gurugeorge

IIRC most of the 9/11 conspirators were middle or professional class. Here's an article on some research into Al Qaeda:-

Sageman found that, for all the simplistic claims made recently about poverty breeding terrorism, a majority of his al-Qaeda sample were middle or upper class and well-educated. Of his sample of 382, he had information on the social status of 306; he found that 17.6 per cent were upper class, 54.9 per cent middle class, and 27.5 per cent lower class. The highest number of upper- or middle-class individuals was among the Core Arabs (from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Yemen and Kuwait), and the highest number of lower-class individuals was among the Maghreb Arabs from north Africa. Even among those who seem most closely to fit the terrorist stereotype - the Southeast Asians - Sageman found a bias towards being middle class. Out of those for whom he had information about family background and social status, 10 of the Southeast Asians were middle class and two lower class.

Most of the great movers and shakers of the so-called "revolutionary" (actually deeply reactionary) totalitarian political movements of the 20th century were middle or professional class - Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trostky, Mussolini, Qutb, and hordes of lesser lights.

I missed the part of the argument where all people who are dissatisfied in slums tend to develop a nasty tendency to cut peoples' heads off in the name of a religion, blow themselves and others to bits in public places, et cetera ad nauseam. I also missed the part of the argument where you point out that that's actually a moral response - the bit where you convincingly argue that it's ok to indulge in that sort of nonsense, just so long as you were born or live the "oppressed slums".

Unless of course you mean "reaction" sort of as in chemistry, not the result of any thought (one must presume these people to be zombies with no moral compass, I suppose?).

Eh? I'm referring to the fact that there's been no comparable evolution of social, moral and legal restraints on religion in Islam as there has been in Christendom. There was one, for a while, in Islam's past, but it didn't last.

I don't disagree that some of the factors you mention - poverty, political oppression (by thugocracies supported in the past by the US) - are part of the story, but by far the biggest part of the story is that Islamofascism is a pseudo-intellectual Utopian fantasy, just like Communism, Fascism, Nazism, Baathism, and all the rest of the stuff in "history's dustbin of discarded lies" (or however it goes ). It's the appeal of these ideologies as uplifting narratives (or fairy stories) to the poorly-educated and oppressed youth, and such, that causes all the trouble.

lpetrich

This seems like a subject for another thread, but that's essentially saying that these Islamists are more bourgeois than proletarian, to use Marxist jargon.

It must be said, however, that many other revolutionaries have been largely bourgeois. Communist ones. The French ones. Even the American ones. Simply check on the signers of the Declaration of Independence -- lawyers and judges and businessmen, often college-educated. And sometimes slaveowners. A contemporary, Samuel Johnson of Dictionary fame, marveled at the sight of slaveowners making such a big fuss about freedom.

So what had motivated all these bourgeois revolutionaries?

premjan

I think the Indian independence movement was also bourgeois (is that the right sp?).

mountainman

Not likely. Bits and pieces at this stage.
The whole is substantial and other things
are taking priority. The first book, with
thanks to your text, should appear first.

Best wishes,



Pete

countjulian

East Timor, Southern Sudan.

Sauron

Which doesn't matter, because your original comment mentioned "islamofacists", not "the particular group 20 or so hijackers who pulled off the 9/11 attack." Maybe you should review what you wrote?

Assuming your bigoted nomenclature of "islamofacist" was meant to convey "islamic militants", the reality is what I said: radical islam would have no foot soldiers if there weren't hordes of dissatisfied people in the oppressed slums. Leaders without soldiers wouldn't accomplish anything. If you doubt me, then expand your scope of view to include Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Islamic Brotherhood, etc. They aren't *all* university-trained engineers; there are quite a few ordinary slumdwellers in the group.

None of which is relevant, because I never said that the leaders or thinkers couldn't be educated individuals. Of course they can be. In fact, it's hard to see how someone with an education in history, economics or politics could graduate without seeing how the West has screwed the Third World in general, and the Islamic world in particular.

What I DID say, however, is that these leaders wouldn't have anyone to command, if external pressure didn't exist, and if that external pressure wasn't creating hordes of willing footsoldiers.

