Juan Cole: What’s the Real Reason Al Qaeda Attacked ‘Charlie Hebdo’?

[eridani]

http://www.thenation.com/blog/194465/whats-real-reason-al-qaeda-attacked-charlie-hebdo

The problem for a terrorist group like Al Qaeda is that its recruitment pool is Muslims, but most Muslims are not interested in terrorism. Most Muslims are not even interested in politics, much less political Islam. France is a country of 66 million, of which about 5 million is of Muslim heritage. But in polling, only a third, less than 2 million, say that they are interested in religion. French Muslims may be the most secular Muslim-heritage population in the world (ex-Soviet ethnic Muslims often also have low rates of belief and observance). Many Muslim immigrants in the postwar period to France came as laborers and were not literate people, and their grandchildren are rather distant from Middle Eastern fundamentalism, pursuing urban cosmopolitan culture such as rap and rai. In Paris, where Muslims tend to be better educated and more religious, the vast majority reject violence and say they are loyal to France.

Al Qaeda wants to mentally colonize French Muslims, but faces a wall of disinterest. But if it can get non-Muslim French to be beastly to ethnic Muslims on the grounds that they are Muslims, it can start creating a common political identity around grievance against discrimination.

The operatives who carried out this attack exhibit signs of professional training. They spoke unaccented French, and so certainly know that they are playing into the hands of Marine Le Pen and the Islamophobic French right wing. They may have been French, but they appear to have been battle-hardened. This horrific murder was not a pious protest against the defamation of a religious icon. It was an attempt to provoke European society into pogroms against French Muslims, at which point Al Qaeda recruitment would suddenly exhibit some successes, instead of faltering in the face of lively Beur youth culture (French Arabs playfully call themselves by this slang term). Ironically, there are reports that one of the two policemen they killed was a Muslim.

Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, then led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, deployed this sort of polarization strategy successfully in Iraq, constantly attacking Shiites and their holy symbols, and provoking the ethnic cleansing of a million Sunnis from Baghdad. The polarization proceeded, with the help of various incarnations of Daesh (Arabic for ISIL or ISIS, which descends from Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia). And in the end, the brutal and genocidal strategy worked, such that Daesh was able to encompass all of Sunni Arab Iraq, which had suffered so many Shiite reprisals that they sought the umbrella of the

[Yo_Mama]

1. Except where is the evidence that the French are being beastly towards Muslims?

Violent terrorists, yes, but that hardly encompasses more than a small minority of French Muslims.

[eridani]

2. They aren't--the attack was intended to provoke a beastly reaction n/t

[drm604]

3. Whether or not this was the reasoning behind the attack

it's still important to realize that this kind of reaction against Muslims needs to be avoided since, as pointed out, it plays into the hands of the fundamentalists.
I think the people of France realize this, at least I hope that they do.

[billhicks76]

4. Very Astute

Dane thing happens here against Black people.

[oberliner]

5. Juan Cole speaking for "most Muslims"

Someone needs to take this guy down a few pegs.

[thesquanderer]

6. I don't think he's "speaking" for them...

...rather he is extrapolating their attitudes based on polling.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

7. He's speaking about most most Muslims. Not for them. If most Muslims were

interested in terrorism. We'd truly be fucked since they're about a quarter of the world's population. But hey, go ahead tough guy. Feel free to "take him down a few pegs".

[oberliner]

9. Most Muslims are not interested in terrorism

I am not in a position to take him down a few pegs. I wish someone more prominent would point out that his reasoning is often specious and he seems to write with an unearned authority on these subjects. (I would say the same for the Sam Harris types as well).

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

10. He's an academic. This is his area of expertise. What is he supposed to say? "I have

no clue of what I'm talking about. But here's what I think."

"Most Muslims are not interested in terrorism". So let me get this straight. You agree with him. But he doesn't know what he's talking about and is all uppity about it? What?

[oberliner]

11. The author of the article purports to know "the real reason" behind the attacks

That is the part that I think he is being presumptuous about.

That most Muslims are not interested in terrorism is not the controversial part of the article.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

14. So why the "speaking for most Muslims" bit then? It may sound

presumptuous but he does make valid points reg. the strategy of many of these fanatical assholes.

[Fumesucker]

8. I grew up a Christian but I haven't called myself that in a very long time

If someone of Islamic heritage is not interested in religion I don't think it's accurate to call them "Muslim" any more than it would be accurate to call me "Christian" because I happened to grow up in that tradition.

[JEB]

12. Juan Cole is an intelligent informed voice

that deserves, at a minimum, to be listened to very closely.

[Enrique]

13. it reminds me of the ISIS beheadings

especially James Foley. I remember my own reaction seeing the lurid cover of the NY Post the next day. I thought "do something!" and then realized that the action was calculated to cause that reaction and that the NY Post was just playing into their hands.

And I totally agree with Juan Cole here: anyone who demands mindless revenge of this attack in France is just playing into these people's hands. In some cases knowingly. In a lot of ways, warmongers on supposedly opposite sides actually have identical aims: to cause war and undermine peace.