It is not possible to accurately describe the people who yesterday blew up a Shiite mosque, beheaded an executive at a factory in France, and killed 30 or so people in an attack on a hotel beach in Tunisia without referring to their religion. Their religion is the ideological basis for their violent activities, their religion and their politics are inseparable

The IRA did not have a religious ideology so of course their motivations were not inseparably religious, even though the ethnic conflict between Protestant Scotch-Irish and Catholic Irish certainly had a religious factor. So what? Different conflict different religions different time and place.

Flimsy basis? Only an academic could find a way to discard the words used by the actors themselves to explain why they are doing what they are doing in order to arrive at such a conclusion. All of the Isis propaganda is explicitly religious. But somehow religion is not the motivation, religion plays no role in radicalization.

...

What % of Muslims are Islamic terrorists? Interesting take and the video is well worth a listen as he fleshes out the idea.

(aside) I had some family relations in Ireland who were ardent Sinn Féin in its early days. The retelling of their stories never mentioned a Catholic "cause" as far as I can remember. The religious situation was obviously part of the background, yet not the real focal point for the various factions in "the troubles" as they were known.

By blaming religion we are able to deny our own role. I don't think you can eliminate religion completely, but not looking at the entire picture is making a big mistake.

I always saw the Irish issue as primarily political and only marginally related to religion, but that is true of much of the history in the UK.

It helps if your honor is mostly external. Then the only way to exculpate humiliation and shame is by making the other person pay for what you feel.

If your honor is external, then often it's also at the group level. Having your group dissed by a member of the other group is a personal offense. And the only way to exculpate that humiliation and shame is by making the other group pay for what you feel.

Once groups are established, it's easiest just to see a person as a member of those on one side of the most important group boundary and not as a person belonging to many groups and acting as an individual. If John Smith is the culprit and you think it's all race, you see him first and foremost as a skin color; if language and ancestry, then he's first and foremost an "ethnic"; if you think religion is the most important thing, you see him as a bearer of a religion; if you think that income and education is the most important thing, then you see him as a member of his class. Etc. Ultimately, the really most important thing is to stop thinking of the person as a person and think of him as a token of some group. Nobody cares who the pilots were who bombed Pearl Harbor; nobody really gives a damn about the guy who killed Prince Ferdinand. What mattered was their group assignment.

What people in other groups think is irrelevant, and to impose your views on that group and say otherwise is arrogant ethnocentrism and intellectual paternalism. Even if the views of the group change over time, those groups are right. Attribution "false consciousness" is a denial of intellectual capacity and personhood and an assertion of superiority. Why? Because they're the people defining the group boundaries in their own way, assigning importance to them, and deciding when and how to handle grievances of humiliation and power. In the West we have different groups. Some decide it's all power and money, and that's the lens we see through; others think religion is more important, and that's their lens. As outsiders, the first point to be aware of, the mantra to hum to ourselves, is simple: "We're just not that important." It's hard to admit being kicked off the chair to the left hand of Jesus, but there it is. Any analysis we do that ignores what people are like and leaves it up to them is ultimately (sub)culture-specific for all its desire to bill itself as universal and all-wise.

The next step of the disaster is for the people on the other side of that group boundary to see themselves as a group and the now-hated non-human humiliator as a symbol of their group, so that by having him threatened or disrespected the group is threatened or disrespected. If that side doesn't see itself as a group then it stays ragged and unorganized. But if that side doesn't see itself as a group, then, really, it just plain isn't a group. Dominant or not. This kind of situation often produces feelings of group membership, however. Threatened, a group forms.

Politics involves groups and power. With the denial of power felt to be deserved, you get feelings of humiliation (and often of greed). Humiliation is often externalized as anger, and projected as hate and ill-will. Even if the ill-will is all on the side of the oppressed, who are barely noticed by those denying power.

Religion involves groups and many, by virtue of one group's merely saying "Our religion is better," feel humiliated. Let's not even talk about disrespect shown to pieces of wood, strings of sounds, or pieces of cloth ... Symbols. And symbols can be long lasting: Xians may have hated Jews for 1500 years because "they killed Jesus"; Shi'ite hate Sunnis for 1300 years because of a dynastic wrangle and the death of Hussein ibn Ali. Again, "we're better" and just being proud or victorious is viewed through the lens of ill-will and interpreted as hate to be met with hate. It certainly doesn't help that a dominant religion tends to be a bit in-your-face. (There's a reason minority religions are often banned. Public performance of religion is in your face. So in Muslim countries for long periods of time Xian symbols and displays were banned or relegated to ghettos far from sensitive Muslim eyes.)

Those with honor, with respect, with power want to retain it. Because any reduction in power, any disagreement even, is also humiliation. All power that's held is deserved and never to be shared except under duress. It's divine right; it's because your lineage or blood or color or religion is better; it's because you're more moral; it's because you're smarter. You pick your boundary name and stick with it.

