Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: Gunslinger on April 16, 2006, 09:35:50 AM
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Yes it will vanish all together at the hands of the EU. "HOW"? you may ask.....it's simple, with the swipe of a pin they plan to make the words no longer usable in order to help not offfend angry muslims.
EU Removes 'Islamic Terrorism' from its Dictionary
By Selcuk Gultasli, Brussels
Published: Wednesday, April 12, 2006
zaman.com
The European Union (EU) also admitted that the concept of “Islamic terrorism” is misused by racist groups in Europe and terror networks such as al-Qaeda.
The Union, taking action to rid such expressions, which are offensive to Muslims, from its dictionary, searches for new concepts behind closed doors. The European bloc is expected to release its new dictionary in June.
Works are underway to eliminate the expression “Islamic terrorism” from the EU’s current dictionary.
Both the EU and Europol have been seeking a new concept for some time for the expression, “Islamic terrorism”.
Many experts believe that the words “Islam” and “terrorism” must not be used together, and concluded that the use of such expressions “alienates” Muslims in Europe.
As a result of long consultations with academic experts, the EU will review expressions such as “Islamic terrorism,” “Islamist terrorism,” “fundamentalist,” and “jihadi.”
EU counter-terrorism chief Gijs de Vries, told Reuters, terrorism does not exist in the essence of any religion and praised Muslims struggling against those conducting terrorism in the name of religion.
Professor Rik Coolsaet, one of several authorities serving as an adviser to the EU, in the statement he made to Zaman, emphasized that Brussels realized such words can be used as “political weapons.”
Instead of expressions like “Islamic terrorism” and “Islamofascist,” a phrase the United States insistently uses, Brussels is trying to develop new concepts that will not cause offense to Muslims.
Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has often objected to the expression “Islamic terrorism.” The incidents arising after the European press’ publication of the cartoons insulting Prophet Mohammed accelerated the activities of EU officials on this issue.
The activities currently being undertaken at the Council of Europe serve two purposes:
• Firstly, to determine and eradicate the basic sources of the radicalism producing terror,
• Secondly to produce a new communication strategy in the fight against religious-based terrorism that will not offend Muslims and will not be abused by the extreme right or terrorist organizations.
For nearly two years, the EU and member countries authorities have been conducting secret talks about how to solve the religion origin terror problem. Contrary to the US, the authorities think the issue is Europe’s and therefore it must be handled as a domestic issue.
The new concurrence is intended to ease European Muslim involvement in the struggle.
European officials are of the opinion that changes to the expression of “Islamic terror” are of paramount importance.
Directly hit by terrorist attacks on March 11 and July 7, Europe regards Islam as being enslaved by some fanatics, since Islam does not have anything to rely on to legitimize terror.
The European Union is working to develop a new and more appropriate terminology for use by bureaucrats and politicians. The new terminology will be introduced to public opinion in a new dictionary set for release in June.
Terrorist advocates of Islam kill Muslims in largest numbers; that is to say, Muslims comprise the largest group of victims of terror in the world, according to the draft document, sources told Zaman.
Europeans have to formulate a particular method, dissimilar to that of the United States, for dealing with religion-based terrorism, said Rik Coolsaet, a professor of political sciences at Gent, and head officer of the Royal Institute of Belgium.
The term “Islamic terrorism” has for years provoked objections from Coolsaet, whom the European Union conferred with over the upcoming edition of the dictionary.
“We have to care for the kind of people living here together with us, most of who have already worked very hard for citizenship from a European country. We should, therefore, desist from helping the right-wing extremists.”
The European outlook on Islamic terrorism, unlike the United States, does not view it as a problem brought in from overseas, said Coolsaet, who also spoke out against a reference from George W. Bush, President of States, to Islamofascism.
“That is a silly expression. Fascism is ironically a gift from Western Europe to the rest of the world. Islam, on the other hand, is a religion like any other religion, and cannot by any means be associated with fascism. The expression in question is invented with the intent of bolstering their assumptions and for use by neo-conservatives in the United States. This term is also in danger of being abused by such terrorist organizations as al-Qaeda.
Madrid train bombs and the London Bus bombs where done by MUSLIMS and were acts of TERROR in the NAME OF ISLAM. Hence it sounds to me like these where acts of "Islamic Terrorism" You don't have to be a Bush fan or a Neo-con to figure this out.
http://www.zaman.com/?bl=international&alt=&trh=20060413&hn=31952
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its all our fault.
we started the whole "PC" thing.
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Originally posted by Hangtime
its all our fault.
we started the whole "PC" thing.
Yup I would sorta agree with that.
