Worldwide pattern of Islamic extremist attacks

Great Debates
41

I dunno here, people. It does seem to me that we’re having a problem with a segment of Islam. The fact that all these groups aren’t taking orders directly from Osama bin Laden in his secret Arctic base or his secret underground lair or his secret orbital station or wherever the hell he is these days merely underscores the point. If all the attacks were being carried out by a single hierarchical organization, I’d say we have a problem with the al-Qaida organization. Personally, though, I’m increasingly of the opinion that “al-Qaida” is something of a fiction, which it suits people on both sides to invoke: sometimes it suits The Authorities the tie their local band of radical nutcases to the shadowy and sinister “al-Qaida”, and sometimes it suits the local band of radical nutcases to claim to be aligned with the shadow and powerful “al-Qaida”. Are the groups of people carrying out attacks in Indonesia and the Phillippines “al-Qaida” or aren’t they? I think they’re “al-Qaida” to the extent it suits them to be “al-Qaida”.

No, not all Muslims are terrorists or supporters of terrorism. No, not all terrorists and supporters of terrorism are Muslims. No, not all the evils in the world today are the product of Islamist extremism. Yes, other religions (and lacks of religion) have had their share of injustice and violence. Yes, there are lots of real grievances and local issues and genuine injustices which help fuel support for the extremists. Also, Saddam Hussein really has jack to do with any of this, except insofar as he may (for his own self-serving reasons) seek some sort of tactical alliance with the Islamists and they (for their own equally self-serving reasons) may accept his aid; but there’s no really deep basis for any such alliance, even if evidence becomes available that such an alliance exists.

Algeria, Chechnya, Kashmir, the internecine warfare in Afghanstan, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Islamic-based resistance to the corrupt secular governments in Egypt or Uzbekistan or the corrupt theocratic government in Saudi Arabia–these are all separate problems. But “al-Qaida”–Egyptian and Saudi radicals making a common cause to establish a base in an Afghanistan ruled by an ultra-radical movement with foreign supporters from the Arab states to Chechnya to the odd Western convert–shows us that diverse radicals from different areas can come together to carry out attacks against “the West”. Partly I think this is just a byproduct of the “the West’s” own succes, with its 747’s and cell phones and Internet connections, and partly of course of our own failure to consistently support the values we claim to uphold in places like Algeria or Saudi Arabia.

Mind you, I have no idea what to do about this. Discriminating against peaceful Muslim immigrants to the West or nuking Mecca or whatever the hell certainly won’t help. But it’s pointless to pretend there isn’t a lot of radicalism bubbling over in large parts of the Islamic world right now, from Nigeria to the Phillippines.

42

Hmmm…I live very close to two synagogues, and in a district with a quite important Jewish population, and I didn’t notice such a trend. All these symbols are clearly visible. Actually, I didn’t even hear about it. No doubt there has been some people who removed their kippa, etc…some months ago, but honestly, I didn’t notice any significant difference in the behavior of Jewish people, nor the people I know, nor apparently the strangers.

There has been a serie of attacks against Jewish buildings at the beginning of the year (which was the basis for a large anti-france movement amongst the Likud-related Jewish organizations [and much more by american than french organizations, for some reason] and propelled by the Israeli government, apparently for political reasons), but I didn’t hear recently that these attacks still occur.
Apart from that, in the cases when the culprits had been caught, they were indeed muslims, essentially dissafected youths from poor subburban neighborhood, reacting much more to the Israeli attacks in Palestine and to boredom than to the calls of an organized terrorist organization (with the exception of the most widely publicized arson in a synagogue, which was actually caused by the drunk nightward, though it still appears on internet sites as an antisemitic attack months after the actual origin of the fire has been known…I thought I would mention it, since it irritates mea lot each time I read it as an example of how antisemitic french people are).

43

Perfectly reasonable post, that I don’t particularly disagree with MEBuckner.

My only beef is when the conspiracy stuff gets a little overloaded. Muslim extremists in al-Qaida and guerillas in Kashmir may have a lot in common - Training, perhaps sharing of certain resources, even some significant elements of theology. But ultimately they are playing different games aimed at different goals. It is a mistake to completely ignore connections between them ( for strategic as well as philosophical reasons ), but I think it is equally a mistake to overplay them. For most of these people ( the minority of nomadic mercenary jihadists that flit from area to area building these ties excepted ) it is local concerns that dominate, not international ones and any “cultural” connections are often a bit diffuse and nebulous. Where ObL is a standout is actually in the fact that he is so deliberately international ( though really his base concerns seem to be a little local as well ).

