We’ve seen a rash of homegrown Islamist terrorists in recent years, and there has been a lot of agonizing about why. One explanation that I haven’t seen elsewhere still strikes me as plausible: The attraction that adolescents and the disaffected feel toward groups that their parents and teachers fear. If you’re feeling marginalized, after all, why not choose the margin? And while you’re at it, why not choose a marginalized group that inspires fear and unease on the part of mainstream society? At least then you’ll get a kind of respect.
In the past fifty years, adolescents have joined a host of marginalized groups their parents found dangerous – juvenile delinquents, mods and rockers, punks, skinheads, and Goths. So why not jihadis? Islamist terror certainly scares authority figures; why wouldn’t Western adolescents and misfits be attracted to violent Islamism — at least as a symbolic stance?
I’m sure that’s not the only explanation for the appeal of homegrown Islamist extremism to a handful of youngsters in this country. Some of it has to do with ties to a home culture among second generation immigrants. But second-generation adolescents may also be tempted to affiliate with a strong, feared movement tied to their background.
Most of us think that Islamic terror is just too serious to be trivialized into a pose for disaffected Western youth. But we may have underrated the effects of a decade of political correctness and anti-Americanism in popular culture, where the search for transgressive shock value never ends.
Take M.I.A.’s new album
”
For M.I.A., in other words, Islamic terrorism is already a kind of life-style fashion item, a marginalized-and-proud, third-world stance that can be easily worn to parties in Brentwood by a wealthy former British art student. And if it works for M.I.A., why shouldn’t it work for an immigrant kid in New Jersey?
Let’s assume that this is part of the appeal that Islamic extremism holds for Westerners. What does that mean for policymakers? It doesn’t mean that these “Springsteen mujahedin” won’t turn out to be very dangerous. But it might suggest a different approach to the problem of turning them away from terror. Some of them will just plain outgrow their infatuation. Others will turn out to be unreliable fighters, prone to abandon the cause when they get tired or frightened by the risk. And best of all, if the tight-jean mujahedin lose their power to shock, they’re likely to go the way of the mods and the rockers. So maybe we should be looking for ways to speed that process by making all these Western jihadis look, well, silly and unfashionable.
Mockery may turn out to be the key to breaking the movement. That’s what finally destroyed the mystique of the KKK. (Steven Levitt tells the story in Freakonomics
Maybe it can happen to Al Qaeda too.
UPDATE: Correction thanks to a commenter.
reader says:
> The attraction that adolescents and the disaffected feel toward groups that their parents and teachers fear.
The optimistic take, then, is that today’s suburban teenagers will all become Republicans.
July 24, 2010, 5:16 pmtroll_dc2 says:
Nowhere in this essay do I see any reference to religious conversion and tendency of new converts to embrace an extreme form of the newly acquired faith. But in this Washington Post article one reads:
I doubt whether your proffered explanation covers this person.
July 24, 2010, 5:28 pmFub says:
Maybe because, as Emma Goldstein was reputed to have said, “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.”
July 24, 2010, 5:33 pmSeattle Law Student says:
Reader – I would hardly characterize that as optimistic
July 24, 2010, 5:37 pmFub says:
Emma Goldman, that is.
July 24, 2010, 5:37 pmAdam Wilhite says:
Very interesting insights. Also, I hadn’t heard that story about the KKK.
July 24, 2010, 6:18 pmGopher Law says:
A very interesting consideration. I have to wonder though, could trying to mock adolescents away from jihad actually drive them closer to it? When I think of the stereotypical “disaffected youth” I, among other things, think of the kid who is picked on too much in school.
July 24, 2010, 6:19 pmStewart Baker says:
Actually, I think it covers him precisely. A “quiet and awkward” loser finds a way to be outspoken and to justify his marginalized status by embracing extreme outsider status. And of course he goes to the far end of the pool; that’s how he proves to himself that he really means it.
July 24, 2010, 6:21 pmCan't find a good name says:
To be precise, Stetson Kennedy leaked his information about the KKK to the writers of “The Adventures of Superman” radio series, not the comic book.
July 24, 2010, 6:22 pmStewart Baker says:
Bwahahaha! You’ve penetrated my dastardly plan to replace mere suburban jihad with something that is truly The Other. And not just any Republicans … Palinistas!
July 24, 2010, 6:24 pmEventually someone says:
It’s not just the past fifty years. I can think of one youth movement in particular from eighty years ago whose fashion sense is a clear influence on the emo today.
July 24, 2010, 6:27 pmStewart Baker says:
Can’t find a good name says:
‘To be precise, Stetson Kennedy leaked his information about the KKK to the writers of “The Adventures of Superman” radio series, not the comic book.”
I stand corrected. This is why I leave comments open. Though if incivility gets too high, I’ll move comments over to http://www.skatingonstilts.com and watch them more closely.
July 24, 2010, 6:27 pmSkyler says:
Ridicule might work but an even more effective solution is hearts and minds: two in the heart and one in the mind as Marine marksmanship instructors have been known to say.
July 24, 2010, 6:51 pmKevin R.C. O'Brien says:
Indeed, Nazis have been for decades figures of comedy — even before they did their worst, Charlie Chaplin and the Three Stooges were making mock of them for up- and downscale audiences respectively. Before he taught all our kids to read, Dr Seuss made political cartoons mocking the Nazis. And has everyone seen The Blues Brothers? So one reason very, very few “rebellious” teens today embrace Naziism is that they’ve internalized an image of it as pathetic, stupid and — above all — not cool. Kids want to be Hogan, not Klink or Borkhalter.
When was a Klansman last depicted as a truly terrifying figure in popular culture? He’s more likely to be a stupid, weak bully who folds before quiet determination.
But the arbiters of popular culture will not depict jihadis at all, least of all to mock them. They’re more likely to turn their terrorists into Eurotrash neo-nazis (something I never encountered in years of living in Europe — must have gone to the wrong bars). They’re too afraid of the real ones to laugh at stage ones.
There’s a British movie about four inept would-be jihadis, but I don’t think it has any distribution in the USA. Or any hope for same, I think, but that’s not my industry, al hamdulillah.
July 24, 2010, 6:53 pmSkyler says:
That is, jihad is not a joke. The Klan may have reduced itself to marching and petty vandalism, but jihadists have not done so yet. The Klansman might have been embarrassed over being in a super hero comic, but jihadists still go out and kill people and dismember children in front of parents. I’m sickened by your analogy.
July 24, 2010, 6:56 pmTGGP says:
I think that part of Freakonomics was later found to be inaccurate.
M.I.A is better known for supporting the Tamil Tigers, but they’ve been crushed now.
To me, the real question is why we keep letting in people from terrorist-producing countries. It’s not like we can’t do without them, and there are plenty of, say, Chinese who would be happy to take their place.
July 24, 2010, 6:58 pmThomas J. Webb says:
All I’m hearing is “get off my lawn, you whipper-snappers”
Of course MIA mostly identifies with her actual identity – a Tamil, not a Muslim. Maybe people listen to her in part because they identify with being marginalized. So what? There’s a cost to society when it fails to be a hospitable place for young creatives. And – news flash – American Blacks have been finding a place in Islam for the very reason that they have been marginalized for almost a century now. I could see a teenager not too much unlike me as a teenager embracing Arabic imagery and clothing, if not the religion itself (like how the lead singer of Laibach wore a turban in a recent music video – more for shock/humor but just the same…)
July 24, 2010, 7:00 pmbill says:
July 24, 2010, 7:13 pmSFC B says:
Wasn’t the “inaccuracy” that Stetson Kennedy embellished his personal role in it, not that the story itself was wrong. That Kennedy took credit for things someone who was working for him did, doesn’t change the point Freakonomics was making IRT the KKK.
July 24, 2010, 7:17 pmAlanDownunder says:
Interesting suggestion, ridicule, but why not just refrain from marginalizing? Simpler. More direct. Nicer too.
July 24, 2010, 9:03 pmLarryA says:
Science fiction author Dean Ing wrote Soft Targets about “international terrorism in the too-near future.” In the main plot the hero, just as suggested here, holds the terrorists up to ridicule. © 1979.
I also note that today’s real terrorists get really pissed at cartoons.
July 24, 2010, 9:25 pmCornellian says:
For M.I.A., in other words, Islamic terrorism is already a kind of life-style fashion item, a marginalized-and-proud, third-world stance that can be easily worn to parties in Brentwood by a wealthy former British art student.
I assume you mean a British former art student, and didn’t intend to say that the student used to be British but somehow is no longer British.
July 24, 2010, 9:38 pmAJK says:
I think you’re getting the causality backwards (and thereby missing the point). We didn’t start joking about the Klan because they had already become laughable: they became laughable because we started joking about them. The Great Dictator came out in 1940.
