Muslims call for the death of English school teacher...
 

I am sure this news has spread outside of the UK... these people DO NOT represent Islam, but they do represent a growing trend within Islam.

In my opinion this unlawful imprisonment of a British citizen should be treated as a hostile act - and an appropriate military response should be being prepared if she is not released immediately.

The 15 day sentence was obviously some kind of a deal... but we should not deal with these people and legitimise their insanity. No admission of guilt, not one day's imprisonment, is acceptable in this case.

"military response"? are you daft? over a schoolteacher? I never would have picked you to be trigger-happy. Seems to me that the days of "Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead" are long dead.

At what point does this trend represent Islam?

It represents religion. Singling out Islam because it happens to be in it's dark ages isn't really fair. There was a time that this would have happened in Christianity or Judaism.

I was going to post this article, but I'm having a hard time formulating coherently how poorly I understand what's happened.

The worst this could possibly be construed as being is a cultural misunderstanding. There was no suggestion that they were treating the bear as any sort of idol. There was no suggestion that it meant or was supposed to refer to the prophet in any way besides sharing a name. Why is it ok to name your snot-nosed brat Mohammed but not a teddy bear? If the name is sacred and can't be used, why can people name their kids after him without recourse?

I didn't understand the degree of uproar over the cartoon whenever that happened, but I can appreciate why people would be offended by a cartoon mocking someone or something they believe is sacred. This uproar is simply outside any remote boundary of what should be considered a human thought process. It's utter insanity and beyond terrifying that people could reach this level of frenzy from something so totally insignificant.

I know relatively little about the Muslim faith, but if everything in that faith is 100% true, I'm sure these people would be pretty surprised what the afterlife would hold for them if they killed her for her "sin."

I once knew a cat named Hitler.

Of course it's fair. What's unfair about it? Why is a discrete group of people acting like an ignorant barbarians excusable because other groups of people acted like ignorant barbarians hundreds of years ago?

It unfair to set Islam apart in having extreme elements that behave horribly in the name of their religion, of course. All religions have had extremists. If you line up the timelines of Christianity and Islam, they're about in the middle of their dark ages.

first off, this situation in the sudan self-evidently is not indicative of islam in anything like a general sense, simply because muhammed is an extraordinarily common first name across most arabic-speaking countries where islam is a dominant religion--INCLUDING the sudan.
so ANY attempt to make this about something more than the bizarre-o situation that confronts this woman in the sudan is ludicrous.
and it is even more ludicrous that i--or anyone else--should feel the need to even say as much.
you'd think it self-evident.


it is obviously about the fact that this very common first name was interpreted by one of gillian gibbon's CO-WORKERS (i capitalize this because it amazes me) as blasphemous because the name was given BY THE STUDENTS OF HER CLASS to a teddy bear...(this tidbit about the co-worker is in today's guardian)

there's a ton that i do not understand that happened between the lodging of some complaint to the present situation, and so i'm not even going to try to say anything about it.

what is even more baffling is that this whole ridiculous affair is being used for political purposes. that you can see a rationale behind, i guess: i mean it's not as though the sudanese government has not come under a ton of pressure from the international "community" for the civil war in general and over allegations of its support for militias in darfur.

but still...sheesh...

The world of the Dark Ages and the world today really couldn't be more different, particularly with respect to access to information which is what caused the Dark Ages in the first place. Falling literacy rates and the loss of the collected knowledge of Rome with the end of the Roman Empire?

The tools are there, which they emphatically weren't during the Dark Age (well, they were, ironically, in the Middle East, but taking a multi-year voyage to learn in the Middle East was a lot harder than connecting to the internet).

Arguing just to argue, eh? Mkay.

The several hundred years following the fall of an empire? Check.
War torn? Check.
Rule by radical religious people? Check.
Ultra powerful church? Check.
Impoverished? Check.
Peasant/farmer militias? Check
Crusades? Check.

Is it really a growing trend? Or is it just that the small minority that is calling for her execution is getting better at using the media along with the fact that our media thrives on stories like this to make money?

I don't think we should militarily respond to this as the incident itself leaves a huge black eye on the fundies that are railing against this woman. The more things like this happen the faster the mainstream islamics will come out against this sort of thing.

Now I'm all for using diplomatic means to get this woman out of there ASAP. Also charitable organizations in that country should threaten to pull out immediately. Let's see how the country does without international support.

Yeah, but our Spanish Inquisition was some time ago.

Women in The Kingdom are being thrown in jail because they are rape victims right now.

