We can assume religion isn't the primary cause because there are many cultures around the world where confrontational religious ideologies don't actually lead to large scale violence. The one common denominator we can find in all radicalized societies and cultures is poverty and/or some history of being acted against (my example of the wedding party etc).
It seems to me the logical conclusion is that religion on its own is not enough to radicalize large populations.
I'm sure this post will make no sense to me in the morning, I'll be sure to check.
We can assume religion isn't the primary cause because there are many cultures around the world where confrontational religious ideologies don't actually lead to large scale violence. The one common denominator we can find in all radicalized societies and cultures is poverty and/or some history of being acted against (my example of the wedding party etc).
It seems to me the logical conclusion is that religion on its own is not enough to radicalize large populations.
I think a more reasonable explanation is that religion's influence varies over societies and culture, income level and government. It might be of paramount importance in some places, and take a back seat in other places.
"It depends" is, I think, more reasonable than "it is unique". I say this because history has--for example--Christians shedding a lot of blood over theological differences in times past, people have been executed for heresy and apostasy, people sacrifice time and pleasure for the sake of religion... religion compels people to do many things. I think it's extremely likely that it can be a major factor--such that we can call it the factor--behind a few riots and hurt feelings.
It also bears mentioning that I see al-Qaeda, al-Shabaab, Hezbollah, the Taliban, et al. as fundamentally political organizations, with a political objective (destroying America / subverting the Somalian government / destroying Israel / ruling Afghanistan, etc.) couched in Islamic rhetoric. It's a shaky analogy, but I liken it to the Christian Right's crusade against same-sex marriage; if the Bible said homos getting married was totally okay, I doubt the Bible Belt would be fine and dandy with it even then. Of course, that's being a little presumptuous in speculating the attitudes of a large group of people, but it's my guess.
Religion cannot be the sole cause of large scale violence and unrest on the magnitude of we see in radical Islam today. It can be part of it in that it is twisted to suite the ideological needs of the involved parties (wahabism), but on its own you simply can't use religion to radicalize enough people and drive them to violence.
I need to have some kind of reason for this limitation. People feel compelled to do all kinds of things because of religion. If people believe the world works a certain way, I don't see why they wouldn't act on those beliefs.
I said this before but with things like this, at this scale, it's never simply "religion". It's much deeper than that. When people are compelled to do these things it's because of the environment, the people, and the government. (metaphor time) Religion is like the the fabric of a flag they wave, but how they got the flag in the first place is a much more complicated and sad story.
I highly, highly recommend the movie "Iraq in Fragments" to understand the dynamics of what I'm talking about. It applies to Iraq and it's people, not Al Quaeda, but the ideas and sentiments are widespread especially in the middle east.
Angry puppy on
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
We can assume religion isn't the primary cause because there are many cultures around the world where confrontational religious ideologies don't actually lead to large scale violence. The one common denominator we can find in all radicalized societies and cultures is poverty and/or some history of being acted against (my example of the wedding party etc).
It seems to me the logical conclusion is that religion on its own is not enough to radicalize large populations.
I think a more reasonable explanation is that religion's influence varies over societies and culture, income level and government. It might be of paramount importance in some places, and take a back seat in other places.
"It depends" is, I think, more reasonable than "it is unique". I say this because history has--for example--Christians shedding a lot of blood over theological differences in times past, people have been executed for heresy and apostasy, people sacrifice time and pleasure for the sake of religion... religion compels people to do many things. I think it's extremely likely that it can be a major factor--such that we can call it the factor--behind a few riots and hurt feelings.
I certainly feel that many of the recent public displays of violence are religiously motivated and apolitical, such as the Quran burning protests and the violence and murders in the wake of the Mohammed cartoons.
Even something like 9/11 can be linked to foreign policy, but things like murdering people for drawing a cartoon or making a movie have no political goal. It's just pure fanaticism, and I think that too many people tend to underplay the role of religious fanaticism in these cultures, especially in the theocratic nations or nations with religiously-based legislation.
Sure, I'm don't doubt that in many instances Islam is twisted to fit political ends, and that's basically what al Qaeda and the Taliban are all about, but the misery they inflict on their own people, even members of the same religious sect, for offenses like going to school or learning to read are largely based in religious fundamentalism, as any political gain or progress earned from such actions is, at best, questionable.
Religion cannot be the sole cause of large scale violence and unrest on the magnitude of we see in radical Islam today. It can be part of it in that it is twisted to suite the ideological needs of the involved parties (wahabism), but on its own you simply can't use religion to radicalize enough people and drive them to violence.
I need to have some kind of reason for this limitation. People feel compelled to do all kinds of things because of religion. If people believe the world works a certain way, I don't see why they wouldn't act on those beliefs.
I said this before but with things like this, at this scale, it's never simply "religion". It's much deeper than that. When people are compelled to do these things it's because of the environment, the people, and the government.
And again, environment, people, government... but not religion? What's so special about religion that it isn't a motivating factor? To hear religious folk tell it, religion is pretty important to a lot of people.
