Islamic Terrorism: is religion/belief no matter how misguided, the main motivator?

[johnmc]

There's 2,000,000,000 Muslims in the world. I don't believe Salafist jihadists make up 0.001% of that. That is not a high proportion.

Are you saying that the incidents we are seeing recently are all (or mostly) carried out by Salafist jihadists? Obviously the media report only as Muslim and I've yet to hear them refer to them by specific sects (if that is the right term)

 

[ccr]

So that little shit is going to heaven for 47 virgins although some claim it means grapes. Rivers of wine although some claim its non alcoholic. Drinking camel urine cures tummy ache. Marrying 6 year old girls is ok, having sex with them at 9 years old was/is the norm. Thighing babies is fine. Male sperm comes from between the backbone and the ribs. The sun sets in a pool of muddy water and Satan lives up your nose. Don't get me started on the Bible. The only way is education, although at the rate its going another 5000 years is required. How do I know these things ? My God Dibblebubble told me in a dream.

 

[Gelsons Dad]

This attempt to ascribe all of Islam's woes with Salafists is not backed up by the data gathered by ICM a few years ago. The attitude towards religious violence held by a significant number of British Muslims is not the peace loving picture which is painted.
https://www.icmunlimited.com/polls/icm-muslims-survey-for-channel-4/

 

[Magicpole]

Even simpler put, humanity is the root of all evil here.

Which just like yours is so broad that it's a completely pointless statement, so let's try to be less simple and more specific instead.

Correct. Because it was written by men with an agenda like every religion that has ever been conceived. Current count, 10,000,

 

[Uptop]

My opinion is that religion was made up as a way to control the masses, putting in place general "laws" for populations to follow which would keep them stable while uniting them towards common goals in old times, be that for good or bad (knowledge/cultural improvements vs conquering lands/persecution based on beliefs).

I believe religion is just a tool and if religion never existed something else would take its place allowing people to push their agendas.

I have no problem with people who follow religion, as long as original texts are interpreted, not taken literally. Basically all religion's have developed to fit the modern world, some more than others and literal interpretations are rare now outside extreme sects.

Education is the way to move forward, the more educated the world becomes the less bullshit will go on and the less people will be manipulated.

 

[Damocles]

Are you saying that the incidents we are seeing recently are all (or mostly) carried out by Salafist jihadists? Obviously the media report only as Muslim and I've yet to hear them refer to them by specific sects (if that is the right term)

Yeah.

Salafists are a small sect of Sunni Islam who are generally very conservative. They believe that Islam was at its most purest right when it was invented and that actions from both kuffar (unbelievers) and murtadd (apostates) corrupted it and its beliefs. There's many Salafists who aren't jihadists though - some are positively peace loving compared to the freaks like ISIS.

Jihadists are people who believe that only through armed rebellion is their "liberation" possible. Bit of a controversial thing this as jihad in Islam generally refers to a struggle against something that's often internal such as wrestling with your faith, but in modern parlance jihadis are terrorists.

So ISIS for example are jihadists who are also Salafists. But not all Salafists are jihadists and not all jihadists are Salafist (though to be honest most really are who we'd be discussing on here).

It's also why Saudi Arabia often gets badly lumped into these discussions, as some of their Royal Family fund mosques as community centres of learning and prayer in what can only be politely described as country with lots of many "developing regions". The House of Al Saud are Wahhabists - a very similar sect of Sunni to Salafism whose differences are so small to be just academic. Our own affiliated Al Nayhan family had its own brushes with the Wahhabists a hundred years or so back in what is now Abu Dhabi and ended up literally paying them just to fuck off somewhere else and be somebody else's problem.

Both Wahhabism and Salafism appeal to uneducated and rural Muslims whose lives are built around their religion and their mosques function as Churches used to over here back in the 1500s. Many parts of Arabia have villages and towns where their way of life hasn't changed in a thousand years almost, and like most rural folks they're very much change adherent. Saying that all the problems in the world are the fault of Westerners is often quite an appealing idea as they see their way of life eroded by the advent of technology and the seduction of liberalism. This creates a force that can be mobilised against a monarchy who very often has a poor grasp on their own country - like every monarchy in the world, those in the region are clinging onto power by turning rival factions against each other rather than themselves and part of this means making sacrifices to one sect, then the other, etc. Saddam Hussein was pretty good at this balancing act as ruthless and inhumane as he was.

The problem with Arabia is that we look at it as a few blocs of land but it's a hugely complex mix of ethnic and religious diversity all with their own rivalries and hatred towards one another. We always believe our enemies are less complex than ourselves for some reason even though scousers and Mancs traditionally dislike each other we don't put that same level of division on other countries. We aren't blowing people up but the root causes are the same.

