ISLAMISM: THE ROOT CAUSE OF ISLAMIST TERROR
by Mark Humphrys
The root cause of Islamist terror
Since 9/11, a lot of nonsense has been talked about the root
cause of Islamist terror. The left has attempted to explain it
as driven by "poverty" or "oppression", or American foreign
policy, or Israel, or at least some sort of logical
grievance.
But we are gradually coming to see that Islamist terror is in fact driven by a vile, totalitarian, hallucinatory ideology - Islamism - that has its own dynamic, and that is not based on any logical or rational grievances.
Many are now also realising that Islamist terror before 9/11 - such as in Israel - was basically the same thing. Arab terror against Israel is also fundamentally based on Islamism, not on logical or rational grievances.
Using logic and reason
- Assuming there must be a reason that makes sense behind 9/11
is a basic logical error. The cause of 9/11 may make no sense at
all.
- There was no logical or coherent reason behind most of history's mass killings. There was no logical reason behind Hitler's genocide of harmless, rural, East European Jewish peasants. There was no logical reason behind Stalin's democide of harmless lower-middle-class "kulaks". The idea that 9/11 has to have a logical cause is an assertion that fails to understand human nature.
The Paradox of Cruelty: The greater the hatred, the less the reason.
- Kevin Myers, 9 Sept 2011, says followers of Chomsky think
that evil deeds must stem from some logical cause or grievance.
While followers of Edmund Burke understand that evil men
committing evil deeds is the oldest story in history. "On the one
hand, there were the Chomskyites, henceforth the chumps, who felt
that there was an underlying "reason" for 9/11, which had been
"created" by US policies. And there were the others, the Burkians,
who felt that 9/11 represented yet another occasion when evil had
captured the souls of men. We'd seen it before - the French
Revolution, the October Revolution in Russia, the Third Reich in
Germany, Mao and Pol Pot. And now, here we go again."
Bin Laden (2nd from right) in Sweden in 1971. He wasn't
born evil. He chose evil.
Bin Laden's life illustrates clearly how Islamist terror is not caused by poverty or oppression. He wasn't poor. In fact, he was obscenely wealthy. His life's work was as a rich man killing people who were much poorer than he was. He was never oppressed either.
Islamist terror is not caused by poverty or oppression. It is caused by memes. It is caused by ideas inside the killers' heads - and nothing more.
The idea that Islamist terror must be caused by "poverty" or "oppression"
The Paradox of Cruelty: The greater the hatred, the less
the reason
- The idea that 9/11 must have had some logical cause:
- Infallible haters? by Thomas Sowell - The idea that hatred has to have a good reason is absurd and ignores history.
- Why talk is useless by Andrew Bolt - The Islamofascists "have no cause. They have nothing for us to discuss." Sometimes, it is true, there is a cause. There is something to discuss. But sometimes not. And this is one of those cases where there is not. The only proper response to Islamofascism is total war.
-
These guys want to kill us anyway, Mark Steyn, March 15, 2004,
after Madrid, on the difference between Islamist terrorism and IRA
or ETA terrorism.
- Victor Davis Hanson rejects the Chomsky-Said idea that 9/11
must have had some logical cause. - ".. this post-Marxist idea
that wars are the product of material grievance or clear-cut
exploitation, unfortunately, is not true; .. so many wars in
antiquity and in the modern world start because of perceived
grievances only. They deal with irrational elements like fear
and honour, and we don't necessarily have to believe they have
any basis in fact."
- Philip Bobbitt (paraphrased): "for instance, if terrorism is rooted in Muslim grievances about western support for Israel or engagement in Afghanistan and Iraq, why are so few of those apprehended in the West for terrorist crimes Palestinians, Afghans or Iraqis?"
- The terrorists' complaints are fantastic and are not based on reason:
- Lo, the Poor Terrorist by Theodore Dalrymple - "The idea that if someone is prepared to do something truly horrible, he must have a worthy cause remains attractive to liberal intellectuals"
- Basically, the left don't understand the Islamists.
Islamist terrorism is not caused by poverty. It is not caused by
any rational grievance or logical complaint. It is caused by a
sick fantasy ideology flourishing in a corrupt political world of
dictatorships. The solution is not more aid. The solution is not
to address their "grievances". The solution is to attack the
followers of the fantasy ideology wherever they live. The solution
is to invade and end the dictatorships in their home countries.
The solution is to transform their entire world against their
will.
- Al Qaeda's Fantasy Ideology by Lee Harris, August 1, 2002.
- The 9/11 attackers are motivated by fantasy that bears no relation to the real world, and "it is absurd for us to look for the so-called "root" causes of terrorism in poverty, lack of education, a lack of democracy, etc. Such factors play absolutely no role in the creation of a fantasy ideology."
- "Equally absurd, on this interpretation, is the notion that
we must review our own policies toward the Arab world - or the
state of Israel - in order to find ways to make our enemies
hate us less. ... There is no political policy we could take
that would change the attitude of our enemies - short,
perhaps, of a massive nationwide conversion to fundamentalist
Islam."
- Describing them as simply "evil" is not a bad response. "There is one decisive advantage to the "evildoer" metaphor, and it is this: Combat with evildoers is not Clausewitzian war. You do not make treaties with evildoers or try to adjust your conduct to make them like you. You do not try to see the world from the evildoers' point of view. You do not try to appease them, or persuade them, or reason with them. You try, on the contrary, to outwit them, to vanquish them, to kill them. You behave with them in the same manner that you would deal with a fatal epidemic - you try to wipe it out."
