Robert Fisk Independent/UK Common Dreams April 08, 2016
The most relevant newspaper cartoon on the asylum story popped up on the front page of The Irish Times this week, for Martyn Turner’s sketch caught two scandals in one.
On the left hand side was a rich businessman stepping onto a palm-fringed island under the caption: “Since forever, RICH people have been taking their assets offshore to avoid tax...” On the right hand side of the cartoon, refugees in a flimsy rubber boat sail across choppy seas beneath the words: “Since recently POOR people have been taking their assets offshore... Guess which problem we have worked day and night to stop?”Well, of course, it’s the poor guys who are getting the chop – courtesy of an annual €3bn to the Turks and an easy visa for anyone from Izmir to Iskanderia who wants to take a look at the EU which the refugees risked their lives to reach.
It’s not just that – nor the clever-clogs way in which the EU packed its first boat of returnees with Pakistanis who don’t quite qualify for our pity, and thus couldn’t be seen on our television screens as refugees fleeing for their lives. They all went meekly aboard, guarded by the blue legions of Frontex, that least accountable of all border institutions the EU has yet invented. I’m sure they’re all gentle lads and lasses, but why on earth do they wear these preposterous hygiene masks over their faces when confronted by refugees?
Reporters, NGOs, local villagers apparently feel no need to protect their health from the huddled masses of the Middle East. But the Frontex centurions seem to be in a state of permanent delicate healths. Indeed, like the soldiery and cops of Brussels, it now seem ‘de rigeur’ for any self-respecting European security man to wrap his face up in scarves or hoods. Are we telling the world that the refugees are plague carriers? Or have the Belgian army and police and Frontex picked up this fashion accessory from Isis itself?
As for the ‘one-for-one’ refugee “exchanges”, as we’ve now been taught to call the whole fandango, what happened to our well-founded concerns about the nature of the state – Turkey – to which we are dispatching immigrants the moment they step ashore on Greek territory?
Sure, the Turks have promised that they will be very correct and pleasant and sweet to all the folk we fling back at them. But isn’t there a problem with Turkey? Isn’t this the place where the cops take over newspapers and lock up journalists, and where the army has been slaughtering large numbers of Kurds for decades, and where the president is turning into a miniature Sultan? And where, still – let this not be forgotten – the government does not recognise the Turkish genocide of a million and a half Christian Armenians in 1915?
I imagine that present-day Armenian refugees from Syria will demand a quick transit to Greece – and Syrian Kurds in Greece will request a very slow journey back to Turkey. I was very struck by the words of French philosophy professor Frederic Worms last month who pointed out that the Turks will somehow ensure that Europe has ‘validated’ the identity of refugees travelling (‘legally’, if that’s the right word) in the other direction. In other words, we’re already choosing the ones we want from the ones we don’t want.
The ironies and the injustices – and the violence, alas – are still to come. Yet at least there are some prepared to point out the iniquities of the current crisis – and take risks to do so. Among the latest are German journalist Wolfgang Bauer and Czech photographer Stanislav Krupar whose slim new book, Crossing the Seas: is a bleak but deeply revealing expose of the ‘trade’ in refugees. Both men set off from Egypt, beaten by youthful smugglers on their way to the beach, only to be caught when it turns out that the nightly Egyptian naval patrol has not been paid off by the smugglers. When the same Syrians – without their journalist friends – try the same trip later, the very same patrol boat lets them sail away.
But it’s not just the detail in this book that counts. It’s the anger. Europe had done nothing to bring the carnage in Syria to an end, Bauer says, and “most European governments...said a no-fly zone and military intervention would just worsen the situation... Hundreds of thousands of people have come to us across the sea and via the Balkans. And now the EU’s interior ministers want to close the borders. None of them have resigned, despite the thousands who have drowned in the Mediterranean in the wake of their mistakes...”
I don’t buy Bauer’s demand for military action; by funnelling weapons to the bad guys in Syria, we’ve done quite enough “intervening” already. But his conclusion is humbling indeed.
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/04/08/one-one-refugee-policy-means-were-picking-and-choosing-among-desperate-people
Saturday, 16 April 2016
Another Look at Easter
By Ian Harris Otago Daily Times April 8, 2016
There’s a lot that’s right about the Easter just passed, but God punishing Jesus for the sins of the world isn’t part of it. Not even when you say “Ah yes, but that simply shows how much God loves us.” For one thing, that whole notion depends on the existence of the God of theism. Any view of God requires us to speculate on what that God is like: in theism humans project on to this external being the best and highest values that we can conceive – love, justice, compassion, holiness, wisdom, truth, beauty – and a consequential hatred of their opposites.
