You can't appease Terrorism...

Ok I haven't digested it all:
but as we're hearing the debate on this side muslims are fed up that the reporting is about 4 (or 5) "muslims" of Pakistani origin who grew up in the UK.
Basically they are British!
 
RedZebra said:
You seem to be blaming the Muslim community for not integrating - perhaps it is the community they live in who doesn't welcome them?
Can we really say Islam has a particular tendency to be misinterpreted and used for evil ends, considering the history of the Christian church (Northern Ireland, the "anti"-popes, the Inquisition, just for starters) ???
Perhaps all religion is open to exploitation by desperate/mis-informed/etc people.
Except Buddhism.
Maybe.

RedZebra
Good point - I absolutely agree - most religions can be interpreted in ways that are alien to their original intended philosophies and therefore we have seen them used for 'evil' ends throughout history; but we are talking about contemporary muslim faith in this instance and I do believe it's more totalitarian and strictured ethos creates a social system that in it's extremer forms can help to prevent integration. Of course there does exist integration in much of Britain and of course their is racist and bigoted resistance to integration - but I stand by my somewhat simplified appraisal [and additional points raised in the other thread]
 
Some good points made all round! Like ott's response on page two. Know that one
 
wow, what a civilised thred...

i agree, lots of really good points. my input:

'You can't appease Terrorism...'

a dictionary definition:

'The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.'

by defining its methods in this way, any party to terrorism logically cannot be appeased; only quelled or annihilated.

supposing then, the people we are dealing out the bombs here are 'terrorists' in this sense

any process of appeasement must presuppose
a) identification of the parties
b) recognition of causes
c) negotiations over demands

we have not identified the parties, and importantly they have not identified themselves.

no causes have been cited by the 'party' or parties responsible - therefore none can be recognised. focusing on islam, etc is worse than a red herring; it chanells al the energy of the 'debate' into those language-worlds. the cause imho is within that greater 'debate'.

demands have not been made. no negotiations are planned. it is debatable whether any are in progress elsewhere within the 'greater debate'.

these facts put the current wave of incidents in a different category than those associated with say the IRA, Che Guevera or Yassa Arrafat.
 
a couple of interesting articles written by learned muslims on 'opposing' sides of the fence;
well worth a read - personally I subsrcribe to the former [although there are obviously true
and relevant points expounded in the latter]

http://www.newstatesman.com/nscoverstory.htm

http://www.ramadhan.org/print.php?sid=1695

rcain I agree with your initial points RE: terrorism
- up until you want to remove radical islamic doctrine from the debate...
it is [IMO] at least partly because of extreme islamic doctrine that there are no demands
or negotiations - the intractibilty of extremist islamic viewpoint negates any possibility of
compromise etc.
Of course as you say there is a greater debate - but again I say that extreme islamic doctrine
cannot be ignored...
 
<pedant>Just out of interest how was OBL's declaration in 1993 (or whenever exactly) long before the Iraq war in 1990?</pedant>

And to top that off .. Who was it that allowed the americans to launch fighters/bombers against the Iraqis?

Slightly off topic i know but i DO love being a pedant :D
 
SkizZ said:
a couple of interesting articles written by learned muslims on 'opposing' sides of the fence;
well worth a read - personally I subsrcribe to the former [although there are obviously true
and relevant points expounded in the latter]

http://www.newstatesman.com/nscoverstory.htm

http://www.ramadhan.org/print.php?sid=1695

rcain I agree with your initial points RE: terrorism
- up until you want to remove radical islamic doctrine from the debate...
it is [IMO] at least partly because of extreme islamic doctrine that there are no demands
or negotiations - the intractibilty of extremist islamic viewpoint negates any possibility of
compromise etc.
Of course as you say there is a greater debate - but again I say that extreme islamic doctrine
cannot be ignored...

