Global Jihad

[Young Master Smeet]

https://theconversation.com/inspire-magazine-and-the-rise-of-open-source-jihad-14013

Quote:

The influence of globally available jihadist propaganda on the web is well established….Because the stakes are set so high, many who may encounter such material are not influenced by it, at least not in the sense of taking up its challenge, as it asks far too much. But for some of those with an acute sense of their own victimhood, it is a potentially seductive brew. It promises to replace shame at a feeling of impotence or worthlessness with the experience of triumph. It makes a direct appeal to a core feeling of humiliation and inserts into it a narrative of heroic resistance.

  What is interesting about the article is the parallels it draws with crime reporting in the tabloid press (and the differences).  In the aftermath of the Boston bombings, it seems the above analysis holds, and "Lone Wolf" jihadists are the main threat.

Further:

Quote:

The dynamics of victimhood portrayed in jihadist propaganda differ from that type of crime reporting in several ways. First the victims are portrayed as Muslims everywhere. The perpetrators, meanwhile, are portrayed as all non-believers, i.e. everyone else, plus those Muslims who are in fact not true Muslims. So, unlike in the reporting of crime, in jihadist propaganda everyone is involved. The suffering and blame are everywhere, and the duty to take revenge cannot be avoided.

Now, this could be said to be a feature of leftist propaganda (indeed, of any propoaganda, in as much as it is designed to build a coalition around a particular cause, and no-one wants to be the oppressor, we all want to be the good guys). 

To an extent, I think we avoid this, and instead do try and focus on the practical, rational gains of socialism: and, of course, ours is a call to collective action not to violence.  We should not paint ourselves as victims, but as the positive future course.

[ALB]

What did these Jihadist nutters expect:http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2329290/Woolwich-attack-More-100-English-Defence-League-supporters-gather-near-scene-killing.html

[Young Master Smeet]

Well, what they got, apparently:https://theconversation.com/a-global-abomination-woolwich-and-the-politics-of-violent-images-14575

Quote:

Research on school shootings helps explain what this might mean. This work emphasises that media affect how real violence works as a symbolic phenomenon. There is a “performative” aspect to this particular form of mass murder. According to their own posthumous accounts, shooters are often acting out their rage against people and society. The promise, and even the certainty of media notoriety lends a distinct shape to their actions. Cho-Seung Hui, for example, stopped in the middle of the Virginia Tech murders to film a monologue, which he then delivered to NBC. When it comes to school shootings, the crime and the media event are often hard to separate.

This article draws interesting comparisons with the Rot Armee Faktion (RAF):https://theconversation.com/terror-on-the-streets-of-london-but-dont-jump-to-conclusions-yet-13883

Quote:

This isn’t new of course – in the 1970s the Red Army Faction claimed some of its violent bombings in West Germany were carried out on behalf of the Vietnamese people. It also justified its actions from the ideas of Karl Marx. Yet none of the group had been to Vietnam and one of the principal leaders – Andreas Baader – didn’t even read Marx until after he had been imprisoned.

Interesting is the idea of "non-negotiable, sacred beliefs" being at the core of such ideologies.I think anyone involved in fringe politics will have met at least one person with potentially violent fantasies, and dreams of being the saviour, the hero: currently global jihad is the sacred idea that spurs such people beyond fantasy into action, whereas back in the 7's the narrative was global communism, which lead to the RAF.However closely this event is linked to decentralised terrorism, I think it's more reassuring than any truly organised campaign (however horrific the actual attack is).

[ALB]

Quote:

Journalist Laurie Penny used the same platform to warn of “ugly racism and Islamophobia”.

Here's a much more rational approach from a fellow writer for the New Statesman, Andrew Zak Williams:http://www.newstatesman.com/religion/2013/04/new-atheism-should-be-able-criticise-islam-without-being-accused-islamophobia 

Quote:

Take Sam Harris. His 2003 book End of Faith catalogues the Qur’an’s long list of orders to murder and exhortations to avenge. (…) Surely, rational discourse should be permitted to tiptoe cautiously along the hallowed corridors of the house of Islam without the guards frogmarching it out, bellowing allegations of racism and bigotry. Cannot we not agree that the real issue is whether the critiques of Islam proffered by today’s prominent atheists are correct? For instance, does Islam fall short when it comes to women’s rights? Does it trample free speech while enforcing its own precepts, by the sword if necessary? (…) Islam isn’t a race, so to accuse its detractors of racism should appeal to no-one bar those in need of an cheap jibe.

[Young Master Smeet]

I think part of that is that the critique by atheism begins and ends with 'there is no god, and Allah isn't his name.'  The materialist critique goes further and says that ideas have no independent substance and it is dangerous to reify ideologies (as both opponents and detractors would like to do).  These apparent auto-jihadists would probably find a cause to be violent even if Islam didn't exist, it just provides a map for their actions and a means to comprehend their desires.   Thorough going critical materialism is the ultimate riposte to Islamist ideologues because it essentially says that doctrine is irrelevent.