My view is that there are people saying that things that are apparently very relevant to religion--burning a holy book that is supposedly the word of God apparently causing riots--are for some reason the cause of anything but religion. There isn't even anything particularly extenuating about this, anything that would make this particular incident suspect as an example of religious craziness. It's simply assumed, without apparent reason, that this apparently religious-motivated activity must necessarily have nothing to do with religion, even though everyone involved kinda says it is.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I need someone to disabuse me of the view that there's a lot of special pleading going on here.
The Taliban hates the liberation of women and intellectualism in general. They cherry-pick scripture to suit their needs. BAM, Islam is the religion of female oppression and anti-intellectualism.
White landowners need a moral underpinning for enslaving blacks and other non-whites besides just economics. They cherry-pick from scripture to suit their needs. BAM, Christianity is -- oh wait.
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
The Taliban hates the liberation of women and intellectualism in general. They cherry-pick scripture to suit their needs. BAM, Islam is the religion of female oppression and anti-intellectualism.
White landowners need a moral underpinning for enslaving blacks and other non-whites besides just economics. They cherry-pick from scripture to suit their needs. BAM, Christianity is -- oh wait.
I don't think it's fair to call it "cherry picking" in either religion, as both are quite open and frequent in their appeals to misogyny and irrationality.
Still, it's hard to call those political goals. It may be extremist conservatism, but only in a social sense. Otherwise, without religion those appeals to backwards barbarism have to be filtered through the seine of reason and logic. So, semantically it may be correct to say that it's not about religion, but most likely the strength of those viewpoints without the benefit of religious endorsement falls to the point of extreme fringe employment.
I mean, I'm sure there are non-religious people right here in the US or Europe who think education is wrong and women are inherently worthless, but they're generally politely asked to shut the fuck up with that noise.
Of course they're political goals. Al-qaeda/the taliban/hamas/whoever are trying to structure society in a way that is preferable to them, and islam is one of the rhetorical cudgels they use.
Christianity has been used in the same way to support any number of evils over the course of history; that doesn't mean that christianity necessarily supports slavery or colonialism or the spanish inquisition.
I mean, it comes back to the same thing discussed earlier. Billions and billions of people manage to subscribe to religious faith without blowing up buildings or repressing women or inevitably supporting autocratic governments, from which it should follow that religion is probably not the cause of those things.
Eat it You Nasty Pig. on
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
The reason for the middle east being undemocratic has less to do with the Religion of Islam and more to do with the fact that it has oil. Without oil money and the subsequent American support, most kingdoms in the middle east wouldn't last a week. They would be republics in no time. Maybe not democratic, but no longer absolute monarchies.
I mean seriously? We are even fucking debating this fact? Even the outliers like Egypt and Syria are affected by the strategic importance of middle east Oil.
I would tend to think they'd just be a theocracy in many cases. For instance, Iran is not a monarchy, and is in name a republic. In truth it is a theocracy with a public face of a republic.
I think my first post in this thread was about how Islam, like any religion, is imperfect and is a reflection of its (very human) creators. I'm not a religious scholar, but it's my understanding that both Christianity and Judaism have at various points in their history gone through reforms that you could generally call "modernizations." Islam has no such history of introspection or reform (though there are lots of different sects with their own "true" interpretation of Islam) -- in fact, obstinate objection to change is a hallmark of the broader Islamic tradition, evidenced by things like claiming that the protection of god himself has kept the Quran from being changed for millenia, and by clinging to the burka. In short, it's not a bug -- it's a feature.
Like I mentioned before, it's not like poor, innocent, idyllic Islam was taken into a back-alley and beaten up by al-Qaeda or the Taliban.
But you have to have both elements -- political/cultural motives and religious justification -- to feel compelled to fly planes into buildings, imho.
The reason for the middle east being undemocratic has less to do with the Religion of Islam and more to do with the fact that it has oil. Without oil money and the subsequent American support, most kingdoms in the middle east wouldn't last a week. They would be republics in no time. Maybe not democratic, but no longer absolute monarchies.
I mean seriously? We are even fucking debating this fact? Even the outliers like Egypt and Syria are affected by the strategic importance of middle east Oil.
I would tend to think they'd just be a theocracy in many cases. For instance, Iran is not a monarchy, and is in name a republic. In truth it is a theocracy with a public face of a republic.
What makes you support this claim?
Oil makes them rich. At that point there are two options to keep order maintained as a dictator:
1) Widespread prosperity! This is not popular as that's less money for you, the dictator.
2) Buy lots of weapons and training for your army/secret police and keep them in check by force.
Coincidentally, when Middle Eastern dictators choose option 2, we're the ones who train them.
enlightenedbum on
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
Of course they're political goals. Al-qaeda/the taliban/hamas/whoever are trying to structure society in a way that is preferable to them, and islam is one of the rhetorical cudgels they use.