- The terrorists have no clue what is happening in the world:
- Of course the terrorists' complaints are not based on logic
and evidence, because the terrorists are usually completely
ignorant of world history and politics. They rarely have a
clue what is happening in the world. All they know is that
they love Islam.
- Poll, Nov 2010: 92 percent of Afghans have never heard of the 9/11
attacks. 92 percent of Afghans have no idea why America came to
their country. Ignorant, illiterate, and above all, incurious.
- Kevin Myers, November 10, 2009, on the "grievances" of
Islamism: "within, it seems, all "moderate" Muslim communities
are some fundamentalists who hold the local franchise for the
global grievance of Islam. And no one really knows what such
Islamic fundamentalists want, because the demands change
according to whatever market the local Islamic franchisee is
operating in. ... somewhere inside the greater Islamic mind is
an absurd sense of victimhood: and where there is no local
grievance, why then there is always "Palestine", as if those
few disputed acres in the vast Islamic landmass of Afro-Asia
merited the unanimous and indignant global furies of all
Muslims, from Delhi to Dearborn."
- Rachel Woodlock, 23 Mar 2011, expresses in almost pure form the absurd idea that Islamic terrorism is caused by ... fear of Islamic terrorism!
- She says "we can cut the oxygen that fuels the flames of [Islamist] fanaticism by" - not "stopping Islamist hate speech", not "deporting Islamist clerics", not "fighting all support for sharia or jihad", not "controlling Islamic immigration" - no, rather, by: "actively countering anti-Muslim paranoia."
- There you go. To stop Islamic terror you should clamp down on opponents of Islamic terror!
- She says that to stop Islamic terror in Australia, we need: "societies in which there is religious freedom and the state ensures social services are provided to all - this means facilitating the settlement and integration of Islam and Muslims in Australian society."
- Roland Shirk, 23 Mar 2011, shreds her argument. "All that Muslims need to be peaceful is multicultural laws and a generous welfare state. If only someone had tried that strategy before! ... The problem with Islam in the West is that we don't yet have enough Muslims in our midst, we don't bend over backwards to accommodate their preferences, and we don't cut them enough government checks to make sure that they really feel welcome. Because of this, many Muslims have grown understandably sulky, and ignored the dictates of their own peaceful religion to become suicide bombers, honor killers, and preachers of totalitarian sharia. Isn't that what every group would do in that situation? Remember how the Southeast Asian "boat people" in the 1970s formed terror cells throughout the West? How the Haitians who fled that country's political chaos in the 80s took to blowing up New York skycrapers?"
- Cracking comment on Woodlock's article: "So when Muslims bomb coptic Christians in Egypt is that due to western racism and discrimination as well?"
- Rachel Woodlock is a Muslim convert who wears the veil. Funny how she never told us that in her other article!
VIDEO:
"It's a Monologue, but with Greg"
Actor Matthew Modine, Mar 2010, illustrates the failure of so many well-meaning liberal westerners to understand jihadis.
He absurdly says: "Imagine if somebody were to really sit down with Osama Bin Laden and say, 'listen man,what is it that you're so angry at me about that you're willing to have people strap bombs to themselves, or get inside of airplanes and fly them into buildings.' That would be the miracle if we can get, sit down and talk to our enemies and find a way for them to hear us."
As Greg Gutfeld says: "Modine just turned 51, but his opinion reflects that of a six year old girl ... It's a perspective that suggests one has never contemplated evil beyond a character portrayed in a script. MM fails to realize that there are people out there who see your desire for "understanding" as one reason why you'll be killed first."
US Department of State spokesperson Marie Harf is the poster girl for dumb left-wing conventional wisdom.
- In Feb 2015 she said about ISIS: "we cannot win this war by killing them. We cannot kill our way out of this war. We need .. to go after the root causes that leads people to join these groups."
- Great, go after the root causes - Islamism, sharia, jihad. Let's do it.
- And then she shows that she has no clue what the root
causes are: "Whether it's lack of opportunity for jobs ... We
can work with countries around the world to help improve their
governance. We can help them build their economies so they can
have job opportunities for these people. ... if we can help
countries work at the root causes of this. What makes these 17
year old kids pick up an AK-47 instead of trying to start a
business".
- Jesus. This is what passes for "wisdom" in Obama's America.
No wonder Obama has screwed up everything he ever touched to
do with Islam and the jihad since 2009.
- Charles Johnson defends Marie Harf. Johnson used to
understand the root cause of Islamic terror. Now he doesn't!
- "Our Fight Against Violent Extremism". Obama speech, 18 Feb 2015, shows that Obama himself has no clue about the root cause of Islamic terror. He will never have a clue. The words "Islamism" and "jihad" and "sharia" do not appear. He has no interest in what inspires jihadis to fight. It's probably best not to read what ideas he has instead. It's too depressing. I long for the day when this stuff is wiped off the whitehouse.gov website.
- Power Line sums it up: "jobs are indeed a root cause of the fix we are in. ... we won't win the war the jihadists are fighting against us until Barack Obama and his crowd lose their jobs."
The comically awful White House Down (2013) by Roland Emmerich.
See plot summary and negative reviews.
In this dumb, obvious, clunking left-wing fantasy film, the Barack Obama-like President says that the root cause of terrorism is poverty. And he's not meant to be an idiot! We're meant to think he's intelligent.
