Massacre in Paris - three fatigue-wearing masked Islamaniac gunmen, armed with AK-47 assault rifles, murder 12 journalists, cartoonists and policemen at the offices of French satirical magazine, “Charlie Hebro” in Paris, in broad daylight. Another indication of the “Islamic State of Mind”, at least as seen by the Caliphists ? At any rate, this outrage gives credence to the idea propagated by elements of the US-European intellectual Right (“Gates of Vienna” and all that) that Western civilization faces a “war from within”, which it is ill-prepared to fight. I hope that the normal Muslim-in-the Street does not suffer for this.
In any event, this ranks with the worst Islamaniac attacks on the West, not excluding 9/11. It is a direct attack on a fundamental pillar of Western democracy - the right to Freedom of Speech. Cartoonists have been trenchant in their response to the murder of their fellows -
After the attack on the offices at Charlie Hebdo another attack took place, again in Paris, after a gunman opened fire. If i recall correctly almost every year there was an incident like that, regarding Charlie Hebdo. Retaliations took place throughout France, after yesterdays shooting. These actions mean only that more caricatourists and satirists will take on against the islamic state. R.I.P.
Also lets not forget the police officer who died in the Tuesday’s shooting!! Je suis Achmed
Might I suggest that this currently prevailing view is a subjectively focused Western view which endows the murderers with much greater intellect and socio-political analytical skills and purpose than their self-evidently religiously motivated revenge murders displayed.
A more objective view is that murderers like these are actuated by an inexplicably fragile confidence in their version of Islam which leads them to be unduly sensitive to perceived insults to their version of their faith, suitably inflamed by the numerous violently inclined and also inexplicably fragile leaders of various versions of their faith espousing and inciting violence against kaffirs and, almost exclusively if ranked by death tolls, adherents to other versions of Islam.
The vastly disproportionate resort to violence for perceived insults is attributable also to the primitive cultures which spawn these vipers where, for example, a family is dishonoured by a daughter’s innocent unsupervised contact with a boy from the wrong caste, tribe or whatever, which dishonour is expunged by the girl’s father and brothers killing her or, as a magnificent display of dispassionate application of justice and penalty, having the village elders rape the girl before killing her.
Charming people, whose ilk as paragons of Islamic virtue under ISIL pursue the age old barbarian practices of plunder, pillage, rape, and taking or selling captured girls and women into sexual servitude.
Add to these noble achievements the routine execution of unarmed innocents, be they defenceless journalists beheaded in various places or the more recent Paris mass murders or the countless thousands in Islamic countries, and Allah and Mohammed PBTH must be so fuc*king proud of their valiant warriors.
As for an attack on freedom of speech, there isn’t a country in the West or anywhere else which has, or ever will have, complete freedom of speech. The Charlie Hedbo murderers were just targeting people who had offended them. They’re not terrorists, just murderers exacting revenge for perceived insults to an ancient historical figure (who, unsurprisingly, was himself an even more violent and vengeful bastard), which places them below even the detestable people who carry out so called honour killings to avenge perceived dishonour to their presently living families.
The Western press and governments would do their respective consumers and electorates a huge favour by abandoning the term ‘terrorist’ and reducing these vile people to their proper status of murderers some degrees below the level of sane thrill killers, and treating them with appropriate contempt and real life sentences or, preferably if only to avoid predictable hostage taking of innocents elsewhere to procure the release of these microbes, the death penalty. Ideally applied during attempts at capture, thus saving everyone a lot of trouble.
It’s not a major issue and I’ll leave it to your discretion, but you might agree that it would be better to retitle this thread “Islamic Fascist State of Mind” or some other title you might prefer to distinguish the violent Muslim dregs from the Muslim communities which are appalled by and opposed to the likes of ISIL, the Paris murderers, etc.
This isn’t a mod issue but merely an unusual display of delicacy by me, so it’s entirely up to you which way you’d like to go, with no adverse consequences whatever you decide.
RS, I’ll stand to your point about the term terrorist. Firstly those guys are murderers of 12 innocent people and editors who simply do some work that looks insulting to the muslims only because their religion is a little bit anachronistic. Second i think the word terrorist defines completely their act because they struck one of the most valuable parts of any democratic nation the freedom of speech; and thats exactly what terrorism is, cause of fear. France is in complet chaotic state from Tuesday. Last i dont know how i can tie this incident with entire the islamic world because a muslim man also died(executed from the footage) and i think a lot muslims demonstrated about those events too.
