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The cause of ISIS is Islamic extremism. Not income inequality. Not climate change. Islamic extremism. Those who claim otherwise are merely playing politics to

by judah 11y ago

The cause of ISIS is Islamic extremism. Not income inequality. Not climate change. Islamic extremism. Those who claim otherwise are merely playing politics to advance political agendas. Sam Harris, the well-known atheist author and speaker, describes such people well[0]: "These people are part of what [Muslim reformist] Maajid Nawaz has termed the “regressive Left”—pseudo-liberals who are so blinded by identity politics that they reliably take the side of a backward mob over one of its victims. Rather than protect individual women, apostates, intellectuals, cartoonists, novelists, and true liberals from the intolerance of religious imbeciles, they protect these theocrats from criticism." To say the problem with ISIS is anything other than Islamic extremism is a red herring. In this case, Piketty has long been advancing his political agenda regarding income inequality. He is merely playing politics here, using the ISIS problem to advance his agenda. [0]: http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/sam-harris-the-salon-interview http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/sam-harris-the-salon-inte...

bosdev 11y ago
What is the origin of the Islamic extremism? Why does this group of Muslims kill people while the vast majority do not?
- RickHull 11y ago
  Many Muslims are subject to extreme indoctrination and brainwashing regarding the metaphysics of martyrdom. Jihadist imams have figured out the virality of this particular meme, and the environment in which it may take root. Depressed economic conditions end up gifting jihadist recruiters with more reasons for individuals to join up and become a martyr.
- _prototype_ 11y ago
  The biggest issue is the believe that there is a separation of "extreme islam" vs "mainstream (non-violent) islam" when the calls for violence in the religion are extremely clear and in their holy book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LBpmPXv1R4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LBpmPXv1R4
- flubert 11y ago
  > Why does this group of Muslims kill people while the vast majority do not? Pareto? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle
mikeash 11y ago
People who hold to your preferred cause are the only sane ones, and everyone else is "merely playing politics." Cool. Or maybe, just maybe, the real world is a little more complex than that. Maybe it is Islamic extremism and climate change and income inequality and a thousand other things all interacting with each other. I don't doubt that Piketty is using ISIS to advance his agenda, because that's what people do. Everybody everywhere is using ISIS to advance their agenda. Piketty uses it to support his ideas about income inequality, and Sam Harris uses it to support his ideas about Islam. Ultimately, pointing fingers does nothing. The question is, what do you do now to fix things? I don't see anything actionable on that front coming out of the "Islamic extremism" cause.
- jules 11y ago
  There's actually lots of really important actions that get mostly ignored precisely because saying that this is related to religion is politically incorrect. 1. The West should more publicly defend the people who stand to gain most from a decrease of religiosity in Muslim majority countries: women, intellectuals, gays, etc. Those are the people who have a self-interest in reform, and thus are most likely to actually try. 2. In Europe in particular there should be a bigger emphasis on religion in education; particularly education about different religions and about atheism. 3. Any immigrants and refugees should get personal and very intense help to integrate into European society, and gaining a European passport should be tied to achievement of those goals. 4. Salafist and Wahhabist organisations should be banned, and any money coming from Saudia Arabia and other Gulf states investigated. etc.
manachar 11y ago
Okay, and why is Islamic extremism taking root and spreading? It's like a body, you've got loads of bacteria all over your body, including some nasty MRSA stuff on your skin. This isn't normally a problem. But sometimes something can trigger a situation where the bad bacteria can spread and literally eat your body. ISIS would be a footnote in an odd corner of the world if it weren't for favorable conditions for them to flourish. This very much includes Islamic extremism as their call to legitimacy as a caliphate resonates with far too many. It is absolutely not a red herring to point to the root conditions for ISIS success. It's incorrect if one thinks it's ONLY income inequality, compared to an interplay of conditions (Iraq destabilization, income inequality, Islamic extremism, and geopolitical machinations providing a destabilized Syria amongst them).
- iofj 11y ago