In the 5th century the creative mind of St Augustine teased that out further by saying the biblical origin myths mean that human life began in a state of perfection. Then Adam and Eve disobeyed their creator, and everyone since has been born into a state of sin, simply by virtue of their origin. That is unavoidable, Augustine argued, because “original sin” is passed on through the sex act. And sin merits punishment. Sinners need to be rescued. But how?
In the 11th century Anselm, then archbishop of Canterbury, devised an answer by projecting on to God a feudal image of a just ruler who could not treat lightly any breach of his laws. Offenders had to be punished, or the moral order would collapse. Who could bring hope to all these miserable sinners? Only Jesus, the perfect man, said Anselm. So Jesus accepted God’s just punishment for sin on behalf of everyone who identified with his sacrifice on the cross. That narrative of sin, punishment, faith and salvation inspired Christian faith for the next 1000 years.
Then came the great advances in scientific knowledge of the past 200 years. We learnt that human life did not begin perfect and whole, but evolved over millions of years from earlier species, gradually developing new skills and attributes. As such knowledge expanded, the theistic model of God began to seem less self-evident than before. For many, God became less an objective being in heaven and more a supreme influence within human consciousness. Any mature view of Godness has justice at its core, but it is not the penal justice of a sentencing judge. Rather it is doing justly, acting compassionately in everyday life.
If, then, there was no original human perfection and so no “fall” into original sin, if there is no heavenly overlord poised to condemn sinners, no place called heaven and no physical hell, a new view of Easter becomes necessary. Or rather, the oldest view can re-emerge.
The most telling corrective to the punishment-oriented interpretation of the cross comes from Jesus himself, twice over. First there is his parable about a young blade determined to have a good time. He asked his father to give him in advance the inheritance he expected from his father’s estate, so he could take off and live the high life. That was highly insulting – it was tantamount to saying he couldn’t wait for his father to die – but he got his inheritance anyway.
Then everything turned to custard. He squandered his money, sank lower and lower, and finally grew so desperate he had no option but to crawl back home. He deserved a good whipping for his arrogance and waste. Instead, his father laid on a feast to welcome him home. For Jesus, that reflected the character of God. You can’t go beyond unconditional love.
Then there’s the example of Jesus on the cross. He could have railed against the authorities and his executioners. He could have threatened they would all pay dearly for their part in killing an innocent man. He didn’t. He said, “Father, forgive them, they don’t know what they’re doing.” You can’t go beyond unconditional love.
Easter, shorn of the punishment motif running through well-loved hymns, rituals and much preaching, proclaims that unconditional love. It is the clue to Jesus and the heart of Godness. It does not judge or threaten. It welcomes gracefully, offers love, and sets a wholesome direction for living
In Christianity, this is summed up in the affirmation that though Jesus died, the Christ is risen, Christ being the archetype of love, grace and transforming power. Like all archetypes, it is imprinted on the psyche, and is expressed in the lives of those who follow him.
That’s what Easter is really all about – not Jesus paying for our sins, but the Christ releasing us into a new way of being. Which is how it was at the beginning.
There’s a lot that’s right about the Easter just passed, but God punishing Jesus for the sins of the world isn’t part of it. Not even when you say “Ah yes, but that simply shows how much God loves us.” For one thing, that whole notion depends on the existence of the God of theism. Any view of God requires us to speculate on what that God is like: in theism humans project on to this external being the best and highest values that we can conceive – love, justice, compassion, holiness, wisdom, truth, beauty – and a consequential hatred of their opposites.
In the 5th century the creative mind of St Augustine teased that out further by saying the biblical origin myths mean that human life began in a state of perfection. Then Adam and Eve disobeyed their creator, and everyone since has been born into a state of sin, simply by virtue of their origin. That is unavoidable, Augustine argued, because “original sin” is passed on through the sex act. And sin merits punishment. Sinners need to be rescued. But how?
In the 11th century Anselm, then archbishop of Canterbury, devised an answer by projecting on to God a feudal image of a just ruler who could not treat lightly any breach of his laws. Offenders had to be punished, or the moral order would collapse. Who could bring hope to all these miserable sinners? Only Jesus, the perfect man, said Anselm. So Jesus accepted God’s just punishment for sin on behalf of everyone who identified with his sacrifice on the cross. That narrative of sin, punishment, faith and salvation inspired Christian faith for the next 1000 years.
Then came the great advances in scientific knowledge of the past 200 years. We learnt that human life did not begin perfect and whole, but evolved over millions of years from earlier species, gradually developing new skills and attributes. As such knowledge expanded, the theistic model of God began to seem less self-evident than before. For many, God became less an objective being in heaven and more a supreme influence within human consciousness. Any mature view of Godness has justice at its core, but it is not the penal justice of a sentencing judge. Rather it is doing justly, acting compassionately in everyday life.
