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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsRadical Islam, Nihilist Rage
LONDON FACED with a horror like the slaughter of 148 schoolchildren and school staff members by the Taliban in Pakistan, it is tempting to describe the act as inhuman or medieval. What made the massacre particularly chilling, though, is that it was neither. The killings were all too human and of our time.
The Peshawar massacre may have been particularly abhorrent, but the Taliban have attacked at least 1,000 schools over the past five years. They have butchered hundreds through suicide bombings of churches and mosques. And beyond Pakistan lies the brutality of groups like the Islamic State, Boko Haram and the Shabab.
What seems to bind these groups together is that they claim to act in the name of Islam. Why, many ask, do so many of todays most vicious conflicts appear to involve Islamists? And why do Islamist groups seem so much more vicious, sadistic, even evil?
Muslims are not the only religious group involved in perpetrating horrors. From Christian militias in the Central African Republic reportedly eating their foes to Buddhist monks organizing anti-Muslim pogroms in Myanmar, there is cruelty aplenty in the world. Nor are religious believers alone in committing grotesque acts. Yet, critics argue, there appears to be something particularly potent about Islam in fomenting violence, terror and persecution.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/opinion/sunday/kenan-malik-the-nihilist-rage-of-radical-islam.html?_r=0
CJCRANE
(18,184 posts)Someone is funding all this.
closeupready
(29,503 posts)Which is intriguing.
yallerdawg
(16,104 posts)It is the history of western imperialism.
Like Lady Macbeth discovered, the blood does not wash away.
The consequence has been the transformation of anti-Western sentiment from a political challenge to imperialist policy to an inchoate rage against modernity.
Mosby
(16,297 posts)yallerdawg
(16,104 posts)We are told "they hate the way we live." What is it they hate? Millions of Moslems live around the world, live in the modern world, and wouldn't dream of these horrific and barbarous acts.
In this context, religion - Islam - no longer applies. No "moral and philosophical framework." These terrorist acts are an expression of existential nihilism.
What is the goal? There is no goal.
JI7
(89,244 posts)between shia and sunni in the middle east.
people do exist and things do happen without the west being the big reason for everything.
jberryhill
(62,444 posts)It boggles the mind to lay the actions of these people at the feet of their own victims.
Scootaloo
(25,699 posts)Well, because the lurid reality of Protestant soldiers raping, killing, and eating entire communities of Twa pygmies doesn't sell really well in the west, where Christians are by default "the good guys." Similarly, Myanmar's push to purge Muslims doesn't sell well, thanks to two factors; this weird american belief that Buddhism is a specially-enlightened religion, and of course, the persistent bugbear that "Muslims deserve it."
In fact, this bugbear is the source of this "argument" from "critics." becuase the western world has spent the better part of the 20th century completely fucking over Muslims, and "they deserve it!" is the mantra of justification for doing so.
Tierra_y_Libertad
(50,414 posts)The must think their God(s) are wimps.