IN A STATEMENT PUBLISHED in its online magazine, Dabiq, this February, the militant group the Islamic State warned that “Muslims in the West will soon find themselves between one of two choices.” Weeks earlier, a massacre had occurred at the Paris offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. The attack stunned French society, while bringing to the surface already latent tensions between French Muslims and their fellow citizens.
While ISIS initially endorsed the killings on purely religious grounds, calling the murdered cartoonists blasphemers, in Dabiq the group offered another, more chilling rationale for its support.
The attack had “further [brought] division to the world,” the group said, boasting that it had polarized society and “eliminated the grayzone,” representing coexistence between religious groups. As a result, it said, Muslims living in the West would soon no longer be welcome in their own societies. Treated with increasing suspicion, distrust and hostility by their fellow citizens as a result of the deadly shooting, Western Muslims would soon be forced to “either apostatize … or they [migrate] to the Islamic State, and thereby escape persecution from the crusader governments and citizens,” the group stated, while threatening of more attacks to come.
Last Friday, at roughly 9:20 p.m. local time in Paris, the Islamic State delivered on that threat. A group of young men pledging allegiance to the group, armed with firearms and explosives, carried out a series of coordinated bombing and shooting attacks on civilians in the heart of the city. Suicide bombers, wearing explosive vests packed with nails in order to maximize casualties, detonated themselves among crowds of young people, while men armed with assault rifles shot dead concertgoers and patrons in a restaurant.
By the time the attack was over, 132 people had been killed and hundreds more wounded in what was the worst terrorist attack in France’s modern history. In a statement issued online, ISIS claimed responsibility, stating that its operatives had “set out targeting the capital of prostitution and vice.”
It is tempting to view such violence as senseless and nihilistic. However, taking into account the Islamic State’s history, it is clear that such a determination would be a mistake. By launching increasingly shocking attacks against Western targets, the Islamic State is pursuing a specific goal — generating hostility between domestic Muslim populations and the broader societies that they live in.
Despite its dire connotations, such a strategy is achievable for the group. In fact, some group members have successfully implemented it before, in Iraq, when the Islamic State’s predecessor organization, al Qaeda in Iraq, purposely provoked a sectarian civil war in that country following the 2003 U.S. invasion.
In a 2004 letter to Osama bin Laden, Abu Musab Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, laid out his proposal for provoking such a conflict, calling for terrorist attacks against the Shiite majority population that would lead to a harsh crackdown on the Sunni minority. In such a scenario, his group could then coerce the Sunni population into viewing it as their only protector. “If we succeed in dragging them into the arena of sectarian war,” Zarqawi wrote, “it will become possible to awaken the inattentive Sunnis as they feel imminent danger and annihilating death.”
The climax of this depraved strategy came in 2006, when an attack by al Qaeda in Iraq operatives succeeded in destroying the Al-Askari mosque in Samarra, one of the holiest sites in Shiite Islam. The attack, which shocked Shiite Muslims across Iraq, ultimately succeeded in triggering a full-blown civil war that has not fully abated to this day.
The Islamic State has little hope of achieving that level of disastrous success in Western Europe or North America. But what the group is seeking to accomplish nonetheless mirrors its strategy of divide-and-conquer in Iraq. Through increasingly provocative terrorist attacks, hostage executions, and videotaped threats, the Islamic State is consciously seeking to trigger a backlash by Western governments and citizens against the Muslim minorities living in their societies. By achieving this, the group hopes to polarize both sides against each other, locking them into an escalating spiral of alienation, hatred and collective retribution. In a such a scenario, the group can later attempt to pose as the only effective protector for increasingly beleaguered Western Muslims.
Following the deliberately shocking attacks in Paris, some nativist politicians in both Europe and the United States have already responded with calls to collectively punish Muslims en masse through discriminatory migration policies, restrictions on religious freedoms, and blanket surveillance by law enforcement.
While politically popular among some, such measures, effectively holding Muslims collectively to blame for the atrocities in Paris, would be self-defeating. The Islamic State is deeply unpopular among Muslims. Like their non-Muslim compatriots, French Muslims recoiled with disgust at the recent atrocities in Paris. Indeed, several of them were killed in the attacks.
As such, it would be both perverse and counterproductive to lump them together with ISIS and blame them for the group’s actions. Similarly, it would be absurd to treat refugees, many of whom are fleeing the Islamic State’s draconian rule in Iraq and Syria, as though they too are responsible for the crimes of the group. Doing so would grant the Islamic State a propaganda coup, implicitly endorsing the group’s narrative of Muslims and Westerners collectively at war with one another.
Instead, in response to an attack intended to sow xenophobia, Western countries should reaffirm unity for their own Muslim populations and honor their best values by continuing to accept refugees without religious discrimination. Simultaneously, they should also recommit to the military effort against Islamic State enclaves in Iraq and Syria, making clear that there is no contradiction to embracing Muslims at home while fighting terrorists abroad. Such an approach would show resilience in the face of violence, while fatally undermining ISIS’ Manichean narrative of “a world divided into two camps.”
Through murderous provocation, the Islamic State seeks to trigger a civilizational war between Muslims and the West, violently dragging both parties into such a battle if need be. There can be no real victory in a conflict with such apocalyptic connotations. Instead, Western nations should remain defiant, making clear through word and deed that they refuse to see the world divided on the Islamic State’s terms.
Horrid, asinine article. Don’t most Muslims secretly long for the rebirth of the Caliphate anyway?
http://justpaste.it/Muslimswakeup
was that written by a 10 year old? *are = our
“Eliminating the Grayzone” dovetails with the American support of Saudi Arabia and by extension Wahhabism. The only winners here are the people who have shares in the War machine.
I guess the mistake is to depict the IS as a rational player with a sophisticated strategic game while in reality the terrorists may not be as smart as suggested. I also wonder if the point of conflict between muslims and non-muslims is their goal because they perceive “muslims” as non-muslims as long as they do not obey to their brand. So non-radical muslims are not their potential allies but their actual enemies.
Awesome.
It makes sense to me this is an act of desperate recruitment by ISIS. For support you have to go recruiting, make a big show. It’s for your own brand.
I am a little disappointed that we as a society are not addressing the grievances of people in the Middle East. We have chosen to present a certain version of the West — scary, intimidating, hyper-liberated. This doesn’t translate well for the average person. For example, our idea of liberated Egypt was to try to build a mall for them and get them on the IMF teat. In Egypt but even worse in poorer areas, access to drinkable water is often non-existent, sometimes even blocked for political/war/terroristic reasons. The problem is our generals probably do not want to agree to giving up this kind of leverage. We also practice terrorism and we have to stop that too.
The backers of ISIS, al nusra, al quada,…etc. are the Mossad and it’s CIA puppet. Mossads goal (financed by the Zionist banking mafia) is to justify the ethnic cleansing of Israel by convincing Westerners of the dangers of Muslims in their midst. I
Winny – I hear those claims a lot but have yet to see any convincing evidence that ISIS has been created to be the monster they are specifically by Mossad. From what I have seen the only solid evidence out there is that Israel has provided medical assistance to any and all Syrian rebels. Do you have any more solid evidence that that though to back up your claim or are you just being the next unthinking link in a chain of propaganda?
‘ What would it take for a person to cross the line’ has long been an unethical driving force behind the business of unintelligent surveillance, practically exercised through insinuation, harassment, fictitious profiling and psychological manipulation of public opinion. And no wonder why history repeats itself.
Mr. Murtaza Hussain, an enlightening article -thank you. But I think you missed the point of the Paris attacks.
I don’t believe that the attacks were to “drive a wedge” between muslims & “the west”. I do believe they were a recruitment call for ISIS in Syria.
Let me explain.
-First, all the attackers were European. A Syrian passport seems to have been planted to suggest the attackers were middle eastern. It remains to be verified if this passport was a fake or if it was stolen from a Syrian. No one in the policing (of any countrys’) establishment is commenting on it.
-Secondly, it now seems nearly ALL the Republican candidates running for president (including the billionaire bigot from New York -Donald Trump), are now starting a campaign to refuse Syrian refugees from entering the U.S. -as are over 25 governors!
-Thirdly the European countries are tightening the restrictions for allowing Syrian refugees to enter and/or settle in their countries.
-Additionally if any Syrians still in Syria were on the fence about joining ISIS, these developments make it more attractive to join -now that they may mistakenly believe that there is NO country that will let them enter.