  • Tamerlane
44

[Moderator Hat ON]

Coll, I am sure you can argue against a point without calling it “drooling idiocy”. Generally you can insult an argument all you like but that’s just a bit much. **Cool it. **

[Moderator Hat OFF]

45

I’m really disappointed. Still nothing from december about Clinton’s support of Islamic extremists.

This a President who had someone named “al-Gore” at the top levels of his Administration! What more proof do you need?

46

From the cite; this hatred of government seems to extend as far as a “… child who told his father to remove a picture of Dr Mahathir.”

Might just be an example of how the Malaysian government of Dr Mahathir bin Mohamad handles disent. The gaoling of Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibraham on trumped up charges of sodomy would be another.

Can I presume your other “clues” are equally substantial?

47

Whooo boy; I seem to have missed this thread yesterday in the midst of my obsession with getting more details about the Moscow situation. In this case, I’m quite glad the pile-on started without me. Saved me looking up some stuff.

I’ll stick primarily to commenting on the Chechen situation, since that’s what I know the best (and can some friendly Arabic speaker out there tell me what was written in Arabic script on the front of the female hostage-takers’ hoods? Thanks!).

The Chechens and other North Caucasians have pretty much just wanted to be left the hell alone for the past 2-3 centuries, which the Russians have steadfastly refused to do, using varying degrees of force. Frankly, the Chechens have been treated like crap by the Tsarist, Soviet, and now Russian governments, and their language and religion suppressed on countless levels, contrary to Soviet and Russian constitutional protections for such things, not to mention international law.

Yes, the Chechens are Muslims. Yes, they are pissed off. At this point, I might even be willing to believe that there are some outside agitators/mercenaries helping them out in their struggle against the Russians.

As they have been pissed off for so long, and IMHO with pretty damn good reason, and as the rest of the world has shown that they consider Chechnya to be Russia’s internal affair and has shown next to no desire to do anything about the fact that something like half of Chechens are now refugees and Grozny and numerous villages have been bombed back to the Stone Age, civilians are killed and “disappeared” on a regular basis, and teenage girls have been raped by Russian soldiers in a culture where personal honor and a girl’s virginity are of extremely high importance, I can’t say I would blame the Chechens for looking to the only people in the outside world who seem willing to offer any kind of concrete assistance. Quite frankly, this sort of thing is what happens when people are subjected to oppression for long enough, have tried working within the system to change their situation, and gett absolutely nowhere and see no signs that they ever will without taking more extreme measures.

Again, I am NOT condoning making innocent civilians into victims. As I’ve done in the Moscow theater thread, though, I’m simply saying that the Russians are reaping what they have sown. The Chechens may or may not be getting help from Islamic extremists from outside Russia, and if they are, those folks may or may not have any connection whatsoever to OBL. But the seeds of this conflict were planted a long, long time ago. And IMHO this specific conflict is based on political power, not religion, although religion has certainly been made into a factor by elements on both sides.

As to Putin’s comment that you quoted about Al-Qaeda involvement: Putin is by no means an idiot or a politically unsophisticated person. Claiming “foreign elements are involved” in anything the government doesn’t like is a tactic that is probably as old as Russia itself. If Putin can convince the world that Al-Qaeda is involved in Chechnya, the rest of the world is less likely to raise a fuss as he continues his genocidal “internal antiterrorist” campaign in Chechnya.

If you want to know more about exactly how the Chechens have been treated like crap, search on my username and Chechen and you’ll find a bunch of cites from a thread a couple of months ago. Also, there’s been some interesting commentary (in English, BTW) on Radio Free Europe’s website (rferl.org) over the last few days which will give you a glimpse into the Hell that is living as a Chechen in Russia lately. Also, I highly recommend Anne Nivat’s Chienne de Guerre: A Woman Reporter Behind the Lines in Chechnya, if you want an idea of the horrific human impact of the current Chechen campaign.