July 24, 2010, 9:56 pmDG says:
I’m not sure ridicule is going to work on this. The KKK was a secret society. Most secret society/mystery cults look pretty silly in the plain light of day, or can be made to look as such, almost effortlessly. The hard part is digging out the secrets, which gets a lot easier as the organization gets larger and older (more time to get disaffected). Extreme Islam is almost the opposite of a secret society. While people don’t know who is an islamic extremist, the beliefs involved are not only well known, the organizers and officers of the organizations are quite up front about those beliefs, as well as all of the rituals associated with the group. They have taken great pains to propagate that information in as many public forums as possible, including, recently, a print magazine.
Think of this more like Nazi Party in the early 1930s than the KKK – the ideology was quite public, if held by a small minority. It was held up to ridicule by educated people, but those educated people weren’t really the target, and the true targets didn’t care.
I think that very few American 2nd generation Muslim youth will get mixed up in this – we do too good of a job of assimilation. Western Europe does a much worse job, and they will pay the price.
July 24, 2010, 10:37 pmPJens says:
why wouldn’t Western adolescents and misfits be attracted to violent Islamism — at least as a symbolic stance?
I would answer this question by saying that Islam does not allow alcohol or drugs and tolerates no sex out of wedlock. Western adolescents want to rebel and do things to make themselves feel good. Very few would willingly choose something that further limits their options to do so.
July 24, 2010, 11:15 pmStrict says:
“For M.I.A., in other words, Islamic terrorism is already a kind of life-style fashion item, a marginalized-and-proud, third-world stance that can be easily worn to parties in Brentwood by a wealthy former British art student.”
What? I don’t see how a bunch of random rhyming words [jeans/springstein/mujahideen/mangosteen] is in any way a “stance” or an expression of “pride” in support of Islamic terrorism. I don’t think she was trying to make jihad sound “fashionable”, or promote mangosteen in any way.
July 24, 2010, 11:29 pmRandy says:
PJ: “I would answer this question by saying that Islam does not allow alcohol or drugs and tolerates no sex out of wedlock. Western adolescents want to rebel and do things to make themselves feel good. Very few would willingly choose something that further limits their options to do so.”
Perhaps for most, but certainly not all. There are western adolescents who ‘rebel’ by joining extreme religions and cults that prohibit those very things. It gives them a sense of superiority over those who indulge in sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll, and they loudly proclaim how morally superior they are. (I know several just like that). It helps if there is a cause or belief that demands it, and then they can feel ‘called’ to the cause.
And it hardly needs to be an extreme religion. Catholics require their priests to eschew all forms of sex, and mormons require you to give up all alcohol and caffeine, and yet some western young’uns willingly embrace that.
July 25, 2010, 12:04 amSkyler says:
I am not missing the point. I don’t agree with the point and the imagined power of ridicule. As I recall, the Nazis were still pretty potent until about halfway through 1945. The ridicule of the Klan became effective only because the Klan was no longer attracting stronger people. It’s almost a chicken and egg thing.
We will not end the jihad through ridicule. Killing it’s adherents is the only known solution.
July 25, 2010, 12:52 amKevin says:
And normal schools. Teen “Rebels” at my alma mater now have to be called “Mavericks” on account of the Confederacy, all of a sudden on account of a national wave of Mascotitis and guilt expiation.
HS Hormonal Hotheads would’ve been better, imo. More post-PC.
July 25, 2010, 12:59 amMason says:
And normal schools. Teen “Rebels” at my alma mater now have to be called “Mavericks” on account of the Confederacy, all of a sudden on account of a national wave of Mascotitis and guilt expiation.
HS Hormonal Hotheads would’ve been better, imo. More post-PC and alliterative.
July 25, 2010, 1:01 amStrict says:
I know young western Mormons who don’t consume alcohol or caffeine. But it’s not rebellion [they were raised that way by parents who also don't consume alcohol], and it’s not about feeling superior, it’s just about living life the way they’re raised. That’s fine.
Also, embracing the ascetic practices of Islam [no pork, no booze, no premarital sex, salah prayer exercises, etc] is not at all the same as embracing terrorist jihad. I don’t see either catching on in America, though. That’s fine too.
July 25, 2010, 1:04 amStrict says:
Skyler: “Killing it’s adherents is the only known solution.”
Care to give any examples of this solution?
There must be some root causes of jihad. Otherwise, what explains the fact that some people become mujahideen while others from the same community do not?
It’s true that killing an individual mujahid is a known solution to the problem of that individual waging jihad, but it’s not true that it solves the problem of jihad. That is, even if you today had a way to instantaneously and simultaneously zap dead every individual mujahid, jihad might not be solved. It could rise again. A non-mujahid person who is angry about the zapping might become mujahid, for example…
July 25, 2010, 1:16 amSkyler says:
The nazis were not stopped until a very large percentage of them were dead. Hitler retained power over his people until he killed himself, and even then his true-believer followers were reluctant to quit the struggle.
If there were a way to instantaneously kill every jihadist in the world simultaneously, the problem would be solved. And their neighbors would be much happier too, because they generally like to keep their children’s limbs intact.
The ones that are unhappy about the killing of the jihadists are themselves jihadists, even if they don’t actively participate.
We need not kill every single one. There comes a point where enough are killed or otherwise neutralized that the remaining ones could be mocked. We are nowhere close to reaching that point yet. Until Dutch cartoonists are safe, there is no chance that mockery will be effective.
July 25, 2010, 1:30 amStrict says:
“The nazis were not stopped until a very large percentage of them were dead.”
1. Nazis aren’t the same thing as jihadist. You said there’s a known solution to jihad. I asked for an example and you gave me Nazi. At that time, Nazis were a rather distinct group with a central location and a central leadership. It was a unified political organization. That’s nothing like modern jihad.
2. Denazification was not a matter of killing them all. The solution to Nazism was a thorough occupation of its seat of power and a systematic dismantling of its networks, organizations, and apparati, as well as massive re-education and propaganda efforts.
3. The problems of extreme nationalism, anti-Semitism, and militarism have not been solved.
4. Heck, the problem of Nazism hasn’t even been solved. Europe still has hundreds of thousands [perhaps over a million??] Nazis.
July 25, 2010, 2:03 amStrict says:
Skyler: “If there were a way to instantaneously kill every jihadist in the world simultaneously, the problem would be solved.”
Would it be solved for all time, or merely for that moment in time? You seem to claim that jihad is just about people, and not about ideas which can survive after the people are dead and gone. Once you admit that there is a power in ideas, then surely there are solutions that also involve ideas and not just killing.
July 25, 2010, 2:06 amPeter Shalen says:
Well at least it was funny, which your reply was not.
July 25, 2010, 2:47 amreshuffle1 says:
Fear not. The jihad eschews the w/o/w indulgence.
July 25, 2010, 7:08 amSkyler says:
I’m not saying it is possible, strict, but if you “could” end every brain that contains an idea, then you will have effectively ended the potency of the idea. It was your ridiculous assertion, not mine.
I don’t think we could have occupied the Nazi seat of power without killing a lot of Nazis.
Jihadists have a religious fervor that is immune from logic, decency, or moderation. Ridicule does not work. We have seen that they respond to ridicule by killing cartoonists. They are too busy terrorizing people to bother wondering what others think of them. In fact their entire raison d’être is to control how others think, not to respond to how others think of them. To them, resistance to them is more evidence that they are right in their methods.
People who eviscerate children in front of their parents so that the neighborhood will obey them not only will not be corrected by any method except death, they deserve no other fate as well.
You can laugh at them all you want. They’ll only want to kill you even more.
July 25, 2010, 9:19 amAriel says:
FWIW, there’s a known and underreported very thick connection between Nazis and jihadis. The main people behind the Muslim Brotherhood, Qutb, al Banna, and Ramadan, all had connections with the Nazis. Al Husseini also had connections with the Nazis – the Mufti of Jerusalem, and uncle of the one true lead of the Palestinian people (or whatever he’s called now). So while there are some important differences – the jihadis have not overtly taken over a country – there are also important similarities, particularly w/r/t ideology. Much of what is objectionable about jihad was engrafted onto it in the last century.
July 25, 2010, 9:25 amSarcastro says:
[Death is easy - everyone dies if you wait long enough. What I believe Strict is saying is that death is not enough, ya gotta prevent more jihadis from arising. That takes some change in society that indiscriminate killing won't accomplish.
Furthermore, wanton killings of the bad guys, while satisfying, might prove counterproductive to that second, greater goal.]
July 25, 2010, 10:21 amBill Quick says:
Well, maybe because jihadis – violent religious warriors, at least – bear about as much resemblance to the other fads as vampire bats do to vanilla ice cream.