- Warner Todd Huston, 7 July 2013, points out that the Middle East "peace plan" proposed by the idiot President in the film - withdraw all US forces from the Middle East, and let dictators and terrorists do as they will - would lead to a bloodbath in the region. Possibly even a nuclear war.
- This film would certainly support the idea that the left are the dumb ones - the ones who do not think about the news too deeply.
Why do jihadis hate America and Israel, not China and Russia?
Hint: It's based on psychology and emotion, not on logic and reason.
The Paradox of the Fisks: The most criticised societies in the world will be the least criminal societies
- Bruce Thornton makes the point about Russia:
- ".. consider the case of Russia. For over a century Russia and then the USSR dominated and oppressed Central Asian Muslims. The Soviets then brutalized Afghanistan ... After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the attempt by Muslims in Chechnya to gain their independence has been brutally suppressed at the cost of perhaps 50,000 dead ... So is Russia, its hands red with Muslim blood, the "Great Satan" of the jihadists and their state sponsor, Iran? Of course not. The United States is: a country that never colonized or ruled a Muslim nation, a country that helped Muslims in Afghanistan, a country that liberated Muslim Kuwait, a country that bombed and killed Christian Serbs to protect Balkan Muslims, a country that has spent its blood and treasure getting rid of Iran's most bitter enemy and the Shia Muslims' worst oppressor, Saddam Hussein, a country that even now is fighting to empower Iran's fellow Shiites. We are the Great Satan, while the Iranian mullocracy happily does business with the Russians and seldom says a word of condemnation against them. Why is this so? Obviously, Russia serves Iran's interests by helping with their nuclear development and protecting its interests on the Security Council. But there's another important reason Russia's much more extensive crimes against Islam are given a pass: the jihadists know the Russians are not susceptible to the therapeutic blackmail used against a self-loathing West. Russia uses brutal force to promote and defend its interests and doesn't give a damn what the rest of the world thinks."
- Bruce Thornton again: "Historically the greatest
slaughterer of Muslims has been Russia, most recently in
Chechnya, where by some estimates a 100,000 people were
killed, torture and collective punishment freely employed, and
the capital Grozny shelled into rubble. That's how Russia
solved its jihad problem. But that hasn't kept Iran's lunatic
president Ahmadinejad from cheerily posing for the cameras
alongside Vladimir Putin. But more important, you never hear
criticism of Russia from most Muslim countries, for the simple
reason that Russia doesn't care what anyone thinks about its
pursuit of its interests. Only we Westerners, so sensitive and
guilty, are vulnerable to that sort of emotional blackmail.".
- Bernard Lewis, May 16, 2007, on how the Islamists gave a
pass to the Soviet Union - because it was brutal and they
feared it. In the Cold War, "While American policies,
institutions and individuals were subject to unremitting
criticism and sometimes deadly attack, the Soviets were
immune. Their retention of the vast, largely Muslim colonial
empire accumulated by the czars in Asia passed unnoticed, as
did their propaganda and sometimes action against Muslim
beliefs and institutions. Most remarkable of all was the
response of the Arab and other Muslim countries to the Soviet
invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979." When the UN tried
to weakly condemn it, "Even this anodyne resolution was too
much for some of the Arab states. South Yemen voted no;
Algeria and Syria abstained; Libya was absent; the nonvoting
PLO observer to the Assembly even made a speech defending the
Soviets."
- And of course the jihadis do not hate any of the modern Muslim killers of Muslims.
The Arab / Islamic culture of shame and pride
- The culture of shame
- Who is our enemy?, by Steven Den Beste - Their hate is not based on reason. It is not based on things we have done, or any rational grievance. They hate us because they are failures and we are successful.
- "They are forced to compare their own accomplishments to
ours ... In most of the contests it's not just that our score
is higher, it's that their score is zero. They have nothing
whatever they can point to that can save face and preserve
their egos. In every practical objective way we are better
than they are, and they know it. And since this is a "face"
culture, one driven by pride and shame, that is intolerable.
Nor is it something we can easily redress."
- Arab psychology by David Gutmann, argues that Arab culture
is driven by shame and avoidance of losing face. He argues
that, paradoxically, western weakness and tolerance invites
attacks, while western strength and aggressiveness brings
peace and respect.
- Nonie Darwish (born an Egyptian Muslim): "The Arab culture is famous for its concept of pride. Image is very important and pride and shame are great motivators. Protecting the image of Muslims in front of the non-Muslim West is vital. Thus elaborate behavior is done to saving face. Admitting to a mistake can bring terrible shame and is not regarded as a virtue; those who admit to mistakes are not rewarded for their honesty but ridiculed and shamed or even severely punished. ... Fear of being accused of defaming one's tribe, nation or religion leads to a culture that tends to blame others rather than look within. ... There is also a concept in Islam called "taqueya" which allows lying to non-Muslims if it is in the best interest of Islam. That concept is very deep in Muslim culture that we don't even think of the term "taqueya" any more; it has simply penetrated every aspect of Muslim life. Because of it there is very little self-criticism. Thus, saying sorry, admitting guilt or looking within for solutions is not a strong value; it will surely get a person in deep trouble instead. Such a person will bear the blunt of the blame for everything - even for what he did not do; thus you have Muslim denials and defensiveness over matters that many in the West cannot comprehend. ... Shaming is prominent in the Arab child. To avoid the intense pain of shaming, denying responsibility turns into a virtue to save face and protect one's pride. The concept of "taqueya" is one of the reasons many Muslims were silent after 9/11. Only a few were speaking out honestly and openly by admitting there is a problem in Muslim culture that needs to be examined and corrected. The few Arab Americans who did that where not rewarded for their honesty by their Muslim community; instead they were condemned, shunned and shamed by the majority of Muslims. ... This charade of denials and games has done nothing but keep the Muslim world in a permanent state of stagnation, turmoil and poverty despite of the wealth from oil."