If, then, there was no original human perfection and so no “fall” into original sin, if there is no heavenly overlord poised to condemn sinners, no place called heaven and no physical hell, a new view of Easter becomes necessary. Or rather, the oldest view can re-emerge.
The most telling corrective to the punishment-oriented interpretation of the cross comes from Jesus himself, twice over. First there is his parable about a young blade determined to have a good time. He asked his father to give him in advance the inheritance he expected from his father’s estate, so he could take off and live the high life. That was highly insulting – it was tantamount to saying he couldn’t wait for his father to die – but he got his inheritance anyway.
Then everything turned to custard. He squandered his money, sank lower and lower, and finally grew so desperate he had no option but to crawl back home. He deserved a good whipping for his arrogance and waste. Instead, his father laid on a feast to welcome him home. For Jesus, that reflected the character of God. You can’t go beyond unconditional love.
Then there’s the example of Jesus on the cross. He could have railed against the authorities and his executioners. He could have threatened they would all pay dearly for their part in killing an innocent man. He didn’t. He said, “Father, forgive them, they don’t know what they’re doing.” You can’t go beyond unconditional love.
Easter, shorn of the punishment motif running through well-loved hymns, rituals and much preaching, proclaims that unconditional love. It is the clue to Jesus and the heart of Godness. It does not judge or threaten. It welcomes gracefully, offers love, and sets a wholesome direction for living
In Christianity, this is summed up in the affirmation that though Jesus died, the Christ is risen, Christ being the archetype of love, grace and transforming power. Like all archetypes, it is imprinted on the psyche, and is expressed in the lives of those who follow him.
That’s what Easter is really all about – not Jesus paying for our sins, but the Christ releasing us into a new way of being. Which is how it was at the beginning.
Many Americans believe only in America
Giles Fraser Guardian/UK 4 March 2016
‘Trump waves his Bible around – though he is apparently unable to name a single verse from it when asked – and talks a lot about making America great again and the threat from Islam.’
It has long been presumed that America is more Christian than Europe. But it’s a myth. Of course, way more people go to church in America. And you can’t become president without holding up your floppy Bible and attending prayer breakfasts. But what the Donald Trump phenomenon reveals is what several intelligent Christian observers have been saying for some time: that a great many Americans don’t really believe in God. They just believe in America – which they often take to be the same thing. God was hacked by the American dream some time ago. “The evangelical church in America has, to a large extent, been co-opted by an American, religious version of the kingdom of the world. We have come to trust the power of the sword more than the power of the cross,” writes Gregory Boyd in The Myth of a Christian Nation.
On the whole, I defer to people’s self-description when it comes to religious belief. If people say they are Christian then that’s good enough for me – unless we are talking about school places or running for office. Then it’s worth a little more scepticism. So with Trump, who has done so much to peddle the ridiculous birther conspiracy about Obama’s nationality, there is a considerably less ridiculous re-birther question. “Anyone, whoever he is, who only wants to build walls and not bridges is not a Christian,” said the pope of Trump’s faith, “… if he says these things, this man is not a Christian.” Likewise, the head of the US Presbyterian church into which Trump was baptised said: “Donald Trump’s views are not in keeping with the policies adopted by our church.”
Not in keeping is putting it mildly. It’s not even that he tries and fails. “Why do I have to repent or ask for forgiveness, if I am not making mistakes?” he says. No, Trump doesn’t even begin to model Christ in his life. On the poor, on appealing to fear, on telling the truth, on sexual ethics, on (not) loving his enemies, on making greed his God, Trump models the anti-Christ.
But none of this makes much of a difference to Republican voters who have long been linked with evangelical Christianity. Trump waves his Bible around – though he is apparently unable to name a single verse from it when asked – and talks a lot about making America great again and the threat from Islam. And that speaks volumes about what sort of faith it is that Republican believers actually believe in. Little wonder, as Professor Stanley Hauerwas says, that America doesn’t produce interesting atheists: they don’t have a God interesting enough to deny.
America itself has long been its own civil religion. Church and state may be separated, in theory. But if the state itself is deified, then the church has already capitulated. The 1833 amendment to the Massachusetts Constitution did away with church establishment. But it also insisted that “the public worship of God, and the instructions in piety, religion, and morality, promote the happiness and prosperity of a people, and the security of republican government.”
