Alright, I’m trying to figure out if we disagree here: Do you think there is something about Islam, or religion more generally, that is causing this in a way that nationalism or communism or imperialism couldn’t, or is the problem ideological beliefs generally, not even specifically religion? Or is this totally beside the point?
Let me put forward two analogies:
A wildfires during a drought set off by a carelessly tossed cigarette. I guess it would be silly to say that the cigarette didn’t cause the fire, because it did. But if that cigarette had not been tossed the fire probably would have happened anyway. We might hold that person to account if we can find them, but it would be silly to think they were a terribly important cause of the fire. We blame the environmental condition rather than the immediate cause.
A person is shot and is an collection of organs that don’t always work right so they die. In this case, we know the death was inevitable, but we blame the immediate cause of the bullet and the person who fired it. This time we think it is silly to blame the environmental condition and decide we ought to blame the immediate cause.
So when you take a country that has a lot of economic and security problems we know that it is a ripe ground for violence and for violent groups to form. Someone comes along with a specific violent agenda and finds it takes hold in that environment. Do we blame the environment or the immediate cause? Surely it’s both, but which do we focus on if we don’t want the same thing to happen again?
Except when it’s not…which is the majority of the time.
So again, why is it so important to you that we use a red herring in the terminology? Why is it NOT important that we instead focus on the root causes (inequality, poverty, lack of hope, separation from a power seen as foreign, etc.)
This is ideological fiction. Terrorism is largely instigated by well educated people from economically stable backgrounds (often extremely privileged ones), who do so because they rationally believe it necessary because of their ideological belief systems.
Alright, I’m trying to figure out if we disagree here: Do you think there is something about Islam, or religion more generally, that is causing this in a way that nationalism or communism or imperialism couldn’t, or is the problem ideological beliefs generally, not even specifically religion? Or is this totally beside the point?
I don’t think there’s anything unique about religion, or Islam in particular. It just happens that specific beliefs can cause specific actions. I think I have made it abundantly clear that it’s not about all religion, but rather specific interpretations of religion. It also applies to other religions other than Islam, more so in the past than today, it’s mostly Islam at the moment, with a few isolated examples from other religions around now. And of course this applies to other non-religious ideologies as well, there has been plenty of communist terrorism in past for example.
From your analogy a bed-rock of salafist ideology is part of the environmental condition.
Do we blame the environment or the immediate cause? Surely it’s both, but which do we focus on if we don’t want the same thing to happen again?
None of this science or evidence crap for you! No actual analysis of terrorists and their motivations.
You see through such things with your amazing all-seeing mind-balls!
Crazyness. I’m the only one who seems to be interested in terrorists actual motivations, you’re more interested in explaining them away with white-guilt excuses.
He did link to a variety of books and articles citing research into terrorism that concludes that economic insecurity is a far better predictor than religion; and that research into radicalization, how it happens and how to stop it, has been mostly fruitless because we just don’t know who will become radicalized or how to stop it. None of them mentioned white guilt.
That’s not an accurate summation of the links he posted actually, and those links are not an accurate summation of the academic thought on the issue. Sociology isn’t an wholly unbiased empirical academic discipline either it’s also important to note (I did a search in one of the PDFs for mentions of doctrine, scripture, etc., and didn’t find a single hit, it’s hard to find evidence for something when you’re not looking for it).
I’m not sure what you feel about my summation of the links is inaccurate, but I’m not going to dwell on that.
I’m sure there are arguments on both sides of the fence in academia, but unless you are keeping up with the most recent journals I don’t see how you are in a position to say your view is factual while his is fanciful.
And from that last statement, it appears that if sociological research was overwhelmingly saying that terrorism was caused by the factors he is suggesting, you would just dismiss it as biased.
I mean, what are we to do? How are we to have a fact based discussion?
“self-identified” is traditionally used to marginalize people… “Self-identified Wiccan” or “Self-identified Buddhist” contrasted with “Christian” or “Jew.”
And from that last statement, it appears that if sociological research was overwhelmingly saying that terrorism was caused by the factors he is suggesting, you would just dismiss it as biased.
It would depend on what assumptions they were making in their research, usually these guys start off with an assumption of social constructionism, so it’s no surprise that’s all they ever find. Not the case with everything of course, but it’s more common than not.