The stupidity of the bigots in the U.S. seem to have prevailed! Just as the 2 doctors running for president (Rand Paul & Ben Carson) have repeated the debunked theory of immunizations causing autism, nearly all the Republican candidates (with the exception of Jeb Bush -please do not mistake me as endorsing him) have taken the bait of laying this whole Paris Terrorism (there goes that vague word again) thing on the innocent Syrian refugees.
This attack I believe was just a recruitment tactic for ISIS.
How stupid is the Republican party? How bigoted have they become? How stupid is Donald Trump? PRETTY STUPID! In addition, Trump has just commented that if elected “we’re going to have to do certain things that were frankly unthinkable a year ago”:
-that he’d support a database that keeps track of Muslims in the U.S.
-“There should be a lot of systems, beyond databases,” he told NBC News on Thursday. “I would certainly implement that, absolutely.”
-NBC’s Vaughn Hillyard asked how that plan would be different from when Nazis tracked Jewish people.
“You tell me,” Trump said. (Huh?)
-On Thursday, Trump told Yahoo News that the U.S. would have to do “unthinkable” actions concerning followers of the Islamic faith and declined to rule out warrant-less searches of American Muslims or identifying them by their religion in a database or national I.D. scheme.
-According to Yahoo, he also suggested he would consider warrant-less searches.
-“We’re going to have to do things that we never did before. And some people are going to be upset about it, but I think that now everybody is feeling that security is going to rule…And certain things will be done that we never thought would happen in this country in terms of information and learning about the enemy.
-On Fox News’ “Hannity,” Trump went a step further, saying the United States has “absolutely no choice” and must shut down mosques where “some bad things are happening.”
This attack I believe was just a recruitment tactic for ISIS.
The Muslim people as a whole are not inept. There is a huge opportunity, huge voice to unify against the wrong, to join with the right. This is what in their silence, as a whole, they seem to have choosen. Middle of the road doesn’t cut it. You will be pushed to the opposing side if you aren’t a ‘team player’.
In order to help de-legitimize Daesh, I think the news media and government need to stop calling them ISIS, ISIL, or the Islamic State. Since it’s claimed Daesh has nothing to do with Islam, why legitimize their presence by calling them a ‘state’ or ‘Islamic’?
Not that this is going to solve the problem, but Daesh is apparently a derogatory term for the group, so let’s start by taking the words ‘Islam’ and ‘state’ out of the picture. By doing this, it may help the vulnerable and naive (two groups Daesh loves to prey upon) by letting them know right away that this group of monsters is bad news.
“Daesh” itself is an acronym… Dawlat al- Islamiya… First two words means Islamic State in Arabic…
US AND WEST PLAYING RIGHT INTO ISIS HANDS…TRUMP, CARSON, CLINTON ET ALL ARE DEAD WRONG…BERNIE IS CORRECT.
“Islamic State’s Goal: “Eliminating the Grayzone” of Coexistence Between Muslims and the West”
Sounds like a shared goal of a Republican state.
It looks like the plan for a “stable” Middle East is to hand our nation building over to our “ally” Saudi Arabia by way of Daesh terrorists.
“October 8 2015
Moscow will soon start paying the price for its escalating military intervention in Syria in the form of reprisal attacks and casualties, the US defence secretary has warned, amid signs that Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies are preparing to counter the Russian move.
Riyadh’s anger over Vladimir Putin’s intervention was reflected in a statement by 55 leading clerics, including prominent Islamists, urging “true Muslims” to “give all moral, material, political and military” support to the fight against Assad’s army as well as Iranian and Russian forces.”
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/08/russia-pay-price-syrian-airstrikes-ashton-carter-us-defence-secretary
Oct 31, 2015
More than 200 dead after Russian airliner crashes in Egypt’s Sinai “ISIL” takes responsibility for the attack.”
What foreign policy disagreements do the U.S, Daesh, Israel, and Saudi Arabia have anyway?
Many believe Paris was a false flag operation….and that the corporate owned media is fueling the right wing haters to refuse refugees, and want the US to send troops. Is it any wonder…we are being bamboozled by the corporate media just like we were in Iraq….that includes MSNBC too.
The 2 Uzi Muslim
The year was 1982 the place was San Fernando Valley California.
Our Persian Muslim neighbor went out to his front yard to investigate the screams for help he just heard. As he reaches the front yard he locked eyes with a masked man in the drivers seat of a van parked in front of our house. At the same time our Muslim neighbor turned to run back inside his house the driver of the van started honking the horn. Apparently this was to tell the 3 other masked men that executed a home invasion robbery on our home and grandmother to end the robbery to make a quick exit. As the last robber was jumping into the van our neighbor was running back to the front yard but this time his hands were gripping 2 Uzi’s. The driver saw the 2 Uzi Muslim running out of his front door and stepped on the gas pedal. According to our neighbor “someone was going to die but instead the van was going to leak water really bad because they drove away too fast.”
A Persian Muslim who will be appreciated, respected and loved by our family forever our neighbor, the 2 Uzi Muslim. Who says Jews and Muslims can’t work together?
I’ve had many talks with Persian Muslims post 9/11 here in the Silicon Valley. A few times the talk went from words to venom. The hate for America and Isreal is still in their hearts yet they are in America living a good life?
Hmmm…I wont approach this debate in a way of nationalism nor religious expression (or lack thereof). Instead I will pose a question…
If some random person came and knocked on your door, and asked to come in…and being the benevolent person you are…gave your consent…shortly after allowing them into your home…their crazy brother kicks the door in and starts killing your family, you eventually put the crazy brother down…and as you do…your “guest” apologizes for that inconvenience then proceeds to explain how he has 10 other brothers and how 7 of them are okay…but the other 3 are just like this one.
This is the realistic situation we are facing…you see…your religion doesn’t matter to me…not even on a good day…but when “sects” of your religion start coming to my homeland and bringing big ass bullseyes and “crazy brothers” masquerading as the “not crazy brother” so they can get a good shot at my family…well…I certainly dont need to express my level of disdain for your right to religious expression, prosperity or safety. No offense…the ones that are here…great…glad to have you aboard…the ones who arent…we cant identify who is and is not the crazy brother…stay out…muslims who feel their brethren should be allowed here…feel free to help soothe the nerves of the non muslims in america…theres a place you can volunteer for this duty…its called the army recruiters office…welcome to america…stop trying to figure out what we can do for you…start trying to figure out what you can do for us and yourself.
Nice try. What you forgot to add is that the guest (and the 10 brothers) are in your house because you’ve been in their house first and abused them and destroyed their house causing them to become homeless and in search of a house.
I say to the west, stop interfering win other countries, either directly or by proxy oppressive regimes, and as if by magic, refugees will stop, and peace will reign.
Part true, part not. Assad was brutal before this all began. Arabs were revolting before all this began. The U.S. gave some nominal encouragement, followed at length by some air strikes trying to keep some people from killing others. ISIS came out of Iraq’s leadership, which had been brutal and warlike a long time. You want to try to look back for happy days, maybe you can try some of the Hashemite kings the West cynically backed for a time… alright, they were nothing to cheer about, but at least they didn’t make their fame by burning people and dropping them off buildings. Before that … it was the Ottomans.
The U.S. didn’t make the region a tar pit … it just comes out tarred from playing in it.
Are you delusional? The US bombed Iraq into the stone age!!! The 911 attack was a blatant inside job; just go to youtube and type in “9/11: the towers of dust” and pause at 1 minute 17 seconds. You will see that WTC 1 has turned into a crater whose center is at ground level. This is impossible by a gravity collapse; the nearly 1400 foot building was vaporized by explosives. FEMA moved into NYC on 9/10 for a mass casualty drill scheduled for 9/12 and thus was in position to lock down the whole site, preventing testing for explosives by the NYC fire department . The list of connections is huge; no damage by the engines on the pentagon wall; the taxi driver whose cab was supposedly hit by a 300 lb lamppost leaving no marks on his hood or interior admitting he was part of a conspiracy. Cell phones can’t work at 35K feet. The list goes on and on
Religious freedom is the hearts blood of America, our Constitution, our culture and our laws. We forsake this we for forsake the Nation. Yes some must die too keep this freedom. Freedom has consequences and costs.
America , Muslims welcome, Jews welcome, Christians welcome, all faiths and atheists welcome, MURDERS UNWELCOME.
Immigration is center piece of our history and is important to our future. However our laws must be followed and we live in a dangerous World. Just my view, we should take in documented families after vetting them out. Young men traveling in groups or alone must be handled with extreme care. Too many “lost boys” affiliated with ISIS.
