Barbarians: the Islamist terrorist war on the west
A few days ago I used the term “barbarism” in reference to the Nairobi mall attack. It’s the proper one. And this is an excellent article making a similar point—by a writer who appears to be a liberal, yet.
But here is one part of it with which I disagree:
What we have today, uniquely in human history, is a terrorism that seems myopically focused on killing as many people as possible and which has no clear political goals and no stated territorial aims.
In that sentence I think author Brendan O’Neill underestimates the scope of we’re dealing with. Yes, these terrorists love violence for its own sake; it makes them feel both powerful and powerfully feared. “Feared” is a concept that’s particularly important, for it ties into their “political goals” and “territorial aims” in a way that O’Neill does not seem to credit.
His article mentions two recent terrorist attacks: the church in Pakistan and the Nairobi mall. But both do have political goals, and the same one: frightening and thereby intimidating Christians in Pakistan and Kenya. Although in Pakistan Christians are a minority, and in Kenya they are a majority, the goal of the Islamic terrorists is the same—driving them away, or wiping them out, but above all scaring them into abandoning their faith or at least the public worship of their faith, and ceding the field entirely to Islam. Thus, the terrorists’ “territorial aims” are quite clear too, and related—although this “territory” is partly one of the mind—to ultimately install Islamic sharia governments in these countries. And then, on to other countries.
A good example of an Islamist terrorist organization with these goals is Boko Haram, a group based in Nigeria that has been responsible for a series of horrific attacks, including one yesterday. It is very upfront about its political and religious goals beyond the killings themselves. From Wiki:
[Boko Haram] is an Islamist movement which strongly opposes non-Sharia legal systems, and what they deem “Westernization.” Founded by Mohammed Yusuf in 2001, the organisation seeks to establish sharia law in the country. The group is also known for attacking Christians, bombing churches and attacking schools.
…The group seeks to “purify Islam” and is known for using motorbikes as its primary mode of travel. The movement is divided into three factions. In 2011, Boko Haram was responsible for at least 450 killings in Nigeria. It was also reported that they had been responsible for over 620 deaths over the first 6 months of 2012. Since its founding in 2001, the jihadist terrorists have been responsible for roughly 4,000 deaths comprising mostly innocent people.
In much of its reportage on yesterday’s attack, the MSM could not quite bring itself to call these people “terrorists.” But, as Brendan O’Neill says in the last paragraph of his column (although not referring to Boko Haram itself), “even the term terrorist might be too good for them.” They are killers who wish to sow chaos and fear, but they are also barbaric terrorists and enemies of civilization and learning (other than that of the Koran, of course) who would like to take us back to medieval times by amplifying that fear with the goal of closing schools and taking over education.
Here’s what they did yesterday in Nigeria (and also see how the NY Times dances around to avoid the words “terrorism” and “terrorist”—they are “militants,” “extremists,” “gunmen,” “attackers”):
The attackers drove into the campus of the Yobe State College of Agriculture, in a rural area just south of Damaturu, Yobe state’s capital, survivors said. A student, Musa Aliyu, 21, said Sunday that the attackers had entered the college’s dormitories as students slept and then opened fire randomly in the darkness.
The attack was the second large-scale massacre of civilians attributed to Boko Haram in less than two weeks. The Nigerian military has been pressing a scorched-earth counterinsurgency campaign against Boko Haram for four months and appeared to have halted its attacks in the urban centers of northeastern Nigeria, while hundreds of civilians fled into neighboring Niger to escape the violence. In rural areas, though, killings by the group — including at least 143 reported deaths in the northeastern town of Benisheik on Sept. 17 — appear to be continuing unabated.
In its war against the Nigerian state, Boko Haram has singled out government institutions, especially schools, for attack. One of its tenets is that Western-style education, not based on the Quran, in conventional schools is sinful and un-Islamic; the group has burned numerous schools in Maiduguri, the largest city in the region, and in early July it attacked a government secondary school in the town of Mamudo, killing 42 people, mostly students.
In yesterday’s attack “almost all those killed were Muslims” rather than Christians. At first glance, this might seem bizarre, and would appear to tie into O’Neill’s theories about the lack of logic in the strategy of such groups. But that would be wrong, because in this case the idea is to scare Muslims into being better Muslims by the twisted definitions Boko Haram uses. In their minds, Muslims who adopt Western ways—including studying Western methods of agriculture, or even scientific ones, as it seems these young people were doing—or who read Western books or don’t wear the proper Islamic outfits, are apostates and deserve death. Boko Haram’s political goal is to scare people into complying, close down such schools, and ultimately to establish a fundamentalist Islamic state (think “Taliban”) in Nigeria and elsewhere.
