All the liberal cliches went off within seconds of one another, writes Frank Johnson
THERE we Londoners were on that Thursday morning, going about our traditional business of being all multicultural and vibrant under mayor Ken Livingstone.
Suddenly we were innocent victims. On our Walkmans as we struggled into work, or over the radio for those of us still in bed, and from the editorials in the liberal press the following day, came explosion after explosion.
"We must tackle the root causes of terrorism ... legitimate grievances ... Palestinian state ... end to Israeli settlements on the West Bank ... bombs wholly unrepresentative of Muslims in this country ... we in the faith communities united in condemnation ... Archbishop of Canterbury ... global warming ..."
On and on went the politicians, bishops, enlightened chief constables and liberal editorialists. Evidence soon emerged that all the cliches went off within seconds of one another. They were the work of experienced professionals trained to use them about any subject. Most of them live in this country. Many have British citizenship. They are taught never to write or say anything original. Only a few days before they had targeted Gleneagles. The ozone layer, African debt, Islam; it is all the same to them.
But we Londoners can be proud of the way we took it. They did it to us before over, among other things, Northern Ireland. We are used to it. We went through even worse during the Blitz. We are not going to give in now to a cell of crazed liberals.
What drives them to do it? Well, there is much dispute about that. Hatred of the West is undoubtedly a factor. It would be foolish, however, to rule out the possibility that some of them really believe what they write or say. But they would tend to be the dupes, easily manipulated by cynical imams with religious titles such as controller of current affairs or comment editor. These characters do not believe for one minute that a Palestinian state or a US withdrawal from Iraq would make any difference. They make a good living and enjoy a certain social status in Islington and Camden Town by stirring up moderation.
It is vital, however, that these terrible incidents should not provoke hatred of, and a backlash against, the broader liberal community. Most liberals have never planted a cliche in any newspaper. They read them, but that is because there is no alternative. They can hardly be expected to read the Tory press. Still, one must admit, the first time I went on the Tube after all those editorials and pronouncements I harboured unworthy suspicions. Any one of my fellow passengers could be a liberal. He or she could be travelling to a newspaper office or a BBC studio to set off another piety.
Take that man sitting opposite. He is wearing an earring and a summery floral T-shirt, and is flicking through Gay News. He could easily be a liberal bishop. But that is stereotyping on my part. He could just as easily not be. He might be a modernising Tory. But my first suspicions about him were exactly what the perpetrators of moderation wanted me to harbour. They wish to divide us, to make us suspicious of one another.
We must resist this. We cannot give in to the godfathers of moderation. Then they will have won. We must address the causes of liberalism; the inability of so many graduates to find work other than in the festering enclaves of the BBC and the comment sections. It will not be easy. But it is the only way forward. Above all, we must not resort to cliches ourselves.
It is good to see, at the top of the nonfiction bestsellers, as proof that not all is dumbed-down, the first great political biography of the 21st century: Mao: The Unknown Story by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday. One of the book's many qualities is that it confirms what many of us have always believed about the 20th century's ideological mass murderers, that their crimes were not committed to further their ideology or their beliefs but were, like all mass murder, the product of character. Earlier ages had no difficulty in deciding what it was about their characters that caused their crimes: they were evil.
But the 20th century did not believe in evil. It believed in psychology as an explanation for, say, a Hitler. That, and economic structures. Adolf Hitler came to power and did what he did because he was a tool of monopoly capitalism. When Joseph Stalin died, the Left accepted that he was a mass murderer, though it had not done so in his lifetime, but ascribed it to state capitalism. Mao Zedong, in his lifetime, got off lightly from the Left because he continued to make radical noises to the end.
Chang and Halliday, however, show that, as he rose in the Communist Party in the 1920s, Mao "discovered in himself a love of bloodthirsty thuggery. This gut enjoyment, which verged on sadism, meshed with, but preceded, his affinity for Leninist violence. Mao did not come to violence via theory. The propensity sprang from his character ... this propensity caught Moscow's eye, as it fitted into the Soviet model of a social revolution."
