[Flipside]

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.

[Aesaar]

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.

[Luis Dias]

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.

[NGTM-1R]

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! (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.

[Luis Dias]

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?

[Phantom Hoover]

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.

[NGTM-1R]

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.

[Aesaar]

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.

[Luis Dias]

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.

[NGTM-1R]

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.

[Luis Dias]

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.

[Phantom Hoover]

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.

[NGTM-1R]

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.

[Luis Dias]

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.

[Phantom Hoover]

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.

[Phantom Hoover]

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.

[-Sara-]

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.

[Grizzly]

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.