...didnt want to remove it from the debate, i just believe it is getting too amplified by the debate already; and there are bigger issues afoot.

my personal view, for what its worth is that most religion and Islam in particular is a load of old f*ck-arse medieval bollox and the sooner people shake themselves out of such ridiculous paradigms the better. i am sure its its all a total hed-fuk to most of those involved.

imho.

good links skizz. guess i'm with Salman Rushdie for the time being. http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/anglophone/satanic_verses/contents.html

...and so on with the debate...
 
I read a bit of http://www.newstatesman.com/nscoverstory.htm which SkizZ noted above (thanks mate). Amongst other things it says :-

"The tenor of these statements is: these are the acts of pathologically mad people; Islam has nothing to do with it.

But Islam has everything to do with it. As Dr Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, director of the Muslim Institute, points out: "The terrorists are using Islamic sources to justify their actions. How can one then say it has nothing to do with Islam?" "

On that basis, religion had everything to do with the IRA campaign in Ireland, or the war in Yugoslavia, or... Think about it. Roman Catholicism is responsible for the IRA. When put like that, you can see what utter nonsense it is.

And now I'm getting *really* worried, especially as even UK Muslim communities are buying into the thinking. Religion is the excuse, desire for power is the cause, and frankly just about every "religious" war falls into this category. (I'm using the word "power" in a wide sense. Empowerment e.g. as in freedom from oppression, falls into meaning I'm using.)

Leaders of the UK Muslim community met Tony Blair yesterday. They agreed on all kinds of things, which mean f'all, and have fallen into the trap of 1. effectively assuming responsibility for the attacks, and 2. in so doing have made the Islamic community targets of race and religious hatred. They don't represent the activists, or even a lot of "their own people", and as more Muslims become the victims of the inevitable prejudice and discrimination that will ensue, so more resentment amongst them will develop leading to...

How much better would it have been if Tony Blair had, for one moment, looked at the real causes for support for the activists? Sweep the ground from under their feet. Isolate them. Valuing a Muslim life in Iraq as highly as a white person's life in the UK would have been a start. As it is we have no idea of how many people have been killed in Iraq - which is an utter and total disgrace, and sends out the message that we just don't care. Imagine you'e an Iraqi. How would you feel?

This is just crazy - utter madness. Just as that evangelist, Tony Blair, thinks that the invasion of Iraq is combatting terrorism, so he thinks singling out Islam will do the same. For chrissakes! Sometimes I despair. To spell it out, all either of those things will do is to increase the power of the terrorists, and bring more poeple into their organisations.

Then there's the thing about the Pakistani "Madrasses" - the places where the bombers are meant to have been "brainwashed". Let's say they're banned, or people are banned from going to them. What good is that going to do? The effect will be to drive more activists underground. If our intelligence agencies thought there was no immediate danger at the time of the bombings, failing to detect a pretty sophisticated organisation, what chance have they if it's driven into even more secrecy?

Really, it's so stupid. This entire situation is going to get a lot worse before it gets any better. All Blair's doing is prolonging and increasing the agony.

Hugs,

Barclay
 
i can see the ira/roman catholic link in as much as the 'troubles' were split down sectarian lines where both religion and political allegiances go hand in glove - but the real difference between irish terrorism and islamic terrorism was the ira had a political focal point 'give ireland back to the irsh" - there would appear to be no such correalation between 'al-queda/muslim extremism' - just 'jihad' against the west or more importantly the great satan that is the united states and it would seem its supporters.

So now we have official reports being published that say we are at greater risk of fundemental muslim terrorists because of our support for the united states in afghanistan (probably) legal and iraq (probably) illegal - meanwhile when is Tony going to retract his statements/lies in the days after the london bombings when he was quite emphatic that our involvemnt in these conflicts couldn't possibly have any sort of bearing on what had happened.

