What next after Mosul and Raqqa?

[Polaris]

An ISIS-like abomination reforms elsewhere, in Libya or Nigeria most likely. Yay for the great 'victory'.

ISIS is a symptom of a problem, it's not the problem itself. That's why I insist we should look at what motivates them.

McHrozni

There already are ISIS-like abominations in Libya and Nigeria.

 

[Vixen]

An ISIS-like abomination reforms elsewhere, in Libya or Nigeria most likely. Yay for the great 'victory'.

ISIS is a symptom of a problem, it's not the problem itself. That's why I insist we should look at what motivates them.

McHrozni

Ultimately it is the have-not's versus the have's.

I bought an ancient single from a record shop in Soho by a band called Rare Bird.

The lead sings, ''Now half the world, hates the other half, and half the world has all the food, and half the world lies starving, quietly starved, 'cos there's not enough love to go round. And sympathy is what we need my friend, and sympathy is what we need (repeat line). Cos there's not enough love to go round.'

That sums it up in a nutshell.

 

[Mycroft]

I don't see why? Radical Islamism is eschatogical (apocalyptic) in its own right. Its aim is to destroy all infidels.

Christianity, Judaism and Hinduism do not have such a mission.

See? You're making a comparison.

 

[Jules Galen]

That's actually two crackpots (and pretty influential crackpots, too).

It also has its own Wikipedia entry.

EDIT: ‘Christians Just Want Jews Slaughtered and Converted’, written by, of all things, a Christian Dominionist (albeit one who staunchly opposes the popular Evangelical "end times" movement).

So what?

It doesn't really matter as long as this cause has no state support and funding - unlike ISIS who has plenty of supports from Qatar, the UAE, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. And when the Arabs aren't supporting ISIS, then Israel is bombing people who are fighting ISIS. It's a strange Sunni-Jewish alliance.

 

[McHrozni]

Ultimately it is the have-not's versus the have's.

I bought an ancient single from a record shop in Soho by a band called Rare Bird.

The lead sings, ''Now half the world, hates the other half, and half the world has all the food, and half the world lies starving, quietly starved, 'cos there's not enough love to go round. And sympathy is what we need my friend, and sympathy is what we need (repeat line). Cos there's not enough love to go round.'

That sums it up in a nutshell.

Except that this was the default state of the affairs since the dawn of history. We always had rich people and we always had poor people. It is a great achievement of the West to have created the sizable middle class we see today. If anytihng the world today is more egalitarian than at almost any point in history. That can't be the cause of terrorism.

Plus countries that are hotbeds of terrorism aren't particularly poor. The poorest countries in the world do not contribute significantly to terrorism.

Lastly, if you draw up demographics of terrorists, you notice that they're wealthier than average, there is a greater proportion of middle-class Islamic terrorists than the percentage of middle-class Muslims in a society.

From this I conclude poverty is not a significant factor in influencing terrorism.

McHrozni

 

[McHrozni]

There already are ISIS-like abominations in Libya and Nigeria.

Yes, I expect one of those two to rise in prominence within a year or so of Raqqa falling to whomever.

McHrozni

 

[A'isha]

Lastly, if you draw up demographics of terrorists, you notice that they're wealthier than average, there is a greater proportion of middle-class Islamic terrorists than the percentage of middle-class Muslims in a society.

From this I conclude poverty is not a significant factor in influencing terrorism.

This isn't quite true. Many terrorists are college-educated, but that does not have the same signifier as it does in the West (particularly the US). In Egypt, for instance, university schooling is completely free, and unemployment among college graduates is ten times higher there than among those who didn't attend college. Many middle eastern states are like this: the governments established free schooling to try and encourage their citizens to become socially useful engineers and doctors, but their economies don't actually have jobs available for all the graduates, resulting in large numbers of highly educated young people who have no jobs and no economic opportunities.