48

Sorry for the semi-coherent rant; the Chechen situation is a subject rather close to my heart, and I haven’t had my coffee yet. I meant to make apoint that perhaps a number of Muslim radicals are simply taking advantage of several specific situations of oppression of/discontent among Muslim groups who aren’t naturally either radical or violent (and may not even be terribly observant; one Russian news source apparently showed foootage of the leader of the Moscow theater bunch lying dead with a bottle of booze in his hand)) to further their own ends, be they religious, political, military, or whatever.

The moral of the story: if you want peace, work for justice. I’m off to brew some coffee.

49

If anyone wants 40+ pages of detail about how Russia has violated its legal and moral obligations to North Caucasians, I can probably be convinced to email my master’s thesis.

50

Well, I can’t recall any Catholics recently (since Catholics are not directly involved in any struggles outside Northern Ireland), but if you expand your definition to Christians and Jews I can point to the late Meir Kahane and his even more vitriolic son (now, also deceased) Benyamin. Ian Paisley has avoided direct calls for murder (although his policies come close in some cases) but his associate William Beattie actively called for the murder of Catholics. (And then there is South Carolina’s Henry Jordan, who suggested, as a member of the Board of Education that we “Screw the Buddhists and Kill the Moslems.”)

At any rate, this issue and the slam against “peaceful Islam” are red herrings. Christians and Jews tend to be (at this time) associated with either the majorities or the powerful of the world and there are few places where any Christian feels a need to strike out at a perceived cultural oppressor.

No one doubts that “some segment” of Muslims are currently seeking power by portraying Jews and Christians as oppressors who must be fought (and, likely killed). I had already noted that the Chechens were sharing assistance with al Qaida even before december provided his story on Arabs in the Moscow theatre. The issue in this thread is that december has painted an open-ended call for us to find a solution while linking things that are not linked–a practice that he continues from hundreds of earlier posts.

As Col noted, we took the “they are all bad” approach during the Cold War, (an approach that december embraces to this day), and created many of the problems that the world faces today by dividing the world into “Communist” and “anti-Communist” without regard to the actual local politics. Those local situations are now flaring up, one after the other, with The West (or the U.S.) perceived as the bad guy because of the unthinking application of anti-Soviet policy misapplied to local situations.

december’s current attempt to lump all acts by Muslims into a single plot to bring down the West could result in our children having to fight off attacks from people who had legitimate grievances that were suppressed by our “Islamists are bad” (or, apparently, “Muslims are bad”) policy.
For example, Maylasia may have problems with some Islamic schools teaching hatred. Such schools certainly exist. On the other hand, even Dr. Mahathir (who appears to be Muslim, himself) has not said that all Islamic schools are teaching hatred, but that he was closing all the schools until the government could determine which schools might be. (And, as noted above, Dr. Mahathir has already shown that he is capable of drumming up odd excuses to suppress political dissent while pretending the issue is not political.)

If that is not what december is calling for, then he ought to lay out his actual plan, because he has danced around the issue and done nothing but provide anti-Muslim anecdotes throughout this thread.

51

Fine, I am not sure what better phrase to use for this analysis can be found, but I shall have to evidenlty.

However, the point here being, although it escapes our dear milroy et al, is not a question of if there is racidicalism in Islamic populations, but if december’s little nostrum here, with the evident real purpose of selling his pet rants on Muslims and

No, december, I don’t well know that, and indeed I am far better placed than you to advance an opinion. I know that some aspects of ObL’s violent critiques gain a degree of support, Ialso know that in the Arab region ObL and al-Qaeda are not “enormously” popular in an ordinary sense, for all that there is a reservoir of sympathy for his critique. Why are they not enormously popular? because the radical movements have largely burned themselves out with muslim on muslim violence, as in Egypt.

Not that one may not see a rebound, but that is a seperate issue to your assertions from ignorance.

Now these two items rather illustrate the problem I have with you and your bullshit argumentation - although rotting ignorance peddling would be a far more accurate phrase to use than argumentation:

You advance quotes in re “Muslims” in gross but your sourcing is about two peripheral areas, Northern Nigeria and the North West Frontier province. both ignorant rural populations w/o much clue. Rather like advancing the naming practices of backwoods Virginia as reflecting on “Christendom.”

Tom has already dealt with this, and milly boy’s add on. I’ll call this gambit frank bigotry.

In re the hostage takers, provide a link to the photos and I shall be happy to translate.

52

Speculation? I call it chicken littlism.