Is religion divorced from whatever motivated people to prefer a society that happens to be more in line with their religion?
I mean, you say that there is a version of society that is more preferable to religious people, it seems pretty reasonable to assume that those preferences are shaped at least in part by one or more facets of their religion.
No, I said there was a version of society more preferable to a particular political faction, and they use their view of a particular religion as a means of persuading people to subscribe to it.
I suspect you would have a very difficult time finding a general political philosophy that applied across muslim "religious people."
Eat it You Nasty Pig. on
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Of course they're political goals. Al-qaeda/the taliban/hamas/whoever are trying to structure society in a way that is preferable to them, and islam is one of the rhetorical cudgels they use.
Is religion divorced from whatever motivated people to prefer a society that happens to be more in line with their religion?
I mean, you say that there is a version of society that is more preferable to religious people, it seems pretty reasonable to assume that those preferences are shaped at least in part by one or more facets of their religion.
It's actually a chicken and the egg question. Does the religion provide the political goal? Sometimes it does. Like the crazy motherfucking evangelists who support Israel to trigger the apocalypse. Or to be more fair, abortion. Or does the political goal lead to the perversion of the religion? I think in the US context opposition to gay rights go here, as does a lot of terrorist movements. Or sometimes, it's a chain:
religion -> political belief -> religious perversion
For example, Eric Rudolph.
In the case of Islamic terrorists, I think it's
politics -> pan-arab nationalism -> need for unifying factor to recruit -> Islam -> make up bullshit justifications within that context for murder!
enlightenedbum on
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
Of course they're political goals. Al-qaeda/the taliban/hamas/whoever are trying to structure society in a way that is preferable to them, and islam is one of the rhetorical cudgels they use.
Is religion divorced from whatever motivated people to prefer a society that happens to be more in line with their religion?
I mean, you say that there is a version of society that is more preferable to religious people, it seems pretty reasonable to assume that those preferences are shaped at least in part by one or more facets of their religion.
Exactly.
You can't say that people are only using religious motivation to shape their culture in a preferred model unless you deconstruct why that preferred model exists.
You say that they're just using religion as a political tool, but then you say their political aim is enforcement of religious doctrine. I mean, come on. Does not follow.
I mean, it comes back to the same thing discussed earlier. Billions and billions of people manage to subscribe to religious faith without blowing up buildings or repressing women or inevitably supporting autocratic governments, from which it should follow that religion is probably not the cause of those things.
I think it's much more likely that billions of people are more apt to follow secular interpersonal dynamics when the alternative is pointless misery and murder. I'd say that lapsed and waning religious self-identifiers far outnumber the devout in most of the West.
And don't forget, we've only stopped blowing each other up, subjugating on basis of sex and race, and supporting theocracies in the West in the last hundred years or so. I would strongly posit that the decrease in those occurrences has a strong correlation with the rise of protestantism, agnosticism, and atheism in the West.
And don't forget, we've only stopped blowing each other up, subjugating on basis of sex and race, and supporting theocracies in the West in the last hundred years or so. I would strongly posit that the decrease in those occurrences has a strong correlation with the rise of protestantism, agnosticism, and atheism in the West.
And I'd argue it has to do with improved communications technology (in all of those cases) and increased blowing people the fuck up technology (in the first case).
enlightenedbum on
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
Religion was our answer to barbarism. We needed it in Year One because if there's no risk of eternal damnation if I lie, cheat and steal... why shouldn't I? We've come a long way since then, obviously, and because most of the actually good ideas propounded by scripture (thou shallt not kill, respect thy neighbor, etc) have become the law of the land almost everywhere, the only use for religion anymore is to try and force on us the less obviously worthwhile ideas it puts forth that date back 2,000 years -- the subjugation of women, homosexuals and non-believers, for instance.
What I'm trying (both inarticulately and inefficiently because I'm typing on an iPhone) to say is that your cultural predispositions -- some from millenia ago -- shaped your religion, which is now used as a justification to further reinforce your cultural predispositions. It's a pretty transparent feedback loop, in my view.
The reason for the middle east being undemocratic has less to do with the Religion of Islam and more to do with the fact that it has oil. Without oil money and the subsequent American support, most kingdoms in the middle east wouldn't last a week. They would be republics in no time. Maybe not democratic, but no longer absolute monarchies.
I mean seriously? We are even fucking debating this fact? Even the outliers like Egypt and Syria are affected by the strategic importance of middle east Oil.
I would tend to think they'd just be a theocracy in many cases. For instance, Iran is not a monarchy, and is in name a republic. In truth it is a theocracy with a public face of a republic.
What makes you support this claim?
Oil makes them rich. At that point there are two options to keep order maintained as a dictator:
1) Widespread prosperity! This is not popular as that's less money for you, the dictator.
2) Buy lots of weapons and training for your army/secret police and keep them in check by force.
Coincidentally, when Middle Eastern dictators choose option 2, we're the ones who train them.
