Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Bobboau on July 26, 2015, 11:07:28 pm
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https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/07/20/chattanooga-wesley-clark-calls-internment-camps-disloyal-americans/
:jaw:
I..eh... well that just happened. he actually referenced the WW2 internment camps as an example of what we need to do. wow. Isn't he supposed to be progressive?
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I guess I kind of assume he's getting crazy in his old age. He seemed pretty sane in the 2004 elections.
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“We have got to identify the people who are most likely to be radicalized. We’ve got to cut this off at the beginning,” Clark said.
And carting them off and throwing them in an internment camp is not going to radicalise them? And it's not also going to radicalise everyone who knows them too?
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Wow what the **** did I just read/watch?
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Interesting. I was wondering when it came to this.
e: a bonus, something Reagan said in the reparations bill of 1988
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FEMA Concentration Camps and Black Helicopters have come full circle.
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Oh I'm sure INFOWARS is having a field day with all this stuff. "WE TOLD YA IT'S HAPPENING"
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I read this amazing, amazing interview (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/11/-sp-isis-the-inside-story) with a high-ranking ISIS member. The best part was that they all met in American internment. They traded contact info, waited to be released, and got to work.
“But as time went on, every time there was a problem in the camp, he was at the centre of it,” Abu Ahmed recalled. “He wanted to be the head of the prison – and when I look back now, he was using a policy of conquer and divide to get what he wanted, which was status. And it worked.” By December 2004, Baghdadi was deemed by his jailers to pose no further risk and his release was authorised.
“He was respected very much by the US army,” Abu Ahmed said. “If he wanted to visit people in another camp he could, but we couldn’t. And all the while, a new strategy, which he was leading, was rising under their noses, and that was to build the Islamic State. If there was no American prison in Iraq, there would be no IS now. Bucca was a factory. It made us all. It built our ideology.”
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They missed an opportunity there to bug the hell out of every square meter of that facility. Learn their plans. Tactics. Have them freed and when they stroke, bam, perfect take down.
As it reads, almost looks like a perfect textbook case on how liberalism and its respect for human rights is indeed self-defeating against a ruthless ideology. At least in the short / middle term (let's never forget that Hitler also thougth the same).
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yeah, except the reason they were in an american camp instead of an Iraqi prison was not a result of liberalism.
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I'm with the notion that had Saddam run the place, everyone in there would be probably either dead or extremely "damaged". I don't think he would have commited the "mistake" of letting these people leisurely conversing with each other, scheming and so on.
Mind you, I'm not judging here.
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even assuming the first three months of 2003 happened exactly the same way, it wasn't liberalism that operated the US military prisons in Iraq.
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He's using liberalism in the political philosophy sense, not the American left wing sense.
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it doesn't matter which sense of the word you use, neither meaning of liberalism was running the prison camps.
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As it reads, almost looks like a perfect textbook case on how liberalism and its respect for human rights is indeed self-defeating against a ruthless ideology. At least in the short / middle term (let's never forget that Hitler also thougth the same).
It has its problems in long term as well. Stalin also wasn't big on liberalism and fared a lot better. Insisting on liberalism, human rights and "progressiveness" is the big reason why the US hasn't really won a war since Korea. Against a ruthless ideology, especially one centered on a religious cause, the US is simply incapable of fighting properly. It's treating every enemy in kid gloves, while the other side fights with everything they've got. TBH, those problems prevail through the entire NATO and The West in general. It's why they're not winning against ISIS, the Russians (who manage to be pretty ruthless without being complete monsters, BTW), Somali pirates, etc.
About the internment camps, I find this wouldn't be a bad idea, but the US isn't capable of implementing it the way it'd make a difference. It would need to be done right. People were released from Iraqi prisons far too early. From camps like that, they would have to be released "when the war (or Terror) is over". Which likely means that they'll all die behind the bars, because this is looking like one long war. They certainly wouldn't endear people around the Middle East to the US, but that's not the point, either.
TBH, the US isn't really fighting this war any more. The local militaries, with much less qualms about human rights and public opinion, seem to be the primary combatants. They can and likely will win this, hopefully slaughtering enough ISIS combatants that the movement will die. The best thing the US can do now is not give people any more reasons to radicalize (and perhaps support those militaries logistically). The Middle East doesn't have a high opinion of the US, so if it isn't going to fight, it should concentrate on not making it even lower.
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You are about 170 degrees off in your analysis, as any good counterinsurgency doctrine would tell you.
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good counterinsurgency doctrine
As in, one that worked, or one that US analysts say should work? Since I've had trouble finding examples of the former in the past... Or at least in the recent past, anyway. I don't suppose you mean methods used in a more distant past.
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Calling Stalin 'a success' or treating Russia's entire post-WW2 military history as anything but a comically identical mirror of American adventurism is really silly. Afghanistan did not go well for the Soviets at all. And they have a long history of botched responses to insurrection, counteroccupation, and terrorism.
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It's a problem without solution, and given humanity's propensity to create really dark dystopian hegemons, and given how frequently local dystopian hegemons are created, it's probably for the better that it has no solution.
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Local dystopian hegemons are what happens when you give power to those who want it for the power itself. And that's the kind of people that leads coups and uses violence to gain power. People who want power to do something in particular (like in most established democracies, or exceptional cases like George Washington) or who just get it without trying (most hereditary systems) tend to fare better. Large dystopies simply happen when this occurs in a sufficiently powerful country, or when "something in particular" I mentioned is, for some reason, a particularly unsavory goal (and people are desperate enough to vote for such a person).
Calling Stalin 'a success' or treating Russia's entire post-WW2 military history as anything but a comically identical mirror of American adventurism is really silly. Afghanistan did not go well for the Soviets at all. And they have a long history of botched responses to insurrection, counteroccupation, and terrorism.
This is why I'm saying that Stalin "fared better" than Hitler, not that he was a success (his regime survived him, for one). Soviet Union was a bit of a joke militarily, but for different reasons. I wouldn't say that it was the ideology that failed there. Corruption, lack of common sense (killing a leader that supported them in Afghanistan) and whims of politicians mostly seem to have done them in. Russian Federation under Putin seems to have fixed most of that. Note, when I mentioned Russians, I meant their current exploits in Ukraine and elsewhere, not anything Soviets did. Those guys seem to be winning, including against islamists in North Caucasus.
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He's using liberalism in the political philosophy sense, not the American left wing sense.
Either way, it's a statement that seems to have been calculated for its irony.
re: Dragon's take on history.
The US is terrible at nation-building. Except for everyone else who's tried; Russia's methodology has only served to make nearly every nation it has ever occupied an eternal enemy. The knowledge of actual conditions and modes of failure here is pretty poor, and ignores the obvious lessons learned nature of things. South Vietnam went under within the year; Iraq is threatened but by how much varies depending on who you ask; the US effort at Afghanistan has gone vastly better than the Soviet one.
Holding up Russia as knowing what they're doing is something easily put the lie to by history, considering Russian methods have turned almost every nation they have ever occupied into an implacable enemy. The Baltic states, Poland, and even the Ukraine demonstrate exactly how well the Russian approach to counterinsurgency has worked: it kept the number of visible incidents to a minimum, perhaps, but it left a legacy of "never again" stamped deep into the collective psyches of those nations. Russia keeps trying to back away from the Ukraine, suppressed as it did in the old days the Crimea and will achieve exactly as it did then: temporary success for long-term hatred.
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No matter what you think of western-style liberties, if you try to deprive people of them for something as nebulous as "they might be radicalized someday", it's NOT going to end well.
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When the US did make a national (and fiscal) project out of enormous, comprehensive nation-building, it did pretty well! Japan and Western Europe are still our buddies. But those were 'Western' powers (even in Japan's case) with good reason to be afraid of the USSR.
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I think that liberalism is the only world I'm ever to survive in, the only kind of world worth fighting for, for a really big number of reasons.
Now, it's never going to "end well", unless you're prepared to go to the end here. And you had two choices here, as far as I can see. You either did nation building correctly, and allowed for a system to build itself that provided sufficient antibodies to all these ideologues and rebellions, or you are absolutely ruthless.
The US did neither. It was absolutely incompetent at the first (reusing silly ideas they had tried in Russia back in the nineties, placed incompetent people executing them), it was absolutely unable to do the second (Everyone's reaction to Abu Grahib would be a paradise in comparison).
And since Vietnam, it has been clear that any resistance to America, if sufficiently ruthless and persistent, will eventually pay off. And it did. Against drones and a technological disadvantage beyond any hope, this enemy found extreme radicalization as a weapon. ISIS is not just the fruit of its religion, it's a fruit of their own visionaires' desperations. The virus, IOW, is mutating towards total nihilistic terror as means to survive the world hegemon. It mutated from some local radicals to Al Quaeda. And now it mutated to ISIS. I am not entirely sure I want to know its next mutation.
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I will say, I think ISIS and the fact it is an Islamic Offshoot is irrelevant. Islam was the syringe used to inject that way of thinking, a carrier, as it were. The state that the Islamic faith was in, especially in places like Afghanistan, was far more the fault of it being used because it was tool at hand, rather than a directed concept of the Faith.
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how so? I view Islam's role in the middle east the same way I view christianity's role in the americal south. it enables horrible ideas.
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That's the point, it wouldn't have mattered what religion had been in the area, as long as it acted as a quick, easy way to spread the concept. If the area had been Sikh, we would be talking about 'Sikh Extremists', heck China has violent Buddhist extremists, which is, under the usual image Buddhism holds itself to, an oxymoron.
As you say, abusing a faith system, any faith system, to achieve a political goal is going to end up unpleasant for everyone involved, that's not because of faiths being inherently good or bad, it's about people inherently being people.
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I think that liberalism is the only world I'm ever to survive in, the only kind of world worth fighting for, for a really big number of reasons.
Now, it's never going to "end well", unless you're prepared to go to the end here. And you had two choices here, as far as I can see. You either did nation building correctly, and allowed for a system to build itself that provided sufficient antibodies to all these ideologues and rebellions, or you are absolutely ruthless.
The US did neither. It was absolutely incompetent at the first (reusing silly ideas they had tried in Russia back in the nineties, placed incompetent people executing them), it was absolutely unable to do the second (Everyone's reaction to Abu Grahib would be a paradise in comparison).
