Although I haven’t seen any threads on it here, there’s recently been a horrible crisis over in Algeria where, without going into any real detail - as it’s irrelevant - the terrorists naturally saw themselves as the representatives of all Muslim-kind and thus spared those who they considered Muslim (even though curiously enough 99.9% of Muslims don’t seem to be terrorists storming oil refrineries on murder-suicide missions).
**This is not the first time that all Muslims have been spared, and it seems to me that a class in “how to pretend to be a Muslim” seems a sensible idea at survival centres and so on. Has anyone done this? Have there been any complaints? How common is it? **
I can’t imagine most Muslims would have a problem, because as mentioned above, 99.9% are not terrorists. Even amongst the more unreasonable ones (who are probably more than 0.1% because !terrorist != !terrorist sympathiser [the stats on who sympathsises with certain values of terrorist are so terrifyingly huge I choose to interpret them as either incorrect or based on silly questions - after all almost all British people symapthised with La Resistance and a big majority of us sympathised with the ANC and sympathise with the Palestinians]) and also there is a concept in at least some types of Islam called taqiyya (or something like that) where you can pretend to be another religion if expedient, so there’s hardly any room to complain if those of us who are not Muslim pretend to be for a bit.
Even so I’ve never heard of it and find nothign about it online. So **either it’s being hushed up, no one’s thought of it, it’s thought to be ineffectual (which is stupid), or misguided cultural sensitivity is at play. Or is something else up? **
It can’t be that hard to pose as a Muslim, at least if you don’t have a foreskin, after all.
Cause this OP is a bit long I bolded the bits that need answering.
Here in the colonies, passing one’s self off as a Muslim is likely not to go over too terribly well, with public condemnation, censure, suspicion, and calls to 911. Flying anywhere in the country as a supposed Muslim would involve fitting into a profile, which would involve lengthy waits at the mercy of the TSA and DHS, and that’s really no way to fly.
I’m not talking about pretending to be a Muslim 24/7. I’m talking about about pretending to be a Muslim if taken hostage (or similar).
The guys working out in these remote oil rigs and so on are definitely given all kinds of interesting survival training. I think they should be given “pretending to be a Muslim” training as well.
Edit: I do congratulate your TSA on their “competence” though. Having a (well actually 4 on the same date) conviction for drug smuggling (essentially, in terms of the offence, although you can guess by the fact I am talking to you now it was not a serious offence on teh facts) in the last year, I have regularly travelled all over various borders including with cars and vans without anyone even checking what I’m up to.
I would imagine what is really happening is that people from ethnic groups that are usually Muslim are being let go while those from ethnic groups that are usually non-Muslim are not. They are probably going to scrutinize a western worker claiming to be Muslim beyond the point that someone with only an afternoon of Muslim fakery training is going to withstand.
Pretending to be Muslim is also a lot more likely to make a “routine” hostage taking go bad. Usually the idea is the use the hostages for ransom or some other sort of leverage, not to kill them. The companies and governments involved would MUCH rather hostages cooperate with their captors than try to bluff their way out.
I don’t think it’d really work. If you capture a pile of random Americans, and they are all claiming to be Muslim, you are going to realize something is fishy. It might work for individuals traveling under cover (and I’m sure that happens), but it’s not going to work as a general precaution.
In many cases, there are informants who are familiar with the daily habits of the hostages before capture. They are going to notice that a particular person tends to sleep in and chow down on ham sandwiches. It’s tough to fake the countless little daily things that come with Islam.
Didn’t work this time mate. Although that is quite likely mostly down to the stupid Algerian forces - who I can only assume are not being criticised as they would normally be because something strange is going on behind the scenes. They would normally be being cruicified at this point for their incompetence.
Anyway I certainy would not assume I was going to be released by a terrorist citing Islamic justification for whatever they were doing. A terrorist who happened to be a muslim, sure - but they are very different things.
**Do any “pretending to be a Muslim” classes exist? Should they? **
It’s not the context you’re looking for, but there are a lot of people in this country who pretend to be Muslims for cultural, and sometimes economic reasons. The Black Muslim movement in this country has created this cultural role in some communities, and at times they had a great deal of influence over the boxing business and several boxers claimed to have to converted in order to get fights. Some have been sincere, and others returned to their previous religious identity when their career was over.
Right, that’s what I’m saying. In this instance, there was large loss of life due to a botched rescue attempt. The more common situation with a hostage taking is that the captors negotiate with the company/governments involved and so long as the hostages are cooperative, they have a pretty good chance of being released unharmed. Yeah, in this case maybe trying to bluff their way out might have improved their chances of survival, but in most cases a feeble attempt at faking being Muslim is a lot more likely to make things worse.
That’s as maybe but shouldn’t people be given the option? I would assume with someone entering with a black flag with arabic writing on, which I know to be the characteristics of the al qaeda flag (I have no idea about which arabic is which of course) that pretending to be a devout muslim may a great idea. On the other hand, some random guard dudes that just want asylum in my country, I probably want to have a laugh with them and joke about how silly this situation is and whatever happens I will support them in their arrival into the land of milk and honey where I live…
To convincingly pretend to be a devout Muslim, to the point where you can engage in reasonable banter on religious subjects, you are going to be looking at a year at minimum of work. You’ll need to learn the basics of Arabic (including writing), as well as memorizing various passages from the Quran as you would during childhood education. Then you’ll need to become very familiar with whatever religious affiliation you are claiming affiliation with, including the various current personalities and debates within it. Islam comes with a lot of commentary and debate, and you’ll need to be fairly fluent in these debates, their koranic sources, and the people who are espousing them. In other words, you’ll need to have the mosque lunch room chatter down.
To get all the little daily things down, I’d think you’d want to live a year at minimum with a Muslim home stay family that is charged with teaching you the ins and outs. Praying and Ramadan are (relatively) easy, but there are hundred if not thousands of little daily things that you’ll need to pick up. A lot of these are as cultural as they are Islamic, but if you are going to claim to have grown up Muslim, you’ll need to be able to speak about your fake-o Islamic family in a reasonably convincing way.
And don’t forget, if you fuck up- let’s say you mispronounce a name you really ought to know how to say- they aren’t throwing you back in the general hostage pool as if nothing happened. If you get found out, you are most likely going to be executed immediately.
Given those odds, I think a lot of people are going to prefer to stay in the larger group and hope things work out. Again, they don’t usually slaughter entire groups of hostages. In the vast majority of cases, someone gets paid and the whole thing is over.
I am Muslim and have been one all my life. I suspect had I been in Algeria, they hostage takers might not have believed I; from the sub continent, was a Muslim, so different we are culturally from N Africa.
If you want to play at being a just-pretend Muslim, you might try joining the Shriners. They seem fond of just-pretending (I think) to be an Islamist group. But I think they’ve been toning it down ever since 9/11. They used to have a pseudo-Islamist contingent marching in parades in some kind of pseudo-Islamist full-dress militant uniforms, but I think they stopped doing that.