I bolded the relevant part of his post. They already have money, lots of it in comparison with the populace. The damage is already done. Withdraw American support (oil money) and nothing will change. Especially since you'd also have to withdraw Chinese contention for oil along with every other country (America is not the only one).
I also pointed out how the situation might not change anyway. Iran, for instance, is a republic run by a tyrant (at the moment). You missed an option that I pointed out:
3) Become a theocracy, convince the populace that this is how God wants things, and ensure religious fervor to assist control. You don't need a large secret police because the populace keeps things in check by themselves. Iran works this way. So do many of the middle eastern countries. It isn't money that is what is keeping them in power, it is money coupled with religion.
That's not really how Iran works. The vital thing is the totalitarianism, as we just saw last year.
So the thing about Iran, post-Revolution is this:
1) It's invaded by Iraq. Being invaded/attacked does wonders for faith in your government (see September 2001 - March 2002 for obvious example). When a foreigner kills most of a generation of males, that also helps rallying around the flag. Population remains not really willing to be annoyed with the assholes governing them.
2) War ends, oil (especially with the embargo on Iraq, I suspect) fuels a bit of a boom. Iranian economy does pretty well. Rich people are happy people, as always.
3) Economic slump, they elect a reformer. Illusion of choice provides a brief respite to feelings of discontent.
4) Axis of Evil happens. We go back to step one. Ahmadinejad is elected.
5) Iranian economy tanks, government becomes unpopular. Election is rigged, massive government violence puts down protests. And that's where we are now.
Religion didn't have much to do with it (after the initial revolution, obviously; but that was motivated by the Shah's brutality), except perhaps Ahmadinejad's election which again was a nationalist response to Bush being a jackass.
enlightenedbum on
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
Religion didn't have much to do with it (after the initial revolution, obviously; but that was motivated by the Shah's brutality), except perhaps Ahmadinejad's election which again was a nationalist response to Bush being a jackass.
His re-election was, I thought, pretty much due to the Ayatollah supporting polls which appeared to have been tampered with?
Religion didn't have much to do with it (after the initial revolution, obviously; but that was motivated by the Shah's brutality), except perhaps Ahmadinejad's election which again was a nationalist response to Bush being a jackass.
His re-election was, I thought, pretty much due to the Ayatollah supporting polls which appeared to have been tampered with?
The "re-election" was fear of the people. Ahmadinejad is a puppet. Mousavi not so much.
The original election was nationalism inspired religion related, I think.
Regardless, the people haven't been controlled by religion. Nationalism and good economics, yes.
enlightenedbum on
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
The original election was nationalism inspired religion related, I think.
The Iranian Revolution was a response to the Shah's secularism, yes.
Well, no, I mean obviously the Revolution was. I'm talking about Ahmadinejad's first election in what, '05? Or was it '03? I forget if they serve four years or six.
enlightenedbum on
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
The original election was nationalism inspired religion related, I think.
The Iranian Revolution was a response to the Shah's secularism, yes.
Well, no, I mean obviously the Revolution was. I'm talking about Ahmadinejad's first election in what, '05? Or was it '03? I forget if they serve four years or six.
Religion was our answer to barbarism. We needed it in Year One because if there's no risk of eternal damnation if I lie, cheat and steal... why shouldn't I? We've come a long way since then, obviously, and because most of the actually good ideas propounded by scripture (thou shallt not kill, respect thy neighbor, etc) have become the law of the land almost everywhere, the only use for religion anymore is to try and force on us the less obviously worthwhile ideas it puts forth that date back 2,000 years -- the subjugation of women, homosexuals and non-believers, for instance.
What I'm trying (both inarticulately and inefficiently because I'm typing on an iPhone) to say is that your cultural predispositions -- some from millenia ago -- shaped your religion, which is now used as a justification to further reinforce your cultural predispositions. It's a pretty transparent feedback loop, in my view.
I tell you about the answer to barbarism. Somebody already mentioned Tariq Ali previously, but here it goes:
It seems like everyone here is agreeing on the same basic truth about religion and it's uses/how it starts and Loren Michael is just questioning that, or something. Hamurabi put it the most eloquently. I just tried to get at the point quicker, but seriously everyone in this thread needs to see Iraq in Fragments. Here's the trailer:
This is a boring and largely useless distinction as it applies to everything. We have few if any qualms about attributing one or a few major factors as the cause of things, why is religion special here?
I'm sorry that reality is boring?
Religion isn't special. Sole causes just aren't a thing. Everything humanity does is based on a massive cloud of influences which affect one another. Religion reflects a culture and is reflected by a culture. Events, individuals, ideas, and a wide variety of pressures all add their influence and are influenced in turn. Trying to narrow it down to this is because X just leads to a litany of exceptions. People who are aware of the complexity of reality are naturally going to resist attempts to simplify it in such a manner. Religion definately contributes to what's going on in the world. But what is going on in the world shapes that religion.
