Terrorism

[jacob]

@ffj - In my opinion, the best way to integrate is to divide&conquer the influx. I think this is what is happening in the US because it's relatively easy to find work or get into an education which gets people out and interacting with the rest of society in a productive manner. It's so easy that even illegal immigrants can find some work.

In Europe, work is heavily regulated. You typically need a nationally approved education/certification to work. You might have been a nurse, an electrician, or an accountant in your home country and have 20 years of experience, but that won't do you any good in the new country... at best you can hope for unskilled labor and there's not much of that around, especially if you don't speak the language. What then typically happens is that immigrants end up much like how retires from the US end up in enclaves in Thailand, Mexico, ...They don't learn the language. They keep their own culture. Given the welfare system, it's possible to sit at home for years and years collecting something like $1500+/month/adult (imagine the income of a multi-generational family in an apartment). There's no integration obtaining from that. Divide/Conquer doesn't work. People begin to identify based on their own culture (e.g. Muslims, Somalis, ... ) rather than dentists, electricians, etc. The native population does the same, hence the rise in nationalism in recent decades. It turns into an us vs them game which makes it still harder for newcomers and second-generation children to assimilate. Without future prospects, a gang-like lifestyle becomes attractive for the kids ... much like how it works in the US... with concepts like home turf and violence. The ghettos are de facto established. And then the trouble begins.

[IlliniDave]

Communal frenzy around Trump is motivated by xenophobia, and not anti-terrorism. So there is nothing to stop it from turning into all-out racism quickly.

Sorry to get off-topic, but I don't think this is accurate, although it is the narrative the powers that be are trying to advance as a deflection tactic. The frenzy around Trump, and Sanders for that matter, is disdain for the powers that be. So predictably they paint Trump as a villainous xenophobe and leverage racial tensions to brush Sanders aside.

[7Wannabe5]

The other day one of my work assignments was to read a picture book about a little girl who was a spy for the patriots during the Revolutionary War. She sewed an American flag out of the red stockings she hung on the laundry line to signal the arrival of a British ammunition ship and the blue coat her beloved soldier brother was wearing when he was shot to death in a guerilla skirmish. My audience was mostly newly immigrated Muslim children. Weird world we live in.

[Dragline]

[quote="fiby41"

-
Muslim are not the problem. Islam and its core teachings are the problem.

-
[/quote]

How do you explain the Prophet Isa Ibn Maryam and his teachings?

[Dragline]

@Dragline

It's about lessoning the opportunity for others to harm us. Nobody is under the illusion that all risk can be taken away. You keep mentioning probabilities, but keep in mind that the Muslim population is much lower proportionally in the U.S. than these other countries that are suffering much more numerous attacks. That and the fact that a lot of these attacks are being carried out by second generation immigrants.

Probability is the first step that most people don't even get to. Most things reported in the news are not worth changing anything, because of the low probability of occurrence and the measures already in place, which are often assumed not to exist at all due to a small number of negative outcomes.

Narratives are preferred by the masses and their erstwhile political leaders because they require little conscious thought, to be filled in with cherry-picking of data to fit the narrative, which usually involves use of power/force.

Quite timely, the issues of probability and how to do useful forecasting is explored here: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/audio/201 ... -interview

[Chad]

Or, this...

"Much to my surprise, the Islamic scriptures in the Quran were actually far less bloody and less violent than those in the Bible," Jenkins says.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... =124494788

Now, of course, it is easy to cherry pick quotes from both books, as both are long and not exactly written in a time when more humane trends where prevalent. So, just using the main books to judge the religions shouldn't be the final comparison. The books are just part of a comparison, as most religious people rarely actually follow the text, nor is it really possible.

Which one is more accepting in modern times? That leans much more towards Christianity, but as the lovely Chrisitians in North Carolina proved this week they aren't quite as far from Muslim extremists as they would believe. Yes, I realize they didn't bomb any LGBT people or kill someone over a cartoon, but this is definitely a step towards the area of the moral spectrum the Muslim extremists reside in. Obviously, not all the way by any means, but it's in that direction.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc ... ms/475125/

All that being said, I do kind of lean towards Sam Harris' view of Islam. It is a big part of the problem (the other parts being socioeconomic).

