the
> Russians who died in the hands of Chechnya-based Moslem suicide
> murderers since that conflict started. Saddam killed more people every
> month than all those who died from suicide murders since the Coalition
> occupied Iraq.
>
> So what is all the fuss about suicide killings? It creates
> headlines. It is spectacular. It is frightening. It is a very cruel
> death with bodies dismembered and horrible severe lifelong injuries to
> many of the wounded. It is always shown on television in great detail.
> One such murder, with the help of hysterical media coverage, can destroy
> the tourism industry of a country for quite a while, as it did in Bali
> and in Turkey.
>
> But the real fear comes from the undisputed fact that no defense and
> no preventive measures can succeed against a determined suicide
> murderer. This has not yet penetrated the thinking of the Western World.
> The U.S. and Europe are constantly improving their defense against the
> last murder, not the next one. We may arrange for the best airport
> security in the world. But if you want to murder by suicide, you do not
> have to board a plane in order to explode yourself and kill many people.
> Who could stop a suicide murder in the midst of the crowded line waiting
> to be checked by the airport metal detector? How about the lines to the
> check-in counters in a busy travel period? Put a metal detector in front
> of every train station in Spain and the terrorists will get the buses.
> Protect the buses and they will explode in movie theaters, concert
> halls, supermarkets, shopping malls, schools, and hospitals. Put guards
> in front of every concert hall and there will always be a line of people
> to be checked by the guards and this line will be the target, not to
> speak of killing the guards themselves. You can somewhat reduce your
> vulnerability by preventive and defensive measures and by strict border
> controls but not eliminate it and definitely not win the war in a
> defensive way. And it is a war!
>
> What is behind the suicide murders? Money, power and cold-blooded
> murderous incitement, nothing else. It has nothing to do with true
> fanatical religious beliefs. No Moslem preacher has ever blown himself
> up. No son of an Arab politician or religious leader has ever blown
> himself up. No relative of anyone influential has done it. Wouldn't you
> expect some of the religious leaders to do it themselves, or to talk
> their sons into doing it, if this is truly a supreme act of religious
> fervor? Aren't they interested in the benefits of going to Heaven?
> Instead, they send outcast women, naive children, retarded people and
> young incited hotheads. They promise them the delights, mostly sexual,
> of the next world, and pay their families handsomely after the supreme
> act is performed and enough innocent people are dead.
>
> Suicide murders also have nothing to do with poverty and despair.
> The poorest region in the world, by far, is Africa. It never happens
> there There are numerous desperate people in the world, in different
> cultures, countries and continents. Desperation does not provide anyone
> with explosives, reconnaissance and transportation. There was certainly
> more despair in Saddam's Iraq than in Paul Bremmer's Iraq, and no one
> exploded himself. A suicide murder is simply a horrible, vicious weapon
> of cruel, inhuman, cynical, well-funded terrorists, with no regard for
> human life, including the lives of their fellow countrymen, but with
> very high regard for their own affluent well-being and their hunger for
> power.
>
> The only way to fight this new "popular" weapon is identical to the
> only way in which you fight organized crime or pirates on the high seas:
> the offensive way.As in the case of organized crime, it is crucial that
> the forces on the offensive be united and it is crucial to reach the top
> of the crime pyramid. You cannot eliminate organized crime by arresting
> the little drug dealer on the street corner. You must go after the head of
> the "Family".
>
> If part of the public supports it, others tolerate it, many are
> afraid of it and some try to explain it away by poverty or by a
> miserable childhood, organized crime will thrive and so will terrorism.
> The United States understands this now, after September 11 Russia is
> beginning to understand it. Turkey understands it well. I am very much
> afraid that most of Europe still does not understand it. Unfortunately,
>
> it seems that Europe will understand it only after suicide murderers
> arrive in Europe in a big way. In my humble opinion, this will
> definitely happen. The Spanish trains and the Istanbul bombings are only
> the beginning. The unity of the Civilized World in fighting this horror
> is absolutely indispensable. Until Europe wakes up, this unity will not be
> achieved.
>
> The second ingredient is words, more precisely lies. Words can be
> lethal. They kill people. It is often said that politicians, diplomats
> and perhaps also lawyers and business people must sometimes lie as part
> of their professional life. But the norms of politics and diplomacy are
> childish in comparison with the level of incitement and total, absolute,
> deliberate fabrications which have reached new heights in the region we
> are talking about. An incredible number of people in the Arab world
> believe that September 11 never happened, or was an American provocation
> or, even better, a Jewish plot.
>
> You all remember the Iraqi Minister of Information, Mr. Muhammad
> Said al-Sahaf and his press conferences when the US forces were already
> inside Baghdad. Disinformation at time of war is an accepted tactic. But
> to stand, day after day, and make such preposterous statements, known to
> everybody to be lies, without even being ridiculed in your own milieu,
> can only happen in this region. Mr. Sahaf eventually became a popular
> icon as a court jester, but this did not stop some allegedly respectable
> newspapers from giving him equal time. It also does not prevent the
> Western press from giving credence every day, even now, to similar
> liars. After all, if you want to be an anti-Semite, there are subtle
> ways of doing it. You do not have to claim that the Holocaust never
> happened and that the Jewish temple in Jerusalem never existed. But
> millions of Moslems are told by their leaders that this is the case.
> When these same leaders make other statements, the Western media report
> them as if they could be true.
>
> It is a daily occurrence that the same people who finance, arm and
> dispatch suicide murderers, condemn the act in English in front of
> western TV cameras talking to a world audience, which even partly
> believes them. It is a daily routine to hear the same leader making
> opposite statements in Arabic to his people and in English to the rest
> of the world. Incitement by Arab TV, accompanied by horror pictures of
> mutilated bodies, has become a powerful weapon of those who lie, distort
> and want to destroy everything. Little children are raised on deep
> hatred and on admiration of so-called martyrs, and the Western World
> does not notice it because its own TV sets are mostly tuned to soap
> operas and game shows. I recommend to you, even though most of you do
> not understand Arabic, to watch Al Jazeera from time to time. You will
> not believe your own eyes.
>
> But words also work in other ways, more subtle. A demonstration in
> Berlin, carrying banners supporting Saddam's regime and featuring
> three-year old babies dressed as suicide murderers is defined by the
> press and by political leaders as a "peace demonstration". You may
> support or oppose the Iraq war, but to refer to fans of Saddam, Arafat
> or Bin Laden as peace activists is a bit too much. A woman walks into an
> Israeli restaurant at mid-day, eats, observes families with old people
> and children eating their lunch at the adjacent tables, and pays the
> bill. She then blows herself up, killing 20 people, including many
> children, with heads and arms rolling around in the restaurant. She is
> called "martyr" by several Arab leaders and "activist" by the European
> press. Dignitaries condemn the act but visit her bereaved family and the
> money flows.
>

Jo Sul

11-02-2004, 14:47

Continued . . . (I bet you thought I was kidding) . . .

> There is a new game in town: The actual murderer is called "the
> military wing", the one who pays him, equips him and sends him is now
> called "the political wing" and the head of the operation is called the
> "spiritual leader". There are numerous other examples of such Orwellian
> nomenclature, used every day not only by terror chiefs but also by
> Western media. These words are much more dangerous than many people
> realize. They provide an emotional infrastructure for atrocities. It was
> Joseph Goebbels who said that if you repeat a lie often enough, people
> will believe it. He is now being outperformed by his successors.
>
> The third aspect is money. Huge amounts of money, which could have
> solved many social problems in this dysfunctional part of the world, are
> channeled into three concentric spheres supporting death and murder. In
> the inner circle are the terrorists themselves. The money funds their
> travel, explosives, hideouts and permanent search for soft vulnerable
> targets. They are surrounded by a second wider circle of direct
> supporters, planners, commanders, preachers, all of whom make a living,
> usually a very comfortable living, by serving as terror infrastructure.
>
> Finally, we find the third circle of so-called religious, educational
> and welfare organizations, which actually do some good, feed the hungry
> and provide some schooling, but brainwash a new generation with hatred,
> lies and ignorance. This circle operates mostly through mosques,
> madrasas and other religious establishments but also through inciting
> electronic and printed media. It is this circle that makes sure that
> women remain inferior, that democracy is unthinkable and that exposure
> to the outside world is minimal. It is also that circle that leads the
> way in blaming everybody outside the Moslem world, for the miseries of the
> region.
>
> Figuratively speaking, this outer circle is the guardian, which
> makes sure that the people look and listen inwards to the inner circle
> of terror and incitement, rather than to the world outside. Some parts
> of this same outer circle actually operate as a result of fear from, or
> blackmail by, the inner circles. The horrifying added factor is the high
> birth rate. Half of the population of the Arab world is under the age of
> 20, the most receptive age to incitement, guaranteeing two more
> generations of blind hatred.
>
> Of the three circles described above, the inner circles are
> primarily financed by terrorist states like Iran and Syria, until
> recently also by Iraq and Libya and earlier also by some of the
> Communist regimes. These states, as well as the Palestinian Authority,
> are the safe havens of the wholesale murder vendors. The outer circle is
> largely financed by Saudi Arabia, but also by donations from certain
> Moslem communities in the United States and Europe and, to a smaller
> extent, by donations of European Governments to various NGO's and by
> certain United Nations organizations, whose goals may be noble, but they
> are infested and exploited by agents of the outer circle. The Saudi
> regime, of course, will be the next victim of major terror, when the
> inner circle will explode into the outer circle. The Saudis are
> beginning to understand it, but they fight the inner circles, while
> still financing the infrastructure at the outer circle.
>
> Some of the leaders of these various circles live very comfortably
> on their loot. You meet their children in the best private schools in
> Europe, not in the training camps of suicide murderers. The Jihad
> "soldiers" join packaged death tours to Iraq and other hot spots, while
> some of their leaders ski in Switzerland. Mrs. Arafat, who lives in
> Paris with her daughter, receives tens of thousands of dollars per month
> from the allegedly bankrupt Palestinian Authority while a typical local
> ringleader of the Al-Aksa brigade, reporting to Arafat, receives only a
> cash payment of a couple of hundred dollars for performing murders at
> the retail level.
>
> The fourth element of the current world conflict is the total
> breaking of all laws. The civilized world believes in democracy, the
> rule of law, including international law, human rights, free speech and
> free press, among other liberties. There are naive old-fashioned habits
> such as respecting religious sites and symbols, not using ambulances and
> hospitals for acts of war, avoiding the mutilation of dead bodies and
> not using children as human shields or human bombs. Never in history,
> not even in the Nazi period, was there such total disregard of all of
> the above as we observe now. Every student of political science debates
> how you prevent an anti-democratic force from winning a democratic
> election and abolishing democracy. Other aspects of a civilized society
> must also have limitations. Can a policeman open fire on someone trying
> to kill him? Can a government listen to phone conversations of
> terrorists and drug dealers? Does free speech protect you when you shout
> "fire" in a crowded theater? Should there be the death penalty for
> deliberate multiple murders? These are the old-fashioned dilemmas. But
> now we have an entirely new set.
>
> Do you raid a mosque that serves as a terrorist ammunition storage?
> Do you return fire if you are attacked from a hospital? Do you storm a
> church taken over by terrorists who took the priests hostage? Do you
> search every ambulance after a few suicide murderers use ambulances to
> reach their targets? Do you strip every woman because one pretended to
> be pregnant and carried a suicide bomb on her belly? Do you shoot back
> at someone trying to kill you while standing deliberately behind a group
> of children? Do you raid terrorist headquarters hidden in a mental
> hospital? Do you shoot an arch-murderer who deliberately moves from one
> location to another, always surrounded by children? All of these happen
> daily in Iraq and in the Palestinian areas. What do you do? Well, you do
> not want to face the dilemma. But it cannot be avoided.
>
> Suppose, for the sake of discussion, that someone would openly stay
> at a well-known address in Teheran, hosted by the Iranian Government and
> financed by it, executing one atrocity after another in Spain or in
> France, killing hundreds of innocent people, accepting responsibility
> for the crimes, promising in public TV interviews to do more of the
> same, while the Government of Iran issues public condemnations of his
> acts but continues to host him, to invite him to official functions, and
> to treat him as a great dignitary I leave it to you as homework to
> figure out what Spain or France would have done in such a situation.
>
> The problem is that the civilized world is still having illusions
> about the rule of law in a totally lawless environment. It is trying to
> play ice hockey by sending a ballerina ice-skater into the rink or to
> knock out a heavyweight boxer by a chess player. In the same way that no
> country has a law against cannibals eating its prime minister because
> such an act is unthinkable, international law does not address killers
> shooting from hospitals, mosques and ambulances, while being protected
> by their Government or society. International law does not know how to
> handle someone who sends children to throw stones, stands behind them
> and shoots with immunity and cannot be arrested because he is sheltered
> by a Government. International law does not know how to deal with a
> leader of murderers who is royally and comfortably hosted by a country
> that pretends to condemn his acts or just claims to be too weak to
> arrest him. The amazing thing is that all of these crooks demand
> protection under international law and define all those who attack them
> as war criminals, with some Western media repeating the allegations. The
> good news is that all of this is temporary, because the evolution of
> international law has always adapted itself to reality. The punishment
> for suicide murder should be death or arrest before the murder, not
> during and not after. After every world war, the rules of international
> law have changed and the same will happen after the present one But
> during the twilight zone, a lot of harm can be done.
>
> The picture I described here is not pretty. What can we do about it?
> In the short run, only fight and win. In the long run? Only educate the
> next generation and open it to the world. The inner circles can and must
> be destroyed by force. The outer circle cannot be eliminated by force.
> Here we need financial starvation of the organizing elite, more power to
> women, more education, counter propaganda, boycott whenever feasible,
> and access to Western media, the Internet, and the international scene.
> Above all, we need a total, absolute unity and determination of the
> civilized world against all three circles of evil.
>

Jo Sul

11-02-2004, 14:48

And finally . . . (yep, probably TOO long) . . .

> Allow me, for a moment, to depart from my alleged role as a taxi
> driver and return to science. When you have a malignant tumor, you may
> remove the tumor itself surgically. You may also starve it by preventing
> new blood from reaching it from other parts of the body, thereby
> preventing new "supplies" from expanding the tumor. If you want to be
> sure, it is best to do both.
>
> But before you fight and win, by force or otherwise, you have to
> realize that you are in a war, and this may take Europe a few more
> years. In order to win, it is necessary first to eliminate the terrorist
> regimes so that no Government in the world will serve as a safe haven
> for these people. I do not want to comment here on whether the
> American-led attack on Iraq was justified from the point of view of
> weapons of mass destruction or any other pre-war argument, but I can
> look at the post-war map of Western Asia. Now that Afghanistan, Iraq,
> and Libya are out, two and a half terrorist states remain: Iran, Syria,
> and Lebanon, the latter being a Syrian colony. Perhaps Sudan should be
> added to the list. As a result of the conquest of Afghanistan and Iraq,
> both Iran and Syria are now totally surrounded by territories unfriendly
> to them. Iran is encircled by Afghanistan, by the Gulf States, Iraq and
> the Moslem republics of the former Soviet Union. Syria is surrounded by
> Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, and Israel. This is a significant strategic change
> and it applies strong pressure on the terrorist countries. It is not
> surprising that Iran is so active in trying to incite a Shiite uprising
> in Iraq. I do not know if the American plan was actually to encircle
> both Iran and Syria, but that is the resulting situation.
>
> In my humble opinion, the number one danger to the world today is
> Iran and its regime. It definitely has ambitions to rule vast areas and
> to expand in all directions. It has an ideology that claims supremacy
> over Western culture. It is ruthless. It has proven that it can execute
> elaborate terrorist acts without leaving too many traces, using Iranian
> embassies It is clearly trying to develop nuclear weapons. Its
> so-called moderates and conservatives play their own virtuoso version of
> the "good-cop versus bad-cop" game. Iran sponsors Syrian terrorism, it
> is certainly behind much of the action in Iraq, it is fully funding the
> Hezbollah and, through it, the Palestinian Hamas and Islamic Jihad. It
> performed acts of terror at least in Europe and in South America and
> probably also in Uzbekistan and Saudi Arabia and it truly leads a
> multi-national terror consortium, which includes, as minor players,
> Syria, Lebanon, and certain Shiite elements in Iraq. Nevertheless, most
> European countries still trade with Iran, try to appease it, and refuse
> to read the clear signals.
>
> In order to win the war it is also necessary to dry up the financial
> resources of the terror conglomerate. It is pointless to try to
> understand the subtle differences between the Sunni terror of Al Qaida
> and Hamas and the Shiite terror of Hezbollah, Sadr and other
> Iranian-inspired enterprises. When it serves their business needs, all
> of them collaborate beautifully
>
> It is crucial to stop Saudi and other financial support of the outer
> circle, which is the fertile breeding ground of terror. It is important
> to monitor all donations from the Western World to Islamic
> organizations, to monitor the finances of international relief
> organizations, and to react with forceful economic measures to any small
> sign of financial aid to any of the three circles of terrorism. It is
> also important to act decisively against the campaign of lies and
> fabrications and to monitor those Western media that collaborate with it
> out of naivety, financial interests, or ignorance.
>
> Above all, never surrender to terror. No one will ever know whether
> the recent elections in Spain would have yielded a different result if
> not for the train bombings a few days earlier. But it really does not
> matter. What matters is that the terrorists believe that they caused the
> result and that they won by driving Spain out of Iraq. The Spanish story
> will surely end up being extremely costly to other European countries,
> including France, which is now expelling inciting preachers and
> forbidding veils and including others who sent troops to Iraq. In the
> long run, Spain itself will pay even more.
>
> Is the solution a democratic Arab world? If by democracy we mean
> free elections but also free press, free speech, a functioning judicial
> system, civil liberties, equality to women, free international travel,
> exposure to international media and ideas, laws against racial
> incitement and defamation, and avoidance of lawless behavior regarding
> hospitals, places of worship and children, then yes, democracy is the
> solution. If democracy is just free elections, it is likely that the
> most fanatical regime will be elected, the one whose incitement and
> fabrications are the most inflammatory. We have seen it already in
> Algeria and, to a certain extent, in Turkey. It will happen again, if
> the ground is not prepared very carefully. On the other hand, a certain
> transitional democracy, as in Jordan, may be a better temporary
> solution, paving the way for the real thing, perhaps in the same way
> that an immediate sudden democracy did not work in Russia and would not
> have worked in China.
>
> I have no doubt that the civilized world will prevail. But the
> longer it takes us to understand the new landscape of this war, the more
> costly and painful the victory will be. Europe, more than any other
> region, is the key. Its understandable recoil from wars, following the
> horrors of World War II, may cost thousands of additional innocent
> lives, before the tide will turn.

Team Sergeant

11-07-2004, 07:56

I'm growing tired of this islamic jihad...

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Prominent Saudi religious scholars urged Iraqis to support militants waging holy war against the U.S.-led coalition forces as American troops prepared Saturday for a major assault on the insurgent hotbed of Fallujah (

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,137835,00.html

NousDefionsDoc

11-07-2004, 08:59

http://www.pakistanlink.com/headlines/Nov04/07/13.html

Doc

11-07-2004, 09:36

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/11/4/115255.shtml

lrd

11-07-2004, 12:16

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,137817,00.html

Iraq Inspiring Copycat Beheadings
Saturday, November 06, 2004

ANKARA, Turkey — It was called "Operation Baghdad" (search) and, to be sure, the headless bodies of the three police officers recalled the violence in that city. But these attacks happened in Haiti, not in Iraq....

BMT (RIP)

11-14-2004, 13:41

http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/ns/news/story.jsp?id=2004111318470002621094&dt=20041113184700&w=RTR&coview=

PC Dutch finnally figured out they were wrong.

BMT

ghuinness

11-15-2004, 19:53

'fault lines' of radical Islam growing (http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/sns-ap-islamic-fault-lines,0,2497804.story?coll=sns-ap-world-headlines)

danjam

11-30-2004, 05:34

Do we have a choice ?

http://www.memri.org/bin/latestnews.cgi?ID=SD82004

Airbornelawyer

11-30-2004, 11:51

As I believe I may have stated somewhere near the beginning of this rather long and winding thread, it is not our choice.

Our war is not with Islam or Muslims in general, but with adherents to a particular ideology who believe their ideology condones the murder of anyone - "infidel", insufficiently motiviated Muslim, or passer-by - in the path of their vision.

It is up to Muslims to choose how they respond to the calls of people like this Abu 'Abd ar-Rahman al-'Athari Sultan Ibn Bijad. While among the world's billion or so Muslims very few have answered the call of these people, in far too many places and for far too long far too many Muslims have chosen not to respond. Our President was criticized by the left here for his formulation of "you are either with us or you are with the terrorists" - he was called simple-minded, dividing the world into black and white, etc, - but what he was doing was issuing a call to arms, a response to the Bin Ladens and Abu 'Abd ar-Rahman al-'Athari Sultan Ibn Bijads.

The good news is that in most places I think we are succeeding. A critical mass is developing among Muslims repelled by the actions of these Islamist terrorists. The bad news is twofold: one, that it has taken far too long and still has far to go, and two, that there are too many places where it has not taken root. These places include the West Bank, Hizbullah-controlled South Lebanon, the backwaters of Saudi Arabia, and various Islamist-dominated ghettoes in Western Europe.

There is another problem areas that must be addressed. One is the schools where the ulema are trained. For example, Cairo's Al-Azhar, the world's oldest university, is dominated by "theologians" who think that God doesn't like suicide, but doesn't mind "martyrdom operations," especially when the targets are "invaders" of Muslim lands. Thus the religious leadership will not unequivocally condemn terrorism. The silver lining in this black cloud is that Islam, especially Sunni Islam, is loosely structured and Muslim theologians can only persuade, not order, and can be discredited. We can and must bring more pressure on the Egyptian regime to rein in these ulema, and the Administration's democracy initiative in the Middle East is part of this.

But this is a long term process. It can work, but it is not a guarantee of success. Democratization is not a cure-all. One example Danjam might be more familiar with: Israeli Arabs. They are residents of a democracy but arguably to some extent second-class citizens (I say arguably because, well, it's arguable - for example, there have been various laws for acquiring land from the government, etc., that give a preference to veterans. While facially neutral, these are discriminatory in effect since Jews are drafted while Arabs are not). Israeli Arabs are ethnically no different from Palestinians. But while there have been some Israeli Arab terrorists, there has been nowhere near the kind of radicalization you see among Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and terrorist groups have had little success recruiting Israeli Arabs. Israeli Arabs can see and read the hate being spewed by the PA and the media and religious leaders it controls, but they overwhelmingly reject it. Opinion polls of Israelis and Palestinians show that while majorities of Palestinians generally don't view acts of violence against Israeli and Western civilians as terrorism, majorities of Israeli Arabs, like Israeli Jews, do (The fault line is that many Israeli Arabs also view many acts of the IDF and Israeli police in the territories as state terrorism, while majorities of Israeli Jews do not. Pretty much everyone agrees that the acts of people like Baruch Goldstein were terrorism, though).

World War Two analogies are overwrought. I was thinking of makingt the analogy that our war was with the Nazis and Fascists and not the German and Italian people per se, and that it was the choice of the German and Italian people that dictated the nature of the conflict, but I'm not sure the analogy carries us very far. A better analogy might be if the Nazis never seized power, but operated as a militant movement, exporting the SA bullyboy tactics of the domestic violence in Weimar Germany to other countries. Then they would have been an international terrorist movement, claiming to speak for all "true Aryan" Germans, and it would have been up to the world to demand that Germans speak out and take action, lest the Nazis become the international voice of German-ness by default.

But there actually was a historical situation close to this prior to World War One. The Black Hand movement was a Serb nationalist group that employed international terrorism with the tacit support of many in the government and military of the Kingdom of Serbia. When one of their terrorists assassinated the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, that empire held all of Serbia responsible.

Serbs had a choice again in the 1990s. Side with the former Communists who had recast themselves as ethnic nationalists, or side with the West and choose peace and democracy. They failed that test. In that case, a Serb equivalent of Israeli Arabs, Serbian-Americans, also failed that test. Too many Serbian-Americans, such as Congresswoman Helen Delich Bentley, bought the line being sold by Milosevic's propagandists and did everything they could to prevent us from confronting "Greater Serbia" irredentism and trying to make Yugoslavia's break-up peaceful.

danjam

12-01-2004, 00:31

I think we are basically on the same page.
However you say it much better than I.

Martin

12-15-2004, 15:13

Are normal non-muslims innocents according to muslims (or factions thereof)?

I ask this because an article got me thinking, and it is not a must to have a war with an enemy.

casey

12-22-2004, 12:23

20 pages on this thread, some spirited discussions, alot of very well articulated ponderances and yet the answer IMHO remains the same - It don't matter what the fuck we think - after the 98 fatwa was issued, when kaffirs are killed - its the will of allah, when muslims are killed - its the will of allah, when muj's are killed - yep, its allahs will and congratulations -your a shaheed. Because after all is said and done, their belief is that Islam is the only one true religion must have global dominance - if you doubt this check out the flag.

The only thing I'm sure of is that my grandkids children will still be fighting some strain of this peaceful religion. Like the man said "there's no crying in baseball"
so focus on the problem in your little slice of heaven, and get to work.

The Reaper

12-22-2004, 13:41

casey

12-22-2004, 16:39

Unless we get them to implode in the sort of religious civil war that Christianity has experienced before.

Then they can fear one another. :munchin

TR

From your lips to God's ear Sir!

QRQ 30

12-22-2004, 16:51

Very Interesting:

after all is said and done, their belief is that Islam is the only one true religion must have global dominance

I went to Catholic schoools from kindergarten through the University. The above quote could very well be just as truly preached by substuting "Catholic Religion" or "Dhristianity" for "Islam".

Check out history throughout the crusades, middle ages, Spanish Inquisition and the conquests and conversion of the pagans of the New World. :munchin

casey

12-22-2004, 23:45

Very Interesting:

I went to Catholic schoools from kindergarten through the University. The above quote could very well be just as truly preached by substuting "Catholic Religion" or "Dhristianity" for "Islam".

Check out history throughout the crusades, middle ages, Spanish Inquisition and the conquests and conversion of the pagans of the New World. :munchin

I made it thru grade and high school with Sister St. Incubus too (knuckles intact). But when was the last time you read/heard of a bus full of kids being blown up by a 15yr old for Jesus? A VBIED driven into a building for Christ? An Imir being charged for taking a little boy on a special weekend vacation? How about all those pesky Islamic women wanting to become leaders in the great peaceful religion of peace. You've made my point - Islam is now in their dark ages, with one major difference on their side- modern technology - a very scary combination.

I could not agree with you more re: the crusades, Spanish Inquisition, et al,. Not to be ignorant of history, I choose to look back but not stare - cause whats going to kill me today/tommorrow is right in front of me. Its just easier for me to target acquire looking ahead my brother.

lrd

01-02-2005, 08:10

Holland Daze
From the December 27, 2004 issue: The Dutch rethink multiculturalism.
by Christopher Caldwell
12/27/2004, Volume 010, Issue 15
But on top of that, the Dutch public is being presented with an interpretation of their crisis that other publics in Europe are not. Namely, the view that the problem is not "radicalism" or "marginalization" or "fundamentalism" but Islam--that Islam and democracy don't coexist well. There are several reasons that the debate has taken a different turn in the Netherlands, but primary among them is the presence of outspoken Muslims.http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/005/059darxx.asp?pg=1

lrd

02-18-2005, 08:13

The Norwegian Defence Research Establishment's report on Theo Van Gogh's murder: http://rapporter.ffi.no/rapporter/2005/00376.pdf

Abstract: "This report surveys in depth the available open source information about the ritualistic murder of the filmmaker Theo Van Gogh on the streets of Amsterdam on November 2, 2004. The report makes the case that the murder of Van Gogh was a terrorist attack implemented by an al-Qaida inspired radical Islamist group within the framework of global jihad, and not an act of religious violence by a lone fanatic. The report also argues that the invasion of Iraq was an important motivational factor for the assassin and his accomplices, in addition to grievances related to the Dutch government’s policies concerning immigration and Dutch counter-terrorism measures."

brownapple

02-18-2005, 23:56

I made it thru grade and high school with Sister St. Incubus too (knuckles intact). But when was the last time you read/heard of a bus full of kids being blown up by a 15yr old for Jesus? A VBIED driven into a building for Christ? An Imir being charged for taking a little boy on a special weekend vacation? How about all those pesky Islamic women wanting to become leaders in the great peaceful religion of peace. You've made my point - Islam is now in their dark ages, with one major difference on their side- modern technology - a very scary combination.

I could not agree with you more re: the crusades, Spanish Inquisition, et al,. Not to be ignorant of history, I choose to look back but not stare - cause whats going to kill me today/tommorrow is right in front of me. Its just easier for me to target acquire looking ahead my brother.