...................... and still nobody is protesting
 
As usual I agree with the bulk of what you say Barclay
including the fact that an elite minority of the 'moderate' british islamic community are making
the situation more precarious for the rest of their community (likewise the minority extremist)..
and the fact that the way things are being dealt with will further marginalise muslims...
I personally believe the new anti hate laws and the 'anti terrorism' bills are a complete waste
of time and civil liberty & of course media and govt. are magnifying the situation to help these ends.
Comparing the current situaton to Ireland or Jugoslavia is way off the mark though [IMO]
(if you didn't know that already).
The reasons behind people being marginalised have to be removed to avoid Huxleyesque
'permanent war' but I firmly believe that people need to be aware of the resurgence of
entirely intractible islamofascist ideology and what that will mean if it continues to grow
unabated in any part of the world.
 
I agree with your second para, Dave, but not your first.

Just a point 1st before I get onto that. You said, "Irish terrorism", not "Roman Catholic" terrorism, then you said, "Islamic terrorism". No it bloody isn't! If you want to call it anything, call it al-Qaeda terrorism.

Those terrorists really have us on the run. We don't even know what to call them...

There is a focal point. It's decades of oppression, prejudice, and discrimination. It's stealing their wealth and oil. It's trade imbalance. It's killing their women and children. It's one law for us, and another for them. It's torture. It's total disregard for their human rights. It's the hopelessly distorted view of their culture, where in many instances they've got every right to be very proud. It's using them as though they were slaves. It's treating them as second class human beings. It's supporting their very corrupt regimes. It's supporting their enemies (Israel) with no thought to justice or fairness. It's stealing their land.

How many reasons do you need?

Hugs,

Barclay
 
SkizZ said:
The reasons behind people being marginalised have to be removed to avoid Huxleyesque
'permanent war' but I firmly believe that people need to be aware of the resurgence of
entirely intractible islamofascist ideology and what that will mean if it continues to grow
unabated in any part of the world.

Yep, OK, I go along with that. The way to deal with it is (as you say) to remove the grievances. It'll still exist, but will itself be marginalised 'cos people generally much prefer a peacefu life.

Hugs,

Barclay
 
Barclay (Dark Angel) said:
I agree with your second para, Dave, but not your first.

Just a point 1st before I get onto that. You said, "Irish terrorism", not "Roman Catholic" terrorism, then you said, "Islamic terrorism". No it bloody isn't! If you want to call it anything, call it al-Qaeda terrorism.

Those terrorists really have us on the run. We don't even know what to call them...

ah the reason i described irish terrorism as such is that the focal point was the irish having sovereignty over thier own land and the ira claimed to represent the catholic majority - hence the political and religous tie-in and focal point.

Al-Qaeda i have to call Islamic Terrorism because that is the focal point - no claim to sovereignty of a piece of land just jihad/holy war/retaliation under the banner of a religious movement or whatever attributes you would care to apply to it and a more extreme form of terror now we have suicide bombers doing the dirty deed - a further view i take is in the case of the palestinians and israelis - it is for all intents and purposes the same deal as northern ireland - a political thing split upon religious lines also - very black and white and superficial as an explanation but with all the superflous shite cleared away thats what is left at the heart of those matters. Palestian suicide bombers arent or havent been yet reffered to as al-qeada - but hamass or other organisations - very much along the lines of the ira, the real ira and so on and therin lies the difference to my mind

semantics indeed - as i know our views are not poles apart on most issues!
 
Having digested what has been said I too am generally in agreement with you (Barclay). You are right to point out the injustice and hypocrisy that has been a feature of Western foreign policy for so long (as it has in the foreign policy of most Middle Eastern regimes). Stopping the worst of the injustice would help in undermining the extremists ability to gain support amongst otherwise moderate Muslims. However, I still think you are wrong to insist on ignoring the Islamic fundamentalist aspect of the situation. If it is purely a reaction against oppression from the West why are Muslims killing their fellow Muslims in Iraq, against the will of an elected Iraqi government? Why is there such a schism between Sunni and Shia Muslims? A schism that has caused untold suffering in Iraq. Why are womens rights so fundamentally ignored in such a large proportion of Islamic states? Is this acceptable?