And in France especially, the terrorists are drawn from lower-class immigrants and immigrant families. The brothers in the Charlie Hebdo shooting were orphans from a foster home who had been in and out of prison and held low-level jobs (one worked at a fish market). The attacker in Porte de Vincennes shooting was an unemployed former Coca-Cola worker. The Nice attacker was a delivery-truck driver who had recently been fired. The train attacker who was stopped by passengers was an unemployed former mobile phone shop worker and was sleeping rough in a park in Belgium.

 

[Darth Rotor]

I should imagine the US installing yet another Saddam...?

The Russians get a vote in Syria, and I imagine the Turks will want to be at the table ... that is, if Assad does not come out of this alive. I think he will emerge from this alive.

An ISIS-like abomination reforms elsewhere, in Libya or Nigeria most likely. Yay for the great 'victory'.

Yeah, most likely.

Some of you cannot help yourselves: as soon as the topic is the objectives of those attempting to revive the caliphate (hey, give them credit, go big or go home, and these 's are going big) that the usual suspects just can't wait the change the conversation to Christianity or Judaism.

The Motive Ideological Force Behind the topic in this thread is Salafism, a seriously archaic Islamic world view, and the stated principle aim of Restoring The Caliphate.

IN other news, since 9-11 there have been about 30,000 terrorist attacks. Most of the victims of these attacks have been ... wait for it ... Muslims and people in Muslim nations.

This is a problem for the Muslim world, the Ummah, to solve. The "leaders" of that "world" are sitting on their ing hands. Makes me wonder: do they even want it solved?

Meanwhile, Mosul bleeds.

I will add, in utter cynicism, that in a weird way George W Bush did the world a favor: he kicked over the rock and exposed the bugs in that world. Nobody is writing him thank you letters, to be sure, and I don't think that was even close to his intended aim. But that's what has happened. What some of you, and what a lot of the world refuses to acknowledge is the truth. There's going to be some painful growing in that cultural arm of our world. In the West, we spent from about the 1200's to the 1900's slaughtering each other to figure out how to sort things out in other ways.

For our contemporaries in the Muslim world, I hope it doesn't take that long. Learn from our mistakes, if you can. If you can't, modern tech will provide you with ways to slaughter each other that would have made Louis XIV or Bismarck blanche.

 

[McHrozni]

This isn't quite true. Many terrorists are college-educated, but that does not have the same signifier as it does in the West (particularly the US). In Egypt, for instance, university schooling is completely free, and unemployment among college graduates is ten times higher there than among those who didn't attend college. Many middle eastern states are like this: the governments established free schooling to try and encourage their citizens to become socially useful engineers and doctors, but their economies don't actually have jobs available for all the graduates, resulting in large numbers of highly educated young people who have no jobs and no economic opportunities.

Yeah, because we all know that once you're educated, you totally can't work in a field below your level of skill

And in France especially, the terrorists are drawn from lower-class immigrants and immigrant families. The brothers in the Charlie Hebdo shooting were orphans from a foster home who had been in and out of prison and held low-level jobs (one worked at a fish market). The attacker in Porte de Vincennes shooting was an unemployed former Coca-Cola worker. The Nice attacker was a delivery-truck driver who had recently been fired. The train attacker who was stopped by passengers was an unemployed former mobile phone shop worker and was sleeping rough in a park in Belgium.

How many terrorist attacks were done in France in the same time period by non-Muslim poor? How many people did they kill?

McHrozni

 

[McHrozni]

This is a problem for the Muslim world, the Ummah, to solve. The "leaders" of that "world" are sitting on their ing hands. Makes me wonder: do they even want it solved?

The paradox of the problem is that the Ummah is the only thing that can solve the problem, and yet it is uniquely incapable of solving it. Unlike many other religions Islam doesn't have an internal structure to speak of. This is further compounded by the fact that while its' holy texts can be used to justify just about anything, they're especially good at justifying bloodshed and mayhem and quite poor at denouncing it. As a result Ummah has no tools to solve the problem, but it has an entire arsenal of tools to make the problem worse.