Christianity went through the Reformation. Islam has not had its equivilant. The current fight may be the equivilant.

Maybe no one noticed, but Indonesia had elections not all that long ago. And the population (the most populous Muslim nation on Earth) elected a government that ran on a platform to fight fundamental terrorists.

Seems to me that at least one portion of the Islamic world has spoken... and they have spoken in our favor.

Roguish Lawyer

02-19-2005, 00:33

Interesting point, GH.

What did the Iraqi People just say? :munchin

ghuinness

02-25-2005, 23:18

Holland Daze
From the December 27, 2004 issue: The Dutch rethink multiculturalism.
by Christopher Caldwell
12/27/2004, Volume 010, Issue 15
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/005/059darxx.asp?pg=1

Another change: Dutch Commandos set for Afghan mission (http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=1&story_id=17348&name=Dutch+commandos+set+forUS%2Dled+anti%2Dterror +mission)

NousDefionsDoc

03-07-2005, 08:57

http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/20050306-100025-8869r.htm

Remaking the Middle East

By Mark Steyn

The other day in the Guardian, house journal of the British left, Martin Kettle wrote:
"The war was a reckless, provocative, dangerous, lawless piece of unilateral arrogance. But it has nevertheless brought forth a desirable outcome which would not have been achieved at all, or so quickly, by the means that the critics advocated, right though they were in most respects."
Very big of you, pal. And I guess that's as near a mea culpa as we'll get: Even though George W. Bush got everything wrong, it turned out right. Funny how that happens, isn't it?
Click to Visit
In a few years' time, they'll have it down pat -- just as they have with Eastern Europe. Oh, the Soviet bloc [the Middle East thugocracies] was bound to collapse anyway. Nothing to do with that simpleton Ronnie Raygun [Chimpy Bushitler]. In fact, all Raygun [Chimpy] did was delay the inevitable with his ridiculous arms build-up [illegal unprovoked Halliburton oil-grab], as many of us argued at the time: See my 1984 column "Yuri Andropov, the young, smart, sexy new face of Soviet communism" [see the April 2004 column: "Things were better under Saddam: The coalition has destroyed Ba'athism, says Rod Liddle, and with it all hopes of the emergence of secular democracy" -- published, really, in the London Spectator.]
By the way, when's the next Not In Our Name rally? How about this Saturday? Millions of NIONists can flood into the centers of San Francisco, New York, Brussels, Paris and proclaim to folks in Iraq and Lebanon and Egypt and Syria and Jordan and Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian Authority that all the changes under way in the region are most certainly Not In Their Name.
Well, I'm glad they're in mine. I got a lot of things wrong these last three years, but, looking at events last week, I'm glad that, unlike the Nionist Entity, I got the big stuff right. On May 8, 2003, a couple of weeks after the fall of Saddam, I wrote:
"You don't invade Iraq in order to invade everywhere else. You invade Iraq so you don't have to invade everywhere else." And so it's turned out.
Some of the reasons for starting to remake the Middle East in Iraq were obvious within a day or two of September 11, 2001: By his sheer survival, Saddam had become a symbol of America's lack of will -- of the world of Sept. 10, 2001.
But the other reasons weren't all so clear. After the liberation, the doom-mongers dusted down the old Bumper Boys' Book of the British Empire and rattled off a zillion pseudo-authoritative backgrounders about how Iraq was such an artificially cobbled together phony state, the slapdash creation of the Colonial Office in London, you can never make it work.
In fact, the artificially cobbled together country is one reason it has worked so well. The Shi'ites are the biggest group, but, even if they were utterly homogeneous, which they're not, they're not so large they can impose their will easily on the Kurds and Sunnis. When the West's headless chickens were running around squawking there were more than 100 parties on the ballot, it was all going to be one almighty mess, they failed to understand that the design flaw of Iraq is paradoxically its greatest strength: the traditional Arab solution -- the local strongman -- was unavailable.
Instead, in the run-up to the election and in the month since, we have seen various groupings form, hammer out areas of agreement, reach out to other coalitions, identify compromise positions, etc: in a word, politics.
The sight of 8 million Iraqis going to the polls was profoundly moving to their neighbors in Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, etc. But it was all the pluralist multiparty smoke-filled room stuff that caught the fancy of the frustrated political class in those other countries. It would have been possible to find a friendly authoritarian Pervez Musharraf type and install him on one of Saddam's solid gold toilets, but it would have been utterly uninspiring to the world beyond Iraq's borders. It would have missed the point of the exercise.
A couple of years back, I went to hear Paul Wolfowitz. I knew him only by reputation -- the most sinister of all the neocons, the big bad Wolfowitz, the man whose name started with a scary animal and ended Jewishly.
In fact, he was a very soft-spoken chap, who compared the challenges of the Middle East with America's experiments in spreading democracy after World War II. He said he thought it would take less time than Japan, and maybe something closer to the 1989 revolutions in Eastern Europe. I would have scoffed, but he knew so many Iraqis by name -- not just Ahmed Chalabi but a ton of others.
Around the same time, I bumped into Dominique de Villepin, the French foreign minister and man of letters. He was just back from Egypt, where he had been profoundly moved when asked to convey the gratitude of the Arab people to President Chirac for working so tirelessly to prevent a tragic war between Christianity and Islam. You don't say, I said. And, just as a matter of interest, who asked you to convey that?
He hemmed and hawed and eventually said it was President Hosni Mubarak. Being polite, I rolled my eyes only metaphorically, but decided as a long-term proposition I would bet Mr. Wolfowitz's address book of real people against Mr. Villepin's hotline to over-the-hill dictators. The lesson of these last weeks is that Washington's Zionists know the Arab people a lot better than Europe's Arabists.
Islamism, with its plans to destroy America, take back Europe, colonize Australia and set you up with 72 virgins, may be bonkers but it's a big idea. And you can't beat it with a small, shriveled idea like another decade or three of Hosni Mubarak or Bashar Assad or some such.
The Bush administration decided the only big idea they had to sell was liberty. On Jan. 30, Bush's big idea squared off against the head-hackers' big idea -- you vote, you die -- and we know which the Iraqi people chose and which the rest of the region, to one degree or another, is following.
With hindsight, the fellow travelers were let off far too easily when the Iron Curtain fell like a discarded burqa. Little more than a decade later, they barely hesitated a moment before jumping in on the wrong side of history yet again.
Not in your name? Don't worry, it's not.

Mark Steyn is the senior contributing editor for Hollinger Inc. Publications, senior North American columnist for Britain's Telegraph Group, North American editor for the Spectator, and a nationally syndicated columnist.

jatx

03-07-2005, 09:52

Unexpected Whiff of Freedom Proves Bracing for the Mideast
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR

AIRO, March 5 - The leaders of about half of Egypt's rickety opposition parties sat down for one of their regular meetings this week under completely irregular circumstances. In the previous few days, President Hosni Mubarak opened presidential elections to more than one candidate, and street demonstrators helped topple Lebanon's government.

The mood around the table in a battered downtown Cairo office veered between humor and trepidation, participants said, as they faced the prospect of fielding presidential candidates in just 75 days. "This is all totally new, and nobody is ready," said Mahmoud Abaza, deputy leader of the Wafd Party, one of Egypt's few viable opposition groups. "Sometimes even if you don't know how to swim you just have to dive into the water and manage. Political life will change fundamentally."

The entire Middle East seems to be entering uncharted political and social territory with a similar mixture of anticipation and dread. Events in Lebanon and Egypt, following a limited vote for municipal councils in Saudi Arabia and landmark elections in Iraq, as well as the Palestinian territories, combined to give the sense, however tentative, that twilight might be descending on authoritarian Arab governments.

A mix of outside pressure and internal shifts has created this moment. Arabs of a younger, more savvy generation appear more willing to take their dissatisfaction directly to the front stoop of repressive leaders.

In Beirut on Saturday, a crowd of mostly young demonstrators hooted through a speech by the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, as he repeated too-familiar arguments for pan-Arab solidarity, without committing to a timetable for withdrawing Syrian soldiers from Lebanon.

Young protesters have been spurred by the rise of new technology, especially uncensored satellite television, which prevents Arab governments from hiding what is happening on their own streets. The Internet and cellphones have also been deployed to erode censorship and help activists mobilize in ways previous generations never could.

Another factor, pressure from the Bush administration, has emboldened demonstrators, who believe that their governments will be more hesitant to act against them with Washington linking its security to greater freedom after the Sept. 11 attacks. The United States says it will no longer support repressive governments, and young Arabs, while hardly enamored of American policy in the region, want to test that promise.

Egypt's tiny opposition movement - called Kifaya, or Enough in English, in reference to Mr. Mubarak's 24-year tenure - has drawn attention across the region, even if the police easily outnumber the few hundred demonstrators who gather periodically outside courthouses or syndicate offices to bellow their trademark slogan. Protesters used to exploit solidarity demonstrations with the Palestinians to shout a few abusive slogans against Mr. Mubarak. Suddenly, they are beaming their frustration right at him.

"Everything happening is taking place in one context, the bankruptcy of the authoritarian regimes and their rejection by the Arab people," said Michel Kilo, a rare political activist in Damascus. "Democracy is being born and the current authoritarianism is dying."

Even so, the changes wrought in each country thus far appear minor and preliminary, though the idea of challenging authoritarian rule more directly is remarkably new. In Egypt, nobody expects anyone but Mr. Mubarak to win this fall. Old rules against basic freedoms like the right to assemble, essential for a campaign, remain unaltered.

The al-Saud clan in Saudi Arabia has not ceded any real power in letting men, but not women, vote for only half the members of the country's nearly 200 councils.

"Congratulations and More Power," read a computer printout staffers hung on the wall of the office of Tarek O. al-Kasabi, the chairman of a Riyadh hospital, after he won one of seven city council seats.

"People want to enlarge the decision-making process, which is a good and healthy thing," said Mr. Kasabi, noting that he would rather move slowly than see the country destabilized. "We know how to reform better than anyone else. It is our life; nobody from outside can dictate how we live."

In Lebanon, young demonstrators with gelled hair or bare midriffs serve as an unlikely model for popular uprisings across the Arab world, especially since their goals do not quite apply elsewhere.

They seek to rid themselves of an outside power, Syria, and their movement, the region's first modern mass democratic one, was galvanized by a horrific one-time event: the Feb. 14 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri removed a real estate tycoon turned politician who embodied all the country's hopes to rebuild after the civil war from 1975 to 1990.

"If someone like Hariri can be assassinated it means anyone in the country can be killed," said Doreen Khoury, a 26-year-old getting her master's degree in political science, sitting at the entrance to a small green pup tent downtown.

Ms. Khoury and a colleague, Noura Mourad, have been camping for two weeks in the carnival-like tent city that sprang up spontaneously on Martyrs' Square, once the throbbing heart of this city and now largely sandy lots. Most demonstrators were not even born when the war destroyed it, but they know they want something different.

"This is something unknown for the Arab world - it is pacifist, it is democratic and it is spontaneous," Ms. Mourad, 24, said.

Ahmed Beydoun, a sociology professor at the Lebanese University, noting a crucial difference from the rest of the Arab world, said: "The Lebanese want their institutions to work normally, which is prevented by Syrian influence. It is not a problem with the political system itself."

Taken together, events in Cairo, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Beirut and beyond are the first taste of something new, and the participants are bound to thirst for more.

"The general atmosphere awaits big political and social change," said Dawood al-Shirian, a Saudi commentator on Dubai television. "There will have to be some sort of dialogue between the regimes and the people, or there will be confrontation, but things will not remain as they are."

Arabs differ on the degree to which American influence helped foster the changed mood, but there is no doubt that pressure from the Bush administration played some role.

Iraq, however, serves more as a threat than a model. Although many Arabs were impressed by the zeal with which Iraqis turned out to vote on Jan. 30, Iraq remains a synonym for frightening, violent chaos.

"When you are a Syrian, or an Egyptian or a Saudi and you see what happened to Iraqi society over the past two years, you wonder if democracy deserves such instability and such a sacrifice of people," said Ghassan Salame, a former Lebanese cabinet minister.

The changes started long before the American military overthrew Saddam Hussein, but there were false starts. Parliamentary elections in Jordan, Yemen and Morocco, for example, did not dilute the power of their authoritarian rulers.

New technology has driven the steps toward greater freedoms. Satellite stations brought news of demonstrations to a widening audience. Indeed, the crowds in Beirut swelled in part because potential demonstrators could see that government troops had not opened fire. Months earlier, Arabs watched similar events unfold in Ukraine.

But undoubtedly the most important new element is the spontaneous involvement of people themselves.

"You need democrats to produce democracy, you can't produce it through institutions," Mr. Salame said. "You need people to fight for it to make it real. Neither American tanks or domestic institutions can do it, you need democrats. In Beirut, you have a hard core of 10,000 to 15,000 youngsters who are democrats and who are imposing the tempo."

Support for them is far from universal, either at home or abroad, however, and may yet limit what the demonstrators achieve.

Inside Lebanon, important domestic forces like the Syrian-backed Hezbollah, the most powerful Shiite organization, have yet to commit to the goal of ending Syrian dominance.

"Shiites are not comfortable with joining the opposition because they would be indirectly supporting U.S. policy in the region," said Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, an expert on Hezbollah at the Lebanese American University.

United Nations Security Council Resolution 1559, which the United States and France pushed through to make the demand for a Syrian withdrawal an international one, also stipulates disarming Hezbollah. The group is faced with an intense problem. Hezbollah remains popular among all Lebanese for ending the Israeli occupation of the south, but that popularity might fade if it backs Syria's continued presence.

The American campaign for democracy in the Middle East is viewed by nationalists and many Islamists as a conspiracy to weaken the Arabs. The violence in Iraq helps sustain the idea here that the invasion was not about helping the Iraqis, but rather was part of an American thrust for dominance in the region.

Over all, though, many Arabs sense that small cracks are finally appearing in the brick walls they have faced for decades, even if it will take months or even years to determine just how significant those cracks become.

Some activists wonder, for example, if Syria's governing Baath Party is forced to retreat from Lebanon, how long it will take for demonstrations to emerge in Damascus.

"There is such a high percentage of young people who see the future as something totally black," said Mr. Abaza of the Egyptian Wafd Party. "If you open even a small window for them to see the sky, it will be a tremendous force for change. But they have to be able to see the sky."

jatx

03-07-2005, 09:57

So, in light of recent developments, are we at war with Islam? Has your opinion changed either way over the past month? If you're in the ME, I'd love to hear your unfiltered, unvarnished view of the mood on the street. :munchin

zippy

03-08-2005, 20:34

It occurs to me that Moslems are increasingly at war with us, whether we like it or not, and in spite of our hearts and minds campaign.

As Solid points out, perceptions are everything. These people see BW contractors as CIA, Mossaad, spies, etc., and treat them as such regardless of who they are and what their mission is.

I do not see how we can hope to sway those primitive people whose media, elders, religious leaders, and neighbors proselytize against us every day.

We can continue to ignore it, and let it grow.

Or we can acknowlege the fact and treat this as the cancer that it is. Identify those who wish us ill and take this war into their homes, and remove the tumors they represent while simultaneously trying to save the reminder of the Islamic body which is not trying to kill us.

Just my .02.

TR

Roger that....

brownapple

03-09-2005, 08:19

jatx

03-09-2005, 10:20

Just a reminder. The majority of Islam is not within the Middle-East.

Good point, but the most dramatic events of late involving Islam's followers sure have been.

You must pardon me for trying to stir the pot a bit. I have been thinking about one of President Bush's quotes on affrmative action lately - the one where he refers to the "soft bigotry of low expectations." Now before I get flamed or IP banned or sentenced to 6 months in confinement with an airsofter, let me underline that I am not suggesting that anyone here is a bigot. But that turn of phrase has been ringing in my ears when I think of the Middle East and Russia and its former satellite states.

I cannot begin to count the number of times that I've heard the argument that Russia tends to grow authoritarian leaders like weeds because (a) the country is too big to manage any other way, or (b) Russians appreciate "strength" in their leaders and value "law and order" over individual rights and democracy. There may or may not be truth to those statements. I don't know. I'm not an expert on Russia and don't pretend to be. But neither are most of the people who repeat that party line on their way to absolving themselves of caring about what happens inside Russia. And when a half-held idea is repeated frequently enough, that, my friends, is what we call public opinion.

I've heard many similar arguments concerning the ME from "regional experts" over the past two years. They point out, perhaps correctly, that (a) factional conflict is a fixed element in the region, exacerbated by the Allies' meddling after WW2 and everyone's meddling since then, (b) that Islam is fundamentally incompatible with the principles of democracy, (c) that governments in the region are authoritarian or undemocratic because that is the only way to keep the wheels from coming off the whole thing. I understand the basis for each of these arguments, know that they each contain an element of truth, but am disturbed by the fact that when you sum them together the resulting conclusion is a bit convenient and, well, bigoted.

Which is why I think that this thread is so important. For the time being, we have a leader who is willing to take bold, inconvenient steps "to liberate the oppressed." But are we at war with Islam, or merely the Isamists? Is Islam really incompatible with democracy and, if so, how do we square that with the recent outpouring of civic emotion across the region? The answers are important. The act of answering is important. The alternatives are romanticism or the "soft bigotry of low expectations."

lrd

03-13-2005, 06:05

http://iraqthemodel.blogspot.com/2005/03/shorja-announces-sanctions-on-syria.html

casey

03-14-2005, 08:11

jatx

03-14-2005, 09:48

Remember, this is the same religion which encourages "taqiyya". Taqiyya is part of the religious santioned doctrine which utilizes the deliberate dissimulation of false statements regarding religious matters (fatwas) to protect the religion and its believers.

This is very interesting. This is the first mention I've ever read concerning taqiyya, although I'd be the first to admit that my reading and learning has just begun on this topic.

However, I'm not entirely sure that I get your point. You aren't suggesting that we are faced with a broad, popular conspiracy in the Islamic world to sucker the infidels, are you? I have a hard time seeing the Iraqi election turnout and today's massive demonstration in Lebanon (which includes both Muslims and Christians, BTW) as part of an elaborate, taqiyya-derived ruse.

That is probably not what you mean to suggest, though. IMHO, the existence of taqiyya is another enigmatic anachronism that is hard to reconcile with some of the more progressive voices arising from the ME these days. I guess the real question is how anachronistic, in how many believers' estimation, and how central or peripheral taqiyya is to the faith in general. Any ideas there?

My guess (or hope, really) is that some of the more spurious elements of Islam will be jettisoned over time now that the democracy genie is out of the bottle. There are certainly ideas from old Christianity and Judaism that don't get talked about much any more.

Airbornelawyer

03-14-2005, 13:14

"Taqiyya" is a Shi'ite concept. Its origins were in attempts by Sunnis to persecute Shi'as. Some Shi'ite scholars argued that it was permissible to hide ones true beliefs to protect oneself and one's family. Other scholars disagreed, or narrowed the circumstances in which it was allowable or the degree of dissimulation that was allowable, narrowing permissible dissimulation to things like battlefield deception and little white lies. Some Sunni scholars argued that taqiyya was acceptable for any Muslim, and was not a Shi'ite-only ocncept. Others argued that taqiyya was never permissible, because it indicated a lack of faith in God's ability or willingness to protect a believer.

A classic fallacy of logic, and often a deceptive one, is to ascribe a characteristic to a group, without acknowledging that the characteristic is neither universal nor unique to that group. As to the former, I would venture that 9 out of 10 Muslims have no idea what taqiyya is - in any religion, the debates of religious scholars often have little resonance with the practicing faithful. And as noted above, Muslim scholars disagreed and still do on taqiyya.

As to the latter, dissimulation is hardly unique to Muslims. As noted, taqiyya has its origins in persecution by Sunnis of Shi'ites. Can we perhaps think of other examples where a religious minority was or would have been persecuted for its beliefs, and debated the permissibility of hiding those beliefs? Or where religious leaders justified deception in the name of the faith?
And unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews; to them that are under the law, as under the law, that I might gain them that are under the law; To them that are without law, as without law, (being not without law to God, but under the law to Christ,) that I might gain them that are without law. To the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak: I am made all things to all, that I might by all means save some.I Corinthians 9:20-22.

In a series of letters, St. Jerome and St. Augustine had a spirited debate over the permissibility of dissimulation. St. Jerome argued that it was sometimes necessary, and cited Galatians 2:11-14, among other passages. St. Augustine disagreed, arguing that affirmatively lying, about faith or anything else, was a sin, but even he wrote in De Mendacio (On Lying) that "It is lawful then either to him that discourses, disputes, and preaches of things eternal, or to him that narrates or speaks of things temporal pertaining to edification of religion and piety, to conceal at fitting time whatever seems fit to be concealed: but to tell a lie is never lawful, therefore neither to conceal by telling a lie." St. Thomas Aquinas discussed this debate in the Summa Theologica, and concluded that dissimulation was a sin. However, he appears to have accepted St. Augustine's distinction, noting "Just as a man lies when he signifies by word that which he is not, yet lies not when he refrains from saying what he is, for this is sometimes lawful; so also does a man dissemble, when by outward signs of deeds or things he signifies that which he is not, yet he dissembles not if he omits to signify what he is."

In the early Church, the question was whether Christians could engage in dissimulation among non-believers, including Jews and Romans. When the Church achieved power, this became generally a non-issue, until the Reformation. It arose again during the Reformation.

Nicodemite is the term used to describe certain Protestants who hid their beliefs, attending Mass and observing the sacraments. These Protestants cited the example of Nicodemus the Pharisee. Nicodemites were found in even nominally Protestant lands, such as among Anabaptists living in Lutheran lands. John Calvin denounced Nicodemism as apostasy, stating that true believers should accept martyrdom or flight, rather than pretend to worship the false idols of Catholicism.

Where Protestants had power, Catholics also sometimes resorted to dissimulation. The Church of England required loyalty oaths (one of the reasons for the Puritan flight and for the First Amendment in the U.S. Constitution). To protect English Catholics and Jesuit missionaries, Jesuit scholars argued in favor of dissimulation. Puritans generally rejected that, and after pushing the limits of what Augustine might have found permissible, many Puritans chose flight.

A study of this issue is Ways of Lying: Dissimulation, Persecution, and Conformity in Early Modern Europe by Perez Zagorin (Harvard University Press, 1990).

For the same reasons as above for various Christians, Jews also have a history of similar dissimulation. Crypto-Judaism refers primarily to Sephardim in Spain, forced to convert to Christianity at the time of the Inquisition, who secretly maintained their Jewish beliefs while outwardly acting Catholic.

Dissimulation, when it arises, primarily occurs only among religious minorities who actively face persecution from a majority. In the face of anti-Semitism, Jews in Europe generally kept to themselves and avoided public manifestations of their religious beliefs, but did not actively practice dissimulation except in certain circumstances such as the Inquisition. Jews in Muslim lands also followed this model, practicing dissimulation only in cases of active persecution such as under the Almohads in the 1200s. During the Reformation, Protestant Nicodemites existed in Catholic areas, and Anabaptits Nicodemites in Lutheran areas. Catholics practiced dissimulation in Protestant England (Anglican and Puritan), and Puritans themselves toed a fine line (even when Puritans were technically in power in England).

Minority sects, especially ones considered heretical or apostate, also have practiced dissimulation. Shi'ites are no longer considered merely a sect (though Wahhabis, for instance, do consider them heretical), but when taqiyya arose, they were a persecuted minority. Other sects considered heretical or apostate who have engaged in the practice include Isma'ilis, Druze and Alawites, all offshoots of Sevener Shi'ism. The Dönme, a Jewish messianic sect founded in Salonika in the Ottoman Empire, also practiced dissimulation after publicly converting to Islam. Today, their descendants are neither Jewish nor Muslim.

Dissimulation has a history among Jews, Christians and Muslims, but is not a defining characteristic of Judaism, Christianity or Islam.

casey

03-14-2005, 13:35

This is very interesting. This is the first mention I've ever read concerning taqiyya, although I'd be the first to admit that my reading and learning has just begun on this topic.

It is at this point that something in your brain should have stopped you from posting further.

Impressive, in just a few short paragraphs you have discovered a new concept, asked and assumed my answer to your question, then managed to form an opinion and develop a focused muse (re: said concept) on the existence of taqiyya.
If I may suggest - before posting again, actually read the fatwas that have been issued (take it easy, and start from 98 on) and try and understand what kind of religion encourages same. Grasp what Sharia' Law is all about, then ask yourself "Am I hated because I'm black, British, handicapped, white, democrat, communist, short, educated, American, republican, et al...... or is it just because I am not muslim"?

There are certainly ideas from old Christianity and Judaism that don't get talked about much any more. Yes, yes, I keep hearing this. But would any nation in the world today allow Christianity or Judaism to teach that beheading any non-beliver is still a relative punishment? How about if it was taught in a high school text book to all sophmores, juniors and seniors as it is today in Saudia Arabia?

Don't answer - turn off your TV and read.

jatx

03-14-2005, 16:20

Don't answer - turn off your TV and read.

PM inbound

Pete

03-14-2005, 16:38

"Yes"

That's the short answer.

The long answer can be wrapped around 99 trees from here to next Sunday and debated at every turn but still boils down to "Yes".

Pete

brownapple

03-15-2005, 07:31

Yes, yes, I keep hearing this. But would any nation in the world today allow Christianity or Judaism to teach that beheading any non-beliver is still a relative punishment? How about if it was taught in a high school text book to all sophmores, juniors and seniors as it is today in Saudia Arabia?

Don't answer - turn off your TV and read.

Saudi Arabia is not in itself representative of Islam. Shall we suggest that Jim Jones was representative of Christianity?

casey

03-15-2005, 08:19

Saudi Arabia is not in itself representative of Islam. Shall we suggest that Jim Jones was representative of Christianity?

Thats my point, Saudi Arabia is considered the most PROGRESSIVE of all the Islamic states, yet no one questions the condemnation and if necessary, killing of non-believers - it is merely an excepted concept within the religion.

Jim Jones, Hale Bop, Waco or any of the other cults which utilized the cloak of Christianity make the news because they kill themselves or are led to a confrontation. Jone's people shot up the Sen and his staff because they were going to expose them, not because they refused to convert to his version of the religion.

The total numbers involved in cult like religious groups doesn't amount to even a drop in the bucket when compared to the numbers churned out in the madrassas and mosques every day, week, month, year, and or decade in the ongoing educational process of the great peaceful religion.

Pete put it perfectly The long answer can be wrapped around 99 trees from here to next Sunday and debated at every turn but still boils down to "Yes". The bottom line is - it really doesn't matter what we think - the fatwas have been issued, and to them - IT'S ON - forever - until the black flag flies over the entire world. So whether it AQ, Abu Sayyaf, or even the JI where you are, their numbers continue to multiply due to religious conviction first.

Jimbo

03-15-2005, 10:19

The total numbers involved in cult like religious groups doesn't amount to even a drop in the bucket when compared to the numbers churned out in the madrassas and mosques every day, week, month, year, and or decade in the ongoing educational process of the great peaceful religion.

What do those numbers look like, exactly?

SA is hardly the most progressive of Islamic countries. Bahrain, Turkey and the UAE are FAR more progressive (allowing women to drive, booze to be sold, foreigners to buy property, etc...)

Airbornelawyer

03-15-2005, 15:51

Thats my point, Saudi Arabia is considered the most PROGRESSIVE of all the Islamic states, yet no one questions the condemnation and if necessary, killing of non-believers - it is merely an excepted concept within the religion. I have no idea what you think "progressive" means, but Saudi Arabia is by no measure considered the "most PROGRESSIVE of all the Islamic states." In fact, the 9-11 terrorists were primarily motivated by their hatred for that state and its alliance with the United States. Even Wahhabis would not consider themselves "progressive." They are as reactionary as one can get, viewing Shi'ites and even most Sunni Muslims as apostates.

casey

03-15-2005, 16:52

I used the word progressive in capitals to insinuate biting sarcasm.

On the one hand the Saudi's pay huge sums to public relations and media lobbies (some here in the US) to push forward the notion worldwide that the kingdom flourishes under modern technology and, is in their terms - "progressive". Yet because of the exact reasons AL stated they must leave defined concepts (however antiquated) of the religion in place.

My point (albiet to subtle) was to point out this hypocrisy and that even they, are scared of the militants amongst them.

Yes, I do know what progressive means, and yes, I believe we are at war with islam.

Roguish Lawyer

03-15-2005, 20:50

I love that this debate is still raging. :munchin

The Reaper

03-15-2005, 20:56

I used the word progressive in capitals to insinuate biting sarcasm.

