But the idea of a religion being at odds with practices other than the religion is nothing new; the secular law not based in the religion is just an extension of that line of thought — Chany
We forget, or we weren't born yet, that there was more terrorist activity in Europe in the 1970s than in Europe in the present decade — Bitter Crank
Most of the attacks were in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, Nigeria, Libya, Somalia, and Turkey.
That's a lot. It's not surprising, and not altogether illogical, to connect a pressure cooker bomb by a Kyrgyzstani in Boston, or a truck attack by an Uzbek in Stockholm to the larger number of bombings elsewhere, especially if there are some commonalities.
If there were a similar number of attacks, killed, and injured in Europe and the United States and sponsored by reactionary Catholics, I think it would be quite likely that Catholics in general would become suspect, at least to a substantial degree. Further, it would be difficult for progressive Catholics to completely distinguish themselves from reactionaries, because the basic shared faith (sans politics) is the same.
No doubt the kind of classification and study of Islamic Terrorists has been done. Security services around the world have been characterizing terrorism and terrorists. There are patterns which people don't overlook. — Bitter Crank
That's a lot. It's not surprising, and not altogether illogical, to connect a pressure cooker bomb by a Kyrgyzstani in Boston, or a truck attack by an Uzbek in Stockholm to the larger number of bombings elsewhere, especially if there are some commonalities. — Bitter Crank
My suspicion is that aside from the commonality of a shared religion there must also be various psychological influences exterior to the religion itself that play a role in the creation of terrorist psychology... — VagabondSpectre
The justification a typical terrorist might offer for their actions is largely the product of confusion; — VagabondSpectre
ABSTRACT: Religiously inspired terrorism can be understood as a response to a fundamental problem of secular modernity: the ‘‘God-shaped hole’’ that motivates it. The key issue is identity, and the anxiety that lack of secure identity arouses. Secular values undermine the ontological identity that religion traditionally provided. By devaluing such religious solutions to the ungroundedness of our constructed sense of self, the modern/ postmodern world aggravates the sense of lack that it cannot understand and with which it is unable to cope. This may seem too abstract, but the problems created are all too real. This essay discusses these problems and adumbrates a Buddhist solution. This challenge requires a spiritual growth that involves confronting our lack – that is, opening up to the groundlessness that we dread, which turns out to be a formless, ungraspable ground.
This seems to be directly at odds with Vagabond's graph showing that nearly all terrorist acts occur in deeply religious Muslim countries, where one would have to search long and hard to find somebody with a secular outlook. Further, they are predominantly committed against religious people that belong to competing religions or sects - not against the non-religious. While on the other hand the Muslims in Western countries, that are every day confronted by 'secular modernity', are hardly ever motivated to commit terrorist acts.Religiously inspired terrorism can be understood as a response to a fundamental problem of secular modernity: the ‘‘God-shaped hole’’ that motivates it.
This seems to be directly at odds with Vagabond's graph showing that nearly all terrorist acts occur in deeply religious Muslim countries, where one would have to search long and hard to find somebody with a secular outlook — andrewk
That might be true of many of the individuals recruited to Jihadist causes, but it also might be the case that terrorist ideologues are motivated by the belief that Western culture truly is a satanic force which is bent on the destruction of Islam. They therefore see themselves as warriors in a holy war, a cosmic war, between the forces of evil, personified by The Great Satan, which is American/Western cultural imperialism and degeneracy, and themselves as righteous warriors of Jihad. I think that is much nearer the way they seem themselves, rather than simply ascribing their actions to confusion and desperation. — Wayfarer
The belief that the west is a satanic lacks impact without basing itself in an emotional appeal to a real world conflict. — VagabondSpectre
Sayyid Qutb, an Islamic scholar who became the intellectual inspiration for most Islamic terrorist groups including al Qaeda, built his philosophy on a critique and rejection of secularism. His major work In the Shade of the Qur’an emphasizes that the modern world has reached jahiliyya, a pathological ‘‘moment of unbearable crisis,’’ not only because of its faith in human reason but more generally because of the Christian split between the sacred and secular dimensions of life, which later evolved into the modern Western separation of church and state. For Qutb, secularist morality is ‘‘ersatz religion,’’ and a life in jahiliyya is ‘‘hollow, full of contradictions, defects and flaws’’ (as quoted in Euben, 1991, p. 22). This ‘‘hideous schizophrenia’’ becomes worse when Christians try to impose it on Islam, because it is alien to shari’a, the Islamic moral code that regulates everyday life in great detail. Qutb rejected the Muslims leaders of his time, including ‘‘the Pharoah’’ Nasser who jailed and then executed him in 1966, as modernized and pagan products of the ‘‘new ignorance’’ sweeping the world. Their secularism is an attempt to destroy Islam, hence it must be resisted by any means possible (Berman, 1991, p. 28).
Incidentally I don't believe the Orlando attack was motivated by anything like the above. That perpetrator was a crazed psychopath who simply latched onto the narrative for his own perverted reasons — Wayfarer
Exactly - it's too much religion, not too much secularism, that - together with the poverty, warfare and general desperation - enables the terrorism. A 23 page word salad, by somebody that should know better than to stray from writing knowledgeably about spiritual opportunities and practices to writing superficially and speculatively about geopolitics and criminology, does nothing to change that.Besides, the top seven countries in that graph have been subject to civil wars and/or invasions and/or long-standing sectarian conflicts, often between Sunni and Shi'a, which is one of the major exacerbating tensions behind many of the fatalities. — Wayfarer
A 23 page word salad... — andrewk
It's very easy to call it psychopathy and perversion (and maybe that's accurate) but exploring the causes of that psychopathy is complicated, tedious, and generally repulsive to endure. — VagabondSpectre
I think the supposition that the Orlando shooter himself was gay or bisexual and frequented gay dating sites was later debunked, IIRC.In this case, "radical ideology did it" seems to tell less than half the story. His religious and cultural hatred of homosexuals in particular (not hatred of the west as a whole) was central in his crime, and in light of the fact that he was himself gay or bi-sexual, it stands to reason that the resulting self-hate played a substantial role in creating the instability/psychopathy evident in his actions. — VagabondSpectre
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