Why we fight

[Homer]

I agree with you about the threat posed to Western civilisation by resurgent, militant Islam. It is very difficult to see how any liberal, secular culture can defend itself against a passionate (some would say extremist) religion-based movement. Anything is possible and permissible when you know absolutely without a shred of doubt that you are right and the everyone else is wrong.

Gaza and the West Bank may be symbolic, but are not in themselves a particular threat. IMHO.

Western civilization has nothing to worry about. We defend ourselves by living life as we have been doing. Plurism is our strength.

Possible? yes. Probable? no.

[Tjay]

Western civilization has nothing to worry about. We defend ourselves by living life as we have been doing. Plurism is our strength.

Possible? yes. Probable? no.

Not so sure. They is an argument that Western civilization has become fat, lazy and decadent. And history teaches us what happens when such civilizations come face to face with passionate agressors convinced of the righteousness of their cause and prepared to make sacrifices the decadent are not.

[Tacbat]

Mind you, in the past, the decadent civilizations didn't have the capability of ending the world.

[Ssnake]

They is an argument that Western civilization has become fat, lazy and decadent.

That's what the Nazis said about the United States, and look who's still there.

It's what the Judean People's Front (or was it the People's Front of Judea? SPLITTERS!) said about the Roman Empire. Yeah, the Romans GOT decadent some seven hundred years after they started kicking major butt in the Mediterranean, but there haven't yet been many empires in human history that prevailed for more than an entire millenium.

Victor Davis Hanson made the case in "The Soul of Battle" that there are few things more dangerous than democratic societies mounting for battle to overthrow repressive societies. Yes, it takes an awful amount of momentum to convince a majority in democracies that war is necessary, but once that the ball gets rolling there isn't much to stop it. His examples are the end of Sparta, Sherman's March to the Sea, and Patton's outbreak from Normandy and into Germany. Other devastating victories that come to my mind are the downfall of the Japanese Empire, the end of Saddam Hussein (admittedly the following uprising tarnished the overwhelming initial victory).

Let's be honest here. We're not going for an all-out war against Arabs because, all their posturing, Snackbar yelling and saber rattling aside, they are no real threat to western civilization as such. The individual terrorist on your doorstep is a serious and real threat to you personally. But as a collective they are pathetic, backward, illiterate barbarians. They can't muster the military strength to challenge us on a national level. All that they can do is to blow up a bomb now and then, or crash a few planes. These terrorist activities, as despicable and horrible as they may appear to be, are miniscule in comparison to the number of dead that we tolerate due to traffic accidents. They are much more substantial in weak states like Iraq after the invasion, Afghanistan, Somalia, Mali, etc. - simply because there is no organized and systematic domestic security apparatus like our own police forces. More than 95% of the victims of Islamist terrorists are other muslims, NOT members of western civilizations.

If we would perceive them as a real real threat, there'd be glowing glass south of the Mediterranean (maybe we'd spare a few holiday resorts). They haven't by far hurt us enough to motivate us for an all-out "them or us" type of conflict. Only Iran might, and Pakistan has developed the capacity to seriously hurt us (and even then not in a civilization-endangering way like the Soviets did), and they are probably more rational acting than popular belief.

Yeah, we're decadent and fat and lazy - and what are they going to do about it? :biggrin:

It is our very lifestyle that is the biggest threat to their medieval world view. They are losing, and they know it (arguably that's the reason why they are using violence against us to begin with).

[Captain_Colossus]

Neither Iran nor Pakistan are Arab states- I think the underlying connections that people are making is Islam.

Of course this risks violating your forum's policy, but there have been few voices in the West other than on the political left or in academia which propounds objective views on why the Arabs or the Muslims hate us. Whenever the few policy makers or CIA analysts offer criticism as regarding US foreign policy, they are often made to be pariahs or discredited or made to sound disloyal- on the contrary, they are often quite concerned with keeping the West out of the crosshairs of Muslim or Arab anger. Usually these fall under the lines that we are wrong to believe the usual theory, that is to say, they simply hate us for our way of life or our freedom.