Yes but when you say "They're rioting because we burned their holy book" you really can't say "It's really because of the influence from the Israeli-Palestine conflict, which contributes to a feeling of unease and that the US is to blame, so the fact that the book was a representation of their culture and religious ideologies set off the riot as seen as an attack on their way of life."
I mean sure you can say that, but if you replace "holy book" with some other really popular book, I doubt it'd have the same effect as it. You take religion out of the picture, suddenly you have to find some really really big reason to have a riot. I doubt they'll riot in the streets because the US threw a muslim in jail for robbing a bank or something.
bowen on
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
It was asked page or so ago, but the thing about religion that makes it a poor motivator compared to economics or politics is how abstract it is, Loren.
It was asked page or so ago, but the thing about religion that makes it a poor motivator compared to economics or politics is how abstract it is, Loren.
Er. I haven't heard of too many people who blow themselves up in the name of Keynes or Obama. People might get angry about being poor, or join the Army because they need money, but they don't compare to the fervour and violence of a true believer or religious fighter. An army of children in the middle ages didn't attempt a Crusade because of the socio-economic disadvantages of feudalism. Flagellants didn't (and don't) routinely whip themselves as a political protest. Religion might be a cover for political and economic ambitions for leaders and rulers, but there is a reason for that: it gets the people behind them, because those people are motivated by religion.
Religion is about belief. Occasionally politics is also about belief, but increasingly in the modern world and for most adults beyond 25 is about practicalities - those political systems that do rely on belief often mirror religion (Nazism, Soviet, North Korea, cult-of-personality dictatorships). Economics has always been about practicalities, unless you are a high-level theorist. Belief is a hugely powerful motivator.
Again, you don't provide any examples. History is littered with examples of people who have done extraordinary things for their beliefs (most of which, due to its long historical primacy, are linked to religion), unless you have only read an collection of extraordinarily narrow, Marxist histories (which themselves impose socio-economic reasons on each situation because it is their own belief). To be honest, I can barely imagine the kind of bubble you would have to live in - particularly in the United States - to think that religion isn't a massively important motivator for many people.
You're confusing the stated reasons with the root cause. Terrorist A says he's blowing up Americans for Allah, but that doesn't mean religion is the reason he ever got there in the first place. He had a grievance with America and found a interpretation of his religion that gave him a morally clean slate to engage in violence.
This is fundamentally the strategy we're running with in Afghanistan right now, securing population areas and trying to get an economy up and running so that support for extremism will evaporate. Why blow yourself up when you have a decent job and your kids are going to get killed by a landmine?
Yes but when you say "They're rioting because we burned their holy book" you really can't say "It's really because of the influence from the Israeli-Palestine conflict, which contributes to a feeling of unease and that the US is to blame, so the fact that the book was a representation of their culture and religious ideologies set off the riot as seen as an attack on their way of life."
I mean sure you can say that, but if you replace "holy book" with some other really popular book, I doubt it'd have the same effect as it. You take religion out of the picture, suddenly you have to find some really really big reason to have a riot. I doubt they'll riot in the streets because the US threw a muslim in jail for robbing a bank or something.
Similarly, going back to a couple pages ago: the Islamic Revolution first appeared in Iran and spread all over the Middle East. It was led by clergymen and put those men in power afterwards. It shut down all opposition media and government and declared Islam itself to be the single, ultimate government, and put unprecedented political power into the hands of a few religious leaders. It strikes me as oddly apologetic and underdoggish to claim that the real reason for all this was because 30 years prior the CIA, as part of a Cold War strategy against Russia, worked with the Shah to oust a popular Prime Minister in Iran (who himself came to power through a questionable assassination and illegal election techniques).
The fact that much more recently than that there was growing widespread Islamic opposition to modern secular reforms is more directly topical.
You can say that the reason Iran is in such a mess is because we hypocritically took sides in their politics 60 years ago as part of the Cold War. You can say that the Islamic Revolution 30 years later was just "naturally" what this interference led to (despite our interference having nothing to do with religion). You can always pick any event in history and make the case over and over that it is the "root cause" of anything that happened afterwards. There is certainly an argument to be made there. But at some point in all that you have to acknowledge that religious dominance of government has been the actual problem there for some time.
You're confusing the stated reasons with the root cause. Terrorist A says he's blowing up Americans for Allah, but that doesn't mean religion is the reason he ever got there in the first place. He had a grievance with America and found a interpretation of his religion that gave him a morally clean slate to engage in violence.
This is fundamentally the strategy we're running with in Afghanistan right now, securing population areas and trying to get an economy up and running so that support for extremism will evaporate. Why blow yourself up when you have a decent job and your kids are going to get killed by a landmine?
I could link you a handful of interviews of Afghan civilians who were caught laying out IEDs on roads traveled by American convoys. Their reasons are similar - the Taliban paid them $30 to do it and they can't make money otherwise. Of course, killing their fellow Afghans is out of the question but, if they're desperate, an out-of-work livestock farmer could eventually conclude that murdering invading non-Muslims is alright ... unless those non-Muslims pay better, of course.