Mods, rockers, punks, and goths (and to some extent skinheads) were all essentially fashion statements based on various schools of rock music, and all emphasized individual liberty for youthful lifestyles that “shocked” their elders mostly based on physical appearance.
About as far from the robotic, suicidal, fatalistic “submission” of Islamic jihad as one can get.
If Mr. Baker would like to compare apples to apples, I suggest he take a look at the comparison between Islamic Jihad and the radical stalwarts of the New Left in the Sixties. He could start with Obama pals Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn, and the Weather Underground. Those folks believed in, submitted to, and practiced the precepts of a violent religion: communism. And it should surprise no one that communism and Islamic jihad regard each other as deadly enemies.
July 25, 2010, 11:34 ambill says:
Yes, but one has to do an actual analysis of the costs and benefits of killing jihadists rather than simply ranting about how they are evil and should all be killed. Perhaps that is the case, but one must be mindful that you cannot go around killing people and expect their to be no negative effects or consequences. The Nazi comparison is unbelievably off, as what jihadists have done doesn’t even come close what the Nazis did. To give a generous estimate, jihadists have been responsible for several hundred thousand deaths (I’m counting indirect deaths; the actual number killed by terrorism is not all that high); the Nazis started a war that led to the deaths of 55 million and outright murdered around 12-17 million people. Is there not a difference between the two?
The connections between those organizations and the Nazis arose for an obvious reason: Germany was interested in supporting any and all subversive movements in British colonies, to weaken the British Empire. I suppose the Indian nationalists who got support from Germany were closet Nazis as well?
July 25, 2010, 11:38 amSkyler says:
I never meant to equate Nazis to fanatical Muslim terrorists. They were the counter example offered to me and I was only demonstrating the falsity of their counter example.
July 25, 2010, 11:49 amDaily Pundit » Stewart Baker Jumps the Shark says:
[...] The Volokh Conspiracy » Will jihad jump the shark? In the past fifty years, adolescents have joined a host of marginalized groups their parents found dangerous – juvenile delinquents, mods and rockers, punks, skinheads, and Goths. So why not jihadis? Islamist terror certainly scares authority figures; why wouldn’t Western adolescents and misfits be attracted to violent Islamism — at least as a symbolic stance? [...]
July 25, 2010, 11:55 ambill says:
No, you were the one who introduced Nazis to the debate by saying that the defeat of Nazism required the death of a very large percentage of Nazis. If you didn’t mean to compare them to jihadists you shouldn’t have brought them up at all.
July 25, 2010, 11:55 amAriel says:
You can actually look at pre-Nazi-interaction jihad ideology and compare it with post-Nazi-interaction jihad ideology and see how it closely interdigitated with Nazi ideology and then imported Nazi ideology into jihad ideology. I don’t know enough about Indian nationalism to know if that’s also the case there, but I suspect that it is not.
I did not say that the jihadis were closet Nazis. They were out of the closet. This is part of what I mean by underreported. There’s a big fat connection between the two, both in terms of ideology and actual cooperation.
July 25, 2010, 12:01 pmSkyler says:
No, Bill. I was responding to the comparison to Nazis, that the Nazis were defeated through the use of ridicule — which is a ridiculous assertion. Someone had said that the Nazis were ridiculed in 1940 by Charlie Chaplin, with the implication that Chaplin’s movie was responsible for the defeat of the Nazis. I pointed out that the Nazis were defeated by killing a lot of them, just as jihadist will only be defeated by killing a lot of them as well. That is as far as the comparison can go. There is very little else in common with the Nazis beyond a tendency for murder.
July 25, 2010, 12:04 pmJoshua says:
Let’s assume that this is part of the appeal that Islamic extremism holds for Westerners. What does that mean for policymakers? It doesn’t mean that these “Springsteen mujahedin” won’t turn out to be very dangerous. But it might suggest a different approach to the problem of turning them away from terror. Some of them will just plain outgrow their infatuation. Others will turn out to be unreliable fighters, prone to abandon the cause when they get tired or frightened by the risk.
You’re overlooking one minor detail: One does not just abandon jihad, at least not with the expectation of being allowed to live for very long after doing so.
On the other hand, disaffected youth who adopt this “jihad chic” may not realize this, especially those – including, as it turns out, M.I.A. herself – who aren’t even Muslim in the first place. How many of them have actually read the Qur’an, much less converted to Islam, or less still would actually be willing to pick up an AK-47 or a suicide bomb belt and get packed off to Afghanistan or wherever to partake in an actual jihad?
Embracing “jihad chic” doesn’t make one a jihadi, or even a jihadi sympathizer, any more than wearing a Ché Guevara T-shirt makes one a Communist. What it does do is make one look like a damned fool.
July 25, 2010, 1:13 pmRonNYC says:
It may well be that a big component of attraction of adolescents to jihad is rebellion, a la James Dean. Problem is, Dean and Springsteen etc., don’t have much of a religious component and lack an international character. Jihad is different in these respects. If it’s just a fashion statement, fashion can change. So can religious beliefs but much more slowly and with greater difficulty. And Saudi Arabia isn’t funding Springsteen kerchiefs or blue hair, as far as I know.
July 25, 2010, 2:09 pmInstapundit » Blog Archive » STEWART BAKER: Will Jihad Jump The Shark?… says:
[...] STEWART BAKER: Will Jihad Jump The Shark? [...]
July 25, 2010, 2:26 pmA. Criminal says:
Dr Seuss made political cartoons mocking the Nazis.
And the Japanese; Google [Dr Seuss Japanese cartoons] and the first result is:
“Dr. Seuss Sucks: 7 Racist Cartoons From the Doctor”: http://www.who-sucks.com/people/dr-seuss-sucks-7-racist-cartoons-from-the-doctor
People who make fun of Islam and Ismlamists are typically called bigots or, illogically, racists by the sanctimonious people who infest government and the media. Islamists, and therefore Sharia and jihad, have protected status nowadays (just ask NASA) and it’s very naughty to make fun of them.
++
“‘Yes, I am UGLY, and you daren’t laugh at me’, like the bully who makes faces at his victim. Why is the goose-step not used in England? There are, heaven knows, plenty of army officers who would be only too glad to introduce
some such thing. It is not used because the people in the street would
laugh. Beyond a certain point, military display is only possible in
countries where the common people dare not laugh at the army.” — Orwell
Now, in England, they get arrested for laughing, or more accurately, they get arrested for making fun of, criticizing, etc. IOW, they get arrested for being disrespectful.
July 25, 2010, 2:30 pmRebeccaH says:
Many of the young men who embrace jihad may be as you describe, but that doesn’t explain the very focused, very dangerous jihadist masterminds who use them as weapons. The fading of the fad may cut down on recruitment, but jihad itself isn’t going to go away any time soon.
July 25, 2010, 2:37 pmPubliusFL says:
See “straight edge”. Most adolescents won’t go for such quasi-ascetic forms of rebellion, but jihadism doesn’t need to be a universal movement to be a threat.
See above. Some punks went straight-edge, and some straight-edgers went hardline, and some hardliners even flirted with Islamism.
July 25, 2010, 3:05 pmSnorri Godhi says:
Ever heard of The Third Reich in the Ivory Tower, by Stephen H Norwood?
July 25, 2010, 3:41 pmMocking Jihad « gregormendelblog.com says:
[...] The way to go? No Comments [...]
July 25, 2010, 3:49 pmRob says:
Those “radicalized Western Muslims” wanted to be a part of 1400+ years old conquest of the world thru strict Arabic religious teachings, inspired martyrdom jihad and endless warfare. Those three components are specifically spelled out in the Quran. It doesn’t matter if you, the non-Muslims, can tolerate them in “peaceful co-existence”. To Muslims, you are kafirs (unbelievers) and that has nothing to do with believing in God. Only that you are obliged to believe in Islam’s teachings and submit to Allah, thus the whole point of becoming a Muslim.
Remind why the Byzantines had the fortitude to resist and block the various advances of Muslims, both in diplomacy and warfare, for over 250 years in Constantinople before falling to the Muslim Turks in 1453. Truces were often broken from the Muslim side when they didn’t get what they wanted from Christians and kafirs: submit to Islam. They resorted to violence, murder, and conquest.
The same is true today when the radicals among us are helping the true cause of Islam: the conquest and submission of the United States of America and the world to Allah.
July 25, 2010, 4:06 pmFat Man says:
Well MIA shows the way to combat jihad. Marry them to a billionaire.