When the Pilgrim Fathers got in their little boats and sailed to the new world, they took with them a narrative that had begun to build in England, that the protestant English were actually the chosen people. America, then, was to be the new Israel. The pilgrims had landed safe on Canaan’s side, the promised land. The original 13 colonies in North America “were nothing other than a regeneration of the twelve tribes of Israel” as one American newspaper put it in 1864.
In other words, America became its own church and eventually its own god. Which is why the only real atheism in America is to call into question the American dream – a dream often indistinguishable from capitalism and the celebration of winners. This is the god Trump worships. He is its great high priest. And this is why evangelicals vote for him. But the God of Jesus Christ it is not. The death of God comes in many diverse and peculiar forms. In America, it is the flag and not the cross that takes pride of place in the sanctuary.
@giles_fraser
‘Trump waves his Bible around – though he is apparently unable to name a single verse from it when asked – and talks a lot about making America great again and the threat from Islam.’
It has long been presumed that America is more Christian than Europe. But it’s a myth. Of course, way more people go to church in America. And you can’t become president without holding up your floppy Bible and attending prayer breakfasts. But what the Donald Trump phenomenon reveals is what several intelligent Christian observers have been saying for some time: that a great many Americans don’t really believe in God. They just believe in America – which they often take to be the same thing. God was hacked by the American dream some time ago. “The evangelical church in America has, to a large extent, been co-opted by an American, religious version of the kingdom of the world. We have come to trust the power of the sword more than the power of the cross,” writes Gregory Boyd in The Myth of a Christian Nation.
On the whole, I defer to people’s self-description when it comes to religious belief. If people say they are Christian then that’s good enough for me – unless we are talking about school places or running for office. Then it’s worth a little more scepticism. So with Trump, who has done so much to peddle the ridiculous birther conspiracy about Obama’s nationality, there is a considerably less ridiculous re-birther question. “Anyone, whoever he is, who only wants to build walls and not bridges is not a Christian,” said the pope of Trump’s faith, “… if he says these things, this man is not a Christian.” Likewise, the head of the US Presbyterian church into which Trump was baptised said: “Donald Trump’s views are not in keeping with the policies adopted by our church.”
Not in keeping is putting it mildly. It’s not even that he tries and fails. “Why do I have to repent or ask for forgiveness, if I am not making mistakes?” he says. No, Trump doesn’t even begin to model Christ in his life. On the poor, on appealing to fear, on telling the truth, on sexual ethics, on (not) loving his enemies, on making greed his God, Trump models the anti-Christ.
But none of this makes much of a difference to Republican voters who have long been linked with evangelical Christianity. Trump waves his Bible around – though he is apparently unable to name a single verse from it when asked – and talks a lot about making America great again and the threat from Islam. And that speaks volumes about what sort of faith it is that Republican believers actually believe in. Little wonder, as Professor Stanley Hauerwas says, that America doesn’t produce interesting atheists: they don’t have a God interesting enough to deny.
America itself has long been its own civil religion. Church and state may be separated, in theory. But if the state itself is deified, then the church has already capitulated. The 1833 amendment to the Massachusetts Constitution did away with church establishment. But it also insisted that “the public worship of God, and the instructions in piety, religion, and morality, promote the happiness and prosperity of a people, and the security of republican government.”
When the Pilgrim Fathers got in their little boats and sailed to the new world, they took with them a narrative that had begun to build in England, that the protestant English were actually the chosen people. America, then, was to be the new Israel. The pilgrims had landed safe on Canaan’s side, the promised land. The original 13 colonies in North America “were nothing other than a regeneration of the twelve tribes of Israel” as one American newspaper put it in 1864.
In other words, America became its own church and eventually its own god. Which is why the only real atheism in America is to call into question the American dream – a dream often indistinguishable from capitalism and the celebration of winners. This is the god Trump worships. He is its great high priest. And this is why evangelicals vote for him. But the God of Jesus Christ it is not. The death of God comes in many diverse and peculiar forms. In America, it is the flag and not the cross that takes pride of place in the sanctuary.
@giles_fraser
Saturday, 26 March 2016
The West's Islamophobia is only helping the Islamic State
Arun Kundnani Peace Movement Aotearoa 24 March 2016
The "war on terror" was supposed to contain violence, but the whole world is a battlefield now. The promise of the "global war on terror" was that "it was better to fight them there than here." That brought mass violence to Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Palestine, Yemen and Somalia - in the name of peace in the West.
That formula has clearly failed. Tuesday's bombings in Brussels come on the heels of similar incidents in Grand-Bassam, Ivory Coast; Maiduguri, Nigeria; Istanbul; Beirut; Paris; and Bamako, Mali, all in the last six months. Rather than containing violence, the war on terror turned the whole world into a battlefield.