It appears that your sarcasm was wasted here, hermano. :D

TR

NousDefionsDoc

03-15-2005, 21:22

In fact, the 9-11 terrorists were primarily motivated by their hatred for that state and its alliance with the United States.
How do you know that?

brownapple

03-16-2005, 02:07

Thats my point, Saudi Arabia is considered the most PROGRESSIVE of all the Islamic states,

By who?

casey

03-16-2005, 06:39

By who?

Finger outside the trigger guard Sir. See subtle biting sacasm post 3 above.

brownapple

03-17-2005, 10:09

Finger outside the trigger guard Sir. See subtle biting sacasm post 3 above.

Well, I think you missed the mark. One, because you effectively denigrated the Islamic nations that are progressive, and two, because you used that sarcastic statement to support your position regarding whether we are at war with Islam thereby nicely holing your own argument with your inability to support it without resorting to sarcasm.

The Reaper

03-17-2005, 10:42

One, because you effectively denigrated the Islamic nations that are progressive...

Isn't that a judgement call, and pretty relative at that?

The most progressive Moslem country out there is still mired in 14th Century dogma.

Do you really see a lot of Moslem countries advocating progressive causes?

Not to intrude further, but I think casey did say in a subsequent post that he understood and believed that we are at war with Islam.

TR

Airbornelawyer

03-17-2005, 10:54

How do you know that?
Because they said so.

Team Sergeant

03-17-2005, 13:11

casey

03-17-2005, 15:15

Well, I think you missed the mark. One, because you effectively denigrated the Islamic nations that are progressive, and two, because you used that sarcastic statement to support your position regarding whether we are at war with Islam thereby nicely holing your own argument with your inability to support it without resorting to sarcasm.

It is my opinion that a true Islamic nation cannot be progressive. I used a sarcastic statement not to support anything, but merely to point out the hypocricy of an Islamic state spending millions to bill itself as a truly progressive
nation while teaching the following religious passages to all Saudi high school students:

Studies in Theology: Tradition and Morals, Grade 11, (2001) pp. 291-92 ...This noble [Qur'anic] Surah [Surat Muhammad]... deals with questions of which the most important are as follows: 'Encouraging the faithful to perform jihad in God's cause, to behead the infidels…

"Surahs of Muhammad, Al-Fath, Al-Hujurat and Qaf, Grade 11, (2002) p. 9 …When you meet them in order to fight [them], do not be seized by compassion [towards them] but strike the[ir] necks powerfully, cutting the neck and making the organ [the head of the body] fly off [the body].' "

I have yet to hear a muj yell "take that for my Chechen homeland" "come on lads this is for Pakistan" no, let me think, what is it they yell in religious context??? Allah something or other. (biting sarcasm - no other point intended)

The fact is I choose to believe them when they say that they want Islam to dominate the world, and consume the non-believers, and I have seen how they are preparing. It is a long game to them, and they do what they do for their future generations, not just today. I believe they really mean it when they issue religious edicts, and yes I still believe we are at war with a religion. I hope to God I'm wrong and I'll be the first to post here if so. But in reality I believe our grandchildren will be having this same ole conversation in years to come.

The Reaper

03-17-2005, 15:39

So, casey.

A fine Saint Patty's Day to ya'!

At least we can taste a wee bit o' Guinness today in our progressive country, speak our minds publicly, whether we like the government or no', and go to Mass later, if we wish.

Which progressive Moslem country permits that?

I agree, unless we find a way to kill all of them who wish it, this is going to go on for a long time.

In the end, they will either reform their religion to accept those with other beliefs, subjugate us all, or die for their cause.

TR

Roguish Lawyer

03-17-2005, 16:13

So, casey.

A fine Saint Patty's Day to ya'!

At least we can taste a wee bit o' Guinness today in our progressive country, speak our minds publicly, whether we like the government or no', and go to Mass later, if we wish.

NYC is a good place to be on this day.

In the end, they will either reform their religion to accept those with other beliefs, subjugate us all, or die for their cause.

Those who dispute that we are at war with "Islam" appear to believe that some Muslims accept those with other beliefs. This really is the ultimate question, isn't it? I'm still waiting for a cogent explanation of which Muslim sects, if any, preach meaningful tolerance.

casey

03-17-2005, 16:25

Peregrino

03-17-2005, 20:59

I hold out hope for the latter Sir. And a fine St. Patty's Day to all, insha'allah.

Now that's worthy sarcasm! FWIW I too favor sending them to their martyr's reward. Having read some of the choicer passages in the Qur'an I'm afraid it's the only peace we're destined to have. Peregrino

12B4S

03-18-2005, 03:40

This is just toooooooooo good, however it's closing in on 0300 here and my thoughts are light years away from my typing abilities. Later ...

brownapple

03-18-2005, 09:19

Isn't that a judgement call, and pretty relative at that?

The most progressive Moslem country out there is still mired in 14th Century dogma.

Do you really see a lot of Moslem countries advocating progressive causes?

Not to intrude further, but I think casey did say in a subsequent post that he understood and believed that we are at war with Islam.

TR

Indonesia and Malaysia are at least as progressive as many of the countries in the world, including a large number of the nations found south of the United States.

And Casey stating that he believed we were at war with Islam is the point of how poorly aimed his sarcasm was.

brownapple

03-18-2005, 09:27

In the end, they will either reform their religion to accept those with other beliefs, subjugate us all, or die for their cause.

Sounds like the reformation, doesn't it?

Would all of you fine "liberators of the oppressed" have been as quick to condemn all of Christianity?

Just curious, you understand. Because for a group of people who are supposed to have an understanding of cultural differences, I see an awful lot of inability to do so when it comes to a particular religion.

Oh, and Team Sergeant? Indonesia, the most populated Islamic nation in the world, and Malaysia, another heavily populated Islamic nation. Both are very progressive, even to the point of allowing someone to tip a Guinness on St. Patty's day... and both are democracies.

And let's not forget Turkey, which may not meet US standards, but is a whole lot better than Iran.

NousDefionsDoc

03-18-2005, 09:32

I've been to Turkey GH, albeit a long, long time ago. I would hardly use the term "progressive" to describe it. Repressive would be much more accurate in my opinion.

The Reaper

03-18-2005, 10:02

Sounds like the reformation, doesn't it?

Would all of you fine "liberators of the oppressed" have been as quick to condemn all of Christianity?

Just curious, you understand. Because for a group of people who are supposed to have an understanding of cultural differences, I see an awful lot of inability to do so when it comes to a particular religion.

Oh, and Team Sergeant? Indonesia, the most populated Islamic nation in the world, and Malaysia, another heavily populated Islamic nation. Both are very progressive, even to the point of allowing someone to tip a Guinness on St. Patty's day... and both are democracies.

And let's not forget Turkey, which may not meet US standards, but is a whole lot better than Iran.

GH, you seem to do a lot of selective reading of these posts.

Did you miss the first part, where I stated that "they will either reform their religion to accept those with other beliefs"? That is the "win-win" strategy.

The Jihadists have repeatedly stated that their goal is to kill or convert the infidels. The madrassas teach the same line, and add that it is no crime to kill a non-believer. Few Imams or other senior Islamic clerics have publicly denounced that. If the Indonesians and Malays want to be of a different opinion, they sure haven't spoken up about it. I do recall seeing some OBL t-shirts in the tsunami refugees, do you think we handed those out?

Essentially, we are faced with a situation akin to having a homicidal murderer for a neighbor. He will be treated and healed (have an epiphany, be arrested or whatever), he will kill us, or we will have to kill him to protect ourselves.

Can you speak out on the streets of Jakarta against the government or have an Easter parade? Are women in Malasia accorded all of the same rights as men?

For a person who went through training, you seem to be having trouble identifying a threat and developing a strategy to eliminate it. What do you propose? Turning the other cheek a 40th or 50th time? Containment? Appeasement?

Do Moslems pose a threat to Americans/non-Moslems? Do Moslems view the US/non-Moslem countries as targets? Do a significant number of Moslems oppose the targeting of Americans/non-Moslems? Do the leaders of Islam oppose the attacks on Americans/non-Moslems? Have they spoken out against terrorism and crimes committed against Americans/non-Moslems? What have Indonesia and Malaysia done to help us in the GWOT?

TR

NousDefionsDoc

03-18-2005, 10:27

What dumbass started this thread anyway?

Jimbo

03-18-2005, 10:59

I've been to Turkey GH, albeit a long, long time ago. I would hardly use the term "progressive" to describe it. Repressive would be much more accurate in my opinion.

I lived in rural Turkey in 2000. I also spent some time in the cities. I didn't see anything that would be considered repressive. The press is fairly open and free.

The nearest grocery store was about a 40 min drive away. It had beer on the shelves and a pork section in the deli.

Airbornelawyer

03-18-2005, 10:59

I've been to Turkey GH, albeit a long, long time ago. I would hardly use the term "progressive" to describe it. Repressive would be much more accurate in my opinion.I have been to Turkey too. I lived there. I speak the language. I have also lived and loved among Turkish Germans.

"Repressive" is not the opposite of "progressive." Are you claiming that all that is progressive in Turkey is solely the result of state and militarily-enforced secular Atatürkism? That the people are all secretly chomping at the bit to kill infidels, and only the army (you know, the ones who actually have the means to kill infidels) is stopping them?

At its December 2004 Analysts' Meeting, Efes Beverage Group (which controls 77% of the Turkish beer market and is a market leader in six other markets, including Russia), reported that its beer business has had a compounded annual growth rate between 1996 and 2003 of 15%. It grew from the 10th largest brewer in Europe in 2002 to 6th in 2003. In 2003, its Turkish production was 780 million liters. In the past three years, its Turkish sales grew by a 3% compounded annual growth rate. From 2002 to 2003, its Turkish beer sales grew by 41% and gross profits by 50%. Turkey beer operations recorded a 2002 to 2003 increase in EBITDA of 70% and in net profits of 213%.

Efes sold 640 million liters of beer in Turkey in 2003, up from 600 million in 2002. Turkey beer sales were up 10% in the first quarter of 2004.

According to a 2004 report by market researcher Euromonitor International, the total alcoholic drinks market in Turkey was expected to reach nearly 928 million liters in 2003, up by 9% on the previous year in volume terms (based on Efes' market share and sales, the total actually exceeded Euromonitor's predictions).

Over the past decade, beer has displaced raki, the Turkish liquor similar to ouzo, as the drink of choice among young Turks. Wine sales are also growing.

I suppose the Army is holding up pictures of Atatürk and force-drinking all those otherwise jihadist Turks to drink.

Or maybe it is the repressive advertising featuring un-progressive Muslims like model Selin Toktay.

Roguish Lawyer

03-18-2005, 11:01

Jimbo's point seems to confirm that we are not at war with every Muslim, just certain groups of them. Or do you disagree with that, TR, casey and others taking the affirmative position?

Jimbo

03-18-2005, 11:01

Few Imams or other senior Islamic clerics have publicly denounced that.

http://www.muhajabah.com/otherscondemn.php

NousDefionsDoc

03-18-2005, 11:11

SPAM and beer as a sign of progress? OK

AL - ask the Armenians and the Kurds.

Like I said, it was a long time ago.

The Reaper

03-18-2005, 11:11

http://www.muhajabah.com/otherscondemn.php

I see American, British, Canadian, Australian, and NZ muslims condemning the 9/11 attacks, and a few selected others.

Was that the last time they spoke up against terrorism?

Where are the statements speaking out against ongoing terrorism by major players in predominantly Moslem countries?

You are either with us, or you are against us in this struggle.

TR

jatx

03-18-2005, 11:18

Jimbo's point seems to confirm that we are not at war with every Muslim, just certain groups of them. Or do you disagree with that, TR, casey and others taking the affirmative position?

Forgive me, but I thought their general point has been that the distinction does not matter so long as the Islamic world is divided primarily between a relatively small number of violent Islamofascists and a larger majority of passive observers who will not organize against them.

I do not like the statement that we, "are at war with Islam." However, I understand that, until such time as a vocal opposition to the Islamofascists emerges from within the Islamic community, the distinction is of little utility to those who are taking the fight to our enemies. Until then, they will continue to focus on targeting our most dangerous adversaries and those who provide them comfort and aid. When or if a vocal opposition appears, supporting those individuals will become more of a concern for SF. Until then, they are focused on the 25m target and, in any case, no one is suggesting that we take the war to Islam's passive majority. They are properly the focus of public diplomacy.

Have I got this right?

Peregrino

03-18-2005, 11:35

To continue on the line of TR's post - It doesn't matter if we think we're in a war with Islam. Muslims think they're in a perpetual state of war with al'Islam (in case anybody missed it - that's us - everybody who has not accepted Mohammed as the one true prophet of Allah, blessed be His name!). Wars only require one aggressor. Unless the entire western world wakes up to the fact that a state of WAR (not just an intelectual conflict of opposing ideologies) exists, we will lose. Losing means life does not continue as we know it. It gets very ugly. And they fight the long fight. France is about to get it's justice, current population trends project they will be a Muslim nation w/i 50 years as will most of Southern Europe. Put your head in the sand and be an easy target or work to redirect their culture and eliminate the militancy that IS the ROOT of the Muslim religion. Like most good SF Soldiers, I have done the cultural studies, objectively believe it or not, and our only chance to win is to succeed in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Lebanon. Those three countries/situations, represent our best chance to present an alternative to Wahabiism (and other fundamentalists) and suborn the people into wanting more than another theocracy based on the ravings of a 7th century megalomaniac and delusions that the 14th century was a "Golden Age". As Sun Tsu said - Know your enemy -------- . FWIW - Peregrino

Airbornelawyer

03-18-2005, 11:39

The Jihadists have repeatedly stated that their goal is to kill or convert the infidels. The madrassas teach the same line, and add that it is no crime to kill a non-believer. Few Imams or other senior Islamic clerics have publicly denounced that. If the Indonesians and Malays want to be of a different opinion, they sure haven't spoken up about it. I do recall seeing some OBL t-shirts in the tsunami refugees, do you think we handed those out?
The Jihadists? The madrassas? Few Imams. Some OBL t-shirts.

What percentage of Muslims are jihadists (and assuming you mean only those for whom jihad means a duty to propagate the faith by war, and not just a duty to propagate the faith - as the son of a Baptist missionary I know a little about the latter not just for Muslims)? What percentage of madrasas "teach the same line"? As I noted in another thread, madrasas in Bangladesh for example are state-supervised and essentially little different from regular schools than parochial schools in the US are from private schools. What percentage of imams are "jihadists"? How many kids were wearing OBL t-shirts (or Che t-shirts)? Sometimes it seems like some here think the answer to each is 100%, or at least close enough as not to matter, and seem utterly uninterested in actually testing that hypothesis, instead only seeking sources that confirm the preconception.

Essentially, we are faced with a situation akin to having a homicidal murderer for a neighbor. He will be treated and healed (have an epiphany, be arrested or whatever), he will kill us, or we will have to kill him to protect ourselves.Actually, we seem to be faced with a situation where someone in the neighbor's house is a murderer, and some in the family fear speaking out while others seek to put family first (and any cop who has answered a domestic disturbance call can tell you how strong that bond can be) and a few have the courage to speak out. The neighbors are the Jones. Some would like to go after the murderer, while others seem content to treat all Jones as murderers.

What have Indonesia and Malaysia done to help us in the GWOT?What have France and Germany and Belgium and Mexico and Argentina and Brazil and Chile and Greece and myriad other predominantly Christian countries done? What has Russia done, besides try to thwart us on confronting Iraq and Iran and use the GWOT as an excuse to brand all Chechens as jihadists ripe for killing?

The Reaper

03-18-2005, 11:50

The Jihadists? The madrassas? Few Imams. Some OBL t-shirts.

What percentage of Muslims are jihadists (and assuming you mean only those for whom jihad means a duty to propagate the faith by war, and not just a duty to propagate the faith - as the son of a Baptist missionary I know a little about the latter not just for Muslims)? What percentage of madrasas "teach the same line"? As I noted in another thread, madrasas in Bangladesh for example are state-supervised and essentially little different from regular schools than parochial schools in the US are from private schools. What percentage of imams are "jihadists"? How many kids were wearing OBL t-shirts (or Che t-shirts)? Sometimes it seems like some here think the answer to each is 100%, or at least close enough as not to matter, and seem utterly uninterested in actually testing that hypothesis, instead only seeking sources that confirm the preconception.

What percentage of Germans in 1941 were actually Nazis?

Should we not have gone to war with them because the majority were not party members or claimed not to know what was going on in the camps?

Was bombing civilian targets in Germany wrong because they were not actually Nazis?

Should the Nuremberg trials have accepted the "I was only following orders" excuse?

How about the Japanese? There were only a few thousand directly responsible for the Pearl Harbor attack, Hell, we burned 50 times that number in incendiary raids on Tokyo, almost all of whom had nothing to do with the attack. Was that wrong?

What proof should we have of hostile intent (or collaborative support) by separate individuals before we are permitted to engage them? How about their hosts?

Just a few random thoughts, I maintain that we are at war with every Moslem who wants to be at war with us, and can extend that to supporting members as we see fit.

TR

Airbornelawyer

03-18-2005, 11:54

AL - ask the Armenians and the Kurds.
Ask them what?

Kurds are Muslims. Turkish repression of Kurdish national identity is a nationalist idea, not sectarian. It is in fact a Western concept, a product of the Enlightenment. Turkey was following the French example, among others.

At the time of the Revolution, only about 25% of people in France spoke French (the rest spoke Breton, Provencal, German, Flemish and various other languages and dialects) and there was no concept of citizenship. After Napoleon, there was a French nation (for better or worse) made up of French citizens. That is what Atatürk was trying to create in Turkey out of the ashes of the Ottoman Empire. You are welcome to criticize that policy, but it has nothing to do with Islam.

As for the Armenians, that was perpetrated under the Ottoman Empire. In 1915. It also had ethnic and military components, as well as religious. The Ottomans long feared that Armenians would help the Russians, and their (Christian) German allies agreed.

1915 was 25-30 years before people in a predominantly Christian part of the world killed 6 million people for their religion. If you are going to cite the Armenian genocide as evidence that modern Turkey is a repressive Muslim state, then the Holocaust seems like even better evidence that the West is full of genocidal Christians.

NousDefionsDoc

03-18-2005, 12:02

A progressive state doesn't murder its citizens by the millions no matter their religion or cause.

Turks are still killing Armenians, just not in large groups.

The conversation was Turkey: Progressive or not? Not did Hitler kill Jews. Do you consider Nazi Germany representative of a progressive state?

Trip_Wire (RIP)

03-18-2005, 18:31

American Saudi Schools: Home Grown Sleeper-Cells
By Barbara J. Stock
March 3, 2005

There are thousands of Saudi-funded Islamic schools in America. While we have been aware of this for years, Americans were ignorant about what was being taught in those schools to American children who just happen to be Muslim. The Saudi Ministry of Education has been creating a network of sleeper-cells right in the heart of America.

For a modest investment, the Saudi government has had total access to thousands of young American minds and has used that opportunity to corrupt and mold those young minds into its view of the perfect Muslim. The perfect Muslim is full of hate for all non-Muslims, has no loyalty to the United States, and is convinced that only radical Islam--Wahhabism--is the correct interpretation of Islam. There are now thousands of pre-programmed terrorists in America, waiting for the war against the American infidel to begin in earnest. These soldiers do not consider themselves: they know they are loyal Muslims in the army of Islam.

The American flag waves in front of each Saudi-supported American school, but the students continue to be taught that someday it will be replaced with the flag of Islam. They believe it is just a matter of time. These young people have been totally indoctrinated in the Wahhabism belief that has been taught in Saudi Arabia for two centuries. Children are not born terrorists. Terrorists are created. The Saudis have been very busy doing just that--right here in America.

There are two major questions that remain: How much longer will Americans tolerate this Saudi hate-filled school system in our midst and how much damage has been done? One has to assume that the hate-everyone-not-Muslim curriculum is standard in all of them.

After other embarrassing moments for the Saudis, the airwaves have been saturated with denials and righteous indignation from the Saudi government. The Royal House of Saud has been noticeably silent this time. Perhaps there is nothing for them to say. Nothing has changed in Saudi Arabia. The radical Wahhabi interpretation of the Quran is still being taught to Saudi children. Where do you think Bin Laden learned it? What angered Bin Laden was the fact that he felt that the Royal Family had strayed from the strict path of Islam because of Western influence.

Long ago, the House of Saud turned over the Education Ministry to the Wahhabi clerics with the understanding that the Royal Family would not be bothered. The Saudi leaders have allowed this hatred to be spread all over the world in the hopes of securing their own safety.

Wahhabism has given birth to the likes of Bin Laden and the Taliban. These Islamic terrorists are the strictest of the strict. Wahhabies are the most violent and think nothing of slitting the throat of a fellow Muslim that does not practice Wahhabism. This is the religion of our "good friends," the Saudis.

What the Saudis have done is create perhaps the largest Fifth Column in history. There is no way of knowing how many of those American Muslim children, now adults, will follow the clarion call when it is given. That call will be given. Arabs do nothing on impulse. The attack on 9/11 was more than six years in the making. It is unlikely that the call will come from the Saudi Arabian government. The Saudis lost control of the situation years ago. The self-appointed-by-Allah rulers of Saudi Arabia are in the cross-hairs themselves. Frankenstein's monster has come home seeking its creator.

In July, 2004, the Saudis proudly posted on Saudi Institutes webpage: "We need your Support! Join the Saudi Institute in fighting terrorism and promoting democracy in Saudi Arabia." While the Saudis were saying these lovely and reassuring words publicly, Erik Ruselowski published an opinion editorial in the Virginia Pilot that gave the first line of the teachers manual used for teaching first graders: "For the teacher: Explain that all religions, other than Islam, are false, including that of the Jews, Christians, and all others." There seems to be a conflict between what the Saudis say and what they do. The Islamic Academy in Alexandria, Virginia, is completely funded by the Saudi government and some of its more illustrious graduates are now making a name for themselves.

Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, an American, graduated from that academy six years ago at the top of his class. He now faces 80 years in prison for being a traitor to his country. This must baffle most Muslims, who have no allegiance to any country. Their only allegiance is to Islam. This is what they have been taught since birth. It is all they know. Muslims have no borders.

Saudi children are taught to hate the Jews. They believe that Jews are the root of all things evil. A high school text book has lines such as this that must be memorized by all students: "The Hour will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews, and Muslims will kill all the Jews." Saudi children are taught that it is not a crime to kill a Jew. In fact, the extermination of the Jews is encouraged and these children are taught that this pleases Allah. The "end-time" cannot come if Muslims have not destroyed the Jew. This mindset has now been expanded to include Christians, Hindus, and even Muslims who do not follow Wahhabism. It is not an accident that 15 of the 19 highjackers on 9/11were Saudi. The hatred taught to them in Saudi schools gave birth to their 9/11 mission.

Many Muslims brag that Islam is the "fastest growing religion in the world." These new converts have not been brainwashed since infancy, so the indoctrination needs to be swift and harsh. In 1993, the Islamic Assembly of North America published the "Answers to Common Questions to New Muslims." The question put to these Islamic leaders was: "Now that I am Muslim, can I keep my non-Muslim friends that I have known all my life?" Their answer should anger every American. These new Muslims were told to break all ties with non-Muslim friends and family. "You should try to remain away from mixing with non-Muslims because mixing with them removes your religious zealousness and pride from your heart and may lead you to having love and compassion in your heart for them. ...it is obligatory upon a Muslim to be free of the people of infidelity and to hate them for the sake of Allah." Hatred is quickly inserted to new converts mind-set. They isolate and indoctrinate. Americans call it brainwashing.

Islam doesn't allow love and compassion for un-believers. It would be difficult for new converts to kill those that they consider friends. While this teaching session goes on to say that infidels should not be harmed, there is the obligatory exception: "One must not harm them, hurt them or oppose them without justice and rights to do so, as long as they are not fighting us." But we are fighting them because the vast majority of Americans do not wish to be Muslim. This one line justifies killing their neighbor or even their brother if he is not Muslim.

Hatred for infidels is preached from American mosques. The absolute belief that Islam will rule the world is taught in Islamic schools in America and all over the world. New converts to Islam are isolated and indoctrinated to hate their country and their people. The war is here. It's just that the shooting hasn't started yet.

Barbara Stock is a working registered nurse with 24 years of experience.

She is the mother of two grown sons and two grandchildren.

Barbara is a regular contributor to AmericanDaily, ReNewAmerica, Bushcountry, RepublicanDailyNews, The Judson Cox Newsletter, and Prudent Politics. She has also been published on Intellectual Conservative, TownHall, New Republic, Israeli News, and even the Retired NYCFD website.

Barbara has her own webpage at Republican and Proud.

brownapple

03-18-2005, 20:45

GH, you seem to do a lot of selective reading of these posts.

Did you miss the first part, where I stated that "they will either reform their religion to accept those with other beliefs"? That is the "win-win" strategy.

The Jihadists have repeatedly stated that their goal is to kill or convert the infidels. The madrassas teach the same line, and add that it is no crime to kill a non-believer. Few Imams or other senior Islamic clerics have publicly denounced that. If the Indonesians and Malays want to be of a different opinion, they sure haven't spoken up about it. I do recall seeing some OBL t-shirts in the tsunami refugees, do you think we handed those out?

The Jihadists are not Islam.

Essentially, we are faced with a situation akin to having a homicidal murderer for a neighbor. He will be treated and healed (have an epiphany, be arrested or whatever), he will kill us, or we will have to kill him to protect ourselves.

Agree entirely. Let's not toss the innocent neighbors who happen to share a single characteristic with that murderer into the same group with him.

Can you speak out on the streets of Jakarta against the government or have an Easter parade?

Yes.

Are women in Malasia accorded all of the same rights as men?

Yes.

For a person who went through training, you seem to be having trouble identifying a threat and developing a strategy to eliminate it. What do you propose? Turning the other cheek a 40th or 50th time? Containment? Appeasement?

No, I have a problem with misidentifying the threat and thereby developing a strategy that is inappropriate and excessive. The threat is a relatively small portion of a particular segment of Islam. It is not Islam, and it can be demonstrated that portions of Islam are our allies.

Do Moslems pose a threat to Americans/non-Moslems?

As a whole, no. Do Catholics pose a threat to Protestants? Or is that only a problem in Northern Ireland?

Do Moslems view the US/non-Moslem countries as targets?

Again, as a whole, no. Do Catholics view England as a target? Or is it a particular group of Irish Catholic terrorists?

Do a significant number of Moslems oppose the targeting of Americans/non-Moslems?

Yes.

Do the leaders of Islam oppose the attacks on Americans/non-Moslems?

Considering one was recently elected on an anti-Islamic terrorism platform, the answer is obviously yes.

Have they spoken out against terrorism and crimes committed against Americans/non-Moslems?

Yes.

What have Indonesia and Malaysia done to help us in the GWOT?

Taken into custody, prosecuted, jailed and killed more Al Queda, JI, etc. than have most of the other nations in the world. Provided intelligence allowing us and Thailand to find and arrest more.

brownapple

03-18-2005, 20:48

I've been to Turkey GH, albeit a long, long time ago. I would hardly use the term "progressive" to describe it. Repressive would be much more accurate in my opinion.

Compared to Iran? Iraq until two years ago?

It is a democracy, even if not in the form that the US is used to.

casey

03-19-2005, 11:51

Actually, we seem to be faced with a situation where someone in the neighbor's house is a murderer, and some in the family fear speaking out while others seek to put family first (and any cop who has answered a domestic disturbance call can tell you how strong that bond can be) and a few have the courage to speak out. The neighbors are the Jones. Some would like to go after the murderer, while others seem content to treat all Jones as murderers.

= TR I maintain that we are at war with every Moslem who wants to be at war with us, and can extend that to supporting members as we see fit.

AL, you have made TR's point with your excellent anology . During every LEO operation to arrest any murderer or violent felon, you go in understanding that the friend (neighbor) and or family bond (religion) can be very volatile. Hell, even the thug (muj) know this - thats why he hides there. But, it is the neighbors or family who make the decision that they are either with Mr. Thug, or not.

To bring said Thug to justice, my team will come thru the door with as much speed, violence of action and overwhelming force as I deem necessary until everyone's dick is in the dirt and secured. I have dusted off many a parent, cousin, friend and yes even clergy AFTER the mission was completed and the murderer/felon was in custody. Not to apologize to them, but to explain what they already know - him bad - us good, better get that door fixed.

Hearts and minds during the hit is not an option. You go after the murderer but do you ignore the family / neighbors in the room while doing so? Of course not -they, sometimes are a bigger unknown entity as the thug himself. Indifferent, fearful, or tacit compliance because of a religious bond is a weak excuse.