- Augean Stables by Richard Landes
- The Honor-Shame Jihad Paradigm (HSJP)
- In contrast to the mainstream left-wing view: "The HSJP understands the Arab-Israeli conflict through the prism of honor-shame culture and Islamic jihad. These elements of Arab culture are the main factors that have made it impossible to reach a solution to the conflict."
- "The HSJP identifies Arab political culture as an example
of "traditional" or "pre-civil society" culture. ... According to
HSJP, the Arab-Israeli conflict is fueled by wounded Arab honor
and frustrated religious imperialism. ... Arab elites prefer
losing wars to resolving the conflict by allowing Israel to exist.
When they are weak they withdraw and cherish dreams of revenge.
When they feel strong enough - no matter how delusional that
feeling - they go to war with Israel (1948, 1967, 1973, 2000)."
- "This paradigm's conclusions seem dark, with apparently no possibility for negotiations and war as the only apparent alternative. Although this is not necessarily true, it seems deeply depressing. Those who begin to comprehend HSJP find it difficult to communicate with people strongly committed to PCP." [Post-Colonial Paradigm]
- Saddam Hussein and Arab Honor - The pathology of Arab culture that can forgive Saddam for killing a million Muslims because he died with "honour".
- Why Arabs love their oppressors and hate their liberators -
article by Victor Davis Hanson, discusses why "Kids whose parents
were butchered by Saddam Hussein and are now fed and protected by
American money and manpower nevertheless dance upon a burned out
Humvee while shouting for Saddam to return. The same is true of
those on the West Bank who have their capital looted by the
Palestinian Authority, their relatives jailed or murdered, and
their votes and speech curtailed: They will still praise Arafat to
the skies - if he at least mutters some banality about hating the
West. Because these are irrational responses - people acting from
their appetites and impulses rather than their heads" - because
their philosophy, and their hatreds, are built on fantasy rather
than reality.
- "They Really Don't Think The Same Way We Do" - A normal, tolerant westerner goes to Saudi Arabia, and his ideas change:
- "In the case of the Kingdom, I went there with a certain
sympathy for Arab grievances, a belief that America had earned a
lot of hostility from "blowback" from our ham-handed
interventionist foreign policy and support for Israel etc."
- His observations could be dismissed as "racist", but in
reality maybe they should be taken on board by Saudis (and
others). After all, culture is a human invention, and we can
all change our culture.
His observations:
- They don't think the same way we do.
- When you meet them in just the right circumstances, they are a very likable people.
- Their values are fundamentally different from ours, their self-esteem is derived from a different source (not work, and not relationships).
- Not only can they not build the infrastructure of a modern society, they can't maintain it either (Saudi Arabian maintenance is like the old Soviet bloc).
- They do not think of obligations as running both ways (hypocrisy does not bother them).
- In warfare, we think they are sneaky cowards, they think we are hypocrites.
- In rhetoric, they don't mean to be taken seriously and they don't understand when we do.
- They don't place the same value on an abstract conception of Truth as we do, they routinely believe things of breathtaking absurdity.
- They do not have the same notion of cause and effect as we do.
- We take for granted that we are a dominant civilization still on the way up. They are acutely aware that they are a civilization on the skids.
- We think that everybody has a right to their own point of view, they think that that idea is not only self-evidently absurd, but evil.
- Our civilization is destroying theirs. We cannot share a world in peace. They understand this; we have yet to learn it.
- "I came back with the gloomy opinion that over the long run we are going to have to hammer these people hard to get them to quit messing with Western Civilization."
- Mideast Rules to Live By, Thomas L. Friedman, December 20, 2006 (and search for copies). Some of his rules:
- What people tell you in private in the Middle East is irrelevant. All that matters is what they will defend in public in their own language.
- If you can't explain something to Middle Easterners with a conspiracy theory, then don't try to explain it at all — they won't believe it.
- Civil wars in the Arab world are rarely about ideas --like liberalism vs. communism. They are about which tribe gets to rule. So, yes, Iraq is having a civil war. But there is no Abe Lincoln in this war. It's the South vs. the South.
- The most underestimated emotion in Arab politics is humiliation. The Israeli-Arab conflict, for instance, is not just about borders. Israel's mere existence is a daily humiliation to Muslims, who can't understand how, if they have the superior religion, Israel can be so powerful.
- A Northern Irish student's impression of Syria: "In a closed society such as Assad's Syria, language is not for transmitting or exchanging information. Its main purpose is to reinforce the values held by the community and by the regime. These values are outdated and dangerous: self-pity, purity through sacrifice, a leader who will redeem us, the Jews with their wicked plots foiling us, etc. When I first arrived this was funny in a strange Borat kind of way. Now it just scares me."
- Why Muslim cultures lag behind by Pedestrian Infidel. He asks why the Islamic world (unlike, say, the Far East) has not been able to understand and adopt the western ideas that made the West so rich and powerful. He says the Islamic world has failed because of:
- Belief in magic.
- Belief in conspiracies.
- Lack of innovation.
- Lack of devotion to non-family/non tribal/non-clan organizations.