We should not be surprised. Violence inflicted abroad always comes home in some form. Last year, the U.S. military dropped 22,110 bombs on Iraq and Syria. The Pentagon says these bombs "likely" killed only six civilians, along with "at least" 25,000 Islamic State fighters. The true number of civilian deaths, though, is likely to be in the thousands as well. Indeed, we know that the war on terror kills more civilians than terrorism does. But we tolerate this because it is "their" civilians being killed in places we imagine to be too far away to matter.
Because we pay little attention to the effects of our violence in the places we bomb, it appears that terrorism comes out of the blue. When it does happen, then, the only way we can make sense of it is by laying the blame on Islamic culture. When opinion polls find that most Muslims think Westerners are selfish, immoral and violent, we have no idea of the real causes. And so we assume such opinions must be an expression of their culture rather than our politics. There is no social media hashtag to commemorate these deaths; no news channel tells their stories.
Donald Trump and Ted Cruz have exploited these reactions with their appeals to Islamophobia. But most liberals also assume that religious extremism is the root cause of terrorism. President Obama, for example, has spoken of "a violent, radical, fanatical, nihilistic interpretation of Islam by a faction - a tiny faction - within the Muslim community that is our enemy, and that has to be defeated."
Based on this assumption, think-tanks, intelligence agencies and academic departments linked to the national security apparatus have spent millions of dollars since 9/11 conducting research on radicalization. They hoped to find a correlation between having extremist religious ideas, however defined, and involvement in terrorism.
In fact, no such correlation exists, as empirical evidence demonstrates - witness the European Islamic State volunteers who arrive in Syria with copies of 'Islam for Dummies' or the alleged leader of the November 2015 Paris attacks, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who was reported to have drunk whisky and smoked cannabis. But this has not stopped national security agencies, such as the FBI, from using radicalization models that assume devout religious beliefs are an indicator of potential terrorism.
The process of radicalization is easily understood if we imagine how we would respond to a foreign government dropping 22,000 bombs on us. Large numbers of patriots would be volunteering to fight the perpetrators. And nationalist and religious ideologies would compete with each other to lead that movement and give its adherents a sense of purpose.
Similarly, the Islamic State does not primarily recruit through theological arguments but through a militarized identity politics. It says there is a global war between the West and Islam, a heroic struggle, with truth and justice on one side and lies, depravity and corruption on the other. It shows images of innocents victimized and battles gloriously waged. In other words, it recruits in the same way that any other armed group recruits, including the U.S. military.
That means that when we also deploy our own militarized identity politics to narrate our response to terrorism, we inadvertently reinforce the Islamic State's message to its potential recruits. When British Prime Minister David Cameron talks about a "generational struggle" between Western values and Islamic extremism, he is assisting the militants' own propaganda. When French President Francois Hollande talks of "a war which will be pitiless", he is doing the same.
What is distinctive about the Islamic State's message is that it also offers a utopian and apocalyptic vision of an alternative society in the making. The reality of that alternative is, of course, oppression of women, enslavement of minorities and hatred of freedom. But the message works, to some extent, because it claims to be an answer to real problems of poverty, authoritarian regimes and Western aggression.
Significantly, it thrives in environments where other radical alternatives to a discredited status quo have been suppressed by government repression. What's corrupting the Islamic State's volunteers is not ideology but by the end of ideology: they have grown up in an era with no alternatives to capitalist globalization. The organization has gained support, in part, because the Arab revolutions of 2011 were defeated, in many cases by regimes allied with and funded by the U.S. After 14 years of the "war on terror", we are no closer to achieving peace. The fault does not lie with any one administration but with the assumption that war can defeat terrorism. The lesson of the Islamic State is that war creates terrorism.
After all, the organization was born in the chaos and carnage that followed the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Russia and Iran have also played their role, propping up Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime - responsible for far more civilian deaths than the Islamic State - and prolonging the war in Syria that enables the militant group to thrive.
Meanwhile, the alliances that we consider crucial to the war on terror have worked in the Islamic State's favor. The group's sectarianism and funding have come from the Saudi and Gulf ruling elites, the West's closest regional allies after Israel. And the groups that have been most effective in fighting the Islamic State - the Kurdish militia - are designated as terrorists by Western governments because they are considered threats to our ally Turkey.
The incoherence of our response to the Islamic State stems from our Islamophobia. Because we believe religious extremism is the underlying problem, we prop up Arab dictatorships that we think can help us contain this danger. Paradoxically, we support the very regimes that have enabled the Islamic State's rise, such as the Saudis, the most reactionary influence in the region.