The reason you missed that part of the argument is because you went looking for a strawman. I never said that, so you're welcome to keep your homemade strawbuddy; may he bring you plenty of company. :Cheeky:

Whether radical Islam is attractive to 5% or 50% of the people in slums - my point still stands: it is the external pressure, the poverty, etc. that make the recruiting easy for the organizers. Don't like that fact? Too bad; because it's the same way all around the world, regardless of whether the issue is islamic radicalism, northern ireland, inner city crime in the US, drug cartels in South America, Tamil Tigers, etc. etc.

People who have a big stake in the current status quo are unwilling to rock the boat or change things. They aren't footsoldier material. It is the precisely people who have little or nothing to lose that are susceptible to radical movements -- they are far more willing to roll the dice to see if they can change the hand of cards that life has dealt them. That's where your footsoldiers come from. Want to eliminate the footsoldiers? Eliminate the forces that create them in the first place.

I've mercifully deleted your whine about the morality - I'll only say that anyone questioning the morality of resistance needs to also review the morality of the original actions that *prompted* the resistance. Failure to do so is hypocrisy.

As might be expected, it also appears that you've missed the point: this analysis is not an attempt to define the morality. There's little to be gained from that. Instead, it's an attempt to accurately connect cause and effect, so that in case -- just in case -- anyone is seriously interested in reducing these situations, they'll have a starting point from which to begin.

It's a forlorn hope in most cases, I know.

Actually, I meant "reaction" as in "normal human reaction to external pressures and a lack of hope for the future."

Or perhaps they have the same moral compass as the western govts that have attacked them, supported dictators and military govts that oppressed the citizens, toppled uncooperative regimes, armed their enemies, and destroyed their culture?

That kind of morality, you mean?

You'd be wrong about that. More precisely, it has varied by country and time. In fact, one of the few beneficial impacts of colonization was a restructuring of the older islamic legal system so that it had at least some aspects of either the British system or the Napoleonic code.

No, it is not. It might feel good for western conservatives to reflexively categorize islamic fundamentalism into the same pigeon hole as they tried to stick communism - but these same western intellectuals were wrong about the root causes of communism; so it's unlikely they'll be right about the root causes of islamic fundamentalism.

And as long as people like yourself persist in misunderstanding the dynamics here, you'll continue to understimate the scope of this movement and blame the wrong sources.

Sauron

I'm talking about countries -- or even well-defined regions of countries -- that are overwhelmingly christian, yet are being occupied by Islamic countries or an Islamic elite. There aren't any. The closest you can come is Lebanon or Egypt - but the christians aren't a majority there in either country.

On the other hand - Israel rules over large swaths of Islamic areas, India rules over such areas, Thailand does as well, as does Russia.

As for East Timor -- it is only christian as a result of European conquest and colonialism of an indigenous people who were primarily Islamic before the conquest. The elite in E. Timor are the Portuguese-derived upper class. Your example proves my point, actually.

I didn't say that Islamic countries are free of any christian minorities; that is obviously not the case. Almost all Islamic countries have some non-Islamic minorities, and they are ruled by the majority. In Sudan, for example, over 50% of the country is Islamic, with between 4-6 percent of the population being Christian.

* Israel rules over Galilee and the West Bank - both overwhelmingly muslim.
* Russia rules over Chechnya - again, predominantly muslim.
* Thailand rules over five southern districts that were forcibly incorporated into the modern state of Thailand, even though they were not Buddhist - and those are the same states that insurgents arise from.
* The Philippines has a similar situation.

These four examples illustrate Robert Pape's point. As you can see, I'm trying to draw up a mirror image between the islamic situation and the christian situation. But it's not working, because the christian nations have dominant militaries and economies.

gurugeorge

Yeah, maybe you should deal with the facts.