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So in other words the above listed article is rather like:
"Peace in our time"
Not to mention that the EU seems to have already surrendered. Lets not make the bad people angry and maybe they'll let us live..... :rolleyes:
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Well, guys, I hadn't thought about it in this context before, but it does make a certain amount of sense. Suppose references were made to terror attacks in Ireland as acts of "Christian terrorism", using the logic its Catholics vs Protestants there? That would certainly offend folks here, and rightfully so. Shoe on the other foot and all that.
culero
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Culero,
Nice analogy and in a way it almost fits. There was sectarian violence and terrorism on both sides of that conflict with protestants and catholics killing the other "for god". I would say it was appropriate except I don't recall religious leaders on either side of theat conflict supporting violence. In the case of the muslim terrorist there ARE clerics claiming it's a religious war.
In the muslim situation it is the terrorists themselves who are also claiming the religious war, not the targeted people. It's the muslim terrorists saying it's allah's will that they kill infidels for nothing more than that they are infidels. In this case I think the terms do indeed fit as one of the prime reasons cited by the muslim terrorists is the religious reason for their war.
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:rofl at the euros. amazing stuff it truly is. I just hope we don't have to send our young people over there to fight their wars for them again.
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ok, im done with this understanding BS. im getting tired of the muslim world being all paranoid and over-reacting to every single thing that has even the slightest relation to them. and i hate it even more that people are giving into this violence. a couple kids get killed by police and the whole country is ablaze, a guy draws a cartoon that makes fun of terrorists and people riot. BS!!! screw em all!
PS
same goes to you born again christians and scientoligists! i've got my eye on you!
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As a result of long consultations with academic experts, the EU will review expressions such as “Islamic terrorism,” “Islamist terrorism,” “fundamentalist,” and “jihadi.”
Perhaps we should have a ministry of truth to purge all negativity in language. "Slow" could become "unfast"
I am probably not the first to have this idea.
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I got this from LGF and I just thought it a good read. I'm not intending to make fun of Euros here just the EU itself. I would hope that our friends accross the pond dislike this as much as we do.
What comes after this will be writing these words into their "hate speech" laws. Anyone who talks about terrorism and mentions muslims could be guilty of "hate speech"
For nearly two years, the EU and member countries authorities have been conducting secret talks about how to solve the religion origin terror problem. Contrary to the US, the authorities think the issue is Europe’s and therefore it must be handled as a domestic issue.
If this is truely their attitude, they have allready lost. This conflict is soley about the so called "religion of peace" If they can't figure out who they are fighting and why then they might as well just capitulate to them.
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This is what they are fighting:
http://iranvajahan.net/cgi-bin/news.pl?l=en&y=2006&m=04&d=15&a=10
Saturday, April 15, 2006
Ahmadinejad's Demons
April 14, 2006
The New Republic
Matthias Küntzel
During the Iran-Iraq War, the Ayatollah Khomeini imported 500,000 small plastic keys from Taiwan. The trinkets were meant to be inspirational. After Iraq invaded in September 1980, it had quickly become clear that Iran's forces were no match for Saddam Hussein's professional, well-armed military. To compensate for their disadvantage, Khomeini sent Iranian children, some as young as twelve years old, to the front lines. There, they marched in formation across minefields toward the enemy, clearing a path with their bodies. Before every mission, one of the Taiwanese keys would be hung around each child's neck. It was supposed to open the gates to paradise for them.
At one point, however, the earthly gore became a matter of concern. "In the past," wrote the semi-official Iranian daily Ettelaat as the war raged on, "we had child-volunteers: 14-, 15-, and 16-year-olds. They went into the minefields. Their eyes saw nothing. Their ears heard nothing. And then, a few moments later, one saw clouds of dust. When the dust had settled again, there was nothing more to be seen of them. Somewhere, widely scattered in the landscape, there lay scraps of burnt flesh and pieces of bone." Such scenes would henceforth be avoided, Ettelaat assured its readers. "Before entering the minefields, the children [now] wrap themselves in blankets and they roll on the ground, so that their body parts stay together after the explosion of the mines and one can carry them to the graves."
These children who rolled to their deaths were part of the Basiji, a mass movement created by Khomeini in 1979 and militarized after the war started in order to supplement his beleaguered army.The Basij Mostazafan--or "mobilization of the oppressed"--was essentially a volunteer militia, most of whose members were not yet 18. They went enthusiastically, and by the thousands, to their own destruction. "The young men cleared the mines with their own bodies," one veteran of the Iran-Iraq War recalled in 2002 to the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine. "It was sometimes like a race. Even without the commander's orders, everyone wanted to be first."
