Extremist Islam: the cause?

[CapelDodger]

Trite and inaccurate, IMO. The Catholic community endured fifty years of a sectarian state in Northern Ireland, yet the IRA remained marginalised. A campaign initiated in the 1950s was abandoned in 1962, lack of popular support being cited as the main cause. Throughout the Troubles most Catholics continued to support constitutional politicians rather than terrorists, not to mention the fact that the RC Church has always denounced terrorism.

The border campaign was indeed abandoned by the IRA, as was violence and sectarionism generally, because it could gain no headway in a stable Catholic community. That community was discriminated against, and the "lynching" of Taigs was a regular phaenomenon, but things weren't getting worse . The general increase of prosperity in the 50's and 60's did spread to the Catholic community of NI, and they were in many ways better off than in the South. They could buy condoms, for instance. The Civil Rights movement was political and optimistic, but the Protestant response was violent. Murderously so. The Army was sent in initially to protect the Catholic community. That aim was subverted from both sides - polarisation - and from that point the Provisional IRA became the rallying point of Catholic self-defence.

The perogative to wage war on behalf of the Irish people is the sole preserve of the Irish defense forces. The IRA campaign, lacking as it did popular, moral or legal legitimacy, could not be described as a conventional "war".

You are hanging your case on a dispensation from the 1920's. When people are coming up your street petrol-bombing the houses and the police effort involves telling people they have three minutes to get out because their house is about to get petrol-bombed by those guys back there, the Irish Army wasn't actually present. The creation of the Irish Free State was just one incident in a long history and is not sanctified in any way.

The Catholic voters of NI did support the SDLP, but the Catholic insurgency could have been stopped at any time if that was what the community wanted. (You must be aware of how scary Celtic mothers are, and they would have stopped all that nonsense.) They didn't do it. The same could be said of the Protestant side. UK involvement was a complication, not the driving force of the conflict. That was a local issue, and a conventional war over resources.

 

[Elind]

Does anybody have any comments about how the violence in Northern Ireland compared with the current round of Islamic violence?

I keep wondering whether our cultural biases make violence in Islam seem different than violence in our own culture when in fact the causes and nature of the violence are very similar.

Irrelevant trivia questions:
What US city had the highest per capita murder rate in the US in 2003 (and for the eight preceeding years)?

In 2003 were there more murders in Chicago or New York city?

I hate to offer any words that might seem to be kind to the IRA and their counterparts on the other side, but with a few exceptions they did not deliberately try to cause as many civilian casualties as possible, and even offered advance warnings in many cases, as does the ETA from time to time.

Have you ever detected any such hesitations, not to mention scale of efforts to kill, from the Islamists? While the Troubles had religious roots, I never heard an Irishman talk of going to heaven and be rewarded (with perversions) based on how many of his own he could kill.

You should read a few more newspapers, or posts here, if you just think that is just a subjective difference.

 

[davefoc]

The answers to the irrelevant trivia questions"

1. Gary, Indiana as of 2003 had the highest murder rate in the the US for cities with over 100,000 people. The rate was about 62 people per 100,000.

2. Despite the fact that New York (7.3 murders per 100,000 in 2002) has over twice as many people than Chicago (22.2 murders per 100,000 in 2002) there are still more murders in Chicago most years.

One other little statistic: Honolulu has the lowest murder rate in the US for a city of over 500,000 people. The Honolulu murder rate is about 2 per 100,000 people. So one is about 1/30 as likely to be murdered in Honolulu than Gary, Indiana.

I started looking at these statistics because it seems like one of the points of this thread is to try to understand the nature and cause of Islamic violence. I wondered how successful we could be at that if we couldn't explain the vastly different rates of violence in various cultures that we are closer to than Islamic ones.

 

[Ziggurat]

Does anybody have any comments about how the violence in Northern Ireland compared with the current round of Islamic violence?

I keep wondering whether our cultural biases make violence in Islam seem different than violence in our own culture when in fact the causes and nature of the violence are very similar.

There are similarities, but there are also a number of differences that make the two in very different classes. As has been pointed out, though they are ruthless killers, criminals, and thugs, there is a threshold of violence that the IRA has been unwilling to cross. You can attribute that to whatever you like: a limit to their own hatred, a recognition that it would lose them support, a fear of massive retribution, whatever. But the central point is, they exercised a degree of self-restraint to their violence. Islamic terrorists have done no such thing. Not only have they engaged in massive massacres of civilians, they want to do so on even larger scales. There is NO limit whatsoever to the violence they are willing to engage in. The ONLY limit is their ability. This frightening reality makes them a threat very different indeed from the IRA, or from ordinary violent crime. This is not cultural bias, it is the harsh reality we face. Denying it isn't cultural sensitivity, it is willful ignorance, and it can get people killed.