It's worse when there are multiple group boundaries all lined up. Mahdism in the Sudan wasn't just religious, but it was religious; it was also because of changes to society that denied the supremacy to one group that deserved it and thereby humiliated that group, and this was seen as religious; at the same time, those changes were caused by outsiders, which made an easy target--and once that target was gone, lesser targets could be sighted in to preserve power (lest the dreaded Other return).

If you don't care about power; if you don't have a system where humiliation is assigned to you instead of assigned to yourself; then you won't get terrorism. If you don't have firm group boundaries imposed, you won't get terrorism. It doesn't matter if you're Roof or the guy in France or the guy who killed the cops in NYC. This has limited predictive capacity: Most humiliated folk do not engage in terrorism.

One more caveat: Terrorism isn't the refuge of the hopeless. It's the refuge of those with hope. If there's no hope for change, there's no point in the terrorism. But "change" has to be defined properly. Many suicide bombers believe that their actions will lead to a removal of humiliation in terms of a shift in power: IS, PLO. It will lead to the humiliation of their foes. Others believe it will lead to an alleviation of the humiliation felt by their clan or family, if only because humiliation often results in a denial of social opportunities. If the cause is hopeless, against overwhelming force, humiliation isn't felt as strongly because it can't be; if it's even, experienced by all groups equaly, then there's little perceived chance of becoming less humiliated. If you know that the act intended to alleviate humiliation won't matter in the least, will result in more humiliation, or will lead to your family's or clan's death, then it's counter-indicated. (Same for civil resistance in such cultures: Gandhi's actions against the British versus against a hypothetical Nazi regime is a case in point.) Violent lyrics and websites gave Roof hope, he identified as white, he thought he was losing power or virility and was humiliated; killings of policemen increased after protests got started, not before--there was hope of change where there had been hopelessness, and the identification of police as a group apart certainly helped identify an enemy. Where that threshold is between "no hope" and "sufficient" hope ... That's a social and individual judgment. But having support from your group for violence and "struggle" certainly helps.

But not too much support from your group, because then it might veer into civil war. That's too much hope and opportunity for mere terrorism (unless the will to power and no humiliation is still thwarted).

Still, since personality has to be involved, how trivial slights are interpreted, what opportunities are available, quirks of thinking, even peer pressure and thrill-seeking, this isn't just real predictive. You also have to take into actual needs--much of the Arab Spring, for instance, was driven by demographics + culture, but the immediate trigger was subsidy decreases (which were seen as humiliation, if you read the primary literature). The best it does is have a list of parameters to be set, a series of constraints. It's probabilistic at best, and gathering enough information for reasonable assumptions is a bear.

Some want to say it has to be politics and Western interference behind ME terrorism because they want to play domestic political games and feel good about their group. They exculpate somebody else by shifting the burden allegedly to their group, but deftly redefining their group at the last minute as their foe. "It's America's fault--but not really America's fault, but the other group in America. Even if it looks like it's Obama's fault and he's in my group, it's not really his fault but others that keep him from being the virtuous member of my group that I know him to be." What's the mantra? "We're just not that important."

This only works if you carefully define your terms, ignore any other possible definitions and referents, and pick your data very, very carefully. Of course, then you've mostly just defined a kind of secular belief. Then, when you look to your right hand you again see Jesus (but really it's just your own reflection).

They are clearly motivated by religious ideas.... to create a religious state.

The number who agree or disagree is of no concern related to the reasons groups like this exist. Religion is how they recruit their soldiers and cannon fodder. Religion is why Shiites and Sunnies hate each other. The authority they imagine they have to do what they do comes from religion.

It's religion.


Besides, in some places on Earth, like much of the Middle East.... religion IS the government and politics.


All these things were true during the Crusades and the Protestant/ Catholic conflicts of Europe too.


Politics may have something to do with it, but religion is the catalyst and what keeps it going.

One must remember that religion USED to also be government. This is why a separation of church and state is so important in America. It's also why many people don't seem to get that such a separation was quite new in 1789 and that tho' we here in the west (as the idea spread) have more separation than in our past, other places don't.

Are we really without any responsibility?

Motivated by religious ideas is a part of the problem, but it is foolhardy to write it off as only that.

So then....

"It’s not the religion that creates terrorists, it’s the politics"

is untrue.... like I said.


Or do you think "religious ideas" has nothing to do with religion?

At any rate, how would you propose to address the problem. If it's just religion, then you are helpless. If you see it in it's complexities, then your options become broader.

What exactly did we do to oppress them? What changes should we make in our relationship with Saudi Arabia, which currently can best be described as "face fully planted in buttocks", that would change the alleged political dynamic that enables well off Saudi's to engage in jihadist terrorism around the world?