The sacrifice of the Basiji was ghastly. And yet, today, it is a source not of national shame, but of growing pride. Since the end of hostilities against Iraq in 1988, the Basiji have grown both in numbers and influence. They have been deployed, above all, as a vice squad to enforce religious law in Iran, and their elite "special units" have been used as shock troops against anti-government forces. In both 1999 and 2003, for instance, the Basiji were used to suppress student unrest. And, last year, they formed the potent core of the political base that propelled Mahmoud Ahmadinejad-- a man who reportedly served as a Basij instructor during the Iran-Iraq War--to the presidency.
Ahmadinejad revels in his alliance with the Basiji. He regularly appears in public wearing a black-and-white Basij scarf, and, in his speeches, he routinely praises "Basij culture" and "Basij power," with which he says "Iran today makes its presence felt on the international and diplomatic stage." Ahmadinejad's ascendance on the shoulders of the Basiji means that the Iranian Revolution, launched almost three decades ago, has entered a new and disturbing phase. A younger generation of Iranians, whose worldviews were forged in the atrocities of the Iran-Iraq War, have come to power, wielding a more fervently ideological approach to politics than their predecessors. The children of the Revolution are now its leaders.
In 1980, the Ayatollah Khomeini called the Iraqi invasion of Iran a "divine blessing," because the war provided him the perfect opportunity to Islamize both Iranian society and the institutions of the Iranian state. As Saddam's troops pushed into Iran, Khomeini's fanatically devoted Revolutionary Guard moved rapidly to mobilize and prepare their air and sea forces. At the same time, the regime hastened to develop the Basiji as a popular militia.
Whereas the Revolutionary Guard consisted of professionally trained adult soldiers, the Basiji was essentially composed of boys between twelve and 17 and men over 45. They received only a few weeks of training--less in weapons and tactics than in theology. Most Basiji came from the countryside and were often illiterate. When their training was done, each Basiji received a blood-red headband that designated him a volunteer for martyrdom. According to Sepehr Zabih's The Iranian Military in Revolution and War, such volunteers made up nearly one-third of the Iranian army--and the majority of its infantry.
The chief combat tactic employed by the Basiji was the human wave attack, whereby barely armed children and teenagers would move continuously toward the enemy in perfectly straight rows. It did not matter whether they fell to enemy fire or detonated the mines with their bodies: The important thing was that the Basiji continue to move forward over the torn and mutilated remains of their fallen comrades, going to their deaths in wave after wave. Once a path to the Iraqi forces had been opened up, Iranian commanders would send in their more valuable and skilled Revolutionary Guard troops.
This approach produced some undeniable successes. "They come toward our positions in huge hordes with their fists swinging," one Iraqi officer complained in the summer of 1982. "You can shoot down the first wave and then the second. But at some point the corpses are piling up in front of you, and all you want to do is scream and throw away your weapon. Those are human beings, after all!" By the spring of 1983, some 450,000 Basiji had been sent to the front. After three months, those who survived deployment were sent back to their schools or workplaces.
But three months was a long time on the front lines. In 1982, during the retaking of the city of Khorramshahr, 10,000 Iranians died. Following "Operation Kheiber," in February 1984, the corpses of some 20,000 fallen Iranians were left on the battlefield. The "Karbala Four" offensive in 1986 cost the lives of more than 10,000 Iranians. All told, some 100,000 men and boys are said to have been killed during Basiji operations. Why did the Basiji volunteer for such duty?
Most of them were recruited by members of the Revolutionary Guards, which commanded the Basiji. These "special educators" would visit schools and handpick their martyrs from the paramilitary exercises in which all Iranian youth were required to participate. Propaganda films--like the 1986 TV film A Contribution to the War--praised this alliance between students and the regime and undermined those parents who tried to save their children's lives. (At the time, Iranian law allowed children to serve even if their families objected.) Some parents, however, were lured by incentives. In a campaign called "Sacrifice a Child for the Imam," every family that lost a child on the battlefield was offered interest-free credit and other generous benefits. Moreover, enrollment in the Basiji gave the poorest of the poor a chance for social advancement. (continues below)
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(from above)
Still others were coerced into "volunteering." In 1982, the German weekly Der Spiegel documented the story of a twelve-year-old boy named Hossein, who enlisted with the Basiji despite having polio:
One day, some unknown imams turned up in the village. They called the whole population to the plaza in front of the police station, and they announced that they came with good news from Imam Khomeini: The Islamic Army of Iran had been chosen to liberate the holy city Al Quds--Jerusalem--from the infidels. ... The local mullah had decided that every family with children would have to furnish one soldier of God. Because Hossein was the most easily expendable for his family, and because, in light of his illness, he could in any case not expect much happiness in this life, he was chosen by his father to represent the family in the struggle against the infidel devils.