There are lunatics in every religion... in Islam, the lunatics are starting to take charge... thats the issue.

wouldn't it be more accurate to say that in the sudan, a very problematic regime is in power?
and that this particular situation is but one--and not a terribly significant one--example of this?
i say not terribly significant because, well, there's darfur. there's been a civil war. who the hell knows how many people have been massacred in these contexts?
that a nice school teacher from england is in jail because she let her class name a teddy bear muhammed is surreal, but it doesnt demonstrate anything--AT ALL---about islam in general.

and why would you advocate military action over this?
i dont remember seeing anything from you (or anyone else here, really) arguing that darfur was a massive human rights disaster that required international intervention?
the "community" almost addressed this question a couple years ago, but dodged it by deciding that darfur was "genocide-like" or "genocide-ish" but not genocide because that would have required action.

nothing about that: outrage about this.
i really do not understand your priorities, where they lay, what they are.

and i'm in no way condoning what is happening to this poor woman.
i just dont understand why her situation is more important than that of hundreds of thousands of human beings in darfur. for example.

please dont make me speculate as to why that is.
i really dont want to go down that route.

She will be released this weekend anyway Ive been hearing.

By all means we should interfered over Darfur. With strong protective force.

By all means I would send in a warship and I would send my troops to take her out of prison... by peaceful means if possible.... and by killing anyone who tried to prevent it if necessary.

This attack against one women, as insignificant as it may be in human terms compared to Darfur, is an attack against the dignity of our nation. It should not be tolerated.

how is this an attack?

it was a bizarre legal case...

Islam today is better than it was 10 years ago. The idea that "the lunatics are starting to take charge" seems somewhat dated. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is much less radical than his predecessors.

I actually completely agree with you on the timeline. Islam was founded ~650 years after Christianity, and this kind of stuff was happening in Europe in the 1300s.

However, one thing we need to remember is that the world itself is completely different. Back then, you could go through a regional religious transformation and not have it effect the greater world community very much (outside of the occasional crusade). Now, with the way the world as a whole is connected, the problems there create major problems elsewhere.

We really can't afford to wait them out for the next hundred-plus years, because by then it could be too late for not millions, but billions.

I don't know what CAN be done, but something HAS to be done.

I agree with this completely. My point was simply that singling out Islam really doesn't make sense. Frankly, I believe that the world would be better off if extreme religious fundamentalism and zealotism was treated for what it is: mental illness. Considering that the west is no longer in the dark ages, I'd say that in the interest of self preservation we should be taking action to bring peace and prosperity to the region. Imagine the dark ages had there been enough resources and less fighting.

We single out Islam because they are the problem.

Past problems really don't matter at this point, and we have a bit of apples and oranges.

I once felt this was the 'normal' progression to some sort of civilized state for Islam, but the world is different enough these days that you can't use ignorance and superstition as a cause like you could even 200 years ago.

In the crusades the first place you saw a Muslim would be either in the occupied cities or at the point of your/his sword.

These guys are using the internet to post videos of murders and many of the terrorist types have lived in the West.

Privative ignorance is not an excuse, its a death cult with a culture of hate from birth that is to blame.

And while for some reason the Crusades are constantly used as we 'well we were just as bad' the Crusades would never have happened it if weren't for prior Islamic military expansion which they had been trying to (and almost successfully) to conquerer Europe for years. Its not like we just decided 'hey lets kill those non-Christians'.

After all its Istanbul not Constantinople for a reason.

Look in the highest office in our nation and tell me Islam is your and my problem more than, say, Christianity. Bush is blatantly messianic. How often does he use "evil" where "criminal" would be more correct. How often does he invoke the name of god in his explanation of foreign policies that happen to coincide with the interest of the country which currently houses Jerusalem? You're an atheist just like me; you should be able to have some perspective on this.

Over use of religious language = bad.

Teaching your children that they should blow themselves up in a suicide attack as religious martyrs = superduper bad.

jesus christ, this is depressing.

there's an article here:

http://www.unhcr.org/publ/RSDCOI/3ae6a6b914.html

that actually talks about the sudan, its very particular form of government, its curious organization and ideology.
it's a bit outdated--it seems to have been written around 2001--but it took about 30 seconds to find and abuot 5 minutes to read and gives enough background information to shortcircuit this idiotic "something must be done about islam" line that keeps cropping up here.

think about it: if you're going to talk about this situation IN THE SUDAN, dont you think it reasonable to talk about the sudan?



and such articles are easy to pile up---it just requires a *little bit* of research---nothing stressful i'm sure you can do it. it will take you less time that it will to write another rehash of the huntington "thesis."

I'm sure someone as intelligent as you has wondered how much of our current involvement in the ME may have to do with theism.

Teaching your children that they should blow themselves up in a suicide attack as religious martyrs = superduper bad.

