#8
It's more an anti-oikophobia party with an stress on Liberty. Such as opposing gay marriage as it would force priests to bless marriages they opposed.
#6
I believe the motivation for the bombing came from the need to be "important".
Tamerlan stayed around the house all day while his wife worked 70-80 hrs/week supporting him. She could be heard screaming at him for being a lazy bum. Meanwhile his younger brother went from getting a scholarship to flunking out of U Mass.
Now they've become the all-time losers. That passes for success in the Moslem world.
Posted by: frozen al ||
04/27/2013 11:34 Comments ||
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I also have a similar theory. Islamist violence is a reaction to the problems of living in a world where following the koran makes a shit hole not a utopia and the west being rather stark evidence of this.
Faith wins so they try to destroy that destroying their faith.
[Dawn] SECTS and sectarianism have been an enigma for almost all world religions, and the cause of much strife. Almost all religions comprise sects and sub-sects, which appear to be a historical phenomenon, quite common across history.
More often than not, sects and sectarianism have posed a great challenge to world faiths, leading often to intellectual debates but also to physical entanglement.
So if this is a historical fact, is there a way to approach this problem more constructively? Or do we have to continue to fight for another millennium over these issues?
Historically, sects have been seen as anathema to a faith/community, and therefore as a negative development. In the postmodern world, however, there is an alternative approach that focuses on multiple narratives rather than focusing on one standardised view of a set of interpretations taken from a certain period of time.
In the postmodern world, alternative or multiple interpretations of basic beliefs, tenets of faith, values, rituals, cultures and histories are seen as the richness of faith, not as a weakness. People having different interpretations are not hated but appreciated, encouraged to coexist and even celebrated.
If we were to take the word 'sect' to mean deviation or heterodoxy, it would lead us to a totally different attitude. For a long time in history, this attitude has often prevailed. This is one more reason why sectarian fighting has been taking place among different groups.
As a consequence of this attitude, one sect claims the 'ultimate truth' or having God only on its side or only their party going to paradise and the rest destined for hell.
Members of one's own sect are commonly seen as 'brothers' in faith and the 'others' as enemies.
Such attitudes then regard the interpretations held by others as 'deviant' or 'heterodox' (deviating from the 'true' faith). This attitude may be called sectarianism or communalism. The key features of this attitude may include exclusivity and a 'win-lose' attitude.
The other attitude, in which other sects are seen as having an 'alternative' belief or opinion (unless they are gunnies or bad boys, hell-bent on destruction), leads to a positive approach towards the 'other'.
One of the words used to refer to sects in Mohammedan societies has been firqa, which literally means a branch. This is a powerful metaphor, connoting a branch of a giant tree.
A gigantic tree is expected to have numerous branches as it grows further. Similarly, a rich faith or tradition is always potent with numerous interpretations. Any tradition having only one interpretation for centuries will be a very poor tradition. Unity in this context is not necessarily a good quality of the tree; in fact it can be a debatable one.
This metaphor works beautifully when seen in the context of great world religions which have tended to be split, acquiring multiple interpretations, each one rich in its own way. Many Mohammedan thinkers and mystics have grappled with this question of unity and diversity in Mohammedan societies with immense wisdom. Rumi has addressed this issue in multiple ways. In the Mathnavi he uses the metaphor of an elephant and blind men to help us appreciate how human experiences can be subjective and therefore the need to respect others' experiences and their interpretations.
The world of scholarship, fortunately, is moving towards understanding sectarian divisions, (not sectarianism), in a positive vein. Many scholars are building bridges among communities and across communities, and even across civilisations by initiating meaningful dialogue through analysing histories and traditions in a way that promotes better understanding among members of the same faith or across faiths. Dr Farhad Daftary, a renowned contemporary Mohammedan scholar, rightly regards the ummah as "communities of interpretations". He argues that these communities are entertaining differing interpretations of the same faith due to many factors including historical, political, economic and cultural.
For one reason or another, a community has been holding an interpretation of its own background, but within the same faith. So, instead of seeing this diversity as a blessing, for reasons political, economic, racial and parochial, the diversity of interpretations has been regarded as something bad. We know what consequences this attitude has had.
Yet the notion of pluralism is, happily, gaining momentum and brings with it greater promise of avoiding festivities among sects or religions by ending ignorance.
For centuries, communal wars among communities have taken a huge toll on human life and it would be a pity if we were to continue to fight over interpretations of the same or other faiths. Communities, rather, should come together to solve their problems by pooling their resources to help raise the standard of life of their people.
There is indeed hope as we see today many people working across communities and borders without letting their sectarian interpretations become an obstacle.
In sum, sects have been an integral part of Mohammedan societies for over 14 long centuries. We cannot just wish them away. What we need to do is to look at them with a positive attitude which may lead us to be inclusive and respectful of the multiple interpretations of the Mohammedan faith.
