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PeonForHer -> RE: WTF happened in Normandy (7/28/2016 10:11:31 AM)
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quote:
MariaB: Most of the Muslims I knew and still know don’t give religion a lot of time. They are far more interested in fashion, make-up, popular music. Whilst they may appear be more devout than we are with Christianity, generally they are no more devout than my Christian grandmother who attended church once a week.
quote:
Yet around here, they go to their mosques several times a day.
In Peterborough, I saw the men sitting around all day chatting on the steps of local mosques while the women were at home seeing to the kids and tending the house.
For me, it's this kind of assumption that gets the focus wrong. What evidence there is suggests that devoutness is not a good indicator of who's likely to become a terrorist. We're not talking about people who've pored over the Koran for many years and become imbued with thousands of words of doctrine:
"Religious motivation
Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon, in their book, The Age of Sacred Terror, argue that Islamic terrorist attacks are purely religious. They are seen as "a sacrament ... intended to restore to the universe a moral order that had been corrupted by the enemies of Islam." It is neither political or strategic but an "act of redemption" meant to "humiliate and slaughter those who defied the hegemony of God."[32]
Two studies of the background of Muslim terrorists in Europe—one of the UK and one of France—found little connection between religious piety and terrorism. According to a "restricted" report of hundreds of case studies by the UK domestic counter-intelligence agency MI5,
[f]ar from being religious zealots, a large number of those involved in terrorism do not practise their faith regularly. Many lack religious literacy and could actually be regarded as religious novices. Very few have been brought up in strongly religious households, and there is a higher than average proportion of converts. Some are involved in drug-taking, drinking alcohol and visiting prostitutes. MI5 says there is evidence that a well-established religious identity actually protects against violent radicalisation.[33]
A 2015 "general portrait" by Olivier Roy (see above) of "the conditions and circumstances" under which people living in France become "Islamic radicals" (terrorists or would-be terrorists) found radicalisation was not an "uprising of a Muslim community that is victim to poverty and racism: only young people join, including converts".[34] Or as another observer described it:
the large majority of French jihadists are second-generation Muslims who, unlike their parents, speak French, grew up with little to no contact with mosques or Muslim organizations, and before their conversions drank, took drugs, and had girlfriends. They are estranged from their parents and don’t know where to fit in. Or they are recent converts, largely from rural areas and many from divorced families. Why is that, Roy asks? If Islam or social conditions are essentially to blame for breeding terrorism, why do such structural problems affect only this very narrowly defined group? Why does it not attract first- or third-generation French Muslims, or those whose Islamic culture is the deepest? And why does its appeal extend to children of the successful middle class? His answer: jihadism is a nihilistic generational revolt, not a religiously inspired utopianism.[35][35]
Roy believes terrorism/radicalism is "expressed in religious terms" because
most of the radicals have a Muslim background, which makes them open to a process of re-Islamisation ("almost none of them having been pious before entering the process of radicalisation"), and[34]
jihad is "the only cause on the global market". If you kill in silence, it will be reported by the local newspaper; "if you kill yelling `Allahuakbar,` you are sure to make the national headlines". Other extreme causes—ultra-left or radical ecology are "too bourgeois and intellectual" for the radicals.[34]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_terrorism
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