Being directly responsible the the deaths of over 1m people since 2003 because Jesus said so = way worse than suicide bombers.

Edit: RB, that's a good article. I hope everyone reads it.

Roach, pretend for a minute that I know nothing about religion, economics, or world geopolitics, and just tell me what the hell is going on.

In a nutshell: fundamentalism, nationalism, reformation?

i cant pretend to know in much detail, and i have to go in any event, but i bit this background section from the linked article and paste it here.

what's happening seems in general terms consistent with this, yes?

very strange regime.
i'm kinda curious about it now, actually.

If this were a local issue then yes, but either militant Islam is springing up independently in pretty much every location they come in contact with other belief systems, or there is an interconnectedness that allows for generalizations.

Militant Islam is a direct result of the political and social systems in which they are located.

It's interesting to note that in the Middle Eastern context the increasingly liberal nations are the ones that either never had oil or have run out of oil. The money that oil brings means that despots can remain in power, can limit free speech, keep international trade (beyond oil) to a minimum, buy off imams and political opponents, etc.

I have seen it suggested that as long as these nations can continue to drill for oil they have no need of drill the resources of their people.

There is a massive lack of education, employment and opportunities. When this sort of situation occurs people look for someone to blame. The West is a convenient scapegoat that has been offered up.

They're just freedom fighters for crying out loud. There is after all a point to blowing their own children up and rallying for the deaths of westerners who allow their children to call a teddy bear Mohammed.

....as Will pointed out, at least they aren't listening to Jesus.

except there is The Kingdom

except there is the Taleban

except in Iran a rape victim was executed by the state last year

the common link in is Islamic extremism.

Except there is Pat Robertson

except there are bombings of abortion clinics

except the KKK and the National Liberation Front of Tripura are officially Christian terrorist organizations

The common link has jack shit to do with Islam. The common link is ignorance. Ignorance and hatred spawn terrorism.

"radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam in a country like America." - Rosie O'Donnel

I kinda think Rosie was holding back a bit when she said this, but that's not the point. The point is, Will, you obviously agree with her....and that is as ignorant as ignorant can get. Any attempt at comparing Christianity to the OP is so far off base it can only be considered hatred for Christianity.

You're such a terrorist Will, and you don't even know it.

...as an afterthought...read through this thread.

At some point, don't you people think to yourselves there's something wrong with this reaction:

When I hear of 600 people calling publicly for the death of a schoolteacher who was there to teach their children, or an entire geographic area calls for the death of a cartoonist because something offended them...my immediate reaction is to use my years of psychological, sociological, and political training to put it into perspective.

But when I hear about these crazy f'ers knocking on doors trying to tell me about their jahova.....pull out the fucking guillotine.

I won't ask because you've probably been poked in the eye by shards of glass from an exploding abortion clinic, and shot in the knee by a member of the KKK as you were walking by a church, but you seem willing enough to accept that the OP doesn't represent Islam, couldn't you at least give Christianity the same courtesy?

Wow, this thread is taking a turn for the worse. Are we not prepared to establish the marked differences between following one's religion and carrying it away?

I've never once been ignorant in my life. The reality is that you simply compared me to someone generally viewed to be stupid and didn't speak of any evidence or logical conclusions against anything specific I said. Besides this being a logical fallacy (something common in your posts), it's not even an argument. "You're wrong." is generally followed by something. Something other than an insult, that is. Do you have something to say, or will it just be baseless insults?
Baseless insults it is, then. I acquire and spread knowledge whereas religions spreads fear. Maybe you should rethink what terrorism really is.
As someone who actually DOES have years of experience and education in the areas if psychology, I feel it necessary to question the validity of your claim as to having training in those fields. You've been posting on TFP even longer than I have, but I've never seen any evidence of such training.
That was of course my point. Just as the KKK and NLFT don't represent Christianity, these isolated incidents don't represent Islam. If you read all my posts in this thread, you should see that was my point from the get go. All religions have extremists in them, which do not represent the whole. To suggest that they do represent the whole is to ignore the fact that such a small percentage is radical. Out of the (estimated) 1.2 billion Muslims in the world, there are only a few thousand who are radical, and most of them live in deeply impoverished and war torn areas.

Pat Robertson is a good example.

Pat Robertson is a powerless lunatic

Usama Bin Laden has millions of followers.

Bin Laden might be a bit more intelligent, but his basic message is just as crazy.

Pat Robertson has millions of followers. Or do you think the 700 Club has been on the air since 1966 just for fun?

I dont think Pat Robertson has organised any major terrorist attacks that kill 1000's of civilians yet.