How different from what was widely written when Mao died in 1976. "By his ideas and actions the most populous country in the world was translated from near-feudalism into a modern centralised state," said The Guardian. "His career is assessed by Jerome Cohen, professor of Chinese history at York University, Ontario, and John Gittings [The Guardian's China expert]."
The article contained no mention of the numbers killed in this translation from feudalism into a modern state. The murderous Cultural Revolution was depicted as a mere "struggle of ideas", with Mao and his followers seeking "to create new socialist values". The article reassured the readers of 1976: "Even the disorders which Mao deliberately stirred up may turn out to be beneficial." Chang and Halliday have ensured that no one would dare write that kind of thing about Mao again, though they no doubt will about the next left-wing mass murderer.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
07/17/2005 14:29 ||
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#1
Should be page 2.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
07/17/2005 14:31 Comments ||
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#2
What to say? Bravo for the Londoners! Boo, hiss for the BBC et al. That about sums it up. :)
A few years ago I was visiting Bahrain and sitting with friends in a fish restaurant when news appeared on an overhead TV about Muslim terrorists, men and women, who had taken hostages in Russia. What struck me, though, was the instinctive reaction of the Bahraini businessman sitting next to me, who muttered under his breath, "Why are we in every story?" The "we" in question was Muslims.
The answer to that question is one of the most important issues in geopolitics today: Why are young Sunni Muslim males, from London to Riyadh and Bali to Baghdad, so willing to blow up themselves and others in the name of their religion? Of course, not all Muslims are suicide bombers; it would be ludicrous to suggest that.
But virtually all suicide bombers, of late, have been Sunni Muslims. There are a lot of angry people in the world. Angry Mexicans. Angry Africans. Angry Norwegians. But the only ones who seem to feel entitled and motivated to kill themselves and totally innocent people, including other Muslims, over their anger are young Sunni radicals. What is going on?
Neither we nor the Muslim world can run away from this question any longer. This is especially true when it comes to people like Muhammad Bouyeri - a Dutch citizen of Moroccan origin who last year tracked down the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, a critic of Islamic intolerance, on an Amsterdam street, shot him 15 times and slit his throat with a butcher knife. He told a Dutch court on the final day of his trial on Tuesday: "I take complete responsibility for my actions. I acted purely in the name of my religion."
Clearly, several things are at work. One is that Europe is not a melting pot and has never adequately integrated its Muslim minorities, who, as The Financial Times put it, often find themselves "cut off from their country, language and culture of origin" without being assimilated into Europe, making them easy prey for peddlers of a new jihadist identity.
Also at work is Sunni Islam's struggle with modernity. Islam has a long tradition of tolerating other religions, but only on the basis of the supremacy of Islam, not equality with Islam. Islam's self-identity is that it is the authentic and ideal expression of monotheism. Muslims are raised with the view that Islam is God 3.0, Christianity is God 2.0, Judaism is God 1.0, and Hinduism is God 0.0.
Part of what seems to be going on with these young Muslim males is that they are, on the one hand, tempted by Western society, and ashamed of being tempted. On the other hand, they are humiliated by Western society because while Sunni Islamic civilization is supposed to be superior, its decision to ban the reform and reinterpretation of Islam since the 12th century has choked the spirit of innovation out of Muslim lands, and left the Islamic world less powerful, less economically developed, less technically advanced than God 2.0, 1.0 and 0.0.
"Some of these young Muslim men are tempted by a civilization they consider morally inferior, and they are humiliated by the fact that, while having been taught their faith is supreme, other civilizations seem to be doing much better," said Raymond Stock, the Cairo-based biographer and translator of Naguib Mahfouz. "When the inner conflict becomes too great, some are turned by recruiters to seek the sick prestige of 'martyrdom' by fighting the allegedly unjust occupation of Muslim lands and the 'decadence' in our own."
This is not about the poverty of money. This is about the poverty of dignity and the rage it can trigger.
One of the London bombers was married, with a young child and another on the way. I can understand, but never accept, suicide bombing in Iraq or Israel as part of a nationalist struggle. But when a British Muslim citizen, nurtured by that society, just indiscriminately blows up his neighbors and leaves behind a baby and pregnant wife, to me he has to be in the grip of a dangerous cult or preacher - dangerous to his faith community and to the world.