...we have an idea here that all religions are the same, that they're all equally wise or equally empty or equally irrelevant. And this is obviously devout believers of various religions don't believe this, but -- but secular liberals tend to believe this. And it's just not true. Our religions are quite different.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/ ... tions.html

Where I differ with most is believing hard power can solve this problem. More bombs, more drones, more intelligence, more soldiers, more fronts, more battles, etc. Hard power is popular because it feels like we are doing something. There are tangible and measurable results, at least there appears to be. Just ask McNamara. In reality, they are just as difficult to measure as soft power, but soft power doesn't have cool explosions on the nightly news.

Soft power wins are what Jacob noted earlier when he compared how the US assimilates immigrants and how Europe does. Of course, this is only one battle in the war.

This is a culture war. This war won't be directly won by how much territory ISIS can take, as hard power won't win that territory. Soft power will. The battle isn't how many of them we kill or how many of us they can kill, or how much territory is taken militarily. The battle is for the support of the Muslim moderates/normal citizen, which won't be won with planes, guns, or bombs. Though, it can be lost by them.

This type of war takes a long time. The Cold War is a prime example. It took decades and finally ended when a Soviet Union weakened by years of losing the culture war (weakened grip on Warsaw Pact countries due in part to Western culture/ideas and poorly managed economy) had the last leg of the stool kicked out from under it by a sustained oil price crash. Though, our current enemy is no where near as strong as the Soviet Union.

We have failed time and again in winning the soft power side of this conflict. From going into Iraq initially to using drone strikes in multiple countries that kill terrorists as much as they cause collateral damage. Building a wall, not allowing any Muslims into the country, potentially putting a semi-totalitarian state around our Muslim communities with heavy handed police actions, etc. are all soft power fails for us.

We are considered to be the #1 threat to world peace.

http://www.wingia.com/en/services/about ... ults/7/33/

That is a massive loss in the culture war. Especially, considering we produce a shit ton of soft power with our basic culture outside of our foreign policy decisions, which also makes us the "US, Canada and Australia are the countries where most people would like to live if they could."

If we don't win the soft power war, what happens when the Saudi and Persian Gulf governments fall when oil goes the way of coal in a decade or two? Part of Iraq and the vast majority of the Arabian peninsula, with the potential for more when those dominoes start falling, is a nice beginning to a real Caliphate. If that happens, then we will have the hard power war everyone seems to want.

Note: This is why I started this thread. Getting used to these attacks is a soft power victory for us. Not a massive one, but it is one. Also, I'm not suggesting hard power doesn't have it's place, but it's not as big as commonly believed.

[Chad]

Narratives are preferred by the masses and their erstwhile political leaders because they require little conscious thought, to be filled in with cherry-picking of data to fit the narrative, which usually involves use of power/force.

Quite timely, the issues of probability and how to do useful forecasting is explored here: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/audio/201 ... -interview

The narrative. The bane of stock pickers everywhere.

[BRUTE]

Which one is more accepting in modern times? That leans much more towards Christianity

for realz? brute would like to remind Chad about the Christian fundamentalist country that started a war with 500,000-1,000,000 deaths (depending on who counts what) recently.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/oct/07/iraq.usa
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualtie ... e_Iraq_War

[fiby41]

-
Muslim are not the problem. Islam and its core teachings are the problem.

-

How do you explain the Prophet Isa Ibn Maryam and his teachings?

(Presently) Lesser of the two evils.

[7Wannabe5]

There are multiple problems with direct comparison of the Quran with the Bible, or WWMD vs. WWJD. First off, obviously, the Bible is a compilation of writings, composed, compiled and edited over a fairly extensive historical period. The Quran was (depending on your perspective) composed or received by one man over the course of the last half of his life. Muhammad was extremely intelligent, but illiterate like most people at that time, so the verses were written down by scribes, but they were directly dictated by him, and chanted and thoroughly verified as being as he intended them before his death. The Quran begins "This is the book. In it is guidance sure for those who fear God." It was absolutely meant to be the source to be consulted, in a manner roughly analogous to the Supreme Court being guided by constitutional law. The thing that I think is difficult for most people to understand is that in the widespread, hugely varying diaspora of Islam (if anything more varied than Christianity due to it's spread and intermingle with the cultures of Persia, North Africa, Indonesia etc. etc.) the most conservative element from which the most radical element emerged is the least likely to study or consult the Quran as primary source of authority. It is an offshoot of a branch of the religion that did the equivalent of what might have happened in the US in terms of law if all judicial review was frozen in time in 1950 and from then on everybody simply started modeling their behavior on what was known of Thomas Jefferson's behavior from a variety of historical sources. IOW, within modern Islam, the most conservative are very WWMD , and less inclined to study the document.