Fine, no problem. Could I just explain that in naming this thread, the term “Islamic State of Mind” was in part a draw on the old song (?Willie Nelson) “Country State of Mind”, and was intended to refer specifically to the mindset of the Islamaniac ISIS - a sour joke, perhaps, but a joke. It was absolutely not intended as an insult to Muslims generally; I live in a community that is very substantially Muslim - my neighbors -, and I have no problems with Muslims as such (more problems, I have to say, with our purely home-grown hooligans). As an alternative title, I might suggest “Extreme Islamist War on Freedom”, or some such ? Whatever these people are, they are not “Fascist”. Best regards, JR.
This ISIS/L things are getting more and more sympathy from muslim majority country like Indonesia, it is not because they agreed upon their action, but in contraire, we mostly despised their action,. but global condemnation of what we are not, has made the recruiting process of ISIS/L more smoothly than before. This extremely difficult for us for keep going to fight or at least against any act terror, while being branded as terrorist ourselves, no matter what we do or dont do, we all are the culprit. even in this and some of other respectable forums by some of respectable members.
While people now bombarding the muslin of the current event, yet forgetting the very muslim police who died fighting them.
But i know things are getting change for better,. “ill ride with you” is one of them.
I didn’t interpret or impute anything adverse to you. I assumed your personal position was as you have described it in the quote above.
I was just having a quite unwarranted episode last night of not wanting all Muslims to feel that they are embraced by any comments in this thread.
I got over that today when this article http://www.theage.com.au/world/acehs-sharia-law-raped-and-beaten-then-formally-whipped-20150109-12kucb.html (about gang rape of a woman being imposed as a religious punishment by the local religious community of devout Sharia vigilantes for a religious but not criminal offence) reminded me that large parts of the Muslim world living according to their versions of Sharia law are beyond reason and contempt judged by what they see as decadent and repulsive Western notions of humane treatment, fairness and justice.
As my suggestion about changing the thread title sprang from extending my decadent and repulsive Western notions of humane treatment, fairness and justice to Muslims generally, and as large parts of the Muslim world share the Islamic state of mind represented by ISIS and the practice of Sharia law in Aceh, Pakistan etc, I certainly don’t want to offend them by denying them the glory of “Islamic” in discussions of activities by adherents of Islam in pursuit of their laws and customs.
After all, your initial post dealt with the “Islamic State” and that title was proclaimed by no less than the current Caliph, so the thread title is correct.
If other Muslims don’t like what goes on in Islamic State and Aceh and Pakistan and Saudi Arabi and Nigeria and Somalia and countless other places in the name of Islam, they can take it up with the current Caliph.
My apologies, JR*. Your thread title was, and is, perfectly correct.
Your comment represents one side of a two sided problem.
One side is the unfounded sense of universal victimhood by Muslims, which comes through your comment. I can’t think of anyone of international importance making any adverse comment about Indonesia in relation to Islamic terrorists (more accurately, merely murderers), as distinct from concerns about some small elements in Indonesia which have generally been dealt with by local law enforcement bodies, in marked contrast to, say, Pakistan. Considering events such as 9/11, bombings in England and Spain, murder of soldiers selected at random in England and Canada, recent events in France and Australia, and so on, there has been no significant and certainly no equivalent response by the dominant non-Muslim communities in those places to these unprovoked murders and acts of barbarity in the name of Islam. ISIS, Al Qaeda etc do not exercise the same restraint but encourage and carry out murders of innocents, although in the vast majority of cases they are murdering other Muslims, albeit in their view the wrong brand of Muslim, in their tens of thousands. Islam is not a unified religion, any more than Christianity is, but to the extent that Muslims are under attack and being killed it is predominantly from other Muslims. Muslims, not the West, are the greatest threat to other Muslims. Witness about 135 Muslim children murdered by other Muslims in Pakistan recently.