- Lack of empowerment of women.
- Lack of personal responsibility.
- Lack of skilled labour.
- Lack of meritocracy.
- Why we keep getting the Middle East wrong by Mordechai Kedar, Autumn 2014.
- We do not understand the importance of non-state, non-national loyalties.
- We don't understand how weak these 'states' really are. (These two points explain why Iraqi and Syrian soldiers ran away instead of fighting for their "countries".)
- We are too trusting of official sources. (It is all lies. The western media is not sceptical enough of "the other".)
VIDEO:
US soldier chews out Iraqi police.
A brutal encounter between the culture of empirical results and
the culture of honour/shame/tribe
From here. Also here.
Great comments.
The terrorists are not poor, they are revolutionaries
- Terrorism is not caused by poverty:
- Department of Blithe Assertion - The claim that terrorism is caused by poverty.
- Education, Poverty, Political Violence and Terrorism: Is There a Causal Connection? by Alan B. Krueger and Jitka Maleckova - A survey that concludes there is no relationship between terrorism and poverty. See summary.
- What Makes a Terrorist? by James Q. Wilson - Terrorism is not caused by poverty: "Krueger and Maleckova compared terrorist incidents in the Middle East with changes in the GDP of the region and found that the number of such incidents per year increased as economic conditions improved."
- Poverty Doesn't Create Terrorists, by Alan B. Krueger.
- "More terrorists do come from poor countries than rich
ones, but this is because poor countries tend to lack civil
liberties. Once a country's degree of civil liberties is taken
into account .. income per capita bears no relation to
involvement in terrorism. Countries like Saudi Arabia and
Bahrain, which have spawned relatively many terrorists, are
economically well off yet lacking in civil liberties. Poor
countries with a tradition of protecting civil liberties are
unlikely to spawn terrorists."
- "Apart from the size of a country and the extent of its
civil liberties, no factor that I could find .. could predict
whether people from that country were more or less likely to
take part in international terrorism."
- Freedom squelches terrorist violence - Alberto Abadie concludes that terrorism is not caused by poverty. "In the past, we heard people refer to the strong link between terrorism and poverty, but in fact when you look at the data, it's not there."
- Osama Bin Laden was a son of the wealthiest non-royal family in Saudi Arabia.
- Mohamed Atta was the son of a wealthy Cairo lawyer.
- The Flight 253 bomber was the son of one of the richest men in Nigeria.
- Many of the Palestinian terrorists are not poor. Oct 2015
article. "I had occasion to visit the homes of some of the
Palestinian men and women involved in the ongoing wave of
terrorism against Israelis ... none of these Palestinians had
suffered harsh lives. Their living conditions were anything
but miserable. In fact, these murderers had been leading
comfortable lives ... None of the young Palestinians involved
in the recent terror attacks lived a mud house, a tent, or
even a rented apartment. They all lived in houses owned by
their families, and had unlimited access to the internet. ...
To be honest, I envied these terrorists because of the
comfortable lives they had. The furniture in their homes is
far better than my furniture."
- Majority of British Islamic terror suspects are
middle-class or upper-middle-class, says MI5 study leaked in
Oct 2011. In a study of 90 Islamic terror suspects
investigated by the security service: "Where data is
available, two-thirds came from middle or upper-middle-class
backgrounds, showing there is no simplistic relationship
between poverty and involvement in Islamist extremism."
- Marc Sageman, University of Pennsylvania (see here and
here), found that of Al-Qa'eda members and associates:
- 18 per cent were upper class, 55 per cent were middle class. 90 percent came from caring, intact families.
- 29 per cent had some college education; 33 per cent had a college degree; 9 per cent had a postgraduate degree. 91 per cent had a secular education.
- 70 per cent joined the jihad while away from home. They joined the jihad at the average age of 26 (mis-quoted as the average age of all of them being 26).
- In short, they are educated, alienated middle-class twenty-something young men, who as likely as not developed their hateful fascist ideas in the middle of tolerant, democratic western society. Just like Hitler, Marx, Lenin and a million other angry, hateful young men who reject the decent tolerant society that surrounds them.
- "Sageman describes them as the "elite of their country" sent abroad to study because the schools in Germany, France, England and the US are better. ... Al-Qa'eda's "breeding ground", it seems, is as much in fragmented cities in the West as in hotbeds of Islamism in the East."
- What this means is that the western media and the western left are partly to blame for the conversion of young people to Islamism in the west. The constant left-wing attacks on America and Israel one sees in the west is not simply being watched by westerners. Young potential jihadis are watching too, and it encourages some of them to join Al-Qa'eda. The media and the left encourage the enemy (even if they don't mean to). Sageman notes, for example, that France is breeding lots of jihadis while the US is not. The different media climates in France and America probably has a lot to do with it. If French political culture changed to become supportive of America, France would breed a lot less jihadi killers.
- Arthur Chrenkoff on Al-Qa'eda not being poor: "The problem is hardly new. Poor people rarely become revolutionaries because they are far too busy trying to survive to engage in political pursuits. Historically, it has always been the relatively well-off and the well educated who constituted a vanguard of any revolutionary and/or terrorist movement, from the French Revolution and 19th century revolutionary socialism to Bolshevism, Red Brigades-style terrorism, and Palestinian terrorism. ... Overthrowing existing order is and has always been an elite pursuit."
- Does Affluence Cause Jihad? by Zachary Constantino
- The terrorists are not poor, they are revolutionaries:
- Under Our Very Noses: The terrorist next door by Adrian Karatnycky.