What’s so hard to understand about this? It’s only hard to understand if you close your mind to reality.
I was struck by this passage in the linked Telegraph article by Brendan O’Neill:
Yes, there is something wrong with people who don’t see the difference. And it’s been seen especially in the way they react to the Palestinians and the Israelis, which has perhaps carried over into their perception of Islamist terrorists — you know, in an effort to be internally consistent and in the process hide their animus toward Israel.
wish you would learn the definitions of terrorism and barbarism,a nd not use wrong popular confusing usage.
then you might realie that people who are not connected to a state cant do terrorism… ie. its not the state of making people afraid..
and it started as red terror in the french revoltuion, then the russian revolution of 1866, then it was changed by the soviets post wwii to set islam against the jews creating the palistinian conflict we have today
our liberal people do not want you to know that there are states backing these people and that we may back them too.
mid-15c., “uncivilized or rude nature,” from French barbarisme (13c.), from Latin barbarismus, from Greek barbarismos “foreign speech,” from barbarizein “to do as a foreigner does”
these are not foreigners…
these are a political faction in a state seeking to win a civil war to get control of that state and who are backed up by other states.
ie. they dont want you to realize that terrorism is a state act, not a personal act.
and since you prattle along with all the wrong rewritten definitions designed to confuse and keep you away from answers. is it any wonder you nver have any actual answers
your whole discourse ignores the obvious
not only that, but it pays attention to non expetts writing leftist crapola, and completely ignores what the people doing it call themselves or why!!!!!!
Yes, these terrorists love violence for its own sake; it makes them feel both powerful and powerfully feared.
right. thats why they did NOT kill the kids acting moral towards them, and instead gave them mars bars and let them go. cause they just loved to kill.
your so used to plasterig over what you see with the prattle you cant even refute the inanity in your head.
they are nothing like that…
where did you learn that?
let me gues,s you either picked it up as a form of mental lint (it stick to your head when you heard it), or you are reading moraons and pretending they are erudite so now you no longer can tell whats real or not
like solders we send to war, they regret what they do
WE make them out to be monsters so that WE can then control the people and do what we want. in this case, what they wanted to do was not help.
But both do have political goals, and the same one: frightening and thereby intimidating Christians in Pakistan and Kenya.
no, thats whatholloween is for, what they were doing was jihad. religion and the state are married… so they are seeking political control, its just that you cant handle that this politics is also religious and think its different.
but they are not trying to intimidate christians, they dont care if they are intimidated… they would just as easily remove them all, but their religiuous doctrines say they cant!!!!
but all that amounts to is the equivalent of a secular states “ruyles of engagement”..
by the way, who sold you on the idea of just war, and that there are morals in war, and that you can say things are barbaric… ie theya re at war!!! only leftist liberal wingnuts think that war can be moral and that there are things you dont do in war and so on!!!
there is no such thing as that…
(any more than the people doing it are following moral behavior in peace time!)
We also need to stand up to all those who throw the term islamophobic at us. EG: And you, WTF, are barbariphilic. We are not afraid or phobic about these monsters; we are disgusted by them, and to the extent that you don’t fight against these monsters, don’t expect any respect from us. Any a**hole that needs to massacre children to prove his manhood or gain access to 72 virgins is not someone I respect. Anyone who thinks that we can not use our God-given brains to learn how to farm or build an internet must have a terrible inferiority complex that seems well deserved. Don’t blame us for your problems. Stand up to this barbarity or go back to the desert that you came from. Leave your cell phones, cars, and air conditioning behind and learn how to milk a camel.
But that would be wrong, because in this case the idea is to scare Muslims into being better Muslims by the twisted definitions Boko Haram uses. In their minds, Muslims who adopt Western ways–including studying Western methods of agriculture, or even scientific ones, as it seems these young people were doing–or who read Western books or don’t wear the proper Islamic outfits, are apostates and deserve death
not quite
first of all, you swallowed hook line and sinker that this is not the point of the religoun but crazies using religioun as an excuse.
otherwise your phraseology would be differnt!
you have to understand the points here…
the way you talk about it shows incredible levels of ignorance as you try to apply what you know about diluted religous practices in the western secvular world with others…
you make it sound as if this is boka harums ideas.
