Again, Roseworm, you sound like you think Europe has never known terrorism before the Islamists moved in. You’re wrong.
Europe knows terror. She’s lived with it for decades. Basque separatists, the IRA, the Bader-Meinhof gang, the CCC, Direct Action, Red Army Faction, the Red Brigades, PKK (our buddies in Iraq, the Kurds)…the US trying to tell Europe how to handle terrorism is like a child telling his mother how to drive. They’ve been chin-deep in it for a long time now. Just because it looks to us like they’re not doing anything, doesn’t mean they’re not.
If they don’t strip you naked at airports then they are not doing anything.
I was in Madrid not long after the attacks, I was VERY surprised that everything seemed to run as smoothly as before. No opening and checking your handbag 3 times like at our local airport and no fingerprinting and photographing like at San Juan’s airport.
Well, there are speculations that they picked (and continue to pick) Spain because it was the more vulnerable target. They have, over the years, become somewhat adept at handling the ETA, Islamic terrorists caught them with their pants down. They already have played their appeaser card, and still the terrorist keep prodding their defenses. Spain is in for another surprise in the near future, then we’ll see what happens.
Rune, there is a difference between Islamic and Islamist. All Muslims are Islamic. Only the ones with a specific religious/political doctrine are Islamist. While I don’t believe you’re deliberately conflating the two, you ARE conflating the two.
Roseworm: *[…] if you are suggesting that the Madrid train bombings should have been a wake-up call for everyone in Europe, you could not be more right. Sadly, that does not seem to be the case. Even more tragically, the Spaniards responded by caving in. To their eternal shame, they threw out their pro-war, pro-America government and all but begged for mercy. *
More melodrama, and ill-informed melodrama at that. You’re really projecting your own opinions onto the attitudes of Spanish voters there. What actually happened was that the voters refused to re-elect the government that failed to protect them from the Madrid terrorist attacks.
They had a variety of reasons for that: many of them were against the incumbents in the first place, and many others were enraged by the government’s apparent impotence to protect them. It may be that some of the Spanish voters were actually “caving in”, that is, voting against the existing government in the hope of appeasing al-Qaeda, but I’ve never heard of a single Spanish voter who endorsed that position. And your ascribing it to “the Spaniards” as a whole is a baseless invention.
You think so? Well then you are correct that it is not deliberate. I would think it’s clear enough, almost by definition, that Islamic terrorism is only perpetrated by Islamists.
Rune:I would think it’s clear enough, almost by definition, that Islamic terrorism is only perpetrated by Islamists.
I think the point is that “Islamic terrorism” is essentially meaningless, like “Christian terrorism” or “white terrorism”. All those qualifiers are so broad that they say nothing about what the goals of these particular Muslim, or Christian, or white terrorists happen to be.
But “Islamist terrorism” clearly implies “terrorism by extremist supporters of Islamist theocracy”, just as “Christian Army of God terrorism” indicates “terrorism by Christian fundamentalist opponents of abortion” and “White Nationalist terrorism” implies “terrorism by white supremacists against racial minorities”.
More importantly, blurring the distinction between “Islamist” and “Islamic” in this context is exactly the type of misinterpretation that these terrorists are trying to promote. They want people to believe that “Islamic = Islamist”; in other words, they promote the idea that violent Islamist extremism is the only true Islam. When we appear to accept the claim that there’s no real distinction between mainstream Islam and extremist Islamism, we’re helping the terrorists spread their ideas.
Update 23.00: according to Dutch PBS, even several experienced journalists were shocked by the contents of the letter, which was written in excellent Dutch. This further compounds the theory that the murderer radicalized in the Netherlands, and not in a distant poor Middle Eastern dictatorship. He was one of us, before his mind got poisoned by radicalism. Very few people have dared to suggest that the murderer was a victim of terrible circumstances that drove him to his act. However, since it’s now obvious that he was well educated and led a normal life before he radicalized, these excuses can now be disqualified permanently. He even was a well known and loved volunteer in his neighbourhood. This radical Islamist, at least, didn’t get driven into anything. He wasn’t a victim - he chose this course of action
From http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.co…m?id=1286272004
It prides itself on being the beating liberal heart of Europe, but the murder of film-maker Theo van Gogh has convinced many in the Netherlands that the nation’s legendary tolerance has now reached its limit.