Fundamentally, yes, but would Terrorist A still blow up Americans if there was nothing he could interpret? Maybe. But probably far less likely. I posit the problem is religion and it's interpretation for a moral compass.
I can justify doing things without a book, but people get more motivated because of a powerful image. Allah, the American Flag, etc. You take those things away, you remove the meanings behind them, suddenly people become lethargic.
bowen on
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
You're confusing the stated reasons with the root cause. Terrorist A says he's blowing up Americans for Allah, but that doesn't mean religion is the reason he ever got there in the first place. He had a grievance with America and found a interpretation of his religion that gave him a morally clean slate to engage in violence.
This is fundamentally the strategy we're running with in Afghanistan right now, securing population areas and trying to get an economy up and running so that support for extremism will evaporate. Why blow yourself up when you have a decent job and your kids are going to get killed by a landmine?
I could link you a handful of interviews of Afghan civilians who were caught laying out IEDs on roads traveled by American convoys. Their reasons are similar - the Taliban paid them $30 to do it and they can't make money otherwise. Of course, killing their fellow Afghans is out of the question but, if they're desperate, an out-of-work livestock farmer could eventually conclude that murdering invading non-Muslims is alright ... unless those non-Muslims pay better, of course.
Exactly. Terrorist organizations are nucleus of extremely radicalized individuals who make up the leadership, and a nebulous haze of grunts who have a wide variety of motivations that are usually more personal and immediate, such as economic woes or personal grievances (dead family members etc).
We capture and kill the core and counter the motivation of the grunts.
Fundamentally, yes, but would Terrorist A still blow up Americans if there was nothing he could interpret? Maybe. But probably far less likely. I posit the problem is religion and it's interpretation for a moral compass.
I can justify doing things without a book, but people get more motivated because of a powerful image. Allah, the American Flag, etc. You take those things away, you remove the meanings behind them, suddenly people become lethargic.
The religion can be replaced by any ideology. A workers revolution, a revolution for independence, lots of things.
Extremism occurs outside of religion all the time.
Posts
It seems to me the logical conclusion is that religion on its own is not enough to radicalize large populations.
I'm sure this post will make no sense to me in the morning, I'll be sure to check.
I think a more reasonable explanation is that religion's influence varies over societies and culture, income level and government. It might be of paramount importance in some places, and take a back seat in other places.
"It depends" is, I think, more reasonable than "it is unique". I say this because history has--for example--Christians shedding a lot of blood over theological differences in times past, people have been executed for heresy and apostasy, people sacrifice time and pleasure for the sake of religion... religion compels people to do many things. I think it's extremely likely that it can be a major factor--such that we can call it the factor--behind a few riots and hurt feelings.
I said this before but with things like this, at this scale, it's never simply "religion". It's much deeper than that. When people are compelled to do these things it's because of the environment, the people, and the government. (metaphor time) Religion is like the the fabric of a flag they wave, but how they got the flag in the first place is a much more complicated and sad story.
I highly, highly recommend the movie "Iraq in Fragments" to understand the dynamics of what I'm talking about. It applies to Iraq and it's people, not Al Quaeda, but the ideas and sentiments are widespread especially in the middle east.
I certainly feel that many of the recent public displays of violence are religiously motivated and apolitical, such as the Quran burning protests and the violence and murders in the wake of the Mohammed cartoons.
Even something like 9/11 can be linked to foreign policy, but things like murdering people for drawing a cartoon or making a movie have no political goal. It's just pure fanaticism, and I think that too many people tend to underplay the role of religious fanaticism in these cultures, especially in the theocratic nations or nations with religiously-based legislation.
Sure, I'm don't doubt that in many instances Islam is twisted to fit political ends, and that's basically what al Qaeda and the Taliban are all about, but the misery they inflict on their own people, even members of the same religious sect, for offenses like going to school or learning to read are largely based in religious fundamentalism, as any political gain or progress earned from such actions is, at best, questionable.
And again, environment, people, government... but not religion? What's so special about religion that it isn't a motivating factor? To hear religious folk tell it, religion is pretty important to a lot of people.
My view is that there are people saying that things that are apparently very relevant to religion--burning a holy book that is supposedly the word of God apparently causing riots--are for some reason the cause of anything but religion. There isn't even anything particularly extenuating about this, anything that would make this particular incident suspect as an example of religious craziness. It's simply assumed, without apparent reason, that this apparently religious-motivated activity must necessarily have nothing to do with religion, even though everyone involved kinda says it is.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I need someone to disabuse me of the view that there's a lot of special pleading going on here.
White landowners need a moral underpinning for enslaving blacks and other non-whites besides just economics. They cherry-pick from scripture to suit their needs. BAM, Christianity is -- oh wait.
I don't think it's fair to call it "cherry picking" in either religion, as both are quite open and frequent in their appeals to misogyny and irrationality.
