I don't think that's a function of him being wealthy as much as him having power and influence within his organization. Even that aside, it's not like it would be illogical or hypocritical that he wouldn't participate in attacks directly; we don't send our generals to the front lines. That said, I certainly do think a lot of their leaders are cowards who have absolutely no intention of ever putting themselves in danger.
Poverty is a huge part of it. Imagine your country was once part of a vast empire and loses the biggest war in history up until that time. 5 years before you would discover the worlds most valuable resources right below your feet, the victors carve up your empire for themselves because (conspiracy theory) they might have found out about that resource before anyone else. Now it's 100 years later. The western and eastern powers have been using you as a chess board. Disposing and replacing your leaders as they see fit, changing borders, etc. Meanwhile, your country never returned to its former economic and political glory. You're poor and you don't know why. Hey there's this guy in the town square that's yelling about Allah and how we can return to that glory. You go and check out what he has to say. Why are we poor? Because of the western and eastern powers. He tells people that if you kill them in the name of Islam, the Islamic empire will come back. But guess what? Allah isn't doing jack shit for you. You think you must not be serving him enough. So you get crazier. Still nothing. It must not be enough. You get crazier and violent. This cycle keeps repeating until a response is provoked from those powers that now have a much different attitude than they did 100 years ago. Only this time, they are lead by the most powerful nation on earth that has a nuclear arsenal. If it sounds like I'm making excuses for them, I'm not. I think we should carpet bomb the Middle East until there isn't anyone left in those hot bed areas. But I do think that's their mentality. You can keep going back in time to see different events that led to where we are. Hell, Baghdad was the scientific and cultural center of the world. Decades ages of where Europe was during that time. Then Genghis Khan rolled through with his Mongol Horde and obliterated it. Want further back? Look up the Assyrian conquests.
Also imagine that foreign powers are dictating a lot of what happens in your country, while you are dealing with things more mundane and basic like grazing herds or trying to stay alive in general.
ISIS has claimed responsibility for the attacks, at least as of this morning. In sort of good news, the death toll is down to around 128.
I'm sorry it couldn't be as cogent and well-thought out as your "Osama Bin Laden is rich therefor poverty means nothing" argument, but I'm not so good with the words. There are 1.5 billion Muslims in the world. A tiny percentage of them become terrorists. A vast majority of the ones that do are living under particular conditions that allow extremism to flourish. It's worth thinking about factors beyond "Muslims hate freedom."
By "living under particular conditions" you mean "living in Muslim-majority countries", right? They've been inbreeding for thousands of years, which does all sorts of bad things to civic society. More here. Unless you think it's the dirt that makes a country, and not the people.
Wow, I think you guys are being kind of harsh on Nom. Do we have any Muslims on the board? I think it's really easy to hate someone if you don't know any personally, e.g., blacks, gays, Muslims, Jews. I went to a really diverse high school so I know/knew a bunch of Muslims. I might hate them because they're richer and more successful than me but not for their beliefs. http://www.alternet.org/media/not-bigots-will-care-muslims-around-world-are-condemning-paris-attacks
Not to try and derail this thread with talk of religion, however the root of the problem is actually religion itself. I'm sure most of you are familiar with Christopher Hitchens but if you aren't you should be. I found his book God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything to be extremely enlightening and validating.
Well, someone seems to have a hate-on for the French this weekend. http://m.torontosun.com/2015/11/14/high-speed-train-in-france-derails-plunges-into-canal
Can we toss in Beirut, Lebanon to this conversation as well? They had two suicide bombings in their capital with 41 people dead and 200 people wounded not even a full 48 hours before Paris. Odd that we're a page and a half page in no one has mentioned it. What's even more odd is that CNN barely mentioned it. Facebook hasn't given the option of Lebanese flags to put over profile pictures. No #PrayforBeirut hashtag has popped up at all. ISIS attacks Paris and the western world loses it shit. These are facts. Here is a great article written by an Australian site NewMatilda.com by Chris Graham Paris Attacks Highlight Western Vulnerability, and Our Selective Grief and Outrage. Not to derail this thread as it is very important to keep talking about the issue at hand, but I hope people who didn't understand the #BlackLivesMatter thing (or even worse, raged against it) gets it now with this example here. Group A of people dies for the same reason as Group B and Group A doesn't get talked about at all, it's like it never happened. It happens to Group B and hashtags start, conversations start, Facebook creates ways to express it and hell...even threads on message boards start. Of course, all live matters, but it is obvious that to the western world, they really don't. What saddens me more is that certain people's initial response to the Beirut thing coming up is along the lines of "Well it happens over there all the time, that's not news, it doesn't happen in Paris." What it translates to is "those people don't look like me, and I don't plan on traveling there ever so who cares?" That's the second worst thing in the world after the attacks themselves.
This post hints at white guilt. In regards to Nom et al, all I've read is civil discussion and disagreement. I'm failing to see how that equates to actual hatred or even hating on a group. Here's a link I stumbled across. It's a little lengthy but interesting: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isis-really-wants/384980/
It's probably my ignorance, but when I think "Beirut" or "Lebanon", I think of them as constantly war-torn areas of the world, so "another" bombing is no big thing. I can't relate to them as anything else. Paris, on the other hand, is not someplace I'd expect to have that kind of violence in the last 50 years, and my trips there have allowed me to relate to it.