 

[demon]

Ziggurat:
" Islamic terrorists have done no such thing. Not only have they engaged in massive massacres of civilians..."

Ziggurat, would you accept or deny that the USA, UK, Israel, Russia, France etc have all been involved in "massive massacres of civilians"?

 

[Mycroft]

Ziggurat:
" Islamic terrorists have done no such thing. Not only have they engaged in massive massacres of civilians..."

Ziggurat, would you accept or deny that the USA, UK, Israel, Russia, France etc have all been involved in "massive massacres of civilians"?

Are you implying that if the USA, US, Israel, Russia, France etc can be demonstrated to have done it, that we should be unconcerned when Islamic terrorists do it?

 

[demon]

Mycroft:
"Are you implying that if the USA, US, Israel, Russia, France etc can be demonstrated to have done it, that we should be unconcerned when Islamic terrorists do it?"

No.
I took Ziggurat to mean that "massive masacres of civilians" was some sort of species specific behaviour (if you will), of Islamic terrorists. I wanted to make the point that this isn`t so, if indeed that is what he was suggesting.

 

[Ziggurat]

Ziggurat, would you accept or deny that the USA, UK, Israel, Russia, France etc have all been involved in "massive massacres of civilians"?

I was not comparing states and terrorist organizations, I was comparing different terrorist organizations. And you rather missed the most crucial bit, that part about restraint. Even the USSR, which did not balk at killing millions of its own and which I consider to be one of the most evil institutions in human history, knew how to act with restraint. If for no other reason than self-preservation in the face of nuclear annihilation, they did not exercise their capacity for violence to the fullest. Islamic terrorists have never excercised such restraint. They do, therefore, pose a unique threat to the west and to human civilization in general. Civilization does not depend upon the absence of violence (we've never had that for long), but it does depend upon restraint in the use of violence.

Edit: now I see your misunderstanding. You thought a secondary point was my main point. It was not.

 

[Mycroft]

Mycroft:
"Are you implying that if the USA, US, Israel, Russia, France etc can be demonstrated to have done it, that we should be unconcerned when Islamic terrorists do it?"

No.
I took Ziggurat to mean that "massive masacres of civilians" was some sort of species specific behavoiur (if you will), of Islamic terrorists. I wanted to make the point that this isn`t so, if indeed that is what he was suggesting.

I believe he was comparing the terrorists of one people to the terrorists of another people. The Irish terrorists showed some restraint, the Islamist terrorists do not.

 

[CapelDodger]

The PIRA campaign was much more politically sophisticated than Islamic extremism is today. It was war as a political tool. Islamism is directed more towards bringing down current political structures on the assumption that they will be the builders of new ones.

There was a short period when PIRA came under the sway of "The Crazies", which led to the Birmingham Bombs and an attack in Belfast when two bombs were placed so as to herd people right onto another one. Those had an appalling effect on British public opinion (unsurprisingly) which had previously been quite sympathetic to the Catholic plight. (That's what having Ian Paisley on the other side does for you.) The Crazies were quickly overthrown by the politicals (such as Gerry Adams), some of them becaming involved in the INLA, which was always a nest of maniacs. (I met a couple in the 70's. Completely barking. Lecturing me on revolutionary socialism. I ask you.)

 

[demon]

Ziggurat:
"I was not comparing states and terrorist organizations"

Fair enough, but I believe in state terrorism so the distinction doesn`t impress me too much.
As for Russia, I had more recent history in mind...Chechnya for example.

 

[Elind]

I started looking at these statistics because it seems like one of the points of this thread is to try to understand the nature and cause of Islamic violence. I wondered how successful we could be at that if we couldn't explain the vastly different rates of violence in various cultures that we are closer to than Islamic ones.

I think your answer is the simple one. Namely that there are cultural factors involved (whether predominantly religious or not). I think that you can explain our closer to home differences when you start to list what they are; between Chicago and Hawaii, for example.

While some cultures are perhaps not intrinsically more prone to violence (when I lived in the M.E. 25 or so years ago, in areas not at war, I would have described it as one of the safest places I had lived in), but some cultures may be more easily swayed to justify violence on a group level. I suggest that is what we see with Islamic dominated societies. Our dropouts sell drugs and don't care if they die, their dropouts get religion and hope to die.

