Ya Ali madad.
If this topic is permitted in this forum.
I have own views,observations and opinion to reduce n eradicate it.
Before that I wish all member to to stimulate their mind to screaming headlines of news on press,media n web.
It is time to come out of student level search n copy paste.
Each can give its view how it can be diminished n eradicated.
Evaluate the reality of the present n give futuristic redressal.
I will only post after all have chipped in.
Any member who does not wish to post n feel comfortable in copy paste of the past must say that its believes in other's thinking ages old n does not have a thinking mind of it's own to address the stark reality of today.
Radicalization in Religions
There is an interesting article about radicalization of French Muslims at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/19/opini ... d=71987722
I have posted it in another thread as well.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/19/opini ... d=71987722
I have posted it in another thread as well.
How ISIS Makes Radicals
After the terrorist attack in San Bernardino, some people’s minds flew to the materialistic element of the atrocity — the guns that were used in the killing. But the crucial issue, it seems to me, is what you might call the technology of persuasion — how is it that the Islamic State is able to radicalize a couple living in Redlands, Calif.? What psychological tools does it possess that enable it to wield this far-flung influence?
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/08/opini ... pe=article
U.S. Strategy Seeks to Avoid ISIS Prophecy
It’s a very powerful and emotional narrative. It gives the potential recruit and the actual fighters the feeling that not only are they part of the elite, they are also part of the final battle.”
The Islamic State’s propaganda is rife with references to apocalyptic prophecy about the last great battle that sets the stage for the end times. Terrorism experts say it has become a powerful recruiting tool for the group, also known as ISIS or ISIL, which sells potential fighters on the promise that joining will give them the most direct chance to battle Western interests and will bring ancient Islamic prophecies to fruition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/08/world ... d=71987722
*******
Is Saudi Arabia a Unique Generator of Extremism?
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/20 ... ef=opinion
After the terrorist attack in San Bernardino, some people’s minds flew to the materialistic element of the atrocity — the guns that were used in the killing. But the crucial issue, it seems to me, is what you might call the technology of persuasion — how is it that the Islamic State is able to radicalize a couple living in Redlands, Calif.? What psychological tools does it possess that enable it to wield this far-flung influence?
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/08/opini ... pe=article
U.S. Strategy Seeks to Avoid ISIS Prophecy
It’s a very powerful and emotional narrative. It gives the potential recruit and the actual fighters the feeling that not only are they part of the elite, they are also part of the final battle.”
The Islamic State’s propaganda is rife with references to apocalyptic prophecy about the last great battle that sets the stage for the end times. Terrorism experts say it has become a powerful recruiting tool for the group, also known as ISIS or ISIL, which sells potential fighters on the promise that joining will give them the most direct chance to battle Western interests and will bring ancient Islamic prophecies to fruition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/08/world ... d=71987722
*******
Is Saudi Arabia a Unique Generator of Extremism?
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/20 ... ef=opinion
Ya ALI Madad.
Lot is written on this subject.
This has resulted in dynamic change in government of important countries which could have direct impact on Muslim with intolerance and acts from new government which can affect us also.
As seen in India an anti Muslim sentiment party has come into power.
In same way changes are foreseen in France,USA and Germany all coming to power on anti Muslim sentiments. This a VERY DANGEROUS TREND .
The whole of Ummah destiny is in disray.
One can never tell one day that USA n Russia will join hands and end almost all lives of a country where this brand is exported ,they may spare the two holy cities as a grace.
NAA RAHEGA BAANS
AUR NAA BAJENGI BAANSURI.
Lot is written on this subject.
This has resulted in dynamic change in government of important countries which could have direct impact on Muslim with intolerance and acts from new government which can affect us also.
As seen in India an anti Muslim sentiment party has come into power.
In same way changes are foreseen in France,USA and Germany all coming to power on anti Muslim sentiments. This a VERY DANGEROUS TREND .
The whole of Ummah destiny is in disray.
One can never tell one day that USA n Russia will join hands and end almost all lives of a country where this brand is exported ,they may spare the two holy cities as a grace.
NAA RAHEGA BAANS
AUR NAA BAJENGI BAANSURI.
The Return of History
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/11/opini ... d=71987722
Excerpts:
"That the Islamic State has made violent use of history shouldn’t come as a surprise. Perhaps more surprising is that in all those places where a modern nation has been grafted onto an ancient culture, history has returned with a vengeance. From Confucian China to Buddhist Myanmar to Hindu India, history has become the source of a fierce new conservatism that is being used to curb freedoms of women and stoke hatred of minorities. As the ultimate source of legitimacy, history has become a way for modernizing societies to procure the trappings of modernity while guarding themselves from its values."
.....
"Islam, with its rich textual history and detailed recordings of the life and times of the Prophet Muhammad, offers the faithful an especially aggressive blueprint for turning the past into a weapon against the present. But the return of history is not specific to Islam. All over the old world, the spread of modernity and the wearing down of tradition have led to a frantic need to repossess the past. But this act of reclamation, through an ever-closer adherence to text without context, does not give back what was lost. It creates something radical and new — and dangerous."
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/11/opini ... d=71987722
Excerpts:
"That the Islamic State has made violent use of history shouldn’t come as a surprise. Perhaps more surprising is that in all those places where a modern nation has been grafted onto an ancient culture, history has returned with a vengeance. From Confucian China to Buddhist Myanmar to Hindu India, history has become the source of a fierce new conservatism that is being used to curb freedoms of women and stoke hatred of minorities. As the ultimate source of legitimacy, history has become a way for modernizing societies to procure the trappings of modernity while guarding themselves from its values."
.....
"Islam, with its rich textual history and detailed recordings of the life and times of the Prophet Muhammad, offers the faithful an especially aggressive blueprint for turning the past into a weapon against the present. But the return of history is not specific to Islam. All over the old world, the spread of modernity and the wearing down of tradition have led to a frantic need to repossess the past. But this act of reclamation, through an ever-closer adherence to text without context, does not give back what was lost. It creates something radical and new — and dangerous."
The Rise of Hate Search
HOURS after the massacre in San Bernardino, Calif., on Dec. 2, and minutes after the media first reported that at least one of the shooters had a Muslim-sounding name, a disturbing number of Californians had decided what they wanted to do with Muslims: kill them.
The top Google search in California with the word “Muslims” in it was “kill Muslims.” And the rest of America searched for the phrase “kill Muslims” with about the same frequency that they searched for “martini recipe,” “migraine symptoms” and “Cowboys roster.”
People often have vicious thoughts. Sometimes they share them on Google. Do these thoughts matter?
Yes. Using weekly data from 2004 to 2013, we found a direct correlation between anti-Muslim searches and anti-Muslim hate crimes.
We measured Islamophobic sentiment by using common Google searches that imply hateful attitudes toward Muslims. A search for “are all Muslims terrorists?” for example leaves little to the imagination about what the searcher really thinks. Searches for “I hate Muslims” are even clearer.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/opini ... d=71987722
HOURS after the massacre in San Bernardino, Calif., on Dec. 2, and minutes after the media first reported that at least one of the shooters had a Muslim-sounding name, a disturbing number of Californians had decided what they wanted to do with Muslims: kill them.