  Ok. How about "because the states stopping them were sabotaged by external actors". In Iraq's case pretty obvious. From a local's perspective, here's what the US did : 1) remove nationalists from power by destroying all infrastructure. They sucked, but they sucked for everybody and they weren't nearly as bad as religous muslims. 2) jobs ... gone. Money ... gone (or gone soon). Family ... partially gone. Tribe ... partially gone. Security forces replaced by US troops, who don't speak the language. 3) this situation persists for years. 4) (for Sunni's, Christians, ...) US replaces security forces (suddenly) with an army exclusively formed by a religious grouping that Sunni's are attacking wherever they can (Bahrain, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Afghanistan ...) who are looking for revenge. 5) These new security forces come in, US forces don't keep them in check, then suddenly abandon everyone. This sort of stuff becomes commonplace : http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-03-11/shiite-militias-also-carry-out-atrocities-in-iraq http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-03-11/shiite-mili... 6) several tens of thousands of people that this happened to were soldiers. So why is islamic extremism spreading ? For Iraq, you have the answer above this sentence. For Europe/America the answer is different. It is not spreading within the older generation, people who fled the middle east. It is spreading within the youth. How ? Well : 1) schools, bankrolled from Saudi Arabia and Turkey teach islamic supremacism to the kids of immigrant muslims. 2) western european states do token cleanups of these schools every 10 years or so, but not fast enough to make them stop. 3) these kids are not educated to the level even bad local schools educate local youngsters. At 18, they are suddenly abandoned, and quickly find out that no job, no family (not possible without job), no car, no status symbols, ... sucks 4) furthermore. Suddenly islamic supremacism educated kids finds society (including muslims) shun them, or worse. Why ? They have no decent skills, and because of the supremacism thing they are prone to violence. 5) they subsist on welfare for a while, generally causing trouble around them and little else. 6) someone offers them a purpose. "Free" brides (ie. kidnapped women and children. Like most muslim scholars, daesh sees nothing wrong with forced marriage at 6, after all the prophet did it. Makes you wonder how "normal" muslims morally deal with that). A state and police force that supports the supremacism and a free ride over. Oh and a monthly paycheck that more or less matches local welfare checks and what you might call life insurance. The biggest thing stopping them: daesh has a reputation for getting people killed and abandoning them. Let's get real here : if the US did the same to a Western European country it did to Iraq, there'd be isis/daesh territory in the middle of Western Europe, no doubt. Also let's face facts here, and scale the problem. Daesh/islam will not be recruiting really large amounts of muslims from the western world. But it is growing : these people will cause a civil war in Europe unless the situation changes.
splawn 11y ago
I am not disagreeing with you here, but what you are saying doesn't discount that income inequality could still lead desperate people into Islamic (or more generally religious, or even more generally, ideological) extremism. Blind faith thrives among the poor and uneducated.
aeturnum 11y ago
> To say the problem with ISIS is anything other than Islamic extremism is a red herring. This assertion seems obviously false. ISIS isn't suddenly "better" because they are killing in the name of something other than "Islamic extremism." There are also plenty of extreme right-wing muslims who don't kill people, which also suggests that a generic diagnosis of "islamic extremism" is not enough to explain ISIS. If you /really/ believe ISIS is powered by a fervent belief in fundamentalist Islam and nothing else, then there are no remedies other than killing every member of the group as their rhetoric inescapably leads to the conclusion they should kill everyone who disagrees with them. Of course, to believe that, you also have to believe previous groups that espoused philosophies with similar conclusions (Al' Qaeda, etc) were lying - as we haven't kill all of their members and their terrorist & militant activities have fallen off. If all muslim extremists are driven solely by personal belief in islamic extremism, we would never expect them to change their behavior. But people do change! All the time. So, even if you believe that all extremely right-wing muslims want to kill everyone all the time (a preposition I find hard to believe myself), you should also see that some (most I would say) muslim extremists choose not to kill most of the people most of the time. If we want to save as many lives as possible we should, while we push back against the intellectual garbage of extreme Islam, should also work to understand the factors that cause some extremists to kill and others to live in relative harmony.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > Of course, to believe that, you also have to believe previous groups that espoused philosophies with similar conclusions (Al' Qaeda, etc) were lying - as we haven't kill all of their members and their terrorist & militant activities have fallen off. Well, to be fair, for part of the time al-Qaeda was dominant in the threat list, the group now calling itself "the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant" was calling itself "al-Qaeda in Iraq".
  - aeturnum 11y ago
    Sure - and al'qaeda "central" kicked them out because they believed ISIS was too extreme and violent. Since then they have worked with groups as diverse as the FBI[0] to oppose the goals of ISIS. The whole interaction makes believe all the more that 'Islamic Extremism' is far too general a term. When dealing with groups that self-identify as islamic extremists, it's vital to understand what they mean by that, but it's insufficient to understand the entire picture. [0] http://www.theguardian.com/news/2014/dec/18/-sp-the-race-to-save-peter-kassig http://www.theguardian.com/news/2014/dec/18/-sp-the-race-to-...