 

[CapelDodger]

...
2. Despite the fact that New York (7.3 murders per 100,000 in 2002) has over twice as many people than Chicago (22.2 murders per 100,000 in 2002) there are still more murders in Chicago most years.

One other little statistic: Honolulu has the lowest murder rate in the US for a city of over 500,000 people. The Honolulu murder rate is about 2 per 100,000 people. So one is about 1/30 as likely to be murdered in Honolulu than Gary, Indiana.

I started looking at these statistics because it seems like one of the points of this thread is to try to understand the nature and cause of Islamic violence. I wondered how successful we could be at that if we couldn't explain the vastly different rates of violence in various cultures that we are closer to than Islamic ones.

Chicago and New York have very different economies. Chicago is famous for stock-yards and abattoirs, which may mean something. Or maybe that's just the vegetarian in me speaking.

Hawai has a long-standing indigenous culture, which can't really be said for Chicago or New York. New York absorbs wealth whereas cities like Chicago create and export it. That makes living generally less of a struggle in New York. (I realise New York is expensive, but that's because it can afford to be.) I get the impression that New York's population is better established (in its various communities) than Chicago's, which has absorbed more of the recent southern and rural emigrants than New York. That presumably means that Chicago's culture is in more of a state of flux, which implies more conflict.

I think violent behaviour is more prevalent in fractured or disturbed societies than in established ones, even when there are equal injustices and disparities. The societies that are creating Islamist violence are the Arab ones, North Africa, Afghanistan and Pakistan, Indonesia, Central Asia and the Caucasus. OK, that covers most of the Islamic world, but Turkey is relatively harmless despite being an observant Muslim society. There are many reasons for that, but an important one, IMO, is that Turkey has never lost its independence. It lost an empire and became a country, but it was never occupied or administered by an outside power. Iran and Shi'ite Islam generally are also mostly harmless, and Iran has experienced a relatively brief period of foreign domination. Egypt is a tad more problematic but still nothing like Saudi Arabia. Egypt, Iran and Turkey have long histories whereas places like "Syria", "Iraq", "Saudi Arabia", "Pakistan" and all the other European constructs don't. I think that has a lot to do with cultural resentment levels and self-esteem issues, which I regard as crucial.

 

[CapelDodger]

Arab history, for Arabs, starts with Islam. There's a wilful ignorance of earlier Arab history, which wasn't world-shaking but is still respectable. The urbanised Yemen is the star of that story, rather than the bedouin (long-time desert pikeys to their civilised neighbours) who produced Islam. Islam has created an identity between itself and Arabism by deliberately quashing that history. Even somewhere as magnificent as Petra is treated as irrelevant because it pre-dates Islam. I think this is an important point since it links Arab nationalist/ethnic feeling directly with religious feeling. A very, very dangerous combination. Just look at Palestine for confirmation of that.

Iraq's interest in its pre-Islamic (pre-Turkish, pre-European) Mesopotamian history was introduced by the anti-Islamic Ba'athists, quite deliberately. If the Islamists triumph there we can be sure that the elimination of every trace of that will be a priority. Its protection should be - and should have been from the start - a priority of the recent invaders. I suspect that's too subtle a point to have been noticed in Washington. Or Downing Street.

 

[epepke]

Arab history, for Arabs, starts with Islam. There's a wilful ignorance of earlier Arab history, which wasn't world-shaking but is still respectable.

I have to disagree with that. I've seen a lot of websites insisting that various lands be "brought back to Islam" in spite of the fact that Arab hegemony in those lands predates Islam.

 

[CapelDodger]

I have to disagree with that. I've seen a lot of websites insisting that various lands be "brought back to Islam" in spite of the fact that Arab hegemony in those lands predates Islam.

Which are those? I'm aware of no "Arab hegemony" that pre-dates Islam. When the Arabs carried Islam from the Peninsula they did so into the Persian and Byzantine Empires. That whole region from the Eastern Med to the North-West Frontier had been dominated since domination began by variations on three power-bases : Egypt, Anatolia and the Iranian Plateau. The Arabs weren't in it. The Peninsula cannot support the necessary population to compete.

The Arabs were only able to expand because the Byzantine and Persian empires had fought each other to a standstill. And their day in the sun was a short one; within a hundred years it was Turks who were calling the tune, and the Turks only became a feature when they exploited the Persian collapse, just as the Arabs were doing. The Persian culture compensated for military inferiority by intellectual superiority. The Arabs went back to being of no particlar account. If it wasn't for the sheer accident of oil, they still would be.