Both Al-Qaeda and ISIS for example are Salafist Jihadists but they actually hate each other. Al Qaeda affiliated groups have turned out to be one of our best "allies" in the fight against ISIS because they slaughter each other, and there's very small evidence that we might even have been helping them out a little bit in the past through our allies in Israel. The reason I mention this is because both groups are thrown in together in the every day mentioning but both groups have pretty different beliefs and different solutions are required to both.

The London bombings on 7/7 had no connection to either Al Qaeda nor ISIS and were perpetuated by your bog standard jihadists who were suspected to be part of a wing of a Pakistani group known as Lashkar e-Tabir or LeT. These guys are a bit more affiliated to the Wahhabists in the Saud family than Al Qaeda, for example, but are often considered much less likely to be into jihadism yet supposedly inspired the leader of that terror cell.

We don't know who the Manchester bomber was affiliated with, if anyone. There was a group I've seen touted around called LIFG in Libya who were a Salafist group and, get ready for the irony here, were entirely financed by British Muslims sending money and manpower over to them rather than the other way around. They were considered by the Home Office to be affiliated to Al Qaeda back when we just said everybody in the region was affiliated to them in the early days of this stuff, and designated them a terror group and started nicking the financiers and planners in Blightly. Then they "rebranded" in Libya to something else and started talking about human rights and what have you. So who the fuck knows what they're up to now and what if any connection they had to Manchester?

The main takeaway from all of this is that this idea of a centralised ISIS enemy - it's a myth. It doesn't exist. We're not fighting a conflict like with the Nazis, we're fighting an idea like with Communism. There's no central structure to bomb. There's no easy red lines to draw in order to delineate who to "kick out" and who to show compassion towards. It's a conflict based on a thousand years or more of ethnic and religious divides which has not only consumed the region for the past several hundred years but has also consumed loads of other places in the world. This is Catholics vs Protestants if there were 500 sides to that. We can't "back the good guys" in the area with guns and training because there's no good guys to back. Only shades of bad guys which changes as the situation in the world changes.

This problem is enormously complex and deep rooted so I only know two real truths about it. Firstly that Israel, Jordan, Bahrain and the UAE are the only ones really stemming the flow in the region and we need to throw money and support at these fuckers like we're Mansa Musa travelling the Silk Road with Israel being the biggest hope for liberalism in the Middle East. Secondly that banning Polish signs in the market isn't going to solve this problem and we need to leave it to the real experts in intelligence and academia to come up with viable, alternative solutions to the current actions.

 

[MCFCTrick]

Basically .... Even if they turn the world into the desired caphilate, they will then argue, fight and kill each other over who's interpretation of their sky fairy is the right one?

As if proof was needed that such a 'god' doesn't exist, then this proves it, because if there was a god, he would surely wipe his hands of such utter bollox and wipe mankind right the fuck out ...

 

[Damocles]

Basically .... Even if they turn the world into the desired caphilate, they will then argue, fight and kill each other over who's interpretation of their sky fairy is the right one?

Well no. As mentioned a few times, ISIS doesn't really want a Caliphate and are instead trying to bring about the apocalypse. Though some want a proper Caliphate and would probably spend the rest of eternity killing each other and us over which version is correct.

 

[Ban-jani]

The assertion that religion is irrelevant to the current manifestation of Islamic terrorism is false. It is the central tenet of their motivation. It is also the case that this phenomenon has its roots in Wahhabi doctrine, established by a man of that name in the 17th century, who advocated a return to an Islamic form of government and society ordered around the Quran and the Haddiths.

This form of Islam is currently the structure which Saudi Arabia operates and for the last 30 years they have exported this through funding thousands of Mosques world wide. This is a fundamentalist form of Islam that sees as its ultimate goal, the establishment of a world wide Caliphate.

People dismiss these people as corrupting the Quran. The problem here is that within the Quran and Haddiths, there are texts that actually command efforts to establish a caliphate and to kill or subjugate non believers and the followers of this doctrine point to these writings from the Prophet as justification, and indeed compulsion to seek these ends.

