Charlie Hebdo: Gun attack on French magazine kills 11

The videos I watched were of course "propaganda" and they were of course designed to "manipulate." But the aims of that manipulation were pretty clear -- to make themselves look like fearsome badasses, to encourage their sympathizers to join, and to encourage their enemies to abandon their posts and flee as soon as ISIS enters the area, a classic war propaganda strategy.

When did radical islamism begin? Mordy, do you say ever? And would you perhaps have a text backing that up? Because I don't know enough about it, but a Danish expert wanted to place it as the final of the four -isms developing in the twenties still standing. Apparantly, clerics begin to radicalize the tenets of Islam into a political movement. But I don't know, and I don't have any links backing me up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wahhabism

yeah it dates back before the 20s - it predates fascism and communism

Oh, sure. But are we talking radical Islam or political Islam? Oh, probably you're talking radical Islam, got it.

My bad, confused things.

It's a nebulous inquiry though, because what is meant by "radical Islam" and what is meant by "political Islam"? There have been Islamic movements with imperial ambitions, or if you prefer empires and would-be empires with Islamic bents at various times since the dawn of Islam. (There have also been huge Muslim populations living without any such ambitions for as long, to be clear).

yeah wahhabism and the House of Saud are intimately linked - and there's no "render unto caesar" moment in the Koran, Mohammad was p political, it's there from the outset.

Also probably important is the rise of pan-Arabism or Arab Nationalism in the early 20th century, which was not at all a "radical Islamic" movement but did pave the way for the idea of a post-colonial united ME region, a mantle that wahabbists have taken up with a very different spin.

i just take issue when US politicians pretend to have insight. they are Boeing sales representatives

i've read a bit about islamic history but i'm not an expert in it at all (and as you can imagine a lot of what i know are the places where islamic history and jewish history touch) but there are two different points here - one is wahhabism as a more contemporary phenomenon and the second is the currents of colonialism and violence that have existed at different times throughout islamic history. in either case i think it's a mistake to explain islamic fundamentalist violence as primarily a reaction to western interventions even though that certainly has played some role in its current manifestations.

the whole world has been effed for thousands of years. its not like the English tradition doesnt recently have tons of bloodshed on its hands. i dont see the point in morally judging when the whole world has always been a war hungry madhouse.

i just dont see the point in judging this vast group of people to all have something fundamentally different about them than the west. something about throwing stones if u live in a glass house.

uh nobody said any of that

I'm sure we're all plenty comfortable judging ISIS. no one's rendering judgment on Muslims as a whole

i'm not judging anyone and it should go without saying (but maybe i should say it anyway) that islam is a complex and rich tradition with many different beliefs and ideologies. right now i'm talking about a particular tradition within it and not saying in any way that all of islam is this or that which would be absurd in addition to bigoted.

muslim brotherhood dates back to the 20s if that's what the danish guy was talking about. a standard answer for people looking for an intellectual origin of anti-western fundamentalism is sayyid qutb. al-wahhab & ibn saud were late C18th, purist, revivalist & very conservative but not exactly political in the sense people are talking about here. a lot of arab nationalists were pro-western/influenced by e.g. french political thinkers

people are saying they are religiously motivated. i take that as a sort of judgement on islam as a whole.

why? two people read the same text and one is inspired to pacifism and the other is inspired to go to war. they're both religiously motivated.

half of KSM's official statement was praise for enlightenment radicals and american revolutionary heroes

as someone said on another thread: read better

xp

KSM not part of ISIS btw

if we are to stop terrorism we need to look at it as a dynamic system rather than isolated groups.

this is john kerry playing wack a mole

we're not going to stop terrorism. remember all the times you made fun of the "war on terror"? the silly part isn't the war part. the silly part is you can't defeat a tactic.

i am not above entertaining the idea of making the world a safer place. that is the purpose for society and civilization imo.

i made fun of career arms dealer us politicians using that as a sales pitch. i take this stuff seriously tho. i have family in france.

You can get the full text of Lawrence Wright's 9/11 book The Looming Tower here -

https://archive.org/stream/TheLoomingTower/TheLoomingTower_djvu.txt

The early chapters deal with the sources of modern Islamist thought, especially Sayyid Qutb, mentioned already by ogmor.