And since Vietnam, it has been clear that any resistance to America, if sufficiently ruthless and persistent, will eventually pay off. And it did. Against drones and a technological disadvantage beyond any hope, this enemy found extreme radicalization as a weapon. ISIS is not just the fruit of its religion, it's a fruit of their own visionaires' desperations. The virus, IOW, is mutating towards total nihilistic terror as means to survive the world hegemon. It mutated from some local radicals to Al Quaeda. And now it mutated to ISIS. I am not entirely sure I want to know its next mutation.
None of those actions have been fought on a "lose or draw we forfeit our livelihood/culture" level though, we've withdrawn from conflicts because we could. On the whole the west has stepped away from the kind of total warfare measures we found acceptable in the past, namely because they are horrible and have not been necessary since. However, if there were enough domestic terror events that made people day to day feel individually threatened, could ISIS dehumanize themselves to the point the west does accept crushing radical Islam as a national/cultural imperative? If that came to pass would ISIS, even with their radicalism, be able to withstand the result? The Axis Powers were just as zealous, even more so in some cases, and they were backed by military industrial complexes somewhat competitive with their opponents. In the past a liberal society has been pushed to the point were it accepted the costs to themselves and their opponents and take the issue to the last full measure.
I don't know if ISIS will ever actually press the issue to that point, but the Hobbes in me believes their existence still hinges on what the west is willing to endure to retain its scruples.
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Rise of liberalism since WW2 is part of the reason why we havent yet carpet bombed Raqqa and thrown a nuclear bomb on Mosul. Well, that and the fact that ISIS is less of a threat. For now, at least.
That's the point, it wouldn't have mattered what religion had been in the area, as long as it acted as a quick, easy way to spread the concept. If the area had been Sikh, we would be talking about 'Sikh Extremists', heck China has violent Buddhist extremists, which is, under the usual image Buddhism holds itself to, an oxymoron.
As you say, abusing a faith system, any faith system, to achieve a political goal is going to end up unpleasant for everyone involved, that's not because of faiths being inherently good or bad, it's about people inherently being people.
I dont agree with that, ideologies are important, especially an ideology so strongly entrenched and expansionist as islamism. It is the single unifying idea of the entire middle east and north Africa. If middle east werent Islamic, or werent prone to such fundamentalist interpretation of islam, we would see much less terrorism and there would be hardly any ISIS. Islamism is the root of the issue, not just the means to a goal. And thats what makes this conflict so persistent, it is hard to beat an idea.
Without nazism, Hitler would be merely yet another corrupt politician and wouldnt make it very far. Without islamism, ISIS would be just yet another insignificant terror cell. It is the sympathies of the masses for their ideology, either overt or silent, that made both of them powerful.
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Quite right, the existing phenomena does require a bit more than just some "Extremists" of any given religion. In this case, we can trace the origins of this disease back to Wahhabism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wahhabism) and the huge investments Saudi Arabia did for the past decades in building madrastas and theological schools that taught the most severe and radical of these ideas (ironically, the kingdom allowed its most radical wings to do this as a means to avoid having them being built inside Saudi Arabia itself). These ideas trace back to the eighteenth century and their cruelty was not a modern invention.
I'm not saying Flipside hasn't got the right idea, it's just that there are multiple factors involved here, more than just this one big explanation.
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Sunni and Shiite are no more unified than Protestant and Catholic are. Most of the problems in the Middle East are still based on persecution based on which denomination of Islam you are. There is no strongly entrenched isolationist or expansionist version of Islam, any more than there was such a version of Christianity, but it was still used as an excuse to do the Crusades, religion is a medium, and most of the time, its goals are defined by individuals, not the religion itself. (and to clarify that statement, they are both pretty much on a par with their views on expansionism, slavery etc, but Muslims in the Middle East tend to dance to that tune because unpleasant things happen to them if they don't).
This is more about staying in control than being religiously devout, that's why Islam is so forced upon the people there, to perpetuate the groupthink, it's nothing to do with being 'faithful' to the Religion, it's about being falling under the umbrella of the Church, which has a massive presence in Government.
The Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition couldn't have happened without Christianity, that doesn't make Christianity an inherently bad religion, the people who twisted it to suit their own sadistic and expansionist needs are the problem, that and the fact that people weren't educated or empowered enough to turn around and say 'not in my name'. As for Nazism, that was responsive social behaviour, a result of the Post WWI conditions that let Hitler rise to power in the first place, Hitler didn't create Fascism, the conditions in Germany at the time created both and allowed them to flourish.
The truth is, there isn't many arguments that cannot be applied to 'Islam' that isn't applicable in the worst situations to every other belief system out there if the conditions are right, but the word Islam is just being used to replace a massive swathe of social, political and educational problems that need fixing in that area, but because those in power use that situation to stay in power, it's unlikely to happen.
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The Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition couldn't have happened without Christianity, that doesn't make Christianity an inherently bad religion
Yes it does, Christianity as it was interpreted in dark ages was a bad and extremely toxic religion and has caused a lot of evil. The situation has changed for the better over the centuries (well, except for those extremist christians in Africa), but that does not erase that Christianity did go through an evil period. I just dont buy these kinds of excuses at all. And yes, it applies to lots of other ideologies, not just Islam. Even atheism in some of its more militant incarnations has killed countless millions. We will probably see some other "evil meme" appear in the future.
But right now, it is Islam and its more radical interpretations that is the problem. And we should not sweep this problem under the rug or make excuses for it. It is just a ****ty ideology. Islam needs to change radically, shed its more fundametalist parts, or there will never be peace.
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Agreed, the Middle East is, socially, highly under-developed and that problem shouldn't be swept under the rug, but nor should it be placed in a big box marked 'Islam', that's as much a problem as trying to make excuses for it. As you yourself said, Islam in some areas of the Middle East is psychologically at a similar phase to Christianity in the Middle Ages, but that's not the fault of its followers, it's the fault of the environment that it exists within. You'll get faster results changing the latter than attacking the former, the complicated part of the problem is that the former is usually standing between you and the latter, that's the whole Middle-Eastern conundrum.
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Asking whether it is the fault of its followers or the environment is like asking if chicken or egg was sooner. It is the fault of both, as they are largely inseparable.
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This relativistic idea that all religions are equally bad or equally good is nonsense talk to me. I gave you a precise reference to look up and you completely flat out ignored it. These "ideas" must have no real bearing on the situation, it's more like the contingencies and human conditions that makes this happen. I say that's absolutely wrong. It would be equally wrong to state that "The problem wasn't communism per se, it's how real politiks played out between countries", etc. We wouldn't get away with such inane falsehood, and yet we seem to get into that problem when the subject matter is Religion.
And I get why that is, it has little to do with empirical observation and more about wishful / pragmatic thinking. There's no way in chance that we are gonna deconvert 1.5 billion muslims, so we might as well focus on other factors. But that's also a misleading viewpoint. The problem is not Islam, but Islamism. The ideology of turning everybody into their Sharia-Law based sect through either political means or through weaponized jihad.
Denying this fact is getting us nowhere, and precisely the lack of calling a spade a spade has had a very unfortunate effect. Whenever Obama talks about this "evil ideology" without naming it properly, many people will assume he's speaking of Islam in the whole through politikspeak, because it would be too unpolite to say it outright. This is wrong. Everyone should name the problem and the problem is Islamism, not Islam. And it's through this abstraction that we can have any glimpse of hope that we can win this in the long term. Identify the ideological enemy, fight it through a battle of ideas and education.
Here, have Maahjid Nawaz speaking about it, he's 100x more eloquent than I could ever be on this subject:
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@666Maslo666
Exactly my point. ISIS isn't so much the fruit of Islam, as it was described, as the fruit of any faith system that happened to be in the area and could be twisted to achieve this goal, it just happened to be Islam.
That doesn't mean mainstream Islam doesn't have a big role to play in dealing with it (though, it should be noted that ISIS in general has no more respect for those they see as 'Westernized Muslims' than they do for anyone else not part of their group), but this really is far more a social and political issue than an Islamic one, or at least it started that way, part of ISIS' goal is actually to get people thinking of it as being about Islam, and generating tension between moderate Islam and other cultures. So far, it seems to have been super-effective.
@Luis, it isn't so much a question of saying, as you put it "The problem wasn't communism per se, it's how real politiks played out between countries", it's more a case of being very careful not to take that falsehood and let it turn into McCarthyism.
As for people going to fight in other countries, it's partly about obedience, it's also partly about the fact that this is the first period in time where people can actively travel around the globe to do things like this. Who knows how many people would have defected to the Nazis from the UK if the option had been available pre-war, Germany was actually quite popular in Britain at the time. When Russian troops were reported in the Ukraine, voluntary travel to fight in a foreign war was the official excuse given, America had to deal with Freelance Bin-Laden hunters in Afghanistan. It is a worrying trend, but I don't think it says as much about Islam as it does about people and the world in general.
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I really like this column about how to think about IS/IS/IL. (http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/24/how-to-think-about-islamic-state)
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I really like this column about how to think about IS/IS/IL.
(http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/24/how-to-think-about-islamic-state)
That's a pretty good read. I think people sometimes get so focused on the whole 'Islam' aspect of ISIS (since it is rubbed in their faces by both sides), that it can distract from looking deeper and asking the difficult questions. I remember the PLO hijacking planes when I was a kid, it was all part of the same, ongoing problem, but it certainly wasn't about Islam as a religion back then, and it wasn't wanting to subjugate or kill those who opposed them, that's recent, and reeks of a desperate situation to adopt such a self-destructive pose.
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Precisely because I don't want it to become McCarthyism is that I am advocating for the acceptance of this distinction! This much was, I thought, obvious.
Regarding that column Battuta provides, sigh. TL DR, it's all about material wealth resentment and this is established through various encarnations of the same ideas throughout the eons. Very unstructured piece, but what really irks me is this dismissal of all those "Professional politicians, and their intellectual menials" who will "blather" on regarding “Islamic fundamentalism” and so on, as if this theory of how it all stems from material resentment isn't, at the very best, contentious as well.
