To think that Islamic state will cause world war 3

[ReallyTired]

I feel terrified for the future. I believe that the world will reach a point where there will be outright war to stop Islamic state. In the meantime Russia will annexe the Ukraine and much of Eastern Europe.

I am scared that Islamic state will get hold of atomic weapons. There are Muslim extremists with the intelligence to make a nuclear bomb. There are Muslim countries with uranium deposits.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining#/media/File:Uranium_production_world.PNG

But tell me what you know French.

Thymeout don't be so cynical. The Egyptian government have carried out several operations on Libya in the last year not because of any pressure from Obama but because the unstable situation in Libya is a real concern to the Egyptian government, as it borders them to the West. They also face a real problem with Islamic terrorists in North Sinai several soldiers having been killed there since the overthrow of the Muslim brotherhood. This latest operation has been so high profile because the whole of Egypt is appalled by the beheading of those poor men and the government needed to do something spectacular. The beheading of these poor men actually happened three or four days before the mainstream media here picked up on it which disgusts me. They were dirt poor and they were just trying to provide for their families by going to Libya. It is possible that the Egyptian government will escalate this.

do you think some men are press ganged into joining Isis?

I did 1984 at A level, is the tv screen in rooms too close? wasn't therea smart tv that picked up private conversations recently.

Cynical? Moi? This is foreign policy we're talking about.

Do you seriously think that Obama hasn't been on the phone to the heads of state in the region? Or vv? As the Arab Spring showed, these governments have a domestic problem with native militant muslims. They would rather sit on their hands and let the US be the bad guy.

Andango, I really hope you are right. But the situation is only chaotic at the moment because people are living in a war zone. If/when IS gains control and executes any pow's they capture, the situation will stabilise. Roads will be repaired, bakeries will bake bread and there will be a new regime, which will function more or less normally, except for the new laws and brutal punishments for breaking them. Unfortunately. IS have shown themselves capable of being disciplined and well-organised. They're not a rag tag rabble of psychopaths. And they have Allah on their side, in the minds of a sizeable section of the population who are disgusted by Western morals, as they see them.

by all mean talk about ISIS or a terrorist group but to mention 'Islamic state' implies that you are putting all countries that have Islam has their official religious in the same bag.

I took it as a shorthand version of the rather confused ISIS/ISIL/ Islamic State of Iraq and Al Sham/ Daesh...etc. So not "Islamic States".

Thymeout In a way I hope ISIS do over run a Middle Eastern country and attepmt their warped version a caliphate, as this would mean the end for them.
Many times, politicised Islam (and Christianity for that matter) has failed completely. Violent religious idealists have butchered and bullied their way into power only to discover that you cannot Islamise / Christianise a society by force – whether in England in the mid 17th Century, or present day Syria, Iraq. Rhetoric is cheap and easy, but running public services and state institutions is a lot harder. The murderers, kidnappers and rapists ofIsis, and the rest have no political programme, no strategy, no blueprint for government. Theirs is a hate-filled ideology, built on a cult of victimhood and horrific violence.

are you sure Sour I read a while back they are taking over facilities, handing out food and so on and doing a good job of it. Along with the atrocities and miserble rules,but they are taking over hospitals and so on.

Saudi are building a huge wall to keep them out and employing Scholars to distance Islam from Isis interpretation of it. Will be hard given Saudis human rights record and treatment of women

the egyptian leader published a speech making clear that he did not want fundamentalism in egypt and that they needed a more moderate and liberal reading of islam for their society to thrive in modern times whilst i was there back in january. it was much welcomed by the liberal people i know there though no doubt there'll have been groups who read it as a betrayal.

i do hope people have the sense not to see the middle east as some homogeneous blob on the map even when extremist groups try to claim it as one. they are different nations, cultures and peoples with very different histories and relationships to other nations and international relations etc.

everyone i talked to their was at a loss of what to make of the madness in syria - rightly or wrongly they didn't even seem to discern right or wrong or sides in it anymore but to see a whole crazy mess that was eating itself and a once beautiful country being lost to that madness. some knew people with syrian origins who had gone back and expressed how insane they thought they were and that it was pointless suicide to walk into that madness. there seems to be a sense of belief in collective insanity that isn't expressed in very complex terms but as a sort of given of 'these people have gone mad'. for many non politicised or particularly educated people the same attitude seems to be taken towards israel and palestinians- that this is insanity-that these people are beyond reason or common sense and have tipped over into some craziness that cannot be controlled. like we may speak of an individual who has 'lost the plot'.

not massively helpful of course but these aren't leaders or scholars or those who decide how to react on a military level, just people going about their lives much as we average people go about our lives here. they certainly don't see themselves as having anything in common with lunatics blowing themselves up or burning people alive and they don't feel a massive affinity to one side or the other purely on the basis of religion or skin colour or x, y or z.

not sure why i'm sharing all this. but like we go 'why the hell is that boy going to syria from his comfortable life in england to go 'fight' in a situation he doesn't even understand when he's clearly going to die on some false sense of honour or involvement?' so does the egyptian whose vaguely connected to syria neighbour goes off to do the same. mystified as we are.

not a homogeneous lump, believe me.