Of the 20 children that went into battle with Hossein, only he and two others survived.
But, if such methods explained some of why they volunteered, it did not explain the fervor with which they rushed to their destruction. That can only be elucidated by the Iranian Revolution's peculiar brand of Islam.
At the beginning of the war, Iran's ruling mullahs did not send human beings into the minefields, but rather animals: donkeys, horses, and dogs. But the tactic proved useless: "After a few donkeys had been blown up, the rest ran off in terror," Mostafa Arki reports in his book Eight Years of War in the Middle East. The donkeys reacted normally--fear of death is natural. The Basiji, on the other hand, marched fearlessly and without complaint to their deaths. The curious slogans that they chanted while entering the battlefields are of note: "Against the Yazid of our time!"; "Hussein's caravan is moving on!"; "A new Karbala awaits us!"
Yazid, Hussein, Karbala--these are all references to the founding myth of Shia Islam. In the late seventh century, Islam was split between those loyal to the Caliph Yazid--the predecessors of Sunni Islam--and the founders of Shia Islam, who thought that the Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, should govern the Muslims. In 680, Hussein led an uprising against the "illegitimate" caliph, but he was betrayed. On the plain of Karbala, on the tenth day of the month of Muharram, Yazid's forces attacked Hussein and his entourage and killed them. Hussein's corpse bore the marks of 33 lance punctures and 34 blows of the sword.
His head was cut off and his body was trampled by horses. Ever since, the martyrdom of Hussein has formed the core of Shia theology, and the Ashura Festival that commemorates his death is Shiism's holiest day. On that day, men beat themselves with their fists or flagellate themselves with iron chains to approximate Hussein's sufferings. At times throughout the centuries, the ritual has grown obscenely violent. In his study Crowds and Power, Elias Canetti recounts a firsthand report of the Ashura Festival as it occurred in mid-nineteenth-century Tehran:
500,000 people, in the grip of delirium, cover their heads with ashes and beat their foreheads against the ground. They want to subject themselves voluntarily to torments: to commit suicide en masse, to mutilate themselves with refinement. ... Hundreds of men in white shirts come by, their faces ecstatically raised toward the sky. Of these, several will be dead this evening, many will be maimed and mutilated, and the white shirts, dyed red, will be burial shrouds. ... There is no more beautiful destiny than to die on the Festival of Ashura. The gates of the eight Paradises are wide open for the holy and everyone tries to get through them.
Bloody excesses of this sort are prohibited in contemporary Iran, but, during the Iran-Iraq War, Khomeini appropriated the essence of the ritual as a symbolic act and politicized it. He took the inward-directed fervor and channeled it toward the external enemy. He transformed the passive lamentation into active protest. He made the Battle of Karbala the prototype of any fight against tyranny. Indeed, this technique had been used during political demonstrations in 1978, when many Iranian protestors wore funeral shrouds in order to tie the battle of 680 to the contemporary struggle against the shah. In the war against Iraq, the allusions to Karbala were given still greater significance: On the one hand, the scoundrel Yazid, now in the form of Saddam Hussein; on the other, the Prophet's grandson, Hussein, for whose suffering the time of Shia revenge had finally come.
The power of this story was further reinforced by a theological twist that Khomeini gave it. According to Khomeini, life is worthless and death is the beginning of genuine existence. "The natural world," he explained in October 1980, "is the lowest element, the scum of creation. "What is decisive is the beyond: The "divine world, that is eternal." This latter world is accessible to martyrs. Their death is no death, but merely the transition from this world to the world beyond, where they will live on eternally and in splendor. Whether the warrior wins the battle or loses it and dies a Martyr--in both cases, his victory is assured: either a mundane or a spiritual one.
This attitude had a fatal implication for the Basiji: Whether they survived or not was irrelevant. Not even the tactical utility of their sacrifice mattered. Military victories are secondary, Khomeini explained in September 1980.The Basiji must "understand that he is a 'soldier of God' for whom it is not so much the outcome of the conflict as the mere participation in it that provides fulfillment and gratification." Could Khomeini's antipathy for life have had as much effect in the war against Iraq without the Karbala myth? Probably not.With the word "Karbala" on their lips, the Basiji went elatedly into battle.
For those whose courage still waned in the face of death, the regime put on a show. A mysterious horseman on a magnificent steed would suddenly appear on the front lines. His face--covered in phosphorous--would shine. His costume was that of a medieval prince. A child soldier, Reza Behrouzi, whose story was documented in 1985 by French writer Freidoune Sehabjam, reported that the soldiers reacted with a mixture of panic and rapture.