As I’ve stated before, the Muslims living in the West must now become more diligent in carrying out good actions (starting with forgiveness) as good and selfless deeds will cancel out the bad deeds done to them due to hatred and irrational fear of them.
The average Western Muslim just wants to live in peace and take care of theirs and their families existential and spiritual needs.
So true and evident that it should not need to be said, yet we do need to say it. And those of us who know this need to stand up in support of those being persecuted.
————
I came across one of my Muslim students sobbing in the hall Monday morning; she was simply overcome with anxiety, grief, and fear. Her father was in Syria as the increased bombing raid began. I’ve never seen someone so undone. Our French teacher told me she had received, over the weekend, a broken-hearted letter from this girl “apologizing” for the attacks. It honestly makes me want to break something when I go from seeing this lovely young woman to reading the toxic bilge spilling over on The Guardian, where posters in staggering numbers are calling for “nuking the whole Mid-East,” “bombing them all into oblivion,” etc. etc.
I didn’t think there were adults who actually bought into “All-Speak.” That they cannot see that their cries for blood, revenge, mass annihilation, and guilt by association make them akin to terrorists is pathetic.
This is an interesting article, but misses the fundamental point of what is happening with ISIS and the rest of the muslim world.
ISIS are carrying out actions according to the Quran – with meticulous detail.
The Quran sanctions beheading of non-muslims (Quran 8:12)
The Quran sanctions the killing of non-muslims or infidels – (Quran 2:191)
Muslims should muster all weapons to terrorise infidels – (Quran 8:60)
Muslims should punish non-muslims with fire, boiling water and iron rods
– (Quran 22:19)
Muslims should make war against all non-muslims in their neighbourhoods – (Quran 9:123)
Any religion other than Islam is not acceptable – (Quran 3:85)
Muslims cannot have non-muslims as friends – (Quran 3:28)
Fight Jews and Christians – (Quran 9:30)
Non-Muslims are stupid, fight them – (Quran 8:65)
Wherever you come across a non-muslim, kill him – (Quran 9:5)
This is all in the Quran – there is no denying it. And ISIS are using Mohammads sayings to justify their bloody actions.
We cannot sit back and believe when we are told, over and over, that ISIS are not acting in the name of Islam. YES they are. They are simply doing what the Quran commands them to do.
Islam needs to reform. Urgently. It is not going to be easy. But, it HAS to happen. Judaism reformed, and so can Islam.
But, before that can even start to happen – all muslims around the world need to get their heads out of the sand and accept that what ISIS are doing is word-for-word in the Quran.
And politicians need to do the same. Stop lying to yourselves and everyone around you.
Until that happens, we are never going to see an end to the horrific terrorism being perpetrated in the name of Islam.
Reasonable people, not this commenter, can benefit from this new translation and commentary of the Quran:
http://www.amazon.com/Study-Quran-New-Translation-Commentary/dp/0061125865/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1447317176&sr=8-1&keywords=The+study
Producing Quranic verses out of textual and historical context is done by people like this commenter as well as by those so-called Muslims who are misguided and engage in violent acts and try to justify their acts using religion. Their un-Islamic acts are not that difficult to reject using the Quran as the Criterion.
Every religion has people that use parts of the religion to justify their actions. All Muslims don’t do this, but some strains do. Da’ish is such a strain. The problem here is that even ‘liberal’ Muslims are afraid to look at religion and see the problems inherent in it.
The actual dialectic opponent – ideologically – against extremist religion is not ‘moderate’ religion, but atheism. That is the way the most movement against religious extremism will be defeated. Which is why atheism is growing across the world and even in Muslim & Hindu societies.
That is correct.
However, every religion is “man-made”, that is, it is a human interpretation of the Sacred. And this causes a religion to not remain monolithic since it’s natural for human beings to examine it in different ways.
Consequently, Islam, as other religions, is actual multiple “islams”.
Some islams are bad to evil, most are benign, and some, such as many forms of Sufi islams, are excellent as they focus on spiritual/self development.
This is incorrect in two ways:
1. There are Muslims who are NOT afraid to critically examine the primary sources of Islam, and interpret them in rational and reasonable manner with proper textual and historical context.
2. There is no such thing as “problems inherent in it [Islam]” since Islam is merely a set of interpretations of the primary sources of Islam. The problems lies with the methodologies and the procedures that have been used to examine the primary sources with the lower self, as I have often tried to explain.
This is merely your personal opinion. Many Sufi and non-Sufi Muslims have figured out other (religious/spiritual) ways to combat extremism.
http://www.zahrapublications.com
I may be asking a question everyone knows the answer to so feelfree to reply. First it was ISIS, then it was ISIL now our government calls it Da’ish> What does this mean and where did it come from? Also what is the reason for all the name changes?
Searching for “what does daesh mean” led me to this article:
https://www.freewordcentre.com/blog/2015/02/daesh-isis-media-alice-guthrie/
Not sure of its accuracy, but you may want to review other search results.
Just different divisions of the same corporation. All 3 are supplied by Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the intelligence services of NATO and Israel. The division keeps getting rebranded to confuse the western audience as to who the backers are. The US flew 6 thousand sorties against ISIS but ISIS tripled in size; the US never hit any oil trucks carrying oil to Turkey and profiting Ergodan’s son who serves as a middleman.
Obviously Muslims don’t read the Quran, since the current wars (Yemen, Syria) mostly involve them killing each other (with a little assistance from the west thrown in).
First it was Cheney/Bush who made outcasts of competent Iraqi army officers. Today they lead ISIL.
Now its Obama’s turn to deny simple Truth:
A 2012 report by the United States Defense Intelligence Agency was direct: The growing chaos in Syria’s civil war was giving Islamic militants there and in Iraq the space to spread and flourish. The group, it said, could “declare an Islamic state through its union with other terrorist organizations in Iraq and Syria.”
“This particular report, this was one of those nobody wanted to see,” said Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, who ran the defense agency at the time.
“It was disregarded by the White House,” he said. “It was disregarded by other elements in the intelligence community as a one-off report. Frankly, at the White House, it didn’t meet the narrative.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/19/world/middleeast/in-rise-of-isis-no-single-missed-key-but-many-strands-of-blame.html?_r=0
From Bloomberg News:
“Since the Charlie Hebdo attacks in January, from which 16 people died, Paris-area ambulance crews and emergency personnel have taken part in regular exercises designed to test their readiness for possible attacks. One such exercise was held on Friday morning, the day of the latest terror attacks. In a twist of fate, the simulated emergency was a mass shooting, according to Dr. Mathieu Raux, emergency room chief at the Pitié-Salpetrière hospital in Paris.”
Pure coincidence folks – now move along…
…and Cheney was directing air attack exercises on 9/11.
What the writer says makes a lot of sense. The animosity against Muslims is increasing exponentially in the US and even the liberals are contributing to this, unwittingly playing ISIS’s game for them. A case in point is the rather influential ‘liberal’ Bill Maher, who equates ISIS with all Muslims to make the point that we must understand that there is no difference among them, they are all terrorists. That’s exactly what ISIS wants him to do…convince the liberal elites (of course the GOPers need not convincing) of this so that we end up creating a huge resentment among paceful muslims, a resentment that eventually will produce many of them to flee the country and join ISIS. So Mr. Maher has apparently become the HBO recruiting tool for terrorists, and he’s such a moron that has yet to realize this. Someone should hand him a translated issue of Dabiq, maybe that would make him reconsider…and send many copies to Hillary, Bernie, and all those liberal progressives who have taken line floater and sinker in from the islamic state strategists.
This is a good idea. Basically, they want Muslims to leave tje country they are in. It’s a win win situation they want to create. It really is.
The author needs to calm down though. There is nothing oppressive or discriminatory about laws against Islam. It is what it is: a barbaric cult. There is no distinction amkng Muslims. No extremist, no moderates. Period.
In misguided youthfull college days, I converted to Islam. I know the belief for what it is: perverse.
I advise any Muslim to leave whatever country they are in and head to middle east now.
Unless you are from ISIS, which I would respect, that is not a good idea ;)
They are 50,000… What they want is 1,300,000,000 people to join them (1.3 billion people) in a war against the rest of the World… It is not to leave the West and move to Syria, etc… They want them to fight anyone who does not support their religion ;) That is, conquer the world… hurray!!
you really think these groups would be attacking France if France was not engaged with the USA in bombing of Iraq and Syria? Come on man get real.
Racism comes from the media and ignorant people. The media has its own agenda for the redirection of blame to an ideology/race instead of the foreign policy of western countries.