they are NOT…
your description is of Kufrul-Juhood…. or Kufrul-Nifaaq
ie. your incapable of making proper distinctions within their framework, and so your incapabel of actually understanding anything about them other than as projections of what you already know
read this and try to understand what they were sorting, and also know what they are following…
Do notice how many would apply to any religion
and that by ignoring them, the western liberal leaders prevent you from learning of the types of non following that they think is following.
in other words, read and see all the points that secularization of religioun does to beleif, and then learn what you lost. (note that western christianity proscribes other things to do with what you find, but the point of what is beleif and following is quite the same)
Types of disbelief
your not going to figure a damn thing out from a place of ignorance, incuriousness, and lack of respect for the ideas tha have lasted over a 1000 years…
for instance. my ideas dont last more than 10 minutes if that long
Any a**hole that needs to massacre children to prove his manhood or gain access to 72 virgins is not someone I respect
who is dumber?
a person who acts out of somethign else that is believed to be that, or the person who thinks so lowly of the other that they believe whatever propaganda that the side that wants them to hate says?
do you really think that they think like this?
do you?
i mean if they think like this, then you must.
aftert all, you have to think like that to concieve such stupidity….
your point is a secular view of the rewards of a belief in an other life… ie. make fun of it.
problem is that you cant take their bliefs seriously enough to actually take them seriosly enough
hows that for making them fight yuou for not respecting them?
ie. they teach you to think this is hooey, and to not repect it, then you find yourself in a race war over culture (As trotsky the inventor defined it), and you cant get a handle on any part of it with your mind as you have no real part to grasp.
you will point out how they made fun of chinse anre japanese during world war ii and how that actually did not match them, and how they were found to be a dangerous opponent rather than funny looking cartoons who do things for funny reasons.
ie. on one level i can respect them more than i can respect you…
when their society and ideas were being challegnedf to be destroyed, they did not sit round talking while it all goes away, and the a cultured erases everything before it.
ever think that they dont have respect for people who prosyltize how they are great their culture is great then do not defend it or fight for it letting all the hogs and chickens peck and cnort over the remains till; they tear it apart, while you discuss how silly they are.
give them 15 more years and your population collasping and theirs having lots of kids…
better to be a live dummy who cant read
than a dead nothing who never existed
but then again
isnt the latter the better thing they say you should love?
I would think that if they went to that extent to classify the level of mind crime going on, they had plenty of “ideas” and weren’t incurious at all. They were very curious what made people tick and how long it would take to pull the legs off that human fly.
The Four Stages of Ideological Subversion
Demoralization – most of it is done by Americans to Americans,
Destabilization
This time the subverter does not care about your ideas and the patterns of your consumption, whether you eat junk food and get fat and flabby doesn’t matter anymore
what matters is essentials. Economy, foreign relations, defense systems. And you can see quite clearly that in some areas, in such sensitive areas as defense and economy, the influence of Marxist-Leninist ideas in the United States is absolutely fantastic.
Crisis
after crisis, with a violent change of power, structure, and economy, you have a so-called period of normalization. It may last indefinitely.
Communist “Normalization”
Normalization is a cynical expression, borrowed from Soviet propaganda, when the Soviet tanks moved into Czechoslovakia in 1968, Comrade Brezhnev said, “Now the situation in brotherly Czechoslovakia is normalized.”
Most of the American politicians, media, and educational system, trains another generation of people who think they are living at the peace time. False. The United States is in a state of war. Undeclared total war against the basic principles and the foundations of this system. And the initiator of this war is not Comrade Andropov of course, it’s the system – however ridiculous it may sound – the world Communist system, or the world Communist conspiracy. Whether I scare some people or not I don’t give a hoot. If you are not scared by now, nothing can scare you.
they are putting communiust education in school right out of russian models and you guys dont get that the soviets ADMITTED What tey did with islam
really…
if you cant accept the words of the people who did it admitting they did it, why accept the lies of the same people giving your explanaitions?
“What’s so hard to understand about this? It’s only hard to understand if you close your mind to reality.”
Leftists just refuse to do so.
Artfldgr:
I am in a hurry right now, so this will be brief.
If you read the link I provided to a piece I wrote the other day, there is a link in it and quotes in it from an earlier piece I wrote about the term “barbarian.” Suffice to say I’m not using a simple popular definition of the term.
And the terms “terrorist” and “barbarian” are not mutually exclusive, nor are they limited (particularly terrorism and terrorists) to the more narrow definition you offer.
Plus, you are (as often seems to happen) misinterpreting and misunderstanding what I am saying. I am NOT saying that a group such as Boko Haram is a bunch of “crazies” merely using the Muslim religion as an excuse.