The other side is the unfounded sense by many in the non-Muslim, primarily Western, world that all Muslims are united in, or at least do not condemn, the actions of ISIS etc. This stems in part from the same problem that Islam is not a unified religion but, unlike the major Christian religions, there is no worldwide head of Islam comparable to the heads of the Catholic and Anglican churches, so there is nobody to speak with authority for Islam or even the various branches of Islam. This has been compounded until fairly recently by the failure of the news media in the West to report condemnation by various Muslim leaders and associations of the activities of ISIS etc, while reporting the duplicity of some Muslim leaders who say one thing to the news media and the reverse to their own congregation. However, over the past couple of years this has changed, as has the determination of Western leaders in their own countries to avoid calls for vengeance on local Muslim communities after local outrages but to reinforce the need for unity between Muslims and the rest of the local community in fighting a common enemy. This is in marked contrast to the more strident and often violent calls from sections of Islam, inside and outside those Western countries, to increase attacks on the communities to which Muslims have come for a better life.
What we are seeing now is a low level and ultimately unimportant series of attacks by murderers and lunatics inspired by radical and violent Islamic preaching of the ISIS kind, but at a more strategic and more worrying level it is the old revolutionary cycle of attacks by dissidents to increase repression leading to, as you said, increased recruitment to the dissident cause leading to larger attacks and greater repression leading to, almost never, a popular uprising to overthrow the forces of repression. To the extent that the forces of repression in the current jihadist attacks and campaigns are represented by the USA, Britain, Western European nations, and others such as Canada and Australia, and even India and China dealing with their Islamic insurgencies, there is no way that the the Islamic warriors are going to win. As for destroying Muslim nations and killing other Muslims at a vastly greater rate than the West has ever done (but vastly less than the West could do if it wanted to), they are already doing that very successfully and show every sign of doing it more successfully for the foreseeable future.
The path to destruction which the likes of Al Qaeda and ISIS have set us upon can be avoided only by Muslims who disagree with ISIS etc repudiating ISIS etc rather than seeing ISIS as a victim and allying themselves with it as co-Muslims against the West as a wrongly perceived enemy.
I don’t see that happening as the bulk of the Islamic world seems to share your opinion that it should support the likes of ISIS as fellow Muslims against perceived attacks by the West. The reality will be that if the likes of ISIS control Muslim nations, and especially moderate Muslim nations like Indonesia, you’ll think that the massacres of hundreds of thousands of communists in Indonesia in the mid-1960s were gentle times.
your assessment on isis is somewhat true to the extent,. the majority of muslim in Indonesia - like i said on my previous post - are against any action of ISIS or some radical islam movement, however, level of education for most of the people in this very populous country is not high, burden of economy adding to the already difficult life. But also, in bigger city, there are elements of some local radical muslim group who kept harassing the city on their sweeping for anything outside the sariah law, the government had banned such organisation, but thats only happen on the talking of the officials, and no action taken when such group suddenly appeared.
I for once received a leaflet on - calls for jihad - when attending friday pray in one remote mosque, what is surprising, its offer not only those virgins in heaven,. but also proper allowance and benefits. As for some of more educated youth who got access to the media, when asked, on what they think of ISIS,. he expressed that he cannot agree on the violence done by them, but seems, whole world are against us, who gonna stand for own shake.
Major islamic groups in Indonesia are not keep silent on this matter, like Nahdatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah are officially rejecting ISIS in support to the statement of Official to denounce on its existence in Indonesia. But like Al qaeda, we need to take extreme measure in keeping them at bay, not by simply rejecting or denouncing. Unlike Al qeada branch in the country, the police already and still continue hunting them down,. but ISIS in Indonesia has yet to do some damage in order to be announce as criminal organisation, they just demonstrating and rallying support at this moment, but this like waiting for the storm to come.
The view in some intelligence circles is that there is a strong chance that Indonesia will soon be the target for attacks by the likes of ISIS.
Should that regrettable event occur, one wonders what it is supposed to achieve in the world’s most populous, and probably most moderate, Muslim nation.
Hopefully, we won’t need to discuss that, as we hope it won’t occur.
Always intrigues me that demonstrators in non-English speaking countries often make their banners in English. Clearly their messages are intended for impact in the English speaking world, which is rather pointless in countries where English speaking nations have no direct, and often no, local influence.
Doubly ironic in this case, given what appears to be the backdrop of the Welcome monument in Jakarta. They don’t look to me like a welcoming party to English speakers from the West. Nor a welcoming party to most Indonesian Muslims, who generally outside of some local areas such as Aceh follow a much more moderate form of Islam than ISIS and sundry others springing from the oil funded well of Saudi Wahhabbism.