Still, it's hard to call those political goals. It may be extremist conservatism, but only in a social sense. Otherwise, without religion those appeals to backwards barbarism have to be filtered through the seine of reason and logic. So, semantically it may be correct to say that it's not about religion, but most likely the strength of those viewpoints without the benefit of religious endorsement falls to the point of extreme fringe employment.
I mean, I'm sure there are non-religious people right here in the US or Europe who think education is wrong and women are inherently worthless, but they're generally politely asked to shut the fuck up with that noise.
Christianity has been used in the same way to support any number of evils over the course of history; that doesn't mean that christianity necessarily supports slavery or colonialism or the spanish inquisition.
I mean, it comes back to the same thing discussed earlier. Billions and billions of people manage to subscribe to religious faith without blowing up buildings or repressing women or inevitably supporting autocratic governments, from which it should follow that religion is probably not the cause of those things.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
What makes you support this claim?
Like I mentioned before, it's not like poor, innocent, idyllic Islam was taken into a back-alley and beaten up by al-Qaeda or the Taliban.
But you have to have both elements -- political/cultural motives and religious justification -- to feel compelled to fly planes into buildings, imho.
Oil makes them rich. At that point there are two options to keep order maintained as a dictator:
1) Widespread prosperity! This is not popular as that's less money for you, the dictator.
2) Buy lots of weapons and training for your army/secret police and keep them in check by force.
Coincidentally, when Middle Eastern dictators choose option 2, we're the ones who train them.
Is religion divorced from whatever motivated people to prefer a society that happens to be more in line with their religion?
I mean, you say that there is a version of society that is more preferable to religious people, it seems pretty reasonable to assume that those preferences are shaped at least in part by one or more facets of their religion.
I suspect you would have a very difficult time finding a general political philosophy that applied across muslim "religious people."
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
It's actually a chicken and the egg question. Does the religion provide the political goal? Sometimes it does. Like the crazy motherfucking evangelists who support Israel to trigger the apocalypse. Or to be more fair, abortion. Or does the political goal lead to the perversion of the religion? I think in the US context opposition to gay rights go here, as does a lot of terrorist movements. Or sometimes, it's a chain:
religion -> political belief -> religious perversion
For example, Eric Rudolph.
In the case of Islamic terrorists, I think it's
politics -> pan-arab nationalism -> need for unifying factor to recruit -> Islam -> make up bullshit justifications within that context for murder!
ed: although realistically it's probably virtually always a feedback loop of political views > culture and back again
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Exactly.
You can't say that people are only using religious motivation to shape their culture in a preferred model unless you deconstruct why that preferred model exists.
You say that they're just using religion as a political tool, but then you say their political aim is enforcement of religious doctrine. I mean, come on. Does not follow.
I think it's much more likely that billions of people are more apt to follow secular interpersonal dynamics when the alternative is pointless misery and murder. I'd say that lapsed and waning religious self-identifiers far outnumber the devout in most of the West.
And don't forget, we've only stopped blowing each other up, subjugating on basis of sex and race, and supporting theocracies in the West in the last hundred years or so. I would strongly posit that the decrease in those occurrences has a strong correlation with the rise of protestantism, agnosticism, and atheism in the West.
And I'd argue it has to do with improved communications technology (in all of those cases) and increased blowing people the fuck up technology (in the first case).
Religion was our answer to barbarism. We needed it in Year One because if there's no risk of eternal damnation if I lie, cheat and steal... why shouldn't I? We've come a long way since then, obviously, and because most of the actually good ideas propounded by scripture (thou shallt not kill, respect thy neighbor, etc) have become the law of the land almost everywhere, the only use for religion anymore is to try and force on us the less obviously worthwhile ideas it puts forth that date back 2,000 years -- the subjugation of women, homosexuals and non-believers, for instance.
What I'm trying (both inarticulately and inefficiently because I'm typing on an iPhone) to say is that your cultural predispositions -- some from millenia ago -- shaped your religion, which is now used as a justification to further reinforce your cultural predispositions. It's a pretty transparent feedback loop, in my view.
I also pointed out how the situation might not change anyway. Iran, for instance, is a republic run by a tyrant (at the moment). You missed an option that I pointed out:
3) Become a theocracy, convince the populace that this is how God wants things, and ensure religious fervor to assist control. You don't need a large secret police because the populace keeps things in check by themselves. Iran works this way. So do many of the middle eastern countries. It isn't money that is what is keeping them in power, it is money coupled with religion.
So the thing about Iran, post-Revolution is this:
1) It's invaded by Iraq. Being invaded/attacked does wonders for faith in your government (see September 2001 - March 2002 for obvious example). When a foreigner kills most of a generation of males, that also helps rallying around the flag. Population remains not really willing to be annoyed with the assholes governing them.
2) War ends, oil (especially with the embargo on Iraq, I suspect) fuels a bit of a boom. Iranian economy does pretty well. Rich people are happy people, as always.
3) Economic slump, they elect a reformer. Illusion of choice provides a brief respite to feelings of discontent.