Not that I don't see something in it. I just don't take this idea that these notions explain the situation entirely seriously. It's not serious. It's putting one's head inside the sand. So fascinated the westerners are with this notion that it's all "their fault", that even these guys can't really **** up in their own, no, it's all our fault anyways, some kind of 21st century version of "white man's burden", which in turn, and paradoxically, Objectifies these peoples, as if they are merely puppets being thrown around by "our" Global Minotaur or something. If such theory were true, then one should ask why isn't this happening throughout the non-islamist parts of Africa, why isn't this happening in China or India. Why is Vietnam so quiet? Why, oh why, aren't the southern americas in similar dire straits?
Definitely not the ideology. Never an assessment of the ideology. Always ignoring it. I say, this is not helpful. And one day everyone with an interest in these questions will have to face it, but then again, even in 1938 there were people who insisted that any grievances, any beligerances we were seeing in Germany was all the product of Versailles. Nothing to do with ideologies and how they fooled people into their own interpretations of History. And of course, even now, people still insist that this treaty was the sole producer of the nazi phenomena.
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@666Maslo666
Exactly my point. ISIS isn't so much the fruit of Islam, as it was described, as the fruit of any faith system that happened to be in the area and could be twisted to achieve this goal, it just happened to be Islam.
Well, thats not my point, my point is more like the opposite. ISIS is the fruit of Islamism, which is a fairly large and influential subset of Islam, dominant in middle east. As I said, if some other faith was in the area, there would probably be no ISIS, and the situation would look much different (probably much better).
Ideology is of as much importance as realpolitik, much more so for religious terrorist organizations. We will not truly understand the emergence of deplorable regimes such as ISIS if we only concentrate on material and economic factors.
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Islamism isn't really a subset of anything, it's just a form of self-perception. It's easy to say, for example, that 30% of religious professors who are also Islamic support the idea of a Caliphate in the area, so what? If it's not included with the question 'Do you think ISIS is representative of your vision of that Caliphate?', then 30% is just a number with a squiggly thing after it with regards to revealing their stance on ISIS itself. It's the whole Data vs Information thing.
I don't mind that we accept that ISIS used a mutated version of Islam to draw attention to themselves, you could do that with any other religion as effectively, what I do mind is people claiming this is somehow Islam's 'fault', or that it was inevitable because it was Islam, that sort of thinking is far too generalized for me to be comfortable with it.
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That sort of thinking is both perpendicular and unnecessary. Islamism is defined as being the ideology of trying to bring about the conversion of any geographical place into a Caliphate, according to Sharia Law. Islamism is about trying to impose a set of rules of islamic origin unto others.
Islamism is the root cause that should be fought, ideologically. And yes, lots of muslims support it, instead of having a more liberal vision of what their relationship to other humans should be. I am not that interested in fatalisms and racist undertones in blaming muslims for having these thoughts, what matters is that there is a huge contingency of muslims who indeed have transcended this notion of Islamism, and so it's possible. And if it is possible, we should applaud every single method of support to try to bring these ideas forward.
I'm also skeptical of all this notion that we can't "blame Islam" because it's "too generalized", well, fine. Let's not "blame it", let's demand it become responsible, i.e., that they take a hard look into themselves and make sufficient questions regarding what they are doing to their own communities and the world at large. To insinuate that "Islam" has no bearing at all at what's happening is ridiculous and frankly, offensive!, at its face value, because that would necessitate that these religions would have nothing meaningful to add to our human experience whatsoever. That is, that they are all "equal". That they are all just "spiritual or whatevah". This is not true. Religions differ in placing the human psyche in certain very different states of mind and moral stances on what surrounds them. If you are worried about racism and general bigotry, I will follow you and your concerns, it's all too easy to descend into that too, but to deny the connection between Islam and what is happening in Iraq is just .... too much willful blindness.
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I find myself wondering why you constantly have to not only disagree with me, but attempt to play off all my comments as though they are 'spectacularly' wrong in some form or another, as though you are the only person whose opinion could possibly count in any way.
To be honest, I simply don't have the energy left to get into a discussion with someone who is dead-set on turning it into an argument. You carry on believing about the world what you will, I can't change you, but if you cannot listen to my point of view without resorting to constantly attempting to belittle it or decry it as 'not worth listening to', then you can do so alone.
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Imagine someone saying that natural selection has nothing to do with evolution, and then imagine your own reaction to that. Could you take that seriously?
Was I too disrespectful? I don't think I was, I kept giving you points where we could meet. However, written comments in forums might indeed express too much of an austere and cruel tone. Borrowing some ideas from the Volus species, perhaps I should start writing emotional tones before actual paragraphs. My sentiment there wasn't one of arrogance or condescendence, although I can certainly see how it might read like that. It's much more of bewilderment, dysmay, "I can't believe this" sort of feeling. I do understand you think differently, and by no means I want to take that away from anyone.
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What if someone said to you 'I think the common concept of Natural Selection is an over-simplification of how Evolution works'? Because that's what I'm effectively saying, that trying to put all of these problems into any kind of box, pointing to the box and saying 'THAT is the problem', is just going to lead to more of the same problems.
As I said at the start, there is a massive swathe of reasons for the problems in the Middle East, radicalized Islamic Terrorism is a symptom, not a cause to my mind, the cause of these problems won't vanish even if Islam vanished off the face of the Earth tomorrow, any more than the disappearance of the Klan, or the removal of every Confederate Flag would mean an end to racism or the crushing of the Nazi Party meant the end of antisemitism.
To my mind, thinking that if the area hadn't been Islamic, there wouldn't have been these problems is false. I grew up in a world where IRA Bombs were commonly on the News, the Protestant/Catholic divide was blamed, but everyone knew it was about far, far more than just Religious tension, even if the entire area had been one denomination or the other, there still would have been violence, there still would have been bombs, because what it was about at its root was borders, different standards, and the massive tension and anger caused by the division of the country into Northern Ireland and Eire. The religion was just a nice handy envelope.
Sectarian violence is still a problem in Northern island, as is tension along the Eire/NI border, there will always be some tension in a situation like that, but the idea that it was the religious divide that was responsible for the problem was a massive over-simplification of what was actually going on. The same applies here to my mind, religion is a problem in the area, certainly, but it's not the problem.
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What if someone said to you 'I think the common concept of Natural Selection is an over-simplification of how Evolution works'? Because that's what I'm effectively saying, that trying to put all of these problems into any kind of box, pointing to the box and saying 'THAT is the problem', is just going to lead to more of the same problems.
It's always a matter of degree, isn't it? I also never said that the *only* problem is islam. I made precise criticisms of your point of view, namely a scent of religious relativism (religions are all the same), a kind of exagerated contingency causality (Islam is just what these people used, and they did so becuase of their situation).
Remember, you said that the fact ISIS was "Islam" was irrelevant. It was just this that I argued against.
As I said at the start, there is a massive swathe of reasons for the problems in the Middle East, radicalized Islamic Terrorism is a symptom, not a cause to my mind, the cause of these problems won't vanish even if Islam vanished off the face of the Earth tomorrow, any more than the disappearance of the Klan, or the removal of every Confederate Flag would mean an end to racism or the crushing of the Nazi Party meant the end of antisemitism.
It is weird. At a glance, you seem to recognize as I do that these things are complex, non-trivial. Ok, I agree. Then, you say Islamic Terrorism has nothing to do with the cause, it's only a symptom. And yet, we do know a certain amount of facts that do question this narrative and to which you either kept ignoring them or... ignoring them. For instance, when I mentioned Whahabism and the huge investments of madrassas and other radical ideological schools all over the middle east, europe and even america. What do you say to this? Nothing. Because it seems that to you, all these issues are symptoms, not causes. Very well, I just disagree fundamentally here.
To my mind, thinking that if the area hadn't been Islamic, there wouldn't have been these problems is false. I grew up in a world where IRA Bombs were commonly on the News, the Protestant/Catholic divide was blamed, but everyone knew it was about far, far more than just Religious tension, even if the entire area had been one denomination or the other, there still would have been violence, there still would have been bombs, because what it was about at its root was borders, different standards, and the massive tension and anger caused by the division of the country into Northern Ireland and Eire. The religion was just a nice handy envelope.
Ok, but to be fair, and you could have noticed it by yourself, you started this paragraph with an obvious strawman. Where did anyone stated that without Islam, or indeed, without religion one would have no problems? To me, religious tension is the most damning tension here, not the only one and perhaps not even the catalyst. But it perpetuates the divides. I'm sure most irish people won't disagree with me there. Look at every big tension in the world, tell me religion is not playing a role. India / Paskistan. Israel / Palestine. ISIS / Shia Islam. Only North Korea seems to be an exception.
Now, again, I said *a role*. I did not say *THE* role. I also did not say *A symptom*. Which is our apparent disagreement here.
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Only North Korea seems to be an exception.
You doubt the Noble Divinity of the Dear Leader?
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Ok, but to be fair, and you could have noticed it by yourself, you started this paragraph with an obvious strawman. Where did anyone stated that without Islam, or indeed, without religion one would have no problems?
Well, thats not my point, my point is more like the opposite. ISIS is the fruit of Islamism, which is a fairly large and influential subset of Islam, dominant in middle east. As I said, if some other faith was in the area, there would probably be no ISIS, and the situation would look much different (probably much better).
Accusing me of 'not noticing things' and 'making obvious strawmen'...
You're doing it again, and I'm tired of it. I'm out.
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Jesus ****ing hell, no one there said there would be "no problems". The mere fact that this region is filled with oil is just asking for a huge load of problems. I'm also tired of your deflections and shenanigans but don't want to end this on a sour note. Agree to disagree?
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The problem isn't what you are saying, it's that you cannot seem to say it without being abusive of the other persons' opinions. Oh, sure we all say 'It's the Internet', but don't you think it's funny that was always say it in the third person, as though we aren't right here, being responsible for the very attitudes we claim to be inevitable because 'it's the Internet'.