How does that happen? Britain's Independent newspaper described one of the bombers, Hasib Hussain, as having recently undergone a sudden conversion "from a British Asian who dressed in Western clothes to a religious teenager who wore Islamic garb and only stopped to say salaam to fellow Muslims."
The secret of this story is in that conversion - and so is the crisis in Islam. The people and ideas that brought about that sudden conversion of Hasib Hussain and his pals - if not stopped by other Muslims - will end up converting every Muslim into a suspect and one of the world's great religions into a cult of death.
#1
when did allah get to be a gawd? he a symbol of a minor rocky satellite that we will soon rape for it's precious water, leaving nothing but a dry husk for morons to wank over.
#2
In a nutshell: mohammedeans KNOW their culture is backwards, but are unable to change due to doctrinal rigidity. They KNOW that other cultures have leaped ahead precisely BECAUSE they are willing to re-examine their doctrines.
#4
Nope, this is not NYT BS. Friedman occasionally gets it, and he gets it here. He's correct in that poverty isn't the problem. It's dignity. I think he's read Steven Den Beste, who wrote on this a long while back (and better, too).
Islamofascists belong to a failed society and failed culture. There's little dignity in most Islamic nations; little chance to get ahead; constant struggle to provide the basics for one's family. Young men in Islamic (and particularly Arabic) countries realize that life pretty much sucks. The job prospects are few, marriage prospects are bleak much before age 30, corruption is everywhere, clans rules one's life, and there's little entrepreneurial spirit outside the local bazaar. So it's easy to be led astray.
And it's easy even if you're a Muslim man in Europe. Friedman gets how young French muslim men are not French, not Muslim, and frankly, not men either. That creates a certain, dangerous attitude of bile and bitterness. Add in a holy man who's happy to manipulate this, and you have the proper conditions for struggle, splodydopes and Dire Revengeâ¢.
Now Friedman can't take the next step at this point: acknowledge that since the issue is dignity and not poverty, that Islamic culture has to change, and that we in the West -- to protect ourselves -- have to help lead and shape that change. Friedman is still at the stage of thinking that if only we understand them better, we'll be able to 'negotiate' something so that both cultures can live side-by-side in harmony.
We can't do that. The two cultures aren't and will not be equal because of the terrible imbalance in human dignity. One is going to prevail and that one is ours. We need to move the Islamic cultures to accept personal liberty and individual dignity as primary values in their societies. That's a radical change. Friedmand doesn't get it yet, but he's moving in that direction.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/17/2005 14:02 Comments ||
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#5
Why, Steve, you made the case for Bush's ME portion of the Bush Doctrine quite well there in that last paragraph.
Tsk, tsk, my friend. Don't you know it's open season on Bush? Why, he hasn't addressed my private personal eye-ticks in the time-frame that suits me!
#6
Friedmand doesn't get it yet, but he's moving in that direction.
Maybe we should buy a plane ticket so Steven Den Beste can personally whack Friedman with a clue-by-four. Might knock some sense into him.
To continue Shipman's most eloquently expressed thought, since the Islamic calender is based on sightings of the phases of Earth's puny satellite, and Earth is pretty much the only place to get a good look, does this mean Islam is forever earthbound?
Once you get out around the gas giant planets with their multiple moons you start entertaining the idea of multiple deities which immediately makes you into an astro-infidel. Do fatwahs extend beyound geosynchronous orbit?
#7
To continue Shipman's most eloquently expressed thought, since the Islamic calender is based on sightings of the phases of Earth's puny satellite, and Earth is pretty much the only place to get a good look, does this mean Islam is forever earthbound?
Damn! Did I say that? ahem.. yep, musta been me, of course. I was on that research track for years you know.
#8
Friedman is truly disgusting when he says: "I can understand, but never accept, suicide bombing in Iraq or Israel as part of a nationalist struggle. "
Those who claims to "understand" suicide bombing in Iraq and Israel is siding with the enemy. Whatever cause one may have, whatever grievance or objective, it is NEVER understandable to engage in terrorism. Saying something like that just gives cover to the Islamofascists.