And triply ironic as the average English speaker is repelled by ISIS and all it stands for. These idiots have wasted their time and money making banners in English, unless the banners are intended to annoy English speakers. Which is a further miscalculation by these idiots as, unlike the zombies in France who thought that murdering defenceless cartoonists and journalists to avenge insults to the Prophet PBHM was a triumph for ISIS style Islam, we’re not too upset by, nor necessarily impressed by, words and banners.
And, as an English speaker in the English speaking world next door to Indonesia, I couldn’t care less what these depraved religious idiots think, want, or do.
i couldnt agree more on we should already initiate some actions towards these embryo of ISIS, however, Indonesia still having this culture shock so called ‘human right’
these vultures loves to hide under the banner of human rights when there are some arrest/sweeping on these extremists. The military are keeping themselves away from being branded as human right abuser, as few of high ranks military officials still being haunted of this accusation of the older regime.
There was one time when one cleric openly support al qaeda and Osama bin laden, and his boarding school openly advocating to join on the purpose. The government arrest the cleric, but some NGO in the name human right, able to secure the cleric, however his boarding school were ceased to operate. The newly imposed Human right restrictions, really limit the ability of authority to take action on potential terror group.
Your comment on the english banner, really an eye opener, i believe it is meant for western media or at least some westerners to see on their movement as if whole nation are supporting these group, and hoping funneling bad sentiment toward us. And this connected to my first post previously.
I’ll start by saying that i didn’t even heard that ISIS/L “movement”, or i don’t know how else to characterize this group, acted in Indonesia and also so pompously but that’s probably the reason my homecountry has problems on it’s own,although it’s bad not to be correctly informed by the mass media. The photo gumalangi uploaded might only had the supporters we see in the foreground and thats all, but thats irrelevant; it’s so problematic to see demonstrations take place in muslim countries(i dont know if this is a correct term) and support ISIS/L, simply because this is beyond a movement anymore but a criminal organisation. I’d agree with RS* about the irony with the english-written banners but doesn’t it also show a hostillity to the human right section, especially after what happened in France?
Furthermore something else that i found out via the internet was the incident with Boko Haram in Nigeria. I write about it here because i think it “belongs” here. Mass bombings that took place in Baga, Nigeria killed about 2000 people, most of them probably christians but also muslims, if we take acount the religious populations in the country. This happened the same period with the Charlie Hebdo incident and i don’t think it was given enough publicity and i dont why. The point i’m trying to make, not clearly, with this paragraph is that ISIS/L and other groups affiliated with them, dont only fight the westerner’s(which i’ve read it is their main cause), but from their hits they target also muslims and their lives, making muslims their enemy also.
Also gumalangi why to funnel bad testiment towards you, with what end i mean.
Respectfully Kal
The feeling of mutual ends among all muslims, is not necessarily based on the similar verses we read and understood (as a matter of fact, we always keep arguing on those verses, like - you should kill the infidel againstYour way is yours, and my way is mine. -, but more and more due to islamicphobia sentiments and statements. One preacher keep telling us on how the westerners hate Islam and/or Indonesia as the most populous muslim nation etc, and so to our just we should defend ourselves.
And relates to the english banners, in the very heart of the capital? the welcome monument it is,.surrounded by 4 international chain hotels (Mandarin orientral, Hyatt, Kempinsky and Sheraton) 80% of its occupants are foreigners and British Embassy.
Also the hate at the muslims i never understood. Definately different dogma, different way of lives, but from what i hear from friends, blogs and stuff like that, in europe there is a neutral idea about arabic/muslim countries and the hate comes from the goverments, especially the US, something i think started(and never ended from historical view) from the crusades.
Well i didn’t know about the hotels around the welcome monument and now the whole phot has a point thus “uniting” the muslims.
Related to the paris shooting, i just realized early of December 2014, France recognized Palestine as a state, and then,. attacked on kosher restaurant in Paris, and the Charlie Hebdo shooting,.
i dont wanna play conspiracy theory in here,. but,. i found it is strange for what great things has been done by France towards palestine - which represent - the oppressed muslim nation, being attack continously by muslim or muslim organization just after that… it just not make any sense?
It’s a significant consequence of France’s colonial past, notably in Algeria and from the Algerian migration to France caused by violent French repression during that bitter conflict, which has produced a large population of poor Muslims in France who are resentful of France.