I'm sick and tired of trying to have discussions with people who seem to think the only possible way of responding to an argument they disagree with is to start calling it 'Strawman' or 'Ridiculous' or 'Stupid', it's immature and creates an atmosphere where I really cannot be bothered to discuss it any more, I don't read further into your posts on occasion because I read something like 'This is a stupid argument', and from that point onwards I have no interest whatsoever in what you have to say, because you've gone straight to the ridiculing, so I greatly doubt anything beyond that is going to contain anything that even begins to be level-headed or reasonable. Even if it does, you've not exactly created an 'open and frank' forum for discussing your points have you? Instead you've created an ethos of confrontation that is actually a block to discussion.
It's not just you, I understand that, but I've got better things to do than have a discussion with someone whose idea of an argument is to spend the first sentence of every paragraph trying to think of ways of calling me 'stupid' or 'ignorant' or 'delusional' in such as way as it skirts just inside the forum rules by pretending to attack the argument.
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I have had similar arguments with you about similar subjects. You can come up with an assumption about a person's motivations and make constant efforts to guide them into saying something that you can use to prove their 'true' hidden motivations that you have decided on. I have noticed that when I say Christianity causes problems I never get any flack, but if I say Islam causes problems, well now I just simply hate all Muslims don't I?
though, I think we can all agree that Luis is... somewhat... ...unrefined...
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I have had similar arguments with you about similar subjects. You can come up with an assumption about a person's motivations and make constant efforts to guide them into saying something that you can use to prove their 'true' hidden motivations that you have decided on
Do you have an example of that, because I'm certainly not aware of doing that, and if I do, then I'd like to see in what way so I can be aware of when I am doing it.
To be honest, I've never said either religion 'never causes any problems', I'm perfectly aware of the impact both of them have had. But that's how I feel about most religions, the moment it gets organized, it gets dangerous, but the thing is, this isn't a discussion about whether Islam or Christianity is 'Good' or 'Bad', it's discussion about whether the Middle Eastern problems were caused by Islam, or whether Islams problems were caused by the Middle East, and I really don't think it's a binary situation.
I have my own opinion on Islam and it's Tenets, and they are not favorable ones, same as many implementations of Christianity, and that is an issue humanity has to deal with, but we need to separate out what we are concerned about with regards to the religious practice in general, and what we are concerned about with regards to extreme interpretations of it. I don't agree with the Roman Catholic opinion on contraceptives, for example, but that is a different issue from Priests abusing children. One is an outdated, and somewhat dangerous tenet that is a common-held 'foundation' to the religion, the other is an aberration caused by sick people abusing a position of trust and responsibility. Whilst I would happily say some RC Priests are pedophiles, I would not, therefore continue to claim that this means that every Roman Catholic should take some responsibility for their actions.
Edit : For those that are interested : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-33645685
It's an interesting piece about someone in the UK whose brother went to join ISIS, and his investigation into how his brother was lured there and why he chose to go. You'll note, it's largely about a schism in Islam that largely resembles the Protestant/Catholic schism in Europe. All ISIS is, at it's heart, is the symbol of another religion collapsing in on itself like a failed souffle.
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Do you have an example of that
one of the draw mohamed day threads.
nothing you said there I disagree with strongly.
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Yeah, those Mohammed threads were a bit rough, but I didn't feel I was being manipulative at the time. I'll keep my eyes open for myself doing it, and if you see me doing it, let me know because it's not my intention to behave like that, and like every human being, I know it's perfectly possible for me to do so, so if I can see the signs, I can avoid it.
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I really don't know what to say. Is it my tone? Is it that I'm "unrefined" or, quote, "immature"? Was that a description on what I said or on my persona? Perhaps indeed I am, I'm really open to that. From my end, it merely feels that whenever I happen to disagree with something some people say, I'm labeled as confrontational, not "open and frank" enough, etc. Whenever I share some ideas and concepts and links, etc., they are immediately ignored, and what actually matters is my "tone". I do realise that you feel that I'm using sleazy tactics to be able to call you names under the radar, because perhaps I get off of something like that or something. Nothing could be further from the truth! I do happen to like you and do enjoy what you mostly contribute to the discussions. I just happen to disagree with some things you say. And if I detect that something you said was a strawman and pointed out, it was just to inform you of this, not to make a mark on a checklist of logical fallacies in a gotcha style.
Slight interlude here. Do consider that whenever I do intervene is because something props up in my mind that isn't being taken to account. So it will appear that my comments are mostly confrontational. It might be that I agree with what you are saying to a 70/90% degree, and I just mention what irked me the most, i.e. the 10/30% that is left.
Now was I really being rough on the edges? I'm sorry if it feels that way. Let me tell you, I also don't like that my points are being ignored or strawmanned, or deflected with discussions around "tone". Do I get to say this as well? Are my feelings about the kinds of responses I get to be considered as well, or not?
Because I am confused about some of your arguments. And stop right there. I know what you're feeling. "Ah, here he comes again with his immature smugness and condescension towards me, NOW what fallacy is he gonna point out, I'm tired of this ****". It's NOT smugness. I am *really* confused, because I think I see a contradiction in here, and yet you seem unflinched, as if there isn't any contradiction. You insist that Islam is mostly irrelevant, it is a symptom, it may well be a cause for a lot of trouble, but nothing that would irrevocably separate it from other religions. But now you say this:
You'll note, it's largely about a schism in Islam that largely resembles the Protestant/Catholic schism in Europe. All ISIS is, at it's heart, is the symbol of another religion collapsing in on itself like a failed souffle.
Now, this I totally agree. But it's also in direct contradiction with your previous statements, I believe? Is it not fair to point this out? The whole ISIS phenomena *is* a symbol of a wider crisis within Islam, a Reformation and all the "butterflies"that come with them (the christian reformation was followed by bloody wars), movements of radical resistance to change. Your insight is a wider "Look at the forest, forget the trees" bird's eye view, but it establishes that, much rather than being an irrelevant side aspect of the whole problem, it's at its core. We might disagree on the conclusions to take from this. For instance, one of the big issues I see with this analogy is that it sort of makes one feel that History is fatalistically "doomed" to make Islam more moderated and, like you say, "collapse in on itself like a failed souffle". I disagree with how this prediction is made, because I feel the future is open. There is a fever, but the patient can get worse, not better, after it passes.
But regarding the inconsistency here, what am I missing?
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Do you have an example of that, because I'm certainly not aware of doing that, and if I do, then I'd like to see in what way so I can be aware of when I am doing it.
Hi.
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I'd suggest, after what you did, that you stay well away from this conversation.
And particularly considering what you did, I'd also suggest you stay well away from concerns about manipulation.
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I'd suggest, after what you did, that you stay well away from this conversation.
I'd suggest that you not attempt to dictate what conversations I can and can not participate in as though you are a mod. You gave that up. I'd equally suggest that you successfully manipulated that conversation by doing so, whether you wish to call it that or not, and thus it is a rich statement that you suggest I stay away from it for being manipulative when you were the best manipulator present at the incident you're complaining about now.
More seriously, though, the idea that ISIS is not about Islam everyone has been pushing most of this thread baffles me. (Even Luis' commentary about it being "Islamism" is dancing around this point, afraid to approach it.) Every bizarre pronouncement about Rome is rooted in Islamic religious prophecy; every crowing statement about the capture of some obscure valley is because it has religious significance; the rank and file spout religious statements at every turn because they believe them.
I suppose this is one of the grand Western conceits, that faith is not a thing; that behavior informs religion, not the other way around. We who grew up going to church but never feeling a deep call ourselves and never having met anyone who did, imagining that such deep callings do not exist. But they do. Perhaps I should thank, rather than curse, the Southern Baptist's Conference and its ilk for providing me evidence of this rather than being a constant irritant on social issues.
ISIS could not exist without Islam. Regardless of whatever possible problems one wishes to discuss, the problems at hand are deeply, inextricably religious. Whatever else one chooses to blame, whatever other contexts in which we choose to frame the discussion, we have to accept that religion is a major dynamic and that it will matter. To do otherwise means our solutions will be less effective, and we deny ourselves further means with which to combat ISIS.
ISIS is based in Islam, and that is a strength, but it is also a weakness. Much as the IRA once considered itself the protector of Catholic Irishmen and could be attacked via the acts it undertook which were distinctly unCatholic to the minds of many, so can ISIS be fought inside the framework of Islam for the actions it takes that are considered unIslamic. There is a famous quote of the Prophet: when a man accuses his brother of being an infidel, there is indeed an infidel present. The eagerness of ISIS to declare others apostates is just the start of the things that can be used against it once we are willing to acknowledge that this war is a religious one.
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So you don't like people suggesting things to you either? Why doesn't that surprise me? I'm not part of the Mods so you can't even use your 'conspiracy theory' rubbish to try and manipulate things either now, can you?
The whole reason I quit as a Mod, as you are well aware, was because I was tired of trying to find the middle road between people who thought that whenever the Forum didn't bow to their wishes, that it was all some kind of conspiracy theory against them, I put up with that crap with you for over a year and ended up quitting because I was sick and tired of you misquoting facts and quote mining purely for the sake of hurling abuse...
Let me give you an example :
There was a somewhat heated discussion about Modified Newtonian Dynamics going on some time ago, I posted a response which read :
It's all theory, that's what I'm saying. The real risk here is putting the cart before the horse, the worst step science could take would be to assume that because something doesn't match what we think is true, it must, therefore, be untrue.
As I said before, there's work to do, but if you look back 15 years on the Dark Matter model, and you'd be in a similar situation, it's only through years of adjustment that we've defined a model of the Universe based on Dark Matter theory, not the opposite, if MOND had been thought of first, I wonder if the position would be reversed, and we'd be discussing that fact that Dark Matter can't be right, because it doesn't produce the same numbers as MOND.
MOND has had, possibly, a decade to produce results, I've been hearing about Dark Matter for about 3 decades, and for a lot of that, that theory produced no results either, so I'd be inclined to leave things just a little longer before writing it off.
Edit : Look at it this way, we spent a long time believing the Sun went round the Earth, we had maths that worked for that model, we even calculated a complex system for the regression of planets. The maths fitted, the model fitted, there was only one minute flaw, the entire model was based on a false premise.
Edit 2 : And even wierder is that I could take those incorrect calculations, based on an incorrect model and get correct answers from them with regards to where the Sun is going to rise etc.
Your highly thought out, well structured response to this was :
It's all theory, that's what I'm saying.
Twenty demerits for using an argument straight out of a creationist playbook.