Realistically, that's not usually the motivation for attacks on the West. Freedom was not the reason that Saudis, Kuwaitis and Egyptians hatched a scheme to destroy the Twin Towers or the Pentagon. Indeed, in some sense, Saudi Islamic militants have argued that they are fighting for their own freedoms against a very harsh, unelected government, the one that the West supports.

These people usually try to objectively argue that:

1) In the equation, we ignore the heavy handed, yet convoluted approach in our foreign policy, that we have tended to support authoritarian governments and their methods to keep their citizens poor, underemployed, and under compliance. US policy-making through its influence and muscle shapes affairs in their countries more than the common people who actually live in these countries.

2) That our foreign policy with regards to Israel is unbalanced and simply would never be 'fair'.

3) The perception that we tend to look at Arab or Muslim lives has having less worth (rightly or wrongly) does exist.

We simply do not approach the problem this way in order to asses the Muslim anger. This is not to say that anyone who points these issues out approve of backwards, militant Islam. What this is trying to do is objectively understand why these people would attack targets in the US or Great Britain rather than in Japan or in Denmark.

[Ssnake]

Yeah... this thread is pretty close to religious and political discussion, and that I'm participating in it doesn't make it any better. I shall split these last postings into a different thread, accept a few more replies and then close it, OK?

Still, I'd like to point out that Islamists DID attack in Spain, they attempted to murder Kurt Westergaard in Denmark and Salman Rushdie because these were executing the fundamental tenet of open societies (freedom of speech); numerous attempts of their terrorist activity in Germany were foiled or failed for technical reasons in the past years. Even before the war in Afghanistan was in full swing, Islamists attempted to crash an airliner in Paris. Yet none of these countries has such a big footprint in middle-eastern politics (or had it back then) as the US. The UK may have a bigger exposure because of the fights in Helmand (to an extent the same case could also be made for Germany and France, but not Spain and Denmark).

Bin Laden's reasoning that he had to attack the US because of the presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia post 1991 is quite a bit of a stretch, given that these military installations were and are behind closed gates with little to no interaction with the surrounding population (but I'm giving him the benefit of doubt that it might still offend a religious zealot because fanatics can get worked up over about anything).

Even in admitting that the West has given reason to people in the middle east to hate us beyond reasons of religion and culture it's impossible to ignore that there's more behind it than a mere disagreement over which tyrants the West supports. Looking at MEMRI, the all-permeating, unlimited hate of everything related to Jews, not just Israel or "Zionism" is shocking. The statistics of who falls victim to terrorist bombings with Islamist background are impossible to refute either. It's not Westerners who are the prime target - more than 95% the victims are other Muslims. To me this suggests that it's a religiously motivated power struggle, the attempt to violently overthrow the Arab societies (and Pakistan) to erect a Caliphate (and who knows what will happen after the fall of the current cleric government in Iran). The "objective explanation" does not convince me in full because it can't explain all the observed data. There IS a term of cultural clash in the equation as well.

[Captain_Colossus]

Right.

I think the point is that it is more convoluted than any single reason, and we should not necessarily do something or not do something at the wishes of Islamists, rather, if you want to understand why when and where Islamists select their targets, the reasons aren't simply because of contempt for the West's freedoms. Islamists are a threat to Russians and Chinese and Indians as well- so the freedom issue doesn't really carry over in that way. And there's a difference between home grown Islamists, who have failed for whatever reason to accept the Western countries they live in, and the foreign Islamists- they have different motivations even though they may end up cooperating or appearing as though their interests are aligned. Remember, many of those guys on 9/11 weren't poor Islamists, the ringleaders were either Western educated or from a middle class that enjoyed more freedoms than the poorer slobs at the bottom of the rung. On the other hand, the Taliban in Afghanistan aren't about bringing about the destruction of America, they aren't interested in America's freedoms, their interests are local, we come into conflict with them because we are there.

When you watch angry people in the streets in these countries on news broadcasts, they explain what they're angry about. We don't take this at face value, rather, we inject our interpretation- their reason couldn't make sense, so we'll make sense of it for them.

The tapes that OBL was issuing to the West in the 90s telegraphed exactly what he was about, and we dismissed them as the ravings of a lunatic man. They weren't so much that he intends to attack America because America is decadent, but rather decadent states such as America and their puppets were plotting to destroy Islam. He listed point by point what his issues were, when they made good on what they planned to do, the issue which everyone rallied behind just simply was wrapped up in the bullet point: freedom.