In terms of the London bombers being motivated by the pain they see in their Muslim brothers in Iraq - where was their voice when Muslims were being massacred in Srebrenica? Why has the British Muslim community seemingly no interest in their brothers in the Balkans. How about Mr. Blairs military intervention in Kosovo, an intervention designed to prevent Serbs from killing Muslims? What was the reaction of the British Muslim community then?

Sorry, I must get back to work now. I'll come back later in the day.
 
Very interesting link to the New Statesman article, Skizz.

I’ll admit I don’t know much about Islam, and it’s interesting to read about the serious societal problems it can cause, such as the case of the woman forced to divorce her husband after being raped by her father-in-law. Perhaps what is so problematic is the intimate relationship between religion and politics in many Muslim countries. The Catholic church has many laws which are just as stupid and life-threatening (eg: outlawing the use of condoms), but in most countries these rules aren’t actively enforced by religious police or laws/fatwas. On the other hand, politics and (fundamentalist Christian) religion are slowly becoming more and more intertwined in the US. Now, large amounts of funding come from religious sponsors in return for support of “pro-life†movements, and the Creationist “theory†being taught in schools, etc. For all of America’s promotion of “liberty†(ha!) I don’t think it’s impossible that they one day twist themselves into a mirror image of Islamic religious states.

The author of the article is saying that Islam is particularly prone to that, with its history of the Kharjite. Perhaps that’s true. However I still think the issue is more complicated than that (and becoming muddier all the time). Perhaps there IS a slightly greater innate propensity for Muslims to be fundamentalist, but they still need the raw materials to work with – alienated / oppressed / disillusioned individuals who want to take out as many lives as they can. THAT might help explain why a substantial number have lived or live in the West.

A few other random points:

- There’s no good evidence that Beslan was anything to do with Muslims as opposed to Chechens see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beslan_school_hostage_crisis

- Pakistani Madrassas are “fairly strange institutions where children, normally, are taught to memorise the Koran in Arabic†and are fairly unlikely breeding grounds for terrorists. see
http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/0000000CAC89.htm

- I don’t think there’s any convincing evidence that the 4 London bombers were Muslimist suicide bombers as opposed to having been tricked into a suicide mission.
 
Crikey, the Muslim commnunity did protest, as a non-Muslim Asian, I know they did, thing was, it wasn't reported much at all in the media.

Skizz has made one very important point, and that is about the Muslim 'Ummah' or great nation of Islam, which says all Muslims are brothers and sisters irrespective of their nationality, and that they are Muslims first. This concept coupled with the version of Islam, known as Deobandi is a major factor when looking at the causes of Islamic terrorism.
 
fighting the assumptions:

The insane war on terror

From an interview by Scott McConnell in The American Conservative of Robert Pape, a man who has studied suicide bombers all over the world and has written a book about suicide bombing called "Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism", here are a few comments by Professor Pape:
"Over the past two years, I have collected the first complete database of every suicide-terrorist attack around the world from 1980 to early 2004. This research is conducted not only in English but also in native-language sources - Arabic, Hebrew, Russian, and Tamil, and others - so that we can gather information not only from newspapers but also from products from the terrorist community. The terrorists are often quite proud of what they do in their local communities, and they produce albums and all kinds of other information that can be very helpful to understand suicide-terrorist attacks.