There are millions of people all over the world who are extremely poor and/or could justifiably consider themselves oppressed, but who for some strange reason don't kill innocent people who have nothing to do with their problem. I'm not denying that your "footsoldier" point has relevance, but you do seem to be making a most strenuous effort to ignore the effect of pseudo-intellectual, middle-class fantasy ideology. Perhaps it's a bit too close to the bone for you.

countjulian

Wrong. Before the Indonesian invasion East Timor was neither majority Christian or Muslims, but but inhabited by people following ages-old indigenous religions, like much of Indonesia. At that time, only about 30% of the population was Christian, mostly European descendants. AFTER the invasion and occupation (for secular reasons, no doubt, but all of the "occupations" of Muslim lands are secular, too) by aggresively Islamic (remember the anti-Christian and anti-Chinese riots) Indonesian forces, many people previously following native rleigions converted to Christianity to show their opposition to the occupation and genocide of their country. Yet, no international Christian terrorism against Muslims.

Yes, but the region of Southern Sudan is almost exclusively non-Muslim, Christian and pagan (fuee with PC), and makes up a"well-defined regions of [a] countr[y]." For the last 50 years it has been invaded and suffered not only genocide, but a massive campaign of Islamic slave raiding, all stemming from the theocratic Ummah parties attempts to enforce sharia in the South, which as states is almost exclusively non-Muslim. The South, as a consolidated geographic region, revolted, and a Muslim theocratic army was dispatched to put down a rebellion by a geographic group of oppressed Christians (and pagan-- but it should be noted Christians have made up most of the leadership in the rebel SPLA). Say what you want of the Israelis in Palestine or even the Russian in the Chechnya, neither the Israelis nor the Russians have ever done anything as atrocious as what happened to the Christians (and pagans) of Southern Sudan.

Malachi151

I have finally read this book myself and will now give my review of it.

Overall I was not too impressed with the book. I personally didn't care for the writing style, which is quite narrative in format, with many words being used to make each point that could have been made in far fewer.

I also thought that the author should have quoted more and paraphrased less.

I found that his treatment of Christian sources, especially the Bible, was very naive. He takes the Bible at face value and isn't even up on the positions held by moderate Christian scholars in regard to the reliability of the Bible as history.

For example, he treats Acts as reliable history, referring to it many times to explain the rise of Christianity and to elucidate the historical figure of Paul, which I found quite annoying.

His treatment of Jesus was even less critical than the Jesus Seminar, basically taking anything that "Jesus" is claimed to have said in the Gospels as fact. He seems to assume that the Gospels are reliable history.

His points overall were okay, and supported, but only weakly compared to the actual evidence that exists. He made several statements that were wrong in ways that weakened his own points, for example he discusses the work of Copernicus, and claims that Copernicus saw that the work of Ptolemy was incorrect, thus he reworked it, when in fact Copernicus based his work on Aristarchus of Samos, who had put together the first mathematical heliocentric proof back in the 3rd century BCE. Copernicus even credited Aristarchus in his rough draft of his publication, but later decided to take all the references to him out, for what reason we are not sure, perhaps either to make the work appear more original or to avoid controversy.

I would expect a book that intends to take on these subjects to note this type of information, and to be more critical of Christian sources. He also made little use of the vast library of Christian apologetics.

He also made the same old mistake of pointing to Aristotle as the "key scientist" of the pre-Christian era, and made little commentary on Democritus or Epicurus, and failed to make many key points about how Aristotle overturned centuries of accepted "undirected" naturalism, replacing it with the teleology that later came to dominate Christian thought. He wrongly states that the overturning of the ideas of Aristotle was a part of the problem, not that Aristotle himself was a part of the problem.

Overall, while the book proves a respectable time line of overall events, and names most of the key players I find it quite weak and disappointing.

I intended to use this book as research for my book on Christianity vs. Evolution, but I'll more likely be arguing against the points made in this book than for them.

This book is a good example of how difficult it can be to get ones head around this subject and its material. Our history is so warped by Christianity that even people who attempt to point out this fact often fail by themselves being trapped into Christian versions of history.

I'm not sure what to make of the sections that contained information that I was less familiar with, because in all the section that had information that I was familiar with I found his treatments troubling and naive. Some of the sections, that dealt more with the later Emperors, etc., seems okay to me, but only because I myself didn't have a firm grasp of the primary sources. In every case where I myself had primary source knowledge that was relevant, I disagreed with his treatment of the material. Though a significant portion of the book seemed agreeable, it was probably only due to my lack of knowledge in those areas.

Overall I found this book way too favorable to Christianity and not nearly critical enough.