53

Aaaaaand we have TWO winners today. No less than TWO winners. In fact the number of hate crimes against Jews is up with 70% in Germany, 50% in France and 50% in the UK since the Intifada started. The increase is wholly attributed to extreme Islamist groups, while the pre-Intfiada state is more or less 100% ‘racist white nujobs’ like our friends from Stromfront. In the same period hate crimes against Jews in the US did not increase significantly. It is noteworthy that it was only after the increase due to the Intifada that France and the UK reached the same level as the US if counted per 1000 inhabitants. (note that in the table below France is not reported as well as the others).

I detailed this in another thread a while ago, this is the data. See the earlier post for cite and more details.


**Hate Crimes Against Jews 2000**
Nation       #crimes   per 1000 inh.
USA          1,606*       0.006
Germany      1,378**      0.016
France         146***     0.002
The UK         405****    0.006

[ol]*877 cases of harassment and assault 729 cases of vandalism
**out of which 5 were violent, the rest were threats, vandalism, holocaust denial and anti-Semitic rallying
***only includes violent crimes and large scale vandalism
****2 attempted murder, 51 physical assault, 73 vandalism, 196 abusive behavior

NB: the higher number of crimes registered in Germany is in part influenced by the much stricter laws against anti-Semitism [/ol]

So… december care to tell us where these overwhelming masses of violent European Islamist anti-Semites are hanging out? For some reason they seem to not show up in the stats. Stats compiled by an Israeli university no less.

Sparc

54

First, there have been parallels among “Christian” extremists. Secondly, these kinds of actions would be unthinkable in EVERY major religion. This includes Christian, Jewish, and Muslim.
Why?
It’s simple december. These Muslim extremists are NOT Muslim.

I’m going to say it again and since I cannot slow my speech down through typing I’m going to ask you to please just read it slowly: These Muslim extremists are NOT Muslim.

They can claim to be. They can pray to their version of Allah. They can believe their interpretation of the Koran. They still aren’t Muslims.

So for you to refer to them as Muslim, in any thread, is wrong. For you to compare OBL to the pope is wrong. OBL isn’t a religious leader. He’s a leader of an extremist faction that claims to be part of an organized religion.

I don’t know how many times I can explain this, but maybe different versions will help it sink in.

With thanks to Mr. Sorkin, let’s try a little game:

Muslim is to Muslim Extremist as Christian is to what?

I’ll give you a clue. the answer is not the Pope.

55

Good point, clairobscur. I also have not heard of this sort of attack recently. I hope they’ve ceased.

Thanks for the information. I hope it was clear that my response to Jojo wasn’t meant to insult the French. It was meant to point out that someone not living in France wouldn’t have a good feeling for conditions there.

I agree. Still, there are disaffected youths among all religions. One can still consider why the disaffected Muslims commit so much terrorism.

56

december, are you suggesting people take matters into their own hands, like this fellow did?

Is this what you’re suggesting as a solution?

57

You have spent most of this post putting words in my mouth, tomndebb. However, at least you were kind enough to offer me a chance to deny your fantasies. I have done enough posting on this thread that there should be no need for you to make stuff up.

However, I’ll try again. What I’m calling for is realistic thinking, rather than a politically correct state of denial.

58

About Dr. Mahathir cutting off government funding for private-run Islamic schools…

Is this really about the Malaysian government trying to suppress what december calls “war against the world by a segment of Islam?”

It really isn’t. Anybody who follows Malaysian affairs closely would know that Mahathir’s party (UMNO) is trying to beat its political rival the Parti Islam seMalaysia (PAS, an Islamic party) in the polls by trying to be more-Islamic than they are. Dr. M is also known to have declared Malaysian to be an Islamic nation, and even called himself a Muslim fundamentalist – on the grounds that a fundamentalist is someone who sticks to the very basics of Islam.

Is it an attempt to put down this so called “war”?

No, it’s probably just what Dr. M calls it: because the schools are teaching them to hate the government.

59

Actually, you’ve spent most of your posts in this thread linking to other news articles with very little commentary or explanation to accompany it.
Now, while I normally don’t stoop so low as to include trite cliches, the answer you just gave is better than any politician could possibly give in his or her answer. Is it possible to be any more vague in what you’re “calling for” than what you list above?

“We must move forwards, not backwards, upwards, not forwards, and always twirling twirling twirling towards freedom!”

60

What Ender said.