The most nuanced article that I’ve seen on the topic of what’s particular about contemporary Islamist terrorism.

Thoughts?

Andrew, thanks for this.

I don't think there is one single reason these young people--some poor and unemployed, others highly educated and with good jobs--become terrorists. Rather I think each one has put together an individual complex of reasons.

Almost everyone, no matter their origins, religion, nation, wishes to feel personal pride for one's self and that which defines one's own group: race, religion, country, goals. I think it cannot be denied that there is something in the human psyche (perched right alongside that longing for a Great Controller) that considers it a noble cause to right the perceived wrongs and insults to one's self and one's tribe.

That is why there are feuds, vendettas, clan wars, Protestants killing Catholics, Shiites killing Sunnis, Serbs killing Bosnians, Jews killing Palestines, Rwandas killing Hutus--and vice versa. As Bush and countless others have said, "You are for us or against us." (Another example of regrettable rhetoric.)

When vengeance is enacted by OUR side it is perceived as good, anyone's "our side". When it is enacted by the "Other", our enemy (again, anyone's perceived enemy) it is terrorism and barbaric and beyond the range of understanding.

Who is not moved by the Christmas truce of 1914 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_truce

Everyone Sang

By Siegfried Sassoon
Everyone suddenly burst out singing;
And I was filled with such delight
As prisoned birds must find in freedom,
Winging wildly across the white
Orchards and dark-green fields; on - on - and out of sight.

Everyone's voice was suddenly lifted;
And beauty came like the setting sun:
My heart was shaken with tears; and horror
Drifted away ... O, but Everyone
Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.


If only they would have stopped right there and not returned to senseless slaughter. How different our world might have been. Imagine if Harry Truman has just filmed an atomic explosion and sent it to the Japanese, instead of sending the bomb itself. Yes, I am speculating, but there is always more than one path of action in the beginning.

I am in NO WAY condoning terrorist actions but if you approach it psychologically, if you look at the situation through the eyes of these (mostly) men, you might understand more about the fertile ground in which radicalization can occur.

The terrorists perceive the west as having declared themselves to be enemies of Islam and their way of life. I remember how appalled I was to hear the post 9/11 Bush rhetoric when he used the word "crusade". Millions of westernized Muslims and other in their own countries who had nothing to do with bringing down the World Trade Center heard this word as Christians hear the word "jihad".

And then the choice of singing The Battle Hymn of the Republic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9Y9NGXxdAg . That sent a bellicose message to everyone watching who was the "Other". Consider the message in the words of that song. In England, it was also sung by the archbishop of Canterbury and those gathered in the church in a (as we westerners saw it) manifestation of solidarity with the United States. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmpo0csiIMs

I know it isn't easy when the nation is in shock, but in the immediate aftermath (IMO) the opportunity to gather the support of a shocked world was wasted. What the moment called for was to establish a strong coalition between the two faiths, all faiths. Instead there was the invasion of Afghanistan, where the soviets had already been for ten years, and before them the British had fought, and the United States took on the role of vengeful aggressor with all the enemy-making potential that implies.

The drones, so these young terrorists might reason, also kill innocent "soft targets". and they see no difference between blowing up someone standing right in front of them or blowing up someone who doesn't even know they are in the crosshairs an ocean away. Dead is dead. They might even find it more honorable and braver to put their life on the line than to kill from a safe distance.

Which brings me to a thought I've been turning over in my mind. Because the suicide bomber kills himself along with his victims, there is never anyone who might repent in the agonizing throes of PTDS. The jihadist contingency sees only martyrdom, there is never any survivor who is overcome with remorse when he realizes what he has done against innocent people. It is the defectors from a cult who open doubt in the minds of the other members.

It isn't so difficult, I think, to find in any given group "idealists" who are susceptible to brainwashing and willing to offer their lives. This isn't a new weapon. The Japanese kamikaze pilots considered it a death of honor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamikaze

Consider the early Christian martyrs depicted in countless horrific art museums throughout Europe and elsewhere. Eyeballs and severed breasts held out on a tray, flayings, drawn and quarterings. And then when that religion got the upper hand, it did the same to others: burning at the stake, the iron maiden, disembowelment. Nowhere is there any high moral ground available for the claiming.

Consider this scene in Saving Private Ryan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XY61XmDJ-1w

That clip doesn't include the close-up of the soldier kissing the crucifix he wore, but even as he was reciting the twenty-first psalm and killing people he knew he was on a suicide mission.

No, it isn't difficult to understand the process of radicalization of young men, but a country's leaders and top advisors as well as the ordinary citizens should exercise forethought.