And no, I don't feel that we should treat everyone in the house as "murderers", just those who allow the murderer into their house, shelter him, and jump up and get between me and the murderer.

brownapple

03-20-2005, 00:29

Casey,

Do you include the neighbors across the street? How about the ones on the next block?

casey

03-20-2005, 09:48

Casey,

Do you include the neighbors across the street? How about the ones on the next block?

Good question - and my response can be kept within this anology, or used within the GWOT framework. All the neighbors are part of the same community (umma) that is affected by this thugs (muj) actions are they not? Everyone in that community knows that it is wrong for Mr. Thug to perpetrate hostile actions such as a holdup/robbery against the community, or even to bust caps at the police, whom they may even feel act overzealous within their own community.

It is however, the neighbors reactions during the search for Mr Thug and his subsequent arrest (or other) wherein the neighbors identify their true beliefs. Some may come out of their houses just because of actions taking place on their block, others may want to intervene because they knew the yuf, or perceive this arrest as a race issue. I have yet to see a crowd gather and attempt to plot or do harm to any LEO's (kafir) because " their taking that Greek Othodox / Buddahist / Christian guy - let's gettem'", I believe only this "great neighborhood of peace" (islam) instructs same.

More to the point, all the neighbors are treated with a wary respect and dignity until they prove otherwise, or info is developed that it is unwarranted (situation and terrain). This is especially true if that neighborhood (religion) has proclaimned to hate LEO's and all who do not live within their specific community, time and time again (fatwas). Add to that fact that this specific neighborhood has acted on such hate claims (fatwas) with beheadings, homicide bombing, assassinations, not just in their own neighborhood, but worldwide against non-neighbors (kuffar), all because of their specific neighborhood beliefs (religion).

All I'm saying here my friend is that after meeting some of the neighbors, and reading their "neighborhood edicts" I choose to believe them. And as such, when said neighborhood individuals attempt to stop me from culling Mr Thug from the herd so as to protect my family or others, then yes, I readily admit those neighbors will be beaten like a greasy haired, buck toothed, cross eyed, chest puffin' crack head on the corner, or if force continuum allows, they will have the honor of dying (shaheed) for their neighborhood beliefs as my human bullet trap.

brownapple

03-20-2005, 19:56

Seems to me that a whole lot of people are willing to treat not just one neighborhood with suspicion, but a whole lot of other neighborhoods who share a single common trait (religion) the same way, despite the efforts of some of those other neighborhoods to help us deal with the problem neighbors.

NousDefionsDoc

03-20-2005, 20:36

The Reaper

03-20-2005, 20:47

brownapple

03-21-2005, 07:55

What if the common trait among many is the desire to see all infidels wiped from the face of the Earth?

TR

Do you actually believe that is a common desire?

brownapple

03-21-2005, 07:59

I think they share more than one common trait. Or maybe because of religion, they share many sub-traits.

Demonstrate common traits other than religion between the populations of Indonesia (the most populous Islamic nation in the world), Malaysia, Chechnya, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Pakistan, Turkey, Morocco and Iran.

Take your time.

The Reaper

03-21-2005, 09:21

Do you actually believe that is a common desire?

Let me put it this way...

If I heard the Pope claim that all non-Christians must be killed and that murdering a non-Christian was not a crime, I would expect to see him removed from his position immediately and a fight going on among other Christian leaders to step up to the microphone to denounce the statement and the concept.

If a Christian sawed the head off of an innocent Muslim in the West, I would expect a nationwide manhunt (with public cooperation), massive public apology, and immediate efforts to prevent that from ever happening again.

If a Christian walked into a public place and detonated a suicide bomb for political/religious reasons, killing many Moslems, I would expect to find an immediate relief effort, persecution of those responsible, denouncement by Christian leaders and politicians as a hate crime, and measures taken to prevent that from happening again.

If 19 Christians simultaneously hijacked four large commercial passenger jets and crashed them into the shrines at Mecca, Medina, Najaf, and the palace of the Saudi Royal family, killing 3,000 Moslems, I would expect the public outcry by Christians denouncing them to be tremendous and the cooperation to find and punish those responsible to be swift and merciless.

1. Those actions have occurred (some repeatedly) for religious and political reasons with Moslems as the perpetrators and non-Moslems as the victims.

2. Maybe I missed the news, but there has been nothing like the reaction that I would have expected by the Moslem world. Mostly a few half-hearted apologies from minor clerics living in the West, and some pro forma apologies from governments with reasons to remain friendly with the U.S.

I did see vast crowds of people ululating and praising the 19 hijackers and saying that it was a good thing though, and that America deserved it. Saw a bunch of flags burned, denials, claims that it was someone else but that it was still a good thing. Of course, they also want Israel wiped off the map and all Jews murdered as well, so maybe they are really Nazis disguising themselves as Moslems. Some of these same people are quite happy to accept US aid, though.

GH, I have no animosity against my neighbors, but when the cops come after a Brian Nichols or a John Couey, and the family/neighbors deny that he did it, obstruct the police, and attack them, I expect a few heads to get busted and a wagon full of people to be taken into custody. I would also expect that in the future, people in that neighborhood would be watched with more than a little suspicion.

I think at this point, the underwhelming response from the global Moslem community speaks volumes, and in light of the ongoing planning and attacks against non-believers, that watching the neighborhood closely and dealing with threats quickly and harshly is the best policy.

Just my .02, YMMV.

TR

Roguish Lawyer

03-21-2005, 09:48

TR:

I think I like the way you are spelling "Moslem." I think you are making a point and taking a position just with the spelling, which is nice sophistry. Could be wrong, of course.

RL

NousDefionsDoc

03-21-2005, 09:54

Demonstrate common traits other than religion between the populations of Indonesia (the most populous Islamic nation in the world), Malaysia, Chechnya, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Pakistan, Turkey, Morocco and Iran.

Take your time.
So it is the religion then and we should be at war with Islam?

brownapple

03-21-2005, 10:16

The Catholic Church doesn't have the best history when it comes to its dealings with those who don't believe the way that the Church directs.

But your example is a poor one. Islam doesn't have a leader like the Pope.

But even with that leader, Catholicism didn't do much of a job of protesting the violence of the IRA over the last 70+ years. Maybe we should condemn all of Catholicism because their reaction didn't match my expectations?

Let's say a couple of protestent preachers of different sects said something about unbelievers deserving to die and burn in hell? You know, like the things that have come out of the mouths of some Evangelists in the past? Shall we condemn all of Christianity because most of us had the common sense to consider those people idiots and allowed the Police to deal with those that were criminals?

Members of Al Queda and JI have been taken into custody or killed in Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand (with intelligence provided by Indonesia and Malaysia), the United States, Singapore, the United Kingdom, Australia and others that slip my memory at the moment. A number of those are Islamic nations, nations that are working with us in tracking down and eliminating those that threaten us.

Religious (Muslim) leaders in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Egypt, and Iraq (that I know of) have made public statements in opposition to Fundamental Terrorism. In addition, political leaders in Indonesia, Pakistan, Malaysia, Turkey, and Jordan (that I know of) have also made clear public statements about their position in opposition to Fundamental Terrorism.

Now, maybe the media coverage you've seen sucks. Wouldn't surprise me in the least. After all, the primary purpose of the media is not to report the news. It is to sell papers or gain viewership. And as demonstrated by the examples that you used (you are aware that some of the media admitted to using footage that was not related to 9/11 but got viewers?), the media (in every country I know of) is not to be taken at face value, especially if the issue is one that has the potential of an emotional response in that market. As stated in The Green Berets, "You could fill volumes with what you don't read in the papers".

As you have pointed out: Identify the threat. The threat isn't Islam, the threat is a group of people who are afraid of change and will use violence in an effort to retain power and avoid that change. Not especially different from the Reformation, an event in Europe that induced the same kind of response to Protestants that some seem to feel is appropriate for Muslims and also began 300 years of conflict.

brownapple

03-21-2005, 10:18

So it is the religion then and we should be at war with Islam?

Those are all Islamic nations. Not all of them are our enemies.

NousDefionsDoc

03-21-2005, 10:36

Those are all Islamic nations. Not all of them are our enemies.

They are not all considered "good" Islamic nations though are they? I mean by the salafi jihadists?

And I think there are significant portions of the populations in all those countries that do consider us their enemies.

I think it is immaterial in this case what the nation-state policy is toward the US. We are not battling nation-states. But rather segments of the populations in each that do not recognize political boundaries. What makes them terrorists is not whether they are Indonesian, Malaysian or Saudi - that would appear to me to be the least relevant of their characteristics.

Jimbo

03-21-2005, 11:01

Well said, GH.

Jack Moroney (RIP)

03-21-2005, 11:24

I think it is immaterial in this case what the nation-state policy is toward the US. We are not battling nation-states. But rather segments of the populations in each that do not recognize political boundaries. What makes them terrorists is not whether they are Indonesian, Malaysian or Saudi - that would appear to me to be the least relevant of their characteristics.

Exactly. The center of gravity of this effort is not Islam, a nation-state nor a religion per se, it is the fundamentalist co-option of the Islamic Faith something that a non-muslims can not do on their own. Islam has to take back Islam. Only they can separate the fundamentalists from their population base, only they can resolve the factors that are splitting their own religion. Our role is to remove those irritants that fuel the hate for the west, provide military support to hammer those targets we can isolate from the non-offending portion of Islam, etc. Just a very abbreviate thought.

Jack Moroney

The Reaper

03-21-2005, 11:24

You are using semantics as an argument? I used the Pope to compare a leader of one of the factions of Christianity, since Catholicism strikes me as one of the more hierarchical Christian religions. Feel free to insert arch-bishop, bishop, or the leader of your choice to make the comparison to whoever could issue a fatwa. What is the equivalent of a Grand Ayatollah? The factions of Islam do have leaders, do they not?

Last time I checked, the IRA never called for the deaths of all non-believers worldwide, or even targeted Americans, much less blew up large public buildings here, attacked navy vessels, hijacked and blew up aircraft, bombed American embassies, etc. They confined their struggle to their country, and largely among themselves. I am looking for tapes of IRA members sawing off the heads of screaming Americans. Hmm, can't seem to find any. Do you have the pictures of Americans cheering in a parade over the deaths of either side in Northern Ireland?

You may occasionally hear a Protestant cleric saying that someone is going to Hell, most usually his own church members. I have not yet heard any advocating genocide or attacks on all non-believers. Have you seen a lot of Christian churches turning out here to go burn down a local synagogue or mosque? You seen the Baptist Convention calling for that or issuing permission to do so?

Christianity has already experienced its Reformation and Inquisition. One of my options I stated was for Islam to have such an epiphany and modernize to accept (or at least tolerate) other beliefs and acknowledge basic human rights.

Islamic countries appear to be cooperating with us to whatever extent they need to for their own survival, no more, and no less. Pakistan and Saudi Arabia continue to sanction teaching hatred, intolerance, and murder in their schools at the same time that they assist us (in some lesser degree) in the GWOT. Statements against terrorism made by the religious leaders in several of those countries that you cited are weak, ineffectual, and conflict with their own statements supporting the terrorists.

So you think that the footage of the planes hitting the towers, the Islamic terrorists sawing off the heads of prisoners, the IED and VBIED casualties, and the crowds holding up the papers and placards from those events are faked? Was the moon landing a fake as well?

The threat, as our President articulated, is not just those who actually commit terrorist attacks on us, but the supporters and "tolerators" who aid, abet, and assist them. Do you remember the role of the various UW elements? Is the supporter, the aide, the auxilliary, or the underground not part of the opposition?

In summary, does the threat by Islamic terrorists not also include those who enable the terrorists, to include the populaces who support them?

TR

Jimbo

03-21-2005, 11:27

Islam has to take back Islam. Only they can separate the fundamentalists from their population base, only they can resolve the factors that are splitting their own religion. Our role is to remove those irritants that fuel the hate for the west, provide military support to hammer those targets we can isolate from the non-offending portion of Islam, etc.
Agreed, but we mut be very precise in how we accomplish removing the irritants so as to not give the guerrilla (and those that support them) more cause. Take the cause away from the guerilla and you make great progress toward victory.

brownapple

03-21-2005, 11:44

They are not all considered "good" Islamic nations though are they? I mean by the salafi jihadists?

And I think there are significant portions of the populations in all those countries that do consider us their enemies.

I think it is immaterial in this case what the nation-state policy is toward the US. We are not battling nation-states. But rather segments of the populations in each that do not recognize political boundaries. What makes them terrorists is not whether they are Indonesian, Malaysian or Saudi - that would appear to me to be the least relevant of their characteristics.

I agree to some extent, however, significant portions (majorities in some cases) of the populations of those nation-states are our allies... and they are Islamic. And I also think it is foolish to assume that all (or even a significant percentage worldwide) Muslims identify themselves by their religion before their nationality.

The most relevant characteristics of those we are concerned with are not appreciably different from the characteristics of any other terrorists. A willingness to use violence against civilian targets in order to create terror. A need to have power and a willingness to corrupt whatever cause they can use to recruit to do that. Islam isn't the cause, it's the hype. Like an advertising agency seeing what hook they can place.

Did you condemn every veteran when Timothy McVeigh set off that bomb in Oklahoma City? Did you condemn every gun owner as the Waco mess occurred?

Sure, many did. Is that the same target identification skills that we encourage and train for?

Roguish Lawyer

03-21-2005, 11:47

One implication of the affirmative position here seems to be that we should wage a conventional war against all Islamic countries like in WWII. Is that what is being proposed? Bomb them all into the stone age? Or are you people just venting some anger?

Seems to me you need to draw some distinctions within these populations if the strategy is UW. But what do I know? :munchin

brownapple

03-21-2005, 11:49

In summary, does the threat by Islamic terrorists not also include those who enable the terrorists, to include the populaces who support them?

TR

What qualifies as a supporter, TR? Does the farmer in his field growing rice and just wanting to raise his kids and get on with his life qualify because he doesn't object the way you think he should? Does the man who runs a little store or works in a factory because they just want to live their life and don't pay any attention to this whole issue?

If so, you have a basic choice, TR. You can go to war with 1.48 billion people, or you can recognize that a large portion of that 1.48 billion don't support the terrorists and can be brought around to be allies in the fight against the actual enemy who are a very small % of that 1.48 billion.

You seem to prefer the first choice. I prefer the second.

Btw, I didn't say that the planes crashing into the WTC was a fraud, or the plane hitting the Pentagon, or the Bali bombing. I'm a New Yorker who lost friends in those towers, but I don't blame Islam. I blame the terrorists who committed the acts. Just as I blame the IRA for bombs in London, not Catholics. What was a fraud was the footage of Arabs celebrating, at least the footage used by some of the media. And MOST Muslims aren't Arabs.

NousDefionsDoc

03-21-2005, 12:09

And I also think it is foolish to assume that all (or even a significant percentage worldwide) Muslims identify themselves by their religion before their nationality.
Perhaps not. I am sure that those causing the problem do. And how will we ever know about the others? I see a lot of calls for "independent Muslim states" in the countries you mentioned.

Context probably has a lot to do with how they define themselves - and they, not us, have made Islam and establishment of a caliphate with strict adherence to shar'ria the context of the conflict. They, not us, use their religion to justify the isolation, genocide, treatment of women. etc. I am happy to call them AWG Terrorists if they quit mentioning Islam, Allah, the Q'uran, etc.

brownapple

03-21-2005, 12:09

And I think there are significant portions of the populations in all those countries that do consider us their enemies.

What do you consider significant? 1%? 10%? 30%?

In at least some of those countries, I would bet that the % that consider Americans to be their enemies is less than 5%.

Might be able to show that a higher % of Americans consider America their enemy... :D

brownapple

03-21-2005, 12:14

Perhaps not. I am sure that those causing the problem do. And how will we ever know about the others? I see a lot of calls for "independent Muslim states" in the countries you mentioned.

Context probably has a lot to do with how they define themselves - and they, not us, have made Islam and establishment of a caliphate with strict adherence to shar'ria the context of the conflict. They, not us, use their religion to justify the isolation, genocide, treatment of women. etc. I am happy to call them AWG Terrorists if they quit mentioning Islam, Allah, the Q'uran, etc.

The countries I mentioned are Muslim states. Calls for "independent Muslim states"? In Thailand and the PI, yes (although not much of such a call in Thailand actually). But Indonesia? Malaysia? Jordan? Morocco?

And your context and definitions clearly point out the failure to discriminate. Not all of Islam is interested in isolation, not all of Islam practices genocide, and not all of Islam treats women significantly differently than non-Islam.

Islamic Fundamentalist Terrorists. That's who we are war with. Not Islam.

Kind of like Irish Catholic Terrorists (or Irish Protestant Terrorists),

NousDefionsDoc

03-21-2005, 12:16

What do you consider significant? 1%? 10%? 30%?

In at least some of those countries, I would bet that the % that consider Americans to be their enemies is less than 5%.

Might be able to show that a higher % of Americans consider America their enemy... :D
>1% with terrorists.

Perhaps a greater percentage of Americans do consider the US their enemy. I'm sure that is the case if you define it as the Bush administration. When they start flying planes into buildings and chopping off heads, we should deal with them the same way McVeigh was dealt with.

NousDefionsDoc

03-21-2005, 12:19

Islamic Fundamentalist Terrorists. That's who we are war with. Not Islam.

Kind of like Irish Catholic Terrorists (or Irish Protestant Terrorists),
Notice the difference. In the former even you put the religion first. In the latter it was the nationality. In fact, in the former you didn't even mention the nationality. ;)

brownapple

03-21-2005, 12:19

>1% with terrorists.

Perhaps a greater percentage of Americans do consider the US their enemy. I'm sure that is the case if you define it as the Bush administration. When they start flying planes into buildings and chopping off heads, we should deal with them the same way McVeigh was dealt with.

Fine. When you're dealing with the people who are actually with the terrorists. When you start talking about dealing with the other 95-99%...

Then it sounds like Hitler and his final solution.

brownapple

03-21-2005, 12:20

Notice the difference. In the former even you put the religion first. In the latter it was the nationality. In fact, in the former you didn't even mention the nationality. ;)

Would you prefer Celtic Catholic Terrorists?

And Arab Islamic Fundamentalist Terrorists?

NousDefionsDoc

03-21-2005, 12:28

Would you prefer Celtic Catholic Terrorists?

And Arab Islamic Fundamentalist Terrorists?
I prefer what ever makes you happy.

The Reaper

03-21-2005, 12:59

I would say that the people we are fighting today (Chechens, Saudis, Yemenis, Jordanians, Iranians, et al) identify themselves as trans-national Islamists. They have no country, just a cause, and that cause is to kill as many non-believers as possible. Quick reality check, have we been attacked by any non-Muslims lately?

You continue to go back to the "soft" Islamic states of SE Asia. Perhaps they are a different sect with a different value set. There are still some hardcore Islamic extremists there, maybe in smaller numbers.

I would maintain that the majority of Muslims in the Middle East are supportive of the terrorism against the U.S. and Israel.

Seems like this discussion with you is focusing on what the U.S. might do or feel, rather than the overt actions over an extended period of time that the Islamic terrorists HAVE taken against us and our interests. Which is the greater threat?

Are you crucifying us for our impressions, rather than blaming the Muslim terrorists for their actions in deeds and words?

Who is a greater threat to kill millions if they have the capability (which we have had for 50 years and not employed since 1945), us, or the Muslim terrorists?

Where should we focus our attention today, on the Aussies? The Anglicans?

TR

Roguish Lawyer

03-21-2005, 13:06

Are you crucifying us for our impressions, rather than blaming the Muslim terrorists for their actions in deeds and words?

Who is a greater threat to kill millions if they have the capability (which we have had for 50 years and not employed since 1945), us, or the Muslim terrorists?

Where should we focus our attention today, on the Aussies? The Anglicans?

TR

I think you are missing the point. Or maybe we're just talking about different issues.

Should we carpet bomb (or nuke) cities in muslim countries to get this over with more quickly?

The Reaper

03-21-2005, 13:12

I think you are missing the point. Or maybe we're just talking about different issues.

Should we carpet bomb (or nuke) cities in muslim countries to get this over with more quickly?

I advocated nothing of the sort. It appears that you are trolling and trying to agitate. If you have a realistic opinion to contribute, please do so.

Counsel, let's just say that the next Islamic terrorist plot is successful, and a surplus 25MT warhead is popped from a shipping container in the Greater LA area while you are on a business trip.

What will you say we should do then, have a weenie roast and sing "Kumbayah"?

The globe is too small these days to sit here protected by the two great oceans and hope that they can't get it here from there. It is too easy and the stakes are too high.

TR

Roguish Lawyer

03-21-2005, 13:40

I advocated nothing of the sort. It appears that you are trolling and trying to agitate. If you have a realistic opinion to contribute, please do so.

Counsel, let's just say that the next Islamic terrorist plot is successful, and a surplus 25MT warhead is popped from a shipping container in the Greater LA area while you are on a business trip.

What will you say we should do then, have a weenie roast and sing "Kumbayah"?

The globe is too small these days to sit here protected by the two great oceans and hope that they can't get it here from there. It is too easy and the stakes are too high.

TR

No, I am not. We are trying to define who the enemy is here, and you are using a very broad definition. When you do that, it raises questions about who should be targeted by us and in what way. I think my question was quite appropriate in light of your prior statements and comparisons of this war to the war against the Nazis.

Jack Moroney (RIP)

03-21-2005, 15:45

No, I am not. We are trying to define who the enemy is here, and you are using a very broad definition. When you do that, it raises questions about who should be targeted by us and in what way. I think my question was quite appropriate in light of your prior statements and comparisons of this war to the war against the Nazis.

Actually this view point is going to be oversimplified because if I am late for chow I am in deep doodoo and still can't fend for myself that well. RL, there is no single target group and carpet bombing as a term is not all that way off but the munitions are information/psyop. You not only have to take out the insurgent but you have to separate him from his base of support which right now are both other extremists and those that support them because they are scared shitless not too. Think concentric rings if you would like with the guerrilla at the center and the folks that support him in various ways forming a series of rings to include the diaspora. Some folks need to be killed, others contained and separated from the guerrillas, some need re-educations, others might need to be moved from an area and yet others need to have the threat removed from the area in which they are in. All muslims read from the same book but not all read or heed the same msg. Just like the Christians who dwell on the bible and take whatever passages suit them-in spite of the fact that the bible is a compilation of a whole series of opinions, interpretations, and serious editing. There is not cookie cutter approach to any group, country that harbors them, or groups that support them and it is going to take a lot of work to find the right buttons to push to address all of them. The worldwide muslim population provides a huge resource for manipulation and recruitment, the trick is to determine the who, what, when, where and why-then we can determine the how. Mess call has sounded

Jack Moroney-call me anything but never late for chow.

brownapple

03-21-2005, 18:31

Actually this view point is going to be oversimplified because if I am late for chow I am in deep doodoo and still can't fend for myself that well. RL, there is no single target group and carpet bombing as a term is not all that way off but the munitions are information/psyop. You not only have to take out the insurgent but you have to separate him from his base of support which right now are both other extremists and those that support them because they are scared shitless not too. Think concentric rings if you would like with the guerrilla at the center and the folks that support him in various ways forming a series of rings to include the diaspora. Some folks need to be killed, others contained and separated from the guerrillas, some need re-educations, others might need to be moved from an area and yet others need to have the threat removed from the area in which they are in. All muslims read from the same book but not all read or heed the same msg. Just like the Christians who dwell on the bible and take whatever passages suit them-in spite of the fact that the bible is a compilation of a whole series of opinions, interpretations, and serious editing. There is not cookie cutter approach to any group, country that harbors them, or groups that support them and it is going to take a lot of work to find the right buttons to push to address all of them. The worldwide muslim population provides a huge resource for manipulation and recruitment, the trick is to determine the who, what, when, where and why-then we can determine the how. Mess call has sounded

Jack Moroney-call me anything but never late for chow.

Well, it may have been fast, but I think that is pretty good, Jack. It sure doesn't sound like the same sort of war as fought against the Nazis.

TR,

Sure, Islamic fundamentalist terrorists are an extreme threat, especially if they have a nuclear device. Seems to me that is just another reason to want to exploit the intelligence gathering abilities and other assets that those of Islam who are friendly to us, who also recognize the threat rather than treating the whole of a religion as a threat.

"Soft" Muslims of SE Asia? I would remind you that there are more Muslims in SE Asia than there are in the Middle East. Those "soft" Muslims are the ones that deal with economies that require more than just pumping oil and selling it. Maybe that is why they are "soft".

By the way, it was "soft" Protestants that founded the bulk of the Colonies that eventually became the United States. I would think that we might find a little more understanding for those who are willing to live and deal with the world than to dismiss them as "soft" Muslims.

And don't forget, Christianity's reformation took 300 years of war to finish most (not all) of the wars within it. It tore most of the known world apart during that time period. Are we willing to have Islam do the same? Or do we need to help to make it more peaceful, more managable, and more to our benefit?

NousDefionsDoc

03-21-2005, 18:37

Fine. When you're dealing with the people who are actually with the terrorists. When you start talking about dealing with the other 95-99%...

Then it sounds like Hitler and his final solution.
Well, I've gone from communist to fascist now?

Like Col. said, there's more than one way to "deal" with them.

Some need a level, some need a screwdriver, most need tape - and yes, some need a hammer.

brownapple

03-22-2005, 08:46

OK, instead of Hitler and the final solution, how about Stalin and the Gulags.. or Mao and the reeducation camps.. :D

brownapple

03-22-2005, 09:08

Some interesting reading regarding Muslims:

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0303/p01s02-wome.html

http://messopotamian.blogspot.com/

http://www.washtimes.com/world/20050302-120412-1959r.htm

http://democracyiniraq.blogspot.com/

http://hammorabi.blogspot.com/

http://www.weeklytelegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/03/03/usaudi.xml&sSheet=/portal/2005/03/03/ixportaltop.html

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,19269-1510003_1,00.html

http://www.terrorfreetomorrow.org/articlenav.php?id=56

http://enews.earthlink.net/article/int?guid=20050310/422fd450_3ca6_15526200503101357373329

NousDefionsDoc

03-22-2005, 10:44

OK, instead of Hitler and the final solution, how about Stalin and the Gulags.. or Mao and the reeducation camps.. :D
In my opinion, that is what the mullahs are doing in the madrasas.

brownapple

03-22-2005, 10:55

In my opinion, that is what the mullahs are doing in the madrasas.

Which is not all of Islam. Or even a majority of Islam.

NousDefionsDoc

03-22-2005, 12:09

Which is not all of Islam. Or even a majority of Islam.
Today

jatx

03-22-2005, 12:15

Today

Madrassa enrollment is low and declining in Pakistan because of an increased number of options available to parents, and appears to be low in many neighboring countries, as well.

The Reaper

03-22-2005, 12:16

Which is not all of Islam. Or even a majority of Islam.

The commonality among these terrorists is that they are Islamic. Not all Muslims are terrorists, but it appears that a damn sight more Muslims are attacking us than any other threat we face.

How many Muslims does it take preaching hatred and intolerance to harm us (and their own religion)? One? Ten? A million? 25%? 45%?

How many dead Americans represent an acceptable loss to Islamic terrorists before we can pin the rose on them? Are we willing to accept further casualties before we call the threat what it is, Muslim extremists and their enablers?

No one suggested going after Muslims who are not involved in terrorism, or supporting terrorism. I suspect that there are more who are ambivalent than anything else, but I also believe that there are more Muslims against us than assisting us.

You can keep citing the vast number of Muslims in SE Asia who are not directly involved and the commonality of Middle Easterners in this, but several nations in SE Asia, including the Phillipines, sure seem to have their share of Islamic terrorists.

I think that we should be using the multiple approaches that have already been articulated to resolve this, but anyone taking up arms or issuing fatwas against us opens themselves up for the hammer resolution.

Frankly, I would be looking to refocus issues to incite discord among the different Islamic radical groups, and help them kill one another off to their hearts' content. That is just my .02, YMMV.

TR

Trip_Wire (RIP)

03-22-2005, 12:24

Wow! Well stated TR! My sentiments exactly! :lifter

brownapple

03-22-2005, 18:44

The question which starts the thread is:

"Are we at war with Islam?"

I also believe that there are more Muslims against us than assisting us.

I disagree. I agree with most of what you said, but I think there is an awful lot of evidence that the terrorists and their supporters (in any region) are a minority. In some regions, like SE Asia, they are a rapidly disappearing minority.

NousDefionsDoc

04-02-2005, 21:44

I thought THIS (http://www.smallwarsjournal.com/documents/gawrych.htm) was interesting.