The problems don't even end here, a whole new layer of problems is represented by the fact a very large number of people consider Islam to be beyond criticism, the fact its' holy texts could also be interpreted as to denounce bloodshed and violence is proof enough for them Islam is indeed peaceful. This further disincentives any meaningful reform, because it allows to look for illogical excuses elsewhere - poverty is the usual suspect, even though it has been proven innocent a hundred times over. The other usual suspects are racism and abuse (debunked) or that Islam is a random variable with terrorism that would happen anyway (debunked).

Some people just don't want to accept Islam is to blame for anything. These same people will happily blame other religions for their skeletons in the closet, which makes me wonder if they realize just how much cognitive dissonance goes on in their brain.

McHrozni

 

[A'isha]

Yeah, because we all know that once you're educated, you totally can't work in a field below your level of skill

Fields that don't pay middle-class wages and so mean that the people in them still aren't middle-class despite their education level?

How many terrorist attacks were done in France in the same time period by non-Muslim poor? How many people did they kill?

Now terrorists aren't all wealthy and middle-class, but you still insist that their socioeconomic level has nothing to do with it? That the non-immigrant poor non-Muslim poor is at the same socioeconomic level as the immigrant Muslim poor, with no other factors separating them?

 

[McHrozni]

Now terrorists aren't all wealthy and middle-class, but you still insist that their socioeconomic level has nothing to do with it?

I'm not claiming terrorists are all middle-class or above, this is another of your fabrications. You're claiming the main driver of terrorism is poverty. For this to be true you need to demonstrate people from poor backgrounds are significantly more represented among Islamic terrorists than the general population of Muslims in the West and you need to show poverty also predicts the number of terrorists from people with non-Islamic background. As always you need to either prove it or shove it. I don't deal with innuendo and wild guesses, and unfortunately for you I don't accept them as evidence.

That the non-immigrant poor non-Muslim poor is at the same socioeconomic level as the immigrant Muslim poor, with no other factors separating them?

For someone who's claiming determining the causes of terrorism isn't exact science you sure rely a lot on statistics of your choosing.

Anyway, this question is incomprehensible, are you asking about three groups or two? Are you implying my position is there are no other factors between these 2-3 groups or that there is? Are you trying to say they're otherwise indistinguishable or not? Are you saying the level of terrorism perpetrated by those 2-3 groups is identical or that it is different?

Reformulate the question please.

McHrozni

 

[A'isha]

I'm not claiming terrorists are all middle-class or above, this is another of your fabrications.

No, you merely made the blanket statement that terrorists are wealthier than average.

You're claiming the main driver of terrorism is poverty.

I'm claiming that it's a major factor.

For this to be true you need to demonstrate people from poor backgrounds are significantly more represented among Islamic terrorists than the general population of Muslims in the West and you need to show poverty also predicts the number of terrorists from people with non-Islamic background. As always you need to either prove it or shove it. I don't deal with innuendo and wild guesses, and unfortunately for you I don't accept them as evidence.

Your unsupported broad claims are perfectly okay, but I have to back up my statements with examples (despite, y'know, me actually giving examples above and you still having not supported your initial statement with, well, anything) or I can "shove it"? Hmm.

And to my list of French Islamist terrorists and their economic backgrounds and situations, I point out that Boko Haram is also mostly formed of the poorer and lower classes (the northern regions of Nigeria, which is their power base, have a 70% poverty rate). The PIRA was overwhelmingly composed of lower class construction and industrial laborers and the unemployed.

Another thing they all have in common, and which is possibly an even bigger factor in determining terrorist tendencies, is cultural prejudice against the affected group and a restricted access to political influence (though that and the economic factors are pretty much tied closely together). In France, Nigeria, and Northern Ireland, the terrorist groups were formed of outgroup minorities who were the subject of social, political, and especially economic discrimination by the groups who they later started targeting. This is one of things separating, for instance, the Muslim immigrant lower classes of France from the non-Muslim non-immigrant lower classes: the consequences and causes of their economic and social situation (and the opportunities for changing that situation) are quite different.