ISIS wants us to turn against the Muslims who live peacefully among us. We must love one another or die. We must.

Them's me thoughts.

PS. I have corrected some typos and clarified some foggy sentences and added some afterthought.

Here, Janis: Judy Garland singing the Hymn I.m. JFK. IT must be Nov. 23 where you are. http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=e4Xz7WV_qJs

I cringe at the phrase at the beginning of the article (three posts back) which suggests that Islamist terrorists are uniquely evil or sadistic. This is obviously false, since the Ku Klux Klan or the Albigensian crusaders of the twelfth century, to name two, are/were easily as brutal and sadistic. But I found much of the article insightful.

The author argues, persuasively I feel, that it is not going to help either Muslims or non-Muslims to say: “The terrorists aren’t real Muslims.” On the contrary, Wahhabism/Salafism is considered by its adherents as hyper-Islam. And there is no reason that we can’t consider what it is in modern Islamic politics and culture that makes that ideology so appealing to so many, without turning on the Muslims who are our neighbors and co-citizens. Just as criticizing the corrupt power structures of the medieval Church wasn’t tantamount to trashing good and ordinary Christians.

As the Atlantic article Bill Lantry linked to at the start of this thread says, it’s an avoidance of what ISIL is about simply to say, “That’s not Islam.” Of course it’s not enlightened Islam which facilitates spiritual realization, any more than the Albigensian Crusade in the twelfth century was real Christianity. And yet the people who undertook that crusade were Christians, in their own view. A sickness within Christendom itself—ultimately the corruption of the papacy—made it possible for those crusades to happen. The fact that most Christians at that time were ordinary people with more or less devout, honest lives didn’t mean there wasn’t a systemic problem. There was: and plenty of people spoke up about it. Eventually, this would lead to the Reformation. Maybe the papacy for modern Islam is Saudi Arabia.

Right-wing Islamophobia in the U.S. lately has been sickening, but it won’t do either to gloss over the fact that the violent extremism which threatens us most these days, and Muslims most of all, is Islamic violent extremism. It doesn’t hurt anyone to question where that’s coming from. And to bring up George W. Bush’s “crusade” statement and other parallels is to revert to generalities. The Ku Klux Klan took root in a context, not only in some generalized “Us-Other” reality. Criticizing American triumphalism is a good thing to do, but the only thing we really learn by noting the universal theme of human stupidity and lust for power is that it’s universal. Then each instance of it has to be dealt with in its own specific terms.

And I think the article, despite its extravagant opening, has something worthwhile to say along these lines.

Andrew, I thought the article was nuanced and accessible. Thank you for linking to it and on a selfish level I want to especially thank you for introducing me to the author of the article, Kenan Malik https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenan_...eaning_of_Race Any friend of the Enlightenment is a friend of mine. I did not know about his writing and am looking forward to reading more.

I fully concur with him and with you on this: that it is not going to help either Muslims or non-Muslims to say: “The terrorists aren’t real Muslims.”

Yet daily, I see and hear demands in print and in the public and social media that the individual Muslims and their collectives do exactly that. And I hear, also on a daily basis, Muslim voices explaining over and over that Islam is not Jihadism.

I agree with you also that Jihadism is a very real threat and that Wahhabism feeds it by exporting radical imams to peaceful congregations in Western (and other) countries. And Saudi Arabia leaders in turn protect and support it in the hope that they will be left alone, though any fool can see that they are a potential target and they will be toppled when the time is ripe. I also believe that the west has turned an equally blind eye to Saudi beheadings, stoning and double-dealing because of the oil.

Looking further afield, ridding the world of its dependency on oil is not only good for the climate. So the sooner we rid ourselves of dependency on fossil fuel, the better, and fracking be damned.

I don't want to go off-track into climate change for that deserves a thread of its own, but as an aside, it would help to start curbing the wasteful Western life-style. It doesn't make sense that on a hot day, the air conditioning is so high in restaurants and shops that you freeze without a sweater—and then swelter back to an air-conditioned car and home. Or that the city dumps and landfills are gorged with broken plastic items that no one ever needed anyway.

Despite the loud noises made by the Tea Partyers and their likes, it was the ideas of the Enlightenment that influenced the Constitution of the new United States, a society based upon reason rather than faith and religious doctrine, for a new civil order based on natural law, and for science based on experiments and observation. The idea of a separation of powers in a government was also a thought-child of the Enlightenment.

So thanks again for the article, well worth reading and reflecting upon.

PS. Another topic that veers off this one yet is related is that poverty and system collapse is a logical outcome of wealth concentration.