The top Google search in California with the word “Muslims” in it was “kill Muslims.” And the rest of America searched for the phrase “kill Muslims” with about the same frequency that they searched for “martini recipe,” “migraine symptoms” and “Cowboys roster.”
People often have vicious thoughts. Sometimes they share them on Google. Do these thoughts matter?
Yes. Using weekly data from 2004 to 2013, we found a direct correlation between anti-Muslim searches and anti-Muslim hate crimes.
We measured Islamophobic sentiment by using common Google searches that imply hateful attitudes toward Muslims. A search for “are all Muslims terrorists?” for example leaves little to the imagination about what the searcher really thinks. Searches for “I hate Muslims” are even clearer.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/opini ... d=71987722
A Medieval Antidote to ISIS
ISTANBUL — THE recent massacres in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif., demonstrated, once again, the so-called Islamic State’s ability to win over disaffected Muslims. Using a mixture of textual literalism and self-righteous certainty, the extremist group is able to persuade young men and women from Pakistan to Belgium to pledge allegiance to it and commit violence in its name.
This is why the Islamic State’s religious ideology needs to be taken seriously. While it’s wrong to claim that the group’s thinking represents mainstream Islam, as Islamophobes so often do, it’s also wrong to pretend that the Islamic State has “nothing to do with Islam,” as many Islamophobia-wary Muslims like to say. Indeed, jihadist leaders are steeped in Islamic thought and teachings, even if they use their knowledge to perverse and brutal ends.
A good place to start understanding the Islamic State’s doctrine is by reading Dabiq, the digital English-language magazine that the group puts out every month. One of the most striking pieces I have seen in it was an 18-page article in March titled “Irja’: The Most Dangerous Bid’ah,” or heresy.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/21/opini ... ef=opinion
ISTANBUL — THE recent massacres in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif., demonstrated, once again, the so-called Islamic State’s ability to win over disaffected Muslims. Using a mixture of textual literalism and self-righteous certainty, the extremist group is able to persuade young men and women from Pakistan to Belgium to pledge allegiance to it and commit violence in its name.
This is why the Islamic State’s religious ideology needs to be taken seriously. While it’s wrong to claim that the group’s thinking represents mainstream Islam, as Islamophobes so often do, it’s also wrong to pretend that the Islamic State has “nothing to do with Islam,” as many Islamophobia-wary Muslims like to say. Indeed, jihadist leaders are steeped in Islamic thought and teachings, even if they use their knowledge to perverse and brutal ends.
A good place to start understanding the Islamic State’s doctrine is by reading Dabiq, the digital English-language magazine that the group puts out every month. One of the most striking pieces I have seen in it was an 18-page article in March titled “Irja’: The Most Dangerous Bid’ah,” or heresy.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/21/opini ... ef=opinion
The Soft Power of Militant Jihad
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/20/opini ... 87722&_r=0
Excerpt:
"Why have tens of thousands of people from around the world chosen to live under the Islamic State’s draconian rule and fight under its black flag? To understand this phenomenon, we must recognize that the world of radical Islam is not just death and destruction. It also encompasses fashion, music, poetry, dream interpretation. In short, jihadism offers its adherents a rich cultural universe in which they can immerse themselves."
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/20/opini ... 87722&_r=0
Excerpt:
"Why have tens of thousands of people from around the world chosen to live under the Islamic State’s draconian rule and fight under its black flag? To understand this phenomenon, we must recognize that the world of radical Islam is not just death and destruction. It also encompasses fashion, music, poetry, dream interpretation. In short, jihadism offers its adherents a rich cultural universe in which they can immerse themselves."
Ya ALI Madad.
Just been reading papers n watching new.
The effect of radicalization, conflict and sectarian violence has led almost 6 million shariatis displaced.
The year 2015 looks like a small beginning for future.
A country claiming to be religious n moral authority over Muslim .who has not only spread wahabi brand of Islam but found to be chief instigator n financer of abettot n actors for this hhuge human crises.
It says that they have utmost concern for every Shariati.
Till now they have not willing to take even ONE refugee In distress.it has large area,wealth and temporary ready campsto house millions during hajj.
What Ideals are they following of an entity? or is it DEVIL?
UNO and world to should take serious note of n curtail it oil exports to 33.3% of current level which is more than enough for local citizens or be bombed by righteous nation to fall in line.
Within Two week.80% of this will end in Muslim countries.
This world is clash if ignorance.
If notthen God will act but in it's own sweet time.
Their income will be down 62% over 2014 ,next year and bankruptcy in few decades.
Just been reading papers n watching new.
The effect of radicalization, conflict and sectarian violence has led almost 6 million shariatis displaced.
The year 2015 looks like a small beginning for future.
A country claiming to be religious n moral authority over Muslim .who has not only spread wahabi brand of Islam but found to be chief instigator n financer of abettot n actors for this hhuge human crises.
It says that they have utmost concern for every Shariati.
Till now they have not willing to take even ONE refugee In distress.it has large area,wealth and temporary ready campsto house millions during hajj.
What Ideals are they following of an entity? or is it DEVIL?
UNO and world to should take serious note of n curtail it oil exports to 33.3% of current level which is more than enough for local citizens or be bombed by righteous nation to fall in line.
Within Two week.80% of this will end in Muslim countries.
This world is clash if ignorance.
If notthen God will act but in it's own sweet time.
Their income will be down 62% over 2014 ,next year and bankruptcy in few decades.
ISIS’ War on Christmas
Excerpt:
To celebrate a birthday, even that of a prophet, is to accept the existence of Time, whereas Islamists fantasize about eternity. In their eyes, Time itself is a crime, because it is a departure from original Islam. Thus restoration is the Islamists’ second foundational myth. Their goal is to return to the beginning of Time, to T=0. To the moment of Revelation, when the prophet was still alive and God was so close to his ear. To the moment when Islam had not yet been soiled, to before it was contaminated by History and “Fitna,” the first Muslim civil wars, which followed the death of Muhammad.
This quest for purity also explains Islamists’ relation to physical space. In addition to wanting to conquer territory, the Islamic State seeks to negate and destroy any evidence of the passing of time, such as monuments and ruins, in Palmyra and elsewhere. It tries to extend the desert’s domain: to replace walls with sand, to flatten out landscape, to return to a vacuum so as to start history all over again.
The purification myth is not the exclusive purview of Salafists. It also runs through other utopian and totalitarian movements, as well as some of the Islamists’ enemies, like the far-right political parties of today. All of them share the same fantasy of returning to some (imagined) original state of purity.