I'm failing to see any hints at white guilt and all I've read subtle hints of "All Muslims are terrorists" and Nom refuting it. Tim brought up a damn good point, lots of outsiders talking about a deeply insider topic. It'd be nice if we could have more than a bunch of non-Muslim white people who don't associate with or have hung out with Muslim people for an extended period of time chime in. That's what Tim is saying and he's 100% right regardless of what hints are picked up. And this is horrible thing. I'm guilty of it too. We shouldn't be desensitized at any of this violence. Every time it happens we should be pissed off and do something about it. But given that we're human and can only care about so many people, places and things...we just don't. I just want to acknowledge it as a thing that happens. 147 people died in Kenya in April because of a terror attack and not a peep. It'd be great if this is the event that finally gets all the military forces focused on crushing ISIS. This guys aren't Al-Queda, these guys have ground and land they are holding on to. We need to go after these guys, take out their power structure. At the same time, the world needs to find a way to cut off the feeder system. Give these people's lives purpose that isn't killing others.
Poverty certainly plays a role in the recruiting for these regimes, but as a root cause I'm not seeing it. And while it's true that only a small percentage of Muslims actually engage actively in terrorism there's no doubt that they live in cultures that not only support terrorism, but perpetuate it: The left has been in adamant denial about the reality of the theocratic societies in the middle east. The idea that it's a vast majority of peaceful, progressive minded communities with a few definitively separated bad apples is delusional. I think Sam Harris hits the nail on the head in just how flawed this line of reasoning has become, particularly at the 4 min. mark. Minority Issues? Over 70% of Muslims Support Sharia Law, 90% Support Execution of Apostates – Statistics These aren't the people you want them to be.
The part that puts me in a loop is I had several friends from Pakistan in college. I work with a large number of Somalian immigrants. By and large very good people, friendly, and more polite than any community I've known. I've had nothing but positive experiences with Muslims. If you live in the United States and have spent time with the Muslim community here you'd likely say the same. Unfortunately, I just don't think projecting our experiences at home speaks to Islam globally. Many of the immigrants who were so eager to leave did so for a reason.
My experiences as well. The sad part is that every time some act of terrorism happens, the muslim community gets all the backlash. Yet every time some looney shoots up a school or a theater, it's always about guns or mental health. There are so many different elements that contribute to each individual attack, that it's unfair to stereotype at least with this kinda thing. Applying logic to something illogical. Back on topic, with it sounding more and more like ISIS is behind this, there's gonna be a world of hurt coming down on those fuckers. French special forces are nothing to fuck with. And I imagine the US is gonna throw a very explosive hat into the ring as well.
As someone who has spent the majority of the last 12 years living in Southwest Asia and East Africa, I can draw on experience when I say this: Islam is in desperate need of reformation. A lot of what has been discussed is true, the majority of the Muslims you meet here in America are good people and left the ME for a reason. The closer you get to the ME the worse the problem becomes though. I have related stories here of my Palestinian drivers while working in Kuwait and how life was bad for them. The Kuwaitis treated them like shit and obviously the Israelis treated them like shit as well and they were eventually forced to move to Syria. I often think of those guys and wonder how they are and if they and their families are ok. In any case, I am reminded of what I was first told by one of the drivers and later told on several different occasions through the years: If I were to marry a Muslim woman to not allow my children to be raised as Muslims. He, as a Muslim, said that Muslims are terrible people and were not to be trusted. That is honest self-loathing like you rarely experience elsewhere. Beyond that, poverty does play a part in it but that isn't the real story. Look at the poor in South America where they are overwhelmingly Christian, do you see this behavior? If you look at a map of where Islam is spreading most rampantly it is through impoverished nations: Sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia and Central Asia. These places also now have serious issues with radical Islamic terrorism now. An additional thing to consider is that there are claims that of the 22,000 ISIS or Daesh members, approximately 4,000 of them are westerners from Australia, Western Europe or North America. A quarter of their soldiers grew up in the western world with a higher standard of living, "Jihadi John" was born in Kuwait to a middle class family, had an IT degree and then lived in the UK, it doesn't fit the poverty narrative. If you want to really get to the root cause of this, we in the West do share a large piece of the blame for all of this. Look at 9/11, the vast majority of the AQ guys were Saudis. We support Saudi Arabia and Saudi Arabia are directly responsible for the spread of radical Islam, they fund the mosque and madrassa construction and operation all over the world that spreads this disease. In Syira, the US and Saudi Arabia directly support ISIS, providing funding and military equipment which is even directly given to ISIS. I have read it on here already that people think we should be going to Syria to kick some ass, well if you believe that to be the answer then go down to the recruiters office, sign up, grab a rifle and head out there to hold the line. Our foreign policy in the ME is what creates this type of behavior and it is our foreign policy that continues to perpetuate it. Sending our young people to war to fight an ideology, not an army, doesn't work and it never will. Cut off immigration from this part of the world, leave them to their own devices and let them solve it, we cannot solve this for them. Muslims around the world need to decide what they want for their religion and whether or not they are willing to fight for it.
Holy shit....MSNBC and CNN are reporting some sort of huge disruption at a memorial in Paris. EDIT: Now MSNBC say it was a false alarm. Apparently the crowd just panicked.