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(from above)
Everyone wanted to run toward the horseman. But he drove them away. "Don't come to me!" he shouted, "Charge into battle against the infidels! ... Revenge the death of our Imam Hussein and strike down the progeny of Yazid!" As the figure disappears, the soldiers cry: "Oh, Imam Zaman, where are you?" They throw themselves on their knees, and pray and wail. When the figure appears again, they get to their feet as a single man. Those whose forces are not yet exhausted charge the enemy lines.
The mysterious apparition who was able to trigger such emotions is the "hidden imam," a mythical figure who influences the thought and action of Ahmadinejad to this day. The Shia call all the male descendants of the Prophet Muhammad "imams" and ascribe to them a quasidivine status. Hussein, who was killed at Karbala by Yazid, was the third Imam. His son and grandson were the fourth and fifth. At the end of this line, there is the "Twelfth Imam," who is named Muhammad. Some call him the Mahdi (the "divinely guided one"), though others say imam Zaman (from sahib-e zaman: "the ruler of time"). He was born in 869, the only son of the eleventh Imam. In 874, he disappeared without a trace, thereby bringing Muhammad's lineage to a close. In Shia mythology, however, the Twelfth Imam survived. The Shia believe that he merely withdrew from public view when he was five and that he will sooner or later emerge from his "occultation" in order to liberate the world from evil.
Writing in the early '80s, V. S. Naipaul showed how deeply rooted the belief in the coming of the Shia messiah is among the Iranian population. In Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey, he described seeing posters in post-Revolutionary Tehran bearing motifs similar to those of Maoist China: crowds, for instance, with rifles and machine guns raised in the air as if in greeting. The posters always bore the same phrase: twelfth imam, we are waiting for you. Naipaul writes that he could grasp intellectually the veneration for Khomeini. "But the idea of the revolution as something more, as an offering to the Twelfth Imam, the man who had vanished ... and remained 'in occultation,' was harder to seize." According to Shia tradition, legitimate Islamic rule can only be established following the reappearance of the Twelfth Imam. Until that time, the Shia have only to wait, to keep their peace with illegitimate rule, and to remember the Prophet's grandson, Hussein, in sorrow. Khomeini, however, had no intention of waiting. He vested the myth with an entirely new sense: The Twelfth Imam will only emerge when the believers have vanquished evil. To speed up the Mahdi's return, Muslims had to shake off their torpor and fight.
This activism had more in common with the revolutionary ideas of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood than with Shia traditions. Khomeini had been familiar with the texts of the Muslim Brothers since the 1930s, and he agreed with the Brothers' conception of what had to be considered "evil": namely, all the achievements of modernity that replaced divine providence with individual self-determination, blind faith with doubt, and the stern morality of sharia with sensual pleasures. According to legend, Yazid was the embodiment of everything that was forbidden: He drank wine, enjoyed music and song, and played with dogs and monkeys. And was not Saddam just the same? In the war against Iraq, "evil" was clearly defined, and vanquishing evil was the precondition for hastening the return of the beloved Twelfth Imam. When he let himself be seen for a few minutes riding his white steed, the readiness to die a martyr's death increased considerably.
It was this culture that nurtured Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's worldview. Born outside Tehran in 1956, the son of blacksmith, he trained as a civil engineer, and, during the Iran-Iraq War, he joined the Revolutionary Guards. His biography remains strangely elliptical. Did he play a role in the 1979 takeover of the U.S. Embassy, as some charge? What exactly did he do during the war? These are questions for which we have no definite answers. His presidential website says simply that he was "on active service as a Basij volunteer up to the end of the holy defense [the war against Iraq] and served as a combat engineer in different spheres of duty."
We do know that, after the war's end, he served as the governor of Ardebil Province and as an organizer of Ansar-e Hezbollah, a radical gang of violent Islamic vigilantes. After becoming mayor of Tehran in April 2003, Ahmadinejad used his position to build up a strong network of radical Islamic fundamentalists known as Abadgaran-e Iran-e Islami, or Developers of an Islamic Iran. It was in that role that he won his reputation--and popularity--as a hardliner devoted to rolling back the liberal reforms of then-President Muhammad Khatami. Ahmadinejad positioned himself as the leader of a "second revolution" to eradicate corruption and Western influences from Iranian society. And the Basiji, whose numbers had grown dramatically since the end of the Iran-Iraq War, embraced him. Recruited from the more conservative and impoverished parts of the population, the Basiji fall under the direction of--and swear absolute loyalty to--the Supreme Leader Ali Khameini, Khomeini's successor. During Ahmadinejad's run for the presidency in 2005, the millions of Basiji--in every Iranian town, neighborhood, and mosque--became his unofficial campaign workers.