The far right in France, for example, wants to go back to “la souche,” its roots, and restore the land of its Gallic ancestors to what it was before immigrants, the Stranger, flooded in. Like the Islamists, it glorifies geography and negates Time.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/02/opini ... pe=article
Excerpt:
To celebrate a birthday, even that of a prophet, is to accept the existence of Time, whereas Islamists fantasize about eternity. In their eyes, Time itself is a crime, because it is a departure from original Islam. Thus restoration is the Islamists’ second foundational myth. Their goal is to return to the beginning of Time, to T=0. To the moment of Revelation, when the prophet was still alive and God was so close to his ear. To the moment when Islam had not yet been soiled, to before it was contaminated by History and “Fitna,” the first Muslim civil wars, which followed the death of Muhammad.
This quest for purity also explains Islamists’ relation to physical space. In addition to wanting to conquer territory, the Islamic State seeks to negate and destroy any evidence of the passing of time, such as monuments and ruins, in Palmyra and elsewhere. It tries to extend the desert’s domain: to replace walls with sand, to flatten out landscape, to return to a vacuum so as to start history all over again.
The purification myth is not the exclusive purview of Salafists. It also runs through other utopian and totalitarian movements, as well as some of the Islamists’ enemies, like the far-right political parties of today. All of them share the same fantasy of returning to some (imagined) original state of purity.
The far right in France, for example, wants to go back to “la souche,” its roots, and restore the land of its Gallic ancestors to what it was before immigrants, the Stranger, flooded in. Like the Islamists, it glorifies geography and negates Time.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/02/opini ... pe=article
How a prophecy can help us better understand Islamic State
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/how ... lsignoutmd
Excerpts:
Q: What draws Islamic State’s recruits?
A: The locals, some of them just want to draw a pay cheque. They live in a war zone. There are not many jobs. Others feel compelled. The foreigners are more ideologically motivated. That’s not to say the foreigners are well versed in scripture. It’s just to say that their imaginations are fired by the project that the Islamic State is engaged in, which is the return of the caliphate.
Q: How much of the appeal is the violence and gore?
A: The violence is off-putting to most people, Muslim and non-Muslim. But it does have the benefit in Islamic State’s perception of attracting people who are in to that kind of violence. The Islamic State is waging a brutal insurgency. So burning the pilot alive or decapitating people—they want young men and women who are excited about these acts of violence to come and join their enterprise.
Q: How much of a boost did the apocalyptic narrative on which Islamic State feeds get from the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq?
A: It was the U.S. invasion the really spurred interest among general Sunnis in the End Times, because they could see there was a cataclysm in the region where prophecy said there would be a cataclysm. I don’t think it’s any accident that the group that has been the most apocalyptic in its thinking, Islamic State, was born out of that conflict.
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/how ... lsignoutmd
Excerpts:
Q: What draws Islamic State’s recruits?
A: The locals, some of them just want to draw a pay cheque. They live in a war zone. There are not many jobs. Others feel compelled. The foreigners are more ideologically motivated. That’s not to say the foreigners are well versed in scripture. It’s just to say that their imaginations are fired by the project that the Islamic State is engaged in, which is the return of the caliphate.
Q: How much of the appeal is the violence and gore?
A: The violence is off-putting to most people, Muslim and non-Muslim. But it does have the benefit in Islamic State’s perception of attracting people who are in to that kind of violence. The Islamic State is waging a brutal insurgency. So burning the pilot alive or decapitating people—they want young men and women who are excited about these acts of violence to come and join their enterprise.
Q: How much of a boost did the apocalyptic narrative on which Islamic State feeds get from the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq?
A: It was the U.S. invasion the really spurred interest among general Sunnis in the End Times, because they could see there was a cataclysm in the region where prophecy said there would be a cataclysm. I don’t think it’s any accident that the group that has been the most apocalyptic in its thinking, Islamic State, was born out of that conflict.
The Right-Wing Attack on India’s Universities
Excerpt:
That was why he’d been fired. “Ideologically, I am at the opposite extreme to the people who are at present in power,” he said. “These people not only cannot tolerate any dissent; they don’t even tolerate disagreement. They want everybody who disagrees with them out of this campus.” Mr. Pandey was referring to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party and — more to the point — the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the B.J.P.’s cultural fountainhead.
The R.S.S., a Hindu nationalist organization, was founded in 1925 as a muscular alternative to Mahatma Gandhi’s freedom movement. Its founder admired Adolf Hitler, and in 1948 the organization was blamed for indirectly inspiring Gandhi’s assassination. The B.J.P. has not always had an easy relationship with the R.S.S. With its fanciful ideas of Hindu purity and its sweeping range of prejudices, the organization is dangerously out of step with the realities of India’s political landscape. When the B.J.P. wants to win an election, it usually distances itself from the R.S.S.’s cultural agenda.
More....
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/28/opini ... d=45305309
*******
Suicide on an Indian Campus
Excerpt:
Dalit students face pervasive discrimination from higher-caste fellow students, faculty members and administrators. In Mr. Vemula’s case — if press reports are true — heavy hands at the highest reaches of India’s government helped push him over the edge of despair by foreclosing his chance at a better future. “My birth is my fatal accident,” Mr. Vemula wrote in his suicide letter.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/28/opini ... d=45305309
Excerpt:
That was why he’d been fired. “Ideologically, I am at the opposite extreme to the people who are at present in power,” he said. “These people not only cannot tolerate any dissent; they don’t even tolerate disagreement. They want everybody who disagrees with them out of this campus.” Mr. Pandey was referring to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party and — more to the point — the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the B.J.P.’s cultural fountainhead.
The R.S.S., a Hindu nationalist organization, was founded in 1925 as a muscular alternative to Mahatma Gandhi’s freedom movement. Its founder admired Adolf Hitler, and in 1948 the organization was blamed for indirectly inspiring Gandhi’s assassination. The B.J.P. has not always had an easy relationship with the R.S.S. With its fanciful ideas of Hindu purity and its sweeping range of prejudices, the organization is dangerously out of step with the realities of India’s political landscape. When the B.J.P. wants to win an election, it usually distances itself from the R.S.S.’s cultural agenda.
More....
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/28/opini ... d=45305309
*******
Suicide on an Indian Campus
Excerpt:
Dalit students face pervasive discrimination from higher-caste fellow students, faculty members and administrators. In Mr. Vemula’s case — if press reports are true — heavy hands at the highest reaches of India’s government helped push him over the edge of despair by foreclosing his chance at a better future. “My birth is my fatal accident,” Mr. Vemula wrote in his suicide letter.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/28/opini ... d=45305309
My Friend, the Former Muslim Extremist
WHENEVER a Muslim carries out a terror attack in the West, the question arises: Why do they hate us?
Provocative answers come from my friend Rafiullah Kakar, who has lived a more astonishing life than almost anyone I know. Rafi is a young Pakistani who used to hate the United States and support the Taliban. His brother joined the Taliban for a time, but now I worry that the Taliban might try to kill Rafi — ah, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
One of 13 children, Rafi is a Pashtun who grew up in a mud home close to the Afghan border, in an area notorious for tribal feuds and violent clashes. His parents are illiterate farmers, and it looked as if Rafi’s education would end in the fifth grade, when he was sent to a madrasa. His mom wanted him to become a hafiz, someone who has memorized the entire Quran.