 

[Shane Costello]

Originally posted by Capel Dodger:
The border campaign was indeed abandoned by the IRA, as was violence and sectarionism generally, because it could gain no headway in a stable Catholic community.

So much for the Catholic community wanting it's young men to go out to war, then.

That community was discriminated against, and the "lynching" of Taigs was a regular phaenomenon, but things weren't getting worse . The general increase of prosperity in the 50's and 60's did spread to the Catholic community of NI, and they were in many ways better off than in the South. They could buy condoms, for instance. The Civil Rights movement was political and optimistic, but the Protestant response was violent.

Ditto. BTW considering that Northern Catholics of the time were as pious as their Southern co-religionists, I doubt very many of them would have perceived the availability of rubbers to be a sign of progress.

You are hanging your case on a dispensation from the 1920's. When people are coming up your street petrol-bombing the houses and the police effort involves telling people they have three minutes to get out because their house is about to get petrol-bombed by those guys back there, the Irish Army wasn't actually present. The creation of the Irish Free State was just one incident in a long history and is not sanctified in any way.

Do you write for An Phoblacht?

The notion of the PIRA as some sort of Arthurian band of white knights doesn't bear up to serious scrutiny. One wonders why they devoted resources to murdering civilians in Britain when time and effort could have been devoted to protecting their own community from Loyalist attack. Crunching numbers also gives lie to the myth. The IRA murdered more Catholics than the Northern Security forces or British Army combined. Considerations of space limit us to the consideration of one case. With defenders like that.....

The Catholic voters of NI did support the SDLP, but the Catholic insurgency could have been stopped at any time if that was what the community wanted. (You must be aware of how scary Celtic mothers are, and they would have stopped all that nonsense.)

As for the IRA being sensitive to public opinion, well words almost fail me. For one thing the IRA campaign was not an insurgency, lacking as it did the majority support of the Catholic community. As well as lacking a factual basis your peculiar notion suggests that Irish Catholics were unmoved by mass murder commited in their names. Anti-Irish bigots everywhere are nodding in agreement. Nor were the IRA passing bricks at the notion of Celtic mothers getting a bit pissed off. You must be as aware as I am that they murdered enough of them.

The PIRA campaign was much more politically sophisticated than Islamic extremism is today. It was war as a political tool. Islamism is directed more towards bringing down current political structures on the assumption that they will be the builders of new ones.

More pie in the sky. The IRA wants to end British jurisdiction on the island of Ireland and create a 32-county socialist republic. If this isn't an attempt to bring down a current political structure and create a new one then I don't know what is. Neither do they consider the government or constitution of the Republic to have any legitimacy. I believe some of these fine upstanding individuals have been moved to comment that the real war will begin as soon as the Brits depart.

There was a short period when PIRA came under the sway of "The Crazies", which led to the Birmingham Bombs and an attack in Belfast when two bombs were placed so as to herd people right onto another one. Those had an appalling effect on British public opinion (unsurprisingly) which had previously been quite sympathetic to the Catholic plight. (That's what having Ian Paisley on the other side does for you.) The Crazies were quickly overthrown by the politicals (such as Gerry Adams), some of them becaming involved in the INLA, which was always a nest of maniacs. (I met a couple in the 70's. Completely barking. Lecturing me on revolutionary socialism. I ask you.)

It took Grizzly until 1983 to become president of Sinn Fein, almost a decade after the Birmingham atrocity. I hope that people in Enniskillen and Warrington gain some comfort from the notion that their loved ones were vapourised by sensible, rational people, as opposed to the nutjobs who thought that bombing pubs in Birmingham and Guildford would make Catholics in Belfast sleep easier at night.

Originally posted by Elind:
There are similarities, but there are also a number of differences that make the two in very different classes. As has been pointed out, though they are ruthless killers, criminals, and thugs, there is a threshold of violence that the IRA has been unwilling to cross. You can attribute that to whatever you like: a limit to their own hatred, a recognition that it would lose them support, a fear of massive retribution, whatever. But the central point is, they exercised a degree of self-restraint to their violence. Islamic terrorists have done no such thing. Not only have they engaged in massive massacres of civilians, they want to do so on even larger scales. There is NO limit whatsoever to the violence they are willing to engage in. The ONLY limit is their ability. This frightening reality makes them a threat very different indeed from the IRA, or from ordinary violent crime. This is not cultural bias, it is the harsh reality we face. Denying it isn't cultural sensitivity, it is willful ignorance, and it can get people killed.