I can't be sure, but that's my theory. Taking over some facilities is not the same as running a nation state. For a start they'd need the support of the people. And the overwhelming majority of Muslims don’t want an Isis-style state. I've just finished an interesting book 'Who Speaks for Islam?' It's based on 50,000 interviews with Muslims in more than 35 countries and in it the authors record how: “Majorities in many countries hate the idea of religious leaders holding direct legislative / political power".

majorities in most countries in the whole world are more concerned about the cost of food and housing and their freedom to go about their day to day lives securely and without threat of violence from within or without their own nation than they are about anything else.

the vast majority of people on this planet want to live in peace and get on with their lives and wish all the psychos and extremist (of all denominations whether chasing oil and money and power or religious extremism and ideological goals would feck off and leave us alone.

Well said TheHoneyB I think I think that secularism is a vital component of democratic politics, for obvious reasons. A secular democracy that upholds human rights is neither pro- nor anti-religion. Rather, it is neutral...

I don't believe we have a duty to commit offence for offences sake, by publishing cartoons that we know will be seen as deeply offensive to a minority for whom their religion is a source of massive comfort. There are so many images we wouldn't dream of publishing - as the effect would be the same.

But where religion tries to impose it's belief systems surely a secular state will find itself at odds with religion?

Look at the USSR or North Korea or China. You don't need a religion. All you need a Cause, whether ideology or patriotism, or a magnified/falsified external threat. Again - read 1984.

Sourdrawers - ISIS do have a political objective: to seize power and hold on to it. Their policies will be to tailor existing institutions to their religious doctrine. They don't need the consent of the majority of the population if they are prepared to use inhumane methods to maintain that control. Dissidents will be brutally eliminated 'to encourage the rest'. Sections of society, like non-muslims or liberal muslims will be scapegoated.

A network of secret police and rewards for betrayal will close down free speech well beyond newspapers and TV.

I think ISIS is a more credible threat than Al Quaeda because it has shown the ability to mobilise troops and finance a conventional war. If they can do that, they can run a country.

Look at the USSR or North Korea or China.

Look at the whole eastern block, many countries, different languages, identities, cutlures, and histories.

Their policies will be to tailor existing institutions to their religious doctrine

Easier for ISIS to impose this in Muslim countries, where Islam is a way of life. They have ramped it all up but its from same place.

sorry. many countries all forced under mantle of communism

Terryfying but true Thyme out.

OTheHugeManatee Excellent comment at 20:39. I see this phenomeon as a expression of British "exceptionalism", a similar phenomenon to the "America exceptionalism" we currently see.

Chandler I've often wondered if a lot of the class divides and issues in the UK are some sort of remnant of the Norman Conquest

It's strange you say this, because I have wondered, for years, whether the North/South divide is some sort of reflection of the outcomes of the Northern Conquest -- that the North/South divide is actually the Anglo-Norse/Norman divide.

Thymeout, I agree, IS is a credible threat, it scares me. And we can thank Tony Blair for their emergence. Fucker.

ussr overthrown and broken down. china - in crisis really and under increasing pressure from it's own people every day and increasingly so the more educated and well travelled they become and the harder it becomes to effect censorship and the usual story of a critical point reached when the gulf between rich and poor is broad enough.

'even' here in the uk and us we're near that critical point where the dogma and totalitarian ideology is at breaking point.

these things have a shelf life and a... critical mass point.

the north south divide really has become the south east v the rest of you/us divide and is rapidly becoming the city mile v the rest of us divide. it's money and power not geography as such - it's just that the money and power is condensed in a geographical area and in recent times that area is shrinking rapidly (and the number of people holding that money power).

again there is the critical mass point - re: at what percentage and area does it become unsustainable? is it when the 1% holds 99% of wealth and power? is it when it's a square mile of the country? etc.

that holds true for every country in the world - the 'middle east' is not so alien. the average person in the middle east has exactly the same concerns as you or i. rightly or wrongly the non politicised average person in egypts observations about the whole uprisings and changes of power were based on the availability of petrol and food and the cost of a kg of tomatoes.

Thymeout I think ISIS is a more credible threat than Al Quaeda because it has shown the ability to mobilise troops and finance a conventional war. If they can do that, they can run a country.

I am not sure about this. I remember back in the mid noughties [?] that there were reports that Hezbollah were concentrating heavily on learning, understanding and discussing methods of civil and public administration. There was a report around that time that said Hezbollah representatives were present at some EU event, and all they wanted to talk about was issues of civil administration with the European delegates present -- much to the delegates' surprise.

Now, at that point, Hezbollah ran an incredibly efficient military structure. They also had a very well-established network of charitable welfare ... but they recognised that actually running a country was a very different kettle of fish.

Indeed, this has historically been one of the problems with toppling any regime anywhere -- Communist, Baathist ... etc. The entire civil service, the only people who actually know how things run, and the heads of key service areas are often tainted by association with the previous regime, often being active members of the Communist Party or the Baath party.

Indeed, if membership of the regime's ideology has been necessary to work at any level in the majority of industries, you can end up with junior mechanics, assistants and teachers being members of the regime.

So to remove the regime, you need to remove these people from positions of power or authority ... but no-one else outside of the regime structure knows how to do these job by default.

TheHoneyBadger there is the critical mass point - re: at what percentage and area does it become unsustainable? is it when the 1% holds 99% of wealth and power?

I think it is Maury Klein who makes the argument that the cause of the Great Depression was that the American economy in the 20s was dangerously dependent on the consumption habits of the 1%. So when the crash of '29 occurred and wiped out the fortunes of the 1%, the economy then collapsed because demand simply vanished overnight.

I have always found this hypothesis very interesting because it suggests that a significant middle class with stable and careful, but regular consumption habits, and a wealthier working class is the key to economic stability over long periods of time.

these things have a shelf life and a... critical mass point

and North korea

and north korea what?