I never claimed that every religion did not have its extremists and its nutcases.... but this trait in Islam is out of control.

If you dont think that Saudi Arabia is a problem with regards to the treatment of women, I dont understand you.

If you think that there are Christian countries behaving in this way, I dont know them.

Sudan is NOT a one off. The Taleban are not one off's.

I am not claiming that the only villians in this world are Muslims, but Islam has twin problems - the alienation of Islamic youth from the globalised norm, and the growing connection of religion with violence and opression of women in Islam. These are serious.

I know quite a few Muslims, and this not a problem that the liberal side of Islam ignores or brushes off... its pretty funny that the Muslim Council of Britain has condemned the Sudanese people, and it is only middle class white liberals who are defending them and claiming the school teacher should be punished for "cultural insensitivity"

In the American internment camp where they hold Muslims without charge or protection of international or national law (Guatanamo Bay?) - one of the "tortures" that they use against Muslims is to urinate on a copy of the Qu'ran in their presence. This badly effects the prisoner, and causes utter outrage in Islamic countries.

I know many religious Christians. I cant imagine anyone particularly being anguished if someone urinated on a Bible.

That's because his followers don't live in an impoverished, war torn region. If you remove war and poverty from the Middle East, you remove the bite of radical fundamentalism. That's my point.

Saudi has more oil than anyone (other than maybe the Russian empire - depending on where you draw the lines of that empire), and is by far the most volatile and extreme in terms of STATE religion (as well as the feelings of the working class)

You could make an argument that the war and poverty are what the leaders of the religion really want, because it creates a reason for people to listen to them.

Again, same thing happened in pre-Renaissance Europe with the Church.

The people are impoverished because the ruling families suck ass.

I agree with roachboy that knowing more about the Sudan might help us understand exactly what's happening there. I don't see how arguing whether Christianity or Islam is worse historically helps to understand this particular legal case in the Sudan.

I also agree with Charlatan that understanding the social, political, and economic systems in which "Radical Islam" resides might better explain the actions of adherents to "Radical Islam". That people in many other Muslim nations name their sons "Mohammed" without controversy suggests that there must be something going on here other than or in addition to "Radical Islam". That some Muslim countries, like Turkey, seem relatively stable suggests to me that this case and other cited examples of "Radical Islam" may not actually be about Islam. That the vast, vast majority of Muslim individuals in the world don't appear to be blowing up buildings, imprisoning English teachers, etc. suggest to me that there may be something other than or in addition to Islam going on in these cases.

I have been ignorant many, many times in my life.

Oh, I respond like that whenever someone attacks my intelligence. I've made mistakes and have been ignorant before, in reality.

IMO, the opinions you expressed in your post are outrageously biased and inaccurate. Militant zionism in the US and the influence over the US military, the federal government and it's foreign policy, and the media by militant evangelical christians is at least equally troubling.

Our military and the CIC/decider who directs them, under the recently outsized evangelical christian and zionist influences, is responsible for the deaths of more innocent muslim civilians than I can tally. Your one sided POV, in view of the facts, elicits countering opinions that you then perceive perceive to be one sided. They're not because they come from people who view "both sides" as extreme, petty, ignorant, anachranistic, and equal examples of the nonsense that is organized religion, responsible for more senseless killing and persecution than any other catalyst in history.

Christians have no record of measured compassion for "the other", than muslims have demonstrated.

Until you're willing to accept that neither christians nor muslims have any claim to a higher moral authority than the other, you work consciously or not, to the dead it makes no difference.... to help make it a certainty that there will be plenty more dead.

They die on both "sides", because of the ignorance and intolerance of some "on those sides". Get in the middle. Stop the nonsense. Lessen the tension and misunderstanding that foments the killing.

The blind one sided point of view that fuels and justifies the violence in the name of WHATEVER, isn't working, and you would say that it's "will's fault" or it's "host's fault" because we believe that the killing it cannot be justified by neocon BS "islamo-fascist" rhetoric and delirium. Bush, Cheney, Bolton, and their neocon/JINSA/CNP propaganda and their, advocacy of waterboarding makes the Irania president look reasonable in comparison, and you never ever notice, do you?

I'm going to guess that naming an inanimate object like a teddy bear = idol worship, and therefore (obvious) she must die because that is explicitly prohibited, in the same vein as showing any image of the 'profit' Mohamed.

South Park handled it best, Comedy Central refused to allow them to show Mohamed in an non-offensive bit but did allow this in the same episode...

<object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/CeVbOoat5rE&rel=1"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/CeVbOoat5rE&rel=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object>

Whats funny is they snuck it in here though....