July 25, 2010, 4:09 pmDaniel says:
A better comparison to jihadis is the Japanese before and during world war two. They were fanatical, murderous (take a look at the information available on the web on the rape of Nanking in which approximately 200,000 unresisting civilians were slaughtered and photographs taken surreptitiously at the time by Westerners viewable on the web depict this) They pursued an aggressive expansionist religiously inspired policy based in part on claims of superiority over the rest of the world. Every action from mining to terror to suicide attacks to slaughter of innocents practiced by jihadis was practiced by the Japanese military. Suicide bombers known as kamikaze attacked American shipping, causing serious damage and far more American casualties than we have had in Iraq and Afghanistan put together, all in a month or so. The kamikaze pilots were not trained in landing and knew they would die that day when they took off.
July 25, 2010, 4:13 pmYet all this horrible behavior and fanaticism came to an abrupt end. How? Do the words Hiroshima and Nagasaki ring a bell with you?
Ever since 1945 the Japanese have been the nicest people in the world in every respect.
nfwu2ht4wg says:
It’s been my opinion that this adolescent rebellion against authority also explains liberalism and anti-Americanism. To me these don’t seem rational so I have to suppose there is a psychological explanation for why people act so irrationally.
July 25, 2010, 4:18 pmMoneyrunner says:
A. Criminal … what a great point! Making fun of Muslims, their faith and their Jihad will get you shunned faster in academia, the MFM and the Obama Regime than … oh I don’t know … smoking (unless you’re the Light Bringer and do it in private).
July 25, 2010, 4:47 pmwillis says:
Or remain adolescents and become Democrats.
July 25, 2010, 4:50 pmTha Grey Man says:
With rare exception, most terrorists are rather dumb and fairly comical failures ensue. Wouldn’t it be cool if somebody put up a website akin to Failblog for failed terrorists?
The answer to the gravity of the situation us levity.
July 25, 2010, 4:52 pmLinda says:
My husband and I were just talking about this rash of American converts to Islamic terrorism. He said it’s the next natural step in the progression, from joining street gangs to joining militant islamic groups.
I would add that it’s a natural next step after the last several decades of rebellion by joining criminal/underground/hippie/communist/revolutionary groups.
Are there any Simbionese Liberation Army type groups active in the US anymore? If not, maybe jihad looks to be the best alternative to those so inclined . . .
July 25, 2010, 4:57 pmbill says:
It’s a good thing Christians have never broken truces or killed those who refused to convert.
July 25, 2010, 5:19 pmFirst Chair says:
The genuine jihadi must see these deluded adolescent “avant garde” as the ultimate of “useful idiots.”
July 25, 2010, 5:22 pmJack says:
This is certainly one way to ignore the religious obligations of conquest and domination that Muslims are required to make.
Ignoring the religiously inspired elements of Islam is a nice way of being politically correct, but it simply does not address the problem. In fact, it ignores the elephant in the room, so to speak.
But your argument allows you to avoid death threats on you and your family as you, like so many others, fail to criticize Islam.
Mocking Islam isn’t likely to be any better received than open criticism as you are still disrespecting the prophet. Laughing at Muslims will focus their ire on you, and you’ll still get the threats.
July 25, 2010, 5:50 pmStrict says:
I think we need the full lyrics to see whether MIA was embracing jihad or even jihad chic. I doubt it though.
And besides, Hollywood glamorized/heroized the mujahideen long ago in Rambo 3.
July 25, 2010, 6:40 pmPeter says:
Pardon me for being a pore dumb redneck but I don’t understand this M.I.A person. She talks of a tight jeans revolution. What I don’t understand is that the Jihadis kll women for wearing tight jeans.
Okay, I understand those who become religious fanatics. I do not understand the kids of the left who support the Jihad. The women of the left support those who kill the women. The homosexuals of the left support those who throw gays from the roof of tall buildings or hang them from construction cranes.
I guess that kids and lefties ain’t the brightest of all God’s little door prizes.
July 25, 2010, 7:56 pmStrict says:
Peter,
Name me some women of the left and homosexuals of the left who support extremist violent terrorist jihad.
I bet you can’t name any names.
It’s a bad idea to write off all leftists are stupid. It’s an indefensible “Know Nothing” attitude. You have nothing to learn from the writings of Negri, Laclau, Badiou, Mouffe, Zizek, Djilas, Bookchin, Chomsky, etc? Nothing at all?
July 25, 2010, 8:30 pmJK says:
She’s just a silly pop singer, it says about as much about “the left” as Toby Keith glorification of lynching does about “the right.”
July 25, 2010, 8:44 pmneurodoc says:
You’re flat out wrong; Ariel is very much right. The Nazi-Arab links were much more than just a matter of common enemies, and a shared hatred of Jews. Fascism has had a definite appeal to the Arab world, which is why there is something to the notion of “Islamofascism.”
July 25, 2010, 8:49 pmhttp://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/014/080ruyhg.asp
mc says:
Bill’s response is so pathetically typical.
Wow, Bill, you really know your history, and your sarcasm is so trenchant anyone critical of Islam should just shut up?
You are exactly what A.Criminal was referring to, and your point is?
Are we to give Muslims a pass, or are you terrified of modern Christians who are out murdering on a literally daily basis the globe over in the name of Christ?
D’oh! That wouldn’t be the Christians, that would be the Muslims doing it while learning of Mohammed’s slave owning, child raping, head lopping, caravan robbing, lying life from their Hadith.
July 25, 2010, 9:02 pmbill says:
You’re flat out wrong; Ariel is very much right. The Nazi-Arab links were much more than just a matter of a common enemy, and shared hatred of Jews. Fascism has had a definite appealed to the latter, which is why there is something to the notion of “Islamofascism.”
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/014/080ruyhg.asp
With such a confident response, I was almost expecting to see some actual facts rather than a link to some junk. What I learned from that article:
Hitler hated the Jews.
The pre-eminent Islamist organization during the 20s and 30s was highly anti-semitic and used rhetoric in some ways similar to those of the Nazis.
There were some connections between the Nazis and the Muslim Brotherhood/other Islamist groups.
The whole article is basically one giant joke. The only thing approaching evidence I see is the funding for the Muslim Brotherhood (the qualifier that the amount given was “larger than for others” is hardly surprising given the Muslim Brotherhood’s relative importance). Yes, there is a lot of vile anti-Semitic rhetoric in the official documents of Hamas and other Islamist organizations, but that hardly proves a direct connection to Hitler. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion are cited several times as if they were Nazi propaganda, when, in fact, they were created in Russia and distributed quite widely by, among others, Henry Ford. Anti-semitism has been around a very long time and has had a great many proponents. The attempts to assign the beliefs of the very worst anti-Semites to all who hold anti-Semitic views is an exercise in historical inaccuracy.
Also, “Islamofacism” is a propaganda term and nothing else. Radical Islam is a deeply reactionary and destructive movement; it does not need to be linked to another destructive movement that was highly different.
July 25, 2010, 9:08 pmAriel says:
I wouldn’t agree to that last bit, about not being able to learn anything from the left. There are certainly some things we can learn from them. For example, I’m told that Chomsky did some great work on linguistics.
As to your point about women of the left or homosexuals of the left who support violent extremist jihad, there’s a well-known group called Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism (QUIT), and I’ve certainly noticed reticence among women of the left to criticize the sort of misogynism that is routine among supporters of violent extremist jihad. For example, you can look to the left’s reception to Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s comments about genital mutilation (which she herself was forced to undergo). If you read anything by Phyllis Chesler, it’s a regular theme of hers how feminists wilt in the face of violent extremist jihad. Now, that’s not exactly support, but it’s not exactly the sort of opposition one might expect either. Gay groups of the left (like QUIT) certainly do support violent extremist jihad.
July 25, 2010, 9:18 pmbill says:
The post I was responding was attempting to use actions carried out in the name Islam hundreds of years ago. I have no problem with attention being drawn to the problems that exist in the Islamic world today, as they are in some cases very severe and, it is true, often underreported by the liberal press. What I do have a problem with is someone using barbarism committed x hundred years ago as some sort of proof about the general nature of a religion, given that if you go far back enough you will find brutal deeds and atrocities pretty much everywhere.
July 25, 2010, 9:21 pmAriel says:
You may note that I linked to a picture of Haj Amin Al-Husseini working with Bosnian Muslim Nazi soldiers. I suppose that’s not enough of a connection for you either. It’s not just that the two physically worked together. It’s not just that the rhetoric was imported from Nazi ideology, it’s also that the Nazi ideology itself was imported. The kind of vile antisemitic rhetoric that you are decrying (perhaps as a pretense) was not native to pre-20th century Islam. (It did exist in certain ways, but no where near in degree of virulence as when the Nazi ideology was imported.) In fact, as the left frequently notes, Jews were treated pretty well in the Ottoman empire. Second-class citizens, but not by a whole lot. Whereas Jews were considerable worse off under the Nazis, or under the Nazi-inspired Arab pogroms of the 20s, 30s, and 40s (including post-WWII and post-Israel’s founding).