by judah 11y ago

bosdev 11y ago

What is the origin of the Islamic extremism? Why does this group of Muslims kill people while the vast majority do not?

RickHull 11y ago
Many Muslims are subject to extreme indoctrination and brainwashing regarding the metaphysics of martyrdom. Jihadist imams have figured out the virality of this particular meme, and the environment in which it may take root. Depressed economic conditions end up gifting jihadist recruiters with more reasons for individuals to join up and become a martyr.
_prototype_ 11y ago
The biggest issue is the believe that there is a separation of "extreme islam" vs "mainstream (non-violent) islam" when the calls for violence in the religion are extremely clear and in their holy book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LBpmPXv1R4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LBpmPXv1R4
flubert 11y ago
> Why does this group of Muslims kill people while the vast majority do not? Pareto? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle

mikeash 11y ago

People who hold to your preferred cause are the only sane ones, and everyone else is "merely playing politics." Cool. Or maybe, just maybe, the real world is a little more complex than that. Maybe it is Islamic extremism and climate change and income inequality and a thousand other things all interacting with each other. I don't doubt that Piketty is using ISIS to advance his agenda, because that's what people do. Everybody everywhere is using ISIS to advance their agenda. Piketty uses it to support his ideas about income inequality, and Sam Harris uses it to support his ideas about Islam. Ultimately, pointing fingers does nothing. The question is, what do you do now to fix things? I don't see anything actionable on that front coming out of the "Islamic extremism" cause.

jules 11y ago
There's actually lots of really important actions that get mostly ignored precisely because saying that this is related to religion is politically incorrect. 1. The West should more publicly defend the people who stand to gain most from a decrease of religiosity in Muslim majority countries: women, intellectuals, gays, etc. Those are the people who have a self-interest in reform, and thus are most likely to actually try. 2. In Europe in particular there should be a bigger emphasis on religion in education; particularly education about different religions and about atheism. 3. Any immigrants and refugees should get personal and very intense help to integrate into European society, and gaining a European passport should be tied to achievement of those goals. 4. Salafist and Wahhabist organisations should be banned, and any money coming from Saudia Arabia and other Gulf states investigated. etc.

manachar 11y ago

Okay, and why is Islamic extremism taking root and spreading? It's like a body, you've got loads of bacteria all over your body, including some nasty MRSA stuff on your skin. This isn't normally a problem. But sometimes something can trigger a situation where the bad bacteria can spread and literally eat your body. ISIS would be a footnote in an odd corner of the world if it weren't for favorable conditions for them to flourish. This very much includes Islamic extremism as their call to legitimacy as a caliphate resonates with far too many. It is absolutely not a red herring to point to the root conditions for ISIS success. It's incorrect if one thinks it's ONLY income inequality, compared to an interplay of conditions (Iraq destabilization, income inequality, Islamic extremism, and geopolitical machinations providing a destabilized Syria amongst them).