Further Friedman is completely wrong in describing terrorism against Israel and Iraq as being somehow a "nationalist struggle". Both are Moslem-driven wars on life and freedom.
#9
"Some of these young Muslim men are tempted by a civilization they consider morally inferior, and they are humiliated by the fact that, while having been taught their faith is supreme, other civilizations seem to be doing much better,"
Some day they feel they need to be a suicide bomber to pay a sort of penance for their sins of living in freedom. With the right influence how scary is this.
I would like to see all folks regardless of various faiths show a tribute to the country they are in. To stand apart from the radical's that we know are among us.
Posted by: Jan ||
07/17/2005 17:14 Comments ||
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#10
The author dances around things aimlessly. It's not about a poverty of dignity and a wealth of rage. Nice try though at making it all make sense. If that be the case then there are alot of sociopathic boomers who have missed their calling. Lack of dignity and excess rage can be found in many people and in many places for a variety of reasons. Some of God's seething chitlins get sociopathic. The special thing is the religion and what it says and the role it plays in the lives of adherents. You want a root cause? There it be methinks. Ugly but seemingly true. Don't choke on it please. The author of the article could have said it in four words without the goddamn "tolerant" faith BS being shoveled out once again. But that's not pretty to say and it won't meet the minimum word count requirement. Ah well. Mayhaps the author should reconsider who he calls "friend."
Charles Clarke, the British home secretary, is 'shocked'. According to the latest police updates, the London bombers were not some Johnny Foreigner threat to our 'way of life': they were four young Britons brought up in our way of life; four men aged between 19 and 30 who were born in Britain to normal, and by all accounts perfectly respectable, Pakistani families.
But why is Clarke shocked? The harsh reality is that these young Brits would appear to be pretty typical al-Qaeda types. For al-Qaeda is not, as many have claimed since 9/11, a bunch of foreigners brought up on the dusty backstreets of Cairo or Ramallah and hell-bent on launching war against a faraway West; they tend to be young, respectable, often middle-class and sometimes naive men, many of whom were born or educated - and even radicalised - in the West. For all the talk of a 'clash of civilisations', al-Qaeda is a largely Western phenomenon.
Yet there is a palpable sense of shock on the front pages of today's papers. 'Suicide bombers from suburbia' says the Daily Mail, asking, above a photograph of the Beeston area of Leeds from which three of the four men reportedly hailed, how 'these utterly British streets produced twisted young men who hated this country so much' (1). The Mirror says, in shocked tones, 'They were four ordinary British lads from ordinary British homes. One was 19. One played cricket. One's parents have a chippyââ¬ÂŠ' (2). 'THE BRIT BOMBERS' yells the front page of the Sun, describing as 'truly shocking' the revelation that the 'backpack butchers' were young Britons (3).
The reason why everyone from the leaders of government to leader-writers in the press are shocked that the London bombers came from Leeds is because they have, for four years, been in denial about the true nature of al-Qaeda. Until recently, al-Qaeda was always discussed as a foreign threat and as some kind of structured army, as the 'embittered few', in the words of President George W Bush, who were being 'harboured' by rogue states (4). And this foreign threat reportedly required a foreign war - against Afghanistan - even though, as a subsequent study showed, not a single known member of al-Qaeda is an Afghan (5). In truth, al-Qaeda, firstly, is not some structured group with any kind of membership scheme, sending volunteers to launch attacks around the globe; rather it has become little more than a name, a banner, under which various individuals do things for various reasons. And secondly, al-Qaeda is not as foreign as officials claimed; its breeding grounds tend to be in cities in the West, in Hamburg, Paris, London, New York and Montreal, rather than 'over there'.