Peregrino

04-02-2005, 22:47

Interesting doesn't change my mind. A sympathetic reading of the Quran is no more legitimate or unbiased than a sympathetic reading of the Bible. Either book viewed objectively in the light of history and the actions their adherents shows a much more human motivation for any actions taken "in the name of God". Religion is always perverted to meet the requirements of whoever can get away with it. A violent minority can force anything on a complacent/compliant majority. A simple look at our own history will show that only about 15% of the Colonists initially supported revolution and splitting from England. Independance didn't become popular until it looked like the revolutionaries were winning. The French Revolution is another example of a (violent) minority forcing their will on a mostly indifferent populace. The Islamists may not be the majority, but it doesn't take a majority to wreak havoc and force change. As long as the majority do nothing, they are accomplices. It is only in opposition that they distance themselves from the goals and methods of the terrorists. A few thousand protestations of outrage, the paltry efforts of a handful of governments facing their own demise if they can't control internal disention - these are not the actions of a people (a religion that claims 1 billion + adherents) united in their opposition to the terrorists and their goals. Thankfully we may be seeing a groundswell change in Iraq as the Iraqi people start turning on those who would deny them a chance at a better life. And that has nothing to do with religion either. Bottom line - If we aren't at war with a religion, we are (or should be) at war with people who would use religion to their own ends. Peregrino

Team Sergeant

04-03-2005, 10:16

More on your "PROGRESSIVE MOSLEM COUNTRIES": (This story had me rolling on the floor!)

Saudis Behead Three Convicted Terrorists
Sunday, April 03, 2005
Associated Press

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Saudi authorities on Friday executed three Saudi militants convicted of assassinating several officials two years ago, Saudi authorities said as this Gulf state continued its campaign to stamp out terrorism.
The three men were beheaded in public in the northern Saudi city of al-Jawf where they carried out their crimes, the Interior Ministry said. After the executions, authorities displayed the executed militants in a public square outside a mosque, tying their bodies to poles on top of which were placed their heads.
Their execution marked the first time Saudi authorities announced penalties against convicted terrorists since 1996. The Saudi monarch had announced an amnesty last year promising that repenting militants will not be sentenced to death.
Militants have carried out multiple suicide bombings and kidnappings and fought gun battles with security forces since May 2003. The attacks have been blamed on Al Qaeda (search), the terrorist group headed by Saudi-born terrorist Usama bin Laden (search), and allied militants.
The men executed Friday — Hisham bin Awwad, Mohammed bin Awadh and Amjad bin Abdul Aziz — were convicted in the 2003 killings of a deputy governor, a religious court judge and a police lieutenant.

pulque

04-03-2005, 23:27

Sorry this article is mostly about culture and apostasy and other intellekshual stuff, but I thought the numbers might be interesting.

http://economist.com/world/na/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3809802

Meanwhile the Dutch intelligence service, AIVD, has made an estimate that was meant to reassure but may have done the opposite. It said 95% of Dutch Muslims were “moderates”—a figure which suggests that nearly 50,000 are potential militants. In fact, the number of active extremists, liable to commit violence, is estimated at around 200, with a loose support group of 1,200.

In fact eh.

brownapple

04-04-2005, 04:42

Team Sergeant

04-04-2005, 07:02

And you haven't seen me ever suggest that Saudi Arabia was moderate.

The Middle-East does not represent Islam, and the majority of the 1.4 billion(more or less) Muslims in the world don't live in Saudi Arabia or even in the Middle-East.

"The hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca, occurs annually between the eighth and thirteenth days of the last month of the Muslim year, Dhu al Hijjah. The hajj represents the culmination of the Muslim's spiritual life."

I'm sure the millions and millions of moslems that travel to Saudi Arabia every year would agree with you whole heartedly GreenHat.

The middle east is islams heart and soul.

I take it you've been to the middle east GreenHat?

pulque

04-04-2005, 14:13

Frankly, I would be looking to refocus issues to incite discord among the different Islamic radical groups, and help them kill one another off to their hearts' content. That is just my .02, YMMV.

TR

I seem to remember reading a book once that a CIA guy suggested in mid 80's to put defective plastic explosives in cars of Syrian diplomats and make it look like it was Hizballah so that the Syrian leadership would go after them the way they did the Muslim Bros. He couldn't even get approval for the defective explosives.

Maybe approval would be more forthcoming if it were extremist vs extremist (no diplomats). Of course I have no experience to back up this baseless speculation, but it might be more difficult to pit extremist vs extremist since they seem to be so interelated/interconnected.

NousDefionsDoc

04-04-2005, 22:41

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Article...le.asp?ID=17602
Quote:
The California Suicide Bomber

By Daniel Pipes
FrontPageMagazine.com | April 4, 2005According to a remarkable article by Scott Macleod in the April 4 issue of Time Magazine, the suicide bomber who carried off the worst atrocity in

Iraq since the collapse of the Saddam Hussein regime was a 32-year-old Jordanian who had lived for two years in California. Ra’ed Mansour al-Banna was born in Jordan in 1973 and grew up in a religious, economically prosperous merchant family. He studied law at the university, graduating in 1996, and then started his own law practice in the Jordanian capital of Amman. After three years, he gave it up and in 1999 he worked a half year without pay for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Amman, helping Iraqis who fled Saddam Hussein’s tyranny.

In 2001, sometime before 9/11, Banna received a visa and moved to the United States, where he apparently lived in California for nearly two years, moving from one unskilled job to another – factory worker, bus driver, and pizza maker. According to his father, Ra’ed even worked “in one of the Californian airports.” If Ra’ed did not make it economically, he seemed to fit in well, traveling to such destinations as the Golden Gate Bridge and the World Trade Center, growing his hair long, and taking up American popular music. Photographs sent to his family in Jordan show Banna eating a crab dinner, walking on a beach in California, mounted on a motorcycle, and standing in front of a military helicopter while holding an American flag. He even planned to marry a Christian woman until her parents demanded that the wedding take place in a church.

Banna apparently loved America, reporting back to his family about the people’s honesty and kindness; “They respect anybody who is sincere.” Talal Naser, a young man engaged to one of Ra’ed’s sisters, explained how Ra’ed “loved life in America, compared to Arab countries. He wanted to stay there.” His father, Mansour, recounted that, despite the September 11 attacks, Ra’ed “faced no problems with his American workmates, who liked him.”

Banna visited home in 2003 but on his return to the United States he was denied entry, accused of falsifying details on a visa application. He returned to Jordan and became withdrawn, holing up in a makeshift studio apartment, sleeping late, and displaying a new interest in religion. He began praying five times a day and listening to the Koran. In November 2004, he went on pilgrimage to Mecca, returning to Saudi Arabia in January 2005.

On Jan. 27, Banna crossed into Syria, presumably on the way to Iraq. He apparently spent February with Sunni jihadis in Iraq, during which time he called home several times, with the last call on about Feb. 28.

Feb. 28 also happens to be the date when Banna suited up as a suicide bomber and blew himself up at a health clinic in Al-Hilla, killing 132 people and injuring 120, the worst such attack of the 136 suicide bombings that have taken place since May 2003. On March 3, the family received a call informing them of Ra’ed’s fate. “Congratulations, your brother has fallen a martyr.”

A friend revealed that Banna became politically radicalized against American policies in the Muslim world while living in the United States. He was especially distraught about developments in Iraq. A neighbor, Nassib Jazzar, recalled Banna upset with the coalition occupation. “He felt that the Arabs didn’t have honor and freedom.’”

The father notes that Ra’ed wore Western-style clothing, rarely went to mosque, and was ignorant of the names of local sheikhs. “I am shocked by all of this because my son was a very quiet man, not very religious and more interested in pursuing his law profession and building a future for himself.”

As Time cautiously concludes from this tale,

On the basis of accounts given by his family, friends and neighbors, Ra’ed apparently led a double life, professing affection for America while secretly preparing to join the holy war against the U.S. in Iraq. “Something went wrong with Ra’ed, and it is a deep mystery,” says his father Mansour, 56. “What happened to my son?”

Ra’ed al-Banna’s biography inspires several observations:

(1) When it comes to Islamist terrorists, appearances often deceive. That Banna was said to “love life in America,” be “not very religious,” and be interested in “building a future for himself” obviously indicated nothing about his real thinking and purposes. The same pattern recurs in the biographies of many other jihadis.

(2) Moving to the West often spurs Muslims to despise the West more than they did before they got there. This appears to be what happened with Banna.

(3) Taking up the Islamist cause, even to the point of sacrificing one’s life for it, usually happens in a discreet manner, quite unobservable even to a person’s closest relatives.

In brief, Banna’s evolution confirms the point I have made repeatedly about the regrettable but urgent need to keep an eye on all potential Islamists and jihadis, which is to say Muslims.

Daniel Pipes (www.DanielPipes.org) is director of the Middle East Forum and author of Miniatures (Transaction Publishers).

Jimbo

04-05-2005, 06:28

Another case that fits into what Sageman says in his book.

NousDefionsDoc

04-05-2005, 06:58

I just finished the rest of Barnett. I can now concentrate on Sageman.

brownapple

04-05-2005, 07:39

"The hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca, occurs annually between the eighth and thirteenth days of the last month of the Muslim year, Dhu al Hijjah. The hajj represents the culmination of the Muslim's spiritual life."

I'm sure the millions and millions of moslems that travel to Saudi Arabia every year would agree with you whole heartedly GreenHat.

The middle east is islams heart and soul.

I take it you've been to the middle east GreenHat?

MFO. Have you been to SouthEast Asia?

As for millions traveling to Saudi Arabia, it might be worth noting that there are over a billion Muslims. So, even if 10 million travel to Saudi Arabia, that is less than 1% of Islam.

As for Saudi Arabia being the heart and soul of Islam, the same could be said of Jeruselum and Christianity. So how many Christians take their direction from Israel? Do you? I don't.

Team Sergeant

04-05-2005, 08:15

MFO. Have you been to SouthEast Asia?.

GH,

While on active duty I spent five years in 5th Gp and six in 1st Gp. You do know the area orientation of both these active duty Special Forces Groups?

I traveled in both SW and SE Asia, and even spent some time fighting a war in SW Asia.
I lived in SE Asia for three years, used to speak, read and write Thai, now just speak Thai.
To answer your question in a little more detail, I've spent years studying both these geographic areas, their indigenous peoples, their economic, government, military, religion, etc etc etc etc.

TS

MFO?

Pete

04-05-2005, 08:41

Guys;

It looks like the horse has been beaten to death. One poor old hoof is sticking up flappin' in the breeze. Everybosy is now doing their best to blast that hoof off the leg.

Time will tell. Keep your eyes on the smaller countries of northern Europe over the next few years.

Of course there will be no prblem in SEA. After China takes Taiwan they will expand out and take most of the area. They have a way to take care of most western religions that seems to work well for them.

Pete

pulque

04-05-2005, 12:06

Ra’ed al-Banna’s biography inspires several observations:

(1) When it comes to Islamist terrorists, appearances often deceive. That Banna was said to “love life in America,” be “not very religious,” and be interested in “building a future for himself” obviously indicated nothing about his real thinking and purposes. The same pattern recurs in the biographies of many other jihadis.

(2) Moving to the West often spurs Muslims to despise the West more than they did before they got there. This appears to be what happened with Banna.

(3) Taking up the Islamist cause, even to the point of sacrificing one’s life for it, usually happens in a discreet manner, quite unobservable even to a person’s closest relatives.

Why isn't it possible that al-Banna (POS) did love life in America, but turned against it when he was denyed re-entry? I have no problem in theory with the author's observations, just that the friends observations are treated like the ISO measure of intention.

brownapple

04-05-2005, 14:07

GH,

While on active duty I spent five years in 5th Gp and six in 1st Gp. You do know the area orientation of both these active duty Special Forces Groups?

I traveled in both SW and SE Asia, and even spent some time fighting a war in SW Asia.
I lived in SE Asia for three years, used to speak, read and write Thai, now just speak Thai.
To answer your question in a little more detail, I've spent years studying both these geographic areas, their indigenous peoples, their economic, government, military, religion, etc etc etc etc.

TS

MFO?

MFO - Multinational Force of Observers.

And I've lived in SE Asia for the last ten years.

D9 (RIP)

04-05-2005, 21:16

As for Saudi Arabia being the heart and soul of Islam, the same could be said of Jeruselum and Christianity. So how many Christians take their direction from Israel? Do you? I don't.

Sir:

An excerpt from Crisis of Islam, by Bernard Lewis:

"....For Muslims, as we in the West sometimes tend to forget, the Holy Land par excellence is Arabia and especially the Hijaz and it's two holy cities - Mecca, where the Prophet was born, and Medina, where he established the first Muslim state.... The Prophet Muhammad lived and died in Arabia, as did his immediate successors, the caliphs, in the headship of the community..... For Muslims, no piece of land once added to Islam can ever be renounced, but none can compare in significance with Arabia and Iraq. And of these two, Arabia is by far the more important...." (pp. xxix, Introduction)

A few other points:

Both Christianity and Judaism, not long after their inception, experienced periods of diaspora and persecution. This forced both of those churches to de-emphasize the geographical significance in maintaining the faith, because their shrines were for long periods denied them. The reformation furthered the de-emphasis on geography in Christianity.

The Islamic world did not meet with such hardships in its inception. It had centuries of uninterrupted conquest and success in which to cement the relationship of the religion with the region and it's shrines. The fact that all Muslims still kneel towards Mecca is symbolic of the predominance of those places as the heart of the Islamic world.

Furthermore, while the majority of Muslims do live in SE Asia, there is an overwhelming dominance on Islamic scholarship and intellectual leadership within the ME, both historically (it was and is the center of Islamic jurisprudence and philosophy) and today.

Jimbo

04-06-2005, 05:52

Read more about Islam and Muslims than Lewis. His books are often the (rehashed) opinion of one man. A number of historians are beginning to challenge his take on things.

jatx

04-06-2005, 07:21

Read more about Islam and Muslims than Lewis. His books are often the (rehashed) opinion of one man. A number of historians are beginning to challenge his take on things.

What do you suggest and of which historians are you speaking? :munchin

brownapple

04-06-2005, 07:25

Sir:

An excerpt from Crisis of Islam, by Bernard Lewis:

"....For Muslims, as we in the West sometimes tend to forget, the Holy Land par excellence is Arabia and especially the Hijaz and it's two holy cities - Mecca, where the Prophet was born, and Medina, where he established the first Muslim state.... The Prophet Muhammad lived and died in Arabia, as did his immediate successors, the caliphs, in the headship of the community..... For Muslims, no piece of land once added to Islam can ever be renounced, but none can compare in significance with Arabia and Iraq. And of these two, Arabia is by far the more important...." (pp. xxix, Introduction)

A few other points:

Both Christianity and Judaism, not long after their inception, experienced periods of diaspora and persecution. This forced both of those churches to de-emphasize the geographical significance in maintaining the faith, because their shrines were for long periods denied them. The reformation furthered the de-emphasis on geography in Christianity.

The Islamic world did not meet with such hardships in its inception. It had centuries of uninterrupted conquest and success in which to cement the relationship of the religion with the region and it's shrines. The fact that all Muslims still kneel towards Mecca is symbolic of the predominance of those places as the heart of the Islamic world.

Furthermore, while the majority of Muslims do live in SE Asia, there is an overwhelming dominance on Islamic scholarship and intellectual leadership within the ME, both historically (it was and is the center of Islamic jurisprudence and philosophy) and today.

Besides Jimbo's comments, I can make a pretty strong argument that Islam is undergoing a reformation today, and that the reformation in South East Asia is significantly different and more agreeable than the reformation in the Middle East.

The Muslims of South East Asia are mostly interested in partaking of the modern world and the majority of them practice their religion in a manner not dramatically different from Christians in the United States.

Jimbo

04-06-2005, 08:26

What do you suggest and of which historians are you speaking? :munchin

I recommend reading as much as you can from as many different authors as you can. This is a good read, and it highlights some of the problems with relying too heavily on Lewis: http://www.mafhoum.com/press7/225C31.pdf

From that pdf:
Lewis’s narrative of the history of the relationship between the Muslim world and Europe differs substantially from that of the majority of Middle East scholars.

As to specific historians, this guy, for one: http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/humphreys.htm

You might look into books by Fouad Ajami, Rashid Khalidi, Gilles Kepel, Olvier Roy, Hamid Algar, and Ali Shariati.

jatx

04-06-2005, 09:46

Thanks for the suggestions, Jimbo. As an unrepentant info junkie, I have been known to hoard reading lists and syllabi. :)

D9 (RIP)

04-06-2005, 10:13

I have read others, Jimbo, that just happens to be what I'm reading at the moment and the reference was fresh. I understand that he may have some ideas that aren't universally popular, but I don't think the importance of the Hijaz to Muslims is one of them.

My only experience with Southeast Asian Muslims is my aunt by marraige, who is Malay and Muslim. I'm very close to my uncle on that side, and lived with them for a summer while I was in college. She is a strict Muslim in some ways, and more typically Asian in others. She is very ritualistic in terms of prayer and other proprieties, but very modern in her fashion, etc. I understand that a population of one is not enough to justify generalizations, so I won't make any. But I do have at least that exposure to SE Asian Muslims.

Also read the text of a speech delivered in '03 (IIRC) by the "moderate" Islamic president of Idonesia, Mohathir Mohammad. At the time he was being heralded as the great hope for Islamic moderation, but I recall the text of his speech being more of a call more complete Islamism than anything resembling reform.

In class tonight we have cultural hour. I'm going to put this to our Egyptian instructor, and see what he says. Surely as a Muslim who spent 25 years growing up in Egypt, he will have some insight.

Jimbo

04-06-2005, 12:00

Thanks for the suggestions, Jimbo. As an unrepentant info junkie, I have been known to hoard reading lists and syllabi. :)

Well then, have at this site: http://www.sais-jhu.edu/Faculty/pecastaing/

It has some syllabi from one of my old profs. He taught the second best course on terrorism I've ever taken.

Airbornelawyer

04-06-2005, 13:07

Also read the text of a speech delivered in '03 (IIRC) by the "moderate" Islamic president of Idonesia, Mohathir Mohammad. At the time he was being heralded as the great hope for Islamic moderation, but I recall the text of his speech being more of a call more complete Islamism than anything resembling reform.
Mahathir Mohamad was the Prime Minister, not President, of Malaysia, not Indonesia, until 2003. He was a Muslim, like about 55% of Malaysians, but hardly an Islamist. And he was not a moderate in any sense of the word. He was the authoritarian leader of a political movement rooted in corporatist capitalism. He was the major proponent of the "Asian values" concept that "freedom" and "democracy" are Western concepts and that Asians value community and deference to authority more.

Mahathir's political movement, UNMO (United Malays National Organisation), is a secular Malay nationalist movement, which in coalition with the Malaysian Chinese Association, Malaysian Indian Congress and several minor parties form the Barisan Nasional (National Front), which has ruled Malaysia since independence from Britain.

The main opposition to Barisan National was Barisan Alternatif (Alternative Front). This coalition includes the main Malaysian Islamist party, the Islamic Party of Malaysia (Parti Islam SeMalaysia, or PAS). Running on an anti-corruption agenda, PAS did surprisingly well in the 1999 elections, winning 27 seats in parliament.

After the September 11 attacks, the secular Democratic Action Party abandoned the Alternative Front because PAS would not moderate its Islamist ideology. In the 2004 elections, PAS collapsed, losing 20 of 27 seats. Its remaining coalition partner also collapsed, and the Alternative Front ended up with 8 seats, to the National Front's 198 and the Democratic Action Party's 12.

Airbornelawyer

04-06-2005, 13:21

This, by the way, is the President of Indonesia, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono:

Airbornelawyer

04-06-2005, 13:47

Dr. Mahathir's political style was touted by non-Islamists, like China's Communists who also ascribe to the "Asian values" school. And Dr. Mahathir's anti-Semitism probably made him popular among some Muslims, but his political movement had little to do with religion.

General, now President Yudhoyono is a "moderate," but he is also a professional military officer, and leads a secular political movement.

There was a President of Indonesia that has been touted as a moderate Islamist, whom you may have partially mixed up with Mahathir. That would be Abdurrahman Wahid, President of Indonesia from 1999 to 2001, founder of the moderate Islamist National Awakening Party and former leader of the Nahdlatul Ulama, the main organization of Muslim clerics in Indonesia. He has a website with extensive English-language commentary on various issues including religion and politics, if you want to get a flavor of where he stands: http://www.gusdur.net/english/index.php

lksteve

04-06-2005, 13:55

This, by the way, is the President of Indonesia, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono:

heck, he has more of our badges, than i do... :boohoo

Airbornelawyer

04-06-2005, 13:58

There was a President of Indonesia that has been touted as a moderate Islamist, whom you may have partially mixed up with Mahathir. That would be Abdurrahman Wahid, President of Indonesia from 1999 to 2001, founder of the moderate Islamist National Awakening Party and former leader of the Nahdlatul Ulama, the main organization of Muslim clerics in Indonesia. He has a website with extensive English-language commentary on various issues including religion and politics, if you want to get a flavor of where he stands: http://www.gusdur.net/english/index.php
Abdurrahman Wahid on Indonesian politics:

"Indonesian politics is like a tree full of monkeys. They are all on different limbs at different levels. Some are climbing up. Some are climbing down. The monkeys on the top look down and see a tree full of smiling faces. The monkeys on the bottom look up and see nothing but a bunch of assholes."

http://www.gusdur.net/english/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=28&Itemid=64

Airbornelawyer

04-06-2005, 14:08

heck, he has more of our badges, than i do... :boohoo
Then-Captain Yudhoyono at Jungle Warfare School in Panama (in the early 1980s, I think):

Airbornelawyer

04-06-2005, 14:12

Lt. Yudhoyono at Ranger School, 1976:

NousDefionsDoc

04-07-2005, 20:48

Damn thread is a year old and won't die.

Jack Moroney (RIP)

04-08-2005, 04:33

Damn thread is a year old and won't die.

Target rich environment!

ghuinness

04-12-2005, 20:00

UN to monitor defamation of Islam (http://in.rediff.com/news/2005/apr/12un2.htm) ..... :rolleyes:

Pete

04-12-2005, 20:12

Damn thread is a year old and won't die.

That is because there are those who believe and those who have burkas pulled down over their eyes.

We will all agree when we kneel down and face the east as we pray.

Pete

NousDefionsDoc

04-15-2005, 11:49

How Islam is Responsible for Making Terrorists
Excerpts reprinted with permission from Ali Sina
Friday, April 15, 2005

In my previous article Why Good Muslims Become Terrorists I wrote:

“Everyone who has a brush with Islam is at risk. Any Muslim can become a terrorist overnight. As long as people believe Muhammad was a messenger of God, they are at risk of contracting Islamic terrorist fever.”

Not everyone agreed. Mr. Hugh Fitzgerald of jihadwatch.org in a private email wrote: "'any Muslim' and 'overnight'? I think too much is claimed”.

Let me respond to this concern and clarify my position. Of course not everyone who reads the Quran becomes a terrorist overnight. I said "can" not "will". In the same article I wrote:

“Many people are infected by HIV but only a few get AIDS. Many people are Muslims, but only a few become terrorists.”

There are several factors that have to be present and the Quran is one of them.

One factor is xenophobia or the distrust of the non-Muslims. Many Islamic countries actively and systematically promote the hatred of the Jews, the America and the West in general. You must see yourself as the victim and the non-Muslims as the oppressors in order to hate them enough to kill them. A great number of Muslims, perhaps the majority, are at this stage. Not all these Muslims are going to become terrorists, but a great majority of them are convinced that America and particularly the Jews are responsible for everything that is wrong in their lives. Just read what they write on the Internet and you’ll see their favorite line of “defense of Islam” is to blame the Jews and America .

The other factor that makes them vulnerable to become terrorists is being hit by a crisis. Personal problems, especially if they are experienced at youth, seem greater than they actually are and tend to make life look meaningless. During these crises people often seek spiritual guidance in their religions and some youngsters, out of desperation, may even commit suicide. Here is where the danger lies. When young Muslims in crisis seek spiritual guidance from their holy book, they expose themselves to the negative influnce of the Quran and the seed of becoming a jihadi aka terrorist is sown in their minds. Life is already meaningless; suicide does not seem like a bad idea. In Islam you can have your cake and eat it too. You can become a martyr – end your miserable life and gain the rewards of the afterlife too. This is like killing two birds with one stone.

Muslims are led to believe that America and especially the Jews who “run the world by proxy” (as the Malaysian PM, Dr. Mahathir said) are responsible for all their miseries. They see themselves as victims. Once they identify their alleged victimizers, they are ready to take their revenge – a revenge that is glorified by all the Muslims and is encouraged by God himself. Here is where the Quran provides them with “guidance” and confirmation. You take your revenge, you end our useless, worthless life, you will be hailed as a hero and you will go to paradise where a bevy of voluptuous celestial "virgin whores" in their see through lingerie is waiting for you to fulfill all your frustrated fantasies. Suddenly you can kiss goodbye all your failures and succeed. What a bargain! How can anyone refuse that?

But that is not all. You also need the support and encouragement of others. You may get cold feet. You need to be egged on, cheered and reconfirmed. This is readily available through mosques that incite hate and encourage martyrdom and the underground network of terrorism that rouse young Muslims to join their campaign of terror and become the next martyr. The whole Islamic ethos encourages you to become a martyr. You have the support of everyone. Jihad and martyrdom are the essence of Islam. Who is that Muslim who can oppose it?

Therefore to say that just by reading the Quran, loving Muslims become terrorists is not entirely true. A whole gamut of conditions must be present for that to happen.

Take the example of becoming infected by viruses. Two persons are exposed to the same virus; one become infected and the other doesn't. Can we conclude that virus has nothing to do with the disease? Immunities vary from person to person. The person with less immunity will get infected while the one with stronger immunity will not. But ultimately it is the virus that makes people sick.

Likewise, not all those who read the Quran become terrorists. But when all the conditions are met, Muslims become vulnerable. It is like being soaked in gasoline. All it takes is a spark to be ignited and that is what the Quran provides. Others read the Quran and may not be affected. They are like wet wood. They hardly get ignited and worked out by the hate laden verses of the Quran. But if all the conditions are met, every Muslim becomes vulnerable and can become a terrorist.

The problem is that all those conditions that prepare a Muslim to become a terrorist are also caused by the Quran. These conditions are not cultural, ethnic, political or economical. They are religious. The hatred of the Jews and the non-Muslims has its roots in the Quran. Most of the crises that Muslim youth face, like lack of opportunity and loss of hope are also the result of the failure of Islam in solving the real problems of Muslims and particularly the youth.

One more factor that I did not mention but is very important is the lack of self-esteem and the prevalent feeling of worthlessness among Muslims, and Islam’s pedagogic fiasco in rearing confident, positive and successful humans. Terrorists are losers who seek their glory in martyrdom. That too is the direct consequence of the failure of Islamic paradigm.

Therefore, Islam does not only provide the ultimate spark, it also prepares Muslims throughout their lives to become failures, haters and terrorists. It gives them distorted values and trains them slowly to accept stupidity as a praiseworthy sacrifice and murder as a divine act.

Islam is entirely responsible for Islamic terrorism. If we fail to see that, we have failed in our diagnosis.

ghuinness

04-15-2005, 22:08

No doubt I am at odds with everyone again....I read the article and all I read was bad mathematical logic theory; falsity implies anything :o

brownapple

04-15-2005, 23:20

You must see yourself as the victim and the non-Muslims as the oppressors in order to hate them enough to kill them. A great number of Muslims, perhaps the majority, are at this stage.

Horseshit. "Perhaps the majority"? 700 million people?

One more factor that I did not mention but is very important is the lack of self-esteem and the prevalent feeling of worthlessness among Muslims, and Islam’s pedagogic fiasco in rearing confident, positive and successful humans. Terrorists are losers who seek their glory in martyrdom. That too is the direct consequence of the failure of Islamic paradigm.

Yeah, Arafat had a real lack of self-esteem and feeling of worthlessness, huh?

I've met an awful lot of Muslims, and have yet to see this "lack of self-esteem" as any more prevelent than any other group (and significantly less than Catholics or Buddhists in my experience).

NousDefionsDoc

04-16-2005, 09:22

I didn't say I agreed with it...I just posted it.

Anybody here have any thoughts on Gurr's "Relative Deprivation" theory?

NousDefionsDoc

04-16-2005, 09:23

BTW, if you haven't read Understanding Terrorist Networks by Sageman and this subject interests you, you should buy the book. Jimbo's recommendation is a good one.

Martin

05-05-2005, 10:35

Commentary: Al-Qaida's take on the U.S.
By Michael Scheuer
Special for United Press International
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20050504-073338-6777r.htm

Martin

05-05-2005, 10:37

Please see link in above post instead.