<object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/qTsR820ofEQ&rel=1"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/qTsR820ofEQ&rel=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object>

Don't tell anyone or they might kill a nun again and riot across Europe.

Muhammad
 

insulting calling a teddy Muhammad? there was at least 10 kids in my school called Muhammad no where near as nice as a teddy!!. surely that's not right how cocky is that?? "hi this is my son god" a while ago i worked with a man called Muhammad he was the most vile smelly rude lazy man i have ever come across his parents should be locked up for 15 days!! what the hell is wrong with the world she was a teacher she was there to help these people not insult them so i say send her home its there loss, in London some Muslims take to the street and preach against us and we send police to protect them!! the hole world has gone crazy.

Just to be clear this:

"You're such a terrorist Will, and you don't even know it."

should have had a smiley face after it I don't really think you're a terrorist, Will. I was being ironic, the fear/ignorance thing. I also wasn't talking about my own reaction to 600 protesters....oh nevermind.

But really? Only a few thousand radical Muslims?

This is all I have to say on people blaming Radical Islam on economic reasons. If that were true we'd have people from Sub-Saharan Africa tossing planes into our buildings, not upper-middle class members in an oil rich country.

Seaver, those so-called middle class members of oil-rich countries all came into radicalization while doing time at schools in the west. Their path to radicalization had more to do with alienation, disenfranchisement and humiliation than anything else. This has been seen time and again with immigrants that have been radicalized.

This sounds a bit too much like blaming the victim for me. Maybe they came into radicalization while in the west but what about the radicals who never have come to the West?

Having had a large contingent of Islamic students in my department, and seeing the extreme pressure they put themselves under to be 'good Muslims', how they alienate themselves, and how they treat/intimidate those Muslims who do try to adopt western ways, I think you are off the mark. The problem is inherent to their culture not the West.

Ustwo... it was not my intention to blame the victim, rather it is an attempt, after much reading about the subject, to understand the causes.

I would agree that the problem lies in their culture (lack of free speech, lack of democracy, combined with corrupt leadership and a radicalized religion) but it is when that culture intersects in the West that some of the more intense forms of radicalization have occurred.

As you have pointed out, you have seen the, "extreme pressure they put themselves under to be 'good Muslims', how they alienate themselves, and how they treat/intimidate those Muslims who do try to adopt western ways". It clearly isn't *just* the West that I am pointing to rather it is the two in combination.

Poverty doesnt explain it all. There is massive poverty in the far east, in Christian parts of Africa, in South America... and not the same movements.

I never said that there are not other problems in the world, and I never claimed that the majority of Muslim's are peaceful and industrious people. But the trend for extremism and violence in Islam IS growing rapidly.

The situation of every nation is unique, but we can see commonality in Pakistan, in Northern Iraq, in Iran, in Afghanistan, in Somalia, in Sudan... in many other places.

This is a recent trend. Historically, Islam supported the rights of women far more than other "religions of the book" - this corruption of Islam has only really been seen since the end of WWII and onwards in my opinion.

The region isn't impoverished because of war. The poverty was there before the war.

Poverty is rampant in the ME because of the oil. The ruling elite don't have to tap their citizens to create wealth all they need do is tap the earth for oil. The nations that have run out or never had oil to begin with are the ones in the middle east that are the most liberal, have democracies (even if they are just starting out like Bahrain) and encourage diversity.

A nation that has to rely on its people for wealth and prosperity, rather than natural resources, cannot afford to ignore 50% of its populace. So they tend to be more liberal with women's rights.

Those same nations, if they are to tap the resources of their people, must invest in education (upgrades in the software of their people if you will).

They must also rely, increasingly, on trade and interaction with other nations. This inevitably results in a more cosmopolitan outlook.


However, when the opposite is true and all the elite need do to create wealth is drill into the ground and sell their natural resources, they do not have pay attention to their populations other than to keep an eye on them to ensure that they do not rise up to overthrow them.

I didn't say it was. I'm saying both poverty and war, as two different realities in the region are more responsible for the radicalization of the people than religion ever could. Religion is simply the straw that breaks the camel's back or the fuse that lights the explosives.

You are right. Poverty doesn't explain it all.

Add to this mix the fact that there is a lack of democracy (read: input into how things are done by the people), a lack of free speech (read: no outlet for grievances), massive corruption, etc.

It is interesting to note that India has the second largest Muslim population and yet there were no Indian Muslims involved in 9/11. There were no Indian Muslims clamouring to join Al-Queda in Afghanistan (this is not to say that there are no issues between Hindus and Muslims in India, I am just pointing out their absence in the larger trend we are discussing here). As I read it, Muslims in India have an outlet for their issues in democratic India. There have been not only Muslim Prime Ministers of India but Muslim women Prime Ministers.