Now, however, earlier official denial about the nature of al-Qaeda is giving way to something equally problematic: an official panic about the threat posed by homegrown fanatics to the fabric of society. The Sun today says there are '200 more Brits ready to blow themselves up' (6). The Sunday Times leaked a Whitehall document on 10 July, which claims that a network of 'extremist recruiters' are circulating on British university campuses and coaxing young Muslims to become violent-minded fanatics (7). They've gone from denying that al-Qaeda was in anyway a Western thing to claiming that al-Qaeda representatives are running rampant in the West and warping young minds.
The peculiar end result is that our leaders now overstate the problem of homegrown terrorism and the role played by ruthless recruiters, while underestimating the depth of the crisis in Western society that has allowed something like al-Qaeda to arise.
For all the shock about the four Leeds bombers - and of course it is shocking and depressing that four young men should destroy their own and many others' lives in such a degraded way - these are not the first Brits to carry out al-Qaeda's, or whoever's, dirty work. Ahmed Omar Sheikh, convicted in Pakistan of murdering the American journalist Daniel Pearl, is a posh kid from Britain: his father was a wholesale clothes merchant in Wanstead, east London, and Sheikh was educated at the prestigious fee-paying Forest School in Walthamstow and the London School of Economics. He was also a member of the British arm wrestling team, before moving to South Asia in the mid-1990s - reportedly inspired by a video showing at the LSE of Muslims' plight in Bosnia - where he got involved in a radical Islamist group that excelled at hostage-taking (8).
Global travel seems almost to be a precondition to becoming an al-Qaeda associate
Richard Reid, the wannabe shoe-bomber who tried to blow up a jumbo jet over the Atlantic in December 2001, was an unemployed loner brought up in Bromley in south-east London who became radicalised at the Brixton mosque. His co-conspirator, the British-born Sajid Badat, who bottled out of his shoe-bombing mission, came from a rather more middle-class background in Gloucester: he was educated at the prestigious Crypt Grammar School for Boys, which counts the late Sir Robin Day among its alumni, and his father worked for Wall's ice cream (9). This is the geeky British kid whom the then home secretary David Blunkett described as a 'very real threat to the life and liberty of our country' (10).
Other al-Qaeda associates have lived, worked and studied in the UK. Zacarias Moussaoui, the 'twentieth hijacker' of 9/11, was a French-born Muslim who got involved with fundamentalists at the Brixton mosque. Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan, al-Qaeda's alleged computer whiz, who was arrested in Pakistan in July last year, had attended a course in human resource management at City University in London in 2003; and apparently his role in al-Qaeda was kind of a middle-managerial one - he is said to have been a link between al-Qaeda leaders and operational cells (11).
Some of al-Qaeda's most notorious supporters were radicalised in the West. The Cairo-born Mohammad Atta, one of the key organisers of 9/11 who piloted the jet that crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center, seems to have developed his particular brand of anti-Western terrorism while studying urban planning in Hamburg, Germany. In Cairo he had been a member of the anti-government Muslim Brotherhood but was never involved in terrorist activities. He and two of the other 9/11 pilots - Ziad Jarrah and Marwan al-Shehhi - were middle-class students of Arab origins who first became radicalised in Hamburg. The fourth pilot, Hani Hanjour, had been a student at the Center for English as a Second Language at the University of Arizona. At one stage in his life, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the key planner of 9/11, studied at a university in North Carolina (12).
Ahmed Ressam, a 33-year-old Algerian who was caught trying to plant a bomb at Los Angeles international airport in 1999, had drifted around the ex-pat Algerian community in France before moving to Canada - and it was in a Canadian mosque that he first got involved in Islamic extremism (13). The reported ringleader of the Madrid bombings of March 2004, Serhane ben Abdelmajid Fakhet, who subsequently blew up himself and four of his colleagues when police came to arrest them, was a Tunisian who had lived in Spain for eight years. He had left Tunisia to study economics at the prestigious Madrid University and later worked as an estate agent; he was said to have lived in a middle-class suburb of Madrid (14).
And on it goes. Some of the most notorious terrorist acts executed by al-Qaeda and its associated groups have been organised in the West, by men who lived and worked in the West. Indeed, one of the most interesting studies of the individuals who make up al-Qaeda, carried out by Professor Marc Sageman of the University of Pennsylvania, found that a large majority of them were 'global citizens', young men who had been sent to Europe and the USA by usually middle-class families for education and job opportunities.
