Paris attacks

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Here's the best thing I've read over the past few days on the subject of Middle East-based terrorism and where its funding comes from…and why. Warning: article contains calm, reasoned, informed analysis. Chest-thumping xenophobes need not bother reading.

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a39727/paris-attacks-middle-eastern-oligarchies/

-Dave-

Ok.. I read it. I hope it clears me from the pre-emptive labeling as a "chest-thumping xenophobe"? Nevermind, that was rhetorical.

But you got to love the conclusion:

Retaliate, and you do not want to know what will happen, but it will done with cold, reasoned and, yes, pitiless calculation.

How's that much different from what I was saying?

[LesPalenik]

German Spiegel has very good coverage of the Paris scene - every day several new and comprehensive articles - in german.
They have also English (international) section, but unfortunately those are all older articles.

Even if you have to run the German text through a translation software, it's a good read. The articles contain a lot of factual information not available in USA or Canada.

Spiegel

[wmchauncey]

Look at it from a Middle Eastern point of view...here you have groups of peoples that have made no contribution to mankind
since Islam was introduced and that there only source of income is under their feet, and that was discovered by the civilized
world, and that, due to the West's technology, is becoming valueless as we speak.  Ponder the lack of self esteem that these
people see as being forced upon them by the evil West.

Were you to rate them in Maslow's hierarchy of needs, they would not attain stage one...is that not sad.
To realize that your people have no value in the scheme of the civilized world. 
Tis no wonder that they crave death for themselves and others.

[elliot_n]

What's this crap about "poverty and lack of education"? Every single known Islamic terrorist so far has been rich or well-off and well educated.

That's not even slightly true.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

That's not even slightly true.

Not true? Slightly true? Not even slightly true!?

Seriously!?

Dr Marc Sageman of the University of Pennsylvania has conducted an exhaustive study of al-Qa'eda's people.  He collected the life histories of 400 individuals either in al-Qa'eda or closely linked to it, and found that traditional theories of what motivates a terrorist — poverty, desperation, ignorance — did not apply in al-Qa'eda's case.  Indeed, some of them turned their backs on cushy lives to sign up for bin Laden's fanciful war against the West.

A majority of Sageman's sample were well-to-do: 17.6 per cent were upper class, 54.9 per cent were middle class and 27.5 per cent were lower class.  For those individuals whose educational records were available, 16.7 per cent had been educated to a level less than high school; 12.1 per cent had at least a high school education; 28.8 per cent had some college education; 33.3 per cent had a college degree; and 9 per cent had a postgraduate degree.  Only 9.4 per cent had a religious education and 90.6 per cent had a secular education.

This good schooling is reflected in their career paths: 42.5 per cent were professionally employed (as doctors, lawyers, teachers, etc.), 32.8 per cent had a semi-skilled job, and 24.6 per cent were unskilled.
And where do they become alienated?  Here's a hint:
Strikingly, 70 per cent joined the jihad while away from home. Sageman describes them as the 'elite of their country' sent abroad to study because the schools in Germany, France, England and the US are better.  Egyptian-born Mohammed Atta, who crashed the jet into the North Tower of the World Trade Center on 9/11, became a violent-minded extremist while studying architecture in Hamburg.   Ahmed Omar Sheikh, the Briton convicted of murdering American journalist Daniel Pearl, attended the London School of Economics.  Al-Qa'eda's 'breeding ground', it seems, is as much in fragmented cities in the West as in hotbeds of Islamism in the East.

One investigation by Princeton-trained economist Claude Berrebi analyzed 335 members of the Palestinian terror groups, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The terrorists surveyed were mainly shahids, or "martyrs," who had died while waging jihad against Israel between 1987 and 2002. Berrebi discovered that 16 percent of those terrorists could be classified as poor, compared to 31 percent of the male Muslim population (between the ages 18 and 41) in the Palestinian territories as a whole. Conversely, 33 percent of the terrorists could be considered “well off,” compared to only 20 percent of Palestinian adult males in that same age group. And another 10 percent of the terrorists were “very well off” according to the survey, as opposed to virtually 0 percent of Palestinian males overall who fit that same description. The study also indicated that the Palestinian terrorists were generally more highly educated than the typical male in the Palestinian population at large...