My point is, they'll tell you what they want to do, there's no reason why we should never believe what they're saying and replace that with a different interpretation.

[Tjay]

There are ways other than simply violence - military or otherwise - to bring down a culture or civilisation. One way is to nibble at the outsides, converting outlying states to your way of thought. Another is subversion from the inside. It is accepted that there are urban enclaves in the UK where Islam and Sharia law take precedence over the statutory laws of the State. And neither the politicians nor the police seem willing to take a stand. That sends the message that we are don't have faith in our own institutions or that we don't care sufficiently about them to enforce them. Not good IMHO.

[Captain_Colossus]

People have argued the same thing- that Sharia Law is replacing the Anglo-American legal traditions in America.

This is not true, this is not a correct understanding of what is happening. There is no Sharia Law, unless lawmakers passed such laws- since there are no Muslim dominated legislatures, since there is none in US Congress, this is impossible. And if that were the case, there is a fail safe called the Courts which can overturn such laws if they contravene the US Constitution.

What is possible is what's known as ADR- alternative dispute resolution. This means settlements that are out of court, in situations that are not criminal cases or civil cases which do not require the court's intervention, usually in family cases where the issues are too trivial or are better suited not to burden the courts with, the parties are permitted to work out their own solutions, such as through an arbiter that is respected by both parties or by the community. You do this all the time for example if you had a dispute with your brother, and your dad/mother or teachers or priest/pastor, or someone else mediated the dispute. If that didn't work, you go to courts and the civil laws and the civil rules of procedure are what matter.

The moment however the subject matter of the arrangement were illegal- for example, an honor killing or a person given as a slave as payment, that arrangement is off, the courts will not enforce an illegal cure to the problem. And if you think the Muslims are unique in this regard, they have already done this with other ethnic groups and communities- Jewish, Asians, or other groups.

I work in Silicon Valley just a walk away from eSim's US listed corporate address. I don't have a problem with the large Muslim populations I see at all, many of them are professionals- engineers, medical doctors, attorneys, scientists. Many others drive taxis, operate the decadent liquor and porn shops (that's ironic), smoke and tobacco shops and restaurants. They aren't doing any of this sort of bad business at all. Now of course, what has happened in France or other European countries, well, that's different, and they'll have to figure out why that is.

[TankHunter]

I don't know UK politics, but Sharia in the US has the same standing as Canon law and Halakha. In other words if secular law does not have something to say, then agreements based on these other laws are acceptable. If secular laws do have something to say then secular law takes precedence. There is also the Constitution which prevents Sharia, Canon, Halakha, etc from being the law of the land in the US.

[Captain_Colossus]

Or anything that isn't remotely religious oriented. The law does not permit illegal subject matter in a contract dispute. Whether there is a religious background to the case has nothing to do with it.

So, if A contracts with B to kill C over a cheating spouse, and B fails to perform in his part of the deal, A can't bring a lawsuit and name B as a defendant in court.

[Hedgehog]

There are ways other than simply violence - military or otherwise - to bring down a culture or civilisation. One way is to nibble at the outsides, converting outlying states to your way of thought. Another is subversion from the inside.

Sneaky Bastards, You want to live here?

You live by our rules, not yours.

(And then they make a big stink about "How it is our culture" wah wah wah.)

And neither the politicians nor the police seem willing to take a stand. That sends the message that we are don't have faith in our own institutions or that we don't care sufficiently about them to enforce them. Not good IMHO

Judges are a different matter.

I recall a Law case where Sharia law was mentioned. Or it might have been a magazine article, not sure. Anyway the Judge involved went ballistic, and told these idiots trying to use Sharia Law in an English court, to get stuffed and F**k off, not sure if he found them in contempt of court, but it wouldn't surprise me.

TankHunter, English Law Court actions are based on previous cases.

This is why legal cases that change the precedence are a big thing with the media over here.

[Captain_Colossus]

I recall a Law case where Sharia law was mentioned. Or it might have been a magazine article, not sure. Anyway the Judge involved went ballistic, and told these idiots trying to use Sharia Law in an English court, to get stuffed and F**k off,

Well, that's your answer as to Sharia Law taking over right there, isn't it? Kind of a wash.