Since Ahmadinejad became president, the influence of the Basiji has grown. In November, the new Iranian president opened the annual "Basiji Week," which commemorates the martyrs of the Iran-Iraq War. According to a report in Kayan, a publication loyal to Khameini, some nine million Basiji--12 percent of the Iranian population--turned out to demonstrate in favor of Ahmadinejad's anti-liberal platform. The article claimed that the demonstrators "form[ed] a human chain some 8,700 kilometers long. ... In Tehran alone, some 1,250,000 people turned out." Barely noticed by the Western media, this mobilization attests to Ahmadinejad's determination to impose his "second revolution" and to extinguish the few sparks of freedom in Iran.
At the end of July 2005, the Basij movement announced plans to increase its membership from ten million to 15 million by 2010. The elite special units are supposed to comprise some 150,000 people by then. Accordingly, the Basiji have received new powers in their function as an unofficial division of the police. What this means in practice became clear in February 2006, when the Basiji attacked the leader of the bus-drivers' union, Massoud Osanlou. They held Osanlou prisoner in his apartment, and they cut off the tip of his tongue in order to convince him to keep quiet. No Basiji needs to fear prosecution for such terrorists tactics before a court of law.
As Basij ideology and influence enjoy a renaissance under Ahmadinejad, the movement's belief in the virtues of violent self-sacrifice remains intact. There is no "truth commission" in Iran to investigate the state-planned collective suicide that took place from 1980 to 1988. Instead, every Iranian is taught the virtues of martyrdom from childhood. Obviously, many of them reject the Basij teachings. Still, everyone knows the name of Hossein Fahmideh, who, as a 13-year-old boy during the war, blew himself up in front of an Iraqi tank. His image follows Iranians throughout their day: whether on postage stamps or the currency. If you hold up a 500 Rial bill to the light, it is his face you will see in the watermark. The self-destruction of Fahmideh is depicted as a model of profound faith by the Iranian press. It has been the subject of both an animated film and an episode of the TV series "Children of Paradise." As a symbol of their readiness to die for the Revolution, Basij groups wear white funeral shrouds over their uniforms during public appearances.
During this year's Ashura Festival, school classes were taken on excursions to a "Martyrs' Cemetery." "They wear headbands painted with the name Hussein," The New York Times reported, "and march beneath banners that read: 'Remembering the Martyrs today is as important as becoming a Martyr' and 'The Nation for whom Martyrdom means happiness, will always be Victorious.' " Since 2004, the mobilization of Iranians for suicide brigades has intensified, with recruits being trained for foreign missions. Thus, a special military unit has been created bearing the name "Commando of Voluntary Martyrs. "According to its own statistics, this force has so far recruited some 52,000 Iranians to the suicidal cause. It aims to form a "martyrdom unit" in every Iranian province.
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(from above)
The Basiji's cult of self-destruction would be chilling in any country. In the context of the Iranian nuclear program, however, its obsession with martyrdom amounts to a lit fuse. Nowadays, Basiji are sent not into the desert, but rather into the laboratory. Basij students are encouraged to enroll in technical and scientific disciplines. According to a spokesperson for the Revolutionary Guard, the aim is to use the "technical factor" in order to augment "national security."
What exactly does that mean? Consider that, in December 2001, former Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani explained that "the use of even one nuclear bomb inside Israel will destroy everything." On the other hand, if Israel responded with its own nuclear weapons, it "will only harm the Islamic world. It is not irrational to contemplate such an eventuality." Rafsanjani thus spelled out a macabre cost-benefit analysis. It might not be possible to destroy Israel without suffering retaliation. But, for Islam, the level of damage Israel could inflict is bearable--only 100,000 or so additional martyrs for Islam.
And Rafsanjani is a member of the moderate, pragmatic wing of the Iranian Revolution; he believes that any conflict ought to have a "worthwhile" outcome. Ahmadinejad, by contrast, is predisposed toward apocalyptic thinking. In one of his first TV interviews after being elected president, he enthused: "Is there an art that is more beautiful, more divine, more eternal than the art of the martyr's death?" In September 2005, he concluded his first speech before the United Nations by imploring God to bring about the return of the Twelfth Imam. He finances a research institute in Tehran whose sole purpose is to study, and, if possible, accelerate the coming of the imam. And, at a theology conference in November 2005, he stressed, "The most important task of our Revolution is to prepare the way for the return of the Twelfth Imam."