Sageman found that out of 382 members of al-Qaeda or closely related groups, over 70 per cent 'joined the jihad' in a foreign country, many while in the West. As he told spiked last year: 'Basically, what we're talking about here is the elite of the country sent abroad to study, because the schools in Germany, France, England and the USA are better.' Sageman also found that a majority of his al-Qaeda sample were middle-class, educated to a graduate or post-graduate level, and had good jobs. He said: 'It is comforting to think of the terrorist as "the Other", but that isn't quite the case. Mostly these guys are the elite of their countries; they are very much like some of us in the West.' (See Meet the al-Qaeda archetype, by Brendan O'Neill.)
Indeed, movement to the West, or at least some kind of global travel, seems almost to be a precondition to becoming an al-Qaeda associate. In his seminal Al-Qaeda: Casting a Shadow of Terror, Jason Burke makes a clear distinction between myopic, narrowly focused groups such as the Taliban and Kashmiri outfits, those Pashtuns and Pakistanis who are generally obsessed with local conflicts and the minutiae of religious rules, and a global group like al-Qaeda. For example, in the late 1990s, when Osama bin Laden was based in Afghanistan, the Taliban became increasingly ticked off by his love of global media attention: where the Taliban saw film and photography as backward and dangerous, al-Qaeda invited CNN and other journalists to come and film them (15). Where the Taliban was focused on the local, al-Qaeda was focused on the global; al-Qaeda's work is generally carried out by worldly individuals, those who have become separated from these local and narrow-minded concerns of Islamism in parts of the Middle East and Central Asia.
There is a growing sense of atomisation and alienation in the West
So for all the talk of a terrible foreign threat to our Western way of life, in fact al-Qaeda largely comes from the West. It is made up of individuals who were born here, alienated young Muslims from London, Paris and now Leeds, or middle-class immigrants from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan and elsewhere, 'the elite of their countries', who came to Western cities to study. Suddenly, the fact that the bombs in London were detonated by four Brits does not seem so shocking. But what leads these otherwise respectable young men to execute such terrible acts? To align themselves with a cranky and murderous terrorist outfit? To blow up themselves and scores more on a sunny Thursday morning in London?
Apparently it is all the fault of those ruthless al-Qaeda recruiters mentioned in the Whitehall document, or those fundamentalist mosques in south London, Paris, Hamburg and elsewhere that are turning our young Muslim men into crazed lunatics. If that is the case, then why is it happening now? There have long been mad mullahs in Western cities but they were generally avoided by most sensible young people, and nihilist terrorism, certainly in the West, has only become a problem over the past five to 10 years. Blaming the recruiters is the easy way out. The finger is pointed at fanatical individuals, and the solution is said to lie in reining these individuals in. The denial about al-Qaeda being a Western phenomenon in the first place has given way to a denial about the deep problems in a Western society that can give rise to something like al-Qaeda.
The drift of young Muslims, whether Western-born or middle-class foreigners, to radical mosques and fundamentalism also surely says something about a malaise at the heart of Western society. Many of these terrorists are not made in Kabul, Cairo or Tehran, but in London, Hamburg and Montreal. Such terrorism, it seems, is less a consequence of far-away fanaticism infiltrating the West, but rather suggests a failure on the part of mainstream institutions in the West to cohere society or to provide individuals with any meaningful sense of identity.
There is a growing sense of atomisation and alienation in the West, not only among immigrants but across society. Homesick Arabs and British-born Muslims in West Yorkshire might feel it more acutely, but it affects everyone in British, American and European societies, in the growth of disillusionment with public institutions and disenfranchisement from the political process. Could it be that the new terrorism, which we consider so awful and alien, is in fact a product of the same corrosive forces that impact on the rest of us? Could it be that those four alienated Asian kids from Leeds were expressing the same angst and disillusionment, in a much more violent way, as anti-globalist campaigners express when they smash up a McDonald's and others of us express in our pissed-off-ness with political and public life?