By this stage, this was an ongoing problem with you, out-of-context quote mining and idiotic behaviour, and it was starting to get to me, as it would with anyone. So before you start accusing me of being manipulative to you, maybe you should ask yourself why you wrote to Admin claiming that if they didn't do what you wanted, you would assume it was just 'evidence' of the perceived corruption you believed the Moderators were indulging in.
You're sitting in a glass-house and throwing stones, so I'd, once again, suggest that you think very hard before making claims about manipulation.
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Could you two get on that in pms or whatever?
(Even Luis' commentary about it being "Islamism" is dancing around this point, afraid to approach it.)
Hey now that I'm called a coward I have to intervene! :D (I totally got that you didn't call me a coward, don't worry, smileys smileys, etc.)
Just to clarify here that my position is not, I believe, "dancing around" this issue. Islam is front and center of what is going on. My last comment points precisely this, and apparently, even Flipside believes this as well.
The thing is, I think it is possible to abstract Islam from Islamism, and if this is done correctly and overwhelmingly, then most people will understand that there is a difference between a theocratic fanatical project and a secular liberal tolerance that allows everyone to have their own personal beliefs without imposing them on everyone else. We can agree, I believe, that this project has numerous problems, one of which is consistency with Islam itself, that is, can Islam be compatible with secularism? I'd argue that this compatibility is difficult, but even if it brings certain contradictions, it's not as if all Religions do not suffer them and still go on being pretty popular anyway.
But, even given all these problems, which undoubtedly you'd start listing all them out, I do think that we have a better shot (even at long term) by outlining this difference between liberal islam and Islamism rather than just blanket Otherizing every single 1.5 billion muslims and tell them that it's all their fault, they should better convert to Christianity or just go full Atheists themselves. That's Ann Coulter - type of rambling (and I'm NOT suggesting anyone here is saying it), and we can all agree that it's not even fruitless, not even silly. It's just ... aeeugh. It's just antagonistic.
So I don't take my "dancing around" as cowardish, but rather as pragmatic, and I even believe it's the sort of angle of attack that might bring long term benefits, ideologically speaking. It's not antagonistic, it's rather inviting all muslims to defend secularism and fight islamism, of all sorts.
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To be honest, this was why I was suggested NGT didn't approach that subject, but he wanted to dive on in, so I felt obliged to respond.
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ISIS could not exist without Islam. Regardless of whatever possible problems one wishes to discuss, the problems at hand are deeply, inextricably religious. Whatever else one chooses to blame, whatever other contexts in which we choose to frame the discussion, we have to accept that religion is a major dynamic and that it will matter. To do otherwise means our solutions will be less effective, and we deny ourselves further means with which to combat ISIS.
ISIS as it is couldn't exist without Islam, but movements like ISIS have existed without Islam before. The best example I can think of is the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War. There are a lot of parallels between the two. I don't think it's Islam. It's a bunch of charismatic individuals convincing desperate people who have nothing to lose that they can be led to something better. It's a product of desperation and poverty. It's easy for charismatic individuals to convince people with no prospects and no hope that some Other is responsible for their predicament and they can have something better if they fight for it. Throw in real or imagined oppression of Muslims in other parts of the world, and it's easy to paint the West as the boogeyman.
There's a reason this is happening in Iraq and Syria and not Iran or Saudi Arabia. The biggest difference between the ISIS and the Bolsheviks is what ideology was used to get traction. In Russia, it was Communism. In the Middle-East, it's Islam. So yes, Islam is a big part of this, and combating ISIS requires acknowledging it as a factor, but I don't think it's the root cause.
Another big difference (besides the media aspect) is that the Bolsheviks were led by Vladimir Lenin, who was a brilliant strategic commander, while Al-Baghdadi... isn't. ISIS is being led by idiots who think antagonizing everyone around them is a great idea. Lenin, on the other hand, was very good at picking his battles and knowing when to retreat.
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The comparison between bolshevists and islam is apt. But not (just) for the material concerns. There is a lot of ideological similarities between the two, even discounting the huge influence that leftist thinkers had on the islamic revolutionaires in the middle of the 20th century.
You state that this all stems from "desperation and poverty". Well of course. I agree, it must be a factor. I see it as akin to a body who has had an immunization defect, weakening its own defenses, and when a virus came along, it destroyed everything in its path. Poverty and war, and I agree that Assad's civil war is a major cause in this, it has contributed to allow anything like ISIS to become possible.
But to repeat this factor as if it's the central one, and discounting both communism and islamism themselves as ideologies as being causal, is missing a really large point. It is, like the body analogy, to dismiss the virus as the agent of this disease. Even a complete wreck of a body without any defenses won't collapse if there is not a virus.
I have to reiterate this, given what Flipside has said previously, that do not take my comment as confrontational. I agree with most of what you say, and I think the communist angle analysis is spot on. We just disagree in a matter of degree and focus. I also agree with your commentary on Lenin's strategic brilliance.
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So you don't like people suggesting things to you either? Why doesn't that surprise me? I'm not part of the Mods so you can't even use your 'conspiracy theory' rubbish to try and manipulate things either now, can you?
in such as way as it skirts just inside the forum rules by pretending to attack the argument.
Physician, heal thyself. Your outburst is a dramatic escalation and lashing out complete with heated accusations of conspiracy theory and a rejection of any discussion of your behavior to instead focus on mine.
I wash my hands of it as such. This is manifestly a conversation you are not ready to have.
Hey now that I'm called a coward I have to intervene! :D (I totally got that you didn't call me a coward, don't worry, smileys smileys, etc.)
Just to clarify here that my position is not, I believe, "dancing around" this issue. Islam is front and center of what is going on. My last comment points precisely this, and apparently, even Flipside believes this as well.
The thing is, I think it is possible to abstract Islam from Islamism, and if this is done correctly and overwhelmingly, then most people will understand that there is a difference between a theocratic fanatical project and a secular liberal tolerance that allows everyone to have their own personal beliefs without imposing them on everyone else. We can agree, I believe, that this project has numerous problems, one of which is consistency with Islam itself, that is, can Islam be compatible with secularism? I'd argue that this compatibility is difficult, but even if it brings certain contradictions, it's not as if all Religions do not suffer them and still go on being pretty popular anyway.
But, even given all these problems, which undoubtedly you'd start listing all them out, I do think that we have a better shot (even at long term) by outlining this difference between liberal islam and Islamism rather than just blanket Otherizing every single 1.5 billion muslims and tell them that it's all their fault, they should better convert to Christianity or just go full Atheists themselves. That's Ann Coulter - type of rambling (and I'm NOT suggesting anyone here is saying it), and we can all agree that it's not even fruitless, not even silly. It's just ... aeeugh. It's just antagonistic.
So I don't take my "dancing around" as cowardish, but rather as pragmatic, and I even believe it's the sort of angle of attack that might bring long term benefits, ideologically speaking. It's not antagonistic, it's rather inviting all muslims to defend secularism and fight islamism, of all sorts.
I think that you've overlooked the obvious problem, and it is that trying to abstract Islam from Islamism is not a point of view that will play well with those of an Islamic persuasion. All religions believe in proselytizing, and usually in some form of doctrinal purity (though relatively few have the organizational mechanisms to attempt to enforce doctrinal purity; hi my old buddies in the Southern Baptist's Conference). Islam, in particular, has a heritage that sees it as the only possible choice, and its triumph over other religions as an inevitable good. Judaism, based upon a Promised Land, proscribed itself boundaries in its mind if not in a literal sense early on. Christianity, born into the adversity of the most powerful empire in the world, could not take for granted its success. Islam could take its success for granted though and did well into the 1400s at the least; one could argue it continued even until Mustafa Kemal Ataturk created modern Turkey after WW1. The feeling that Islam is inevitable is still very much a part of certain strains of thought in that religion, particularly those in the Middle East where Islam is inevitable for most.
You've taken a (very Western) point of view that success comes through reason and education. I would point you towards your own lamentations about "liberal media" who judged that the Planned Parenthood thing wasn't worth their time but who you judge to be negligent in not reporting further as a counterpoint. If this was an engagement with an idea, there would merit to such views. But we are not. Even Battuta's earlier article, while dismissing the Islamic aspect, said it was about feelings rather than ideas. Even if you manage to reason with someone about their feelings, that does not necessarily rob those feelings of their power. Add to that which something like deeply held religious faith is close to immune to reason to begin with.
It should also be considered that a call to secularism is something that simply is not going to play here, among peoples to whom Islam is very close to being like air; so omnipresent as to be invisible, save when the storms blow and then stand not in its way. Their major experience with secularism historically was Saddam. This isn't something people are going to stand up for. We have a situation where the religiously motivated alternatives are progressing: as al-Quada subsumed earlier Islamic revolutionaries into itself for being more doctrinally pure and religiously affiliated so ISIS is doing the same to many aspects of them. If ISIS is a strike against Islam's Reformation, then victory over them without an equivalent of the Jesuits is hard to conceive.
You're implying that this approach is necessarily Otherizing, and that I think is where it goes dramatically wrong. This is why I made comparison to the IRA; considered the protectors of Catholics and Catholic themselves, they were attacked inside Ireland and internationally for being exceptionally poor at many of the core Catholic beliefs. It is not a coincidence that the IRA was set on the road to collapse at a time when the current Pope's messages were focused on a return to those values, before other social issues seized the attention of the Catholic Church.
We simply dismiss ISIS' claims to be the Prophet's heirs as ridiculous. That was the same strategy we used on the original Wahabist terrorists. See how well it has worked now? It is time instead to take the battle to those claims, to take them at their word that the Islamic State is in fact Islamic, and to take them to task in that context. Not for being Islamic, but for being Islamic in the manner they have chosen and how it relates to the words and conduct of the Prophet.
ISIS as it is couldn't exist without Islam, but movements like ISIS have existed without Islam before.
Regardless of whatever possible problems one wishes to discuss, the problems at hand are deeply, inextricably religious.
See also: the rest of my post.