A politics pursued in alliance with a supernatural force is necessarily unpredictable.Why should an Iranian president engage in pragmatic politics when his assumption is that, in three or four years, the savior will appear? If the messiah is coming, why compromise? That is why, up to now, Ahmadinejad has pursued confrontational policies with evident pleasure.
The history of the Basiji shows that we must expect monstrosities from the current Iranian regime. Already, what began in the early '80s with the clearing of minefields by human detonators has spread throughout the Middle East, as suicide bombing has become the terrorist tactic of choice. The motivational shows in the desert--with hired actors in the role of the hidden imam--have evolved into a showdown between a zealous Iranian president and the Western world. And the Basiji who once upon a time wandered the desert armed only with a walking stick is today working as a chemist in a uranium enrichment facility.
Matthias Küntzel is a political scientist in Hamburg, Germany, and author of Djihad und Judenhass (or Jihad and Jew-Hatred).
link to original article
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Originally posted by Maverick
Culero,
Nice analogy and in a way it almost fits.
snip
Mav, you may have missed my point, or perhaps I didn't make it clearly.
I'm not advocating that The Troubles and the current terror attacks against The West are equivalent. I'm not even saying its inaccurate to describe the terrorists as "Islamic". I'm just pointing out that its plausible that to the extent there are Muslims that want to peacefully co-exist with us, using that terminology when another might do could exacerbate tension in our communities.
culero
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Originally posted by culero
Mav, you may have missed my point, or perhaps I didn't make it clearly.
I'm not advocating that The Troubles and the current terror attacks against The West are equivalent. I'm not even saying its inaccurate to describe the terrorists as "Islamic". I'm just pointing out that its plausible that to the extent there are Muslims that want to peacefully co-exist with us, using that terminology when another might do could exacerbate tension in our communities.
culero
I would disagree with that assesment. It seems that Islam as a religion is in itselfed flawed to the point where it doesn't allow cohabbitation with others.
Calling it just plain ole terrorism instead of "islamin terrorism" or "islamofacism" just isn't calling it what it is. These terrorists are devout muslims and killing in the name of their religion. Taking the religious part out of it is just trying to gloss it over. Now before the "jump the gun band wagon" of this bbs flames me I don't think that ALL of islam is bad but I think those that do not support what terrorists do are in the minority.
Either way this kind of "Sensativity to others" crap makes me sick. I should not have to be sensative to ANYONE's special needs. I beleive that people should thinken up their skin vrs watching the way they talk. That's just the way I am.
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F*@&'em
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where would England be without Brussels, God bless them.
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Gunslinger you're missing the point, too.
Let's assume that you are exactly right. Even by your estimation (that a minority of Muslims don't support terrorism) there are a large number of people right here in our community who belong to that religion and don't support terrorism.
Lets also agree there's no need to "be PC". Let chips fall where they will.
What I'm trying to point out (something I never really considered before reading the article that started this thread, BTW) is that its arguable that we're reinforcing tensions within our own community by using this terminolgy. By emphasizing the "Islamic" part of this we could be focusing people's attention on the religion itself, when in fact the problem is the fact people are making war against us.
Look at it this way. The KKK cites religion as part of its justification. Should black people see them as representative of Christianity? Or should they focus on what's really wrong with the KKK?
culero
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Originally posted by culero
Gunslinger you're missing the point, too.
Let's assume that you are exactly right. Even by your estimation (that a minority of Muslims don't support terrorism) there are a large number of people right here in our community who belong to that religion and don't support terrorism.
Lets also agree there's no need to "be PC". Let chips fall where they will.
What I'm trying to point out (something I never really considered before reading the article that started this thread, BTW) is that its arguable that we're reinforcing tensions within our own community by using this terminolgy. By emphasizing the "Islamic" part of this we could be focusing people's attention on the religion itself, when in fact the problem is the fact people are making war against us.
Look at it this way. The KKK cites religion as part of its justification. Should black people see them as representative of Christianity? Or should they focus on what's really wrong with the KKK?
culero
I'm glad you brought the KKK up. Taking out the islam part would be the same thing as calling a racially motivated lynching just a murder for the sake of not upsetting people.
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Originally posted by Gunslinger
I'm glad you brought the KKK up. Taking out the islam part would be the same thing as calling a racially motivated lynching just a murder for the sake of not upsetting people.
Its not about upsetting people. Its about being counter-productive. I'm not worried about who we might offend, I'm thinking about prejudices we may breed in our own minds.