- Poverty is not the cause of 9/11: "It is indeed reassuring
to view the terrorists who now threaten us as an exogenous threat rooted in the Middle East's Hobbesian environment of obscurantism, poverty, and repression - but police and press investigations offer evidence of a far more complex, and ominous, picture. The key hijackers, including Mohamed Atta, were well-educated children of privilege. None of them suffered first-hand economic privation or political oppression."
- So who are the 9/11 attackers, if not poor third worlders?
In fact, they are very much like the middle-class anarchist,
fascist and communist revolutionaries of the past: "To
understand the September 11 terrorists, we should have in mind
the profile of the classic revolutionary: deracinated, middle
class, shaped in part by exile. In other words, the image of
Lenin in Zurich or London; or of Pol Pot and Ho Chi Minh in
Paris."
- "many of the terrorists we are now confronting are a
Western phenomenon, existing inside the Islamic diaspora that
is an established fact of life in the U.S. and Europe. ...
Like the leaders of America's Weather Underground, Germany's
Baader-Meinhof Gang, Italy's Red Brigades, and Japan's Red
Army Faction, the Islamic terrorists [are] university-educated
converts to an all-encompassing neo-totalitarian ideology. ...
youthful members of a bored middle class who have grown
contemptuous of "soft" and corrupt elites and are drawn to the
romance of revolutionary guerrilla movements."
- And like the 1960s and 1970s middle-class anarchist, fascist and communist terrorists, the proper response is war until their total destruction.
- Theodore Dalrymple on the mind of the Islamist revolutionary:
- The Suicide Bombers Among Us - On the confused mind of the starry-eyed young Islamist man. "According to Islamism ... Only a return to the principles and practices of seventh-century Arabia will resolve all personal and political problems at the same time." It is incredible that anyone would believe such a thing. But, of course, we've seen this kind of insane utopianism before: "This notion is fundamentally no more (and no less) bizarre or stupid than the Marxist notion that captivated so many Western intellectuals throughout the 20th century: that the abolition of private property would lead to final and lasting harmony among men."
- The Terrorists Among Us: "terrorism is not a simple, direct response to, or result of, social injustice, poverty, or any other objectively discernible human ill. ... People with unusually thin skins ascribe the small insults, humiliations, and setbacks consequent upon human existence to vast and malign political forces; and, projecting their own suffering onto the whole of mankind, conceive of schemes, usually involving violence, to remedy the situation that has so wounded them. ... Conrad tells us that one of the sources of terrorism is laziness, or at least impatience, which is to say ambition unmatched by perseverance and tolerance of routine. ... The mental laziness of Islamism, its desire that there should be to hand a ready-made solution to all the problems that mankind faces, one that is already known, and its unacknowledged fear that such a solution does not really exist, Updike captures well."
- The Persistence of Ideology: Starry-eyed rebels and terrorists are often not poor (or even oppressed): "Who, then, are ideologists? They are people needy of purpose in life, not in a mundane sense (earning enough to eat or to pay the mortgage, for example) but in the sense of transcendence of the personal, of reassurance that there is something more to existence than existence itself. The desire for transcendence does not occur to many people struggling for a livelihood. Avoiding material failure gives quite sufficient meaning to their lives. By contrast, ideologists have few fears about finding their daily bread. Their difficulty with life is less concrete."
- Islamism is the new global communism: "There are many other parallels between Leninism and Qutb's Islamism, among them the incompatibility of each with anything else, entailing a fight to the finish supposedly followed by permanent bliss for the whole of mankind; a tension between complete determinism (by history and by God, respectively) and the call to intense activism; and the view that only with the installation of their systems does Man become truly himself."
- The radical loser, by Hans Magnus Enzensberger, makes the obvious point that the idea that Islamist terror could bring about a better future for the Arab/Muslim world is absurd.
- He notes that so far, Islamist terror damages the Muslim world far more than the West. Unless terrorists get WMD (*), if attacks continue as they are now: "it makes no difference to the actual power relations. Even the spectacular attack on the World Trade Center was not able to shake the supremacy of the United States. The New York Stock Exchange reopened the Monday after the attacks, and the long-term impact on the international financial system and world trade was minimal. The consequences for Arab societies, on the other hand, are fatal. For the most devastating long-term effects will be born not by the West, but by the religion in whose name the Islamists act. Not just refugees, asylum seekers and migrants will suffer as a result. Beyond any sense of justice, entire peoples will have to pay a huge price for the actions of their self-appointed representatives. The idea that their prospects, which are bad enough as it is, could be improved through terrorism is absurd. History offers no example of a regressive society that stifled its own productive potential being capable of survival in the long term. The project of the radical loser, as currently seen in Iraq and Afghanistan, consists of organizing the suicide of an entire civilisation."
- (*) Even then, any Islamist WMD attack will more likely lead to devastating conventional and nuclear war against the Muslim world. Islamism has nothing to offer the Islamic world except repression, poverty, death, war, terror, famine, and potentially even total destruction.
- What Terrorists Really Want: Terrorist Motives and Counterterrorism Strategy, Max Abrahms, Spring 2008, points out that much terrorism is based on illogical or hallucinatory reasons and strategy:
New York Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad proves that poverty does not cause terror.
Rather, Islamism causes terror.