Van Gogh’s execution last Tuesday, which has been linked to Islamic extremists, has brought calls for a crackdown on fundamentalists and renegade preachers that would previously have been unthinkable.
Once liberal commentators now want Muslim hardliners to be thrown out of the country, even if they have Dutch passports, and greater surveillance of the wider Islamic community.
Meanwhile, one of the biggest Muslim populations in Western Europe is fearful of being tarred with the extremist brush by a nation which increasingly feels it is being taken advantage of.
Gum, why do you insist on arguing something that nobody has said in this thread? Nobody (cite if I am wrong) has called the criminals that killed this fillmmaker “victims”. Just stop it.
What? Mighty Girl? You’re telling me to ‘stop it’? Or what? Do I get beheaded? By some muslim who feels himself a victim all over again by posts like yours?
A rose by any other name would smell just as sweet…
My reluctance with using the “Islamism” moniker is that for me it’s a fairly new invention. I may be mistaken, looking closer I see that it has been in use at least since the late nineties but I think I’ve only seen it in regular use for a year or so. I suspect many people mistake or don’t know the difference between Islamism and Islam, running the risk of conflating them further. And how do you use it? “Islamism terrorism” doesn’t seem to be a valid English phrase. “Terrorism inspired by Islamism” is overly verbose.
Also there’s the small, perhaps trivial, fact that Islamists are also Moslems, devout followers of Islam, and that there exists no absolute demarcation between Islamists and “Mainstream Moslems” – the line is already blurred.
No, but there is, perhaps witnessed in small by the above discussing of Islamism vers. Islamic Terrorism, a tendency to be overly concerned about the sentiments of Moslems to the point where any discussion of Islamism and terrorism is considered suspect and likely to be followed up with words like racist, xenophobe, Islamphobe etc. Moslems may be discriminated against, there are other kinds of terrorism, etc. but none of this negates the fact that there are serious problems with Islamism and terrorism in Europe we need to address.
It dates back to the early 80’s, where it was re-coined ( previously it was an all but extinct outdated term similar to “Mohammedism” ) by French scholars like Olivier Roy and Gilles Kepel as Islamisme to describe these relatively new movements. It entered English with the first translation of one of Kepel’s books in 1985. It probably didn’t become common outside of academic circles until the mid-to-late '90’s.
So it has close to a quarter-century academic history and maybe a decade, maybe less of “common usage”. It is pretty well accepted at this point - at least I am unaware of any real reaction against it.
Oh and I should note that Islamism needn’t = terrorism, either. There are work-within-the-system, non-violent Islamist types as well.
Personally I like “Jihadist” as a reasonable shorthand, one word term for violent Islamist ( Kepel uses “Jihadist-Salafist”, but seems a little clumsier ). But that’s just me - I imagine others might disagree.
Abdel Rahman al-Rashed is general manager of Al-Arabiya news channel. He wrote:
It is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists, but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims.
I do not dismiss the validity of your concern at all as expressed in your previous post. However your accusation in the above quote is truly treacherous (on the part of France). I know this is the pit, but could you please provide a cite ?
Hey gum, You should try and taste what passes for licorice (drop) around here in North America. You wouldn’t believe that kids love the stuff. Its so bland.
heh grienspace, bland? It’s very salty here. But good. [that’s a dutchie speaking]
Bad news. Apparently we’re moving to the same primitive level as the terrorists.
EINDHOVEN, Netherlands (AP) - An explosion blew the door off a Muslim school in a southern Dutch town and shattered windows across the street Monday, Dutch television reported.
There were no reports of injuries. Pictures showed the burned-out entrance of the school which was empty at the time of the attack at about 3:30 a.m. local time. Police suspected it was related to the murder last week of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a suspected Islamic radical, the report said.
There’s no need to feel bad about this. You didn’t do it. You would never do such a lousy cowardly thing.
Likewise the general Muslim population can’t be held responsible for the murder, as they wouldn’t do such a lousy cowardly thing. *
If scumbags who murder and burn things happen share your religion (or some version of it), race or political ideals that doesn’t make you a scumbag too.
*Those who would are scum. Those who agree with doing such things are seriouly misguided. We all agree on that one, I hope.