With our airstrikes, we continue the cycle of violence and reinforce the militants' narrative of a war by the West against Islam. Then, to top it all off, we turn away the refugees, whom we should be empowering to help transform the region. If we want to avoid another 14 years of failure, we need to try something else - and first, we need to radically rethink what we've been doing.
https://facebook.com/PeaceMovementAotearoa/posts/1003550163025686
The "war on terror" was supposed to contain violence, but the whole world is a battlefield now. The promise of the "global war on terror" was that "it was better to fight them there than here." That brought mass violence to Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Palestine, Yemen and Somalia - in the name of peace in the West.
That formula has clearly failed. Tuesday's bombings in Brussels come on the heels of similar incidents in Grand-Bassam, Ivory Coast; Maiduguri, Nigeria; Istanbul; Beirut; Paris; and Bamako, Mali, all in the last six months. Rather than containing violence, the war on terror turned the whole world into a battlefield.
We should not be surprised. Violence inflicted abroad always comes home in some form. Last year, the U.S. military dropped 22,110 bombs on Iraq and Syria. The Pentagon says these bombs "likely" killed only six civilians, along with "at least" 25,000 Islamic State fighters. The true number of civilian deaths, though, is likely to be in the thousands as well. Indeed, we know that the war on terror kills more civilians than terrorism does. But we tolerate this because it is "their" civilians being killed in places we imagine to be too far away to matter.
Because we pay little attention to the effects of our violence in the places we bomb, it appears that terrorism comes out of the blue. When it does happen, then, the only way we can make sense of it is by laying the blame on Islamic culture. When opinion polls find that most Muslims think Westerners are selfish, immoral and violent, we have no idea of the real causes. And so we assume such opinions must be an expression of their culture rather than our politics. There is no social media hashtag to commemorate these deaths; no news channel tells their stories.
Donald Trump and Ted Cruz have exploited these reactions with their appeals to Islamophobia. But most liberals also assume that religious extremism is the root cause of terrorism. President Obama, for example, has spoken of "a violent, radical, fanatical, nihilistic interpretation of Islam by a faction - a tiny faction - within the Muslim community that is our enemy, and that has to be defeated."
Based on this assumption, think-tanks, intelligence agencies and academic departments linked to the national security apparatus have spent millions of dollars since 9/11 conducting research on radicalization. They hoped to find a correlation between having extremist religious ideas, however defined, and involvement in terrorism.
In fact, no such correlation exists, as empirical evidence demonstrates - witness the European Islamic State volunteers who arrive in Syria with copies of 'Islam for Dummies' or the alleged leader of the November 2015 Paris attacks, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who was reported to have drunk whisky and smoked cannabis. But this has not stopped national security agencies, such as the FBI, from using radicalization models that assume devout religious beliefs are an indicator of potential terrorism.
The process of radicalization is easily understood if we imagine how we would respond to a foreign government dropping 22,000 bombs on us. Large numbers of patriots would be volunteering to fight the perpetrators. And nationalist and religious ideologies would compete with each other to lead that movement and give its adherents a sense of purpose.
Similarly, the Islamic State does not primarily recruit through theological arguments but through a militarized identity politics. It says there is a global war between the West and Islam, a heroic struggle, with truth and justice on one side and lies, depravity and corruption on the other. It shows images of innocents victimized and battles gloriously waged. In other words, it recruits in the same way that any other armed group recruits, including the U.S. military.
That means that when we also deploy our own militarized identity politics to narrate our response to terrorism, we inadvertently reinforce the Islamic State's message to its potential recruits. When British Prime Minister David Cameron talks about a "generational struggle" between Western values and Islamic extremism, he is assisting the militants' own propaganda. When French President Francois Hollande talks of "a war which will be pitiless", he is doing the same.
What is distinctive about the Islamic State's message is that it also offers a utopian and apocalyptic vision of an alternative society in the making. The reality of that alternative is, of course, oppression of women, enslavement of minorities and hatred of freedom. But the message works, to some extent, because it claims to be an answer to real problems of poverty, authoritarian regimes and Western aggression.
Significantly, it thrives in environments where other radical alternatives to a discredited status quo have been suppressed by government repression. What's corrupting the Islamic State's volunteers is not ideology but by the end of ideology: they have grown up in an era with no alternatives to capitalist globalization. The organization has gained support, in part, because the Arab revolutions of 2011 were defeated, in many cases by regimes allied with and funded by the U.S. After 14 years of the "war on terror", we are no closer to achieving peace. The fault does not lie with any one administration but with the assumption that war can defeat terrorism. The lesson of the Islamic State is that war creates terrorism.
After all, the organization was born in the chaos and carnage that followed the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Russia and Iran have also played their role, propping up Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime - responsible for far more civilian deaths than the Islamic State - and prolonging the war in Syria that enables the militant group to thrive.
