July 8, 2004
I'M NOT EVIL, I JUST EXPLODE ME THAT WAY (via Kevin Whited):
Islamist militants defy stereotypes, author says (Hannah K. Strange, July 5, 2004, UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL)
"Conventional wisdom" on Islamic terrorism is wrong, according to Dr. Marc Sageman, author of "Understanding Terror Networks," who teaches at the University of Pennsylvania and is a counterterrorism adviser to the U.S. government.The theory that terrorists are poor, angry and fanatically religious is a myth, he said.
Dr. Sageman, who has a doctorate and a medical degree and who worked as a CIA case officer in Pakistan during the Soviet war in nearby Afghanistan, made his comments at a June 17 conference in the District, while discussing what he learned while writing his book. He studied 400 members of terrorist networks from North Africa, the Middle East, Malaysia and Indonesia.
Of this sample, he said, 75 percent come from upper- or middle-class backgrounds, and most also from "caring, intact" families. Sixty percent were college educated and 75 percent could be considered professional or semi-professional. Seventy percent were married, and most had children.
Only half came from a religious background, and a large group raised in North Africa or France grew up in entirely secular communities, which, Dr. Sageman said, "refutes the notion of culture," often cited as a factor encouraging terrorism.
He rejected the idea of terrorists as "inherently evil."
"None of these guys, really, are evil -- though their acts definitely were."
We're gonna need both John Kerry and Robert Reich to explain the nuanced morality of that one. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 8, 2004 6:56 PM
The theory that terrorists are poor, angry and fanatically religious is a myth, he said. . . . Only half came from a religious background
So, coming from a non-religious background somehow means one can't be fanatically religious? Does this bozo think religious belief is inherited like eye color or something?
Posted by: PapayaSF at July 8, 2004 7:21 PMSeems to me that that 'conventional wisdom' is the one we were taught explained the early Christian martyrs.
Like everything else the Church taught, that was mainly bogus. The calendar of saints is full of rich matrons, subalterns in crack regiments and post-debs, and not too many of the humble oppressed.
In other words, a death-seeking Muslim fanatic is not that different from a death-seeking Christian fanatic.
No surprise there.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at July 8, 2004 9:08 PMMartyrs die for what they believe. Terrorist kill for it. Their own deaths are quite incidental.
Posted by: oj at July 8, 2004 9:13 PMToo subtle a distinction for a simpliste like me.
The early Christians were only too happy to kill for what they believed, anyway.
Don't you read the Church Fathers?
Posted by: Harry Eagar at July 9, 2004 2:53 AMNo SHI$! Sherlock, where has he been?
Posted by: Sandy P at July 9, 2004 3:04 AMPapayaSF
"None of these guys, really, are evil -- though their acts definitely were."
Why shouldn't he think religion is inherited? - he thinks evil is.
Posted by: Chris B at July 9, 2004 6:59 AMHarry:
We're killing for our Christian beliefs in Iraq, but even you concede we're righht and they're wrong. Nothing wrong with killing over religion per se.
Posted by: oj at July 9, 2004 8:38 AMReligon is inherited, everyone (with very few exceptions) has it. Different folks worship different entities, golden calves, god groups, lonely gods, the State, Maximum Leader, themselves, ghosts, whatever. It really doesn't matter, they all worship and they are all 'religious'.
Organized religion is more than likely not inherited. It appears to be learned behavior. The rational for organized religion is, in the first instance, control.
Just as tyrants are decended from Ug, the strongest man in the cave, priests are decended from the sly weakling with a modest amount of courage who desires power but has no physical strength.
Posted by: Uncle Bill at July 9, 2004 8:47 AMInherited? Chriust didn't have children, where do Christians come from? Why is it spreading so fast in China, India, etc.?
Posted by: oj at July 9, 2004 9:00 AMoj --
"Organized religion is more than likely not inherited."