But lets move forward. ISIS is indeed a reaction to the political situation in the middle east, but it is a reaction based on an ideological world view that is Islamic to its core. The "problem" from the perspective of ISIS is that the muslim world is one sunni caliphate short of the required number of sunni caliphates. How the fuck would you address that problem cbayer?

Oh wait you have me on ignore. Perhaps somebody else should find out how she is going to address the caliphate deficit.

Cunning and evil men have always used corrupt religions as both sword and shield to amass power, status and wealth while furthering their political ambitions. Religion has never needed to employ a political excuse to justify its acts, rather it is politicians who wrap themselves in the threadbare cloak of religion to excuse their actions. Anyone looking to validate their deeply held hatreds will find ample excuses to justify their insanity by using well chosen phrases teased out of religious texts.

and it's important to see the bigger picture.

Religion has been used and the religious have been used for both good and evil.

Anyone looking to validate their deeply held hatreds will find reasons with or without religion.

I'm not even sure I could adequately define evil, or good for that matter, in my experience. Save for the most obvious examples.

There are those who have no conscious because they weren't born with it. Then there are those that lose it due to repetitive and severe damage. If you are treated like a rodent, you will see others as rodents.

I tend to think that "good" is the default state. This assumption has sometimes gotten me into tight spots, but I still proceed that way.

I tend to think that "good" is the default state. This assumption has sometimes gotten me into tight spots, but I still proceed that way.



(aside) I'm a big film noir fan. Some of their portrayals of good and evil, not to mention the use of black and white photography and the lighting stuff employed, are stunning. There's a month long series running on cable I'm clued in to...

What is it you are watching. Maybe we could share a few films.

ending with Neanderthal some 30,000 years ago. Our history is one of a continuous succession of killings and wars and exterminations that continue to this day, not only of our own, but of all other creatures on this planet. In what sense is "good" the default state?

Something I've done recently and have chosen to step back from. Hyperbole, like sarcasm, is often misread however it is intended.

That said, recent studies have found that Homo Sapiens and Homo Neanderthalensis interbred at times within shared habitat. I wouldn't call that extermination. Maybe Homo Sapiens adapted better to a dramatically changing climate and survived, while Neanderthalensis eventually died off the timeline.



(aside) Your negativity and fatalism are striking to me. Is there anything that you would hold as "good" in our world or our society? I admit to being a committed optimist, yet have my share of doubt at times. Such a blanket statement took me back a bit, though. Hyperbole to make a point?

Note that Homo sapiens arrival in new regions almost invariably coincided with the extinction of large mammals, especially large predator mammals in that region, for example Australia and the Americas.

But again, what evidence is there for your assertion that "good" is the default state?

Years and years and years. Native Americans hunted bison for food and clothing. Apparently honored them for their place in the world. And effectively had a symbiotic relationship of sorts.

I think you're off the mark here, historically. So let's leave this be, OK?

Good vs. Evil may be another discussion.

There are two theories about the megafauna extinction: climate change did it, homo sapiens did it. The general consensus is that both contributed, but that mostly climate change enabled the migrational expansion of homo sapiens where we proceeded to exterminate all the large animals. The Wrangle Island evidence is what eliminates climate change as the sole cause. Mammoths survived on the Wrangle island in an isolated and healthy state long past the end of the ice age. They were exterminated shortly after homo sapiens arrived. There is no other explanation for their demise and the "only climate change" theory has to explain this exception while the homo sapiens theory continues to fit *all* the data. We arrive, within a fairly short biological time frame, all the large animals are extinct.

I'm still waiting for your evidence that homo sapiens are by default "good".

It's not. In this case, it is a means to achieve greater influence for one's religion, plain and simple.

Only morons and irrational apologists think otherwise.

That is some Babe the giant blue ox industrial strength manure right there.

The Guardian really ought to stop giving him space.

Of course ISIS is about religion. They say so. This is as offensive as the Republicans saying Roof didn't attack the Charleston church out of racism.

ISIS kills Shiites.

ISIS kills Yazidis.

ISIS kills Christians.

People are not travelling to Syria for the sake of political realignment in the region. They do it for their idea of Islam. They do it for a caliphate - an Islamic theocracy that kills anyone who resists it, and declares its religion to be the be all and end all of their existence. It's totalitarian religion.

Trying to draw a parallel with the IRA is so blatantly false, it's just lying propaganda. The IRA had a clear nationalist agenda, fomr the beginning. The clue is in the names: 'Irish Republican' v. 'Islamic State'. I can't think what the fuck possessed Fraser to concoct this idiocy, or the Guardian to put it up on the site.

I know you can't see them, but the theophobes are out in force and their heads are exploding all over their black and white world. Don't you understand that religion is the root of all evil? Samadda wid you?

All factors must be considered if we truly want to tackle the issue. This is an irresponsible and extremist piece.