Peregrino

05-05-2005, 11:36

An insightful analysis. I'll have to find and read his books. Do you think he gored enough sacred cows? This type of thinking might explain why he was buried to the point he felt he had to write his expose's. It also reminds me of a couple other "speculative fiction" articles I've read that would be of interest to this board. If I can find them in my archives, I'll get TS to help me post them. Peregrino

mumbleypeg

05-05-2005, 12:01

This book review from yesterdays NY Times,seems to dovetail into the discussion. Having not read the book; I can't really speak to it. The review raises some interesting points.
May 4, 2005
The Jihad Is a Civil War, the West Only a Bystander
By WILLIAM GRIMES
NO GOD BUT GOD
The Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam
By Reza Aslan
310 pages. Random House. $25.95.

For many in the West, the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center turned a page in world history. They signaled the onset of a monumental struggle between fundamentalist Islam and modern, secular democracy, what the Harvard scholar Samuel P. Huntington has called a "clash of civilizations."

Not so, Reza Aslan argues in "No god but God." "What is taking place now in the Muslim world is an internal conflict between Muslims, not an external battle between Islam and the West," he writes. "The West is merely a bystander - an unwary yet complicit casualty of a rivalry that is raging in Islam over who will write the next chapter in its story."

That history, grippingly narrated and thoughtfully examined, takes up nearly all of "No god but God." Mr. Aslan, an Iranian by birth and a doctoral student in history and religion at the University of California at Santa Barbara, has written a literate, accessible introduction to Islam (or, more accurately Islams), carefully placing its message and rituals in historical context. Complete with a glossary and an annotated bibliography, it could easily serve as a college textbook.

Mr. Aslan is, in a certain sense, a fundamentalist. The Christian sense of the word is meaningless in Islam, of course, because Muslims believe that the Koran was dictated by God and, therefore, that its words are literally true. But like the puritanical Wahhabists of Saudi Arabia, whom he reviles, Mr. Aslan looks to the first Muslim community in Medina, established by Muhammad 1,400 years ago, as a model for reform today. His Medina, though, is a communal, egalitarian society dedicated to pluralism and tolerance. The problem with Islam, Mr. Aslan argues, is the clerical establishment that gained control over the interpretation of the Koran and the hadith: the anecdotes describing the words and deeds of Muhammad, passed on by his followers and their descendants. Less than two centuries after Muhammad's death in 632, there were some 700,000 hadith circulating throughout the Muslim world, "the great majority of which were unquestionably fabricated by individuals who sought to legitimize their own particular beliefs and practices by connecting them with the Prophet." The stoning of adulterous women, to take a notorious example, originated not in the Koran, but in the virulent misogyny of Umar, one of Muhammad's first converts and later the ruler of the caliphate, who simply claimed that this form of punishment had accidentally been left out of the Koran. Although women in the Medina community were given the right to inherit the property of their husbands and to keep their dowries as their own personal property, later scholars decided that the Koran, when instructing believers "not to pass on your wealth and property to the feeble-minded," had women and children in mind.

One of Mr. Aslan's most important chapters deals with the centuries-long struggle between traditionalists and rationalists over the proper interpretation of the Koran. The outcome weighs heavy on the world today. The rationalists saw the Koran as both the word of God and a historical document whose meanings change through time. For the traditionalists, the Koran is fixed and eternal. Therefore, "what was appropriate for Muhammad's community in the seventh century C.E. must be appropriate for all Muslim communities to come, regardless of the circumstances."

The traditionalists won. The power to interpret the Koran came under the control of religious scholars, collectively known as the ulama, who ended the era of consensus and free reasoning that, up to the 10th century, had defined Koranic inquiry.

If this sounds like a remote quarrel, it is not. Mr. Aslan says it is now being played out again throughout the Muslim world. This, he argues, is the real jihad, not holy war against the West, but the internal struggle for Islam's soul, with reformers pitted against reactionaries in Tehran, Cairo, Damascus and Jakarta, as well as in Muslim communities in the West. "Like the reformations of the past, this will be a terrifying event," he writes. "However, out of the ashes of cataclysm, a new chapter in the story of Islam will emerge."

This has a heroic ring to it, but Mr. Aslan acknowledges that the outcome is in doubt. He places his hopes in the like-minded liberals who, he suggests, constitute Islam's silent majority. "The fact is that the vast majority of the more than one billion Muslims in the world readily accept the fundamental principals of democracy," he writes. Like the reformers in Iran, they are committed to "genuine Islamic values like pluralism, freedom, justice, human rights, and above all, democracy."

This may be, but Mr. Aslan, in his polemical conclusion, tends to assert rather than present evidence. His impassioned plea for an Islamic form of democracy, although moving, sounds sophistical. Religion and the state, in his view, cannot be separate. The very concept is alien to Islam. "At its most basic level, the Islamic state is a state run by Muslims for Muslims, in which the determination of values, the norms of behavior, and the formation of laws are influenced by Islamic morality," he writes. Yet somehow pluralism, human rights, equality of the sexes and religious tolerance would prevail, because, ultimately, these values already exist in Islam.

As Mr. Aslan acknowledges, Iran's halting steps toward a synthesis of Islam and democracy have been discouraging. The example of the Taliban casts a very dark shadow over the idea of an Islamic state. But the tide of history, Mr. Aslan insists, is moving in the right direction, sweeping Islam back, after 1,400 years, toward Medina.

Jimbo

05-06-2005, 14:04

Wow, he pretty much stole his whole thesis from Michael Vlahos.

brownapple

05-10-2005, 10:14

Maybe so, but it sure sounds an awful lot like the Reformation to me.

Martin

05-20-2005, 13:59

Nice to see this from the newspapers, reflecting what TR mentioned on another thread, and I suspect many others have thought too.

From Boston Globe, Why Islam is disrespected, by Jeff Jacoby, May 19, 2005 (http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/05/19/why_islam_is_disrespected/)

Hard points follow:
[...] Of course, there was a good reason all these bloody protests went unremembered in the coverage of the Newsweek affair: They never occurred.

Christians, Jews, and Buddhists don't lash out in homicidal rage when their religion is insulted. They don't call for holy war and riot in the streets. It would be unthinkable for a mainstream priest, rabbi, or lama to demand that a blasphemer be slain. But when Reuters reported what Mohammad Hanif, the imam of a Muslim seminary in Pakistan, said about the alleged Koran-flushers -- ''They should be hung. They should be killed in public so that no one can dare to insult Islam and its sacred symbols" -- was any reader surprised?
But what disgraces Islam above all is the vast majority of the planet's Muslims saying nothing and doing nothing about the jihadist cancer eating away at their religion. It is Free Muslims Against Terrorism, a pro-democracy organization, calling on Muslims and Middle Easterners to ''converge on our nation's capital for a rally against terrorism" -- and having only 50 people show up.

frostfire

06-07-2005, 05:47

This, by the way, is the President of Indonesia, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono:
his take on USA:
http://www.usindo.org/Briefs/2005/SBY%20Speech.htm

brownapple

06-07-2005, 18:46

his take on USA:
http://www.usindo.org/Briefs/2005/SBY%20Speech.htm

Good read. Thanks.

frostfire

06-18-2005, 12:28

Princeton professor: "Europe will be part of the Arab west". End of western civilisation by 2100?

Berlin, July 28, SPA -- Europe will have an Islamic majority by the end of this century based on current demographic and migration trends, a leading U.S. Middle East specialist said Wednesday.

"Europe will be part of the Arab west - the Maghreb," said Bernard Lewis, a Princeton University professor and author of numerous books on the Middle East, in an interview with the newspaper Die Welt.

In addition to immigration, Lewis said Europeans were marrying too late and having too few children whereas Moslems in Europe married early and had far larger numbers of children.

"Current trends show Europe will have a Moslem majority by the end of the 21st century at the latest," said Lewis as quoted by the paper.

Germany, the biggest European Union (E.U.) country, currently has over 3 million Moslems out of a total population of 82 million.

E.U. leaders will in December decide on whether to open membership talks with mainly Moslem Turkey which currently has a population of 70 million. --SPA 1419 Local Time 1119 GMT

Orginal interview (in German)
http://www.welt.de/data/2004/07/28/310913.html?search=lewis&searchHILI=1

Doc

07-13-2005, 05:15

While the debate in here goes on....

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8551653/

Doc

BMT (RIP)

07-20-2005, 13:30

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=356444&in_page_id=1811

BMT

Team Sergeant

07-20-2005, 13:49

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=356444&in_page_id=1811

BMT

I read that earlier today and laughed.

Someone should inform this future bullet trap that the islamic jihad has already been at war with the western world for quite a few centuries. I’m betting on at least fifty more years of dip-shits blowing themselves up for allah.

CPTAUSRET

07-20-2005, 13:56

If this has already been posted, I apologize, otherwise...

Father of 9/11 hijacker warns of 50-year war
11:56am 20th July 2005

The father of one of the September 11 hijackers said today he had no sorrow for
what had happened in London and claimed more terrorist attacks would follow.

Egyptian Mohamed el-Amir, whose son Mohamed Atta commandeered the first plane
that crashed into the World Trade Centre in New York, said there was a double
standard in the way the world viewed the victims in London and victims in the
Islamic world.

El-Amir said the attacks in the US and the July 7 attacks in Britain were the
beginning of what would be a 50-year religious war, in which there would be many
more fighters like his son.

Speaking to a CNN producer in his apartment in the upper-middle-class Cairo
suburb of Giza, he declared that terror cells around the world were a "nuclear
bomb that has now been activated and is ticking".

Cursing in Arabic, el-Amir also denounced Arab leaders and Muslims who condemned
the London attacks as being traitors and non-Muslims.

He passionately vowed that he would do anything within his power to encourage
more attacks.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id
=356444&in_page_id=1811

Jack Moroney (RIP)

07-20-2005, 14:46

Cursing in Arabic, el-Amir also denounced Arab leaders and Muslims who condemned
the London attacks as being traitors and non-Muslims.

What would that sound like, "Your wife has the face of a camel"? Here is a proponent that wants to make it a target rich environment where all Muslims are to rise up and strike. Evidently Mustaffa the Mouth doesn't want us to be able to tell the forest from the trees. So be it. I love a target rich environment.

Jack Moroney-breaking out the chain saw and willing to limit the harvest in culling the diseased trees but just as willing to clear cut the forest to remove the threat of a wildfire from my doorstep.

Martin

07-20-2005, 14:57

Jack Moroney-breaking out the chain saw and willing to limit the harvest in culling the diseased trees but just as willing to clear cut the forest to remove the threat of a wildfire from my doorstep.
A guy in my last class drew a hilarious short cartoon of a cane carrying old lady who bumps her foot into a tree, next image has her cussing and giving the tree the finger, then coming back with a ski mask and a big ass chainsaw. :D

Reminded me...

PS. No, I'm not calling you an old lady!

lksteve

07-20-2005, 18:09

El-Amir said the attacks in the US and the July 7 attacks in Britain were the beginning of what would be a 50-year religious war, in which there would be many more fighters like his son.hell, in 50 years, we can kill them all if we keep our head in the game...

Detcord

07-23-2005, 01:33

islam is at war with us. they don't like us,
never will, and will always try to kill us. they
can't be negotiated with. you know, that whole
"death to the infidels" thing???

it's a belief in islam that if muslims must negotiate, they will
do so only as a tactical advantage to get their enemies
to drop their guard. then, it's back to jihad until they are
in control again.

they are not nice people in general, have zero tolerance for different
cultures or belief systems, and use extreme violence to
"solve" their problems.

people who have nothing to lose and refuse to think for themselves
are the most dangerous enemy to face. they are "sheep," but very
dangerous sheep. bahahahahaha.

i'd say any "good" muslim is only one hate-filled speech away
from strapping on a vest filled with 30 lbs of C4 and making
the daily news.

oh well, lock and load another 30rd magazine... :cool:

Sigi

07-23-2005, 02:22

Is Islam to blame?
Despite claims of moderate Muslims, a literal reading of the Koran offers cover for acts of terrorism.

By Irshad Manji, Irshad Manji is the author of "The Trouble with Islam Today" (St. Martin's Press, 2005).

Which is why I don't understand how moderate Muslim leaders can reject, flat-out, the notion that religion may also play a part in these bombings. What makes them so sure that Islam is an innocent bystander?

What makes them sound so sure is literalism. That's the trouble with Islam today. We Muslims, including moderates living here in the West, are routinely raised to believe that the Koran is the final and therefore perfect manifesto of God's will, untouched and immutable.

This is a supremacy complex. It's dangerous because it inhibits moderates from asking hard questions about what happens when faith becomes dogma. To avoid the discomfort, we sanitize.

Is Islam to Blame? (http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-manji22jul22,0,1520327.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions)

Huey14

07-23-2005, 03:28

You could probably find the same in the Bible.

The Reaper

07-23-2005, 08:19

You could probably find the same in the Bible.

Yeah, but we grew out of that forced conversion or death by torture thing about 500 years ago.

The Moslems have not yet experienced a significant reformation of their religion.

TR

Huey14

07-23-2005, 08:40

When was the reformation for Christians?

I'm playing Devil's Advocate, BTW.

lksteve

07-23-2005, 09:17

Martin Luther posted his theses in 1517...John Calvin and John Knox were on the scene later in that century..

Team Sergeant

07-23-2005, 09:23

brownapple

07-23-2005, 09:43

Yeah, but we grew out of that forced conversion or death by torture thing about 500 years ago.

The Moslems have not yet experienced a significant reformation of their religion.

TR

There is a pretty good argument to be made that Islam is undergoing a pretty significant reformation right now. I think you have already made that point, TR.

So, let's take a step back and time and consider if we had been around during that period of the 16th to 18th centuries, when Europe was at war between Protestant and Catholic....

If we were persecuted and attacked, tortured and killed... by the Holy Roman Church....

Should we also hate the followers of Martin Luther? Of Calvin? Would we consider ourselves at war with them?

After all, they all read the same book (although they interpret it significantly differently). They all believe in the same God. And they are all Christians...

Remember that it took the Catholic Church around 600 years to apologize for the inquisition. I find it hard to condemn Islam as a whole when the Roman Catholic Church has so much to answer for, and yet I don't expect anyone (and would consider anyone who did foolish) to condemn all Catholics for the actions of a few in the name of that faith.

I also find it hard to claim we are at war with Islam when Muslim Soldiers fight in the GWOT on our side.

Team Sergeant

07-23-2005, 09:54

Inpressive and disconcerting numbers, lets just tolerate islam until it buries the western world.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/07/23/npoll23.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/07/23/ixnewstop.html

One in four Muslims sympathises with motives of terrorists
By Anthony King
(Filed: 23/07/2005)

The group portrait of British Muslims painted by YouGov's survey for The Daily Telegraph is at once reassuring and disturbing, in some ways even alarming.

The vast majority of British Muslims condemn the London bombings but a substantial minority are clearly alienated from modern British society and some are prepared to justify terrorist acts.

Click to enlarge
The divisions within the Muslim community go deep. Muslims are divided over the morality of the London bombings, over the extent of their loyalty to this country and over how Muslims should respond to recent events.

Most Muslims are evidently moderate and law-abiding but by no means all are.

YouGov sought to gauge the character of the Muslim community's response to the events of July 7. As the figures in the chart show, 88 per cent of British Muslims clearly have no intention of trying to justify the bus and Tube murders.

However, six per cent insist that the bombings were, on the contrary, fully justified.

Six per cent may seem a small proportion but in absolute numbers it amounts to about 100,000 individuals who, if not prepared to carry out terrorist acts, are ready to support those who do.

Moreover, the proportion of YouGov's respondents who, while not condoning the London attacks, have some sympathy with the feelings and motives of those who carried them out is considerably larger - 24 per cent.

A substantial majority, 56 per cent, say that, whether or not they sympathise with the bombers, they can at least understand why some people might want to behave in this way.

YouGov also asked whether or not its Muslim respondents agreed or disagreed with Tony Blair's description of the ideas and ideology of the London bombers as "perverted and poisonous".

Again, while a large majority, 58 per cent, agree with him, a substantial minority, 26 per cent, are reluctant to be so dismissive.

The responses indicate that Muslim men are more likely than Muslim women to be alienated from the mainstream and that the young are more likely to be similarly alienated than the old.

However, there are few signs in YouGov's findings that Muslims of Pakistani and Bangladeshi origin are any more disaffected than their co-religionists from elsewhere.

The sheer scale of Muslim alienation from British society that the survey reveals is remarkable. Although a large majority of British Muslims are more than content to make their home in this country, a significant minority are not.

For example, YouGov asked respondents how loyal they feel towards Britain. As the figures in the chart show, the great majority say they feel "very loyal" (46 per cent) or "fairly loyal" (33 per cent) but nearly one British Muslim in five, 18 per cent, feels little loyalty towards this country or none at all.

If these findings are accurate, and they probably are, well over 100,000 British Muslims feel no loyalty whatsoever towards this country.

The proportion of men who say they feel no loyalty to Britain is more than three times the proportion of women saying the same.

Equally remarkable are YouGov's findings concerning many Muslims' attitudes towards Western society and culture.

YouGov asked respondents how they feel about Western society and how, if at all, they feel Muslims should adapt to it. A majority, 56 per cent, believe "Western society may not be perfect but Muslims should live with it and not seek to bring it to an end".

However, nearly a third of British Muslims, 32 per cent, are far more censorious, believing that "Western society is decadent and immoral and that Muslims should seek to bring it to an end".

Among those who hold this view, almost all go on to say that Muslims should only seek to bring about change by non-violent means but one per cent, about 16,000 individuals, declare themselves willing, possibly even eager, to embrace violence.

Yet again, far more men than women and far more young people than their elders evince this kind of hostility towards the world around them. In addition, tens of thousands of Muslims view the whole of Britain's political establishment with suspicion.

More than half of those interviewed, 52 per cent, believe "British political leaders don't mean it when they talk about equality. They regard the lives of white British people as more valuable than the lives of British Muslims".

Almost as many, 50 per cent, reckon the main party leaders are not being sincere when they say they respect Islam and want to co-operate with Britain's Muslim communities.

Despite Tony Blair's well-publicised efforts to reach out to Muslims, fewer than half of those interviewed, 42 per cent, approve of the way he has handled Britain's response to the July 7 events.

Many British Muslims are probably reluctant to give Mr Blair credit for anything at all following his complicity with America, as they see it, in launching the invasion of Iraq. Just more than half, 52 per cent, are impressed by the performance since the bombings of Sir Iqbal Sacranie, secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Great Britain. Some Muslims' discontent with Britain clearly extends to discontent with the existing moderate and pro-British Muslim leadership.

A cloud of suspicion also hangs over Britain's judicial system.

YouGov asked its Muslim respondents whether or not they thought anyone charged and taken to court in connection with the July 7 attacks would receive a fair trial. Only 37 per cent said yes. The rest reckon he or she would not or were doubtful that they would.

Despite these widespread doubts, a large majority of Britain's Muslims clearly believe the time has come when Muslims must shoulder their share of the responsibility for preventing and punishing terrorist crimes such as those in London.

As the figures in the chart show, roughly a third of Muslims reckon they should assume "a great deal" of the responsibility and another third reckon they should assume at least "some" of it.

Even more impressive in some ways is the fact that large numbers now say they are prepared to put their mouth where their feelings are.

As the figures in the chart show, almost three quarters of British Mulsims, 73 per cent, say they would inform the police if they believed that someone they knew or knew of might be planning a terrorist attack.

Nearly half, 47 per cent, say they would also go to the police if they believed an imam or other religious person was trying to radicalise young Muslims by preaching hatred against the West.

Not only that but 70 per cent of Muslims reckon they have a duty to go to the police if they "see something in the community that makes them feel suspicious".

Taken as a whole, the findings of YouGov's survey suggest that, although large numbers of British Muslims dislike British society and in some cases may be tempted to attack it, the great majority are loyal and law-abiding and are unlikely to provide the radicals with moral support, let alone safe havens.

YouGov interviewed 526 Muslim adults across Great Britain online between July 15 and yesterday. The data were weighted to reflect the composition of Britain's Muslim population by gender, age and country of birth.

YouGov abides by the rules of the British Polling Council.

Anthony King is professor of government at Essex University.

The Reaper

07-23-2005, 12:29

There is a pretty good argument to be made that Islam is undergoing a pretty significant reformation right now. I think you have already made that point, TR.

So, let's take a step back and time and consider if we had been around during that period of the 16th to 18th centuries, when Europe was at war between Protestant and Catholic....

If we were persecuted and attacked, tortured and killed... by the Holy Roman Church....

Should we also hate the followers of Martin Luther? Of Calvin? Would we consider ourselves at war with them?

After all, they all read the same book (although they interpret it significantly differently). They all believe in the same God. And they are all Christians...

Remember that it took the Catholic Church around 600 years to apologize for the inquisition. I find it hard to condemn Islam as a whole when the Roman Catholic Church has so much to answer for, and yet I don't expect anyone (and would consider anyone who did foolish) to condemn all Catholics for the actions of a few in the name of that faith.

I also find it hard to claim we are at war with Islam when Muslim Soldiers fight in the GWOT on our side.

Do you really want to open this discussion up all over again?

I thought that we had agreed to disagree on this matter.

If we are going to start this up for another round, I need to clear my calendar and put on a pot of coffee.

We no longer live in the 15th Century. It appears that many followers of Islam do. If only one in four are hostile, how many civilian casualties do you view as acceptable losses? If they get nukes (and it is just a matter of time), how many burned American cities full of non-combatants will it take to convince you in Thailand that we are at war?

You are either with us, or against us. If large groups of Muslims want to operate in an Old Testament environment, maybe we should too.

Is there a New Testament with the promise of peace, love, and salvation in their future? If so, I am not seeing it in their actions today.

Any Catholics who participated in those actions you referenced should have been prosecuted and excommunicated. I refuse to tacitly condone Islamofascism and terrorism because others in our past have also done wrong. Is the fact that we made mistakes in the past the basis for allowing it to happen to us again today?

Those in our society today who fail to recognize this threat are sheep and will likely die like sheep, after preventing the sheepdogs from doing their duty when it was doable.

TR

Jack Moroney (RIP)

07-23-2005, 13:11

Well said TR and I couldn't agree more. Whenever Islam factions get around to figuring out for which portion of their "book" they stand we all should be able to better figure out the target sets. Right now one seems to want to co-opt the others and that being the case we can only assume we are operating in an every increasing target rich environment.

brownapple

07-23-2005, 21:13

If only one in four are hostile,

So three of four are not hostile, correct?

Btw, I'm already convinced we are at war. Just not with Islam.

Any Catholics who participated in those actions you referenced should have been prosecuted and excommunicated. I refuse to tacitly condone Islamofascism and terrorism because others in our past have also done wrong. Is the fact that we made mistakes in the past the basis for allowing it to happen to us again today?

Should have been. But weren't. And the fact that we made mistakes in the past should be the basis for us not making the same mistakes today and being able to recognize that others may make the same mistakes without being evil people.

Those in our society today who fail to recognize this threat are sheep and will likely die like sheep, after preventing the sheepdogs from doing their duty when it was doable.

Fighting all of Islam is not doable, and the idea that it should be done is foolish (I am not claiming that you are suggesting that idea, but following the thread title).
There are troops from Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Morocco, Iraq, Afghanistan, Turkey, Uzbekistan, Bahrain, Jordan and I am sure others that are risking their lives in the GWOT on our side. They are Muslims by and large.

So, are we to turn away the help of those sheepdogs in our quest for a war with Islam? Shall we declare them to be enemies? They are Islam at least as much as the Islamists.

Detcord

07-24-2005, 04:55

Detcord,

Use capitol letters, especially if you wish to engage the Quiet Professionals in conversation. We will not allow children or the che tee shirt wearing MTV crowd to take over this website.

Team Sergeant

Roger.

To put everyone's fears at rest, I have not watched MTV for
over twenty years, nor do I own any of those t-shirts either. :D

The Reaper

07-24-2005, 08:26

So three of four are not hostile, correct?

No, they are tacit supporters, enablers, and apologists.

Btw, I'm already convinced we are at war. Just not with Islam.

Till I see more Muslims taking a stronger stand against the terrorists, I remain unsure that is the case.

Should have been. But weren't. And the fact that we made mistakes in the past should be the basis for us not making the same mistakes today and being able to recognize that others may make the same mistakes without being evil people.

Sorry, I am not responsible for the actions of Europeans before our country was founded. I am responsible for ensuring that my kids are not brutally butchered by a Islamic lunatic who believes it when his Islamic religious advisor tells him (and all of his Islamic congregation) that killing infidels (like my kids) is Allah's will and a sure route to Islamic Heaven. When other Moslems look the other way, make excuses, or blame the Jews, rather than facing reality and excommunicating the Moslem religious leaders responsible, they are the enemy.

So by your logic, the German people were not responsible for the actions of the Nazis because they didn't actually stuff anyone into the ovens themselves?

Fighting all of Islam is not doable, and the idea that it should be done is foolish (I am not claiming that you are suggesting that idea, but following the thread title).

I disagree. It is a huge task, but not impossible. The Moslems need to get their heads out of their asses and their religious leaders under control, or that is exactly what is going to happen, which benefits no one but the same Wahabi idiots who started this.

There are troops from Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Morocco, Iraq, Afghanistan, Turkey, Uzbekistan, Bahrain, Jordan and I am sure others that are risking their lives in the GWOT on our side. They are Muslims by and large.

Some of these troops are supporting us. Most are only reluctantly participating, like the Pakistanis, because their government forces them to. Go to those same countries, and look at the polls. The majority of their populations believe that the US got what it deserved on 9/11, or that Islamic terrorists were not responsible. Name the only nations to recognize Afghanistan under the Taliban. Where are the fatwas against OBL and the other terrorists? Why are the majority of Moslem leaders not standing up every day on camera and saying that anyone with the blood of innocents on his hands will never be allowed to enter Heaven?

So, are we to turn away the help of those sheepdogs in our quest for a war with Islam? Shall we declare them to be enemies? They are Islam at least as much as the Islamists.

We can use them to the extent they will actually cooperate. If you think they are willing allies, I think you are mistaken. I believe that OBL is in Pakistan and that the Pak government knows where he is. IMHO, most of those "sheepdogs" that you cite would rather be killing Americans than AQ and Taliban.

The Japanese and German people who were farmers and businessmen during the early 1940s were treated as our enemies just like their leaders till they were defeated. Then they were treated decently as fellow citizens again. Did Sherman fail to burn and sack property in the South held by Union sympathizers? They are enablers and have to be shown the error of their ways.

GH, why don't you take a look at the scum who are currently deliberately killing innocents around the world on a massive scale in their God's name and tell me what their religion is? What do they have in common? Bear in mind that Jews, Moslems, and Christians are all people of the book and should be brothers.

We are not at war with a religion, but we are in a fight for our lives with a very large group of dedicated people bent on the absolute destruction of the West, and they all happen to be Moslems.

This fight is not going to be over till we kill every one of them who wishes us harm, they kill us, or they decide that what they are doing is wrong and quit. The COA selected is up to them.

TR

Sigi

07-24-2005, 09:07

I find myself thinking exactly the way TR does concerning this subject. And then there are days when I believe the way GH does. It is a very confusing, sad topic that I seem to wrestle with daily (I read too much.)

All I know is that change is not going to come from within Islam until more of the extremeists are laid to rest and there is a more equitable "balance of power" between extremists and moderates. I am beginning to read of more moderates stepping forward, but I am still of the belief this GWOT is far from over, if only just beginning.

Some good articles:

Why Terrorism fails. (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/Commentary/com-7_23_05_JC.html)

We're at war. Act like it. (http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson200507220816.asp)

brownapple

07-24-2005, 19:43

No, they are tacit supporters, enablers, and apologists.

I'm sure the President of Indonesia will be interested to hear your opinion of him.

Till I see more Muslims taking a stronger stand against the terrorists, I remain unsure that is the case.

Might it be that they are taking a strong stand? Just the media isn't reporting it? After the London bombing, Indonesia issued a very strong statement. It wasn't reported on any US news outlet. Why is that?

Sorry, I am not responsible for the actions of Europeans before our country was founded. I am responsible for ensuring that my kids are not brutally butchered by a Islamic lunatic who believes it when his Islamic religious advisor tells him (and all of his Islamic congregation) that killing infidels (like my kids) is Allah's will and a sure route to Islamic Heaven. When other Moslems look the other way, make excuses, or blame the Jews, rather than facing reality and excommunicating the Moslem religious leaders responsible, they are the enemy.

As I understand it, Islam doesn't have a means of excommunicating anyone.

So by your logic, the German people were not responsible for the actions of the Nazis because they didn't actually stuff anyone into the ovens themselves?

Not even close. The German people supported and actively fought for a government that they accepted (even if it wasn't elected). However, that is not true of most of Islam (exceptions being Afghanistan under the Taliban, Iraq under Hussein, Syria, and Iran). The majority of Islam is not supporting such actions.