Looking at the hot spots around the world today I see a lack of democracy, a lack of free press, a lack of education and opportunities for their populations, a lack of personal freedoms. This is not simply a problem of Islam. To paraphrase Ustwo... Islam isn't the problem, it is the lightning rod.

Ok I misunderstood.

Anyway, they have pardonned her and let her go.

edit

gee, that means that all this blather in this thread about this fiction "radial islam" didn't account for or illuminate anything about this situation in the sudan, doesn't it?

what a shock.

Yes obviously the people calling for her death were in on it :rolleyes:

Someone was using radical Islam for their own goals, shocking that religious fanatics would be used as a weapon right?

i already stated my position on the "analysis" you have put up, and on the related "analyses"...i thought them a waste of time before i found out about how this came about (i knew quite early on in the thread, just by reading articles on the actual situation)...they have been demonstrated to be a waste of time now.

You know, a lady was on the radio the other day and explained something about "radical Islam" in these dirt poor countries - many of the people are illiterate, and if they are literate in Urdu or Pustan or some other language, they still cannot read Arabic, the language in which the Koran and other sacred Islamic documents are written.

Thus, they are highly susceptible to whatever a given imam or village loudmouth tells them and cannot easily interpret these documents for themselves. And if the imam tells them "Teddy Bears cannot be named Mohammed" - then that's what they end up believing.

Undoubtedly some are as you describe, but it goes deeper than that.

http://img503.imageshack.us/img503/5656/19jtd7.jpg

These guys could read the Koran just fine. (Suras 2-9)

How do you know they were all Muslim?

Will's right. They were pawns of the Mossad.

it's not so surprising--american conservatives believe in this bogeyman called "radical islam"--they confuse it with a single coherent entity despite all empirical evidence to the contrary (even in this thread, the problem turned up--via seaver, charlatan, will and others--that you can't say anything singular about class composition, that you cant offer a single explanation that refers to anything beyond nationalist-driven paranoia)....

some conservatives seem to believe that a category constructed to market the bush administration and then to market war, a category which made cynical use of 9/11/2001 for its own political advantage (while decrying its use for political advantage) refers to something in the world. its laughable, but it functions.

so there is little difference between the demos you read about calling for death to the namer of teddy bears and what you read from ustwo and others calling for some campaign against this fantasm of a single, unified "radical islam"...

Maybe it isn't that there is a single "unified" radical Islam, just that Islam by and tends to be radical, just as it tends to be repressive and intolerant.

Case examples are not merely limited British teachers in Sudan, but how about Darfur, countries like Iran, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Tribal Pakistan, Iraq without secular rule take your pick between Al Qaeda or the Sunni/Shiite's going at it, even countries that were more moderate like Indonesia have been put on watch lists for new found repressive of other religions and upticks in radicalization.

So I guess I can point to all this evidence of problems, which by and large came at the behest of Muslims (radical ones), in Muslim countries. But according to RB this isn't real, there is no connection, its incoherent, and a construct. Islamic jihadism existed before Shrub, and it will be there after him too.

I can't say anything singular about class composition. Can you be more specific? I named the royal families as a probable cause of some of the issues with poverty and war. I doubt anyone could disagree.

Ustwo, Fayez Banihammad was probably agnostic and was motivated by anti-westernism, not Islam. His youth in the UAE was spent with his parents, who are not Muslim.

there are radicalised movements in any number of places.
the causes that lay behind them are as varied as the places, as the situations.
that they are in some cases drawing on similar options, and probably are elements in a cassette exchange network (you can formalize sending casettes around as a network, but that does not imply that it is centrally directed).
the unification of these movements into a single thing is a construct.
THAT is the point i am making: it's not so hard to grasp. geez.

will: just so you know, i tried to make a separation between stuff that you and charlatan and seaver had posted (mojo came late to this, so is excluded from what my post today are about--nice to see you, btw, mojo...) and the posts by ustwo (and a few others) that recycle the worthless huntington thesis.
i'll just repeat it here--i think that the problems that the thread ran into in trying to say anything singular about "radical islam" demonstrates what i am arguing--and besides, the other main argument was that this situation was ABOUT THE SUDAN.

i have objected to the generalizing drift in this thread from the beginning.
i think it was, is, and remains entirely unjustified.
i should add that i understand the temptation to do it--and that is behind the objections as well.

anyway...

I follow you completely. So the idea that all Islamic fundamentalists are somehow unified or even share a causation is flawed. I agree.
I kinda figured that.