Similar to Christianity, the vast majority of Muslims do not enact or pursue the more extreme aspects of the teachings. If anybody thinks such extreme instructions are not contained within the Bible, they haven't read it. They are there, but due to primarily to the Enlightenment, Reformation and separation of Church and State, we have seen an interpretation of the Bible that ignores the barbaric aspects and focuses upon the nice bits. The sanitised bits. Here are only a few commands from the God of the Bible

Kill those who are not Christian or Jewish:

You must kill those who worship another god. Exodus 22:20

Kill any friends or family that worship a god that is different than your own. Deuteronomy 13:6-10

Kill all the inhabitants of any city where you find people that worship differently than you. Deuteronomy 13:12-16

Kill everyone who has religious views that are different than your own. Deuteronomy 17:2-7

Kill anyone who refuses to listen to a priest. Deuteronomy 17:12-13
Kill any false prophets. Deuteronomy 18:20

Any city that doesn’t receive the followers of Jesus will be destroyed in a manner even more savage than that of Sodom and Gomorrah. Mark 6:11

Jude reminds us that God destroys those who don’t believe in him. Jude

Now, we don't do this, but, if you believed, or were convinced that these are commands from God, you would use them as the justification as Islamic Jihadists do. They point to similar 'divine command' writings and reject those who they see as betraying the true teachings.

Religion and adherence to its writings in a literal sense are 'the' motivation.

The last century has seen the ending of the Ottoman Caliphate after WW1,
The establishment of Isreal, the abortive wars in the Middle East,all of which have contributed to the radical clerics armoury to radicalise and promote violence in the pursuance of a world wide Caliphate. They point to the writings that command Muslims and ignore the condemnation of murder and ill treatment of the children of the book. Us.

Christianity had a reformation, as science proved that the writings of the bible were wrong in relation to how the world is and our place in the universe. Capernicus, Gallileo who showed the earth wasn't the centre of the universe and who was threatened with torture and indeed spent the last 15 years of his life under house arrest. We went from a literal interpretation of the bible to a more well, it's of its time, it's a guide, but, if it was written through divine guidance, the word of God, then who are we to dismiss it? This is what Fundamental Islamists believe. It is not permissible to deny that every word is truly the word of Allah.

We now are in the period of increased violence. Sectarian violence within Islam between Shia and Sunni interpretations. We see our involment in a military context in the Middle East as the the main tool used to redicalise.

They also point to things like Muslim bans in America. Support for an expansionist Isreal as examples of how Muslims are victims. They then point to the book. The book, like the bible contain instructions and indeed commands to violence in the achievement of gods wish for a world wide Caliphate.

The problem for any attempts to reduce tension are hampered by the simple fact, that if you believe every word of a holy book is divine, men cannot challenge it. This will see an eternal number of people who, although in an extemely small minority of Muslims, are still in the millions if we look at the 1.2 billion people within this faith.

Religion is the motivator.

It is the justification they use. They actually believe they will be Martyrs. They believe it because the book tells them. 99% do not accept this and say it is a corruption of the Quran. The problem with this is it is in the Quran as those commands are in the bible. The extreme clerics point to them, point to the geopolitical situation and convince young men and women that God wants them to establish a caliphate through any means.

I have attached a link that gives a historic evolution of what we call extreme Islam, but what those within it see as the command of God. If we are to defeat it, contain it,we need to understand where it comes from. Who is promoting it. What are we doing to exasperate it. What we can do to support Muslims who are happy to live in a secular society to combat the radicalisation of the young. What we do with Saudi Arabia in its promotion of Wahhabi doctrine.

My fear is that they will become more sophisticated in designing bombs, as seems to be the case in Manchester. The call to Syria has been replaced with instruction to stay in the west and use any means to strike. We cannot ignore that intelligence from within the British Musim community plays a major factor in our ability to thwart attacks. This has to be recognised and applauded but more importantly supported.

To defeat an idea, a doctrine that you believe is the word of God is impossible. What is possible is reducing the recruitment and this can only be achieved when we remove the recruitment tools by looking to find political solutions to the Middle East. To call out Saudi Arabia and stop wahabi doctrine expansion.

But, even if all that was achieved we will still have people who will reject it unless it includes the world accepting Islam, which won't happen. The reality is increased attacks will be the norm in the west. I can see no other future for us all. Radical hate preachers and their followers need to be tackled, but that will only drive them
underground. Religion and its ability to make reason redundant is the main issue. To deny that is to deny what motivates them. Read the books and tell me there isn't in black and white instructions to act in the way we see today by extremists. It's there.

I will end with a quote that I think sums up the issue.

In a world without religion, good men would do good things and bad men would do evil things.

But for good men to do evil things, that requires religion.

Below is a summary of information on this topic and gives a background to where things are.

http://www.crf-usa.org/america-resp...rom-1945-to-the-death-of-osama-bin-laden.html

You're often someone on here I disagree with but over the last 48 hours you've made two of the best posts on the board.

Well said, yet again.

 

[Ban-jani]

Religion is just an excuse. If there was no religion there would be some other excuse or reason to be a dicky. Humans have been killing each other for thousands of years it's never gonna stop, religion or no religion

Do you think young British born males would be blowing themselves up, a long with innocent men, women and children if they didn't believe god was commanding it?