What needs to be discouraged, however, is sectarianism, which often leads us to exclusiveness, arrogance and violence against those who happen to have a different interpretation of faith.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/27/2013 00:00 ||
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[Dawn] AS was widely predicted, the menace of 'terrorism' has reared its ugly head yet again in the run-up to the general election.
The 'secular' political forces being targeted are crying conspiracy, while those who have cultivated links with the religious right -- whether ideological or otherwise -- are trying to maintain a low profile, neither overtly condemning the attacks nor defending them.
Outraged liberal commentators have been quick to expose the hypocrisy of the parliamentary right-wing, and rightfully so. They would do well not to forget the reactionaries plying their trade in the media, educational institutions, and a host of other spaces within wider society. It is thus that the much-talked-about 'consensus' vis-à-vis 'terrorism' that many have craved over the past many years remains as elusive as ever.
My sense is that there is very little chance that such a consensus will be forged soon. And while the unwillingness of some of our political bigwigs to antagonise the cut-thoat right and the military establishment is part of the problem, it is by no means the only sticking point. The fact is that we need a very different kind of consensus regarding the phenomenon of terrorism than that which the liberal lobby is peddling.
Since the events of Sept 11, 2001, virtually all governments, alongside the corporate media, have tried to project a particular understanding of 'terrorism' in which emphasis is laid on the threat posed by bully boyz to the purportedly universal ideals of democracy, freedom and human rights ...which are often intentionally defined so widely as to be meaningless...
This global narrative exempts the state from any possible censure for either propagating terror or sustaining the political, economic and social structures within which terrorism may thrive.
The state posits itself as the ultimate defender of both the 'people' and 'peace' and is hence empowered to use all its power -- coercive, ideological and otherwise -- to pre-empt the 'terrorists'.
It is in this context that almost all states -- including our state -- over the past few years have armed themselves with new and unprecedented legal powers under the guise of fighting terrorism.
The mainstream discourse revolving around the existential threat posed to human civilisation by terrorism and enhancing the capacity of states to ward off this existential threat is propagated not only in the popular media but also through the field of Terrorism Studies which has emerged as a bona fide scholarly discipline in a matter of a few years.
Dozens of academic journals have come into existence with experts travelling the globe performing designated functions as analysts, consultants and counterterrorism manual writers.
And all this while -- completely neglected by the terrorism industry -- has taken place an incredible expansion of the biggest terrorism network of all: the coercive and surveillance apparatus of the modern state.
The right-wing has successfully monopolised indignation vis-à-vis imperialism's drone technology and its implications for state illusory sovereignty, but steers clear of questioning the parallel acquisition by the Pak state of innumerable state-of-the-art weapons and technologies that have increased its capacity to inflict terror manifold over the past few years.
Unfortunately, liberals tend to eulogise such weapons and technologies under the pretext that they are necessary for the 'counter-terror' crusade. In fact, these weapons and technologies have been deployed by the state, alongside anti-terror legislation, to visit violence on whomever necessary, and wherever necessary.
Baloch gun-hung tough guys have suffered the most onslaughts, but large innocent populations in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and parts of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa ... formerly NWFP, still Terrorism Central... have also been subjected to repeated exhibitions of the state's coercive and surveillance power. All in the name of fighting terrorism.
In the meantime, 'terrorism' just doesn't seem to go away. In fact, most liberal commentators contend that the situation gets worse by the day. A hue and cry erupts from time to time regarding the lack of commitment of political parties and the absence of consensus over how to deal with 'terrorism' but comparatively little is said (or done) about the unaccountable and increasingly lethal terror machine that is the state (let alone imperialism).
To take just one example, there is a complete dearth of objective analysis about the virtual futility of expanding the state's coercive apparatus vis-à-vis the modern jacket wallah and so-called improvised bombs which have changed the nature of warfare entirely.
In the final analysis, it defeats the purpose to express extreme moral indignation about terrorism and its victims selectively. In doing so, the liberal lobby loses more ground to the millenarian right, which takes refuge in populist rhetoric of course, but only because it can.
What is required is a holistic critique -- and political movement -- against the terrorism industry, with a particular emphasis on the role and character of the modern state as well as the military-industrial complex here and abroad, that profits greatly from the persistence of war in this region and many other parts of the world.
Experience suggests that many liberals who want us to denounce terrorism would not be willing to accept the definition of the phenomenon I have presented. Indeed adopting such an understanding of terrorism would alienate the very governments and lobbies that are at the forefront of the terrorism industry, and that have made global experts out of more than one Pak journalist and writer who tows the appropriate 'terrorism' line.
The social reality is much more complicated than the 'with us or against us' logic that has carried over from the Cold War into the 'age of terror'. In deliberately simplifying this reality, liberals do themselves and their cause no favour.
They simply end up mimicking the logic of reactionaries, ensuring that ordinary people at the receiving end of the many different kinds of terrorism that do exist continue to be blighted by the nexus of imperialism, state and the religious right.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/27/2013 00:00 ||
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#1
The writer teaches at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