July 25, 2010, 9:26 pmbill says:
First, I am aware that connections did exist, as I stated in my post. The problem, however, to borrow a statement that is usually used in a slightly different way, correlation does not imply causation. That a virulent anti-Semite like al-Husseini associated and worked with the Nazis is a fact that cannot be denied- the problem is that I have yet to see evidence that al-Husseini was directly influenced by the Nazis. What I have read about al-Husseini in the past and in the article presented show an anti-Semite/opponent of Jewish migration to Palestine who got along rather well with the Nazis because of his own bigotry, not someone who was greatly changed by Nazi rhetoric.
The “not native to pre-20th century Islam point is true, to an extent, but misses and important and extremely salient fact: that the upswing in anti-Semitism in the Mideast had a direct cause in the Zionist movement and specifically in the Balfour declaration. I’m not saying that the response was justified (it wasn’t), but the rise of anti-Semitism during the time period described has a lot more to do with nationalist/religious anger than Nazi rhetoric.
Also, Nazi rhetoric during the 20s wasn’t influencing many people outside of Germany so describing the pogroms as Arab inspired seems rather dubious.
July 25, 2010, 9:46 pmrrr says:
Yes, let’s embrace Sharia for them. Then they won’t feel marginalized.
July 25, 2010, 9:51 pmRicardo says:
On the connection between Islamism and Nazism, it is important to recognize that Nazism was at its core a racist and racialist ideology. Nazis had a special hatred for Jews (defined as members of the “Jewish race” rather than by religion) but also hated Africans and even pale-skinned Gentile Eastern Europeans. The Nazis had very strong and very bizarre ideas about the harms of mixing the races and the need to have Germany ruled by a racial elite of pure Aryan stock.
There really is no equivalent to this in radical Islam. The closest you get to fascism or Nazism in the Middle East is actually the Ba’athist movements of Syria and Iraq. Aside from that, fundamentalist Islam is certainly anti-Semitic and totalitarian but it is not really racist the way the Nazis were. In fact, on the subject of race, radical Islam is closer to Communism or socialism than to Nazism. I think many radical Muslims really do believe in establishing a multi-racial radical movement that will sweep away the infidel regimes from Turkey to Indonesia and replace them with a Caliphate.
July 25, 2010, 9:54 pmAriel says:
You’re asking me to prove something that is unproveable – that only Nazism had an influence on Islamic fundamentalist antisemitism. By definition, that’s not going to be true. There is no one single cause for just about anything. Economics probably played into it, budding Zionism probably played into it, globalization certainly played into it… the list could go on. I’m not trying to prove that ONLY Nazism had an influence on Al Husseini and the gang, but rather that Nazism had an influence, and a major one. It’s a big string to pull on, though I’d agree that’s there’s a tangled skein with other bits woven in. You’re trying to have me prove something that I didn’t assert and that I wouldn’t assert. I’m happy sticking to my assertion, not the one you’re putting down for me.
As an example of how it was not just the Zionist movement’s influence, you can contrast the direction of al Husseini with that of Emir Faisal Ibn Hussein. Both could have gone the Jew hating route, and both were influenced by Jews being around them, in “their” territory. One of them became heavily influenced by Nazis and went that route, and is among the intellectual forefathers of modern day jihad (along with al Banna, Sayyid Qutb, and the gang) and one of them did not. If anything, this suggests that your asserted cause was a lesser influence.
If you choose to avert your eyes, you will probably not see. This was the second link on a Google search for “al husseini nazi influence” (w/o quotes). It’s really not that hard to find gems like that al Husseini decided to set up concentration camps, e.g., in Nablus, after the Nazis would be victorious, and said, “Arise. O sons of Arabia, fight for your sacred rights. Kill the Jews wherever you find them. Their spilled blood pleases Allah, our history and religion. That will save our honor.”
July 25, 2010, 10:26 pmRandy says:
Ariel: ” Gay groups of the left (like QUIT) certainly do support violent extremist jihad.”
Really? Any support for your contention? As far as I can see, it is a tiny organization that hasn’t been active in a long time and merely seeks to have Israel leave Palestine and asks for divestment of Israeli interests. There is no evidence that they are violent or support jihad at all.
In any case, I know of not a single gay group, either here or abroad that supports violence in the cause of jihad. Again, if you know any groups that actually do, then please mention them. Otherwise, please retract your statement.
July 25, 2010, 10:30 pmAriel says:
Randy,
I didn’t say ALL gay groups of the left support violent extremist jihad. I was asked to come up with an example. That’s one that those of us in the pro-Israeli community have certainly heard of. I don’t know if it’s tiny or not – I know that it has a presence at most of the marches with the various haters. The QUIT website, right at the top, talks about supporting liberation movements – that’s peace-talk for violent extremist jihad, in that part of the world.
Here’s a quote from their website that I think makes it pretty explicit:
“There have been individual acts of Palestinian terrorism that have been highly popularized by the U.S. media and used as propaganda tools by Zionists. We don’t support attacks on unarmed civilians. At the same time it must be understood that it is the right of any occupied people to resist and fight for their freedom, in fact it is their duty.”
I don’t think there’s an honest way to parse that statement such that it supports the middle sentence in there – that they don’t support attacks on unarmed civilians. It seems clear to me that they consider it the right and duty of any occupied people to resist and fight for freedom.
A group that thought did not support violent extremist jihad but was not a fan of Israel might just put a curse on both houses. That’s not what QUIT does.
I don’t know personally of other groups, nor do I know whether this group is big or influential. I made no claim that it was either. I simply claimed that (1) it exists; (2) it is a LGBT group; (3) it is of the left; and (4) it supports violent extremist jihad. I don’t think any of those can be controverted.
July 25, 2010, 10:50 pmAriel says:
They also have a link on their website to Queers Against Israeli Apartheid. I’ve never heard of that group, but it’s a safe bet that (1) it exists; (2) it is a LGBT group; (3) it is of the left; and (4) it supports violent extremist jihad.
I’m not claiming that all gays, or all gay leftists, support violent extremist jihad.
July 25, 2010, 10:52 pmBarb says:
Kids who embrace the religious beliefs, practices and lifestyles of their parents have something to believe in –a cause. Kids whose parents give them no beliefs –or beliefs without a cause to support –who also have dysfunctional families–who are just left to search for meaning on their own, are the more likely to choose the messages of negative artists and rockers/rappers and hang with negative peers.
That’s why the Christians need to be very busy with children and youth –youth are up for grabs by all kinds of scary ideologies –and the more anti-social and unhappy they are, the more messed up their families, the more they will be attracted to the Moonies, the free-love hippies , the Panthers, the SDS –and any one of various cults–remember? And likewise today. Osama bin Ladin looks like a Messiah-figure –and the idea of biting the hands that feed you through violence is nothing new for disenchanted, disenfranchised –or spoiled– rebellious youth.
Christian children’s and youth ministries may not result in life-long Christian commitment in children, but I bet it’s a positive force for good in any culture. Along with the Gospel comes a sense of right and wrong, and ideas of love, compassion, unselfishness and forgiveness, that no atheist should want to see thrown out with the religious bathwater.
July 25, 2010, 11:13 pmnirmal rajkumar says:
I agree with the analysis. The phenomenon of Western converts to the jihad is a tragedy but not a serious threat in itself. Islamic jihad is not a purely intellectual-ideological revolutionary movement that has some appeal to the disaffected universally but is tribal, racialist and sexist as well. The Arab-centrism, religiously sanctioned hatred of the infidel and the female gender are its Achilles’ heal. The only way jihad and for that matter mainstream Islam itself can spread to non-Islamic (infidel) parts of the World in any degree of significance is by demographic change (Immigration and/or high population growth) or as history shows by outright Islamic conquest of infidel lands.
July 25, 2010, 11:13 pmBarb says:
See what I mean??
July 25, 2010, 11:14 pmBarb says:
It’s actually not new — if you recall the Black Muslims who wanted a separate state. The appeal of Islam was its strictness, moral code, discipline, order. There was an air of pride and pseudo-dignity in taking on Islamic name and dress –and a religion that wasn’t passed down by the slave-master–one found in Africa.
July 25, 2010, 11:29 pmRandy says:
Ariel: “I don’t think there’s an honest way to parse that statement such that it supports the middle sentence in there — that they don’t support attacks on unarmed civilians. It seems clear to me that they consider it the right and duty of any occupied people to resist and fight for freedom.”
Here’s one way to peacefully fight: civil disobedience. Another way is for disinvestment, as many organizations called for during apartheid in S. Africa.
So the sum total of your evidence that they support violent jihad is that that:
a) The march in peaceful marches and
b) they say that support an oppressed people to resist and fight for freedom.