“One reason people send kids to madrasa is that a hafiz can get to paradise and take 10 other people along,” Rafi notes, explaining a local belief about getting to heaven. “My mother wanted me to be a hafiz, so I could be her ticket to paradise.”
......
To fight Islamic terrorism, the West spends billions of dollars on drones, missiles and foreign bases. Yet we neglect education and the empowerment of women, which if done right can be even more transformative. The trade-offs are striking: For the cost of deploying one soldier for a year, we could start more than 20 schools.
Rafi teaches us that a book can be a more powerful force against extremism than a drone. But it has to be the right book!
More....
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/21/opini ... d=71987722
WHENEVER a Muslim carries out a terror attack in the West, the question arises: Why do they hate us?
Provocative answers come from my friend Rafiullah Kakar, who has lived a more astonishing life than almost anyone I know. Rafi is a young Pakistani who used to hate the United States and support the Taliban. His brother joined the Taliban for a time, but now I worry that the Taliban might try to kill Rafi — ah, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
One of 13 children, Rafi is a Pashtun who grew up in a mud home close to the Afghan border, in an area notorious for tribal feuds and violent clashes. His parents are illiterate farmers, and it looked as if Rafi’s education would end in the fifth grade, when he was sent to a madrasa. His mom wanted him to become a hafiz, someone who has memorized the entire Quran.
“One reason people send kids to madrasa is that a hafiz can get to paradise and take 10 other people along,” Rafi notes, explaining a local belief about getting to heaven. “My mother wanted me to be a hafiz, so I could be her ticket to paradise.”
......
To fight Islamic terrorism, the West spends billions of dollars on drones, missiles and foreign bases. Yet we neglect education and the empowerment of women, which if done right can be even more transformative. The trade-offs are striking: For the cost of deploying one soldier for a year, we could start more than 20 schools.
Rafi teaches us that a book can be a more powerful force against extremism than a drone. But it has to be the right book!
More....
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/21/opini ... d=71987722
Why do so many jihadis have engineering degrees?
Excerpt:
That takes Hertog and Gambetta to the thorny question of “mindsets for extremists.” Different types of people are attracted to different kinds of extremism—engineers mostly on one side, social scientists and humanities grads on the other—and the authors went in search of traits found in both secular and jihadi extremists as well as among engineers. Three stand out among conservatives in general in recent psychological research: disgust (or the felt need to keep one’s environment pure, which can underpin everything from homophobia to xenophobia); the “need for cognitive closure” (a preference for order and certainty that can support authoritarianism); a very high in-group/out-group distinction.
These are present in particularly high concentration among Nazis and Salafists alike, while European surveys show engineers to be consistently more conservative than other students: moderately right wing, anti-immigration and tough on crime. Whether the discipline makes the man—it’s worth noting engineering, like the virtually women-free world of right-wing extremists, is male-dominated—or the man seeks the discipline, Hertog is not prepared to say, but the correlation is undeniable. And so is what it points to: contrary to what seems obvious, religious faith does not so much drive Islamist terror as provide its cover.
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/weekendre ... lsignoutmd
Excerpt:
That takes Hertog and Gambetta to the thorny question of “mindsets for extremists.” Different types of people are attracted to different kinds of extremism—engineers mostly on one side, social scientists and humanities grads on the other—and the authors went in search of traits found in both secular and jihadi extremists as well as among engineers. Three stand out among conservatives in general in recent psychological research: disgust (or the felt need to keep one’s environment pure, which can underpin everything from homophobia to xenophobia); the “need for cognitive closure” (a preference for order and certainty that can support authoritarianism); a very high in-group/out-group distinction.
These are present in particularly high concentration among Nazis and Salafists alike, while European surveys show engineers to be consistently more conservative than other students: moderately right wing, anti-immigration and tough on crime. Whether the discipline makes the man—it’s worth noting engineering, like the virtually women-free world of right-wing extremists, is male-dominated—or the man seeks the discipline, Hertog is not prepared to say, but the correlation is undeniable. And so is what it points to: contrary to what seems obvious, religious faith does not so much drive Islamist terror as provide its cover.
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/weekendre ... lsignoutmd
Why the Islamic State keeps winning over our young
Excerpt:
Overall, Bourrie makes an important point. Rather than look outward to explain Islamic State’s attraction, we should look closely at ourselves. The propagandists have pinpointed the lack of meaning that pervades modern Western cultures and exploited it to attract recruits, like a virus spreading through a weakened host. Rehabilitating our own societal corpus is our best defence.
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/why ... li=AAggv0m
Excerpt:
Overall, Bourrie makes an important point. Rather than look outward to explain Islamic State’s attraction, we should look closely at ourselves. The propagandists have pinpointed the lack of meaning that pervades modern Western cultures and exploited it to attract recruits, like a virus spreading through a weakened host. Rehabilitating our own societal corpus is our best defence.
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/why ... li=AAggv0m
As Siblings Again Unite to Unleash Terror, Experts Ask What Drives Them
The identification of Khalid and Ibrahim el-Bakraoui as suicide bombers in the deadly Brussels attacks is confronting investigators and counterterrorism experts with a disturbingly recurrent question: Why do so many terrorists turn out to be brothers?
The Bakraouis join a list of brothers involved in nearly every major terror attack on Western soil since three sets of Saudi siblings were among the 19 hijackers who carried out the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States. Before then, the grim roster included 19th-century French anarchists, militants in Southeast Asia and the Jewish extremists who assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel in 1995.
For terror groups, brothers can be ideal recruits. They radicalize each other while reinforcing a sense of purpose and ideological calling. They keep watch on each other to ensure an attack is carried out. One new study suggests that up to 30 percent of members of terrorist groups share family ties.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/24/world ... d=45305309
The identification of Khalid and Ibrahim el-Bakraoui as suicide bombers in the deadly Brussels attacks is confronting investigators and counterterrorism experts with a disturbingly recurrent question: Why do so many terrorists turn out to be brothers?
The Bakraouis join a list of brothers involved in nearly every major terror attack on Western soil since three sets of Saudi siblings were among the 19 hijackers who carried out the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States. Before then, the grim roster included 19th-century French anarchists, militants in Southeast Asia and the Jewish extremists who assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel in 1995.
For terror groups, brothers can be ideal recruits. They radicalize each other while reinforcing a sense of purpose and ideological calling. They keep watch on each other to ensure an attack is carried out. One new study suggests that up to 30 percent of members of terrorist groups share family ties.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/24/world ... d=45305309
The Islamic State of Molenbeek
Extract:
The large-scale immigration from Turkey and North Africa that began a half-century ago at a time of economic boom has — at a time of economic stagnation — led to near-ghettos in or around many European cities where the jobless descendants of those migrants are sometimes radicalized by Wahhabi clerics. As the French prime minister, Manuel Valls, warned recently, an extremist minority is “winning the ideological and cultural battle” within French Islam.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/12/opini ... 87722&_r=0
Extract:
The large-scale immigration from Turkey and North Africa that began a half-century ago at a time of economic boom has — at a time of economic stagnation — led to near-ghettos in or around many European cities where the jobless descendants of those migrants are sometimes radicalized by Wahhabi clerics. As the French prime minister, Manuel Valls, warned recently, an extremist minority is “winning the ideological and cultural battle” within French Islam.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/12/opini ... 87722&_r=0
When a Phrase Takes On New Meaning: ‘Radical Islam,’ Explained
It was nearly 18 months ago, shortly after the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris, when a reporter for National Public Radio, Mara Liasson, observed at a White House press briefing that President Obama and his aides had “bent over backwards” to avoid using the phrase “radical Islam.” The press secretary, Josh Earnest, said this was because “these terrorists are individuals who would like to cloak themselves in the veil of a particular religion,” opening a debate over the phrase that has taken on new rancor amid the massacre in Orlando.