Let's think about this for a minute.

The IRA have shown no compunction in targeting civilians. While Capel Dodger seems to think that the IRA was in the hands of sensible people from the mid 70's onwards, it's a fact that the IRA specifically targeted civilians in Northern Ireland and Britain throughout the 1980s and 90s. A commemoration ceremony in Enniskillen was targetted in 1987. Eleven people lost their lives. Targetting of civilians in the UK continued into the '90s. Likewise loyalists planted bombs south of the border in 1974. The Shankill Butchers (led with gruesome irony by a scumbag called Murphy) murdered people for the sole reason of being Catholics. Personally I can't reconcile any of these actions with basic human decency, never mind restraint. The reality that people in this part of the world faced was just as frightening as the one you perceive to come from islamofascism.

 

[Elind]

Let's think about this for a minute.

The IRA have shown no compunction in targeting civilians. While Capel Dodger seems to think that the IRA was in the hands of sensible people from the mid 70's onwards, it's a fact that the IRA specifically targeted civilians in Northern Ireland and Britain throughout the 1980s and 90s. A commemoration ceremony in Enniskillen was targetted in 1987. Eleven people lost their lives. Targetting of civilians in the UK continued into the '90s. Likewise loyalists planted bombs south of the border in 1974. The Shankill Butchers (led with gruesome irony by a scumbag called Murphy) murdered people for the sole reason of being Catholics. Personally I can't reconcile any of these actions with basic human decency, never mind restraint. The reality that people in this part of the world faced was just as frightening as the one you perceive to come from islamofascism.

First Id like to point out that that you mislabeled the quote that you respond to here. Those were not my words.

As I stated originally, I make no excuses or attempt to diminish the IRA murderers for what they are, which is essentially thugs.

But I do maintain that Islamists kill from a different perspective, namely in the cause of a god, and that makes them even more degenerate for the simple reason that they see themselves outside all other human endeavors.

The IRA at least pretended to be comparable to other "political" groups, for what that is worth, and in that regard appear to have come to terms with political realities.

I don't think the Islamists ever will; while alive.

 

[zenith-nadir]

The IRA/ETA are not Al Queda or Hamas or even Islamic Jihad. Comparing the two is like comparing apples and oranges.

The IRA would never have tried to kill 3000 people at once, and the Islamist attack on the Madrid rail system far exceeded the number of victims of any ETA attack.

The IRA and ETA were/are interested in limited political objectives and they view violence primarily as a means of pressuring their opponents. Al Queda, Hamas and Islamic Jihad see violence primarily as a starting point which has far broader ambitions. They believe that it is the religious duty of a proper Muslim to undertake jihad against secular Muslim regimes and non-Muslims, (see: Israel). They also believe that jihad must continue until the Caliphate -- Islamic rule -- is established in all places that Muslims live.

Terrorist groups in the Middle East justify their acts through religion in terms of an imperative from God. They want to create a new, modern political structure informed by a strict rereading of the Quran;

Hamas council bans music festival - BBC - Friday, 1 July, 2005

A Hamas-led town council in the West Bank has banned outdoor music and dance performances planned as part of a summertime Palestinian festival.

A Qalqilya council spokesman said it was partly to avoid damaging the grass.

But he also said the council had been elected to protect the conservative values of the city, which included not approving of men and women mixing.

(emphasis mine)...


These folks - Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Al Queda - want their interpretation of the Quran to be the sole basis for all law in society...they see the West spreading it's "corrupt" value system through globalization and to them this western economic and social "imperialism" causes Moslems to stray from the path of "true" Islam. Therefore to these groups any non-muslim is fair game.... if you know what I mean.

That is why these groups are nothing like the ETA or IRA, IMO drawing parallels between the two is a pointless exercise.

 

[demon]

"A Qalqilya council spokesman said it was partly to avoid damaging the grass."

Maybe he got that idea from Tessa Jowell

quote:
Anti-war rally may shift to The Mall
Jamie Wilson and Kevin Maguire
Saturday February 1, 2003
The Guardian

The government is facing the embarrassing prospect of reversing its ban on an anti-war protest at Hyde Park or allowing more than half a million demonstrators to hold a rally outside Buckingham Palace, it emerged yesterday.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport confirmed that the Mall was now the "frontrunner" on a list of alternative venues for the February 15 rally, which was banned from Hyde Park by Tessa Jowell, the culture secretary, because of fears it might damage the grass.