Another problem with direct comparison is that , unlike Jesus, Muhammad became the political leader of his people within his lifetime, so he was directly engaged in matters of war and negotiation. Therefore, if you ask "Is engaging in battle against a tribe consisting primarily of members of the Jewish faith something Muhammad would do?" the answer is "Absolutely, yes. That did happen. Here are the known historical details of the bloody ordeal." However, if you whether Muhammad, as philosopher or prophet, called for war against Jewish people, the clear without doubt answer would be "Absolutely not. One of the primary messages of the Quran, repeated again and again, in many different ways, is a call for unity between the Muslims and other "people of the book" (monotheists guided by written code) such as Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians. Muhammad spent most of his early adult years as a trader, traveling and interacting with all sorts of people, and then became inclined towards spending a good deal of solitary time in nature towards mid-life. His social concern was the growing disparity in wealth between people as the tribal nomadic lifestyle of his region was becoming more citified. However, he also recognized the downside and inherent brutality of much of the nomadic past. He was orphaned early, but was a member of a wealthy, influential tribe with uncles who guided him, so in terms of social/political placement for his time/place, he would have maybe been something like a Kennedy. Socially liberal, not a hawk by a long shot, but not a pacifist either.

A final problem with considering quotes from the Quran, especially taken out of context, is that it came into being at a time in history when the long-standing oral tradition was slowly converting to written documents. There is a very good word in Arabic which escapes me at the moment, which describes a certain kind of pride. When your economy is based on a nomadic lifestyle, you have to keep your stuff to a minimum, so every once in a while you throw a party and give everything away and doing that will increase your feeling of that certain kind of pride. One of the things which people prided themselves on greatly in Muhammad's just-on-the-verge-of-adopting-books time/culture was their poetic skill and retention. A tribal warrior society is not unlike a bunch of street gangs. So, the Qur'an is written in a guttural language (uttered dark from the throat rather than light off the palate, Americans sound "cute" when they try to speak Arabic) with an intended audience of poet warriors. So, (once again gross over-simplification) many of the verses would be best compared to the work of a highly literate rap artist. One of the stories concerning the early Muslims was that a warrior known everywhere for his hard-azzedness who was vigorously in opposition to the adoption or spread of Islam was instantly converted himself when he finally heard the beauty of the verses being chanted. Muhammad wasn't going to be able to communicate or convince the warrior-poets of his time with mincing politeness or dry diction. He had to choose words and expressions that held power and beauty. So, there are verses that read/translate something like "If you are a hypocrite, you will be sent to hell and it will be like burning oil poured down your throat." Was this meant to be taken literally? My considered opinion on the matter is "No. I don't think that anybody who wrote/spoke as thoughtfully, eloquently and intelligently on other matters, such as how God reveals himself through the design of nature, as Muhammad did, meant that line to be taken literally." but some people, especially people who take everything literally and are locked in perspective, may have a different opinion.