This young man was born in Pakistan to a wealthy family, the son of an Air Vice Marshal in the Pakistan Air Force. He had the incredible luck to be accepted into the US to study and then work. He received a B.A. in computer science and engineering at the University of Bridgeport, Connecticut. He got an M.B.A at the University of Bridgeport. He got a job as a financial analyst in Connecticut, and lived in suburban America in freedom and prosperity. He responded in May 2010 by trying to kill random American men, women and children, and now faces decades of misery in American jails.
Only Islamism can explain not just such ingratitude, but also such personal self-destruction.
The Daily Show, December 1, 2008 (after Mumbai), sums up these revolutionaries, fighting for a fantasy world that nobody wants.
Killing innocent people is meant to attract the world to the virtues of a global Islamic tyranny: "We hate and kill everything you stand for - Join us!"
Their solution to everything is violence. World poverty - The solution is to suicide bomb a hotel. And so on.
And pure genius: "One final question: When will these motherfuckers go away?"
NOTE: Image links to a search, since online copies have vanished or are not visible from my location.
Poverty does not cause jihad. Jihad causes poverty.
- Robert Spencer has a sharp comment on a story of yet another third world Islamic mob getting angry about some crap and attacking innocents and burning schools, and so on. After a local says Muslims were "driven to a frenzy" by rumours and false reports, Spencer says: "That ability to be so easily "driven into a frenzy" aggravates underdevelopment in the area: it's hard to develop anything stable, let alone an educational system, in a "frenzy"-prone area. Hence, here is another study in jihad and its accompanying attitudes and sense of entitlement causing poverty, rather than the other way around."
- Robert Spencer on the "Islamic street" culture of anger and rioting: "If one's priorities are so disordered" [as to be offended by everything and start rioting] "that mentality will have far-reaching effects on the stability of one's culture, society, and economy. The resulting climate of fear stifles development and innovation: Why think outside the box if it will get you killed? And why develop anything if the next enraged mob will burn it down? In other words, the logical conclusion of this sort of behavior is jihad causing and perpetuating poverty through mental enslavement and physical terror. It is a consequence of the absence of that mentality that explains why Danes and Norwegians aren't flocking to Islamic countries for a better life, but the other way around."
- Terror causes poverty. Jihad Watch, 3 Apr 2011, on the crazed Afghan "Koran burning" riots. "It also contributes to Afghanistan's prolonged poverty. People who are out indulging in an orgy of furious self-pity are not producing wealth. And in this case, they are destroying it, moving the country that much more backwards, save for more American aid to fix self-inflicted wounds."
- Jihad Watch on an attack on the British Council cultural and academic exchange program in Afghanistan, Aug 2011: "once again, jihad causes material and intellectual poverty: no one will invest if they conclude they are only building new targets. And the obstacles to "academic and cultural exchange" in an atmosphere of random acts of jihadist terror are obvious."
- Sudan - Jihad causes famine.
- Somalia - Jihad causes famine.
- Jihadist terrorist group orders Somali schools to switch to Arabic and ban English, and ban pretty much all instruction other than Islamic fanaticism. Jihad causes poverty.
- Mali jihadists block aid convoy, May 2012. Their excuse was that the reception committee for the aid contained women. Jihad causes poverty and hunger.
- The jihad against vaccination
- There are ongoing campaigns against vaccination by Islamists and jihadists in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria
- The Taliban jihad against vaccination.
- The Nigeria jihad against vaccination.
- Islamic fundamentalism causes poverty and disease.
- The jihad against tourism:
- It goes without saying that Islamism and jihad kill tourism. Who goes on holiday to Iran, Afghanistan, Sudan, Somalia or other Islamist hellholes? No one. They lose all those billions of dollars in tourist money. The tourist money goes to nicer places, that make foreigners welcome and happy.
- And if tourists with their money don't get the message that they should fuck off and spend it in another, nicer country, jihadists will kill them directly.
- Luxor massacre of tourists, Egypt, 1997. Jihad kills tourism. Jihad causes poverty.
- Acid attack on British girls in Zanzibar, Aug 2013. Who
would holiday in Zanzibar now? Jihad kills tourism. Jihad
causes poverty.
The root cause of 9/11 - Islamism
The root cause of the September 11th attacks is a sick, fascist movement within Islam.
It is an expansionist fascist movement that aims to rule much of the third world. It is at war with everyone who is not an Islamic fundamentalist fascist. It has killed vast numbers of Muslims.
Ongoing List of killings for Islam around the world.
- This War We're In by Paul Marshall - points out that the largest death tolls from Islamist extremism do not occur in America or the West, or even Israel, but rather the worst killing is in places in the third world where Islam interfaces with non-Islam, or where radical Islam interfaces with moderate Islam - Sudan, Nigeria, Algeria, Indonesia, Bangladesh. Here is where the Islamofascist killing is the most intense. And it's got nothing to do with America or Israel.
- The Religion of Peace - Ongoing list of killings for Islam
around the world.
- This lists the non-stop killing by Islamists of Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists, animists, moderate Muslims and others, in Algeria, Pakistan, Thailand, India, Indonesia, Philippines, Bangladesh, Sudan, Somalia, Nigeria and other places in the third world. This killing has been going on since the origin of Islam. And it has nothing to do with America or Israel.
- Islamic terror attacks in Algeria
- Islamic terror attacks in Pakistan
- Islamic terror attacks in Thailand
- Islamic terror attacks in India
- Islamic terror attacks in Indonesia
- Islamic terror attacks in Philippines
- Islamic terror attacks in Bangladesh
- 93 percent of the world's conflicts involve Muslims, according to Amir Taheri. To be precise, of the 30 active conflicts in the world today, 28 involve Muslims. Also here. He also notes that:
- Nearly two-thirds of the world's poorest, those who live on under $2 a day, are Muslim.