You are just contributing to the noise the media is creating to distract from the real problem which is the willful destruction of the middle east by western ‘democracies’ for their own interests.
As long as violence is used to crush people, some of those people will use violence to get revenge. That is human nature. Everything else is just fluff.
The ___ guilt is strong with you.
1 ) White
2) Western
3) Privileged
Oil.
There needs to be some investigative journalism into Site, RIta Katz boasted of releasing execution videos before IS did. ?!
Site is a mossad from for the United states to receive “intelligence”(propaganda) in some imaginary independent role.
We’re already on Daesh now, fella, keep up.
It will be easy enough for them to change their official title on their manifesto with a word processor, I guess, as required by their paymasters. ISIS yesterday, Daesh today, Freedom From The Shiite Tyranny (and a lot less fear of being made patsies) next.
I think there are several process at work in the Muslim world:
– A fear by some Muslims that many others will become more secular and atheistic as has happened in many Western countries in only a short time
– A continuance of the traditional sectarian problems between Sunni and Shiite in their usual hotspots
– A drive by Saudi Arabia to increase the stake of its own ultraconservative take on Sunni Islam, backed as this seems by an ever-more powerful US
– A reordering of traditional stakeholders brought about by the events of the Arab Spring uprisings, along with further developments
– A continued drive by Islamic conservatives to embed Sharia Law throughout wider society
– An unwillingness by conservative Muslim governments to reform their wider social policies, particularly in light of their drive towards stronger Sharia Law, even when these teachings present socially-conscious ideas
– Continued widespread corruption and greed and a scramble for control centred on the controlling of oil wealth, particularly in view that America plans to perform a huge oil price hike to make their oil shale industry’s profitable, making Middle Eastern oil even more profitable than before
With the world in stagnant recession, a huge hike in oil prices enforced by American guns and law would be a dream come true for allied oil states, bucking the market trends and giving them a leg up against their own domestic rivals, and would be terrible for the rest of us, too.
I say this because it is NEARLY ALWAYS impossible to separate activities in the Arab and wider Muslim world with oil money, and maybe the rest would be minor issues as societies peacefully develop if the whole region wasn’t constantly at each other’s throats.
The “Clash of Civilizations” scenario is a well documented divide and conquer strategy of the British Empire’s “Great Game.” Whenever the US foreign policy has been captured, in effect, by the financial speculators in the City of London and Wall Street, as in the Bush family’s Gulf Wars and Viet Nam, we have acted contrary to our national interests. This is what George Washington’s farewell address meant.
I appreciate the aim of this article, which is to point out that most muslim are not currently radicalized… and I should point out that most Christians, Jews, Atheists etc. are not radicalized either… yet.
The problem with this article is that it underestimates the degree to which that may/probably will, change. If ISIS were actually as it, Washington, western media etc. try to present it… a self organized and directed entity… one might expect cooler heads to ultimately prevail. But that is not the case.
ISIS is a multi-state project initiated in large degree by the US, and has been given ideal means of metastasizing by the US, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, other western powers, and other Sunni powers. It is sponsored by those nations because their governments work at the behest of the global elite who have plans for reshaping the power landscape, and preserving/enhancing their power and control.
These attacks are only the beginning, and the media will be amplifying every one of them so that we will submit to the increased surveillance/police state, and marched to war. If a lot of religious extremists kill a lot of each other, so much the better for all the sponsoring nations.
Any one who thinks that some kind of uprising will stop their plans, are quite naïve IMO.
Inter-cultural understanding is urgent now. We are all responsible for preventing the further decay of that ‘grey zone’. We have to keep our ‘leaders’ from throwing fuel to the fire. Samuel Huntington and his ‘clash of civilizations’ should be thrown away. That idea was meant to support Bush’s plan for a ‘New American Century’. What the world needs is integration, not division. Integration through cooperation for environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable development and peace building. And we in ‘the west’ also need the ‘intelligence community’ to get the hell out of the way of real police work, as someone commented here.
You are assuming that it is a lack of understanding at work. It isn’t, it is our governments playing games over valuable resources. We could all convert to Islam tomorrow and spend our days reading the Koran, they would still be killing each other to get their hands on the dirty cash whilst putting their boot on our heads to keep us down.
Understanding their game, your rights, how they continually violate and infringe upon those rights, and what you can do to bring about change would be far better that knowing which hand they like to eat with and what direction to they like to pray in.
Divisions are fine, integration is terrifying. I live with lots of Burmese people that live pretty much in the jungle when they go home – understanding their life is pointless to me, I don’t need know how to gut chickens or stop termites or keep rain water potable, or even to speak Burmese. I just need to be civil to them, give them their space and rights, and keep OUT of their business, not get into it. People want FREEDOM, not homogenisation and a Walmart on every corner.
what?!…the islamic state’s reasons for resorting to violence is not that abstract!…it’s very simple…they were BOMBED!!!…they’re being besieged from all angles!…they’re desperate!…like almost every nation that’s been attacked in history, they RETALIATE to defend their land and resources and customs and way of life (economic, political, religious)…the west, by immediately retaliating, is doing the SAME DAMN THING as the middle east “rebels” who have been bombed for decades!…
Thanks Russia, in speculation nobody is perfect but now I understand
https://www.rt.com/news/322482-lavrov-us-isis-assad/
I think what the Islamic State is doing is their own suicide-bombing. There is no need for them to change course. As long as they continue doing what they are doing they will ensure their own destruction. The Muslims as such are good people, especially the ones who follow the Sufi doctrine. But like every other group of people there are bad elements among them, and they will gravitate to this abhorrent group of individuals and thus be quickly dispatched to meet Charlie.
There is, of course, the matter of who is really controlling the Islamic State. The only reason why they have formed, survived and flourished despite attempt by a number of powerful countries to annihilate them is because they have a very powerful and resourceful sponsor who looks after them. It is time we owned up to the fact that we are fully aware that some of our friends are nurturing ISIS, and we must nuke them first before taking down ISIS. That way ISIS will suicide-bomb themselves sooner.
Hercules, despite his muscles, was also renowned for his cunning genius. I would therefore suggest you change your moniker to General Potato Head. Or Private Moron.
contemplate this: the concept is ancient, ‘divide and rule’…cui bono?
“The Islamic State has little hope of achieving that level of disastrous success in Western Europe or North America.”
This is perhaps what you wish, but the reality of what is happening on the ground is different. I do not feel that it is necessary to recount the numerous news account across the western world in order to illustrate the violent backlash against muslims.
As US and allies have demonstrated, sowing chaos is easy – from Baluchistan to Syria and to the horn of Africa. In this regard, the Daesh terrorists are in good company – easy to sow chaos. As US and allies have learned, controlling the direction of chaos is very very hard. Here, Daesh has an advantage that US and allies did not.
For Daesh it is not necessary to control the chaos it creates in the west. All it needs to do is to give it a push and allow the dynamics of unchecked capitalism to do the rest.
More spending on security, justified by acts of Daesh, leading to more terror acts, and more security spending and more military bombing campaigns means poorer schools, poorer infrastructure, poorer retirement plans, poorer citizens, poorer society, more segregation, more discrimination, more societal discord, ….
You see, Daesh does not want our oil or minerals. It does not need to control the chaos to allow the multinational to step in – it simply needs to fan the flame, get the politicians to get the citizens more scared, and to create more chaos. It is the destruction from within that Daesh seek.
Money is not disappearing, nor is it’s value decreasing (if it’s the right currency). So if some group of people are getting poorer what is happening to all the wealth? It’s not too hard to figure out. Maybe that’s why whatever you see that is happening is happening.
I appreciate Mr. Hussain’s well-written commentary.
Capitalism, like most economic systems, is just another form of religious insanity. Money is worshipped as a god itself, conferring god like powers upon its wielders….and is no less insane or destructive than ISIS. A sad commentary on the present situation of Homo Sapiens on Earth!
My God is my wife. I give her honour and obedience and she brings fried rice home for me and lets me watch football at the weekends. I don’t have a bean, so worshipping money for me really would be idolatrous worshipping of a non-existent entity.
The sadder commentary is how utterly moronic most people are, and how gullible. “Yeah! Kill Muslim terrorists whose name keeps changing as they are rebranded that America has already admitted to arming and encouraging to destabilise Syria and her Shiite allies so that it can raise oil prices to excessive enough levels to make its toxic fracking program profitable at all our enormous expense, and then once they are rich they can impose financial, legal, commercial and military imperialism over all peoples with draconic effectiveness and cruelty at the insanely high risk of starting WW3!”
Homo Sapiens Sapiens is in reality Homo Morons Morons.