Anyways, in my opinion and experience, the anger held by some young Muslim immigrants in some parts of the West has more to do with racial identity and discrimination than religion, but then this anger finds justification in the warped teachings or practices of some of the fringe conservative sects. I live in the midst of the largest Muslim immigrant population in the United States. I have repeatedly seen cut and copy news reports from various media sources relating incidents of tension in this community. These reports are simply untrue. I mean, it's not like a Coca-Cola commercial from the 70s or a Benetton ad from the 90s, but these kids are like members of every other immigrant group to America you ever read about. They believe that they are Americans. They like cars and video games and they want to be a princess from a Disney movie and they wear little Converse shoes along with their polka-dot hijabs. A couple months ago, I was helping with a kindergarten group when there was a report of a person with a gun near one of the other schools in the district. We didn't know what was going on at first, but we had to direct the children out of the cafeteria and into a corner of one of the classrooms following lock-down procedure. We turned off the lights, locked the door and pulled the shades, and shushed them as best as we could. We were there for over an hour, and we could hear a helicopter flying over head, and we still didn't know what was going on. Some of the children fell asleep and some of them became increasingly squirmy. Finally, we got the all clear signal, and later we found out that it was a false report made by a delinquent teenager. Could it have been a mentally ill person with Muslim children as his potential targets? I didn't want to believe so, but the thought did run through my head. I am the last person on the planet to be in favor of censorship or limits to free speech, but I think individuals should take some personal responsibility for their own behavior, inclusive of their own speech and writing. I don't like feeling fear. I don't want to live in a world made more dangerous through thoughtlessness. I will not vote for Donald Trump. He is not a man I would choose to follow down a dark alley. I do not believe that he would be a good leader.

[Dragline]

@Dragline

"Probability is the first step that most people don't even get to"

I still think we have to be careful here. It presupposes most people are too lazy or stupid to form coherent arguments. Don't misunderstand, many people will not perform due research for their positions in life, but that doesn't necessarily mean that their position is wrong either.

Correct, that would be what is called the "fallacy fallacy", which says that just because someone uses fallacious reasoning (or none at all) to arrive at a decision does not mean that the decision or position that they come to is necessarily in error. Also, arguments can be coherent and still be in error if the data/assumptions relied upon are inaccurate or cherry-picked.

The word that describes the condition is not "wrong", but "ignorant." The aphorism that goes with it is "even a blind squirrel can stumble upon a nut every once in a while." People make lucky guesses. With enough people guessing, someone will be lucky. That's hardly a basis for making any decision of consequence.

It actually comes back to the same basic concept of probability we started with. Exceedingly rare events are exceedingly rare events. But they will happen every once in while with enough people involved.

I think people ARE largely too lazy and stupid to work through all of this themselves. Or lacking in time and mental resources to do their own research if you prefer. Note, those two statements are the same -- one just assigns blame pejoratively and the other doesn't, but either results in uninformed decision making. Easier to take shortcuts by hearing something that sounds viscerally appealing and running with it. Very ordinary human behavior.

[Dragline]

-
Muslim are not the problem. Islam and its core teachings are the problem.

-

How do you explain the Prophet Isa Ibn Maryam and his teachings?

(Presently) Lesser of the two evils.

You missed the point. That prophet is part of the religion of Islam. My question was how does that prophet inform Islamic core teachings?

If you don't know, that's ok, but then perhaps you should not be assuming you know what the core teachings are. Most people don't want to thing about it because it causes cognitive dissonance, so instead they react as you have by repeating the "but they are different" or "yeah, whatever" mantra.

[fiby41]

I'm interested in religions teachings only up to the treatment that'd be given to me in such circumstances that adherents could get away with it.

Except the Hanifite School of Sunni Jurisprudence, all remaining three schools agree on "Islam or death" binary option for kaffurs as per Sharia. Hanifite allows kaffur to exist, as long as they pay a "protection" tax jizya to the Islamic mafia, so that they may tolerate kaffurs, like people of the book. All the while, kaffur females are fair game to be abducted, converted and married of, regardless of age.

All of this is NOT merely theoretically but very real. Also it is not some follower getting "informed" or that it does not happen today. Or that it won't happen where you live. It will happen and it will keep happening as long an individual can get away with it. Just as an indicator, in Islamic Republic of Pakistan, percentage of Hindus have fallen from 22% to 1.6% while in Islamic Republic of Bangladesh, from 28% to 10% since 1941. This is one sided, as Muslims in India have increased from 7% to 13.4% in the same time frame.

Europe is all set to be a collection of Islamic Republics by 2050 if current demographic trends continue.
Terrorism is just one path to a Sharia compliant country. Abductions, rape, marriage (population growth), picketing for Sharia, being adamant on Halal foods, pork ban, protesting against Crusader name for football team (intimidation), crying Islamophobic is rising after Brussels attack, al takkiya lies like Islam is religion of piece, this is racism cause Islam is a race(playing victim-card) are other means to the same end.