Well, I think that saying terrorists are “self-identified” Muslims is specifically a way to marginalize their beliefs. As I was saying above, if they were bombing things because they thought it was necessary to do so for Muhammed (who was really an alien) to return to Earth in his space ship then we wouldn’t have any trouble writing off their beliefs and saying, “That’s not really Islam, is it?” I’m sure there are tons of Muslims who feel that someone who justifies killing in the name of Islam deserves to have their beliefs marginalized (and, then again, there are probably plenty with the opposing view).
This still reads to me like you are saying that if someone finds out that terrorism is caused by economic and social conditions then their research can be discounted whereas if they find it was caused by religion then they’ve got it dead on. We can’t appeal to experts because experts might just be biased, we can’t appeal to reason because we reason about the people’s motivations from completely different perspectives, I don’t know of any data sources to draw from, so I guess that’s that.
A couple of thoughts here;
a) I put in the ‘self identified’ as an indicator that the nutsack might identify himself as muslim [wiccan | buddhist | christian | jewish], but the muslim [wiccan | buddhist | christian | jewish] community certainly aren’t claiming him as one of theirs.
2) So a terrorist gets marginalised? How is that a bad thing?
(unless you meant marginalising the group, in which case that is a bad thing, and not my intent, as my other posts in this thread should make clear )
This still reads to me like you are saying that if someone finds out that terrorism is caused by economic and social conditions then their research can be discounted whereas if they find it was caused by religion then they’ve got it dead on
Then you’re not very good at reading.
It would depend on what assumptions they were making in their research, usually these guys start off with an assumption of social constructionism, so it’s no surprise that’s all they ever find. Not the case with everything of course, but it’s more common than not.
Similarly, it would be very easy to prove religion was the only cause of something if it was assumed from the outset, this would also be terrible research.
And to reply to an earlier question I missed:
I’m not sure what you feel about my summation of the links is inaccurate, but I’m not going to dwell on that.
Because many of the links posted did point out religion as a causative factor (often couched in weasly terms like ‘misinterpreting’). Again, I’m not discounting poverty as a factor, but there were a wealth of opinions given in those links that did not match up with your summation.
They’re fundamentalists. I mean, the Koran does call for the forced conversion of unbelievers and a holy struggle (jihad) as a fundamental pillar of faith. It is just that most modern Muslims are more moderate, just like Europeans don’t normally fight 30 year wars over Catholicism anymore.
It is a social form used to marginalize anyone in an “other” religious faith to question the credibility of said faith. We don’t see “self-identified Christian” used ever for a reason.
But, that aside, you’ve lifted my comments out of context, and in doing so made it look like I’m being a racist arsehole. Presumably that wasn’t on purpose? My comments were made specifically in the context of caze’s assertions about “Islamic terrorism”, and how it’s super special and magical and different to every other kind of terrorism. I disagree with him about that, and offered “terrorism carried out by a self-identified Muslim” as an alternate, specifically to marginalise the supposed importance of religion generally and Islam specifically. My argument works equally well for self-identified Christian terrorists and others.
I’m not sure what the point was there. Terrorism isn’t (by definition) about one’s OWN status. It’s about the status of a people they identify with. Also, as is mentioned in the article the only causal link is conservatism…but that’s only associated with a specific cadre of terrorists (those who are heavily impacted by military and other actions in the Middle East)
Also, as is mentioned
"There’s also a societal component. In countries like Egypt, the period after the 1970s was one of massively thwarted expectations, with engineers emerging on the job market only to struggle to find employment. Per the classic explanation of the onset of rebellion — thwarted expectations coupled with relative deprivation — a generation of highly trained students had been made promises (and made subsequent investments in their education) that their societies could not deliver on. Angry, they turned to violence to restore order in society. "
I’ll also point out one last bit that seems to get brushed over…
Still, a few objections to this theory immediately emerge. First, certain aspects of work as a terrorist — placing wires here, installing fuses there — seem naturally suited to an engineer, raising the possibility that the profession is sought as a preparatory pathway for a career in murder and mayhem. But this criticism, the authors point out, misses the fact that bomb-making is typically handled by a small cadre of specialists and that individuals trained as engineers have frequently ascended to management positions within terrorist organizations, where they have little contact with technical, day-to-day operations. Moreover, engineers simply don’t turn up with the same frequency in terrorist groups in other parts of the world.
There isn’t actually a debunking here of the very legitimate theory that engineering skills are seen as a means to an end and can be obtained after the radicalization begins (again, especially since it’s a cause for others not for one’s self). It’s kind of glossed over but that doesn’t eliminate the consensus.
It does, however, supplement it. Nothing wrong with more data, right?
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