To ask what the problem is (The terrorists)

[lemisscared]

Because i just don't know. Have they got a genuine gripe? Why the hatred? What do they want to achieve? Honestly, shouldn't people be sitting round a table and making concessions on BOTH sides?

I am terrified which is probably daft but in Syria and other countries that im embarrased to say i don't know, people are being massacred daily and the West bats not an eye. They live with terror every day - how can we make it stop?? Not just here, but everywhere?

If there is a God, whoever's God you are, now would be a good time to intervene because i can't help but feel that the whole world is turning on itself.

Can somone please explain this to me, possibly from the point of view of the Islamists behind these attacks, because they must feel justified in their actions, i don't believe that the route of the problem is evil.

I'm just scared

THere's a cartoon trending on twitter and it says something along the lines of: muslim kills: entire religion is guilty, black man kills: entire race is guilty. White man kills (aka brevik) : he's mentally ill.

I think extremism had really become a curse of our generation and a cancer within islam. However, i think asking ALL muslims to apologise for these extremists is unfair.

Some threads on mn this week have been unpalatable. I have yet to see any muslim in the west support these maniacs. As for the muslims in the middle east, i suspect the syrians, gazans, pakistani s, afghans and iraqis are to busy burying their dead to have the time to assess and evaluate the actions of these idiotic terrorists.

Babbas
Cartoons like that are just as ridiculous as things said about "them". Both "sides" put out similar things to prove a point.

i think asking ALL muslims to apologise for these extremists is unfair
I disagree, I apologise as a human that this shit happens in our world.

My pleasure, GrandTheftQuarto

It is kinda one of my research areas, so I could talk about it until the cows come home.

I do wonder why China went such a different way - it has some similarities, stagnation-wise, when Western Europe was doing its big thing.

I'm making very little sense, even to myself

Brilliant post, Worksallhours.

Worksallhours brilliant explanation.

My father would love you. He spent a while doing similar research into the power vacuums left by WWI, but he focused on the Balkans/Greece. He wrote a great book about it...

Thanks Worksallhours - that was really clear.

worksallhours thank you so much for that explanation. it wasn't necessarily what i wanted to hear but i understood it and i appreciate you taking the time to post.

it wasn't what i wanted to hear as it doesn't like a solution will happen any time soon.

They don't like the fact that Hindus/gays/Jews/secularists/women/certain animals/Christians/Zoroastrians/Sikhs/Buddhists/transvestites/cartoonists exist?

Worksallhours - very interesting analysis, thanks.

Nettle speaks a lot of sense.
It's not (just) about religion. If they could all be banned tomorrow it would not solve everything. Some of the worst atrocities in recent history occurred in the absence of religion - the Nazis were a secular organisation.
Humans have always organised themselves into groups and gone to war. Ifthere was no religion, it would be racial, cultural, philosophical divides. Whatever. I believe ( I'm not a historian so I stand to be corrected, I'm just quoting something I heard on the radio) that modern times are pretty much the most peaceful on record.

It's important to remember that across the world Muslims die every day due to terrorism from Muslim extremists. 2000 have died in a massacre at the hands of Boko Haram in Nigeria.

I don't know what the answer is.

lemisscared

Aye lass , do not be so downcast. These things are the way of the world, and we have no more control over it than we do over our neighbours' will of sending her children to bed without supper*.

The questions you ask are eternal questions. We can no more solve war and hatred than those that came before us. People will be as people will be.

*okay, this is a slightly victorian idiom but hey ...

Live and let live. Wouldn't it be lovely.

It's not that 'the west didn't bat an eye' in Syria; we actively funded, trained and encouraged the insurgency, and continue to do so. What's happening in Syria is not organic, it's the result of foreign meddling. Some countries had coups that went 'our' way (the Soviet Union, Poland), but more recently, it's all gone totally tits-up after our intervention (Libya, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Syria, Egypt, Yemen, Algeria). These are 100% not organic movements; they are the culmination of western interventions.

Incidentally, I'm not a tin-fool hat-wearer; look-up Gladio (particularly Daniel Glasner's work) - these things have been discussed and confirmed at parliamentary level.

Thank you worksallhours - that was really interesting.

Nancy - saying 'you're making excuses for terrorists' simply because someone is trying to understand the background to these attacks (aren't we all?) shuts down debate. You may feel differently and that's fine. But if we don't at least try and understand potential triggers and context (including examining western actions) then we're not learning anything that will help us prevent future attacks.

This always makes me laugh.

The Koran clearly states what it's believers must do. The extremists are the only ones who actually take that it literally.

Others decide to say 'oh well what he actually meant by that point was' and continue on some tangent that has nothing to do with the original sentence or completely tries to sidetrack from it's original meaning.

I'm scared. I have family working in places that would be prime for terrorist attack. But we can't live in fear.

muslim kills entire religion is guilty, black man kills: entire race is guilty. White man kills (aka brevik) : he's mentally ill.

But it's not "muslim" in singular. It is attack after attack week after week, thousands of them training to be jihadists. You cannot compare that to an isolated incident. Sorry but the comparison does not stand.

You can talk about triggers all you like, the trigger was a DRAWING of the 'prophet'.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=HavvrcJXi5A Watch and see just the sort of mentality the world is up against.

Ubik1 - thank you.

I was horrified when I read this last night and wondered why aren't we talking about this too?
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2903980/Boko-Haram-slaughter-2-000-people-north-east-Nigeria.html

Time - your argument is nonsensical. The comparison is nothing to do with frequency but centres on the apportionment of blame and culpability. Your post is a classic example of the mentality that was being identified and the reason killallmuslims was trending on twitter this week.

muslim kills: entire religion is guilty, black man kills: entire race is guilty. White man kills (aka brevik) : he's mentally ill.

That sounds like someone is confused about the difference between skin color and religion.

Some of the members of my local chess club are black, some white, some religious and some not, but they all play chess. Is it racist to generalise that way about them? Chessist perhaps?

White man kills (aka brevik) : he's mentally ill.

To be fair, if Norway kept on producing extremists going on the rampage, shooting up immigrants, after a certain point people would be looking suspiciously at Norwegians and would be afraid to get on the tube with Norwegians, etc. I am struggling to think of any other case where a Norwegian went on a shooting spree.

but anders brevik's problem was not religion it was being a sexist right wing extremist/nazi

it appears that the policeman murdered in cold blood by those monsters was a muslim :( he died trying to protect innocent people. He was a true hero.