[SilverElephant]

@ffj - In Europe the Muslim immigrants largely faced a homogeneous population(=very strict/uniform rules wrt fitting in) with a generous welfare system. Consequentially immigrants where cordoned off and put in ghettos for two or three generations. This kind of cultural isolation makes the kids more susceptible to develop a teenage like fascination of joining a[ny] cause; especially if it involves shooting guns and blowing shit up. This---teenage stupidity---is the source of EU home grown terrorism. Youthful enthusiasm to join a crazy cause with terminal consequences. It has been a huge policy fail.

This [European] practise has not been adopted in the US to the same degree. The US is a nation of enterprising immigrants. People are expected to make their own way. If they fail, it's their own personal fault rather than being blamed in not being identical to the culture. IOW, in the EU, culture overrides personal responsibility. In the US it's the other way around. So if immigrants fail in Europe, they are apt to blame society and then run off and join a cause.

The US should indeed learn from the EU lessons. It's hard to understate just how stupid it would be to single out Muslim communities for surveillance/carpet bomb distant relatives/people of the same religious0colour. It would be repeating the EU mistakes all over. Given the EU experience, following the recent Cruz/Trump proposals would be insane. The smartest approach is to keep the focus on the individual! In particular, ultimately, the best way to end terrorism is to give people some lawns to mow.

Interesting you should should say that. Ever since immigrants (or refugees, as most Germans call them) started arriving in large numbers last summer, people have been criticizing Angela Merkel for welcoming them and distributing them across the country.

I've seriously considered the possibility that she knows exactly what she's doing, based on her past record (and, hey, she's got a physics degree! Ain't no such thing as a dumb physicist, right?). Point being, a lot of people strongly object to refugees in their neighborhood and would instead, if we have to take them in at all, at least put them someplace together so they don't do disruptive, immoral things like walk around.

But this would be repeating the mistake you mentioned all over again. It *looks* like the current idea is to spread them out thin in the hope that no critical extremism mass will be reached, that there won't be (much) ghetto-ization etc.

Additionally, there's a strong political push towards getting them work, an apprenticeship etc. Obviously a large number of them don't have the right (or any) qualifications.

I'm certain this won't be a 100% solution. There will be many disgruntled people, on every side. But contrast this to how we dealt with the "Gastarbeiters" (guest workers) back after the war; we shipped them here, got them to work and then kind of hoped they'd go back home (to what?). Then we kind of pushed the more renitent ones to the borders of society. Most of this is understandable, biologically rooted human xenophobia.

TL;DR Merkel critizied for not shipping immigrants off to mass ghetto camps and welcoming them; methinks she might have a plan to prevent exactly said ghettos/formation of terror nuclei.

[7Wannabe5]

I think maybe one of the big differences between the situations where immigrants have been "ghettoed" in Europe vs. choosing to live together in community where I dwell, is that so, so many of them are engaged in any entrepreneurial activity you can possibly imagine in my neighborhood. There are tiny market, restaurants, auto repair shops, dealers in miscellaneous goods, things being fixed up and flipped on every corner. One very chatty 9 year old boy I teach lives near me so he often walks with me and tells me about what he is up to. He is very intelligent and highly verbal, but talks too much to get good marks in behavior, natural born successful salesman type. One day he was telling me that he had to keep his grades up "or else" because his father told him he has to go to college because he doesn't want to have to carry heavy loads on his back all day like his father had to working as near slave for his older brothers in Yemen. Whatever else you may want to say about the religion of Islam, it does promote solid family structure. The Muslim kids in my neighborhood can be terribly obnoxious, but they don't drink or do drugs or engage in vandalism or theft and they want to be successful Americans who buy expensive cars and date some famous cheerleader who has a middle-eastern name which I can't recall, but I don't get any sort of vibe of bitterness or resentment or suspicion that their adolescent dreams may not be realized. They are mostly pretty energetic and optimistic. I suspect some of the hard-faced middle-aged Bosnian men hanging on street corners to be more likely perpetrators of abduction of females.