 

[McHrozni]

I'm claiming that it's a major factor.

If so please explain why the poorest countries in the world don't produce nearly as many terrorists as middle to high income countries do.

It's a major discrepancy which I never saw addressed or explain.

Your unsupported broad claims are perfectly okay, but I have to back up my statements with examples (despite, y'know, me actually giving examples above and you still having not supported your initial statement with, well, anything) or I can "shove it"? Hmm.

I have made no such claims, if you think differently please provide the claim you think I haven't supported.

It would be polite for you to do so after you've proven poverty is a major factor in terrorism. Thus far all I've seen is a blanket assertion with exactly zero evidence behind it.

And to my list of French Islamist terrorists and their economic backgrounds and situations, I point out that Boko Haram is also mostly formed of the poorer and lower classes (the northern regions of Nigeria, which is their power base, have a 70% poverty rate).

The first one doesn't prove your claim in the slightest. Of course a terrorist organization whose base is a population that is 70% under the poverty line is expected to be composed mostly of the poor. For it to prove your claim it needs to show there are statistically significantly more poor proportionately than in the general population.

The PIRA was overwhelmingly composed of lower class construction and industrial laborers and the unemployed.

The class stratification was also national, especially in the 19th century. Irish were seen as little more than expendable work animals by the British. Of course any nationalist movement of the Irish is expected to be of the lower class an unemployed, because the Irish were poorer than the general population to begin with.

You need to show they joined PIRA out of poverty and not out of nationalism and historical grudges. You also need to explain why then a broadly similar economic situation in Wales didn't produce terrorists. Good luck.

Another thing they all have in common, and which is possibly an even bigger factor in determining terrorist tendencies, is cultural prejudice against the affected group and a restricted access to political influence (though that and the economic factors are pretty much tied closely together). In France, Nigeria, and Northern Ireland, the terrorist groups were formed of outgroup minorities who were the subject of social, political, and especially economic discrimination by the groups who they later started targeting. This is one of things separating, for instance, the Muslim immigrant lower classes of France from the non-Muslim non-immigrant lower classes: the consequences and causes of their economic and social situation (and the opportunities for changing that situation) are quite different.

Yes, this is a tad more compelling. It has a fatal flaw, of course: Muslims in Europe and in Nigeria were much more accepted minorities than many other peoples. Soviet mistreatment of Baltic nations, against which the treatment of Muslims was never problematic, didn't result in terrorism, then or now. Christian mistreatment of Jews pre-1945 didn't result in terrorism either. Muslims are not the only mistreated minority in the West, yet they're the only minority who resort to terrorism to any significant degree. Muslim treatment of minorities - for example of Copts in Egypt - is orders of magnitude worse than anything Muslims in Europe face, and they don't turn to terrorism.

In light of that I call BS on your assertion mistreatment of Muslims is a significant factor and ask you to provide more evidence.

McHrozni

 

[Vixen]

Fields that don't pay middle-class wages and so mean that the people in them still aren't middle-class despite their education level?



Now terrorists aren't all wealthy and middle-class, but you still insist that their socioeconomic level has nothing to do with it? That the non-immigrant poor non-Muslim poor is at the same socioeconomic level as the immigrant Muslim poor, with no other factors separating them?

They are very much influenced by the educated fluent Arabic speakers with scholastic knowledge of the Qu'ran who translate the propaganda into English via social media. They target the impressionable disaffected youth.

 

[A'isha]

If so please explain why the poorest countries in the world don't produce nearly as many terrorists as middle to high income countries do.

It's a major discrepancy which I never saw addressed or explain.

You mean the list of countries that includes Rwanda, the Central African Republic, Niger, Afghanistan, Mali, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo?