“In his remarks today, President Obama disgracefully refused to even say the words ‘Radical Islam,’ ” Donald J. Trump said in a statement within hours of when Omar Mateen killed 49 people at a gay nightclub and invoked the Islamic State in a 911 call. “For that reason alone, he should step down.”
The next day, Mr. Obama called the focus on phrasing “a political distraction.”
“What exactly would using this label accomplish?” the president asked. “Calling a threat by a different name does not make it go away.”
What does “radical Islam” even mean and why has it become so controversial? Is this argument just semantics, or does it go deeper?
What does the phrase mean?
Let’s start with the words. “Islam” is a 1,500-year-old religion whose 1.6 billion followers worldwide observe a spectrum of customs and traditions. “Radical” can mean something very different or against tradition, or be defined as extreme views, practices and policies.
The words, absent political context, could be read as trying to distinguish fringe interpretations of Islam, including justifications for violence, from the mainstream majority view, which is peaceful. But that context — including who shouts the phrase and who studiously avoids uttering it — has ladened it with pernicious meaning in particular quarters.
Shadi Hamid, a scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said that before the controversy began, he did not use the phrase “radical Islam” much, but neither did he find it overly objectionable. After two years of politicization, though, Mr. Hamid and other analysts say the phrase has worrisome connotations, potentially maligning all Muslims or Islam itself.
“Why would you feel such a need to use this particular combination of words, when the vast majority of us agree that this is terrorism and that it should be stopped or countered?” he asked. “These terms are being used as dog whistles.”
Will McCants, another Brookings scholar, told The Washington Post in December 2015 that “every bit of that phrase is analytically unhelpful” because of its lack of specificity. “Is this the wine-drinking Islam of the poets?” he asked. “The court Islam of the caliph? What kind of Islam are you even talking about?”
Republicans who invoke “radical Islam” seem to be trying to telegraph certain arguments about Muslims, political correctness, and the United States’ failure to stop the march of extremist groups across the Middle East. At the same time, Democrats who reject it are also making a political statement, one touching on Islamophobia and inclusiveness.
If it seems unlikely that a single phrase with no fixed definition could contain all that information, the fight over “radical Islam” becomes easier to understand when examined in its initial context: as a way to make sense of the rise of the Islamic State.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/17/world ... odayspaper
It was nearly 18 months ago, shortly after the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris, when a reporter for National Public Radio, Mara Liasson, observed at a White House press briefing that President Obama and his aides had “bent over backwards” to avoid using the phrase “radical Islam.” The press secretary, Josh Earnest, said this was because “these terrorists are individuals who would like to cloak themselves in the veil of a particular religion,” opening a debate over the phrase that has taken on new rancor amid the massacre in Orlando.
“In his remarks today, President Obama disgracefully refused to even say the words ‘Radical Islam,’ ” Donald J. Trump said in a statement within hours of when Omar Mateen killed 49 people at a gay nightclub and invoked the Islamic State in a 911 call. “For that reason alone, he should step down.”
The next day, Mr. Obama called the focus on phrasing “a political distraction.”
“What exactly would using this label accomplish?” the president asked. “Calling a threat by a different name does not make it go away.”
What does “radical Islam” even mean and why has it become so controversial? Is this argument just semantics, or does it go deeper?
What does the phrase mean?
Let’s start with the words. “Islam” is a 1,500-year-old religion whose 1.6 billion followers worldwide observe a spectrum of customs and traditions. “Radical” can mean something very different or against tradition, or be defined as extreme views, practices and policies.
The words, absent political context, could be read as trying to distinguish fringe interpretations of Islam, including justifications for violence, from the mainstream majority view, which is peaceful. But that context — including who shouts the phrase and who studiously avoids uttering it — has ladened it with pernicious meaning in particular quarters.
Shadi Hamid, a scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said that before the controversy began, he did not use the phrase “radical Islam” much, but neither did he find it overly objectionable. After two years of politicization, though, Mr. Hamid and other analysts say the phrase has worrisome connotations, potentially maligning all Muslims or Islam itself.
“Why would you feel such a need to use this particular combination of words, when the vast majority of us agree that this is terrorism and that it should be stopped or countered?” he asked. “These terms are being used as dog whistles.”
Will McCants, another Brookings scholar, told The Washington Post in December 2015 that “every bit of that phrase is analytically unhelpful” because of its lack of specificity. “Is this the wine-drinking Islam of the poets?” he asked. “The court Islam of the caliph? What kind of Islam are you even talking about?”
Republicans who invoke “radical Islam” seem to be trying to telegraph certain arguments about Muslims, political correctness, and the United States’ failure to stop the march of extremist groups across the Middle East. At the same time, Democrats who reject it are also making a political statement, one touching on Islamophobia and inclusiveness.
If it seems unlikely that a single phrase with no fixed definition could contain all that information, the fight over “radical Islam” becomes easier to understand when examined in its initial context: as a way to make sense of the rise of the Islamic State.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/17/world ... odayspaper
The Terrorists the Saudis Cultivate in Peaceful Countries
Extract:
"For decades, Saudi Arabia has recklessly financed and promoted a harsh and intolerant Wahhabi version of Islam around the world in a way that is, quite predictably, producing terrorists. And there’s no better example of this Saudi recklessness than in the Balkans.
Kosovo and Albania have been models of religious moderation and tolerance, and as the Clinton statue attests, Kosovars revere the United States and Britain for averting a possible genocide by Serbs in 1999 (there are also many Kosovar teenagers named Tony Blair!). Yet Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries poured money into the new nation over the last 17 years and nurtured religious extremism in a land where originally there was little.
The upshot is that, according to the Kosovo government, 300 Kosovars have traveled to fight in Syria or Iraq, mostly to join the Islamic State. As my colleague Carlotta Gall noted in a pathbreaking article about radicalization here, Saudi money has transformed a once-tolerant Islamic society into a pipeline for jihadists."
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/03/opini ... 87722&_r=0
*****
Bangladesh Attack Is New Evidence That ISIS Has Shifted Its Focus Beyond the Mideast
Extract:
"Bangladesh’s 160 million people are almost all Sunni Muslims, including a demographic bulge under the age of 25. This makes it valuable as a recruiting ground for the Islamic State, now under pressure in its core territory of Iraq and Syria. Western intelligence officials have been watching the organization pivot to missions elsewhere in the world, launching attacks on far-flung civilian targets that are difficult to deter with traditional military campaigns."