I have a little voodoo doll ready of Putin, pressing a big red button. Just gotta find me a black cockerel and some virgin spit…
As many have pointed out, one of the inevitable results of tragedies such as in Paris is the blanket-condemnation of Muslims. Whether it’s talking heads or the ignoramus on the street, if you’re Muslim, they’ll refer to you \ as guilty by association.
Anyways, I came across this Reddit post a few days back and thought it was worth sharing. It asks actively practicing Muslims “what goes through your mind on a day like today?”
To those who cannot separate the extremists such as ISIS from Muslims who like many non-Muslims, their lives day to day without making a splash, perhaps send them this.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3sqh0u/serious_actively_practicing_muslims_what_goes/
They may not care about the distinctions, not if the prejudice already existed and merely needed pretexts for going after the lot. This, from one of the dissents in the wartime Korematsu detention case:
This article just plays into the religious crap that the western keeps spouting as the reason for the violence. This has nothing to do with religion or extremism or any ideology. This comes down to basic humanity. Western countries destroy and plunder middle east…killing civilians, wiping out entire families and cities. This leads to violent gangs which is a natural development from the brutality of western imperialism. France has been bombing the hell out of Syria and Iraq. Like Malcom X said chickens coming home to roost. Religion has nothing to do with it. If there was no western imperialism and killing like the destruction of Iraq or Libya, or western puppet dictators, ISIS WOULD NOT EXIST. If we fail to look at the root cause (Western Imperialism) and instead look at only the symptoms nothing will ever change. It is so obvious…the benefactors of imperialism do not want that, they want to focus on religion and extremism, so that the real issue never sees the light.
…and Israel.
Wnax….Western Imperialsim has everything to do with religion, the Christian kind. The start of the Western Imperialsim was based largely on the Christian belief of spreading gods words to the rest of the world. That and greed of course!
The entire world is propaganda, Bob, in case you hadn’t noticed. Even one’s own opinions are the result of someone else conditioning us at some point. We didn’t arrive with anything of our own. Unless you recognise that, all opinions are rubbish, and most especially those you consider astute and not at all propaganda.
Surely the bottom line as far as Muslims are concerned is whether Daesh/ISIS can actually be regarded as the reinstatement of the Caliphate. Given that Muslims, not to mention Christians, already believe a number of faintly ludicrous things, it wouldn’t be much of a stretch to believe another. Thankfully Christians have had their balls cut off simply by the passage of time from point zero of their religion, so they don’t have to be worried about too much, even though Blair and that other fellow doubtless took counsel from the Almighty on a regular basis, getting us into this mess in the first place.
What matters now is whether relatively comfortable modern Muslims are willing to ramp up their own persecution for the sake of their religion. Let’s face it, you don’t pray five times a day without looking at the world for signs. As to whether they are foolish enough to be convinced that a band of cut-throats is the Caliphate remains to be seen, but I think if I was following a prophetic religion with as much dedication as many Muslims then perhaps I would have to consider that Allah had sent ISIS to do his bidding, and the minute I start taking that idea seriously everything is changed. That’s the spark that starts the forest fire.
Yes, by all means, feed us the propaganda until we choke…
It is all about Israel, as the PNAC memo plainly and clearly laid out. T
The Neocon/Israeli wishes have been coming true ever since 9/11…
“Through murderous provocation, the Islamic State seeks to trigger a civilizational war between Muslims and the West…”
The same could be said for the U.S. in the not too distant past, couldn’t it?
You’re starting to sound like a Neocon propagandist.
Is Cheney et al holding your family for ransom?
Good point. The problem with the Paris attacks beyond the West ‘declaring it an act of war( which is completely ludicrous since they have been at war with ISIS for a long time (one can only think that Hollande and the rest thought they would never shoot back) is that the liberal West are calling themselves ‘humanity’. Of course, ‘humanity’ does not care if 100 people die in a bomb blast in Egypt or in Beirut. Humanity for the West is what it has always been – predominantly white, middle (to upper class) and some what educated.
So, you take this whole ‘ISIS Crisis’ at face value, and believe they are truly an independent and sincere operation?
And there I thought you were much more perceptive a and intelligent than that.
https://twitter.com/rabihalameddine/status/666468532612296704
becuz commies
More on that theme from Juan Cole.
http://www.juancole.com/2015/11/whether-jewish-refugees-syrians.html
This week we’re finding all the undersides to that “huddled masses” idea.
Death was but the good King’s jest, it was hid so carefully
This is perhaps the most important article I have yet read in The Intercept. I hope its message reaches as many people as possible.
You must have a low opinion of the Intercept. I would say this is pedestrian at best. Its the equivalent of using the word EVIL too much.
How so? ISIS has been brutal to everyone in its path. As you alluded to in your previous post, the silence around the massacre of Shia has been deafening. It doesn’t mean it isn’t real. Divide and conquer would naturally be a part of this group’s MO.
Their actions indicate that they’re primarily interested in making life hellish for other Muslims; they want their caliphate. The West is an obstacle or a useful tool, but their primary target is the Middle East.
So I think Hussain is pointing to the horrifying irony of non-Muslim westerners who fight ISIS while generalizing a rage or fear of ISIS to the group’s primary targets.
And ISIS feels that if this happens, its divide and conquer strategy is won.
But most of all, I think he fears for those who’ll need to deal with the attendant racism whenever anything like this happens. That’s very real, too, and it’s frightening.
I understand your points. I take back my comment about ‘pedestrian’. I was suppose i was hoping for something more in depth, connecting the bigger dots.
Hmmm. Your standards must not be so high. A pedestrian article at best.
And if any say Islam is inherently violent, let them first look to their own religious texts and rip out every page that promotes war, murder, slavery, revenge, torture, rape, or a lower status for women.
Anyone who urges revenge is affirming the same fundamental ideology as the ISIL extremists.
When I look around the world at who is committing terror, it is 99% Muslim. If the glove fits… BTW, there is a large percentage of humanity that has no religious text, what about them?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7GAbVhjTSw
Political author Gearoid O Colmain discusses the Paris attacks with RT International
@ Chris
What do you call prosecuting a “shock and awe” campaign against a people that did nothing to you and yours? Destroying most of their infrastructure and turning their people into dead people or refugees (not to mention giving rise to a civil war). Do you call it “not terrorism”? How about drone bombing weddings and funerals? Again, “not terrorism”?
What do you call it when certain white citizens of America roll into a grade school, high school, community college, abortion clinic or movie theatre and gun down everyone in sight? Not terrorism. Any guesses what religion most of the “terrorists” in America are? Here’s a hint–it isn’t Islam.
Maybe you should open your eyes, pull off your culturally/religiously biased lenses and think long and hard about how you define “terrorism”.
If you are talking about the collectivists (communists, socialists, etc.) , I believe their body count was 100 million plus last century. Makes the Muzzies seem like pikers.
Steady steve……you forgot to count all the dead in Jesus his name over the centuries. A bit more then the collectivists me thinks!
I’ve been thinking quite a bit about this. My first inclination is to welcome the refugees. My second inclination is to think how perfect a plan this is in terms of a trojan horse. If we do NOT accept refugees, we may turn moderate muslims into radical extremists in terms of fleeing into arms of isil; if we do accept refugees, it’s perfect trojan horse territory. There is no way 10K refugees can be granted asylum without there being atleast 1% of population being trojan horse. Nothing is 100% guaranteed. Even with the extreme vetting and background checks (purportedly including biometric data) being done by DoD, Homeland, etc.
This is a great way to create cognitive dissonance in a nation already split by very different worldviews ie Republican Machiavellian and Liberal Bleeding Heart.
That’s the other part of the us-vs.-them paradigm, not just what Murtaza’s talking about. After 9/11, the U.S. seems to have lost the idea of there being a loyal opposition, that is, if someone differed from you in matters of politics or religious matters, something was wrong with them. It’s certainly gaining traction.
After 9/11 huh?
It seems to have picked up a lot of momentum since. Of course, we didn’t have Fox News back in the Cold War.
No, we had McCarthy and its neoliberal progeny.
I mean, I suppose you could argue we had a quiet period there. But it required the politicide of the American left. Easy to brook the ‘loyal opposition’ when it no longer meaningfully exists.
As a reality check on this fear-mongering, here are just a few factual examples showing just how dangerous the United States can be:
And:
I believe the bit about televisions killing people….just watch US news….it is lethal for critical brain activity.
And British news and French news and German news. Unbiased reporting from the major world news sources is long gone.