This is why legal cases that change the precedence are a big thing with the media over here.

Case law (court made law) and statutory laws (laws made by lawmakers- in your case, Parliament or local Councils). I am an American, but I studied International law at Edinburgh University, there was not a mention anywhere that I should know about Sharia laws.

So basically, in a free society, anyone can do what they want free from criminal sanctions as long as it's legal. If I decide to do something according to my own moral code or my religious beliefs (for example, be opposed to abortion because my religion informs me as such), I'm free to do so. But if my religion says I can do something against the law, such as kill abortion providers, well then, I've committed murder and I've run afoul of the authorities. Believing as though there are two separate laws isn't so (really there would be more if that were the case- you'd have Catholic, Protestant, Jewish laws, among many others, there's no reason to believe it would only be between Sharia and English Law).

I am not religious- I should have an issue with every person out there who goes and votes according to what they believe is true that I don't believe. After all, part of Amendment I of the US Constitution contains the Establishment Clause, that is, there can be no law which promotes or establishes a state religion. But people vote, they select representatives that way anyway.

[Captain_Colossus]

This thing that is going on in Syria right now is emblematic why the politics is so messed up, this is the lump sum of the West's involvement.

Syria is a secular Arab state ruled by Muslim minority sects- Shiites as well as a select class of bourgeois Sunnis. The Syrian government's trustworthy allies in the region besides the Russians is Iran, not a secular state, and not an Arab state. They are Persians. Besides this alliance, Persians and Arabs have not gotten along so well.

The rebellion against the Syrian government is a mixed bag but largely identified with Sunni Muslims, the largest Muslim sect in Syria, arch enemies of the Shiites. One of the state actors supporting these guys are the Saudis, who despise Iran. There is evidence that the Saudi government would sooner cooperate with the Israelis rather than the Iranians or Syrians. The West tends to be pro-Sunni at the state level (Iraq, Saudi Arabia) rather than pro-Shia. Of course, some of our worst terrorist enemies have been Sunni Muslims.

This situation is almost the reverse case in Iraq. The West 'liberated' the Shiite minority groups from a secularist Sunni majority government, with the Iranians making power play moves in Iraq supporting Shiite groups which didn't want to support the post Saddam Western supported government. Of course, Iran and Iraq had a history of one of the most violent and bloody conflicts ever waged.

[TankHunter]

The Alawis are nominally Shia. They are really something other than Muslim, this is due to their concept of tawhid. The Alawis believe that the godhead is divided into a trinity, consisting of Muhammed, Ali and al-Farsi. Muslims however believe that there is one unified God, so this means that if the Alawis are indeed Muslim, that they are extremely heterodox. There are also other things, such as celebration of non-standard holidays, secrecy as to rites and rituals, etc which make them stand apart from other groups that claim to be Muslim.

As regards the rebellion, as far as I am aware not only is it predominately Sunni, but also from the poorer parts of society. So there is a socio-economic aspect of it too. So we have poor people who are religiously conservative, part of groups which are if not openly Islamist in nature then at least use Islam as a unifying force, with the Salafis receiving the bulk of foreign aid and apparently doing much of the fighting.

The West's involvement in Syria to me just highlights the fact that we have become increasingly demented when it comes to our policies. We were attacked by Salafis on 9-11 and we are actively fighting that ilk in Afghanistan and other lands. But just over a decade after 9-11 we are actively supporting efforts to form what may well be a Salafi state in Syria, at the expense of a multi-confessional government. With of course hawks and the media in the US pushing for a bombing campaign in support of the insurgents.

[Tjay]

I don't know UK politics, but Sharia in the US has the same standing as Canon law and Halakha. In other words if secular law does not have something to say, then agreements based on these other laws are acceptable. If secular laws do have something to say then secular law takes precedence. There is also the Constitution which prevents Sharia, Canon, Halakha, etc from being the law of the land in the US.

Agree completely with the posts above regarding the LEGAL situation. But it appears that in the UK, national laws are not being enforced in certain urban areas because the local Muslim community has 'persuaded' the law enforcement authorities not to intervene - even if the alleged acts (such as forced marriage involving kidnap, and femal genital mutilation) are illegal under UK law. In other words, the State has informally and unofficially abrogated its rights rather than face conflict with the local community. Such non-action risks setting precedents which can later by used to argue the legitimacy of the illegal acts.