More..
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/03/world ... d=71987722
Extract:
"For decades, Saudi Arabia has recklessly financed and promoted a harsh and intolerant Wahhabi version of Islam around the world in a way that is, quite predictably, producing terrorists. And there’s no better example of this Saudi recklessness than in the Balkans.
Kosovo and Albania have been models of religious moderation and tolerance, and as the Clinton statue attests, Kosovars revere the United States and Britain for averting a possible genocide by Serbs in 1999 (there are also many Kosovar teenagers named Tony Blair!). Yet Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries poured money into the new nation over the last 17 years and nurtured religious extremism in a land where originally there was little.
The upshot is that, according to the Kosovo government, 300 Kosovars have traveled to fight in Syria or Iraq, mostly to join the Islamic State. As my colleague Carlotta Gall noted in a pathbreaking article about radicalization here, Saudi money has transformed a once-tolerant Islamic society into a pipeline for jihadists."
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/03/opini ... 87722&_r=0
*****
Bangladesh Attack Is New Evidence That ISIS Has Shifted Its Focus Beyond the Mideast
Extract:
"Bangladesh’s 160 million people are almost all Sunni Muslims, including a demographic bulge under the age of 25. This makes it valuable as a recruiting ground for the Islamic State, now under pressure in its core territory of Iraq and Syria. Western intelligence officials have been watching the organization pivot to missions elsewhere in the world, launching attacks on far-flung civilian targets that are difficult to deter with traditional military campaigns."
More..
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/03/world ... d=71987722
Not All Terrorists Are Deranged Misfits
To the Editor:
Re “Which Attackers Are ‘Terrorists’?’’ (front page, July 18):
It is unfortunate that this otherwise thoughtful analysis repeats (several times) the new favored explanation by Western terrorism analysts that those who self-radicalize and commit acts of violence on behalf of the global jihad are mostly just “unstable people who are at the end of their rope,” or “social misfits” on the “fringes of society,” all simply looking to die “for a cause.”
In fact, for every attacker who was a “social misfit,” there’s a popular college student like Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the Boston Marathon bombers. And for every one who came from the “fringes of society,” there are successful professionals like Maj. Nidal Hasan, the Army doctor who assaulted Fort Hood, or members of a privileged elite, like the young Bangladeshis who committed a massacre at a cafe in Dhaka this month.
And far from being “deranged,” in most cases (including the ones just mentioned), the attackers clearly, and cogently, explain the geopolitical rationale for their actions.
I recognize that it may be frightening for Westerners to believe that “normal” people may be inspired and radicalized by ISIS and other jihadi groups. But that is actually the very definition of terrorism: calculated violence carried out in the name of a political movement.
STUART GOTTLIEB
New York
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/26/opini ... ef=opinion
To the Editor:
Re “Which Attackers Are ‘Terrorists’?’’ (front page, July 18):
It is unfortunate that this otherwise thoughtful analysis repeats (several times) the new favored explanation by Western terrorism analysts that those who self-radicalize and commit acts of violence on behalf of the global jihad are mostly just “unstable people who are at the end of their rope,” or “social misfits” on the “fringes of society,” all simply looking to die “for a cause.”
In fact, for every attacker who was a “social misfit,” there’s a popular college student like Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the Boston Marathon bombers. And for every one who came from the “fringes of society,” there are successful professionals like Maj. Nidal Hasan, the Army doctor who assaulted Fort Hood, or members of a privileged elite, like the young Bangladeshis who committed a massacre at a cafe in Dhaka this month.
And far from being “deranged,” in most cases (including the ones just mentioned), the attackers clearly, and cogently, explain the geopolitical rationale for their actions.
I recognize that it may be frightening for Westerners to believe that “normal” people may be inspired and radicalized by ISIS and other jihadi groups. But that is actually the very definition of terrorism: calculated violence carried out in the name of a political movement.
STUART GOTTLIEB
New York
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/26/opini ... ef=opinion
Once a Qaeda Recruiter, Now a Voice Against Jihad
WASHINGTON — In the four years that he ran the Revolution Muslim website out of his walk-up apartment in Flatbush, Brooklyn, Jesse Morton became one of the most prolific recruiters for Al Qaeda, luring numerous Americans to the group’s violent ideology.
The men and women he inspired through his online posts and tutorials were accused of plots that included flying a remote-controlled plane strapped with explosives into the Pentagon and trying to kill a Swedish cartoonist who satirized the Prophet Muhammad. One of his collaborators was killed in a drone strike in Yemen, where he had joined Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Several are now fighting for the Islamic State.
“We were looking for the lions,” he said, explaining how he would often recruit right outside mosques, “and left them the lambs.”
Mr. Morton, 37, is now at the forefront of an experiment to counter the pull of groups like the Islamic State and Al Qaeda. After a stint as an F.B.I. informant and his release from prison last year, Mr. Morton has been hired as a fellow at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, where he will research the very ideology he once spread.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/30/us/al ... d=71987722
WASHINGTON — In the four years that he ran the Revolution Muslim website out of his walk-up apartment in Flatbush, Brooklyn, Jesse Morton became one of the most prolific recruiters for Al Qaeda, luring numerous Americans to the group’s violent ideology.
The men and women he inspired through his online posts and tutorials were accused of plots that included flying a remote-controlled plane strapped with explosives into the Pentagon and trying to kill a Swedish cartoonist who satirized the Prophet Muhammad. One of his collaborators was killed in a drone strike in Yemen, where he had joined Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Several are now fighting for the Islamic State.
“We were looking for the lions,” he said, explaining how he would often recruit right outside mosques, “and left them the lambs.”
Mr. Morton, 37, is now at the forefront of an experiment to counter the pull of groups like the Islamic State and Al Qaeda. After a stint as an F.B.I. informant and his release from prison last year, Mr. Morton has been hired as a fellow at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, where he will research the very ideology he once spread.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/30/us/al ... d=71987722
From religion to politics, Saudi Arabia feeling chill of isolation
At the end of August, a meeting of Muslim clerics and scholars convened in the Chechen capital of Grozny to forge a consensus on the subject of ‘who constitutes a Sunni.’
Sunnism, the 200 or so Sunni clerics from Egypt, South Africa, India, Europe, Turkey, Jordan, Yemen, Russia warned, “has undergone a dangerous deformation in the wake of efforts by extremists to void its sense in order to take it over and reduce it to their perception.”
The Muslim world is currently under a siege of terror, led by a deviant strain that claims religious authority and kills in the name of Islam. So the Grozny participants had gathered, by invitation of the Chechen president, to make “a radical change in order to re-establish the true meaning of Sunnism.”
If their final communique was any indicator, the group of distinguished scholars had a very particular message for the Muslim world: Wahhabism - and its associated takfirism - are no longer welcome within the Sunni fold.
More...
https://www.rt.com/op-edge/359409-relig ... isolation/
At the end of August, a meeting of Muslim clerics and scholars convened in the Chechen capital of Grozny to forge a consensus on the subject of ‘who constitutes a Sunni.’