---Uncle Bill at July 9, 2004 08:47 AM
"None of these guys, really, are evil -- though their acts definitely were."
Noone is inherently good or evil, it is our actions that determine what we become. Evil acts make you evil.
Posted by: Robert Duquette at July 9, 2004 10:42 AMRobert,
Au contraire, we are inherently evil: created in the image of God, but with the stain of Adam's fall at the core of our being. Humanity, and indeed any single person, is simultaneously capable of acts great good and great evil.
Orrin, I may be for killing in Iraq, but in my case it isn't for Christianity.
The distinction here is between senseless killing (as, for example, to settle the dispute between homoousion and homoiousion, the classic Christian murder case) and killing for some mundane reason, like plunder, liberty etc.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at July 9, 2004 1:59 PMHarry:
We agreed long ago not to hold you lack of selfawareness against you--of course it's for Christianity, even for the freeloaders.
Posted by: oj at July 9, 2004 2:35 PMHarry:
Classic Christian murder case? Suddenly I am seeing a new PBS series with you as Alaister Cooke.
Posted by: Peter B at July 9, 2004 2:59 PMOJ:
Unless you are some sort of post-modernist, some of us are more evil than others.
Also, we are most assuredly not killing for Christian beliefs in Iraq. If Islamists would avoid acting on their exterminationist tendencies, we wouldn't be there, and would be hard pressed to care less.
Last time I checked, we weren't dropping PGMs on African Animists.
This is thanks to secularism, of course. Otherwise differences in religious belief would amount to capital thought crimes. Lucky for you. I'll bet atheists fare better than heretics under such circumstances.
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at July 9, 2004 3:09 PMJeff:
So, as an advocate of the 40 million abortions are you more or less evil?
As you'l have noticed we intervbened in Sudan to save the Christians in the South, not the black Muslims in the West.
I didn't notice we ever intervened on behalf of the Christians, though we did make a feeble gesture for the Muslims.
Jeff, Orrin does believe that some people are more evil than others. What's unclear is what his criteria are.
He, for example, finds Communists more evil than Nazis.
Both are plenty evil enough for me not to have to worry about which one is in first place.
Interestingly enough, Orrin thinks philanderers ought to be killed but not Nazi generals.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at July 9, 2004 6:04 PMHarry:
No, I think Nazis and Communists were equally evil and we should have gotten rid of both or stayed home. Handing the Nazi Empire to the Bolsheviks was a waste.
Posted by: oj at July 9, 2004 6:31 PMOJ:
So I take it you agree with me there gradations of evil.
And it would seem that our intervening on the part of Muslims in the FYR would be rather contrafactual to your position. Equally, you would have to make the claim we would be fighting in Iraq even if it had been governed like, say, Jordan.
"So, as an advocate of the 40 million abortions are you more or less evil?" Either provide a quote of mine that I advocate abortions, or stop criticizing Moore. You can't have it both ways.
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at July 10, 2004 7:34 AMJeff:
We are all evil and all capable of the worst evils, but some of the evils we do are worse than others.
Posted by: oj at July 10, 2004 8:49 AMIn our debate just a week ago, you said Bolshevism was worse than Naziism, Orrin.
I believe this to be and to have been a widespread opinion among conservative American Christians and just about universal among Jew-haters.
I could make a cogent case either way, depending on your overall opinion about the value of nation-states, but why bother?
No, I said that the German conservatives, military, etc. were justified in preferring Nazism to Bolshevism. Similarly the Left is justified in prefering Bolshevism to Nazism. There's no difference between the two though, especially in their hatred of Jews.
Posted by: oj at July 11, 2004 3:30 PMI disagree, since naziism or bolshevism were not the only choices.
It's remarkable, though, how many people in the '30s funked that.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at July 12, 2004 2:37 PMThey were once Hitler was in power. Indeed, once Hitler was gone FDR/Truman left most of them to the Communists.
Posted by: oj at July 12, 2004 2:46 PM