And lets not forget…. Japan. The land with two active meltdowns and a GW Bush wannabe.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/02/24/japan-media-idUKL4N0VY24P20150224
I am normally a fan of these comparisons. For example, I like to compare casualties from coal pollution to the World Trade Center attacks. However, there is a clear problem with using it here:
It’s only 10,000 terr… Syrians.
By your logic I could say Charlie Manson was nothing, because he’s less of a problem than getting crushed to death by furniture. But the thing is, Manson isn’t a national problem; he’s a problem on the scale of whoever happens to be near him.
And it’s only a question of whether we allow 10,000 Syrians to immigrate, or 10,000 Mexicans, or 10,000 Ukrainians, etc. There’s going to be a quota of some sort – you know people won’t authorize unlimited immigration. Someone has to stay out so they can get in.
So is the political correctness of saying ‘sure, we’re not afraid of taking in a half dozen teams like the one they fielded in Paris’ worth the lives of the people who end up getting hurt?
I live in europe so stop whining about a few thousand ok!
I think the most effective way to head them off is to try to rent out some area along the line of Hong Kong set up with full civil liberties, some trade advantages, and at least some level guaranteed basic income and give them free passage to it from Syria (and elsewhere), and hire them to build it into some cities for themselves. That would be a joint US-European project and Europe would of course have more to gain from it.
That’s not what the comparison is about at all. It’s about the reality that the original poster made the unsupported claim that we’ll be less safe for taking in refugees, a stance which the facts do not support.
In other words, both the original poster and you make the explicit claim that people will inevitably end up getting hurt due to allowing these specific refugees into the United States. There simply is no data to support that claim. It’s fear-mongering, nothing more.
Good point and well said. I call it the, bad-apple-in-the-barrel, consequence. Whereas one bad apple can ruin the whole barrel but, finding that apple before it’s damage is the challenge.
Juan Cole made the same point during the Hebdo hysteria. These targets intend to heighten the contradictions, while recuperating liberals into the ‘clash of civilization’ false consciousness. All this talk of defending “free speech”, without any material basis. Just pure mindlessness, from people who consider themselves quite mindful. And the preconception that these attacks couldn’t possibly be political and strategic plays into liberal/colonial preconceptions of “religious primitives”. It’s entirely too easy.
Reminds me a bit about the Nosferatu narrative. Evil coming back from the colonies…virus, contagion, radicalisation….
It’s worth remembering an older principle:
Unfortunately, that was a dissenting opinion, Justice Frank Murphy’s, in Korematsu v. U.S., which upheld the policy of imprisoning an ethnic minority arbitrarily. That decision was never really overturned and we may be one major U.S. incident away from revisiting that. Manzanar, next three exits.
Much of what you say is true, but here’s where you go wrong: “collectively punish Muslims en masse through discriminatory migration policies, restrictions on religious freedoms, and blanket surveillance by law enforcement.” Here, the last two are clearly wrong, clearly counterproductive. But the first is not a punishment!
The world is chock full of people who do not enjoy right to come into America. So long as that is something we can give or withhold at whim, why should our whim not be directed at safety?
And it is safer to do our “wrongs” to people we are never going to see again because they don’t live here than to do them to communities of people here.
The very height of the idiocy is with people like one of the guys who shot up the Curtis Culwell Center, or one of the shooters in Paris, where they’ve been denied the right to exit the U.S. I mean, if their freedom of migration is important to us then by all means, let’s allow them the freedom to go the hell away and live the life of adventure in Jihadistan! We shouldn’t be keeping “free-range terrorists” in our country, waiting for them to lay eggs on us.
The moral to take from France is that citizenship actually does matter — and it matters if we give citizenship (or any other status treated without discrimination) to people who want to kill us. There is no advantage to be had in letting everyone be a citizen and when that means having citizenship means nothing, means that you can be searched without a warrant at any time because you might be a terrorist, means that you can’t be trusted to watch a jihad propaganda video because you might be one of them. If that’s what you want then as a nation we can just revoke our own citizenship, have no more citizenship, and then we can all formally be treated as foreign interlopers in the rich man’s paradise together.
“Simultaneously, they should also recommit to the military effort against Islamic State enclaves in Iraq and Syria, making clear that there is no contradiction to embracing Muslims at home while fighting terrorists abroad.”
But all such “military efforts” kill and wound and displace civilians, as we have seen over and over and over. I’m very surprised Hussain recommends any Western meddling or excuse for it.
What’s the alternative?
Stop bombing and invading and controlling people in the Middle East and Africa, end alliances with Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the other tyrannies in the region, and stop giving and selling them weapons.
Now you are really talking utopia .
Speaking realistically , ISIS has to be eliminated. What Murtaz Hussain writes, sounds logical, although western govt.s have always reacted in a knee jerk manner , and are unlikely to follow his proposed solution. Muslim citizens in the West will be further surveilled , marginalized, and subjected to bigotry and discrimination.
The terrorists have proven repeatedly, that they are smarter than Western politicians. It’s already happening, with the new laws France is proposing, the crackdown on refugees in Europe, and half the Governors in U.S. rejecting any Syrian refugees in their states….all in response to the terrorist incident in Paris.
You are talking endless loop of futility and violence.
The US and any other super power, will always protect their interests, whether its supporting vile dictators or oppressive regimes like Israel and Saudi Arabia. This has been true of other imperial powers in the past and will continue forever.
If you do not allow for and expect political change, nothing will change and there is no hope. Sentences of the form “X will always” are just concessions to the status quo, anti-engagement with the world.
And how will you ever eliminate IS if your interest is more important than human life? If you yourself is a terrorist in your actions to keep control over your interest? When will you ever for certain know that now you have killed the last IS ‘terrorist?’ Because, believe me, bombing places out of the sky with drones that kill mostly innocent people, is not ever going to stop so-called terrorism. You are a dog chasing its own tail. Running yourself drunk on arrogance.
We know that the United States of Hypocrisy is in full gear when they back Saudi Arabia to head Human Rights Tribunals. Or Barry and Michelle visit Saudi Arabia the same weekend three public beheadings take place. Surprising we never heard Barry say anything about this ‘heinous, brutality’.
He’s pro drone in Pakistan as well, iirc. The usual “we’ve made a mess, and now we have to clean it up” logic. “Cruise missile liberals”. They don’t think imperialism is going anywhere, or they see it as a net positive, so they advocate for a more “sane” application. Like Krugman the other day, straight up hippie punching “would-be appeasers” in his column. When the chips are down they show their fangs. I assume Maz knows the base here wouldn’t have that, so he sticks to the positive framing of what-needs-to-be-done. There Is No Alternative. The ‘bigger picture’ isn’t just beyond the point, it’s irrelevant in this calculus. And so it goes.
Stellar article! It harkens back to those of us calling for America to be even MORE American after 911, and not go off half-cocked and do things that are unconstitutional like torturing people and restricting civil liberties. If we change who we are and what this country represents in the name of protecting the country, then they WIN. We don’t throw the constitution out the window when a nutjob shoots up a church. Why should we do it when a “terrorist” commits a crime?
Thanks for the post, Murtaza.
Sadly, this strategy is in danger of succeeding, not because of the strength of ISIS but rather because of the moral weakness in the West. In France, Holland, who is supposed to be a social democrat, is calling for restrictions on personal freedom to be codified in the French constitution. And of course here in the US, the republican presidential candidates are united on their calls for fomenting hatred toward and distrust of Muslims. As though the brand of Christianity to which they adhere is any different.
I wish it would be possible to find some suitable location on earth where all the Christian, Jewish and Muslim fundamentalists could be brought together, given cudgels, and allowed to practice their common form of ecumenism upon each other, leaving the rest of us to live at peace, if not in agreement. I would be glad to contribute that portion of my taxes that would otherwise go to the War and Homeland Insecurity departments to facilitate such a program.
I am also concerned for the same reasons you mention, there, 24b4Jeff. I like that idea of giving the extremist some remote location and cudgels to fight amongst themselves and leave the rest of us alone. How about a crowd-sourcing fund?
Good post Murtaza.
Could you provide a little more specificity on which U.S. politicians are calling for restrictions on religious freedoms and the use of blanket surveillance?
As for religious freedoms, there is the Ted Cruz proposal to restrict immigration on the basis of religion.
http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/260317-cruz-to-offer-bill-banning-syrian-refugees
Of course, dear Ted, if he had paid attention in Harvard Law School in Con. Law class, might have been aware that it doesn’t pass the Lemon test, but who cares if you’re running for President?