[Captain_Colossus]

Well, that sounds like a Muslim on Muslim crime and the police just not caring, that sounds different than the version where Muslims are making everyone else abide by Sharia law.

Is there a case where a Muslim allegedly kidnapped a non-Muslim and the police not investigating?

[Homer]

I should clarify my last post because I was not trying to rationalize the motivations of religious militants. I was only suggesting that we as a society should not significantly alter our behavior, culture, and laws in an overreaction to something that is relatively less significant when compared to more immediate dangers that are present everyday (health issues, accidents, ect.). I'm not that naive.

Personally, I think its a political/social/economic response to global empires which usually provokes resistance in the form of terrorism. The roots of current Islamic terrorism can be traced back to the 10th (?) century "Assassins". It's nothing new. I am not certain if the use of terrorism alone has ever succeeded in achieving its desired goals, but I would be confident in saying that it has an extremely high failure rate.

[Captain_Colossus]

As Ssnake stated, Muslims die at the hands of Muslims more than anyone else- this is a great explanation as to why I'm saying that there is no umbrella explanation that they do what they do because only they hate America's freedoms. They neither are motivated that way when they fight one or another, nor in their conflicts with other states such as what you have in the Philippines, or in Russia, China or India.

For the most part, they don't even act that way. There's a general level of frustration in the Muslim world both for its own internal reasons and reasons directed externally.

[Homer]

Hedgehog,

No color commentary please. This thread is skating on thin ice already and the only reason its still alive is because of its civility.

Thank you.

[Homer]

...

I interpret it this way: It's not who are, but rather it's who we are not.

[TankHunter]

As Ssnake stated, Muslims die at the hands of Muslims more than anyone else- this is a great explanation as to why I'm saying that there is no umbrella explanation that they do what they do because only they hate America's freedoms. They neither are motivated that way when they fight one or another, nor in their conflicts with other states such as what you have in the Philippines, or in Russia, China or India.

For the most part, they don't even act that way. There's a general level of frustration in the Muslim world both for its own internal reasons and reasons directed externally.

Alot if not all of those conflicts are motivated by nationalism. In the Philippines the Moros want independence, in Russia the Chechens want to be rid of the Russians (can't blame them really considering the history), in China the Uyghurs never considered themselves part of China, and China broke promises to them as regards self determination IIRC.

[Captain_Colossus]

I interpret it this way: It's not who are, but rather it's who we are not.

Well, I'm not aware of any terrorist group's stated goals which included converting America to Islam. Some wanted to expand into Africa and Asia, that's true.

[Ssnake]

IMO the disparity of what life could be, and how it actually is, is harder and harder to conceal or explain away for societies that don't offer a similar degree of widespread wealth and welfare. This dissonance opens the door for all kinds of loons with their different explanations, be it "socialism", "nationalism", the "right" religion, ... - and to blame others, if the cure fails (those evil Joos, the Great Satan and his minions, the Illuminati, Capitalism, the "Crusaders", ...)

Unfortunately, the reason why there are different levels of prosperity has also something to do with culture (it's not the single explanation, but an important contributing factor). In other words, in order to achieve a similar degree of prosperity it would require to give up elements of these cultures that are deeply ingrained, or a matter of personal identity. Not everybody may have identified it consciously, but I think most can "feel" it, and this dissonance causes anger.

If the young men in Saudi Arabia could get laid before 30 (and a decent job on top of it), I'm sure that there'd be a lot less motivation for them to turn towards Islamofascism. Wahabism is at the center of the problems that they have, and at the same time it's the raison d'etre for the state, the monarchy, and the cultural identity of this piece of desert. For other countries Wahabism may not be at the center of the issues, but a similar effect is there through the combination of machismo, traditions incompatible with modernity, the unwillingness to accept an "interpretation" of the Koran, a lack of good governance, repressive governments, and no reliability in the judicial system.

[Homer]

In economic terms, it's been downhill for that region since the end of Ottoman empire. Besides oil, what else do they produce?