Meanwhile, the alliances that we consider crucial to the war on terror have worked in the Islamic State's favor. The group's sectarianism and funding have come from the Saudi and Gulf ruling elites, the West's closest regional allies after Israel. And the groups that have been most effective in fighting the Islamic State - the Kurdish militia - are designated as terrorists by Western governments because they are considered threats to our ally Turkey.
The incoherence of our response to the Islamic State stems from our Islamophobia. Because we believe religious extremism is the underlying problem, we prop up Arab dictatorships that we think can help us contain this danger. Paradoxically, we support the very regimes that have enabled the Islamic State's rise, such as the Saudis, the most reactionary influence in the region.
With our airstrikes, we continue the cycle of violence and reinforce the militants' narrative of a war by the West against Islam. Then, to top it all off, we turn away the refugees, whom we should be empowering to help transform the region. If we want to avoid another 14 years of failure, we need to try something else - and first, we need to radically rethink what we've been doing.
https://facebook.com/PeaceMovementAotearoa/posts/1003550163025686
It's our leaders who are creating a generation of terrorists
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown Independent/UK 20 March 2016
On Friday, Belgium police captured Salah Abdeslam, a key conspirator and member of the Islamist gang that murdered so many innocents in Paris last November. Belgium PM Michel is triumphant: “This evening is a huge success in the battle against terrorism.” His bombast is typical of Western leaders – they revel in their “victories” and never think about why so many young Muslims, born in Europe, are turning to violent extremism.
Not one of the EU nations has, to date, taken on Saudi Arabia, the promulgator of hardline Islam and zealous intolerance. Saudi Arabia went into Belgium in the late sixties and spread Wahhabism among the newly arrived Muslim migrants. To date, $70bn has been spent on this global brainwashing and destabilisation programme. This Tuesday evening on ITV, a secretly filmed documentary investigates the nefarious kingdom. Will this exposure alter Europe’s special relationship with the most evil of empires? No.
Here is a dire warning: Europe is losing the battle against terrorism because its leaders still indulge the sponsors of terrorism, unthinkingly aid and abet the propagandists of Isis and germinate animosity and rancour in a new generation of Muslims. EU governments never say sorry, never let complexities divert them from their macho missions, seem incapable of thinking holistically, do not engage with history or the hinterlands, undercut democratic values, can only react to events as they happen and thereby endanger the lives of millions of citizens.
The police and special forces expect multiple terror attacks in London. Other cities are preparing for new blasts. These crimes are indefensible. And no, I am not saying that the West deserves these bloodbaths or is wholly to blame for them. Repulsive Islamists and their ideologies are hell-bent on annihilating modernity and cumulated human cultures. But I do believe that European politicians have, over many decades, created the conditions for fanaticism to seed and grow. The official responses to the refugee flows are leading to new anti-Western furies.
Here is a friend of mine, a Muslim woman, who works in the City and lives in a grand home: “I was born here, have done well. My faith is private and I have no time for fundis ( fundamentalists). But I am shocked. How can Cameron, my Prime Minister, treat refugees like they are cockroaches? Those children? Would he do this if they were white people from Zimbabwe? I now understand how a young Muslim turns and loads up on hate. My own son is so full of anger.” Me too. The media and our leaders – except for Mrs Merkel – demonise refugees and fill up on self-pity. The migration crisis is all about us. Sickening.
Now Turkey – where the government daily violates human rights – is paid billions to take the migrant problem out of Europe. Men, women and children from Africa and Arabia have become traded meat. And all the while, our politicians wax lyrical about Europe’s values and “higher” civilisation. Can you not see how this dissonance affects those with links to those places? And humane indigenous citizens too?
The European crusaders who attacked Iraq and Libya and play hidden war games in Syria have never accepted responsibility for the churn, chaos, rage and violence that they left in their wake. Western sanctions and bombs wiped out more people in Iraq than Saddam ever did. Read Patrick Coburn’s new book, Chaos & Caliphate, which chronicles these historical catastrophes. For Salim and his ilk, these killer facts fuse with their own life stories of confusion and rejection and the amalgam combusts.
Abdeslam was kept safe and hidden by those who live in Molenbeek, an overcrowded Muslim ghetto stuffed with no-hopers. Some inhabitants describe the place as Europe’s biggest jihadist factories. Why should this be so? Because the very air is thick with disillusionment and breathed in by all those who live there.