Sunnism, the 200 or so Sunni clerics from Egypt, South Africa, India, Europe, Turkey, Jordan, Yemen, Russia warned, “has undergone a dangerous deformation in the wake of efforts by extremists to void its sense in order to take it over and reduce it to their perception.”
The Muslim world is currently under a siege of terror, led by a deviant strain that claims religious authority and kills in the name of Islam. So the Grozny participants had gathered, by invitation of the Chechen president, to make “a radical change in order to re-establish the true meaning of Sunnism.”
If their final communique was any indicator, the group of distinguished scholars had a very particular message for the Muslim world: Wahhabism - and its associated takfirism - are no longer welcome within the Sunni fold.
More...
https://www.rt.com/op-edge/359409-relig ... isolation/
Don’t Blame ‘Wahhabism’ for Terrorism
Extract:
Most Islamist militants have nothing to do with Saudi Wahhabism. The Taliban, for example, are Deobandis, a revivalist, anti-imperialist strain of Islam that emerged as a reaction to British colonialism in South Asia. Most members of Al Qaeda follow a radical current that emerged from the Muslim Brotherhood, a movement that defined itself largely in relation and opposition to the West and its values. While some terrorists do identify as Salafi, Islamic sects that are ideologically opposed to Salafism — Naqshbandi Sufis and Shiites, among others — have engaged in violent jihad in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria.
And yet much of the Western news media and far too many pundits put forward a different picture entirely, pinning the blame for terrorism on Wahhabi ideology emanating from Saudi Arabia. These arguments lead one to imagine that European terrorists end up joining the Islamic State by wandering the streets of Paris or Brussels and stumbling upon a Saudi-funded mosque. In this mosque, they read a single book, “The Book of Monotheism,” by Muhammad ibn Abdul-Wahhab, the 18th-century sheikh who founded Wahhabism. A week later, the book’s fundamentalist message inspires them to travel to Syria’s front lines or to plot terrorist attacks in Europe.
The reality is much more complex. Most of the perpetrators of terrorist attacks in Europe have been petty criminals who were known to drink alcohol and take drugs. Their radicalization has little to do with theology. Some European Muslims reportedly purchased books like “Islam for Dummies” before embarking on journeys to take part in jihad in Syria. What they all have in common is a belief that the Muslim world and the West are locked in an irreconcilable clash of civilizations.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/20/opini ... dline&te=1
Extract:
Most Islamist militants have nothing to do with Saudi Wahhabism. The Taliban, for example, are Deobandis, a revivalist, anti-imperialist strain of Islam that emerged as a reaction to British colonialism in South Asia. Most members of Al Qaeda follow a radical current that emerged from the Muslim Brotherhood, a movement that defined itself largely in relation and opposition to the West and its values. While some terrorists do identify as Salafi, Islamic sects that are ideologically opposed to Salafism — Naqshbandi Sufis and Shiites, among others — have engaged in violent jihad in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria.
And yet much of the Western news media and far too many pundits put forward a different picture entirely, pinning the blame for terrorism on Wahhabi ideology emanating from Saudi Arabia. These arguments lead one to imagine that European terrorists end up joining the Islamic State by wandering the streets of Paris or Brussels and stumbling upon a Saudi-funded mosque. In this mosque, they read a single book, “The Book of Monotheism,” by Muhammad ibn Abdul-Wahhab, the 18th-century sheikh who founded Wahhabism. A week later, the book’s fundamentalist message inspires them to travel to Syria’s front lines or to plot terrorist attacks in Europe.
The reality is much more complex. Most of the perpetrators of terrorist attacks in Europe have been petty criminals who were known to drink alcohol and take drugs. Their radicalization has little to do with theology. Some European Muslims reportedly purchased books like “Islam for Dummies” before embarking on journeys to take part in jihad in Syria. What they all have in common is a belief that the Muslim world and the West are locked in an irreconcilable clash of civilizations.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/20/opini ... dline&te=1
Why are young men prone to radicalization?
More than a week removed from the Manchester Arena bombing, we in the West find ourselves in a familiar place. We are combing through the details of the life of a young terrorist, 22-year-old Salman Ramadan Abedi, in hopes we can better understand why he turned against his own home country to kill or injure 139 adults and children.
While conducting research in Belgium during and after last year’s Brussels attacks, I closely observed a country going through the process of asking similar questions with unclear answers. Thanks to youth workers in Brussels and Antwerp, I relearned a lesson that I had first learned as a teenager in Toronto when my friends got into trouble with the justice system. As difficult as it may be to accept, there’s rarely a clear explanation for why people make the decisions they make.
The uncertainty we wrestle with when young men inspired by the Islamic State reveal themselves shouldn’t be reserved for just these extreme examples. There are many more among us who are vulnerable to the influence of morals that regard some human life as expendable, and political views radically different from what is regarded as acceptable in the mainstream. We are losing our influence over young men, and creating space for other influences to take hold.
More...
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion ... e35164423/
More than a week removed from the Manchester Arena bombing, we in the West find ourselves in a familiar place. We are combing through the details of the life of a young terrorist, 22-year-old Salman Ramadan Abedi, in hopes we can better understand why he turned against his own home country to kill or injure 139 adults and children.
While conducting research in Belgium during and after last year’s Brussels attacks, I closely observed a country going through the process of asking similar questions with unclear answers. Thanks to youth workers in Brussels and Antwerp, I relearned a lesson that I had first learned as a teenager in Toronto when my friends got into trouble with the justice system. As difficult as it may be to accept, there’s rarely a clear explanation for why people make the decisions they make.
The uncertainty we wrestle with when young men inspired by the Islamic State reveal themselves shouldn’t be reserved for just these extreme examples. There are many more among us who are vulnerable to the influence of morals that regard some human life as expendable, and political views radically different from what is regarded as acceptable in the mainstream. We are losing our influence over young men, and creating space for other influences to take hold.
More...
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion ... e35164423/
It's Not Islam That Drives Young Europeans to Jihad, France's Top Terrorism Expert Explains
ANKARA - Salman Abedi, the suicide bomber who killed 22 people at a Manchester pop concert this week, started life advantageously enough: to parents who had fled Gadhafi’s Libya for a new life in Britain. But actually it was that kind of dislocation that would send him off kilter two decades later, says Olivier Roy, one of France’s top experts on Islamic terrorism.
“An estimated 60 percent of those who espouse violent jihadism in Europe are second-generation Muslims who have lost their connection with their country of origin and have failed to integrate into Western societies,” Roy says.
They are subject to a “process of deculturation” that leaves them ignorant of and detached from both the European society and the one of their origins. The result, Roy argues, is a dangerous “identity vacuum” in which “violent extremism thrives.”
Born in Britain in 1994, Abedi would later be drawn to violent fundamentalism after a life in limbo. On the one hand, he tried to reconnect with Libya, where he traveled shortly before this week’s attack, while on the other, he strove to emulate the same British young people he killed.