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I think that you've overlooked the obvious problem, and it is that trying to abstract Islam from Islamism is not a point of view that will play well with those of an Islamic persuasion. All religions believe in proselytizing, and usually in some form of doctrinal purity (though relatively few have the organizational mechanisms to attempt to enforce doctrinal purity; hi my old buddies in the Southern Baptist's Conference). Islam, in particular, has a heritage that sees it as the only possible choice, and its triumph over other religions as an inevitable good. Judaism, based upon a Promised Land, proscribed itself boundaries in its mind if not in a literal sense early on. Christianity, born into the adversity of the most powerful empire in the world, could not take for granted its success. Islam could take its success for granted though and did well into the 1400s at the least; one could argue it continued even until Mustafa Kemal Ataturk created modern Turkey after WW1. The feeling that Islam is inevitable is still very much a part of certain strains of thought in that religion, particularly those in the Middle East where Islam is inevitable for most.
I don't think anything I said even transpired such overlooking. Of course this point of view won't play well with those of an "islamic" persuasion. This is a long war, and it will take a generation or two to win it. It's completely correct to make analogies and contrasts with other religions on this proselitizing + purity concepts but let's remember that the fight for secularism was, if anything, a lot harder in the Enlightenment period for there were no contemporary examples of it. And yet, secularism largely won, despite all the totalitarian aspects of all these monotheisms. Let's remember that Catholicism means Universalism, it wasn't just "one" point of view, it was the only correct, universal point of view.
From my POV, there are multiple levels of "Islamism", a sort of scale that encompasses the whole of Islam. At the very end you have jihad terrorists, the ISIS types. These are islamists and they will cut the heads of everyone who mildly disagrees with this vision. Then, you'll have islamists who have stopped fighting for Sharia. They won't cut your head, but they will fight within the political sphere. Think Muslim Brotherhood. Next, you will have non-islamists, people who do not believe in forcing others to take their views, but have nevertheless themselves very strict conservative notions of what it is to be muslim. They will be hard followers of sharia, but they do abhor all these attempts to enforce them to others. Only after you'll start to have more liberal minded muslims.
My take is that the first two have to go. And that the end goal is that on the whole, the muslim community goes towards the liberal direction. This does not mean that they will all become gay muslim liberal kumbayaas. Merely that they stop trying to enforce islam on others. The simple fact that these groups exist is proof enough that this is possible.
Outlining that the first two groups exist does not entail a proof that my take can never happen. Things change. Quickly. Think gay marriage.
You've taken a (very Western) point of view that success comes through reason and education. I would point you towards your own lamentations about "liberal media" who judged that the Planned Parenthood thing wasn't worth their time but who you judge to be negligent in not reporting further as a counterpoint. If this was an engagement with an idea, there would merit to such views. But we are not. Even Battuta's earlier article, while dismissing the Islamic aspect, said it was about feelings rather than ideas. Even if you manage to reason with someone about their feelings, that does not necessarily rob those feelings of their power. Add to that which something like deeply held religious faith is close to immune to reason to begin with.
Sorry, citation needed. Where did I say this? Regardless, I do agree. I think that emotion is so powerful that I think, apart from all these reasonable arguments one can have back and forth, it is people like Malala, by being extraordinary role models and sources of inspiration worldwide that are doing the reformation themselves. Yes, emotions rule. But they aren't necessarily stacked against us.
It should also be considered that a call to secularism is something that simply is not going to play here, among peoples to whom Islam is very close to being like air; so omnipresent as to be invisible, save when the storms blow and then stand not in its way. Their major experience with secularism historically was Saddam. This isn't something people are going to stand up for. We have a situation where the religiously motivated alternatives are progressing: as al-Quada subsumed earlier Islamic revolutionaries into itself for being more doctrinally pure and religiously affiliated so ISIS is doing the same to many aspects of them. If ISIS is a strike against Islam's Reformation, then victory over them without an equivalent of the Jesuits is hard to conceive.
To call Saddam "secularist" is botching the word, but I'll drop that detail, for it does not diminish your point. "Secularism" won't be sold with a package. It's a long struggle. And by little things, like fighting for women's education. Fighting for better laws that allow women more rights. Fighting for freedom of practicing religion. Muslims are doing this all over the place, we only get to hear the bad news.
You're implying that this approach is necessarily Otherizing, and that I think is where it goes dramatically wrong. This is why I made comparison to the IRA; considered the protectors of Catholics and Catholic themselves, they were attacked inside Ireland and internationally for being exceptionally poor at many of the core Catholic beliefs. It is not a coincidence that the IRA was set on the road to collapse at a time when the current Pope's messages were focused on a return to those values, before other social issues seized the attention of the Catholic Church.
I was speaking about the approach of simply saying that ISIS is the logical endpoint of Islam, and that there should not be a distinction between islam and islamism. I am not really concerned about "otherizing" ISIS. They are fair game at practically anything.
We simply dismiss ISIS' claims to be the Prophet's heirs as ridiculous. That was the same strategy we used on the original Wahabist terrorists. See how well it has worked now? It is time instead to take the battle to those claims, to take them at their word that the Islamic State is in fact Islamic, and to take them to task in that context. Not for being Islamic, but for being Islamic in the manner they have chosen and how it relates to the words and conduct of the Prophet.
Hm. Ok. How does that work in practice? Could you give me an example?
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See, going back to the worldview way back in the article Battuta originally posted, I thought a large factor in the IRA's decline was that the material situation of Northern Ireland's Catholics got a lot better over the course of the Troubles, depriving them of their biggest source of support. The pIRA was not really formed due to ideological support for a united Ireland, but because the Catholic population was oppressed and suffering vicious reprisals when it tried to protest.
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I don't think anything I said even transpired such overlooking. Of course this point of view won't play well with those of an "islamic" persuasion. This is a long war, and it will take a generation or two to win it. It's completely correct to make analogies and contrasts with other religions on this proselitizing + purity concepts but let's remember that the fight for secularism was, if anything, a lot harder in the Enlightenment period for there were no contemporary examples of it. And yet, secularism largely won, despite all the totalitarian aspects of all these monotheisms. Let's remember that Catholicism means Universalism, it wasn't just "one" point of view, it was the only correct, universal point of view.
From my POV, there are multiple levels of "Islamism", a sort of scale that encompasses the whole of Islam. At the very end you have jihad terrorists, the ISIS types. These are islamists and they will cut the heads of everyone who mildly disagrees with this vision. Then, you'll have islamists who have stopped fighting for Sharia. They won't cut your head, but they will fight within the political sphere. Think Muslim Brotherhood. Next, you will have non-islamists, people who do not believe in forcing others to take their views, but have nevertheless themselves very strict conservative notions of what it is to be muslim. They will be hard followers of sharia, but they do abhor all these attempts to enforce them to others. Only after you'll start to have more liberal minded muslims.
Ah.
I think this is where we differ. You're pushing for some kind of grand plan to change the way large portions of Islam see their own religion from the outside, by...what exactly? You've been rather vague on that point.
We've been trying what you suggest, in some form, since before the First World War. It's not working now and it certainly hasn't historically. I'm sure you're well-meaning, but it's a shorter leap from where you are to Anne Coulter than you think and dictating to the population of the Third World as a strategy doesn't have much to recommend it.
My take is that the first two have to go. And that the end goal is that on the whole, the muslim community goes towards the liberal direction. This does not mean that they will all become gay muslim liberal kumbayaas. Merely that they stop trying to enforce islam on others. The simple fact that these groups exist is proof enough that this is possible.
You're at the least implying that this isn't an inevitable outcome, more or less, of either strategy. If the hard-liners are theologically discredited, who's left exactly? Granted my suggestion could well leave us at the status quo ante, at least temporarily, but over the long term it can only strength the hand of those who want to return to the spirit rather than the literal nature of 14th century Islam.
The difference is that change is internal. The secularists are now and have always been rallied to the cause, but they don't matter now and they have never mattered because they just aren't a force. If the last hundred years of the history of the Middle East teach you nothing else, learn that; the nationalists counted once, Islam counts now, but there is no urge to the secular for people to tap, no shining examples that anyone involved would care for. I compared religiosity to air in the last post I made because it is very much the air that is breathed in that part of the world. Theological change is the only change that will matter.
Indeed, we were brought to this point by the Saudi insistence on a major theological change. We can well leave it via a similar mechanism.
To call Saddam "secularist" is botching the word, but I'll drop that detail, for it does not diminish your point. "Secularism" won't be sold with a package. It's a long struggle. And by little things, like fighting for women's education. Fighting for better laws that allow women more rights. Fighting for freedom of practicing religion. Muslims are doing this all over the place, we only get to hear the bad news.
No, we hear the good news as well. You wouldn't be able to cite it otherwise; but there is a scant good news because there is scant good news. These things are new and unjustified, for lack of a better term, in the Islamic experience. To make them last while the current environment continues, as it probably will, requires that individuals be willing to place them into the wider context of the Muslim experience and the religion of Islam through theological debate.
I was speaking about the approach of simply saying that ISIS is the logical endpoint of Islam, and that there should not be a distinction between islam and islamism. I am not really concerned about "otherizing" ISIS. They are fair game at practically anything.
I wouldn't say it's the logical endpoint (logic has little to do with religious endpoints; this is about charisma, and hence frequently dissolves into battles over who has the pure vision or the true way), but I wouldn't argue for trying to treat them as totally separate entities either, which it seems many are eager to do. ISIS has to be understood as a subset of Islam, rather as we have to understand the Society of Saint Pius X as a subset of Roman Catholicism; nobody's particularly eager to claim it but the ties run too deep to be ignored.
Hm. Ok. How does that work in practice? Could you give me an example?
I already did, honestly. The quote I gave you earlier ("When a man accuses his brother of being an infidel, there is indeed an infidel present." and the corresponding doctrine that accusations of apostasy are not to be made lightly and the accuser is in at least as much danger as the accused) is one that has been turned against ISIS' behavior by nearly everyone who doesn't align with them, and indeed represents the major doctrinal disagreement between AQ and ISIS.
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The comparison between bolshevists and islam is apt. But not (just) for the material concerns. There is a lot of ideological similarities between the two, even discounting the huge influence that leftist thinkers had on the islamic revolutionaires in the middle of the 20th century.