I suppose there are pictures of George Bush and Tony Blair on various mid-east boards, but are they, even as elected officials, representative of the feelings of all or even the majority of Americans and Brits?

Again today, a British teacher in Khartoum called in to Five Live (a BBC radio staion) and said that there were a few hundred crackpots in a city of a couple of million people who were demonstrating and calling for severe punishment to be given the teacher. Virtually every Muslim he worked with at his school thought that while the teacher who caused the offence wasn't very bright, they (the local Muslims) have been pretty embarrassed by this situation, just as most (but not all) Americans are embarassed by Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, for instance.

More along the lines of years of instability created by the invading imperialists from the West. But I digress.

Ustwo, you've bought a line of incoherent bullshit from "the government". Your blind, unquestioning acceptance of authority's official "story", as incomplete and riddled with contradictions as it is, is unfortunately the reason that they could foist this crap on the world and not even bother to correct or update it:

And Rudi Gulliani whispered "9/11".

Threadjack much guys?

I just don't see where anything is gained by generalizing. All it does is attempt to simplify a complex issue and in the process ends up demonizing those moderates who would support your point of view.

And make no mistake the moderates are there.

Moderates are few in far between in the Middle East, and they have even less influence than presence.

Mojo, your own words tell me that you are akin to a mirror image, in your thinking (and the emotion that wells up from it..) of those (the non-moderates) in the middle east:<br>
<a href="http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?p=2054684#post2054684">Do YOU think Iran is developing nuclear weapons?</a>

What you have in common, in the US/UK and in the M.E., is that those who believe the worst of the motives and intentions of their mirror opposites and thus conclude that a violent "solution" is "rational" are the last to recognize that they are part of the problem, and not part of the solution.

Everything I wrote is fact, and documented, the evidence didn't yield the end results of Iran going after nuclear weapons, all the same the information was accurate.

Why would I not believe the worst motives of the Iranian regime, they have been nothing but problematic for American policy in the last 30 years, the way they treat their people is even more testament to problems in Islam, as it is a theocratic regime ran by clerics.

And I don't see where I was necessarily advocated a violent position or action/reaction. Note the head way and reform that was achieved under Khatemi before Ahmadinejad, that was while Bush was in office and things were looking up. The Iranian government and populace made their bed from there whether voting in that cook, and all of his subsequent policy choices.

And I don't get how that makes me part of the problem. Noting information, and not trusting a government that has pulibcally called for our destruction, actively works against our policies, and has long had ties to extremism. Sorry I'm not into some hippy song and dance where I am assume the best in everyone.

I think we will just have to disagree on the point that there are not many moderates, I can agree however that their influence is not being felt.

As I see it, they are there and don't have a voice (read: lack of free speech retards the ability of any voice but that of the pulpit or the official government voice). From the reading I have done and the people I know from the region, all signs indicate there are many moderates in the Middle East. They just don't have the tools or the platform to get their message through.

but what about moderate muslims in free countries? at least the ones in uk protested and spoke up against the sudan govt. but i rarely ever hear moderates in the us etc condemn terrorism or abuse of women, foreigners etc.

Maybe it's because of <a href="http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?p=2355567#post2355567">the extremism</a> evident in the US. I'm shocked by it, and I'm a christian and a native.

A good point. I do hear them personally and have read their comments in articles but is it really their job to mount massive protests? Perhaps it is but I am not sure how much good it would do other than to make westerners feel good.

So we are to embrace "moderate" Muslims and tone down our reactions, even though they are really powerless to make a difference where it matters? Really a 'pro-peace' type of rally would be nice, Islam is in need of some PR that doesn't include 'bomb', 'riot', or 'woman charged' in the head line.

I'm also going to have to question the conventional logic that our actions 'create' terrorists. Outside of a movie of the week moment where ones family is killed by an errant US bomb, one doesn't just go from 'well both sides need to work out their issues' to 'KILL THE INFIDELS!'

The roots of radicalism are already there, from the, shall we say 'creative' history they get to sermons of hate they get daily. If you can forgive the Goodwin, the closest equivalent in the West would have been the Hitler Youth, only that was more organized but far less deep.

So the question becomes how do you proceed with millions of young men, taught to hate, and who's governments foster said hate for various reasons?