You also missed the point about the KKK. Take a look at http://www.kkk.com - note that they emphasize their Chrsitianity heavily.
Could the racially motivated lynching you cited be properly referred to as a Christianity-motivated lynching?
culero
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culero, no pastors or priests publically support violence in any form against anyone. In fact, quite the opposite any form of violence is openly condemned. the actions of certain nutjobs certainly does reflect poorly upon Christianity but the violence that occurs by so called Christians is like a paper cut in comparisson to mohammadan violence.
islam from it's very foundation has been about violence. you either convert to mohammadanism or you die. hence the term "conversion by the sword". there is no equivalent in Christianity for the "fatwah" which is in essense a death warrant. fatwahs are regularly issued by mohammadan "clerics". it is a violent and perverse religion and it needs to be dealt with on the terms they deal to others.
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I've had plenty of muslim friends and girlfriends, and they never hinted at me being an infidel. 90% of the time, they treated me like family.
The problem isn't religion, it's humans' distortion of it. Corruption of ideas into religion, into organized movement, into political machine has been around since forever.
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Originally posted by storch
culero, no pastors or priests publically support violence in any form against anyone. In fact, quite the opposite any form of violence is openly condemned. the actions of certain nutjobs certainly does reflect poorly upon Christianity but the violence that occurs by so called Christians is like a paper cut in comparisson to mohammadan violence.
islam from it's very foundation has been about violence. you either convert to mohammadanism or you die. hence the term "conversion by the sword". there is no equivalent in Christianity for the "fatwah" which is in essense a death warrant. fatwahs are regularly issued by mohammadan "clerics". it is a violent and perverse religion and it needs to be dealt with on the terms they deal to others.
Its clear to me why I'm not a professional communicator, I do have so much trouble making myself clear :)
I used the obviously absurd example of the KKK to illustrate a point. The point is that if you allow yourself to become accustomed to forming opinions about people based on things like their religion, nationality, color, etc, you are allowing yourself to become prejudiced. If a community becomes prejudiced, that community is less likely to be able to live in peace with others. I'm not trying to discuss why we shouldn't offend people (I could care less who I offend if I speak the truth) but rather what's good for us.
I'll leave the debate about Islam to those who care to study religion. I put that behind me many years ago. My instinct is that you and others who believe as you do are wrong, but I'll happily discuss this with the assumption you are right, OK?
If indeed you are right, then the obvious conclusion is that we should be prepared to make total war against Islam. Yes, total war. If indeed any and every person who is Muslim is by definition committed to the death of any and every person who refuses to convert, then they should all be treated as enemies.
Are you prepared to say we should round up all the Muslims in our nation and treat them as POWs? That we should invade and conquer all nations who allow Islam to be an internal influence? Or that we should perhaps nuke them into submission? Its really the obvious course of action if indeed Islam is what you say it is.
Let's put it this way - whether you are prepared to do so or not, I am. If it becomes evident to me that Islam as a whole seeks the destruction of my community, that is.
I just don't believe you and others are right about Muslims in general. I'd agree that lots of folks in the Middle East who are Muslim hate us and wish us harm. That's pretty obvious. But I also believe there's lots of folks both there, and more importantly, here in our communities in the West, that don't hate us. I think these Muslims want to live in peace with us. I think they can help us by being a calming and positive influence on their Muslim brethren in faith.
Thus, I can see why its a good idea to not be prejudiced against people because of their religious choice. Which brings me back to my original point. I can see why there's an argument for avoiding the use of "Islam" when describing terror because it fosters prejudice - prejudice against people who don't deserve it. Prejudice against people in our community who don't deserve it hurts us.
culero
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Originally posted by storch
culero, no pastors or priests publically support violence in any form against anyone.
Anyone tell Pat Robertson this? ;)
If 100% of Islam (or even a majority) wanted to kill off Christians .... then you'd have seen alot more than the 911 attack (or all of the terrorists acts committed in the last century) by now. It's not a universal tenet of the Islamic faith to kill Christians (or anyone) off. It's a perverted tenet limited to a few sects that are actually inspired behind the scenes by politically motivated Middle Eastern factions attempting to exert greater influence in their region.
And any Christian willing to buy that this is a religious war between Christianity and Islam is playing right into their hands. Nothing makes a Jihad more righteous than the acceptance of such on the other side. Keep it up and it may very well eventually become the widespread tenet we want to think it is now. I'm not much for self fulfilling prophesy (ptp) designed to shoot ourselves in the foot. :D
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I just hope we don't have to send our young people over there to fight their wars for them again.
No worries on that. We're sending ours to Iraq to die in your war at this moment in time.
104 and counting...