I have been hearing a lot of ballyhoo in the media lately (thanks to the World Bank and others) that fewer people are living in poverty now than in recent years. To which I say, yeah, right! The poorest ones have all died off through starvation or war.

The idea of a separation of powers in a government was also a thought-child of the Enlightenment.

It's true that this is when it came to fruition, Janice, but actually the idea was argued forcefully four centuries earlier by one Dante Alighieri. The work in which he argued it, Monarchia, was publicly burned in Bologna a couple years after his death and was banned by the Church until the nineteenth century.

I had the same reaction as you did to the discovery of that author. He's impressive.

Thanks again, Andrew. I have so many knowledge gaps that it is pitiful. I had not read that book but I will.

I will modify my earlier statement to say that one of the principles expounded by the Enlightenment was the separation of powers.

I'll try to find a modern copy of De Monarchia. That shouldn't be too hard. Thanks again.

I have so many knowledge gaps that it is pitiful.

Don't we all! I only brought up the earlier precedent as an example of how separation of church and state, one of the best ideas ever, doesn't necessarily require a secular worldview (which obviously Dante didn't have). This could be important for the future of contemporary theocracies.

In the main, Janice, I do agree with what you well said in Post number 142. The following did occur to me though where I thought I might add to or differ from your disquisition. If I differ in some finer points, I only mention them because I agreed with everything else.

The terrorists perceive the west as having declared themselves to be enemies of Islam and their way of life.

Nothing is more certain but that terrorists perceive the West to be an enemy of Islam and their way of life, yes; far less, however, is it certain that they perceive the West to have “declared” themselves such, as though any deceleration soever could be pointed to which states an intention by the West to annihilate their way of life and their particular religion. Could it not be the case that rather than perceiving any formal deceleration, they assume, without any particular referent that enacts it, an inherit struggle is somehow innate, and that the West of necessity must ever work against their way of life and Islam?

I remember how appalled I was to hear the post 9/11 Bush rhetoric when he used the word "crusade". Millions of westernized Muslims and other in their own countries who had nothing to do with bringing down the World Trade Center heard this word as Christians hear the word "jihad".

Nothing makes me cringe so much as that which has issued from the faux cowboy and real blockhead who had the unfortunate distinction of being an ex president of the United States. That be as it may, his use of “crusade”, inexcusable indeed, is not proportional in its extent of influence to the use of "Jihad", so frequent in the mouths of radicalized Islamists; I mean both words are wrongheaded and bad but this does not imply that of necessity who said the one had an equal influence in the state of current affairs as who said the other. The same kind of folly no doubt is at play but with the difference of proportion. Consider, do you really think that word said by W. Bush in a speech once, "crusade", evidences an equivalent contingent of Westerns whose mission it is to kill, as the word jihad does when said by radical Islamists? When the radical Islamist say it, in many instances indeed, they urge killing of Western citizens like you and me literally and not as a rhetorical flourish (but which is a rhetorical blemish in actuality). I will be so bold as to venture one may be more extremely pernicious than the other as far as proportion, though they both exhibit the same kind of mistaken judgement.

And then the choice of singing The Battle Hymn of the Republic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9Y9NGXxdAg . That sent a bellicose message to everyone watching who was the "Other". Consider the message in the words of that song. In England, it was also sung by the archbishop of Canterbury and those gathered in the church in a (as we westerners saw it) manifestation of solidarity with the United States. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmpo0csiIMs

Did the choice of song at that particular ceremony in Washington really prove so influential to those who have taken up the cause of terrorism and killing Western citizens by all means? Did any specific saying, song or deed really ever consist of what tipped an Islamic terrorist over the edge to killing Western citizens for jihad. The real essential causes must surely be deeper than any such particular occurrence one could point to like this. Nothing said or sung at any speech or ceremony is at all an essential constituent of that fuel which drives men and women to blow themselves up or become radical Islamists. That said, these particulars you mention are grossly unaccountable and wrongheaded themselves; and are in every way to be condemned as contrary to resolution and peace.
Best,
Erik

The Kenin Malik/Guardian article is drenched in the language of humanity's shared condition, nihilism:

'unravelled imperialist traditions' , 'declining progressive social movements', 'loss of faith in universalist values', 'inchoate rage', 'eroded political ideals', 'Islamism filling the void', bottomless 'western cynicism', 'misguided military interventions that succeed only 'destroy[ing] civil society'.

It's as though we've gathered around the rim of the same abyss in a labored effort to pretend there are two sides in order to retain some semblance of meaning and purpose. Each is the designated scapegoat of the other. However there's no existential weight to the purported distinctions. It's mutually assured annihilation under the flimsiest of banners.