Heck, the Congo alone has suffered five times as many terrorist attacks causing five times as many deaths since 2001 as Islamists have caused in the US during the same period. Mali has been so wracked by terrorist violence in the wake of a Tuareg uprising there in 2012 that more people have been killed in terrorist attacks there in just in the first three months of this year than have been killed by Islamists in the US since 2001.

I have made no such claims, if you think differently please provide the claim you think I haven't supported.

"Lastly, if you draw up demographics of terrorists, you notice that they're wealthier than average, there is a greater proportion of middle-class Islamic terrorists than the percentage of middle-class Muslims in a society."

You need to show they joined PIRA out of poverty and not out of nationalism and historical grudges. You also need to explain why then a broadly similar economic situation in Wales didn't produce terrorists. Good luck.

Do you think it's a binary yes/no checkbox? IF "poor" THEN "terrorist" or something? There are a lot of factors that go into why someone becomes a terrorist. Socioeconomics is a very large factor, and it's a hell of a lot more influential than you seem to think it is. Trying to reductively boil it down to some kind of magic bullet trigger so you can parade a ridiculously stupid "Well, why aren't ALL poor people terrorists, then? Checkmate!" effort at rhetorical triumphalism around is just stupid. It's the "if humans evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?" of terrorism arguments.

Yes, this is a tad more compelling. It has a fatal flaw, of course: Muslims in Europe and in Nigeria were much more accepted minorities than many other peoples.

You have no idea what the situation is in Nigeria and the history of how it got that way, or which minorities I'm referring to, do you? I suggest reading this, it might help.

Christian mistreatment of Jews pre-1945 didn't result in terrorism either.

Well...

 

[A'isha]

They are very much influenced by the educated fluent Arabic speakers with scholastic knowledge of the Qu'ran who translate the propaganda into English via social media. They target the impressionable disaffected youth.

Very true. But it's what makes them disaffected that makes them such fertile grounds for terrorist recruiters in the first place.

 

[McHrozni]

You mean the list of countries that includes Rwanda, the Central African Republic, Niger, Afghanistan, Mali, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo?

Heck, the Congo alone has suffered five times as many terrorist attacks causing five times as many deaths since 2001 as Islamists have caused in the US during the same period. Mali has been so wracked by terrorist violence in the wake of a Tuareg uprising there in 2012 that more people have been killed in terrorist attacks there in just in the first three months of this year than have been killed by Islamists in the US since 2001.

And yet they haven't waged a war against US ... or anyone else for that matter.

Care to explain why?

Do you think it's a binary yes/no checkbox? IF "poor" THEN "terrorist" or something?

Of course not. The thing is this also destroys your main argument as to what drives Islamic terrorists.

You have no idea what the situation is in Nigeria and the history of how it got that way, or which minorities I'm referring to, do you? I suggest reading this, it might help.

So Boko Haram arose in 2002 because British oppressed Nigerians in the 19th century and up to 1960.

Yes yes, very likely.

Well...

Yeah, Europeans mistreated the Jews, locked them up in ghettos and conducted pogroms and genocides (plural), which is why, decades and centuries later, they started terrorizing British occupation forces in Palestine. This is exactly the same as Muslims attacking European civilians, because they sometimes look at them with suspicion.

You're hypocrisy incarnate.

McHrozni

 

[McHrozni]

Very true. But it's what makes them disaffected that makes them such fertile grounds for terrorist recruiters in the first place.

True. But if Islam was a benign random variable, you'd see the disaffected youth conducing terrorist attacks in the name of a lot of different things, with Islam being a factor in only very few of them.

McHrozni

 

[A'isha]

And yet they haven't waged a war against US ... or anyone else for that matter.

Care to explain why?

Because most terrorist groups have very specific goals they're trying to accomplish with their terrorism, rather than being part of some kind of "clash of civilizations". Why would terrorists in the Congo, the CAR, or even Mali attack the US?

Or does terrorism only count if the targets are in Europe and America?

