Helian, when it comes to the Israel/Palestine debate, I personally come down hard with both feet firmly on the side of the Palestinians. But...while I don't 'support' Israel's right to exist - especially when their government's policy towards the Palestinian people is so destructive - I do think it's too late to change the fact that it does now exist, therefore the only option now is to open some kind of productive dialogue.

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Mythical? So there are no moderate muslims? I would have thought you knew better than that. Most muslims do denounce terrorism. We need to give them a platform for their voices to be heard though. We need to listen instead of making assumptions about what they think.

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I don't recall doing that, nor do I see the necessity or even the point of it.

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By learning about them and talking to them without any preconceived notions of what they are thinking. Australian muslims (except that small psycho fringe element) have as much motivation for wanting Australia to be a peaceful, productive place to live as the rest of us.

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Yes, I am. It all gets old after a while. It happens on both sides though... and that's what I've been trying to say. Instead of accusations, insults and dragging up long ago conflicts when there's already so much of it now, we need to collectively take a deep breath and seriously look at how to close the divide. The only way to do that is, as I said before, communication.

mozza,

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Ok, how about you give it a try. Show me, where in 1970~ all of a sudden militant Islam rose, where before it didn't exist.

I might just inform you first that the main groups who are considered to be "militant" are groups like the Salafis, who have been in existence since about the late 18th. century, when their "Wahabi rebellion" first began against the Ottoman Caliphate, backed by the British. Other groups often claimed to be militant like the Muslim Brotherhood have existed since the 1930's, and were instrumental in fighting the creation of the Zionist entity in Palestine from the 1940's onwards, until their branch was established in Palestine (now known as Hamas).

Other groups like Hezbollah were founded in the mid-1980's. I'm curious which groups exactly do you claim "arose" in 1970~??? I can't for the life of me think of one that was formed or rose to prominence around that time. For that reason alone I think you've got absolutely no idea about the history of this conflict at all, and are therefore speaking nothing but bovine faeces.

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Can you provide an example of it??

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Actually this sounds a lot more like Christianity than Islam to me. Islam has a very strict system of authentication of scholarship, which means that it's very hard for any looney to just come along, build a compound, declare himself a messiah-of-sorts, amass weapons and engage in a siege. This kind of thing seems to be the forte of Christians. Likewise any Muslim who claimed to be "inspired by allah" would pretty much instantly be considered an apostate, since we do not believe inspiration exists after the time of Muhammad (pbuh).

This is just another case of your ignorant claims about Islam, which are usually based on transposing your knowledge of Christian extremism onto Islam. Without even the basic knowledge that most of it simply doesn't apply to Islam, and exposes you for the ignoramus you are.

Nevermind though, don't let little things like facts get in the way of your ramblings.

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I see. So it was just an exercise in stating the obvious. You could take the word muslim out and nothing would change:

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That doesn't make sense. Democracy is a system of government that can be used by groups of people with any ideology. It is not an entity that acts of it's own free will. This is like saying that Islam blew up the world trade centre.

abu_rashid wrote on Feb 18^th, 2010 at 3:52pm:



abu_rashid wrote on Feb 18^th, 2010 at 3:52pm:


Harvard uni press OK with you?

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/ROUEVE.html

Here's the jist: Palestinian refugees comprise about 12 percent of Lebanon's population. Considered foreigners by law (only a handful have obtained Lebanese citizenship since 1948), they are subject to a number of onerous restrictions, and somewhat more than 60 percent live in 12 United Nations Relief and Works Agency camps that have become semisovereign small towns. Everyday Jihad builds on an in-depth case study of everyday politics in one such camp, Ain al-Helweh, to explain the larger role of the Palestinians in Lebanon. It is a complex and depressing story. The organizing theme, as the subtitle suggests, is that the Palestine Liberation Organization, once the preeminent force among Palestinians in Lebanon, is losing out to jihadists as nationalist ideology gives way to Islamism. An implicit theme is that of the Palestinians as an alien underclass in Lebanon and the region -- caught up in ongoing Lebanese politics while remaining outsiders, manipulated by Syria, and embracing political programs, once nationalist and now increasingly Islamist, that hold out scant chance of being realized.
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/62784/l-carl-brown/everyday-jihad-the-ris...



Militant Islam has existed  since 632 but in modern times it rose to prominence when it succeeded Arab nationalism (an incomprehensible notion for clannish, tribal people) proved to be, predictably, unable to rouse and bind them to defeat Israel in 1967 and 1973.