If I still believed in God it would be a sort of Loki, because it would take a God like that to then put in this region a vast quantity of the energy needed by the rest of the world.

gee, what a shock...

the one thing that obviously emerges from even the coverage of this surreal business in the sudan is the selectiveness of press coverage of islam, its fatuousness, its--uh---problematic relation to accuracy---from this follows that the press coverage of islam is an element in the ongoing mobilization of opinion in support of otherwise bankrupt policies--so the "free press" is at least in part and element of ideological co-ordination and in routinized ways DOES NOT function as a critical check on the actions of the political order: it is OF that order, and EXTENSION of the order, which functions, wittingly or not these days, as a co-ordination mechanism. the problem does not seem to be the individual papers--in that you see critical editos (once an issue emerges as clearly problematic, news outlets will bravely move into saying "this is clearly problematic") but rather in the way routine articles are sourced, in the repetition of the same wire-service factoids across outlets--which has the effect of generating an illusion of objectivity (in the sense of descriptive value, referring to objects or phenomena in the world, and not of neutrality in the way these referrals operate). so it follows that a small demo in khartoum gets framed as a representation of an entire (hallucinated) global tendency within islam, which is also presented (falsely) as a unified entity that "we" know as if it were transparent, that "we" have an operative image or map of, such that the absence of "moderate voices" can be attributed not to problems in the shaping of information, but to some phenomenon on the Map of Islam.

this can only follow because folk want to believe that they know the world, they are invested in the illusion of knowing and in the subsidiary illusion that the press, in its routine functioning, provides material that fills out that knowledge. they do not want to face the extent to which this infotainment is **political**

conservatives in the states have reached an almost mind-boggling pitch of projection as a device to cope with this--they see everywhere a conspiracy of "liberals" which justifies a counter-movement of blatant erasure of any meaningful line between information and conservative policy premises--and they WANT TO BELIEVE they desperately want to believe that this is ok.

it isnt ok.
it is a problem.
it is a big problem.

what seems to have happened is that over the last week there was a degree of indecisiveness in the uk government about how to respond to this situation in the sudan. the sudanese government is problematic and has been for a very long time--the civil war, the events in darfur, their resistance to international pressure, their refusal to play by the rules---the fact that the sudan sits on ALOT of oil that has not yet been exploited---and so actions like the decontextualized magnification of the demo in khartoum was functional in that it prepared ideologically for an option that was being considered, organized proactively a bit of consent by enabling EXACTLY the kind of nonsensical blur of this demo into the pre-packaged imagery folk have been conditioned (i dont like this word in this context, but dont have a better one) into using as a default interpretive backdrop for processing information about islam.

you were chumped. again. you were chumped by infotainment.

i dont see anything in the pseudo-realist line from the folk on the right above but an inability to face the obvious.
within this, a kind of distrubing sense emerges of the level of investment in the crudest form of bush-administration marketing--the Heroic Stand Against an Nebulous Other. a wholesale disabling of the ability to think critically follows in the train of this vulgar and one-dimensional worldview.

same old same old, in short: 6 fucking years of the same old same old.
amazing.
depressing as hell, too, in the way that any demonstration of intellectual castration is depressing.

First off, I don't think military action on its own is going to solve this. There may be cause to use military action but not without a very healthy dose of diplomacy and engagement.

I think we need to have closer diplomatic and business ties to these nations. The US currently has no official voice in Iran, for example. If the Iranians are going to claim to be a democracy, diplomats should be there on the ground to call them on this. At present there is little to know voice of support for the reformists on the ground in Iraq.

Looking around the world at places like India/Pakistan and China/Taiwan I can't help but think that potential conflicts in these areas have been prevented by their being part of the global business supply chain. Not too long ago India was ready to go toe to toe against Pakistan with nukes. When it was noted that India is the back office of much of America and that to go to war would not only close that business down for the duration of the war but most likely forever, the leaders made a choice to support their economy over increased sabre rattling.

Similar things can be said for the Taiwan/China issue.

Countries that have a vested interest in growing their economies through International trade have an increasingly internationalist point of view (i.e. more cosmopolitan, more open), have a vested stake in maintaining good relations with their trading partners (i.e. if they are not a stable supplier of their promised goods and services, the clients will go elsewhere and fast) and in order to take part in this form of trade they must develop their population rather than just their natural resources (i.e. education and development of the populace leads to less influence by radical elements).

I think these is much truth to holding your friends close and your enemies closer.



Engagement at all levels is essential.

it's all about power. People who like power invoke whatever idea is at hand to increase their power. In some parts of the world it's Islam. In Zimbabwe it's colonialism and race. In Nazi Germany it was the Aryan nation, and in the Soviet Union it was the glorious proletariat.

So how did we go from a Teddy Bear to Bush caused 9/11?

Damn it, I said my last post would be the only one I post here.

I don't think I was bashing Bush per se...

the UK govt did a deal with the Sudanese... and then moved the goalposts when even the 15 days was unacceptable to our public.

But the diplomacy always goes on behind closed doors... the original sentence and the silly protests were for internal consumption I think.