“Unlike second generations like Abedi’s, third generations are normally better integrated in the West and don’t account for more than 15 percent of homegrown jihadis,” Roy says. “Converts, who also have an approach to Islam decontextualized from any culture, account for about 25 percent of those who fall prey to violent fundamentalism.”
read more: http://www.haaretz.com/world-news/europe/1.791954
ANKARA - Salman Abedi, the suicide bomber who killed 22 people at a Manchester pop concert this week, started life advantageously enough: to parents who had fled Gadhafi’s Libya for a new life in Britain. But actually it was that kind of dislocation that would send him off kilter two decades later, says Olivier Roy, one of France’s top experts on Islamic terrorism.
“An estimated 60 percent of those who espouse violent jihadism in Europe are second-generation Muslims who have lost their connection with their country of origin and have failed to integrate into Western societies,” Roy says.
They are subject to a “process of deculturation” that leaves them ignorant of and detached from both the European society and the one of their origins. The result, Roy argues, is a dangerous “identity vacuum” in which “violent extremism thrives.”
Born in Britain in 1994, Abedi would later be drawn to violent fundamentalism after a life in limbo. On the one hand, he tried to reconnect with Libya, where he traveled shortly before this week’s attack, while on the other, he strove to emulate the same British young people he killed.
“Unlike second generations like Abedi’s, third generations are normally better integrated in the West and don’t account for more than 15 percent of homegrown jihadis,” Roy says. “Converts, who also have an approach to Islam decontextualized from any culture, account for about 25 percent of those who fall prey to violent fundamentalism.”
read more: http://www.haaretz.com/world-news/europe/1.791954
My Son, the Jihadist
Extract:
In Rasheed’s case, there was his altered appearance and his decision to attend a different mosque. With hindsight, I should have questioned more his distancing of himself from his usual social group — and, possibly, the watchful eye of his father. Naïvely, perhaps, I had passed off the changes in Rasheed as his exploring and forming an identity away from his parents. It was the biggest mistake and regret of my life. But ask any parent of teenagers: Would you have done better?
I cannot bring Rasheed back. But I have found solace in my work of helping other families with experiences like mine process theirs. We need a place where families can feel heard and understood, and talk without fear of prejudice, judgment or shame. It’s in the building of trust between families, communities and governments that we can find the resilience we need to defeat terrorism.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/08/opin ... dline&te=1
Extract:
In Rasheed’s case, there was his altered appearance and his decision to attend a different mosque. With hindsight, I should have questioned more his distancing of himself from his usual social group — and, possibly, the watchful eye of his father. Naïvely, perhaps, I had passed off the changes in Rasheed as his exploring and forming an identity away from his parents. It was the biggest mistake and regret of my life. But ask any parent of teenagers: Would you have done better?
I cannot bring Rasheed back. But I have found solace in my work of helping other families with experiences like mine process theirs. We need a place where families can feel heard and understood, and talk without fear of prejudice, judgment or shame. It’s in the building of trust between families, communities and governments that we can find the resilience we need to defeat terrorism.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/08/opin ... dline&te=1
Finding a Rootless Life in U.S., Sayfullo Saipov Turned to Radicalism
Excerpt:
And on Tuesday, Mr. Saipov, now 29, who had spent so many hours on the road by himself, who a former friend said had “monsters inside,” decided to drive one last truck, this one a Home Depot rental, down a crowded bike path on the West Side of Manhattan, the authorities said. Eight people died.
As with any attack like this, there is no single reason Mr. Saipov reportedly decided to kill innocents, mostly tourists enjoying a blustery fall day, 56 degrees with blue skies. He had come to the United States as a moderate Muslim with dreams of making it. He married another Uzbek immigrant and fathered three children. But life did not work out the way Mr. Saipov had wanted. He could not find a job in the hotel business, in which he had worked back home. He developed a violent temper. He lost jobs. An imam in Florida worried that Mr. Saipov increasingly misinterpreted Islam.
“I used to tell him: ‘Hey, you are too much emotional. Read books more. Learn your religion first,’” said Abdul, the imam, who did not want his last name used because he feared reprisals. “He did not learn religion properly. That’s the main disease in the Muslim community.”
More..
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/01/nyre ... attan.html
Excerpt:
And on Tuesday, Mr. Saipov, now 29, who had spent so many hours on the road by himself, who a former friend said had “monsters inside,” decided to drive one last truck, this one a Home Depot rental, down a crowded bike path on the West Side of Manhattan, the authorities said. Eight people died.
As with any attack like this, there is no single reason Mr. Saipov reportedly decided to kill innocents, mostly tourists enjoying a blustery fall day, 56 degrees with blue skies. He had come to the United States as a moderate Muslim with dreams of making it. He married another Uzbek immigrant and fathered three children. But life did not work out the way Mr. Saipov had wanted. He could not find a job in the hotel business, in which he had worked back home. He developed a violent temper. He lost jobs. An imam in Florida worried that Mr. Saipov increasingly misinterpreted Islam.
“I used to tell him: ‘Hey, you are too much emotional. Read books more. Learn your religion first,’” said Abdul, the imam, who did not want his last name used because he feared reprisals. “He did not learn religion properly. That’s the main disease in the Muslim community.”
More..
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/01/nyre ... attan.html
‘Two Sisters,’ About Teenage Girls Who Left Norway to Fight With ISIS
On an unremarkable October morning in 2013, two Norwegian teenagers of Somalian descent — Ayan Juma, 19, and her sister, Leila, 16 — woke up early, dressed and, without telling a soul, boarded a flight to join ISIS fighters in Syria.
“We love you both sooo much,” they later wrote to their parents in an email festooned with heart emojis. “Inshallah this decision will help us all on the day of judgment.”
They had been planning the secret journey for a year. Their goal, according to Ayan, was to flee home, marry and die. Their father set off after them, tracking them across ISIS territory — razed towns rank with rotting corpses. He was captured and brutally tortured.
“Two Sisters,” a new book by the Norwegian journalist Asne Seierstad and translated by Sean Kinsella, begins in the aftermath of the girls’ departure, which stunned their family and tightknit Somali immigrant community: What had gotten into their girls — so educated, so adored?
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/03/book ... 3053090404
On an unremarkable October morning in 2013, two Norwegian teenagers of Somalian descent — Ayan Juma, 19, and her sister, Leila, 16 — woke up early, dressed and, without telling a soul, boarded a flight to join ISIS fighters in Syria.
“We love you both sooo much,” they later wrote to their parents in an email festooned with heart emojis. “Inshallah this decision will help us all on the day of judgment.”
They had been planning the secret journey for a year. Their goal, according to Ayan, was to flee home, marry and die. Their father set off after them, tracking them across ISIS territory — razed towns rank with rotting corpses. He was captured and brutally tortured.
“Two Sisters,” a new book by the Norwegian journalist Asne Seierstad and translated by Sean Kinsella, begins in the aftermath of the girls’ departure, which stunned their family and tightknit Somali immigrant community: What had gotten into their girls — so educated, so adored?
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/03/book ... 3053090404