These are the questions we need to ask, rather than coming up with easy, pat solutions about shutting down mosques and banging up certain imams. When four young men from Leeds who were born, raised and educated here, and who days before the attacks were playing cricket and hanging out with their mates, can head down to London and kill themselves and 60 others, something has clearly gone horribly amiss. Al-Qaeda's 'war' does not represent a clash of civilisations, but rather points to a crisis within Western civilisation itself.
Read on:
spiked-issue: London bombs
spiked-issue: War on terror
(1) 'Suicide bombers from suburbia', Daily Mail, 13 July 2005
(2) 'The suicide murderers', Mirror, 13 July 2005
(3) 'The Brit bombers', Sun, 13 July 2005
(4) National Security Strategy of the United States of America, White House, September 2002
(5) See 'Meet the al-Qaeda archetype', by Brendan O'Neill
(6) '200 more Brits ready to blow themselves up', Sun, 15 July 2005
(7) Leaked No.10 dossier reveals al-Qaeda's British recruits, The Sunday Times, 10 July 2005
(8) Profile: Omar Sheikh, Guardian, 15 July 2002
(9) Al-Qaeda is a conspiracy of alienated middle-class kids, Brendan O'Neill, Spectator, 2 April 2005
(10) Al-Qaeda is a conspiracy of alienated middle-class kids, Brendan O'Neill, Spectator, 2 April 2005
(11) Al-Qaeda's computer expert, BBC News, 6 August 2004
(12) Executive summary, The 9/11 Commission Report, National Commission on Terrorist Attacks on the United States, 2004
(13) Ahmed Ressam: terrorist within, Canada.com, August 2002
(14) Piecing together Madrid bombers' past, BBC News, 5 April 2004
(15) Al-Qaeda: Casting a Shadow of Terror, Jason Burke, IB Tauris, 2003
#1
When most other groups feel alienated from society they protest, organize, write, and speak in order to draw attention to their plight. When Muslims feel alienated they blow up subways and buses. Sorry, this article is just "it's society's fault!" all over again.
Posted by: Jonathan ||
07/17/2005 12:29 Comments ||
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#2
Shame the author went to all that trouble when all he's done is to confuse opportunity with causation.
#3
I got ten bucks to torch the worst of the Muzzie Mossks in London..... Just a short-term run of violence...a few weeks, then we can return to 'bidness as usual'
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/17/2005 22:35 Comments ||
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Watching Lance dominate the French at their own game is somewhat satisfying for some reason. Stiking them at their core is very apealing.
Posted by: 49 pan ||
07/17/2005 10:27 Comments ||
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Sports Illustrated put out a nice commemorative issue detailing Lance's career. At one point they describe him donning a tshirt with the slogan: "Texas is bigger'n France."
As it was (though his domestic fans may not know this) he quietly opposed the war being waged by his friend and fellow Texan, President Bush. ''It's wrong," Armstrong said, ''to go to the front without the support of Europe." Not necessarily for that reason, relations between him and the French, press and public alike, have mellowed, and if he's not quite loved here, he inspires something near affectionate - and awed - respect.
To treat terrorism as a law-and-order problem is to do what the terrorists want -- sap your strength. No amount of security can stop terrorism if the nation is reluctant to go after terrorist cells and networks and those that harbor terrorists.
Posted by: john ||
07/17/2005 16:21 ||
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Bush's 'war on terror' is the prescription of an ex-KGB agent -- what does that tell you?
This particular blogger was quiet for quite a while (Apr 30 until July 13).. Obviously he was doing some serious thinking. He has come up with a solution similar to that which several sects, e.g., Ismaili and Ahmiyadas have also developed.
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...I just want to discuss why the suicide attacks always done by Muslims? Have you ever heard a Christian or someone from any other religion bombed him/herself? NO...
So there is a big wrong in this religion itself. Wrong in its âholy bookâ and in the Hadiths (sayings of Mohammed) which are the base of terror nowadays because some of Islamic sects follow what the hadiths say literally and apply it to âraise the banner of Islamâ.