You state that this all stems from "desperation and poverty". Well of course. I agree, it must be a factor. I see it as akin to a body who has had an immunization defect, weakening its own defenses, and when a virus came along, it destroyed everything in its path. Poverty and war, and I agree that Assad's civil war is a major cause in this, it has contributed to allow anything like ISIS to become possible.
But to repeat this factor as if it's the central one, and discounting both communism and islamism themselves as ideologies as being causal, is missing a really large point. It is, like the body analogy, to dismiss the virus as the agent of this disease. Even a complete wreck of a body without any defenses won't collapse if there is not a virus.
I have to reiterate this, given what Flipside has said previously, that do not take my comment as confrontational. I agree with most of what you say, and I think the communist angle analysis is spot on. We just disagree in a matter of degree and focus. I also agree with your commentary on Lenin's strategic brilliance.
I think we mostly agree. If we're using a body and disease as an analogy, then yes, poverty and desperation are a compromised immune system, but Islam isn't the disease, it's a vector. The disease is charismatic, power-hungry people. Islam has definitely injected its own particular "flavor" (for lack of a better word) into this conflict, but I think we'd have a conflict even if it wasn't an Islamic region. The evil here isn't the ideology, it's just human nature.
Basically, I think Islam is the sword, not the hand wielding it.
Though I agree that Communism and Islamism both advocating violent revolution doesn't help, and helps explain a few similarities between this and the Russian Civil War. I wonder if a similar thing could crop up in the American Deep South (for example) if things got bad enough. Probably. Like I said, riling up poor, desperate people is pretty easy if you pin all their problems on something (or someone) else.
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Ah.
I think this is where we differ. You're pushing for some kind of grand plan to change the way large portions of Islam see their own religion from the outside, by...what exactly? You've been rather vague on that point.
We've been trying what you suggest, in some form, since before the First World War. It's not working now and it certainly hasn't historically. I'm sure you're well-meaning, but it's a shorter leap from where you are to Anne Coulter than you think and dictating to the population of the Third World as a strategy doesn't have much to recommend it.
That would be fair to say, it is true to a point, but I don't think it's entirely true for a number of reasons. The first is that the entire Left has long embraced Islam as a legitimate revolutionary force, since the gone days of Foucault, and, much more importantly, Sartre, Fanon, Ali Shariati. This has long meant that the primary driver of Islam's aggressiveness since the late 20th century came from revolutionary marxist ideals combined with islamic absolutism (culminating in the Iranian revolution itself), with the long view that the big enemy was Colonialism and, of course, Big Capitalism, etc., etc. IOW, "Big Satan" itself.
This snippet is only meant to state that, apart from trying to "educate" the "rabble" in the middle east, we have been actually fomenting its opposite.
It's time to start doing the reverse. Just like communism is now seen as a ridiculous, dangerous and ultimately false idea, so too we should try to get everyone to see that the same applies to its step-child, Islamism.
You're at the least implying that this isn't an inevitable outcome, more or less, of either strategy. If the hard-liners are theologically discredited, who's left exactly? Granted my suggestion could well leave us at the status quo ante, at least temporarily, but over the long term it can only strength the hand of those who want to return to the spirit rather than the literal nature of 14th century Islam.
The difference is that change is internal. The secularists are now and have always been rallied to the cause, but they don't matter now and they have never mattered because they just aren't a force. If the last hundred years of the history of the Middle East teach you nothing else, learn that; the nationalists counted once, Islam counts now, but there is no urge to the secular for people to tap, no shining examples that anyone involved would care for. I compared religiosity to air in the last post I made because it is very much the air that is breathed in that part of the world. Theological change is the only change that will matter.
Indeed, we were brought to this point by the Saudi insistence on a major theological change. We can well leave it via a similar mechanism.
Main priority is precisely this, I do agree, to get most islamic scholars to condemn islamism. This has to happen from the inside, which is actually not. But it has to stem from a framework that is not arbitrary. More on that later.
I wouldn't say it's the logical endpoint (logic has little to do with religious endpoints; this is about charisma, and hence frequently dissolves into battles over who has the pure vision or the true way), but I wouldn't argue for trying to treat them as totally separate entities either, which it seems many are eager to do. ISIS has to be understood as a subset of Islam, rather as we have to understand the Society of Saint Pius X as a subset of Roman Catholicism; nobody's particularly eager to claim it but the ties run too deep to be ignored.
Sure, that's why I don't like ISIS to be called "Violent Extremists", like Obama does, or whatever. I think the name Islamism conveys very clearly the source of the poison, but is also able to distinguish from Islam. It's like Scientism. It conveys both that it stems from its source word but also that it's a radical degeneration of it.
The main purpose is to let muslims themselves be able to voice this difference. "I'm a muslim but I'm not an Islamist". Extremist, or fundamentalist doesn't have the same gist to it, it's both too generic and seemingly an expression of weakness on their part (are you saying you're not sufficient of a believer? Are you saying you're not basing your religion from the fundamentals of it?), thus inadvertingly giving a kind of a purist credence to the extremists.
I already did, honestly. The quote I gave you earlier ("When a man accuses his brother of being an infidel, there is indeed an infidel present." and the corresponding doctrine that accusations of apostasy are not to be made lightly and the accuser is in at least as much danger as the accused) is one that has been turned against ISIS' behavior by nearly everyone who doesn't align with them, and indeed represents the major doctrinal disagreement between AQ and ISIS.
Yeah... but this is still completely arbitrary, isn't it? "My interpretation tells me you're wrong!", "No U!", it's like you say, who has the most "charisma" and so on. I think we have to substantiate and justify these "heretic claims" with more than the Koran, because if you do so, it's a random walk. Over a precipice. I say, add a Human Rights ideology with it. Demand it. Then it stops being random, it has a clear focus in the right direction.
The evil here isn't the ideology, it's just human nature.
Well, sure, but. And note, I'm picking this sentence because it's the only thing in that text that didn't taste as well as the others, to which I obviously agree with.
Thing is, and running the risk of sounding pedantic here, to say "it's human nature" really rubs me the wrong way. It's a kind of handwaving that I just don't agree with. Every human action is "human nature" by logical necessity. It has two problems here. One is logical, as stated before. It just is too general and doesn't inform us of anything. The second is sharper. I think its problem is that it naturalizes human behavior too much. "What are you going to do, it's just humans being humans", in a kind of darwinian bird's eye view. I can even imagine a Battuta's character in this world running some kind of psychohistorian analysis through a computer and easily predicting all of this ****.
Ok, let's run with this. But let's pay attention here. What are the factors that this simulation is detecting that are creeping in and causing all of these particular behaviors? To say that something like Testosterone is driving this is a no-brainer, but also irrelevant. Testosterone causes a lot of other things. Why this particular pattern of behaviors, why this fractal attractor that is seemingly pseudo-stable for some time at least, but is so filled with such nihilism?
I guess, what I am saying is this: a guy murdered someone. We can say with our hands in the air, "Ah, it's human nature", or, we can try to make more questions. Why did he do it. What was the context? The motivation? What didn't prevent the murder? What faciltated it? What triggered it?
IDK, sorry, I am beggining to realise I'm just rambling. But for some reason I'm not deleting this. I guess it's lack of sleep.
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That would be fair to say, it is true to a point, but I don't think it's entirely true for a number of reasons. The first is that the entire Left has long embraced Islam as a legitimate revolutionary force, since the gone days of Foucault, and, much more importantly, Sartre, Fanon, Ali Shariati. This has long meant that the primary driver of Islam's aggressiveness since the late 20th century came from revolutionary marxist ideals combined with islamic absolutism (culminating in the Iranian revolution itself), with the long view that the big enemy was Colonialism and, of course, Big Capitalism, etc., etc. IOW, "Big Satan" itself.
...no?
Really how you managed to connect Marxism and "the Left" to this is equally baffling, because it's not a connection worth making or one that's real. You've confused the earlier ideological strain of Arab nationalism with the modern Islamic ideologies, which share pretty much nothing. The ideology at hand is, if anything, a reaction against the earlier Marxist-infused Arab nationalism. The Iranian revolution is a case in point, where a left-wing revolution was highjacked by right-wing religious figures rather than allow a Marxist ideology. The Saudi support of Wahabism was born of the necessity of preventing the same kind of revolution. They stand in direct opposition.
You're reading your history very wrong.
Main priority is precisely this, I do agree, to get most islamic scholars to condemn islamism. This has to happen from the inside, which is actually not. But it has to stem from a framework that is not arbitrary. More on that later.
All political and social frameworks are ultimately arbitrary and relative.
Sure, that's why I don't like ISIS to be called "Violent Extremists", like Obama does, or whatever. I think the name Islamism conveys very clearly the source of the poison, but is also able to distinguish from Islam. It's like Scientism. It conveys both that it stems from its source word but also that it's a radical degeneration of it.
The main purpose is to let muslims themselves be able to voice this difference. "I'm a muslim but I'm not an Islamist". Extremist, or fundamentalist doesn't have the same gist to it, it's both too generic and seemingly an expression of weakness on their part (are you saying you're not sufficient of a believer? Are you saying you're not basing your religion from the fundamentals of it?), thus inadvertingly giving a kind of a purist credence to the extremists.
The semantic game you are playing here is, bluntly, just that; saying you're Muslim but not Islamist is no better an admission of core principles than saying you're not an extremist or a fundamentalist. In many ways, it's worse; at least those words have been previously devalued by the behavior of those who seek the label.
Again, trying to distinguish like you are doing is pointless. ISIS is a subset of a whole. To confront the ugly parts of history and doctrine in a religion you must first admit to them; see Roman Catholicism's struggles with the sex abuse issue, or the Mormons' struggles with admitting certain historical acts. It is comforting to say "they're not like me" but it is not tactically useful.
Yeah... but this is still completely arbitrary, isn't it? "My interpretation tells me you're wrong!", "No U!", it's like you say, who has the most "charisma" and so on. I think we have to substantiate and justify these "heretic claims" with more than the Koran, because if you do so, it's a random walk. Over a precipice. I say, add a Human Rights ideology with it. Demand it. Then it stops being random, it has a clear focus in the right direction.
Adding a human rights ideology to it would also be completely arbitrary and based on charisma in the end as well. You're suggesting fighting the ocean, in effect; adding something completely new and unprecedented into a hostile environment. No amount of support (at least that anyone would be willing to part with) would be enough to make this approach work. Fighting the ocean is not and has never been a winning strategy; you have to make it work for you.