That’s a pretty slim reed to hang upon their neck. Again, if you have any real evidence that they have supported jihad, please come out with it. All you have is at best conjecture. Additionally, it is the only gay group that even by your loose standards supports jihad, which hardly merits any mention.
“’ve never heard of that group, but it’s a safe bet that (1) it exists; (2) it is a LGBT group; (3) it is of the left; and (4) it supports violent extremist jihad.”
Okay, now I’ve got it. Any group that criticizes Israel supports violent extremist jihad, even if there is no evidence and you just consider it a ‘safe bet.’
Barb: “See what I mean??”
No. I have no idea what you mean, unless you mean that all gays are atheists and therefore hate morals. But that’s such a riduculous conjecture that even Ariel would no doubt find ridiculous.
July 25, 2010, 11:33 pmRandy says:
Ariel: “I don’t think there’s an honest way to parse that statement such that it supports the middle sentence in there — that they don’t support attacks on unarmed civilians. It seems clear to me that they consider it the right and duty of any occupied people to resist and fight for freedom.”
Here’s one way to peacefully fight: civil disobedience. Another way is for disinvestment, as many organizations called for during apartheid in S. Africa.
So the sum total of your evidence that they support violent jihad is that that:
a) The march in peaceful marches and
b) they say that support an oppressed people to resist and fight for freedom.
That’s a pretty slim reed to hang upon their neck. Again, if you have any real evidence that they have supported jihad, please come out with it. All you have is at best conjecture. Additionally, it is the only gay group that even by your loose standards supports jihad, which hardly merits any mention.
“’ve never heard of that group, but it’s a safe bet that (1) it exists; (2) it is a LGBT group; (3) it is of the left; and (4) it supports violent extremist jihad.”
Okay, now I’ve got it. Any group that criticizes Israel supports violent extremist jihad, even if there is no evidence and you just consider it a ‘safe bet.’
Barb: “See what I mean??”
No. I have no idea what you mean, unless you mean that gays are atheists and therefore hate morals. But that’s such a ridiculous idea that even Ariel would no doubt find ridiculous.
July 25, 2010, 11:34 pmBarb says:
The question refers to what I said earlier about people who feel rebellious,angry at family and/or society, disenfranchised, unhappy, lacking beliefs and cause –being attracted to Jihadism. Granted, the issue with the fringe gay group, was apartheid –but the Muslims are separatists to the point of wanting Israel’s complete demise, so I find anti-Israeli sentiments peculiar coming from a group against apartheid.
July 25, 2010, 11:52 pmMicha Elyi says:
Catholics, like most other Bible-believing Christians, teach that everyone must “eschew all forms of sex” outside of a sacramental marriage. In this respect, the typical Catholic priest of the Roman rite is just like any other unmarried person.
C’mon, bill, surely you’re not trying to claim a moral equivalence between certain Christians who betray their religion’s ideals and Mohammedans who obey their religion’s teachings. Come back with the Christian counterparts to Muslim religious authorities who teach that breaking truces or killing those who refuse to convert is endorsed by God. Is it in the Gospels? No. The Koran, yes. Popes have condemned forced conversion since the earliest days of the Church. Mohammedans have praised it since, well, Mohammed.
As for truces, maybe you’re upset that Catholic Christians didn’t create Just War Theory soon enough to suit you. (You prefer the pre-existing pagan Roman ways of war and ethics, bill?) In contrast, the Mohammedans’ holy book, the Koran, explicitly teaches that their god considers treachery and truce-breaking praiseworthy if it leads to victory over non-Mohammedans. Theirs is a crude pre-Christian ends-justify-means style attempt at moral reasoning.
As a rustic philosopher once said, “Those who are ignorant of history are ignorant.”
July 26, 2010, 1:10 amneurodoc says:
Ariel said he didn’t “think there’s an honest way to parse that statement such that it supports the middle sentence in there — that they don’t support attacks on unarmed civilians,” and it appears you can’t either, since you don’t even attempt it. Most who are not profoundly obtuse or disingenuous realize that “we don’t support attacks on unarmed civilians” is not the same as “we condemn attacks on unarmed civilians,” especially when what follows immediately is a sympathetic expression of “understanding” of the uses of terrorism in the service of “freedom struggles,” and when the we-don’t-support (but don’t condemn, or even reproach) group links up with other groups that may be seen as terrorist “sympathizers,” like the Palestinian Solidarity Movement, part of the International Solidarity Movement, as QUIT does.
You really give yourself away with such self-evident horsesh*t.
[BTW, first you speak just of "jihad," then of "violent jihad." Where in this context does "jihad" in the sense of "inner struggle," as some say the word should be understood, figure? The "non-violent" kind pertains here?]
July 26, 2010, 1:40 amneurodoc says:
But supposedly there is “no compulsion in Islam”?! http://www.danielpipes.org/2110/the-issue-of-compulsion-in-religion-islam-is-what-its
July 26, 2010, 1:47 amAnon says:
Micha Elyi: I don’t know if you are still checking this thread but you should re-read the Qur’anic passages you refer to; they do not say you can break a truce to defeat a non-Muslim – they say if someone has broken a truce/treaty with you then you can attack them.
It’s one thing to mis-interpret, it’s another thing to completely reverse the meaning of the texts you are purportedly discussing. May I ask why you use the out-dated term Mohammedans?
July 26, 2010, 1:53 amKirk Parker says:
Oh, brutal irony!
July 26, 2010, 3:21 amStrict says:
Barb: “There was an air of pride and pseudo-dignity in taking on Islamic name and dress –and a religion that wasn’t passed down by the slave-master–one found in Africa.”
Many slaves were originally Muslim [one estimate says 20%]. Omar Ibn Said, a slave in North Carolina, wrote an autobiography – in Arabic. Job Ben Solomon also wrote in Arabic, and he wrote first-hand accounts of slavery and the intercontinental slave trade experience. Abd al-Rahman Ibrahim, a slave in Mississippi, wrote two autobiographies. Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua also narrated his biography. All very interesting…
Anyway, what is pseudo-dignity?
Also, Queers Against Israeli Apartheid? Wow. I supposed there’s all kinds of folk out there. The picture on the webpage says “We Stand With Queers in Palestine.” That stance doesn’t seem to comport with the original claim that “The homosexuals of the left support those who throw gays from the roof of tall buildings or hang them from construction cranes.” Moreover, I’d say that QAIA are not at all representative of “the homosexuals of the left.” I think most gays and gay organizations are strongly against homophobia everywhere.
July 26, 2010, 3:26 amManju says:
I haven’t been this confused since the time the bartender at the 4seasons told Henry Winkler they don’t carry seagrams whisky because Ludwig Mies van der Rohe said it doesn’t go with tiger meat.
July 26, 2010, 3:40 amStrict says:
A condemnation of terrorist attacks on civilians should not be qualified. It should be unequivocal and absolute.
“Come back with the Christian counterparts to Muslim religious authorities who teach that breaking truces or killing those who refuse to convert is endorsed by God. Is it in the Gospels? No. ”
Possibly Hebrews 10:26.
But never mind – the Gospels are not the only source of religious authority in Christianity. In Catholicism, for example, there are papal bulls and papal briefs. There are papal bulls and other formal Catholic authorizations of slavery, torture, conquest, and murder. There was a thing called the Inquisition. And Crusades. And Hussite Wars. Taborites, etc. Martin Luther, the founder of Protestantism, wrote extensively how it is great and glorious to murder Jews and such heathens.
July 26, 2010, 3:59 amAlanDownunder says:
I merely had in mind merely not embracing subversion invasion and expropriation of countries that happen to be predominantly muslim in order to satisfy the demands of US-based multinationals.
No need to go as far embracing sharia law. No need to do anything – just stop the antagonising.
July 26, 2010, 6:12 amAriel says:
That’s not an honest way to parse the statement. They didn’t say we oppose terrorism. Terrorism is bad. They said, they don’t support attacks on civilians (but they don’t condemn them either) and they understanding fighting and resistance. There is no call for civil disobedience. FWIW, they do support BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions), but only as part of the program.
I didn’t say that was all the evidence that I had. I mentioned that they frequently support jihad in these various marches, though I didn’t provide direct evidence. Here’s some. You don’t join the rest of the gang at the 60th Nakba celebration if you’re not supporting the undoing of the Nakba, as they clearly did. It’s not possible to be there and not support this jihad. You can also do a simple Google search on “site:zombietime.com quit” (no quotes) and find plenty more photos of their noxious signs at protests.
Clearly, they are not supporting jihad in the sense of sending suicide bombers out to murder people. But just as clearly, they are marching in support of violent extremist jihad.
A group that’s called X Against Israeli Apartheid?!? This is a safe bet. There is criticism and there is absurdity. There’s no apartheid in Israel. By claiming there is, the group is giving moral support to, you guessed it, violent extremist jihad.