[ALB]

Quote:

'there is no god, and Allah isn't his name.' 

I like it (even if I shouldn't). Sounds like a good title for a daring meeting.Meanwhile there's a lively discussion on this beheading going on on the forum of the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain:http://www.councilofexmuslims.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=68e6398ad09798b645ee7fe4069798f5&topic=24183.0

[alanjjohnstone]

Not an ideal article but SOYMB has done a critique of Islam here.http://www.socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2013/04/sunday-sermon-islam.html 

[ALB]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

These apparent auto-jihadists would probably find a cause to be violent even if Islam didn't exist, it just provides a map for their actions and a means to comprehend their desires.

The fact the two beheaders have turned out to be ex-christians who chose to become muslims suggests that this is probably true and that under other circumstances they would have found another ideology through which to express their frustrations. But why did they choose islam?

[alanjjohnstone]

It is not particularly recent.We should not forget that many Afro-American militants in the 60s and 70s chose Islam and to become Black Muslims.Malcom X and, of course, the most famous of them all, Cassius Clay, Mohammed Ali. But there is also the extremist black nationalist Louis Farrakhan.They chose Islam to break with what they considered to be the slave religion – Christianity. A naive re-writing of history of Islam's own connections with Africa's slavery and the slave-trade. But also from a belief that racism did not exist within Islam that doesn't bear out from the divisions between black and Arab North Africans.It is unconnected but in south India along the Malibar coast, Islam was the religion many Hindu's adopted since it supposedly freed them from the caste system. However the reality is that caste followed them into their new religion and this has also applied to the Christian converts from Hinduism.It's a cliche but they always say converts are the most committed…requiring to prove themselves more than those born into a religion.

[Young Master Smeet]

Well, one view could be that Islam was formed as a counter hegemonic ideology: Mohammed gathered together the second sons and other political 'out' groups of Mecca.  This, apparently, is a recurrent motif of Islam.  Without wishing to be thought of as quoting our own Prophets, I've found the following by Engels suggestive:

Fred wrote:

A peculiar antithesis to this was the religious risings in the Mohammedan world, particularly in Africa. Islam is a religion adapted to Orientals, especially Arabs, i.e., on one hand to townsmen engaged in trade and industry, on the other to nomadic Bedouins. Therein lies, however, the embryo of a periodically recurring collision. The townspeople grow rich, luxurious and lax in the observation of the "law." The Bedouins, poor and hence of strict morals, contemplate with envy and covetousness these riches and pleasures. Then they unite under a prophet, a Mahdi, to chastise the apostates and restore the observation of the ritual and the true faith and to appropriate in recompense the treasures of the renegades. In a hundred years they are naturally in the same position as the renegades were: a new purge of the faith is required, a new Mahdi arises and the game starts again from the beginning. That is what happened from the conquest campaigns of the African Almoravids and Almohads in Spain to the last Mahdi of Khartoum who so successfully thwarted the English. It happened in the same way or similarly with the risings in Persia and other Mohammedan countries. All these movements are clothed in religion but they have their source in economic causes; and yet, even when they are victorious, they allow the old economic conditions to persist untouched. So the old situation remains unchanged and the collision recurs periodically.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894/early-christianity/index.htmI'd also suggest that, without straying too far into psychology, the strictness of the Islamic God might well appeal to someone with a fragile self identity, or living in a precarious world. It does seem Islam has slipped in as the replacement for Maoism, a universal counter message to the modern world, that promises an authentic life, grounded in the reality of ritual.

[alanjjohnstone]

I'm not sure if this is just a bit of clever placement of "establishment" news such as we had in the General Strike with police v strikers football or a genuine sincere Xmas Day Truce 1st World War game of footie between Brits and Huns but worth noting.Tea and biscuits and a game of football between mosque and EDLhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-22689552Nevertheless, it is an echo of our own approach that the solution to political violence is not counter-violence but a reasoned rational response, not demonisation

[ALB]

Just read that Arab Christians also call their god "Allah", so a meeting under the title "There is no god, and his name isn't Allah" wouldn't work. But then we're just as much opposed to christianity as we are to islam..

[ALB]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

I'm not sure if this is just a bit of clever placement of "establishment" news such as we had in the General Strike with police v strikers football or a genuine sincere Xmas Day Truce 1st World War game of footie between Brits and Huns but worth noting.Tea and biscuits and a game of football between mosque and EDLhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-22689552Nevertheless, it is an echo of our own approach that the solution to political violence is not counter-violence but a reasoned rational response, not demonisation

Apparently this is not a one-off:http://www.ipswichstar.co.uk/news/ipswich_edl_walk_through_town_centre_ends_without_incident_1_2218950Maybe someone will now organise a football match between the UAF and the EDL. More likely, though, is that the UAF will adopt a policy of: "No tea and biscuits for the EDL".

[Author]

Posts