The spelling, by the way, of one of those toxic outfits is is Hizb 'Allah, the party of Allah. Hezbollah conceals the true name of these thugs. Or are you now worshipping Ollah?

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I'm fine with it, but nowhere in that excerpt does it say militant Islam arose in 1970~.

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Since you're obviously not aware of the complexities of a language which has case endings, and initial consonants that can be elided, I guess it escapes you why it becomes ollah or ullah when the word is placed in construct state. Nevermind.

[quote author=abu_rashid link=1265797120/60#66 date=1266395874]
I can bring you countless incidents of Muslims resisting the colonialists prior to 40 years ago. The idea that all of a sudden something changed 40 years ago is not historically sound. [quote]

Muslims resisting western imperialism is old news. If you want, you can go back to the crusades, and following that, to the expansion of the Ottoman empire into Western Europe.

But imperial warfare is hugely different to what we see today. Geopolitically, it's like the difference between WWI and the Cold War. Afghan tribesmen defending their territories against the British is different to the various forces and ideas battling it out in Afghanistan right now. Of course, you'd think the west would learn from history.

They never do...

There are a number of influences that have occurred over the last 50 years or so that have changed the face of Islamic struggle (and conflict with the west). Technological changes like the invention of light arms (AK47s and hand-held missile launchers) have played a huge role, not to mention the internet.

But these things always occur within a history of ideas. One of the chief influences on Al Qaida and the whole notion of militant jihad was the writer/martyr Sayyid Qutb, executed in Egypt in 1966 for allegedly plotting to overthrow the Nasser regime. Qutb focused the struggle onto the US and western materialism, and he advocated the notion of struggle as miltant in the persuit of defending the Islamic faith against the creep of western corruption and decadence.

After his execution, Qutb's brother, Mohamed Qutb, moved to Saudi Arabia, and went on, through connections in the "Muslim Brotherhood", to personally influence Osama bin Laden.

Then Osama moved to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets in the 1980s, and the rest is history.

In the 1960s, the main theme in Arab foreign policy was Pan-Arab nationalism (or Nasserism), which centred around the 1967 war with Israel, but stretched to a range of treaties and shared agendas. Pan-Arab nationalism was a shared nationalist cause, not Islamic, but of course the two influenced each other.

Also fundamental was the rise of OPEC (with its offshoot branch, OPAEC: Organisation of ARAB Exporting Petrolium Countries), who flexed their collective muscle and implimented the oil crisis in 1973, causing a global recession that the west didn't forget - especially Dick Cheney.

The oil embargo was a response to the 1967 war, and the inability/unwillingness of the UN to move Israel back to its former borders. So Israel, and the US using its Security Council veto power in the UN, were crucial in pissing off the Arabs, and then militant groups like Al Qaeda, since 1967.

But I'd say it was Sayyid Qutb's writings, particularly his 30 volume treatise on the Koran, In the Shadow of the Qur'an, that placed Islam's gaze outwards and re-interpreted the notion of jihad as a form of physical warfare against various external enemies (like Western materialism). For Qutb, jihad should not be defensive, but offensive. Also, through his influence on groups like Al Qaeda, Islamic concepts like Ummah (or community) have been re-interpreted into the geopolitical realm, manifesting in the dream of some for an Islamic Caliphate to spread out and rid the world of non-Muslim evil.

Qutb's "martyrdom" at the hands of the US-collaborating Nasser government occurred in 1966. The shockwaves from this event - and Qutb's writings - have influenced the modern idea of militant jihad.

Defending your tribe or empire's borders through conventional warfare is one thing. Strapping on an explosive belt and committing suicide (which is unforgivable in Islam) - not to mention mass murder - is another.

And it is in the last 40 years or so that we've seen such a fundamental re-interpetation of Islam's core teachings.

I agree with Karnal, Islamist extremism does seem to have emanated from sayid qutb, and his reinvigorating the brotherhood of Islam, after his time in the US in the 1950's, where he was outraged and disgusted to see teenagers dancing together, and even holding hands in public.

He returned to egypt to see the US culture creeping into the youth culture of egypt, where some women were even immoral enough to wear T Shirts in public.
That was it, obviously it was his duty to try and have the president of egypt assassinated, and stop the slide into decadence which would spell doom for decency as he saw it.

Meanwhile we had a corrupt regime in Iran, and a crazy ayatollah in exile, colluding with lunatic french socialist extremists, and VOILA, we had a muslim revolution, and the Isllamic state of Iran was born.

The extremist muslims had found a voice on the world stage, and as they say, the rest is history.