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That would be fair to say, it is true to a point, but I don't think it's entirely true for a number of reasons. The first is that the entire Left has long embraced Islam as a legitimate revolutionary force, since the gone days of Foucault, and, much more importantly, Sartre, Fanon, Ali Shariati. This has long meant that the primary driver of Islam's aggressiveness since the late 20th century came from revolutionary marxist ideals combined with islamic absolutism (culminating in the Iranian revolution itself), with the long view that the big enemy was Colonialism and, of course, Big Capitalism, etc., etc. IOW, "Big Satan" itself.
...no?
Really how you managed to connect Marxism and "the Left" to this is equally baffling, because it's not a connection worth making or one that's real. You've confused the earlier ideological strain of Arab nationalism with the modern Islamic ideologies, which share pretty much nothing. The ideology at hand is, if anything, a reaction against the earlier Marxist-infused Arab nationalism. The Iranian revolution is a case in point, where a left-wing revolution was highjacked by right-wing religious figures rather than allow a Marxist ideology. The Saudi support of Wahabism was born of the necessity of preventing the same kind of revolution. They stand in direct opposition.
You're reading your history very wrong.
....
You're entirely right. I crossed the beams, mixed two very different stories in my head. ... This is the sort of bull**** that my brain does that prevented me to go to a History degree or smth.
The semantic game you are playing here is, bluntly, just that; saying you're Muslim but not Islamist is no better an admission of core principles than saying you're not an extremist or a fundamentalist. In many ways, it's worse; at least those words have been previously devalued by the behavior of those who seek the label.
Again, trying to distinguish like you are doing is pointless. ISIS is a subset of a whole. To confront the ugly parts of history and doctrine in a religion you must first admit to them; see Roman Catholicism's struggles with the sex abuse issue, or the Mormons' struggles with admitting certain historical acts. It is comforting to say "they're not like me" but it is not tactically useful.
I think it's the first step. The worst you can do is having them thinking "I abhor what they do, but they *are like me*, so if these guys are fighting them, they are also fighting me".
Adding a human rights ideology to it would also be completely arbitrary and based on charisma in the end as well. You're suggesting fighting the ocean, in effect; adding something completely new and unprecedented into a hostile environment. No amount of support (at least that anyone would be willing to part with) would be enough to make this approach work. Fighting the ocean is not and has never been a winning strategy; you have to make it work for you.
I don't think the Human Rights is arbitrary, I think it's a good standard. It's not perfect, but at least it's pointing at the opposite direction of the precipice. Regarding the point of how there's no one to make this work, etc., I'm not really sure what you mean. I mean, I'm not speaking directly of Iraq here. I'm speaking globally and in a timespan of a generation. Most people in ISIS army came from foreign countries who were enchanted by this nihilistic ideology that at least stood for something. I think that the west's current complete relativism and moral disarray is something that is "in the air" and was caught by these idiots.
Aside, it's also a pattern that reminds me of shooting massacres in the US, wherein we get psychopaths wanting to get noticed, do a mass shooting, and then every media can't shut up about them, giving them exactly what they wanted in the first place. ISIS found a way to scale this phenomena into a whole army, using the Quran and Whahabbism as ideological frameworks.
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I'm going to say again, I think NGTM's IRA analogy is bogus and completely blows this whole 'it's all really about Islam' line of argument out of the water.
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I'm going to say again, I think NGTM's IRA analogy is bogus and completely blows this whole 'it's all really about Islam' line of argument out of the water.
A lack of substance, in both charges and connecting them so that one is a logical extension of the other.
Of course the latter is impossible when it's obviously an analogy of convenience for people who don't believe in faith as a motivating factor, but why let that get the way of content-free post?
I don't think the Human Rights is arbitrary, I think it's a good standard. It's not perfect, but at least it's pointing at the opposite direction of the precipice. Regarding the point of how there's no one to make this work, etc., I'm not really sure what you mean. I mean, I'm not speaking directly of Iraq here. I'm speaking globally and in a timespan of a generation. Most people in ISIS army came from foreign countries who were enchanted by this nihilistic ideology that at least stood for something. I think that the west's current complete relativism and moral disarray is something that is "in the air" and was caught by these idiots.
Aside, it's also a pattern that reminds me of shooting massacres in the US, wherein we get psychopaths wanting to get noticed, do a mass shooting, and then every media can't shut up about them, giving them exactly what they wanted in the first place. ISIS found a way to scale this phenomena into a whole army, using the Quran and Whahabbism as ideological frameworks.
It's an arbitrary addition, as any other addition would be. Not in itself, but as a choice. Why accept it over any other? What will it offer? Why should anyone back it? It has neither precedent nor place. The intrusion of outside forces in a major way necessary to support it as such has never been effective and arguably tainted it as a concept in the minds of most of those concerned, from not only an interior but an exterior perspective. The ground's only getting stonier when you throw more seeds on it.
Most people in ISIS army came from foreign countries who were enchanted by this nihilistic ideology that at least stood for something.
This, though, deserves further analysis because it's an interesting reversal of your earlier complaint about the blindness of the media to the good news; now you trust them too much instead of too little. ISIS' foreign volunteers get all the press, but they in no way represent the majority of its forces. As mentioned before it stole much of its starting infrastructure and people in a doctrinal schism from AQ, and many of its people are the same people doing business at the same stand with the same merchandise the region has harbored for more than a decade. The failure of the Arab Spring to deliver change has produced many Syrian and Egyptian newcomers.
It also ignores that the majority of people who do leave from outside the region to join ISIS were not "enchanted with an ideology that stood for something". They were enchanted with group's nihilism. They see destruction and slaughter and find it good; whether from budding tendencies to ASPD or simple immaturity. Or they find themselves failing and powerless and wish to become part of something powerful; seeking vicariously what they themselves lack. The narrative of some kind of tapping into an undercurrent of dissatisfaction with Western society is self-serving on both the part of ISIS and those who would parrot it. They have tapped into our reserve of the socially malformed and the desperately inadequate in a spectacular way, but it's nothing that isn't present in every society and nothing that lacks precedent. You brushed against this very realization in your last paragraph, but you can't hold it at the same time as you do with the last sentence of the other; they are mutually incompatible.
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I don't think they are, I think they are absolutely symbiotic. In contrast to Dostoievsky's words "Without God, everything is permitted", I think that its now famous Lacanian reversal is much more informative: It is that With God that everything is permitted. These are probably all clichés to you, but I'll reiterate them for reference.
The more general argument is that if you have God on your side, if your heart is in a divine place and are blessed by God Himself, then everything that you will do will have the blessing of God, therefore you can do anything you want, for it is good by definition. That is, you can stop feeling guilty for being the most horrible nihilistic terrorist in the world, for you have Allah's blessing. If you are blessed for being a jihadist for Allah, then, as long as you follow the rules as described in the Quran, everything is permitted. You are a direct instrument of divine will, such banalities as "human rights" or "basic empathic rules" or whatever just fall completely short. What are these banal things compared to the infinite? What is a rape or a beheading when it's the whole creation that is at stake here?
IOW, it is the divine aspect of this movement that provides it with the authorization to be absolutely nihilistic. It's a kind of a cover. Both socially and psychologically. Socially because, who are you to question me, a direct tool of the divine Infinite? Psychologically because, I am now outside of this weird grey moral areas, unaware of whether I'll save my soul or not, I am in truth, directly and thus I can do whatever I want, and I don't need to feel bad about it, for everything else is unimportant.
This thing happened with fascism as well. Follow these very strict rules, that come from an extremely rigid structure of power. Now, if you do this, we promise you that you can do whatever you want with those that the rules deem as "inferior". Have fun with them. Let your inner nihillistic monster surge.
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I'm going to say again, I think NGTM's IRA analogy is bogus and completely blows this whole 'it's all really about Islam' line of argument out of the water.
A lack of substance, in both charges and connecting them so that one is a logical extension of the other.
Of course the latter is impossible when it's obviously an analogy of convenience for people who don't believe in faith as a motivating factor, but why let that get the way of content-free post?
You'd have a hard time pinning down the causes and trajectory of the Troubles to some motivating factor of 'faith'. I explained in more detail why they are far better explained by the exact socioeconomic factors that you are now dismissing in my previous post in this thread.
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I mean if you want something more specific:
You're implying that this approach is necessarily Otherizing, and that I think is where it goes dramatically wrong. This is why I made comparison to the IRA; considered the protectors of Catholics and Catholic themselves, they were attacked inside Ireland and internationally for being exceptionally poor at many of the core Catholic beliefs. It is not a coincidence that the IRA was set on the road to collapse at a time when the current Pope's messages were focused on a return to those values, before other social issues seized the attention of the Catholic Church.
The IRA didn't 'collapse'. The idea is totally laughable to anyone who actually knows about Northern Ireland. The more accurate assessment of the IRA's fate is that they won. They got seats in the halls of power, they got a reformed police service, they got widespread immunity from prosecution from their terrorist campaign, they got closer ties with the Republic. The Troubles didn't start or end because of God, or the Pope, or some grandiose clash of civilisations and ideologies. They started because the people without power wanted it, and those with power wanted to keep it; they ended when that disparity was levelled.
I'm not going to say that I think for sure that ISIS is the same. But what I am sure about is that you two have no idea either.
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Sometimes, someone wants to raise controversy to appear in the media, only to never mention the topic again and to instead proceed with their actual agenda. Dutch politician Geert Wilders did it, making near hilarious, bordering on extremist remarks, only to shift to far more nuanced alternatives when the media turned their attention to him after said initial crazy remarks.
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Sometimes, someone wants to raise controversy to appear in the media, only to never mention the topic again and to instead proceed with their actual agenda. Dutch politician Geert Wilders did it, making near hilarious, bordering on extremist remarks, only to shift to far more nuanced alternatives when the media turned their attention to him after said initial crazy remarks.
Heh, I recall a very specific thing, him making an audience shout 'LESS MAROCCANS, LESS MARROCANS!" and then remarking 'Yeah, we can do that" - only to drop the topic as soon as someone asked how he actually intended to go and do that.