... The anecdotal evidence is also overwhelming. Osama bin Laden, for instance, inherited the extraordinarily large fortune of his Saudi family. Al Qaeda's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, is a trained physician. Mohammed Atta, ringleader of the 9/11 attacks, was a graduate student in Germany when he became radicalized. One of the 2005 London bombers left behind an estate valued at more than $150,000. The 2007 terrorist attack at Scotland's Glasgow International Airport was carried out by a medical doctor and an engineer. Nidal Hasan, the U.S. Army psychiatrist who killed 13 people and wounded at least 31 others (at Fort Hood, Texas) in November 2009, was highly educated and financially well-off. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian terrorist who attempted to detonate explosives aboard a Northwest Airlines flight on Christmas Day 2009, was a child of Alhaji Umaru Mutallab, one of the richest men in Africa (and the former Nigerian Federal Commissioner for Economic Development).

[Tarnash]

Knowing the social and/or economic circumstances of individual terrorists may help to explain their motivation but does little to help non-jihadists understand the ideology that underpins (`justifies') their actions.  The problem, as I see it, is with the belief system and the circumstances that lead otherwise largely unremarkable individuals to suspend their humanity in order act on its most extreme tenets.  That, in itself, is not exclusive to any one religion and is perhaps not a religious thing at all.  Surely this is a time for careful reflection, not simply reaction.

[amolitor]

One imagines that a well to do Muslim might be motivated to action on behalf of the less fortunate. It's not seen as bizarre when Christians do it.

[Robert Roaldi]

The religious aspect is probably the excuse not the cause. And that made be more generally true, not just in this case. When you want to whip up people into a frenzy, you use emotion.

And we should probably keep in mind that the Turk and Kurd (and other) troops fighting ISIS on the ground are themselves mainly muslim (culturally if not always religiously). Reducing this to good guy vs bad guy is not helpful; it has not been so thus far, or we wouldn't be here.

A good interview podcast on the conflict (may not be available outside Canada): podcast link.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

One imagines that a well to do Muslim might be motivated to action on behalf of the less fortunate...

Oh, how delightful! So sweet actually. The newest spin: the most vicious, barbaric terrorists in modern history are actually just Robin Hoods.

It is almost as good as this one from today's news:

A Democrat candidate for a state representative seat in Minnesota has withdrawn from the race after he drew ire from many — including those in his own party — with a controversial tweet following the Paris terrorist attacks.
“ISIS isn’t necessarily evil,” Dan Kimmel, a candidate for a Minnesota state representative seat tweeted Saturday. “It is made up of people doing what they think is best for their community. Violence is not the answer, though.”

[amolitor]

That's not what I said and it diminishes you to pretend I did.

[Rajan Parrikar]

The religious aspect is probably the excuse not the cause.

Far be it from me to stand in the way of your fantasies. All I know is, for me the kafir, there are some not-too-pleasant things prescribed in the Quran.

[Rajan Parrikar]

According to the Left loons, the real victims of Paris are the Muslims, not the infidels. Solution: import more Muslims. Good luck. At this rate, there don't be a Europe in 20 years.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

That's not what I said and it diminishes you to pretend I did.

Then support what you said with any evidence that ISIS fights for the poor, that they have any socio-economic program to that end, other than establishing a religious rule in the form of a caliphate. Unless you count distributing under-age girls to their fighters as a profit-sharing system?

[Robert Roaldi]

Far be it from me to stand in the way of your fantasies. All I know is, for me the kafir, there are some not-too-pleasant things prescribed in the Quran.

I'm sure that's true, and it's probably true of many religious texts.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

I'm sure that's true, and it's probably true of many religious texts.

It might be, though I doubt the degree is the same. However, even if true, nobody is acting today on those other religious texts, at least not on such a massive scale or with such devastating consequences.

[Rajan Parrikar]

I'm sure that's true, and it's probably true of many religious texts.

The key point is, in the current day, only adherents to one text put it into practice.

[amolitor]

I am not interested in arguing the details of this case or that. My aim is to dump on reductionism wherever I find it.

Consider this: everyone thinks they're the good guys. Simply saying loudly 'but WE ARE' doesn't make you any righter.

There is plenty of blame to go around. To simply apply it all to the other guys is absurd.

[amolitor]

The key point is, in the current day, only adherents to one text put it into practice.

Nonsense. People do horrible things in the name of Christianity and Judaism quite regularly.

[amolitor]

The scientologists are not immune. The Hindus like to keep their hand in. I think the Sikhs have done the odd atrocity in the last decade but I might be misremembering.

I think there are sects of Buddhists, for crying out loud, that do terrible things, although they may not be active at this exact time.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Nonsense. People do horrible things in the name of Christianity and Judaism quite regularly.

And I jaywalk regularly, thus break the law, thus I am a criminal. The same criminal as any other serial killer or mass murderer. Right?

Scale, my friend, scale matters.