This wealth of information creates a new picture about what is motivating suicide terrorism. Islamic fundamentalism is not as closely associated with suicide terrorism as many people think. The world leader in suicide terrorism is a group that you may not be familiar with: the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka."

and (my emphasis in bold):
"The central fact is that overwhelmingly suicide-terrorist attacks are not driven by religion as much as they are by a clear strategic objective: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. From Lebanon to Sri Lanka to Chechnya to Kashmir to the West Bank, every major suicide-terrorist campaign - over 95 percent of all the incidents - has had as its central objective to compel a democratic state to withdraw."

and:
"Since suicide terrorism is mainly a response to foreign occupation and not Islamic fundamentalism, the use of heavy military force to transform Muslim societies over there, if you would, is only likely to increase the number of suicide terrorists coming at us."

and:
"I not only study the patterns of where suicide terrorism has occurred but also where it hasn't occurred. Not every foreign occupation has produced suicide terrorism. Why do some and not others? Here is where religion matters, but not quite in the way most people think. In virtually every instance where an occupation has produced a suicide-terrorist campaign, there has been a religious difference between the occupier and the occupied community. That is true not only in places such as Lebanon and in Iraq today but also in Sri Lanka, where it is the Sinhala Buddhists who are having a dispute with the Hindu Tamils."

The West's current problem with terrorism has only one solution, the withdrawal of Western troops from the Middle East and the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Occupied Territories. Any time you read somebody writing about the necessity of fighting the 'war on terror', and of the dangers of 'appeasement', you are reading somebody who has a hidden agenda that has nothing to do with stopping terrorism, and everything to do with keeping the occupying troops in place. If it is so important to keep the troops in place - whether it be for American corporate control of the oil fields or the building of an Israeli Empire - the West is going to have to get used to accepting the cost of increasingly severe terrorist attacks. The 'war on terror' as conceived by the neocons is:

  • immoral, as it further punishes the victims of Western aggression;
  • insane, as it advocates stopping terrorism by increasing the activity that caused the terrorism in the first place; and
  • senseless, as it simply cannot be won.
from http://xymphora.blogspot.com/
 
Somebody else is talking sense.

Ken Livingstone http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4698963.stm

Decades of British and American intervention in the oil-rich Middle East motivated the London bombers, Ken Livingstone has suggested.
The London mayor told BBC News he had no sympathy with the bombers and he opposed all violence.

But he argued that the attacks would not have happened had Western powers left Arab nations free to decide their own affairs after World War I.

Instead, they had often supported unsavoury governments in the region.

Mr Livingstone was asked on BBC Radio 4's Today programme what he thought had motivated the bombers.

He replied: "I think you've just had 80 years of western intervention into predominantly Arab lands because of the western need for oil.

"We've propped up unsavoury governments, we've overthrown ones we didn't consider sympathetic.

"And I think the particular problem we have at the moment is that in the 1980s... the Americans recruited and trained Osama Bin Laden, taught him how to kill, to make bombs, and set him off to kill the Russians and drive them out of Afghanistan.

"They didn't give any thought to the fact that once he'd done that he might turn on his creators."

No justice?

Mr Livingstone said Western governments had been so terrified of losing their fuel supplies that they had kept intervening in the Middle East.

He argued: "If at the end of the First World War we had done what we promised the Arabs, which was to let them be free and have their own governments, and kept out of Arab affairs, and just bought their oil, rather than feeling we had to control the flow of oil, I suspect this wouldn't have arisen."

He attacked double standards by Western nations, such as the initial welcome given when Saddam Hussein came to power in Iraq.

There was also the "running sore" of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict.

"A lot of young people see the double standards, they see what happens in Guantanamo Bay, and they just think that there isn't a just foreign policy," said Mr Livingstone.

Suicide bombers

Mr Livingstone said he did not just denounce suicide bombers.

He also denounced "those governments which use indiscriminate slaughter to advance their foreign policy, as we have occasionally seen with the Israeli government bombing areas from which a terrorist group will have come, irrespective of the casualties it inflicts, women, children and men".

He continued: "Under foreign occupation and denied the right to vote, denied the right to run your own affairs, often denied the right to work for three generations, I suspect that if it had happened here in England, we would have produced a lot of suicide bombers ourselves."

Mr Livingstone also criticised parts of the media for giving too much publicity to certain figures who were "totally unrepresentative" of British Muslims.

Hugs,

Barclay
 
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