There’s also Rupert Murdoch, who’s not a U.S. politician but might as well be.
http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2015/nov/17/rupert-murdoch-to-obama-on-refugees-admit-only-proven-christians
I’d like to see how INS will provide such proofs.
There’s also Donald Trump.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/11/16/trump-keeps-on-saying-we-should-shut-down-mosques.html
Given the possibility that Trump or Cruz could be President, it’s worth taking it seriously.
Thanks coram. Part of me responds to myself: “Ted Cruz, Donald Trump, Rupert Murdoch! Who gives 2 shits what they think!? I’ll dismiss their horseshit-crazy views.”
The Other Part of me says: “Ted Cruz and Donald Trump are ranking top 3 in several polls. Their batshit views are embraced by an embarrassingly large proportion of the U.S. population, and one of them could win the GOP nod” *struck by terrible goosebumps*
At the end of the day, I choose to go with the former. The major assholes will fizzle out, leaving the lesser assholes to vie for the GOP candidacy (major assholes being Trump, Carson, Cruz, Huckabee, Graham; and the lesser assholes being the rest). These really are reprehensible viewpoints, blaming war-victims for the actions of an extremist minority.
INS transferred out of Justice into DHS over a decade ago. I have no doubt you knew this but you’re dating yourself :)
I’m not sure how you could “test” for Christianity, at least not in this country. According to one US poll, a plurality of Americans seem to think that the Sermon on the Mount was by Billy Graham.
Maybe they can borrow and modify the Church of Scientology’s authoritative piece of tech, the E-Meter, to siphon out the non-believers
I am yet to be convinced that Syrian refugees are fleeing ISIL or even Assad. What they are fleeing is the chaos unleashed by western and allied Sunni forces after their destruction of Libya. The west is completely and utterly morally bankrupt, and soon will become financially bankrupt as well. Its desperation has driven it to seek to sow chaos and destruction. ISIL is its Frankenstein monster. It is itself reflected in a pool darkly.
These events unfolded concurrently. The uprising in Syria began around January-March 2011. At this point in Libya, NATO was planning the no-fly zone. Your supposition is wrong and I think you need to do some reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refugees_of_the_Syrian_Civil_War
What uprising? Like in Egypt? What civil war? Like in Iraq?
You’re just all over the place, aren’t ya?
I really enjoyed this article and relate to it myself, even though I am not Muslim.
I find myself forced told often to “their side or ours” and have even been told by my mom that I should just go move to where the terrorists are since I don’t stop criticizing the discrimination and blatant disregard for civil rights, human rights and international law my government has committed. She has also told me to stop talking to my best friend who I have known since I was 3, because she is Muslim and “they can’t be trusted.”
I fear a war in where I don’t want to fight on either side. One that every day degrades the rights that people have fought for for hundreds of years. My own family left Italy to seek on fairness and saw what happens to immigrants under a suspicious eye during world war two.
It hurts me to watch my mom talk so low about Muslims yet educate me on what my grandmother went through during the 40s and how Italians never received compensation for their treatment.
I’m tired of watching everyone around me care more about money and themselves than human lives or others.
I agree with everything his article says. People must stand together and show that enemies won’t allow a country to turn on its own people. People must also show the world, terrorists and world leaders, that they won’t turn on each other as well and pick sides.
The rights and morals we loose today will hurt us more than any bomb. They make the bomb stronger and more dangerous in my opinion.
So many typos… I should have proof read before submitting. Sorry about that.. Here is a corrected version:
I really enjoyed this article and relate to it myself, even though I am not Muslim.
I find other people often infer to me that I should pick “their side or ours” and have even been told by my mom that I should just go move to where the terrorists are because I don’t stop criticizing the discrimination and blatant disregard for civil rights, human rights and international law that my government demonstrates. She has also told me to stop talking to my best friend, who I have known since I was 3, because she is Muslim and “they can’t be trusted.”
I fear a war in which I don’t want to fight on either side. One that every day degrades the rights that people have fought for for hundreds of years. My own family left Italy to seek fairness and saw what happens to immigrants under a suspicious eye during world war two.
It hurts me to watch my mom talk so low about Muslims and say that their treatment is OK in the name of national security. Yet she then educates me on what my grandmother went through during the 40s in the U.S. and how Italians never received compensation for their treatment (under the same premise).
I’m tired of watching everyone around me care more about money and themselves than human lives or others.
I agree with everything this article says. People must stand together and show that it is not permissible for the actions of our enemies to give governments the right to turn on its own people. People must also show the world, terrorists and world leaders alike, that they won’t turn on each other or pick sides which require them to commit or support domestic or international crimes.
The rights and morals we loose today will hurt us more than any bomb. If anything, they make the bomb stronger and more dangerous in my opinion.
What are the two sides you refer to?
The two sides are “ISIS’s version of Islam” and “Hating All Muslims” (not counting the other other side of “Shi’a Islam, run by those evil Iranian heretics”.)
The mostly-Republican politicians who are saying that only Christian refugees can come here are helping ISIS demonstrate that the West hates Islam and wants to force them to be convert or die.
The idea of a “religious test” is pretty hard to defend from detractors. However — we don’t have to have an explicitly religious test in order to accomplish what we want where religion of immigrants is concerned.
For example, we can show immigrants pictures of Muhammad, a defaced Koran, etc. and say: do you promise to accept that these things are legitimately protected by the right to freedom of expression, and promise not to involve yourself in plots to harm the people who say such things ? And they can answer yes or no. Now of course, the hard-core ISIS operatives can answer yes – we can’t help that. The most moderate Muslims will say no. But the meat we’re going after here is the more solidly ideological Muslims who might, at that juncture, recognize that they are not for America and America is not for them. People who otherwise would have been steady fuel for long-term recruitment efforts. Provided we have some kind of exchange program set up to let in gay refugees who landed in Turkey or some such in trade, we probably can put those Muslims on a plane and out of our lives in no time, and all simply because they couldn’t say ‘yes’.
Edit Wannabe: “most moderate Muslims will say yes”, I meant above.
Okay, that’s what I thought she meant but didn’t want to assume.
@Rachael –
You put it so beautifully. We MUST start sticking together. I sometimes ues on this board:
“Divided = Conquered, But United = Empowered!” So many layers to that, it seems.
As we saw with 9.11, when terrorists say jump the rightwing in the United States asks how high.
They are not only willing to do exactly what ISIS demands, they simply cannot fathom doing anything BUT what ISIS demands.
They are so compliant and eager to equate all 1.6 billion Muslims worldwide with being in league with ISIS that they never figure out that by slaughtering hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in response the terrorists easily achieve their goals of executing a religious war.
To be so effortlessly outsmarted by psychotic mass-murderers speaks volumes for the ignorance of many Americans.
It’s because of that huge propaganda machine they’ve got going, called Hollywood. Too much cowboys and crooks movies. Indoctrinated to believe that they are represented by the good guys.
And those retched video games, right!?
/s/
I don’t know the kind of video games you play but any person in their right minds would know the difference between a game and reality. Sadly, just like with religion and any other doctrine that is injected into your mind from a young age, movies have quite a strong power in how we perceive the world and it could be used as a tool of propaganda. The American Sniper is a perfect example of pure bullshit propaganda.
This puts the refugee accepting countries, the West and others, between a rock and a hard place. Accepting them in order to show compassion as well as disrupt the IS strategy to divide the world into two camps is the right thing to do, but as we have seen it only takes one IS member disguised as a refugee to commit terrorist acts. One example are the Tsarnaev brothers whose entire family was accepted into the states, put on gov’t welfare, housed, fed, educated, and provided opportunities to live peaceful lives. Instead they grew up here, lived off US tax payer money, went to our colleges and then committed a terror attack at the Boston marathon. True example of ‘biting the hand that feeds’.
I don’t know how a country can reconcile the unknown potential of refugees to commit terror attacks. Even if it is 1 in 10,000, one rotten ideology can spoil the bunch. I know this is stated from a position of fear, which is a goal of the terrorist groups, and that bothers me deeply. So my question is how does the world compassionately manage the refugee populations without endangering those that wish to help them?
Don’t think that 1 in 10,000 isn’t that bad. I mean Americans kind of deserve to have 1 in 10,000 refuges become hostile after creating all the mass hysteria and fear mongering against muslims everywhere. And again is it really any different then the 350 school shootings the US has every year. In all honesty, I think you should just roll with the punches while the dust settles because if fear mongering wasn’t involved and 1 refugee in 10,000 killed 1-10 americans it’s really no different then any other day in America. Like think about for 2 seconds.