July 26, 2010, 9:29 amAriel says:
I didn’t make that initial claim about homosexuals of the left. I made the claim that such groups do exist, not that they are the norm or the majority. QAIA may stand with queers in palestine, but they certainly do it in an odd way – by supporting their murderers.
July 26, 2010, 9:32 ambebopkid says:
the only way to take marganilized kids’ fads and make them uncool is to make them popular.
that said, if justin beiber converted to islam millions of people will hate it overnight. and even though you may have 5 million converts overnight they’ll only stick around until disney releases their next branded child.
July 26, 2010, 10:09 amneurodoc says:
Ariel, you could have spared a great many electrons if you had just said something like, “what neurodoc said at 1:40AM,” especially about “an honest way to parse that statement;” the not so nuanced difference between “we do not support attacks on unarmed civilians” and “we condemn attacks on unarmed civilians;” the sympathetic expression of “understanding” of the uses of terrorism in the service of “freedom struggles;” the alliances with terrorist sympathizing/supporting organizations, like the PSM and ISM; etc.
And you could have saved still more electrons had you simply said “jihad” rather than “violent extremist jihad.” Now, maybe you intended to add force with “violent” and “extremist,” but you don’t think that those adjectives are really necessary in front of “jihad” here do you?
July 26, 2010, 12:49 pmAriel says:
neurodoc,
I definitely considered saying see above. Ending up not doing it mostly b/c I wanted to reemphasize what you said.
I probably wouldn’t differentiate “jihad” vs. “violent extremist jihad” either – it was done up thread, in whatever comment I was initially replying to. Sure, some people think it’s about personal improvement, but that’s not the jihad we’re talking about here.
July 26, 2010, 1:18 pmRandy says:
Barb: “The question refers to what I said earlier about people who feel rebellious,angry at family and/or society, disenfranchised, unhappy, lacking beliefs and cause –being attracted to Jihadism.”
On the contrary, people who are attracted to jihadism are not ‘lacking in beliefs’ but rather have very strong ones. It’s just that they have rather unhealthy beliefs. Otherwise, I agree — people attracted to strong unhealthy beliefs tend to feel disenfranchised or angry at something.
Micha: “Catholics, like most other Bible-believing Christians, teach that everyone must “eschew all forms of sex” outside of a sacramental marriage.”
Yes, but for priests, ALL forms of sex are always forbidden. That’s rather extreme
Neurodoc: “Most who are not profoundly obtuse or disingenuous realize that “we don’t support attacks on unarmed civilians” is not the same as “we condemn attacks on unarmed civilians,”.”
So now the standard is that unless you specifically condemn an action you are considered to support it? That’s rather extreme in itself.
The bottomline: Neither you nor Ariel have been able to show any evidence whatsoever of affirmative support for violent jihad (or just regular jihad, if there is a difference) of QUIT or any other gay group.
“You really give yourself away with such self-evident horsesh*t.”
let’s review — Ariel mentions a gay group that he admits he knows nothing about, but just assumes that they must be supportive of violent jihad based upon their name. But that’s not horsesh*t.
It is quite possible that QUIT actually supports killing innocent people in Israel, and if they do, then they ought to be condemned and marginilized. However, I don’t know that, and neither do you. The website says that QUIT and Queers for Palestine are actually the same organization, but again, I didn’t see any evidence that they support killing people. It may be difficult for you and Ariel to conceptualize, but there are people of sincere good faith who are against Israel’s occupation of Palestine but don’t believe that war, jihad or not, is the answer.
Nonetheless, it’s really rather pointless to even bring up them up. There are strange people everywhere in the world. I’ve people active with Jews for Jesus — yet I certainly wouldn’t claim that there are jews out there who dislike being jewish and want to be christians simply because there are so few of them and they have no real clout. Same with QUIT.
I am glad, however, that you stated that except for the possible exception of this organization, there are no other gay groups of the left that support jihad. I hope that Neurodoc also agrees.
July 26, 2010, 1:39 pmMoneyrunner says:
And this is the verse referred to:
Judgment; you do understand what that means in Christian doctrine, don’t you? Hint: “something to do with the hereafter;” you know, heaven and hell and all that stuff. Unlike Jihad, which, as we have experienced – especially on 9/11 – is definitely of the here and now. Jihadist are not waiting for the Allah to separate the sheep from the goats. Christians, on the other hand, are admonished to turn the other cheek. Of course few do, which is why sin and redemption is the core of Christian theology.
But you knew that didn’t you?
July 26, 2010, 1:44 pmAriel says:
I said that about QAIA, not about QUIT. In any case, as mentioned above, and as you forgot to argue against: “Against Israeli Apartheid” – it’s really a safe bet.
Hanging out at Nakba 60 is not enough? Fine, do a quick Google search, as indicated above, to see plenty more.
I don’t know that for a fact. I do know that at least QUIT (and likely QAIA) do support it. I don’t suspect it’s a widespread belief among the gay left, not least because they ought to (and may) recognize that Palestinian treatment of gays is not always hunky-dorey.
July 26, 2010, 1:58 pmSarcastro says:
People who make fun of Jews and Zionists are typically called bigots or, illogically, racists by the sanctimonious people who infest government and the media. Zionists, and therefore Israel, have protected status nowadays and it’s very naughty to make fun of them.
July 26, 2010, 2:57 pmneurodoc says:
Randy, are we to count you as disingenuous or just obtuse here?
I have never spoken out against the genital mutilation of little girls. Thus, it can truthfully be said I am not on record anywhere as “specifically condemn(ing)” that practice. But honesty requires it to be said that neither am I on record anywhere, let alone in an edited statement on behalf of an organization, saying that “I do not support genital mutilation of little girls,” then following that with anything that could be seen as an apologia for the practice (e.g., it is a hallowed tradition in many places, deeply embedded in the culture, viewed as beyond shameful if not done, something that may be repugnant to outsiders but unquestioned among those groups for whom it is the normative practice, the girl would be unmarriageable if it were not done, etc.). And, it would be absurd to imagine that because I have not previously made known my abhorrence of this barbarity and wish to see a stop to it, I must be a supporter of it.
As noted several times above, but which you have repeatedly chosen to ignore, QUIT may be seen as apologists for Palestinian terror because they immediately follow their “we do not support” not with anything remotely like “indeed, we earnestly condemn,” but rather with an expression of sympathetic “understanding” of the practice. Furthermore, they link arms with others who may be viewed as terrorist sympathizers. Now, if that is not enough to persuade you that this radical gay group as supporters/enablers of terrorists, fine. But it is BS to maintain, as you have, that Ariel and neurodoc “have been (un)able to show any evidence whatsoever of affirmative support for violent jihad (or just regular jihad, if there is a difference) of QUIT or any other gay group.”
You allow that possibility though they say, “We do not support attacks on unarmed civilians.”? If you had to bet, do you think it more likely that QUIT will be heard to unqualifiedly condemn attacks on unarmed Israelis than Palestinian supporting groups like the American Friends Service? Equally likely/unlikely in your opinion? If you think one more likely/unlikely to do so than the other, would it be fair to infer that while you profess not to “know that,” you have some basis to think one more likely/unlikely and that might be the “evidence” that Ariel and neurodoc have been arguing?
Not need for me to “conceptualize” it, whatever that means, since I have never believed otherwise. (Can you point to any “evidence” that I believe otherwise, or just more disingenuity?)
Funny that you should say that now. Strict challenged us to identify any such groups existed (“Name me some women of the left and homosexuals of the left who support extremist violent terrorist jihad.”) and Ariel cited QUIT by way of reply. You were the one who jumped on that and tried to deny that they could be seen as “homosexuals of the left who support extremist violent terrorist jihad,” but now tell us it doesn’t matter anyway?!
Did Ariel say that? Where (date/time)? I can’t agree or disagree, since I would have no basis to do so.
July 26, 2010, 3:35 pmSarcastro says:
The important thing is to get caught in the minutae, and not think about how silly the idea of gay folks loving jihad is.
Or better yet, acknowledge how silly it is, say you can’t believe how dumb leftists are, and revel in your lack of proof!
July 26, 2010, 4:58 pmAriel says:
Yeah, it would be terrible if people actually engaged each other’s arguments, instead of trying to create arguments that the other side never made.
July 26, 2010, 6:48 pmMC says:
Klaus Fuchs, involved deeply in the invention of the H-bomb, was asked why he committed espionage and gave indispensable knowledge to the Russians, particularly in light of the fact that they were so brutal to the Jews.
Richard Rhodes mentions an account in which Fuchs was asked why, Fuchs responded with something to the effect that once the Americans and capitalism, which scared him, were eliminated he would work on that Jew hating bugaboo.