Although that’s not by any means a complete explanation, as some Muslim migrants to other Western countries or their Western born children bear equal hostility to the Western countries to which they chose to migrate, and have demonstrated it by violent and frequently murderous acts and plots in Britain, the US, Canada and Australia which, certainly in the latter two countries, had no involvement in anything adverse to Muslims and, in the case of the vipers let into our midst, foolishly welcomed them with open arms and considerable financial support (typically funding the likes of the recent Sydney murderer on welfare for the many years they have lived here without contributing anything useful to our society).
The problem common to all these nations is that, regardless of where they came from, a small proportion of Muslims who choose to live outside Muslim nations hate the Western nations in which they live and are determined to destroy them in pursuit of the ideals of the likes of Al Qaeda and ISIL.
Then again, the same mentality applies to many Muslims in widely spread Muslim nations to justify the killing of Muslim schoolchildren in Pakistan; endless atrocities in Nigeria; ISIL etc in Iraq and Syria, and various other places, where Muslims do vastly more damage to other Muslims than they do with relatively inconsequential events like the recent ones in France.
This problem is not one of Western oppression of Muslims as the likes of ISIL would have us believe, but one of radical Muslim elements attacking the rest of the world which doesn’t share their narrow view of (generally radical Sunni) Islam. Muslims in countries targeted by the likes of ISIL and Boko Haram have a lot more to fear from those fellow Muslims than they do from the West.
The greatest criticism that can be made of the West is not that it persecutes Muslims, but that it fails to do enough or even anything to protect them from the ravages of the Pakistani Taliban, Boko Haram etc.
Whether it is realistic to expect the West to intervene in places like Nigeria or Pakistan is a different question, to which the answer is always: No.
I am by no means unconcerned by the threat posed by super-mass migration to the heritage of “western civilization”. However, migration, and mass migration, have been phenomena observed throughout recorded history and before. Otherwise, we would all still be in Africa. Sometimes, mind you, I wonder why we ever came out of Africa. Especially after viewing “Extreme Alaskan Survival” - type shows on Discovery. In any event, the migrants are coming, and will keep coming. That is a fact. Unlike the softies who laud this as promoting variety and multi-culturalism (although this does have benefits), I might wish otherwise; but this would be unrealistic. Non-“European” migrants are “here”, and will remain here. Both “natives” and “migrants” will just have to find the best way of dealing with this.
Actually, there is another threat to our civilization in the West perhaps even more serious than migration - the crapulous education systems, even in many “advanced” western countries, that are bringing up generations of children who have little or no appreciation of the indigenous cultural heritage of Europe and the Americas. I am not a religious person - but it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that some of this at least is due to the decline of the advanced West into a politically correct religious desert. The problem is neatly encapsulated by the account of a young British primary school teacher of bringing a party of her pupils on a tour of Britain’s National Gallery of Art a couple of years’ back. Half-way through the tour, she was approached by an indignant little girl pupil, who demanded to know why all of the babies in the “Madonna” paintings were boys (!). To such basic ignorance and political correctness can be added the mass philistinism of the young promoted by the appropriation of youth culture by electronic social media and video games, and the ever more insistent pressure coming from “industry” and “innovation” advocates (that is to say, the agents of the ultra-rich) on governments to skew the education system ever more towards the “needs” of “industry” and “innovation” (that is, techie stuff and “management skills” much of which will be redundant within a decade) at the expense of the arts and literary studies - not to mention direct private sector intrusions into the delivery of education. The result of this could leave us within a very short time with a workforce in place of a citizenry; with a population of intellectually impoverished helots with no appreciation of the “heritage” that is, in fact, what truly made them. Even if this were likely to be of benefit to all helots, it might be something - but it would not. The tech/management-clever helots will become “managers” and “tech leaders”; the rest, well, I am not sure what we will do with them. A huge number of the basic model will be left over, surplus to requirements. Much more dangerous will be the surviving educated, or self-educated cadre of clever but “impractical” helots. Neither of the last to groups would be likely to cause much trouble individually and, individually, either might be manageable by the new élite (the Roman Empire pulled off this trick for a long time, after all). Put together, however, one finds the source of Revolution.
Perhaps I am not sorry that, purely on the basis of passage of time, I am not likely to be in this world too much longer. Yours from the Ivory Tower, assailed by the Foul Thing, JR (apologies to my late countryman, Oscar Wilde).
