He talks about undermining, refuting and providing alternatives to an ideology. I did to. I said the alternative was jobs and social mobility.
It’s not enough though, not all terrorists (possibly even the minority in certain situations) come from disadvantaged backgrounds, many are well off and highly educated. The disadvantaged will of course also get swept up and used as cannon fodder, as has always been the case, so economic development is vital as well. If social deprivation was enough to explain terrorism then we’d see it everywhere, but you also need an ideology to harness it along with both real and/or perceived grievances, the ideology is also greatly important to the form the terrorism takes.
The basic point - that we should clearly distinguish between Islam and “Islamism” - is an academic, not a practical one.
I disagree.
People are seeing on the news that some Muslims killed a bunch of people in France in the name of Islam. It is not helpful if people blame Islam for that attack and turn against their Muslim neighbors.
Of course not.
He thinks the best way to address this is by using two different samey-sounding words. Other people think it’s more helpful to say “That’s not Islam.” I don’t think the message is really all that different.
They are different, one prevents the essential critical analysis of the dangerous ideologies that help foment radicalisation. I don’t think you’re quite aware just how widespread and unchallenged extremist ideologues are in the west (they’re very well funded form Saudi, and Qatar in particular for one thing), never mind the middle east and elsewhere.
But how are the Paris attacks even vaguely consistent with the effort to get everyone to adopt Islam?
They’re not, and nobody is suggesting that’s their motive.
It couldn’t have been better calculated to get air strikes aimed at their training camps.
That’s not a very good argument for not blowing up their training camps though. If an idiot wants you to do something, it might actually be the right thing to do, just not for reasons the idiot thinks. That doesn’t mean there aren’t good reasons for not bombing them, but their opinions on things aren’t particularly relevant.
It is useful to ISIS that young Muslims in France continue to be discriminated against and put in ghettos and be unable to find jobs.
True, these extremists preach ghettoisation regardless though, and of course it’s vital to counter bigotry as well as Islamism - which is why I keep saying we need to prevent right wing assholes from framing the debate. When the public see mainstream politicians and media outlets failing to address these obvious issues it will only drive them to the reactionary asshats.