I have just searched briefly for a quick link, you are welcome to dismiss this comment without a link, but I believe I am close to, if letting some sarcasm of my own out, the passage’s info.
There ought to be genuine fear of an Islamic “reformation” which takes the Muslims closer to the literal intent of their writings, koran and hadith, as opposed to the reformation of christians which led them away from the often sick tyranny and abuse of the vatican.
As for those who chose to side with those who loath them, to help them and shield their atrocities…as for those of the likes of Fuchs or our contemporary feminists who find Ayan Hirsi Ali more problematic than inspirational…Or code pinkers marching with radicals who wish to kick Israel into the sea…or at the least American and Western soldiers perish…
Those deluded are with us always in varying numbers. Sadly in the last several generations they have taking with glee to teaching. Now we have to hope for “shark jumping”, this while the press tries to dampen the loathing of young violent homemade converts because the Americans in their ignorance may resort to violence.
Ugh.
July 26, 2010, 9:08 pmRandy says:
Neurodoc: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Saying a group supports murder is an extraordinary claim. If you have any evidence at all that QUIT supports murder, please give it. So far, all we have is an explicit statement from QUIT that they “do not support attacks on unarmed civilians.”
I understand that this statement is tempered by the following statement of theirs, which is “At the same time it must be understood that it is the right of any occupied people to resist and fight for their freedom, in fact it is their duty.”
One could interpret this as support for violence. One could also interpret it as a call to fight through other means, such as non-cooperation, or disvestment.
” If you had to bet, do you think it more likely that QUIT will be heard to unqualifiedly condemn attacks on unarmed Israelis than Palestinian supporting groups like the American Friends Service? Equally likely/unlikely in your opinion? If you think one more likely/unlikely to do so than the other, would it be fair to infer that while you profess not to “know that,” you have some basis to think one more likely/unlikely and that might be the “evidence” that Ariel and neurodoc have been arguing?”
I’m not betting anything. What I think of them doesn’t really matter — what matters is what they have actually done to either support or not support violence. There is none, which you are forced to admit.
“(“Name me some women of the left and homosexuals of the left who support extremist violent terrorist jihad.”) and Ariel cited QUIT by way of reply.”
Yes, and I have merely pointed out that it isn’t as obvious that QUIT supports extremist violent terrorist jihad. I am willing to concede that they are, IF there is some evidence that they are.
“You were the one who jumped on that and tried to deny that they could be seen as “homosexuals of the left who support extremist violent terrorist jihad,” but now tell us it doesn’t matter anyway?!”
No, I never said that it doesn’t matter. Please try reading my quotes more carefully. I said that they might very well be, but we need some degree of evidence before we condemn a group of people. If they do support it, then we should condemn them, so I’m not defending them at all. I merely ask for evidence before condemnation. It’s the American way, after all. But of course, from all that I can see, they are a very small group of people who haven’t been very active at all — at best just having a website, issuing a few press releases and attending at least one Palestinian protest in San Fransisco. They hardly seem to be a threat, and so I’m not terribly concerned about them.
I really don’t know what you want from me. I try not to rush to judgment about anyone (and yes, of course, I often fail at that). Ariel might know something more about this group that he hasn’t yet mentioned, and I would be interested in knowing that. But in the absence of any concrete evidence other than speculation, I can only conclude that they might talk about a lot of stuff, but their actions are virtually non-existant, and they are so small as to have a negligent impact upon the national dialogue.
At 9:32am, Ariel said “I didn’t make that initial claim about homosexuals of the left. I made the claim that such groups do exist, not that they are the norm or the majority.” For that I agreed with him, and offered praise for that.
And for the record, I am very supportive of the fact that Israel, alone among middle eastern countries, is a haven for gays. They are the one place where a person can be gay and supported by the society and the government. That cannot be said by other government in that region, but rather leads to jail, abuse and even murder and execution. All gays should support Israel for their treatment of gays, and not other others.
July 26, 2010, 10:47 pmReed the Viking says:
The Perfect Girlfriend…
So last week, I started putting up pictures of scantily clad broads and I saw a huge uptick in my traffic… surprise surprise. I’ve come to terms with the fact that no matter how good I think I have written a post, you all just care about boobs. That…
July 26, 2010, 11:53 pmJardinero1 says:
I say the question is moot because the premise is false. We have not seen a “rash” of homegrown Islamic extremism in recent years. So asking why something would happen which is not happening makes no sense.
July 27, 2010, 12:02 amAriel says:
I don’t know if they’re a threat, at least in any measurable sense. I don’t claim they’re big. However, they have been more active than their website indicates. Again, I’ve given you the Google search to conduct, which will show plenty of photos of them at many more protests than are indicated by their website. You can keep alleging lack of evidence, or you can actually take a look.
July 27, 2010, 9:11 amKen Arromdee says:
because we all know that groups don’t act in silly ways. Especially silly and dangerous ways.
July 27, 2010, 10:08 amneurodoc says:
Randy, I should probably say “ditto” to what Ariel has said here (would that make me a “dittohead”?), since I agree with everything he has said in response to you, and I think he has said it rather well. I’ll just take a few whacks at what you have last said to me, before moving on.
“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Saying a group supports murder is an extraordinary claim. If you have any evidence at all that QUIT supports murder, please give it. So far, all we have is an explicit statement from QUIT that they “do not support attacks on unarmed civilians.” I did take Evidence in law school, and from a very good teacher. It was a couple of decades ago, though. And there was much I did not have subsequent occasion to use, and my memory is fast failing me now, but I am quite sure we never took up the concept of extraordinary evidence, and that I have never seen/heard it mentioned, let alone expounded on by an legal authority. Hence, I can only conclude that it is your own concept, one that you are free to define and employ however you wish. Fine, but I can’t engage with it.
I am at the beach and don’t have a copy of Black’s Law Dictionary at hand to give you a legal definition of “evidence,” so you might know what you are saying when you assert, as you have repeatedly and incorrectly, that the neither Ariel, nor neurodoc (what kind of weirdo speaks in the third person?) have adduced any evidence that there exists a gay group over on the left the supports jihad, the kind that incorporates terrorism. You could look up the legal definition of “evidence” for yourself, though, and you could also do some reading to understand terms pertaining to evidence ike “probative,” “relevant,” “competent,” “admissible/inadmissible,” etc., and related concepts like the “weight” to be given the evidence which is introduced and “burden of proof” (which subsumes both “burden of production” and “burden of persuasion.”)
“I understand that this statement is tempered by the following statement of theirs…” If, as you maintain, “we don’t support attacks on unarmed civilians” is no evidence of nothing, why are you addressing yourself to it in this context?
The usual definition of “tempered” is “moderated.” So, if we start with a statement that addresses terrorism in a way clearly crafted to avoid condemnation of it, and then “temper” it further, what do we have if not an expression of sympathetic “understanding” of terrorists and their cause?
“One could interpret this as support for violence.” If it is not evidence of anything, there is no need to “interpret” it. But you do allow that it can be seen as “support for violence.” “One could also interpret it as a call to fight through other means, such as non-cooperation, or disvestment.” OK, now you are getting the hang of it and doing what a competent defense counsel would do, which is not to claim that the statement is of no relevance or non-probative, but to acknowledge it as evidence and try to persuade the judge or jury that the statement is open to other interpretation, e.g., “non-cooperation, or divestment,” though you “client” never mentioned any alternative to violence, and try to create sufficient doubt that the other side could not meet its burden of proof, whatever that may be here. (It sure isn’t “beyond a reasonable doubt.”)
[I'm abbreviating this rather than engaging with every bit of it, e.g., "But in the absence of any concrete evidence other than speculation, I can only conclude that they might talk about a lot of stuff, but their actions are virtually non-existant, and they are so small as to have a negligent impact upon the national dialogue." What would "concrete evidence" be, an explicit statement saying they applaud the actions of Palestinians terrorists or conviction for sending money to support their understakings? That "they might talk about a lot stuff," yeah, but "their actions are virtually non-existant" - how knowledgeable are you about them and their actions? "(T)hey are so small as to have a negligent (sic) impact upon the national dialogue" - no one claimed that their impact on anything was great, the point was what they represent over on the left.]
July 27, 2010, 10:52 amAKevin says:
I realize I’m commenting about a month and a half after the fact … and I generally try not to comment on this blog because I’d be in way over my head, but when Mr. Baker says M.I.A. transgresses on this album, I have to laugh whole-heartedly. The point he was otherwise trying to make is worth making, but the passing criticism without analysis (other than to say that /\/\/\Y/\ “lacks much of the raw energy and boogey rhythm that enlivened her first two albums”) is fairly worthless.
Thankfully, I don’t come to this site for musical critiques. Back to lurking!
September 8, 2010, 1:48 pm