4) Axis of Evil happens. We go back to step one. Ahmadinejad is elected.
5) Iranian economy tanks, government becomes unpopular. Election is rigged, massive government violence puts down protests. And that's where we are now.
Religion didn't have much to do with it (after the initial revolution, obviously; but that was motivated by the Shah's brutality), except perhaps Ahmadinejad's election which again was a nationalist response to Bush being a jackass.
The "re-election" was fear of the people. Ahmadinejad is a puppet. Mousavi not so much.
The original election was nationalism inspired religion related, I think.
Regardless, the people haven't been controlled by religion. Nationalism and good economics, yes.
The Iranian Revolution was a response to the Shah's secularism, yes.
Well, no, I mean obviously the Revolution was. I'm talking about Ahmadinejad's first election in what, '05? Or was it '03? I forget if they serve four years or six.
Oh, never mind.
I tell you about the answer to barbarism. Somebody already mentioned Tariq Ali previously, but here it goes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21CL-QqRgs0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vBc_OrzzfI
I'm sorry that reality is boring?
Religion isn't special. Sole causes just aren't a thing. Everything humanity does is based on a massive cloud of influences which affect one another. Religion reflects a culture and is reflected by a culture. Events, individuals, ideas, and a wide variety of pressures all add their influence and are influenced in turn. Trying to narrow it down to this is because X just leads to a litany of exceptions. People who are aware of the complexity of reality are naturally going to resist attempts to simplify it in such a manner. Religion definately contributes to what's going on in the world. But what is going on in the world shapes that religion.
I mean sure you can say that, but if you replace "holy book" with some other really popular book, I doubt it'd have the same effect as it. You take religion out of the picture, suddenly you have to find some really really big reason to have a riot. I doubt they'll riot in the streets because the US threw a muslim in jail for robbing a bank or something.
Er. I haven't heard of too many people who blow themselves up in the name of Keynes or Obama. People might get angry about being poor, or join the Army because they need money, but they don't compare to the fervour and violence of a true believer or religious fighter. An army of children in the middle ages didn't attempt a Crusade because of the socio-economic disadvantages of feudalism. Flagellants didn't (and don't) routinely whip themselves as a political protest. Religion might be a cover for political and economic ambitions for leaders and rulers, but there is a reason for that: it gets the people behind them, because those people are motivated by religion.
Religion is about belief. Occasionally politics is also about belief, but increasingly in the modern world and for most adults beyond 25 is about practicalities - those political systems that do rely on belief often mirror religion (Nazism, Soviet, North Korea, cult-of-personality dictatorships). Economics has always been about practicalities, unless you are a high-level theorist. Belief is a hugely powerful motivator.
Again, you don't provide any examples. History is littered with examples of people who have done extraordinary things for their beliefs (most of which, due to its long historical primacy, are linked to religion), unless you have only read an collection of extraordinarily narrow, Marxist histories (which themselves impose socio-economic reasons on each situation because it is their own belief). To be honest, I can barely imagine the kind of bubble you would have to live in - particularly in the United States - to think that religion isn't a massively important motivator for many people.
This is fundamentally the strategy we're running with in Afghanistan right now, securing population areas and trying to get an economy up and running so that support for extremism will evaporate. Why blow yourself up when you have a decent job and your kids are going to get killed by a landmine?
The fact that much more recently than that there was growing widespread Islamic opposition to modern secular reforms is more directly topical.
You can say that the reason Iran is in such a mess is because we hypocritically took sides in their politics 60 years ago as part of the Cold War. You can say that the Islamic Revolution 30 years later was just "naturally" what this interference led to (despite our interference having nothing to do with religion). You can always pick any event in history and make the case over and over that it is the "root cause" of anything that happened afterwards. There is certainly an argument to be made there. But at some point in all that you have to acknowledge that religious dominance of government has been the actual problem there for some time.
I could link you a handful of interviews of Afghan civilians who were caught laying out IEDs on roads traveled by American convoys. Their reasons are similar - the Taliban paid them $30 to do it and they can't make money otherwise. Of course, killing their fellow Afghans is out of the question but, if they're desperate, an out-of-work livestock farmer could eventually conclude that murdering invading non-Muslims is alright ... unless those non-Muslims pay better, of course.
"Government spending has been shown to compensate for low private demand in times of economic recessiiiiiioooooo -- BOOM."
I can justify doing things without a book, but people get more motivated because of a powerful image. Allah, the American Flag, etc. You take those things away, you remove the meanings behind them, suddenly people become lethargic.
Exactly. Terrorist organizations are nucleus of extremely radicalized individuals who make up the leadership, and a nebulous haze of grunts who have a wide variety of motivations that are usually more personal and immediate, such as economic woes or personal grievances (dead family members etc).
We capture and kill the core and counter the motivation of the grunts.
The religion can be replaced by any ideology. A workers revolution, a revolution for independence, lots of things.
Extremism occurs outside of religion all the time.