In the Sixties, Belgium welcomed cheap factory labour from Morocco and other Arab lands. The old industries died and families were marooned with no jobs, low skills and a sense of failure. They believe successive governments used and then discarded them. Francoise Schepmans, the mayor of Molenbeek, has now come out and spoken about the “culture of denial”, which now must be broken. Belgium needs to address its racism and neglect of Muslims who are in its national bloodstream. So too France, Germany, Spain, Britain, Denmark…
Our political elites need to be honest, savvy and ethical. They must refrain from impetuous militarism and reach out to estranged Muslims. Remember, the West beat communism using political and economic seduction. Weapons, laws and racist discourse will not defeat Islamist terrorism. Soft, smart power just might. [Abridged]
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/our-leaders-are-creating-a-generation-of-terrorists-a6942906.html
On Friday, Belgium police captured Salah Abdeslam, a key conspirator and member of the Islamist gang that murdered so many innocents in Paris last November. Belgium PM Michel is triumphant: “This evening is a huge success in the battle against terrorism.” His bombast is typical of Western leaders – they revel in their “victories” and never think about why so many young Muslims, born in Europe, are turning to violent extremism.
Not one of the EU nations has, to date, taken on Saudi Arabia, the promulgator of hardline Islam and zealous intolerance. Saudi Arabia went into Belgium in the late sixties and spread Wahhabism among the newly arrived Muslim migrants. To date, $70bn has been spent on this global brainwashing and destabilisation programme. This Tuesday evening on ITV, a secretly filmed documentary investigates the nefarious kingdom. Will this exposure alter Europe’s special relationship with the most evil of empires? No.
Here is a dire warning: Europe is losing the battle against terrorism because its leaders still indulge the sponsors of terrorism, unthinkingly aid and abet the propagandists of Isis and germinate animosity and rancour in a new generation of Muslims. EU governments never say sorry, never let complexities divert them from their macho missions, seem incapable of thinking holistically, do not engage with history or the hinterlands, undercut democratic values, can only react to events as they happen and thereby endanger the lives of millions of citizens.
The police and special forces expect multiple terror attacks in London. Other cities are preparing for new blasts. These crimes are indefensible. And no, I am not saying that the West deserves these bloodbaths or is wholly to blame for them. Repulsive Islamists and their ideologies are hell-bent on annihilating modernity and cumulated human cultures. But I do believe that European politicians have, over many decades, created the conditions for fanaticism to seed and grow. The official responses to the refugee flows are leading to new anti-Western furies.
Here is a friend of mine, a Muslim woman, who works in the City and lives in a grand home: “I was born here, have done well. My faith is private and I have no time for fundis ( fundamentalists). But I am shocked. How can Cameron, my Prime Minister, treat refugees like they are cockroaches? Those children? Would he do this if they were white people from Zimbabwe? I now understand how a young Muslim turns and loads up on hate. My own son is so full of anger.” Me too. The media and our leaders – except for Mrs Merkel – demonise refugees and fill up on self-pity. The migration crisis is all about us. Sickening.
Now Turkey – where the government daily violates human rights – is paid billions to take the migrant problem out of Europe. Men, women and children from Africa and Arabia have become traded meat. And all the while, our politicians wax lyrical about Europe’s values and “higher” civilisation. Can you not see how this dissonance affects those with links to those places? And humane indigenous citizens too?
The European crusaders who attacked Iraq and Libya and play hidden war games in Syria have never accepted responsibility for the churn, chaos, rage and violence that they left in their wake. Western sanctions and bombs wiped out more people in Iraq than Saddam ever did. Read Patrick Coburn’s new book, Chaos & Caliphate, which chronicles these historical catastrophes. For Salim and his ilk, these killer facts fuse with their own life stories of confusion and rejection and the amalgam combusts.
Abdeslam was kept safe and hidden by those who live in Molenbeek, an overcrowded Muslim ghetto stuffed with no-hopers. Some inhabitants describe the place as Europe’s biggest jihadist factories. Why should this be so? Because the very air is thick with disillusionment and breathed in by all those who live there.
In the Sixties, Belgium welcomed cheap factory labour from Morocco and other Arab lands. The old industries died and families were marooned with no jobs, low skills and a sense of failure. They believe successive governments used and then discarded them. Francoise Schepmans, the mayor of Molenbeek, has now come out and spoken about the “culture of denial”, which now must be broken. Belgium needs to address its racism and neglect of Muslims who are in its national bloodstream. So too France, Germany, Spain, Britain, Denmark…
Our political elites need to be honest, savvy and ethical. They must refrain from impetuous militarism and reach out to estranged Muslims. Remember, the West beat communism using political and economic seduction. Weapons, laws and racist discourse will not defeat Islamist terrorism. Soft, smart power just might. [Abridged]
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/our-leaders-are-creating-a-generation-of-terrorists-a6942906.html
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