I disagree. It is a huge task, but not impossible. The Moslems need to get their heads out of their asses and their religious leaders under control, or that is exactly what is going to happen, which benefits no one but the same Wahabi idiots who started this.

So, you would go to war with 1.4 billion people over the actions of a few thousand?

Doesn't exactly demonstrate very good target selection choice, does it? And makes it pretty hard to be a "force multiplier", don't you think?

Some of these troops are supporting us. Most are only reluctantly participating, like the Pakistanis, because their government forces them to. Go to those same countries, and look at the polls.

Kind of like the polls that said Kerry would win the Presidency? Polls get the results the pollsters want. And if they are so reluctant, how come they are getting such significant results?

The majority of their populations believe that the US got what it deserved on 9/11, or that Islamic terrorists were not responsible. Name the only nations to recognize Afghanistan under the Taliban. Where are the fatwas against OBL and the other terrorists?

At least twice fatwas have been issued against the terrorists. Again, not a whole lot of coverage in the US.

Why are the majority of Moslem leaders not standing up every day on camera and saying that anyone with the blood of innocents on his hands will never be allowed to enter Heaven?

Could it be because the cameras aren't interested in showing that?

We can use them to the extent they will actually cooperate. If you think they are willing allies, I think you are mistaken.

Hmmmm.... unwilling but they get results... interesting...

I believe that OBL is in Pakistan and that the Pak government knows where he is.

I think OBL is probably dead. Really isn't material, is it?

IMHO, most of those "sheepdogs" that you cite would rather be killing Americans than AQ and Taliban.

They outnumber our forces 6 or 7 to 1. With very competent troops. If they would rather, I think they would be.

The Japanese and German people who were farmers and businessmen during the early 1940s were treated as our enemies just like their leaders till they were defeated. Then they were treated decently as fellow citizens again. Did Sherman fail to burn and sack property in the South held by Union sympathizers? They are enablers and have to be shown the error of their ways.

We can demonstrate very easily how farmers and businessmen in Japan and Germany provided support to the Wehrmacht and IJN. Can you demonstrate how a farmer in Malaysia provides support to an Islamist terrorist?

GH, why don't you take a look at the scum who are currently deliberately killing innocents around the world on a massive scale in their God's name and tell me what their religion is?

Which scum is that? FARC? RIRA?

All terrorists are scum. And all of them do it for power. For the Islamists, religion is an excuse. Just as it was/is for the IRA.

Shall we condemn all Catholics as enablers of the IRA?

Bear in mind that Jews, Moslems, and Christians are all people of the book and should be brothers.

Maybe you should bear that in mind when you are thinking about that 75%.

We are not at war with a religion, but we are in a fight for our lives with a very large group of dedicated people bent on the absolute destruction of the West, and they all happen to be Moslems.

Would it make you feel better if they were Catholics? Then you could call for the destruction of the terrorists without condemning their religion as well, couldn't you?

This fight is not going to be over till we kill every one of them who wishes us harm, they kill us, or they decide that what they are doing is wrong and quit.

I agree. The question is how well we bother to identify those who wish us harm. You seem intent on condemning large numbers for no reason other than their religion, not because they wish us any harm.

The COA selected is up to them.

Is it? We have no options?

Airbornelawyer

07-25-2005, 09:32

Yeah, but we grew out of that forced conversion or death by torture thing about 500 years ago.Both you and GH make good points on both sides of the equation, and I have elaborated much earlier at length on my views and do not wish to revisit them.

I would note, however, with regard to this statement, that while it is true that Christianity has become moderate and tolerant among most Americans (US and Latin), Western Europeans, and some others, this is most certainly not true everywhere. Orthodox Christianity in the Balkans, for example, can be just as vitriolic, if not worse, than Islam there. When I first started working in the Balkans in 1991, one of the first things we tried to do was get Serbian Orthodox religious leaders to denounce the acts being committed by Yugoslav soldiers and Serb militiamen in the name of their religion. Some spoke out courageously, but far too many chose ethnic and religious solidarity and became participants, abettors and "tacit supporters, enablers, and apologists" of torture, rape and savage butchery.

We saw similar things in Chechnya, where Russian human rights monitors have documented, among other things, bodies of Chechens with crosses carved into them. There has not been major violence in the past few years, but harassment and vandalism continues to be directed against other sects, including Jews, Pentecostals and other evangelical Protestants, Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses.

My mother was a Southern Baptist missionary in Africa, so I grew up with an interest and background in that region. In many places, Christianity has been a great moderating influence, but in others, religious hatred has been exploited for violent ends. For example, many Nigerian states routinely experience murders in the dozens or hundreds of Muslims by Christians and of Christians by Muslims.

Christianity and Islam, of course, are not alone. Christians and Muslims have also faced persecution, violence and forced conversions by Hindus in a number of Indian states. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad, an extremist offshoot of the Hindu fundamentalist movement Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, has been implicated in a number of violent acts against missionaries and Indian Christians and Muslims.

Peregrino

07-25-2005, 10:26

AL does have a point. Having witnessed the excesses of "revolutionary theology" by Catholic priests and laity in Latin America during the 80's I'm not big on them either. The Catholic heirarchy did make token attempts to control the proponents but the leftist ideology they spouted did untold damage that still reverberates. Unfortunately - given weaknesses in human character, religion will always be the fastest/easiest route to power for the unscrupulous. Marx made a legitimate observation when he called it "the opiate of the masses". My .02 - Peregrino

Jimbo

07-26-2005, 06:20

The Christian Science Monitor - csmonitor.com

from the July 26, 2005 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0726/p01s03-wome.html

Terror shifts Muslim views
By Dan Murphy | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

CAIRO - When the American invasion of Iraq began, Adel al-Mashad and his activist comrades sprang into action.

The next day they helped organize an antiwar protest in Cairo that brought tens of thousands of Egyptians onto the streets; it evolved into the biggest public attack on President Hosni Mubarak's rule since he came to power in 1981.

Mr. Mashad says that protest, which tied the anger at the US invasion to the aspirations for democratic change at home, is one of his proudest moments.

But that was March 20, 2003. Today, the voices of Mashad and activists in other Arab capitals are largely mute when it comes to Iraq.

They still fervently oppose the US presence. But they are increasingly put off by the brutal tactics used by the insurgency against civilians. Similarly, many Muslims are angry over the tactics used by terrorists in the name of Islam.

Among the manifestations of this shift in public attitudes:

* On Sunday, about 1,000 Egyptians, mostly hotel workers, marched through Sharm el-Sheikh, where a weekend bombing killed scores of people, chanting: "There is no God but God; terrorism is the enemy of God."

* In Pakistan, an Islamist call for nationwide protests against a crackdown on militants fell flat Friday with rallies drawing just a few hundred people.

* A recent Pew poll showed a decline in public support for suicide bombings in Muslim countries (see chart).

Mashad says he's been appalled by recent incidents in Iraq, such as the suicide attacks that killed 25 children receiving candy from US soldiers two weeks ago, and more than 50 Iraqis in a separate incident near a Shiite mosque.

And with suicide attacks on civilians spreading to places like Egypt, with 88 killed in the country's worst terrorist attack Saturday, he and many others are asking how one can honorably oppose American foreign policy without lending support to brutal tactics.

"The people fighting in Iraq, we don't know them and it's hard to be comfortable with them,'' he says. "We want to support the Iraqi people, but the situation now is so complicated and confused, and there's so much that happens that simply can't be tolerated. You ask me who do we support, and the answer is: It's hard to say."

Recent weeks have seen an outpouring of concern and condemnation of the culture of suicide terror.

In a talk given in Los Angeles last Friday by Maher Hathout, a senior adviser to the US Muslim Public Affairs Council, an organization opposed the US invasion of Iraq, he condemned suicide bombings. He spoke of a "perversion" of Islam as having affected the men who attacked London. "Somehow, some person [made] them swallow the bait that transformed them into [being] willing to blow themselves up and take with them innocent lives that God created," he said. "So many hearts that were supposed to be opened are closed; so many minds that could have been guided by the light of Islam have been confused."

"Confusion" is now the operative word for millions of Arabs, alarmed by the daily suicide attacks on civilians in Iraq, Europe, and now Egypt.

That has left secular activists like Mr. Mashad, an electrical engineer with a small contracting business, and some Islamists in the position of condemning both the US and the tactics used against US and Iraqi soldiers. "These are the tactics of extremists who are against democracy,'' he says.

Still, many Arabs continue to make distinctions between "legitimate" resistance that targets American forces and the "illegitimate" resistance that has become common in Iraq.

"There are both resistance fighters and terrorists," says Mahmud Kaswani, who runs a small store in Damascus. "The resistance has a right to continue to fight. [But] the people who are killing civilians - they are the terrorists.... I am against anybody who kills civilians - even British or American civilians."

But there are those who see attacks on civilians as a necessary component of an asymmetric war. Ayman Samarra, who sells scarves and robes in Damascus, says he supports the expansion of terror tactics to places like London. Iraq "was a safe country and now ... it is turning into a civil war. This is what America did. Everybody is against the Arabs. The bombings in London - things like this have to happen because before the war in Iraq, there were hundreds of protests and nobody listened."

Mohammed Mahdi Akef, the Supreme Guide of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, has repeatedly said killing civilians "contradicts religion and its laws." But he has tempered his criticism by saying the US and its allies bear some of the blame.

Mashad remembers thinking that a nationalist Iraqi resistance would quickly emerge after the US invasion, focused on getting America out of Iraq and creating a democracy. Just as his organization had organized material and political support for Palestinian groups fighting Israel, he envisioned similar efforts on behalf of the national Iraqi resistance.

Instead, he sees the insurgency in Iraq as mostly religious extremists and former supporters of Saddam Hussein who want to restore dictatorship to Iraq. Were that to happen, the interests of democracy in the region would be hurt as badly as it has been by, in his view, an illegal US invasion to impose its views on Arabs from the outside.

"I can never agree to the American occupation and the US ability to impose its will on the region,'' he says. "But I can't support a resistance that commits so many crimes. Each seems as bad as the other."

* Rhonda Roumani in Damascus, Syria, contributed to this report.

Peregrino

07-26-2005, 09:56

Here's some more editorial commentary about Islamofascism - and the war we should/must wage against it. Peregrino

Can we rid the world of this cult of death and destruction?
--------------------

By Frederick J. Chiaventone, a retired Army officer who taught counterinsurgency at the U.S. Army Command & General Staff College

July 22, 2005

If the problem of Islamic-inspired terrorism wasn't painfully obvious before, the London bombings have driven home the point yet again. In the West our contact with murderous acts of terrorism supposedly in the name of Islam has been relatively limited but dramatic nonetheless.

In all of the furor, the constant stream of reports--from London, Madrid, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Iraq--of dead, injured, kidnapped, terrorized and brutalized populations, it is easy to be overcome by the horror, easy to forget that the fight against Islamo-fascism is a necessary, even mandatory struggle.

As pleasant, as liberating, as it might seem to be able to wash our hands of the entire business, withdraw our troops, retire behind our borders and let the world go its own way, it won't happen.

We cannot do it.

We cannot afford to do it.

The world cannot afford the luxury of ignorance. The war against terrorism is a war to the death. For the self-anointed leadership of Islamo-terrorism, there are no neutrals and that, quite frankly, is the essential reason for our complete opposition and tireless resistance.

Whatever claims may be made by Osama bin Laden or Abu Musab al-Zarqawi or their ilk, there is not a single person or idea not encompassed by their very limited and perverted screed who is held harmless or sacred--Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, it matters not--if an individual or a society does not accede to and embrace with fanatic enthusiasm the convoluted and medieval Wahabist interpretation of Islam, he or she is not entitled to life or liberty. It is that simple. And that urgent.

The increased tempo of terrorist operations--heightened as Iraq and Afghanistan draw ever further away from the enervating clutches of the fanatics--is indication of how very desperately the opposition fears democracy and religious freedom and tolerance. The very nature of the targets selected by the terrorists indicate their very real fear that they are losing the war. They have already lost the hearts, minds and sympathies of the vast majority of the civilized world.

But with every new act of terror, al-Zarqawi, bin Laden and their minions demonstrate how truly they have misread human nature. The Spaniards were deterred from their commitment to Iraq by the horrendous bombings in Madrid, but not so the British. Not so the Americans. Not so the Saudis.
Not so the Afghanis or the Iraqis--Sunnis or Shiites. If anything, the terrorists' strategy to deliberately target the innocent in an effort to derail the society at large and thus paralyze the war effort, has not only failed--it has backfired.

Americans have taken the war to the very heart of the enemy's territory.
The British have shaken their fists defiantly at the murderers among us and determined, with typical British aplomb, to carry on. Even the Spanish, initially deterred by the horrific violence inflicted on their citizens, have become relentless in their pursuit of the predatory murderers who have infiltrated Spanish society.

Do not be misled or cowed by the remarks of Omar Bakri Mohammed, the England-based sheik who blames the West for provoking the attacks. Do not be dispirited by the inflammatory rhetoric of Anjem Choudary, a lawyer and Islamic activist who claims, from the relative safety of his home in England, that there is more horror to come. Do not be dissuaded by the rantings of the father of suicidal hijacker Mohamed Atta, who vows a 50-year war against the West.

All of these people--the bin Ladens, the Attas, the al-Zarqawis--are failed human beings. Their belief system is corrupt, empty and vindictive in the extreme. What they label as Islam is about as far from true Islamic beliefs and practices as snake-handling is from Christianity. They are an anomaly.

As evidenced by the outpouring of outrage, not only in Great Britain and the United States but in Muslim populations throughout the world, the terrorists have done nothing but prove to the world that they are anathema to civil society. If there were ever any doubts before, there are none now.
The Islamo-fascists have done their utmost to prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that they are at war with the world. No pseudo-religious sect with such extreme and inflexible views should ever be allowed to hold sway over the world at large. The actions of Al Qaeda and its Iraqi, Saudi, Syrian and Jordanian associates are purely destructive--assassination, kidnapping and murder of diplomats, policemen, soldiers, journalists, teachers, statesmen, scholars, Imams. The world that they would impose on us is as dark and repressive as any ever dreamed of by Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge or Adolf Hitler's Nazis.

In some ways the Islamo-fascists are their own worst enemies for, just as we are beginning to weary of the grind and drain of war, they commit inhuman outrages such as to ensure that we do not forget what this entire war is about. They remind us that this is a war we cannot afford to lose--none of us.

Copyright (c) 2005, Chicago Tribune

The Reaper

07-26-2005, 10:18

Here is an article, by an Arab Moslem living in the US, though I think his perspective is limited to an Arab-centric perspective, much as I think GH is looking at this from an Asian Islamist perspective.

Interesting, nonetheless.

TR

VIEW OF THE ARAB WORLD BY AN ARAB

The Arab who wrote this is: Haim Harari, Chair, Davidson Institute of Science Education.

Past President, Weizmann Institute of Science

"A View from the Eye of the Storm"

Talk delivered by Haim Harari at a meeting of the International Advisory Board of a large multi-national corporation, April, 2004:

"As you know, I usually provide the scientific and technological "entertainment" in our meetings, but, on this occasion, our Chairman suggested that I present my own personal view on events in the part of the world from which I come.

I have never been and I will never be a Government official and I have no privileged information. My perspective is entirely based on what I see, on what I read and on the fact that my family has lived in this region for almost 200 years. You may regard my views as those of the proverbial taxi driver, which you are supposed to question, when you visit a country.

I could have shared with you some fascinating facts and some personal thoughts about the Israeli-Arab conflict. However, I will touch upon it only in passing. I prefer to devote most of my remarks to the broader picture of the region and its place in world events. I refer to the entire area between Pakistan and Morocco, which is predominantly Arab, predominantly Moslem, but includes many non-Arab and also significant non-Moslem minorities.

Why do I put aside Israel and its own immediate neighborhood? Because Israel and any problems related to it, in spite of what you might read or hear in the world media, is not the central issue, and has never been the central issue in the upheaval in the region.

Yes, there is a 100 year-old Israeli-Arab conflict, but it is not where the main show is.

The millions who died in the Iran-Iraq war had nothing to do with Israel.

The mass murder happening right now in Sudan, where the Arab Moslem regime is massacring its black Christian citizens, has nothing to do with Israel.

The frequent reports from Algeria about the murders of hundreds of civilian in one village or another by other Algerians have nothing to do with Israel.

Saddam Hussein did not invade Kuwait, endangered Saudi Arabia and butchered his own people because of Israel.

Egypt did not use poison gas against Yemen in the 60's because of Israel.

Assad the Father did not kill tens of thousands of his own citizens in one week in El Hamma in Syria because of Israel.

The Taliban control of Afghanistan and the civil war there had nothing to do with Israel.

The Libyan blowing up of the Pan-Am flight had nothing to do with Israel, and I could go on and on and on.

The root of the trouble is that this entire Moslem region is totally dysfunctional, by any standard of the word, and would have been so even if Israel had joined the Arab league and an independent Palestine had existed for 100 years.

The 22 member countries of the Arab league, from Mauritania to the Gulf States, have a total population of 300 millions, larger than the US and almost as large as the EU before its expansion.

They have a land area larger than either the US or all of Europe.

These 22 countries, with all their oil and natural resources, have a combined GDP smaller than that of Netherlands plus Belgium and equal to half of the GDP of California alone.

Within this meager GDP, the gaps between rich and poor are beyond belief and too many of the rich made their money not by succeeding in business, but by being corrupt rulers.

The social status of women is far below what it was in the Western World 150 years ago.

Human rights are below any reasonable standard, in spite of the grotesque fact that Libya was elected Chair of the UN Human Rights commission.

According to a report prepared by a committee of Arab intellectuals and published under the auspices of the U.N., the number of books translated by the entire Arab world is much smaller than what little Greece alone translates.

The total number of scientific publications of 300 million Arabs is less than that of 6 million Israelis.

Birth rates in the region are very high, increasing the poverty, the social gaps and the cultural decline.

And all of this is happening in a region, which only 30 years ago, was believed to be the next wealthy part of the world, and in a Moslem area, which developed, at some point in history, one of the most advanced cultures in the world.

It is fair to say that this creates an unprecedented breeding ground for cruel dictators, terror networks, fanaticism, incitement, suicide murders and general decline. It is also a fact that almost everybody in the region blames this situation on the United States, on Israel, on Western Civilization, on Judaism and Christianity, on anyone and anything, except themselves.

A word about the millions of decent, honest, good people who are either devout Moslems or are not very religious but grew up in Moslem families: They are double victims of an outside world, which now develops Islamophobia and of their own environment, which breaks their heart by being totally dysfunctional.

The problem is that the vast silent majority of these Moslems are not part of the terror and of the incitement, but they also do not stand up against it. They become accomplices, by omission, and this applies to political leaders, intellectuals, business people and many others. Many of them can certainly tell right from wrong, but are afraid to express their views.

The events of the last few years have amplified four issues, which have always existed, but have never been as rampant as in the present upheaval in the region.

A few more years may pass before everybody acknowledges that it is a World War, but we are already well into it.

The Reaper

07-26-2005, 10:18

These are the four main pillars of the current World Conflict, or perhaps we should already refer to it as "the undeclared World War III":1. The first element is the suicide murder.

Suicide murders are not a new invention but they have been made popular, if I may use this expression, only lately. Even after September 11, it seems that most of the Western World does not yet understand this weapon. It is a very potent psychological weapon. Its real direct impact is relatively minor. The total number of casualties from hundreds of suicide murders within Israel in the last three years is much smaller than those due to car accidents. September 11 was quantitatively much less lethal than many earthquakes More people die from AIDS in one day in Africa than all the Russians who died in the hands of Chechnya-based Moslem suicide murderers since that conflict started. Saddam killed every month more people than all those who died from suicide murders since the Coalition occupation of Iraq.

So what is all the fuss about suicide killings? It creates headlines. It is spectacular. It is frightening. It is a very cruel death with bodies dismembered and horrible severe lifelong injuries to many of the wounded. It is always shown on television in great detail. One such murder, with the help of hysterical media coverage, can destroy the tourism industry of a country for quite a while, as it did in Bali and in Turkey.

But the real fear comes from the undisputed fact that no defense and no preventive measures can succeed against a determined suicide murderer. This has not yet penetrated the thinking of the Western World. The U.S. and Europe are constantly improving their defense against the last murder, not the next one. We may arrange for the best airport security in the world. But if you want to murder by suicide, you do not have to board a plane in order to explode yourself and kill many people. Who could stop a suicide murder in the midst of the crowded line waiting to be checked by the airport metal detector? How about the lines to the check-in counters in a busy travel period? Put a metal detector in front of every train station in Spain and the terrorists will get the buses. Protect the buses and they will explode in movie theaters, concert halls, supermarkets, shopping malls, schools and hospitals. Put guards in front of every concert hall and there will always be a line of people to be checked by the guards and this line will be the target, not to speak of killing the guards themselves. You can somewhat reduce your vulnerability by preventive and defensive measures and by strict border controls but not eliminate it and definitely not win the war in a defensive way. And it is a war!

What is behind the suicide murders? Money, power and cold-blooded murderous incitement, nothing else. It has nothing to do with true fanatic religious beliefs. No Moslem preacher has ever blown himself up. No son of an Arab politician or religious leader has ever blown himself.

No relative of anyone influential has done it. Wouldn't you expect some of the religious leaders to do it themselves, or to talk their sons into doing it, if this is truly a supreme act of religious fervor? Aren't they interested in the benefits of going to Heaven? Instead, they send outcast women, naïve children, retarded people and young incited hotheads. They promise them the delights, mostly sexual, of the next world, and pay their families handsomely after the supreme act is performed and enough innocent people are dead.

Suicide murders also have nothing to do with poverty and despair.

The poorest region in the world, by far, is Africa. It never happens there. There are numerous desperate people in the world, in different cultures, countries and continents. Desperation does not provide anyone with explosives, reconnaissance and transportation. There was certainly more despair in Saddam's Iraq then in Paul Bremmer's Iraq, and no one exploded himself. A suicide murder is simply a horrible, vicious weapon of cruel, inhuman, cynical, well-funded terrorists, with no regard to human life, including the life of their fellow countrymen, but with very high regard to their own affluent well-being and their hunger for power.

The only way to fight this new "popular" weapon is identical to the only way in which you fight organized crime or pirates on the high seas: the offensive way.

Like in the case of organized crime, it is crucial that the forces on the offensive be united and it is crucial to reach the top of the crime pyramid. You cannot eliminate organized crime by arresting the little drug dealer in the street corner. You must go after the head of the "Family".

If part of the public supports it, others tolerate it, many are afraid of it and some try to explain it away by poverty or by a miserable childhood, organized crime will thrive and so will terrorism.

The United States understands this now, after September 11. Russia is beginning to understand it. Turkey understands it well. I am very much afraid that most of Europe still does not understand it. Unfortunately, it seems that Europe will understand it only after suicide murders arrive in Europe in a big way. In my humble opinion, this will definitely happen. The Spanish trains and the Istanbul bombings are only the beginning. The unity of the Civilized World in fighting this horror is absolutely indispensable. Until Europe wakes up, this unity will not be achieved.

2. The second ingredient is words, more precisely lies.

Words can be lethal. They kill people. It is often said that politicians, diplomats and perhaps also lawyers and business people must sometimes lie, as part of their professional life. But the norms of politics and diplomacy are childish, in comparison with the level of incitement and total absolute deliberate fabrications, which have reached new heights in the region we are talking about. An incredible number of people in the Arab world believe that September 11 never happened, or was an American provocation or, even better, a Jewish plot.

You all remember the Iraqi Minister of Information, Mr. Mouhamad Said al-Sahaf and his press conferences when the US forces were already inside Baghdad. Disinformation at time of war is an accepted tactic. But to stand, day after day, and to make such preposterous statements, known to everybody to be lies, without even being ridiculed in your own milieu, can only happen in this region. Mr. Sahaf eventually became a popular icon as a court jester, but this did not stop some allegedly respectable newspapers from giving him equal time. It also does not prevent the Western press from giving credence, every day, even now, to similar liars.

After all, if you want to be an anti-Semite, there are subtle ways of doing it. You do not have to claim that the holocaust never happened, and that the Jewish temple in Jerusalem never existed. But millions of Moslems are told by their leaders that this is the case. When these same leaders make other statements, the Western media report them as if they could be true.

It is a daily occurrence that the same people, who finance, arm and dispatch suicide murderers, condemn the act in English in front of western TV cameras, talking to a world audience, which even partly believes them. It is a daily routine to hear the same leader making opposite statements in Arabic to his people and in English to the rest of the world. Incitement by Arab TV, accompanied by horror pictures of mutilated bodies, has become a powerful weapon of those who lie, distort and want to destroy everything.

Little children are raised on deep hatred and on admiration of so-called martyrs, and the Western World does not notice it because its own TV sets are mostly tuned to soap operas and game shows. I recommend to you, even though most of you do not understand Arabic, to watch Al Jazeera, from time to time. You will not believe your own eyes.

But words also work in other ways, more subtle. A demonstration in Berlin, carrying banners supporting Saddam's regime and featuring three-year old babies dressed as suicide murderers, is defined by the press and by political leaders as a "peace monstration". You may support or oppose the Iraq war, but to refer to fans of Saddam, Arafat or Bin Laden as peace activists is a bit too much. A woman walks into an Israeli restaurant in mid-day, eats, observes families with old people and children eating their lunch in the adjacent tables and pays the bill. She then blows herself up, killing 20 people, including many children, with heads and arms rolling around in the restaurant. She is called "martyr" by several Arab leaders and "activist" by the European press. Dignitaries condemn the act but visit her bereaved family and the money flows.

There is a new game in town: The actual murderer is called "the military wing", the one who pays him, equips him and sends him is now called "the political wing" and the head of the operation is called the "spiritual leader". There are numerous other examples of such Orwellian nomenclature, used every day not only by terror chiefs but also by Western media. These words are much more dangerous than many people realize. They provide an emotional infrastructure for atrocities. It was Joseph Goebels who said that if you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it. He is now being outperformed by his successors.

The Reaper

07-26-2005, 10:19

3. The third aspect is money.

Huge amounts of money, which could have solved many social problems in this dysfunctional part of the world, are channeled into three concentric spheres supporting death and murder.

In the inner circle are the terrorists themselves. The money funds their travel, explosives, hideouts and permanent search for soft vulnerable targets. The inner circles are primarily financed by terrorist states like Iran and Syria, until recently also by Iraq and Libya and earlier also by some of the Communist regimes. These states, as well as the Palestinian Authority, are the safe havens of the wholesale murder vendors.

They are surrounded by a second wider circle of direct supporters, planners, commanders, preachers, all of whom make a living, usually a very comfortable living, by serving as terror infrastructure.

Finally, we find the third circle of so-called religious, educational and welfare organizations, which actually do some good, feed the hungry and provide some schooling, but brainwash a new generation with hatred, lies and ignorance. This circle operates mostly through mosques, madrasas and other religious establishments but also through inciting electronic and printed media. It is this circle that makes sure that women remain inferior, that democracy is unthinkable and that exposure to the outside world is minimal. It is also that circle that leads the way in blaming every-body outside the Moslem world, for the miseries of the region. The outer circle is largely financed by Saudi Arabia, but also by donations from certain Moslem communities in the United States and Europe and, to a smaller extent, by donations of European Governments to various NGO's and by certain United Nations organizations, whose goals may be noble, but they are infested and exploited by agents of the outer circle. The Saudi regime, of course, will be the next victim of major terror, when the inner circle will explode into the outer circle. The Saudis are beginning to understand it, but they fight the inner circles, while still financing the infrastructure at the outer circle.

Figuratively speaking, this outer circle is the guardian, which makes sure that the people look and listen inwards to the inner circle of terror and incitement, rather than to the world outside. Some parts of this same outer circle actually operate as a result of fear from, or blackmail by, the inner circles. The horrifying added factor is the high birth rate. Half of the population of the Arab world is under the age of 20, the most receptive age to incitement, guaranteeing two more generations of blind hatred.

Some of the leaders of these various circles live very comfortably on their loot. You meet their children in the best private schools in Europe, not in the training camps of suicide murderers. The Jihad "soldiers" join packaged death tours to Iraq and other hotspots, while some of their leaders ski in Switzerland. Mrs. Arafat, who lives in Paris with her daughter, receives tens of thousands of dollars per month from the allegedly bankrupt Palestinian Authority, while a typical local ringleader of the Al-Aksa brigade, reporting to Arafat, receives only a cash payment of a couple of hundred dollars, for performing murders at the retail level.