iofj 11y ago
Ok. How about "because the states stopping them were sabotaged by external actors". In Iraq's case pretty obvious. From a local's perspective, here's what the US did : 1) remove nationalists from power by destroying all infrastructure. They sucked, but they sucked for everybody and they weren't nearly as bad as religous muslims. 2) jobs ... gone. Money ... gone (or gone soon). Family ... partially gone. Tribe ... partially gone. Security forces replaced by US troops, who don't speak the language. 3) this situation persists for years. 4) (for Sunni's, Christians, ...) US replaces security forces (suddenly) with an army exclusively formed by a religious grouping that Sunni's are attacking wherever they can (Bahrain, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Afghanistan ...) who are looking for revenge. 5) These new security forces come in, US forces don't keep them in check, then suddenly abandon everyone. This sort of stuff becomes commonplace : http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-03-11/shiite-militias-also-carry-out-atrocities-in-iraq http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-03-11/shiite-mili... 6) several tens of thousands of people that this happened to were soldiers. So why is islamic extremism spreading ? For Iraq, you have the answer above this sentence. For Europe/America the answer is different. It is not spreading within the older generation, people who fled the middle east. It is spreading within the youth. How ? Well : 1) schools, bankrolled from Saudi Arabia and Turkey teach islamic supremacism to the kids of immigrant muslims. 2) western european states do token cleanups of these schools every 10 years or so, but not fast enough to make them stop. 3) these kids are not educated to the level even bad local schools educate local youngsters. At 18, they are suddenly abandoned, and quickly find out that no job, no family (not possible without job), no car, no status symbols, ... sucks 4) furthermore. Suddenly islamic supremacism educated kids finds society (including muslims) shun them, or worse. Why ? They have no decent skills, and because of the supremacism thing they are prone to violence. 5) they subsist on welfare for a while, generally causing trouble around them and little else. 6) someone offers them a purpose. "Free" brides (ie. kidnapped women and children. Like most muslim scholars, daesh sees nothing wrong with forced marriage at 6, after all the prophet did it. Makes you wonder how "normal" muslims morally deal with that). A state and police force that supports the supremacism and a free ride over. Oh and a monthly paycheck that more or less matches local welfare checks and what you might call life insurance. The biggest thing stopping them: daesh has a reputation for getting people killed and abandoning them. Let's get real here : if the US did the same to a Western European country it did to Iraq, there'd be isis/daesh territory in the middle of Western Europe, no doubt. Also let's face facts here, and scale the problem. Daesh/islam will not be recruiting really large amounts of muslims from the western world. But it is growing : these people will cause a civil war in Europe unless the situation changes.

splawn 11y ago

I am not disagreeing with you here, but what you are saying doesn't discount that income inequality could still lead desperate people into Islamic (or more generally religious, or even more generally, ideological) extremism. Blind faith thrives among the poor and uneducated.

aeturnum 11y ago

> To say the problem with ISIS is anything other than Islamic extremism is a red herring. This assertion seems obviously false. ISIS isn't suddenly "better" because they are killing in the name of something other than "Islamic extremism." There are also plenty of extreme right-wing muslims who don't kill people, which also suggests that a generic diagnosis of "islamic extremism" is not enough to explain ISIS. If you /really/ believe ISIS is powered by a fervent belief in fundamentalist Islam and nothing else, then there are no remedies other than killing every member of the group as their rhetoric inescapably leads to the conclusion they should kill everyone who disagrees with them. Of course, to believe that, you also have to believe previous groups that espoused philosophies with similar conclusions (Al' Qaeda, etc) were lying - as we haven't kill all of their members and their terrorist & militant activities have fallen off. If all muslim extremists are driven solely by personal belief in islamic extremism, we would never expect them to change their behavior. But people do change! All the time. So, even if you believe that all extremely right-wing muslims want to kill everyone all the time (a preposition I find hard to believe myself), you should also see that some (most I would say) muslim extremists choose not to kill most of the people most of the time. If we want to save as many lives as possible we should, while we push back against the intellectual garbage of extreme Islam, should also work to understand the factors that cause some extremists to kill and others to live in relative harmony.

dragonwriter 11y ago
> Of course, to believe that, you also have to believe previous groups that espoused philosophies with similar conclusions (Al' Qaeda, etc) were lying - as we haven't kill all of their members and their terrorist & militant activities have fallen off. Well, to be fair, for part of the time al-Qaeda was dominant in the threat list, the group now calling itself "the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant" was calling itself "al-Qaeda in Iraq".
- aeturnum 11y ago
  Sure - and al'qaeda "central" kicked them out because they believed ISIS was too extreme and violent. Since then they have worked with groups as diverse as the FBI[0] to oppose the goals of ISIS. The whole interaction makes believe all the more that 'Islamic Extremism' is far too general a term. When dealing with groups that self-identify as islamic extremists, it's vital to understand what they mean by that, but it's insufficient to understand the entire picture. [0] http://www.theguardian.com/news/2014/dec/18/-sp-the-race-to-save-peter-kassig http://www.theguardian.com/news/2014/dec/18/-sp-the-race-to-...