Of course not. The thing is this also destroys your main argument as to what drives Islamic terrorists.

Do you understand the difference between "a major factor" and "the only factor"?

So Boko Haram arose in 2002 because British oppressed Nigerians in the 19th century and up to 1960.

Yes yes, very likely.

Do you think Boko Haram just appeared out of nowhere in 2002 and immediately started murdering people in the name of Islam (which would be an odd argument for you to make, given that you ascribe the primary factor in turning these groups to terrorism to Islam and yet Islam has been present in Nigeria for centuries)?

Movements that combined Northern resistance to Southern economic domination mixed with weird ideas of Islamist "reform" began in Nigeria as soon as independence happened - the violent extremist Maitatsine movement founded by Muhammed Marwa that began in the 60's combined appeals to the urban poor and indigent with a rejection of anything outside the Qur'an, from wristwatches to bicycles to the ahadith (Marwa later rejected even Muhammad and declared himself to be a prophet). Elizabeth Isichei even called it "a revolt of the disinherited".

The movement clashed violently with non-Maitatsine Muslims in the north and with the Nigerian army from the late 60's and through early 90's, not slowed by the death of Marwa (and 6,000 other people) at the hands of the military in 1980. Before Marwa's death they focused on attacking other Muslims (particularly wealthy Muslims), but starting in 1982 they expanded to attackin Christian targets as well.

At around the same time as Marwa's death, another "reform" movement (Salafist, but more quietist than the far more violent Maitatsine movement) began. Called Yan Izala, it also drew heavily on the unemployed and destitute, focusing its animosity on the Sufi elite establishment of Nigeria, but it didn't gain nearly the traction that the Maitatsine did, and in the 90's both movements faded.

In 2002, Mohammed Yusuf, a former student of the spiritual leader of the Yan Izala movement, founded Boko Haram. Initially also nonviolent, Yusuf preached against both the Westernized schools of Nigeria, and the Salafist but still modernist schools of Yan Izala, and he recruited the membership of his group from the same poverty-stricken and dispossessed urban population that formed the core of the earlier Maitatsine and Yan Izala movements. The group espoused a redistributionist ideology, preaching that the economic order of Nigeria should be destroyed and rebuilt to favor the poor, and that the wealthy are more sinful than the wretched. In 2004, Yusuf and his followers left the cities of Northern Nigeria to found their own settlement, which they called "Afghanistan", in imitation of Muhammad's hijra. This attempt to cut themselves off from the rest of Nigerian society did not last, since a raid by the Nigerian military on "Afghanistan" later that year killed 27 Boko Haram members and resulted in the dismantling of the settlement.

There was no further real violence until 2009, when violence between the Nigerian authorities and Boko Haram members was rekindled by (of all things) the refusal of Boko Haram members to follow a new set of motorcycle laws mandating the wearing of helmets and banning riding at night. Clashes at police checkpoints set up to enforce the new laws spread into tit-for-tat violence, and Yusuf was captured by the Nigerian police and executed without trial. This is generally seen as the turning point in transforming Boko Haram from an isolationist Salafist movement into a violent terror group under Yusuf's successor, Abubakar Shekau.

Yeah, Europeans mistreated the Jews, locked them up in ghettos and conducted pogroms and genocides (plural), which is why, decades and centuries later, they started terrorizing British occupation forces in Palestine. This is exactly the same as Muslims attacking European civilians, because they sometimes look at them with suspicion.

For one thing, it's only been in the last hundred years or so that the modern tactics and techniques of terrorism has been possible. For another, there have always been Jewish resistance and underground movements, especially during the Nazi years, carrying out bomb attacks on troop trains and arson attacks on cinemas.

You constantly demand to be shown examples of things, and the instant you are, you move the goalposts.

True. But if Islam was a benign random variable, you'd see the disaffected youth conducing terrorist attacks in the name of a lot of different things, with Islam being a factor in only very few of them.

Except we do. You just find ways to handwave away every example of it.