4. The fourth element of the current world conflict is the total breaking of all laws.

The civilized world believes in democracy, the rule of law, including international law, human rights, free speech and free press, among other liberties. There are naïve old-fashioned habits such as respecting religious sites and symbols, not using ambulances and hospitals for acts of war, avoiding the mutilation of dead bodies and not using children as human shields or human bombs. Never in history, not even in the Nazi period, was there such total disregard of all of the above as we observe now. Every student of political science debates how you prevent an anti-democratic force from winning a democratic election and abolishing democracy. Other aspects of a civilized society must also have limitations. Can a policeman open fire on someone trying to kill him? Can a government listen to phone conversations of terrorists and drug dealers? Does free speech protects you when you shout "fire" in a crowded theater? Should there be death penalty, for deliberate multiple murders? These are the old-fashioned dilemmas. But now we have an entire new set.

Do you raid a mosque, which serves as a terrorist ammunition storage? Do you return fire, if you are attacked from a hospital? Do you storm a church taken over by terrorists who took the priests hostages? Do you search every ambulance after a few suicide murderers use ambulances to reach their targets? Do you strip every woman because one pretended to be pregnant and carried a suicide bomb on her belly? Do you shoot back at someone trying to kill you, standing deliberately behind a group of children? Do you raid terrorist headquarters, hidden in a mental hospital? Do you shoot an arch-murderer who deliberately moves from one location to another, always surrounded by children? All of these happen daily in Iraq and in the Palestinian areas. What do you do? Well, you do not want to face the dilemma. But it cannot be avoided.

Suppose, for the sake of discussion, that someone would openly stay in a well-known address in Teheran, hosted by the Iranian Government and financed by it, executing one atrocity after another in Spain or in France, killing hundreds of innocent people, accepting responsibility for the crimes, promising in public TV interviews to do more of the same, while the Government of Iran issues public condemnations of his acts but continues to host him, invite him to official functions and treat him as a great dignitary. I leave it to you as homework to figure out what Spain or France would have done, in such a situation.

The problem is that the civilized world is still having illusions about the rule of law in a totally lawless environment. It is trying to play ice hockey by sending a ballerina ice-skater into the rink or to knock out a heavyweight boxer by a chess player. In the same way that no country has a law against cannibals eating its prime minister, because such an act is unthinkable, international law does not address killers shooting from hospitals, mosques and ambulances, while being protected by their Government or society. International law does not know how to handle someone who sends children to throw stones, stands behind them and shoots with immunity and cannot be arrested because he is sheltered by a Government. International law does not know how to deal with a leader of murderers who is royally and comfortably hosted by a country, which pretends to condemn his acts or just claims to be too weak to arrest him.

The amazing thing is that all of these crooks demand protection under international law, and define all those who attack them as "war criminals," with some Western media repeating the allegations.

The good news is that all of this is temporary, because the evolution of international law has always adapted itself to reality. The punishment for suicide murder should be death or arrest before the murder, not during and not after. After every world war, the rules of international law have changed, and the same will happen after the present one. But during the twilight zone, a lot of harm can be done.

The picture I described here is not pretty. What can we do about it? In the short run, only fight and win. In the long run - only educate the next generation and open it to the world. The inner circles can and must be destroyed by force.

The outer circle cannot be eliminated by force. Here we need financial starvation of the organizing elite, more power to women, more education, counter propaganda, boycott whenever feasible and access to Western media, internet and the international scene. Above all, we need a total absolute unity and determination of the civilized world against all three circles of evil

Allow me, for a moment, to depart from my alleged role as a taxi driver and return to science. When you have a malignant tumor, you may remove the tumor itself surgically. You may also starve it by preventing new blood from reaching it from other parts of the body, thereby preventing new "supplies" from expanding the tumor. If you want to be sure, it is best to do both.

But before you fight and win, by force or otherwise, you have to realize that you are in a war, and this may take Europe a few more years.

In order to win, it is necessary to first eliminate the terrorist regimes, so that no Government in the world will serve as a safe haven for these people.

I do not want to comment here on whether the American-led attack on Iraq was justified from the point of view of weapons of mass destruction or any other pre-war argument, but I can look at the post-war map of Western Asia. Now that Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya are out, two and a half terrorist states remain: Iran, Syria and Lebanon, the latter being a Syrian colony. Perhaps Sudan should be added to the list. As a result of the conquest of Afghanistan and Iraq, both Iran and Syria are now totally surrounded by territories unfriendly to them. Iran is encircled by Afghanistan, by the Gulf States, Iraq and the Moslem republics of the former Soviet Union. Syria is surrounded by Turkey, Iraq, Jordan and Israel. This is a significant strategic change and it applies strong pressure on the terrorist countries. It is not surprising that Iran is so active in trying to incite a Shiite uprising in Iraq. I do not know if the American plan was actually to encircle both Iran and Syria, but that is the resulting situation.

The Reaper

07-26-2005, 10:19

In my humble opinion, the number one danger to the world today is Iran and its regime. It definitely has ambitions to rule vast areas and to expand in all directions. It has an ideology, which claims supremacy over Western culture. It is ruthless. It has proven that it can execute elaborate terrorist acts without leaving too many traces, using Iranian Embassies. It is clearly trying to develop nuclear weapons. Its so-called moderates and conservatives play their own virtuoso version of the "good-cop versus bad-cop" game Iran sponsors Syrian terrorism, it is certainly behind much of the action in Iraq, it is fully funding the Hezbollah and, through it, the Palestinian Hamas and Islamic Jihad, it performed acts of terror at least in Europe and in South America and probably also in Uzbekistan and Saudi Arabia and it truly leads a multi-national terror consortium, which includes, as minor players, Syria, Lebanon and certain Shiite elements in Iraq. Nevertheless, most European countries still trade with Iran, try to appease it and refuse to read the clear signals.

In order to win the war it is also necessary to dry the financial resources of the terror conglomerate. It is pointless to try to understand the subtle differences between the Sunni terror of Al Qaeda and Hamas and the Shiite terror of Hezbollah, Sadr and other Iranian inspired enterprises. When it serves their business needs, all of them collaborate beautifully.

It is crucial to stop Saudi and other financial support of the outer circle, which is the fertile breeding ground of terror. It is important to monitor all donations from the Western World to Islamic organizations, to monitor the finances of international relief organizations and to react with forceful economic measures to any small sign of financial aid to any of the three circles of terrorism.

It is also important to act decisively against the campaign of lies and fabrications and to monitor those Western media who collaborate with it out of naivety, financial interests or ignorance.

Above all, never surrender to terror. No one will ever know whether the recent elections in Spain would have yielded a different result, if not for the train bombings a few days earlier. But it really does not matter. What matters is that the terrorists believe that they caused the result and that they won by driving Spain out of Iraq. The Spanish story will surely end up being extremely costly to other European countries, including France, who is now expelling inciting preachers and forbidding veils and including others who sent troops to Iraq. In the long run, Spain itself will pay even more.

Is the solution a democratic Arab world?

If by democracy we mean free elections but also free press, free speech, a functioning judicial system, civil liberties, equality to women, free international travel, exposure to international media and ideas, laws against racial incitement and against defamation, and avoidance of lawless behavior regarding hospitals, places of worship and children, then yes, democracy is the solution.

If democracy is just free elections, it is likely that the most fanatic regime will be elected, the one whose incitement and fabrications are the most inflammatory. We have seen it already in Algeria and, to a certain extent, in Turkey. It will happen again, if the ground is not prepared very carefully. On the other hand, a certain transition democracy, as in Jordan, may be a better temporary solution, paving the way for the real thing, perhaps in the same way that an immediate sudden democracy did not work in Russia and would not have worked in China.

I have no doubt that the civilized world will prevail. But the longer it takes us to understand the new landscape of this war, the more costly and painful the victory will be. Europe, more than any other region, is the key. Its understandable recoil from wars, following the horrors of World War II, may cost thousands of additional innocent lives, before the tide will turn."

brownapple

07-26-2005, 20:08

The Reaper

07-26-2005, 20:31

Good reads.

Very focused on the middle-east and immediate surroundings.

Yet the majority of Islam is not in the middle-east.

It seems to me, that the issue is not Islam, it is the culture, norms, economic and social realities that exist primarily in the middle-east and the surrounding areas.

Islam is a tool that certain groups are using to manipulate followers, but they are able to use that tool because of the culture that they are in. The manipulation is far less successful in Islamic nations that do not share the characteristics of the middle-east (Malaysia, Indonesia, the various former Soviet states, Bahrain, etc.).

Just as the IRA used Catholicism as a tool to manipulate support in Ireland, Northern Ireland and the United States.

To my way of thinking, that means the key to long-term success against these terrorists is taking Islam away from them as a tool by encouraging cultural and social changes that are already accepted in Islamic nations. In other words, actively assist the nations of the middle-east in becoming more like the Islamic nations outside the middle-east.

In my opinion, the biggest single contributor to that sort of change? Is free-market trade, linked to democratically elected leadership.

GH:

I think you overplay the US role in the Troubles, but I am not from your part of the country. We have already lost more people in the GWOT than were killed in the entire IRA campaign.

Are you maintaining that the predominantly Islamic states from the former Soviet Union, former Yugoslavia, the Phillipines, and Indonesia are benevolent and non-violent?

A successful democracy requires a vibrant middle-class, a feature lacking in most of the Islamic states. The failure to acknowledge that was one of the many major failings of the Klinton regime. You can conduct democratic elections in Haiti and have all of the fre trade you want with them, but they are going to revert as soon as the adult leadership (with guns) departs. This is true in most of the Islamic states. I think that the best we can hope for in the short to mid-term is responsible, benevolent dictatorships. There MAY be sufficient middle-class people in Iraq to make it work. I do not think that it will in Afghanistan without a lot of support for a long time.

I am not sure that I want the Arab Moslems learning anything else from the Chechens.

IMHO, the money would be better spent helping moderate clerics and eliminating those teaching hate by any means possible, preferrably by discrediting and disenfranchising them and their followers.

TR

Sigi

07-26-2005, 21:17

That was an outstanding article. Thanks for posting it, TR.

Jimbo

07-27-2005, 05:46

To my way of thinking, that means the key to long-term success against these terrorists is taking Islam away from them as a tool by encouraging cultural and social changes that are already accepted in Islamic nations.

As a guy I once worked for used to put it:"Take the cause away from the guerrilla."

As for the part about encouraging nations in the middle east to become like the islamic countries outside of the middle east, that simply will not happen.

brownapple

07-27-2005, 07:18

Are you maintaining that the predominantly Islamic states from the former Soviet Union, former Yugoslavia, the Phillipines, and Indonesia are benevolent and non-violent?

No, but they are no more violent than their non-Islamic neighbors (in SE Asia, Cambodia, Vietnam and Burma are significantly more violent nations).

A successful democracy requires a vibrant middle-class, a feature lacking in most of the Islamic states.

I guess that depends on how you rate a successful democracy. The nation where I currently live has been a democracy for quite a while (sometimes more successfully than others). It has only developed a vibrant middle-class very recently. Both Japan and Korea were relatively successful democracies before they had any substantial middle-class.

IMHO, the money would be better spent helping moderate clerics and eliminating those teaching hate by any means possible, preferrably by discrediting and disenfranchising them and their followers.

And when the terrorist leaders turn to another method of recruiting for their "cause" (which is power for themselves, no matter how they dress it up)?

It isn't that long ago that a number of Arab terrorist groups espoused Marxism. As someone has already pointed out, religion is easier to exploit and manipulate, but that doesn't mean that the culture can't be exploited by other means.

brownapple

07-27-2005, 07:27

As a guy I once worked for used to put it:"Take the cause away from the guerrilla."

As for the part about encouraging nations in the middle east to become like the islamic countries outside of the middle east, that simply will not happen.

"more like"

And I'll bet that 100 years ago, no one would have thought that Japan would have adopted so many bits from American culture... but they have...

The Reaper

07-27-2005, 08:05

No, but they are no more violent than their non-Islamic neighbors (in SE Asia, Cambodia, Vietnam and Burma are significantly more violent nations).

I doubt that anywhere on Earth is more violent than Chechnya.

I guess that depends on how you rate a successful democracy. The nation where I currently live has been a democracy for quite a while (sometimes more successfully than others). It has only developed a vibrant middle-class very recently. Both Japan and Korea were relatively successful democracies before they had any substantial middle-class.

Japan and Korea were not really democracies before US occupation. Even now, Japan is a constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary government, not a strict democracy. BTW, Thailand is a constitutional monarchy as well.

And when the terrorist leaders turn to another method of recruiting for their "cause" (which is power for themselves, no matter how they dress it up)?

It isn't that long ago that a number of Arab terrorist groups espoused Marxism. As someone has already pointed out, religion is easier to exploit and manipulate, but that doesn't mean that the culture can't be exploited by other means.

Any program to take the initiative and have them react to us would be a good one. We need to be inside their OODA Loop for a change. I would say that it is a lot easier to recruit martyrs for Islam than for Karl Marx and his ideology. What would he promise for the afterlife, a truly classless society? Who wants that crap?

TR

Jimbo

07-27-2005, 08:08

And I'll bet that 100 years ago, no one would have thought that Japan would have adopted so many bits from American culture... but they have...

Well, we DID firebomb them and then nuke them twice.

brownapple

07-27-2005, 09:33

Japan and Korea were not really democracies before US occupation. Even now, Japan is a constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary government, not a strict democracy. BTW, Thailand is a constitutional monarchy as well.

Britain is also a Constitutional Monarchy... and a democracy. Parliamentary systems are just as entitled to be called democracies as our Republic.

As far as I know, there is no "pure democracy" in place as the government of a nation-state. All of what we call democracies are representative democracies, whether parliamentary systems or republics.

brownapple

07-27-2005, 09:36

Well, we DID firebomb them and then nuke them twice.

Didn't do that to Thailand, Korea, Russia or Singapore... but I think the same comments would have been made 100 years ago about them (actually, in Thailand's case, I actually have a book written about 60 years ago that claims that the west will never influence Thai culture. Oops).

Airbornelawyer

07-27-2005, 09:51

Japan and Korea were not really democracies before US occupation. Even now, Japan is a constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary government, not a strict democracy. BTW, Thailand is a constitutional monarchy as well. Of the nations in Freedom House's rankings which receive the highest rating as free countries, 15 out of 46 are constitutional monarchies - Australia, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Tuvalu and the UK.

Of those receiving the second-highest rating, 7 out of 15 are constitutional monarchies - Belize, Grenada, Japan, Monaco, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia and St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

Jamaica and Thailand receive lower ratings, but are still "free". Six constitutional monarchies are "partly free" - Malaysia, Nepal, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and Tonga. Two are "not free" - Bhutan and Cambodia.

If you define a constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary government as not being strictly a democracy, then your definition of democracy is too narrow. All of these constitutional monarchies are representative democracies, and only in a few - Liechtenstein, Thailand, Nepal, Tonga, Bhutan and arguably Luxembourg - does the monarch have any real authority.

Airbornelawyer

07-27-2005, 10:16

Let me qualify one statement above: all are democracies in the sense of having elected governments, but in Bhutan, Cambodia, Nepal and Tonga the democratic institutions are still fairly weak. Tonga's elected parliament, for example, is dominated by nobles, and criticism of the king is generally not permitted.

Of course, by modern standards, the United States was not a democracy for at least the first century of its existence (voting was limited essentially to propertied white males, and the upper house of the legislature was appointed by state governors, not elected).

magician

07-27-2005, 13:04

Not to get into a discourse on political science here, and by no means do I wish to offend anyone, but strictly speaking, America is not really a genuine democracy, either.

In fact, I do not believe that there is a nation on earth that is truly a democracy, as defined in any basic political science text book. Those countries that are "free," to an extent, have democratic traditions and institutions. But all nations are mixtures, and all are different.

As for Thailand....I must say, it has been educational living here.

If you badmouth the king, or the institutions of the monarchy, you are literally liable to have the holy shit kicked out of you. You will go to jail. With bruises. The monarchy is off limits for critical discourse.

Like TR....and I hate to say it, I think that some form of benevolent dictatorship may end up emerging in Iraq, and countries like it. Such political structures inevitably generate internal opposition, and over time, internal stresses can lead either to political change, or to conflict. Healthy polities evolve versions of democracy and free enterprise, and I do believe that it is possible for these features to emerge over time in distressed states. Look at China. It is still ruled by a communist party. But change is occuring there, even there, in what is arguably the oldest and most traditional country on earth. The change is driven by free, or somewhat free, enterprise. And by the free flow of ideas (China tries to put the internet genie back into the bottle, but it is too late), and by the interaction of cultures.

But I think that it is idealistic of us, as Americans, to hope that we can successfully transplant democratic institutions and traditions to countries with no history of them. I know that many Iraqis that I met were nostalgic for certain features of the Saddam days. They missed having reliable electricty, cheap and plentiful benzine, clean water...and they all pointed out that there was no anarchy in the streets. If you drove like an idiot, went the wrong way on a one way street, you were liable to be shot. Everything flowed in patrimonial fashion from the state.

Now, as anyone knows who has been to Iraq since the fall of Saddam, driving there is worse than driving virtually anywhere else on the planet. In fact, much of the country is de facto chaos.

It is a toss up, in my mind, whether Iraq as a contiguous state will survive. My money is on a loose federation, with an increasingly autonomous Kurdish north, a Shia south increasingly aligned with Iran....and a middle area of Sunnis, living worse than the Palestinians in the Jordanian refugee camps or areas around Israel proper.

It is up to Iraqis, of course. If this transpires, then Iraqis will have no one to blame but themselves. America, and Americans, have given them the best chance that they could ever expect to start over, from scratch. If they choose to waste it, then there is not much that America or Americans can do about it.

For myself, I look forward to a day when I can return to Kurdistan. Wonderful people. Wonderful country. The rest of that country....I will refrain from expressing my opinions.

The alternative....if a cohesive, coherent Iraqi state is to survive...I believe that it will be because a form of benign dictatorship emerges. Dictatorship is what the Iraqi people know, and frankly, the average guy on the street just wants to make a living, and not be persecuted. They want to worship God in their own fashion, they want to be safe from mafias, safe from the secret police, and they want a viable standard of living.

It would be enough, in my mind, if some form of state were to emerge that enabled Sunni and Shia to live without conflict. I do not see this happening. I think that this schism within Islam has yet to be resolved, and it will play out over the coming decades. As infidel invaders, we merely distracted them from their primary focus, which was persecuting heretics.

The one thing that we accomplished, which more than any other fact mitigates in favor of Iraq (and this is one of the things of which we should be most proud), is the emergence of free enterprise. If we can help the state hold itself together, and simply hold off the insurgency long enough to help a viable middle class emerge...then something good might survive.

Again, I am not optimistic.

brownapple

07-27-2005, 16:53

Magician,

Did you know that Iraq was a functioning democracy at one time?

Pete

07-27-2005, 19:53

Magician,

Did you know that Iraq was a functioning democracy at one time?

Kinda' ended when the oposition party was taken out and shot.

The post WW I history of the middle east, the young turks, the rise of the Bath political party, how the Bath party machine was/is used, the rise of the "Strong Man" in each country all makes for some interesting background reading.

All of the above plays directly into how the military is run in those countries. Not for the same reasons, but similar, is how the African countries run their military forces. While there may be great small unit leaders, the higher command is picked for political reliability.

magician

07-27-2005, 20:12

Magician,

Did you know that Iraq was a functioning democracy at one time?

Dimly, brother.

It might be helpful if someone wants to post a definition of "democracy" that we can all agree to use, if we pursue this thread further.

Airbornelawyer

07-28-2005, 11:29

Magician,

Did you know that Iraq was a functioning democracy at one time?
Iraq was never a democracy.

The Constitution of the Kingdom of Iraq of March 21, 1925 (as amended July 29, 1925) provided for a constitutional monarchy (Article 21: "On accession to the throne, the King shall swear an oath before a joint meeting of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, which shall be presided over by the president of the Senate, that he will observe the terms of the constitution, preserve the independence of the country and strive faithfully to further the interests of both country and people."), but it was not a democratic system where the monarch was only a figurehead.

Executive power was vested in the King. Article 26(1): "The King is the supreme head of the State. He confirms laws, orders their promulgation and supervises their execution. By his order regulations are drawn up for the purpose of giving effect to the terms of laws, in so far as such laws contain provisions therefor." When Parliament was not sitting, he also had the power to make laws by issuing Royal Ordinances.

The Senate was appointed by the King. He was commander in chief of the armed forces and could declare war with the assent of the Council of Ministers (but did not need Parliament's consent). Judges were appointed by the King.

There were some limitations. Parliament could repeal Royal Ordinances once it met. It had the power to approve treaties. The King appointed government ministers and officials, but on the recommendation of the Prime Minister or responsible ministers.

The lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, was fairly representative democratic. It was elected based on universal male suffrage, with special provisions to ensure ethnic and religious minority representation. But since any law required assent of the King and of both houses, the King and the Senate he appointed had a veto over the Chamber of Deputies.

The Supreme Court was not a standing body, and was appointed when necessary for various functions (interpreting the Constitution, trying a minister, etc.) by Royal Decree. The Senate chose the membership from among its own members and senior judges.

Politically, the monarchy period was tumultuous. The British mandate ended in 1932. Iraq's first coup came in 1936. It's second came in 1941, a pro-German one which led to the British invasion. There was a lesser uprising in 1948, and major protests in 1952 which led to the imposition of martial law.

The 1958 coup overthrew the monarchy, and the Republic of Iraq was founded. Two factions arose out of the coup - one close to the Iraqi Communist Party and one close to the Ba'ath Party. The 1925 Royal Constitution was abolished, but no new constitution was promulgated, nor any parliamentary elections held. Instead, power was exercised through decrees.

The Ba'ath took power in 1963, but lost it a few months later, when the military overthrew the then-small party. In 1964, Iraq began moves to unite with Syria and Egypt into the United Arab Republic, but this fell apart by 1965. A civilian prime minister was appointed, who tried to establish the rule of law, but the central government was still weak and a Kurdish rebellion soon began. The military took power again in 1966. The government remained weak and another coup in 1968 left a power vacuum into which the Ba'ath stepped.

A provisional constitution was put forth in 1968 and became effective in 1970.

Under the 1970 interim constitution, Iraq was a "Sovereign People's Democratic Republic." The individual rights set forth in earlier constitutions were subject to "social" rights, first of which was that "the social solidarity is the first foundation for the Society. Its essence is that every citizen accomplishes his duty in full, and that the Society guarantees the citizen's rights and liberties in full." (Article 10). Such individual liberties as remained were made subject to certain qualifications, and an article was added limiting all rights: "It is prohibited to exercise any activity against the objectives of the People, stipulated in this Constitution."

Economically, it was a socialist system, with a nod to Arab fascism: "The State assumes the responsibility for planning, directing and steering the national economy for the purpose of: (a) establishing the socialist system on scientific and revolutionary foundations; (b) realizing the economic Arab unity." (Article 12).

Private property was subject to state control, and had to be used for the benefit of society (Article 16(a): "Ownership is a social function, to be exercised within the objectives of the Society and the plans of the State, according to stipulations of the law.").

The "supreme institution in the State" was the Revolutionary Command Council, all of whose members had to be Ba'athists. The Parliament was to be replaced by a National Council, which had no real power. The President of the Republic held the most power, far more than the King ever had. No National Council was elected until 1980. All candidates had to be approved by the Ba'ath.

So, to sum up:

1535-1918: Ottoman administration (with a few interruptions and some degree of local autonomy)
1918-1932: British administration, with some moves to creating a constitutional monarchy
1932-1958: Constitutional monarchy, but not a democratic one
1958-1968: Republic, weak and undemocratic, mainly a series of military dictatorships
1968-2003: "Sovereign People's Democratic Republic" under the Ba'ath.
2003-2004: US-led Coalition administration
2004-2005: Interim transitional government appointed by the Coalition
2005-date: Democratically-elected government working on creating democratic institutions.

magician

07-28-2005, 11:50

brother, I bow in your general direction.

thank you.

s.
-

The Reaper

07-28-2005, 16:51

Doooh!!!

TR

brownapple

07-29-2005, 23:33

Iraq was never a democracy.

The Constitution of the Kingdom of Iraq of March 21, 1925 (as amended July 29, 1925) provided for a constitutional monarchy (Article 21: "On accession to the throne, the King shall swear an oath before a joint meeting of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, which shall be presided over by the president of the Senate, that he will observe the terms of the constitution, preserve the independence of the country and strive faithfully to further the interests of both country and people."), but it was not a democratic system where the monarch was only a figurehead.

Executive power was vested in the King. Article 26(1): "The King is the supreme head of the State. He confirms laws, orders their promulgation and supervises their execution. By his order regulations are drawn up for the purpose of giving effect to the terms of laws, in so far as such laws contain provisions therefor." When Parliament was not sitting, he also had the power to make laws by issuing Royal Ordinances.

The Senate was appointed by the King. He was commander in chief of the armed forces and could declare war with the assent of the Council of Ministers (but did not need Parliament's consent). Judges were appointed by the King.

There were some limitations. Parliament could repeal Royal Ordinances once it met. It had the power to approve treaties. The King appointed government ministers and officials, but on the recommendation of the Prime Minister or responsible ministers.

The lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, was fairly representative democratic. It was elected based on universal male suffrage, with special provisions to ensure ethnic and religious minority representation. But since any law required assent of the King and of both houses, the King and the Senate he appointed had a veto over the Chamber of Deputies.

The Supreme Court was not a standing body, and was appointed when necessary for various functions (interpreting the Constitution, trying a minister, etc.) by Royal Decree. The Senate chose the membership from among its own members and senior judges.

Politically, the monarchy period was tumultuous. The British mandate ended in 1932. Iraq's first coup came in 1936. It's second came in 1941, a pro-German one which led to the British invasion. There was a lesser uprising in 1948, and major protests in 1952 which led to the imposition of martial law.

The 1958 coup overthrew the monarchy, and the Republic of Iraq was founded. Two factions arose out of the coup - one close to the Iraqi Communist Party and one close to the Ba'ath Party. The 1925 Royal Constitution was abolished, but no new constitution was promulgated, nor any parliamentary elections held. Instead, power was exercised through decrees.

The Ba'ath took power in 1963, but lost it a few months later, when the military overthrew the then-small party. In 1964, Iraq began moves to unite with Syria and Egypt into the United Arab Republic, but this fell apart by 1965. A civilian prime minister was appointed, who tried to establish the rule of law, but the central government was still weak and a Kurdish rebellion soon began. The military took power again in 1966. The government remained weak and another coup in 1968 left a power vacuum into which the Ba'ath stepped.

A provisional constitution was put forth in 1968 and became effective in 1970.

Under the 1970 interim constitution, Iraq was a "Sovereign People's Democratic Republic." The individual rights set forth in earlier constitutions were subject to "social" rights, first of which was that "the social solidarity is the first foundation for the Society. Its essence is that every citizen accomplishes his duty in full, and that the Society guarantees the citizen's rights and liberties in full." (Article 10). Such individual liberties as remained were made subject to certain qualifications, and an article was added limiting all rights: "It is prohibited to exercise any activity against the objectives of the People, stipulated in this Constitution."

Economically, it was a socialist system, with a nod to Arab fascism: "The State assumes the responsibility for planning, directing and steering the national economy for the purpose of: (a) establishing the socialist system on scientific and revolutionary foundations; (b) realizing the economic Arab unity." (Article 12).

Private property was subject to state control, and had to be used for the benefit of society (Article 16(a): "Ownership is a social function, to be exercised within the objectives of the Society and the plans of the State, according to stipulations of the law.").

The "supreme institution in the State" was the Revolutionary Command Council, all of whose members had to be Ba'athists. The Parliament was to be replaced by a National Council, which had no real power. The President of the Republic held the most power, far more than the King ever had. No National Council was elected until 1980. All candidates had to be approved by the Ba'ath.

So, to sum up:

1535-1918: Ottoman administration (with a few interruptions and some degree of local autonomy)
1918-1932: British administration, with some moves to creating a constitutional monarchy
1932-1958: Constitutional monarchy, but not a democratic one
1958-1968: Republic, weak and undemocratic, mainly a series of military dictatorships
1968-2003: "Sovereign People's Democratic Republic" under the Ba'ath.
2003-2004: US-led Coalition administration
2004-2005: Interim transitional government appointed by the Coalition
2005-date: Democratically-elected government working on creating democratic institutions.

In 1921, Iraq elected King Faysal. Basic concept of a representative democracy is elected leadership, correct? So election of the King (who is evidently the power and leadership based on your post) is a representative democracy. It may not be the sort that we are used to, but it is a democracy. In addition, a parliamentary system did exist during the time period that is considered to have been under British rule ( http://www.angelfire.com/nt/Gilgamesh/1918.html )