One more thing—a terrorist or other murderer can love killing for its own sake and yet not kill everyone in sight, or everyone available at the time he/she is doing the killing.
What’s so easy about opening your mind to reality? There’s scary stuff out there.
Art:
For God’s sake, PLEASE try to cool it with the invective and the verbosity. Just make your points; no need to remind us how stupid, ignorant, unheedful and misguided we’ve all been. This is a freaking Blog, not a convention of Old Testament prophets!
I like you and (sometimes) your insights; but good gracious man, turn up that squelch knob a little bit; folks won’t read long, unpunctuated comments. And rightly or wrongly, nobody likes to be hectored or lectured to. We’re all grownups here (and I’ll venture a guess that the average age is well north of 50)
Radical Islam is every bit as much a political movement as it is a religious one. They want to seize and wield power, and with them in charge they get to decide who gets to live and who dies. That’s pure politics.
G Joubert:
Political, religious, and territorial. All of the above.
The barbarism is useful because it is so ghastly that it intimidates people into submission or flight. Until they have a critical mass it will also keep everyone, especially politicians and the media & entertainment industries quiet for fear of setting off the rioting rage boys, terrorists or fatwa-issuing imams.
Adherents aren’t just directed to conquer and dominate, they are instructed humiliate the infidels, which is why churches are destroyed and/or converted into mosques, homes & property destroyed, infidels are taxed, etc (good explanation here: http://tinyurl.com/csp7zda). I think the brutality is used not only to demonstrate how little they respect their victims (hate them, really), but to demonstrate to others how committed they are to achieving their goal – there is no limit to what they are willing to do. Heck, they’re proud to send their own children off to detonate suicide bombs. This is psychological warfare, and their message is crystal clear compared to PC mush uttered by Western leaders.
Heck, they’re proud to send their own children off to detonate suicide bombs.
Not their senior leaders. They’ll happily send other people’s children on suicide missions, but their own they carefully safeguard. More hypocrisy from the Religion of Pieces.
waltj…
The practice in Iraq was to use retarded children — training them like mice with candy.
So suicide is actually an incorrect term.
Art, throttle back or get back on your meds.
@blert: I’d heard that about using retarded kids as “suicide” bombers. Nice. And we’re supposed to avoid “Islamophobia” so as not to hurt these savages’ feelings? Yeah, right.
Brendan O’Neill is no liberal. He’s a former big wheel in the small Marxist cog which was known as the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP). It was a culty organizations and a lot of the girls that sold the party newspaper were very pretty. I know I was not the only radical young man who liked to fall into conversation with them, posing as an as yet unenlightened proletarian, and then challenging the RCP’s outrageous party line. The girls looked even prettier when they were angry – it was a kind of pre-nternet trolling.
The RCP’s last hurrah was it’s support of the Serb cause in the Yugoslav war, something a lot of Marxists fell into, out of force of habit, I think, of always being against the US. The RCP pushed the boat out even further, and claimed that the news reports of Serbian prison camps were faked.
Since then Brendan has reinvented himself as a libertarian-contrarian – a change of mind perhaps, by I doubt his heart has changed much.
“Westernization.”
I believe Europeans used to call it Coca-Colaization. After exhausting themselves of mass murder during WW2, Europeans restricted their hatred of modernity to intellectual tracts, inventing existentialism (Sarte, the communist), orientalism (Said, the palestinian activist), feminism (de bouvier, the stalinist) and che t-shirts.
Australians call people from India and the Middle East “Asians”.
They call it an ethnicity. Those mountain ranges were sort of why the Asians didn’t mix with the Persians ethnicity wise all that much. But not even the Earth’s highest mountains can come over the mountain of ignorance called Leftist indoctrination.
But as for Art, I don’t mind if he calls me a Leftist or what I say Leftism. My standard for Leftism revolves around whether they want to change the world or change themselves. Thus I posed the challenge to Art, that if he really wanted to improve his readability, he should start by capitalizing his sentences: change himself and his actions.
Instead of calling for Others to read and know and be Enlightened, change yourself is the answer diametrically opposed to Changing the World (slavery is a kind of changing the world to avoid changing your own behavior).
O’Neill’s, “…unique in human history…” is a loo-loo, is it not?? Pointless except for the butchery for butchery sake..!? I nearly spit a tooth.
Carl in Atlanta: ‘High functioning’ asbergers syndrome can really get tiresome when it nests on blog comments, can it not. (-:
The only way to deal with barbarians is to exterminate them. No conversation, no “trying to understand their grievances”.
That’s known as “termination with extreme prejudice” and I’m fine with that.
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