I’ve thought about it for more than 2 seconds and your logic is completely flawed. You can’t equate terrorist attacks to everyday violence in the streets of America because that type of random and/or internal violence happens everywhere in the world. Muslims groups have been slaughtering each other for centuries for their version of Islam, genocide in Africa occurs when one party gets elected over the other, American biker and street gangs slaughter each other over drugs, turf, shoe color, etc. Drug cartels in central and south America do the same.. it’s an endless list and the fact is that throughout human history there have always been one group defeating and/or conquering another for a multitude of reasons.
“Roll with the punches…” that is completely foolish and weak minded at best. You don’t blindly accept violence to your own people because your country has committed violence elsewhere. Who would think that way?
Alright, I guess your life is much more important than the civilians our western governments are killing everyday. This isn’t a religion problem it’s a people problem, people just use religious text to to justify their means and reasoning because they don’t want to take responsibility for their actions. I mean look how Christianity has poisoned the people of America, Africa, and the Middle East. They use religion as a tool, the problem lies within the individual. Don’t equate 5th-15th century war of people with little intellect, to the wars of today. We should all know better, but sadly we don’t.
Yeah, sorry Americans but you deserve to have that 1 refugee out of 10,000 deal some death and destruction because of “all the mass hysteria and fear mongering against muslims everywhere.”
There is no “maybe.” You utterly failed to live up to your name.
tlajah
You “reconcile” it by understanding as all human beings do, that we humans don’t control everything. We can’t predict the future, and we’ll never stop the very human impulse of the very statistically insignificant few–regardless of whether they are immigrants or birth citizens of a land–to harm others.
So the question is, why should anyone accept the premise that the actions of 1 member of some group X is indicative of the values, propensities or actions of the rest of the members? It’s an obvious logical fallacy and irrational.
Moreover, as a function of “threat” or “risk” to you or your life, immigrants from wherever are not nearly as likely to harm you as food poisoning, car crashes, or striking a deer. So why the hysteria? It’s irrational.
I’ll tell you why, because there are always many in society who benefit from seeing the working and middle classes divided and fearful of one another. There are always those who profit economically or politically from fueling those divisions. And unfortunately, the vast majority of people wherever they are on the globe are both innately as an evolutionary matter, and via cultural conditioning, “programmed” (by nature or education) to be suspicious of “the other.”
All enlightened people fight that impulse anywhere and everywhere they can knowing full well it is a largely inherent bias present in all people to one degree or another.
On a human to human level I completely agree. I realize that the majority of refugees are fleeing the conflict and seeking a peaceful place to live. I too want to retain the peaceful place I live. I believe we all deserve that. My point is that “how does a country reconcile accepting this potential danger…” For example, say you are a state governor or more basically the person responsible for the safety of thousands or millions of others. Are you willing to risk the lives or peaceful order within that community in order to provide refuge? Are you willing to accept that potential danger in? Even the mistrust of “the other” can disrupt that peaceful order. I feel it is more compassionate to establish a place that is closer to their original homes, provide security (from all involved countries), provide food, necessities, etc. That to me is more compassionate and rational than bringing them into a completely foreign and potentially hostile environment.
Yeah it’s totally irrational that some people might pay the price for something their elected officials have done. All those civilians in the middle east who past away were nobody, they we’re just caught in a bad place that is in war. You are untouchable in your free society. Get off your high horse. When I say some people may die that means me or you as well. Nobody is exempt. Every action has a reaction, deal with it. I wish this wasn’t the case, but when you resort to military to find peaceful solutions this is what happens. But your right, your government has YOUR best interests in mind. Just because I’m being blunt, it doesn’t make it false.
RationalThoughtMaybe,
Not sure if you are following this thread clearly, but I’ll respond since you directed your frustration towards me.
Yes it is logical to think that some people might pay the price for something their elected officials have done. But it is completely ridiculous to think that one would feel they ‘deserve’ to be attacked for something their elected officials have done. They don’t ask me before they pull the trigger.
Your reading comprehension needs work… This is not about you or I nor have I written anything regarding military action. We are discussing the appropriate response for refugee placement. Try to keep up..
Nice evasion, everything I said suggests that refugees should be placed in the western countries that displaced them, but I guess your reading comprehension might also need some work.
@ tlajah
Of course I’m willing to accept that “risk” because I/we accept “risks” that are 10 to 100 times greater every day in our normal lives. Why should this “risk” be any different particularly when it is a lesser “risk” as a statistical matter. That’s the point–people are highly irrational about the “risk” presented by immigrants from anywhere on the globe. In fact it is best described as “willful ignorance” or a fundamental inability to even understand what “risk” really is as a statistical matter.
What you are really arguing is the null set Dick Cheney hypothesis i.e. that if there is even the remotest possibility or statistical likelihood no matter how remote of some bad thing X happening caused by a member of group Y (regardless of the actual likelihood of X actually happening or happening in the magnitude feared) then all members of group Y should be excluded or killed. That’s both irrational, ignorant and immoral to boot.
Fair enough, but you are well aware that most of the countries closest to those refugees are presently suffering under and incredible and unsustainable strain from the MILLIONS of refugees they have already taken in. Seems to me, in the spirit of compassion and coherent morality, some of the nations most responsible for destabilizing the entire region (in service of their “interests”) and creating, in part not entirely, some of the refugees they have created. Don’t you?
Oh now you are afraid for “them” if we allow them to come into our land as refugees? What exactly is so “foreign” about our environment? You know that many places in this nation have populations that speak the same language and can assimilate the refugees?
So who exactly in your mind makes a good candidate for “refugee” status and settlement in America? Because I’ll tell you what, as a historical matter, almost every immigrant and/or refugee to this country in the past has at one point considered America a “foreign environment”. All had a preference for different cultural practices and norms prior to coming here. And all ultimately assimilate (without necessarily giving up some of their cultural practices that don’t violate law or hurt anyone) and that’s what makes America, in part, a nominally great nominally pluralistic at times economically and culturally vibrant country (assuming you agree America possesses a distinctive “culture” other than unrepentant greed, paranoia of government, football and jazz music–and many argue we don’t have much “culture” simply on the basis of the last two and certainly not on the basis of the former two).
Now the reality is the there is also a long history of nativists making immigrants to this country very painful (at least the ones that come after they immigrate here). But unless you are indigenous North American, then YOU or your ancestors before you were at one time immigrants or refugees to this land. Do you understand that? Once it was taken from its original inhabitants you have no better claim to this land than any other except through circumstance of birth which you have nothing to do with.
So please explain to me why you think others, regardless of where they originate, shouldn’t be afforded the same opportunity to resettle here and assimilate just as your ancestors did. At least until such time as our nation hits is resource “carrying capacity” (which is a legitimate discussion to have) and then if we are going to end immigration or strictly regulate it, then do it on the basis of what best serves our “economy” and not on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation or gender identity, religion or national origin.
Wow you spent way too much effort providing a completely invalid point. Comparing immigration today to 80+ years ago or even 30years ago makes no sense. Today there is instant communication, countries are a short plane ride apart, and 1 individual has the capacity to commit massive destruction on there own. Back then you had to assimilate to survive.
taking the risk of inviting killers into your community because there are other greater statistically significant risks in everyday life like food poisoning… ? Say what?! Talk about willful ignorance.
The Zarqawi letter was published by the US government and we all know how truthful the US government is……Please watch this and see who might have actually planted that bomb to destroy the mosque and start a sectarian war..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgzkU4mmEdk
And what is your support for the notion that it was fabricated – Anything beyond Al Qaeda denying it?
I’ve got both of my middle fingers up. One pointing at the Military Industrial Complex and one pointing to ISIS. They can both go and fuck themselves. We as a human race should stand against these arrogant fools who think they can conquer us by dividing us. Playing us off against one another. Don’t trust any bullshitter that wants you to believe that it’s us against them. They need us to believe in an enemy because without it they know that they would have no power left.
That was a blockquote test.
Apart from the finger pointing… I see the two as one in the same assemblage of a war machine that has taken on its own sovereign logic…
“Instead, Western nations should remain defiant, making clear through word and deed that they refuse to see the world divided on Islamic State’s terms.”
Our author seems to be asking western nations to behave in a moral way with compassion and understanding instead of blind retribution and increased profits for weapons manufacturers. The fossil fuel corporations are also reaping the benefits of a disorganized citizenry who may be less interested in focusing attention on tackling the climate disaster that is heading our way.
I too second that plea but feel certain that pleas are simply not adequate for the threat that we, humans, are facing.