[Chad]

for realz? brute would like to remind Chad about the Christian fundamentalist country that started a war with 500,000-1,000,000 deaths (depending on who counts what) recently.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/oct/07/iraq.usa
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualtie ... e_Iraq_War

For realz. That war wasn't started because of religious reasons, it was started based on neoconservative foreign policy theories. Just because those people happen to be religious does not mean it was a religious war. Though, Christians were, in general, more supportive of the war than others.

My point wasn't that Christians are good. I think I have shown my true colors on religion in other threads. My point was to very briefly touch on the fact that a Christian living beside a Muslim in the Middle East is probably in more danger than the opposite in the West. Not that either side is inherently better.

How can you be a Sam Harris fan and use the above example of North Carolina as a valid comparison? I am truly curious.

I don't understand where you find the disconnect here.

Check this video out of a discussion between two gay men: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fely6gd2Q-k You'll have to suffer through one being a Trump supporter, but his views on the cultural wars I think are spot on. You may disagree.

There is a lot here to varying to degrees. I agree with the overall theme for sure. I don't disagree that the system needs shaking up. I disagree that "two wrongs make a right", with Trump just being change just for change. I could be wrong about Trump, but no one can ever say they were right about him if he does do well, because of:

The one part I have a huge problem with is Milo's (not going to even try to spell his last name) quick throw away of the lack of policy ideas from Trump. This is why I don't respect Trump or his supporters.

@brute and ffj
I find it interesting the least important parts of what I said are the two pieces that get pulled out for discussion.

[Ego]

I found this interesting....

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... story.html

What explains how people can commit such violent acts? One answer lies in our psychology. Humans are hard-wired to adopt their communities’ norms, and these norms can include rules for how to treat others — including whether to tolerate differences or attack outsiders. When norms provide status, material rewards or membership in a privileged group, they become even more potent.

Cultures are able to hijack this psychology for violent ends by providing status, promises of an afterlife and a sense of meaning. People belonging to communities that advocate violence will adopt norms of violence, whether those communities are tribal societies, neighbors and family, or Facebook friends. Cross-cultural research I’ve conducted shows that the most important predictor of warfare in a society is a cultural system that awards warriors with social benefits.

[fiby41]

My question was how does that prophet inform Islamic core teachings?

Easter celebration attack kills 54 and injures 29.

-

To his credit, Muhammad is quit clear-cut about it. Christians are to be subjugated and made to feel subdued as dhimmis.

According to Islam everyone is born a Muslim but is picked up by other faiths. What do you have to say about that?

According to Islam Islam is the perfect refinement of earlier monotheistic religions. Without a doubt, in case there is any discrepancy between the two, teaching of Islam takes precedence.

Also when deciding between beheading, stoning, cutting off hands, throwing off a building, throwing off a building and then stoning, just in case, to be sure, crucifixion etc as a punishment for not being a Muslim or other crimes
a Muslim is not going to set a chair for comparative religion - He is going to obey the. Qur'an.

Also Islam has been the hardest religion to "reform" both from within and without- because of course, Muslims don't get AIDS.

_
I repeat, an individual Muslim can have all the desirable qualities, but Islam prevents/subverts the social development of people.


No person can, regardless of time or place, can read the Qur'an, and then believe in it, and emerge a mentally sane and balanced person afterwards.

No wonder then Allah has to keep insisting nine times to his adherents that Muhammad is not mad.

[jacob]

@Ego - It works for entire nations too. Indeed, it's probably the only way to organize a war. Think of the historical use of medals, parades, ...as a reward for military participation. Then adding the more recent support ribbons/stickers, military/tactical fashion wear, and politicians openly advocating torture and carpet bombing to a cheering crowd. Bernays showed explicitly how this worked (sell the feeling while making the product available) but it's a strategy that countries and kings have followed for centuries.

Another aspect is the Milgram experiment. When it comes to violence, people are hardwired probably even more to follow authority than by the promise of social status in whatever form this may take. IOW, the promise of social status sets the scene. Authority then makes it possible.

It's interesting to note that IS apparently suffered somewhat of a recruitment problem (it was in the European news several months ago) after people started defecting and telling others that the status/promises offered wasn't the status/promises that was delivered. Promoting these stories is a strong form of soft power.

[Ego]

@Ego - It works for entire nations too.

Absolutely. Here we're talking about terrorism....

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B0eppuJCMAQslDM.jpg