- Two-thirds of political prisoners are held in Muslim countries.
- Muslims account for nearly 80% of the world's refugees.
- All but one of the world's last military regimes are in the Muslim world.
- The Islamic world must change, not the West.
- The U.S. State Department lists 45 Foreign Terrorist Organizations
- 25 are Islamic (56 percent) even though Islam is only 20 percent of the world's population.
- 7 are communist (16 percent).
- 11 are secular nationalist (24 percent).
- None are Christian (0 percent), even though Christianity is 33 percent of the world's population.
- Our World-Historical Gamble, by Lee Harris, argues that much of the unhealthy mindset in the Arab world comes from the fact that their wealth has come by lottery rather than by hard work (i.e. they happen to sit on oil). Our liberal respect for sovereignty recognises their ownership of resources they did nothing to create. So we pay them for doing nothing, and as a result many have become decadent, and have lost touch with reality like spoilt adolescents.
- "What Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein have in common is that they became rich because the West paid them for natural resources that the West could simply have taken from them at will, and without so much as a Thank You, if the West had been inclined to do so. They were, by one of the bitter paradoxes of history, the pre-eminent beneficiaries of the Western liberalism that they have pledged themselves to destroy."
- So "the quite unintended consequence of the West's conduct" is: "the prodigious funding of fantasists".
- Daniel Pipes commentary on this
- Harris attacks the idea of sovereignty and self-determination - "The principle of self-determination in a world of perpetual peace may not in fact be the panacea for mankind's ills, but rather a means for prolonging these ills"
- Another person angry with sovereignty is Ralph Peters.
- Harris argues that if we do not abandon sovereignty and adopt new policies of pre-emptive attack, then nuclear attack on the west will come soon. He argues for an uncompromising assault on "fantasy" Islamism in order to force it to see reality. - "it is .. critical that we are not misled into trying to win the hearts and minds of the Islamic fantasists. We must not set about trying to convert them in believing in our principles and accepting our values, .. Nor must we be seduced into believing that we are in a popularity contest" - Instead we must re-shape their entire world against their will.
- The triumph of American values by Mark Steyn
- The root cause of Sept 11th - "U.S. foreign policy" and "Israel"
- The left, of course, has a different answer to what is the root cause of Sept 11th: U.S. foreign policy and Israel. The hope seems to be that if "we" (Americans, Israelis, westerners) change our behaviour, then "they" (Arabs, Islamists, third worlders) will be alright, and will live with us in peace.
- Sadly, this is fantasy. The sad fact is that "they" must change. The entire Arab Islamic world must abandon tyranny, totalitarianism, theocracy, religious hatred and anti-semitism, and they must embrace freedom of religion, free speech and democracy.
- A World Without Israel by Josef Joffe - If Israel vanished, the Arab Islamic world's problems would remain.
The inability of the western left to understand the root cause of Islamic terror.
Jihad butcher of women and children, Osama Bin Laden, packs so many lies into one sentence:
-
The lie that jihadists kill women and children because they are responding to something.
- The lie that jihadists don't want to kill women and children.
- The lie that jihadists have ever acted according to any moral rules of warfare.
- The lie that there are any circumstances under which jihadists will not kill women and children.
- The lie that if the West changes behaviour, the jihadists will stop killing women and children.
- The lie that the West targets women and children.
- All of these statements are total lies. So many lies, all in one sentence.
"Once I interviewed a young Taleban fighter who was almost too
angry to speak as he described how he joined the insurgency
after American soldiers had dishonoured his mother by entering
and searching their family home, casually looking at her as they
did so." — Article by Tom Coghlan, The Times, 17 Aug
2009, beautifully illustrates the "root cause" of Islamic
violence.
Infidels looked at his mother. Does he shrug and say so what? Does he ... write a letter of complaint? Does he ... join a political party and stand in the upcoming Afghan elections? Does he organise a demo? Does he write a witty article? No. He turns immediately and without trying any other solution to barbaric violence.
The "root cause" of his violence is crap inside his head, not anything outside it.
"[The left's] idea of root causes [is] a pseudo-intellectual exercise that prevents a real understanding of evil actions. Every culprit can tell a story, but by listening to that story, you insult each and every one of his victims." — Greg Gutfeld, 23 Nov 2009.
"They can't blame it on poverty or any of that stuff. They will
have to realize that it's an ideology and it's a way of life
that makes people change." — American-born Islamic terrorist
Omar Hammami (or "Abu Mansoor Al-Amriki") himself denies that
"poverty" is the root cause of Islamic terror.
"Our enmity towards Hindus is not due to the Kashmir issue; our
enmity towards America is not due to Iraq and Afghanistan; the
enmity between us and the Jews is not due to the Palestine; the
real cause is that they do not accept our system and Islam. Our
enmity towards them (the non-believers) will continue even if
they renounce all their crimes." — Al Qaeda, Sept 2013, explains the root cause of Islamic terror. But the left isn't listening.
Mark Humphrys describes himself as "Irish. Atheist. Liberal-right. Anti-jihad. Pro-West. Pro-Israel."
Contact him at his website www.MarkHumphrys.com.
This article is a major portion of
http://markhumphrys.com/root.cause.html#poverty. The
original article includes live links to additional material.