The role of Sadaam's former Baathists should not be overlooked

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/the-hidden-hand-behind-the-islamic-state-militants-saddam-husseins/2015/04/04/aa97676c-cc32-11e4-8730-4f473416e759_story.html

His account, and those of others who have lived with or fought against the Islamic State over the past two years, underscore the pervasive role played by members of Iraq’s former Baathist army in an organization more typically associated with flamboyant foreign jihadists and the gruesome videos in which they star.

Even with the influx of thousands of foreign fighters, almost all of the leaders of the Islamic State are former Iraqi officers, including the members of its shadowy military and security committees, and the majority of its emirs and princes, according to Iraqis, Syrians and analysts who study the group.

They have brought to the organization the military expertise and some of the agendas of the former Baathists, as well as the smuggling networks developed to avoid sanctions in the 1990s and which now facilitate the Islamic State’s illicit oil trading.
...Rather than the Baathists using the jihadists to return to power, it is the jihadists who have exploited the desperation of the disbanded officers, according to a former general who commanded Iraqi troops during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Yeah, one thing I would also say from my limited reading of their propaganda is that ISIS could potentially seem like it had a lot to offer for someone not ostensibly religiously motivated but very nihilistic/cynical/vicious -- adventure, action, rape, etc. So it has occurred to me that not all of its recruits may wholesale buy into the ideology deep down, but may just like the opportunity it purports to afford to basically live in a video game.

As that article noted--Two decades ago, the elaborate and cruel forms of torture perpetrated by Hussein dominated the discourse about Iraq, much as the Islamic State’s harsh punishments do today.

Michael Weiss is kind of an idiot but his interviews with ISIS members recently suggest a lot of people joining now are locals who just need $$$

http://uk.businessinsider.com/isis-defector-explains-why-people-continue-joining-group-2015-11?r=US&IR=T

Would be interesting to know how their failure to make any military or strategic headway this year has impacted foreign recruitment.

short book excerpt from politico on the connections between/supercession of IS and AQ

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/08/isis-jihad-121525#.VdXrKab3ac2

Also probably important is the rise of pan-Arabism or Arab Nationalism in the early 20th century, which was not at all a "radical Islamic" movement but did pave the way for the idea of a post-colonial united ME region, a mantle that wahabbists have taken up with a very different spin.

― on entre O.K. on sort K.O. (man alive), Wednesday, November 18, 2015 2:36 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

others here know more than me; i thought the growth of islamist movements sprang from the failures of pan-arabism to deliver

Right, I just mean I credit pan-Arabism with a new wider regionalist thinking that islamist movements took up, I think we're saying similar things.

Started reading Looming Tower thanks to this thread (h/t to Ward for the free link). Wright is such a great storyteller, the kind of writer I find myself trying to sneak in another page of every chance I get -- in the elevator, in the hallway, etc.

Looming tower is amazing

I read Going Clear and Thirteen Days in September (not quite as gripping but the subject matter is drier) and I devour pretty much anything he writes in the NYer.

I may try to read everything he's done, although the twins book doesn't sound that interesting to me.

Wasn't sure where to put this, so, France beheading attack: Suspect Yassin Salhi kills himself

"Prosecutors regarded Salhi as a militant Islamist, but the delivery driver maintained that he was motivated by a grudge against his employer."

"His head - reportedly bearing Arabic inscriptions - had been hooked on to factory railings, alongside two flags, also with Arabic writing on it."

weird

Also weird that someone I know knows someone who got a phone call from his brother saying, "I'm off work today, one of our driver's just beheaded my boss."

Every saud has a killer lining

dude was that necessary

Not even defensible tbh let alone necessary

Man shot in Paris on Charlie Hebdo anniversary

Shot while trying to enter a police station while yielding a knife, according to reports.

... and wearing a suicide vest... allegedly.

... fake suicide belt apparently, guy was no genius obv.

http://hurryupharry.org/2016/04/03/charlie-hebdo-on-brussels/
^ Interesting analysis of latest controvercial piece