We should not blame the happy Mujahid who has âa heart full of love and belief in God and the prophetâ who runs towards the âinfidelsâ with a smile of victory and green card to the paradise, this Mujahid is brainwashed and deceived by the ones who control him using the Quran and the hadiths..*you can get many different explanations of the Quran and Hadiths to the same verse because they are not clear enough to be explained directly, this is the problem in dealing with those two*. And if they really exist, so there might be many verses been added during those hundreds of years..yes?
I think if many verses had been cancelled and never been said, the Islamic mind would be much better.
Or if all those clerics from different sects have brains even as small as the beans, meet together and represent the majority of Islamic society and try to put an end to such verses or explain them in another way like regarding them as old ones and they must not be applied nowadays. I think, the world will be much more peaceful and quiet.
I know it is difficult, and saying it is so easy, but this is the only way to stop this illness which will destroy this religion first then 'its enemies'..
One might say that those fundamentalists do not represent Islam and they are only a small group..blah..blah..blah..
So why there are a lot of their silent supporters in many Islamic and Arabic countries and others who feel proud of OBL and Zarqawi..I watched religious men and political analysts on the TV who stand side by side with those terrorists and give them the right to do whatever they do....
#2
The Ismaili sect gave rise to the Hashishin (the original "Assassins"), whose primary tactic was to kill Sunni leaders in as public a place as possible - usually at Friday prayers.
Do we really want Moslems to take that sect as an inspiration?
The best source for knowing about Muslim sects is Google. Just get your spelling right: it is Ismaelis, Ahmadiyas. Check also for the Quadianites. In case you have satellite TV one of those sects broadcasts on HotBird (they are easy to identify: they wear Indian-style turbans instead of Arabic-style)
About Assassins since they killed Sunni Muslim leadersand imams it perhaps a not so bad idea to incite Muslims to imitate them.
Anyway whatever the Ismaelis were on XIIth century since then they have revised their doctrine and no longer practice violence, they don't turn to the nearest mountain for prayers instead of Mecca, treat their women unusally well for Muslims, drink alcohol and I think, don't take the Koran as the true and only holy book (I could be wrong about this).
#5
mhw is making an implicit claim that these two sects are somehow better for freedom from Islamofascism. I'd like to see evidence of that. I'm not going to Google all over the net in the vague hope that maybe I'll find something or other. Either there is evidence for the claim that the Ismaili are better for us (e.g. they reject taqiya, jihad and sharia), or there isn't.
I'm willing to learn about them, if I have reason to think it's worthwhile.
#6
Not all homocidal kooks are Muslims - Tim McVeigh, Jim Jones, Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao. The Muslim community does stand apart in its innovation of generating spodedopes via assembly line type effeciency.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
07/17/2005 15:23 Comments ||
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#7
The Ismaili sect gave rise to the Hashishin (the original "Assassins"), whose primary tactic was to kill Sunni leaders in as public a place as possible - usually at Friday prayers.
NB that the Hashishin got stoned out of their minds before they went on their murder sprees. Today's jihadis do much the same thing.
Whatever differences you think there are between the Muslims of then and now, there's more similarity than we like to think.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
07/17/2005 15:31 Comments ||
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#8
RC: NB that the Hashishin got stoned out of their minds before they went on their murder sprees. Today's jihadis do much the same thing.
The assassins of old used to kill political and military leaders. Jihadis slaughter innocents. That's the primary difference. Assassins used to be slow-roasted and flayed to death. Jihadis merely blow themselves up. Big difference.
#9
let me say first that I don't really consider the Ismaelis and the Ahmayadis to be that great. They each have pluses (the most obvious plus being the fact that they have found a way to abstain from violent jihad by interpreting some verses in the Koran to be time or time/space limited)and minuses. What is important however, is the thought process. Once moslems realize they need to do something about the Koran, it is only a few more steps to realizing that Koran isn't true in the literal 9th century way. This would undercut much of the momentum behind the jihadis. It would also give breathing space for lots of introspection.
Alas, this blogger is only one fellow. I know a number of moslems who feel the same but they are afraid to voice their opinions.
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