"Recruiters for hard-line Islamist groups can turn Muslim youths with little interest in religion into extremists in a matter of weeks." And how do they do it? By appealing to the Qur'an and Sunnah.
From AP, with thanks to Twostellas:
PARIS (AP)--Recruiters for hard-line Islamist groups can turn Muslim youths with little interest in religion into extremists in a matter of weeks, the head of France's counterterrorism agency said in an interview published Friday.A year after suicide bombers launched attacks on London's transit system, Pierre de Bousquet de Florian told the daily Le Parisien he could "not rule out" the possibility of a terrorist attack in France.
The fact that there have not been any attacks in Europe since last year's bombings on the London transit system "does not mean there haven't been any plans," he said.
"We have - like our British and Italian colleagues - neutralized groups that could have taken action," Bousquet de Florian said, adding authorities dismantled "several groups" in the Paris region and in the south of France in late 2005 and earlier this year.
Bousquet de Florian said one potential threat comes from volunteers who pass through Syria to fight in Iraq but are returned to Europe "to carry out the jihad according to one of the strategies developed by (Abu Mussab) al-Zarqawi," the head of al-Qaida in Iraq who was killed in June.
Robert;
Thank you for hosting this site. I think its fascinating.
France seems to be a test case for assimilation. The numbers I've heard is that Muslims consistitute 10% of the population but 30% of the population under 20 years of age. In a generation, France is on track to have a majority Muslim population (in a democracy with nuclear weapons).
It will be interesting to compare the success of extremism in a conflict scenario (Israel) vs. assimilation scenario (France). We need to watch.
Why are we forcing our protectors to waste time and effort attacking the problem from every angle except head-on?
The recruiting is done by what tool?
Islam and the Qur'an.
Where does the terrorist ideology come from, verbatim?
Islam and the Qur'an.
Who are committing 99.9% of the terrorist acts in the headlines every single day on this planet? Followers of:
Islam and the Qur'an.
What has had nothing at all to do with the founding of any Western nation?
Islam and the Qur'an.
What has helped destroy Western nations, or subjugate them or occupy them -- for example the Byzantine Empire, Sicily, Spain et al?
Islam and the Qur'an.
What chased Christians and Jews out of their former homelands in the Middle East?
Islam and the Qur'an.
What still preaches genocide against the Jews?
Islam and the Qur'an.
Do I need to go on? What's frightening is that I could probably do this for hours.
Islam is the Enemy. Face it head-on and destroy it or watch our nations crumble.
The fiends who turn their youth into sociopathic butchers are responsible for all the murders. It's truly a coward's way of killing is through brainwashed youths while keeping your own family safe.
http://www.answers.com/sunnah&r=67
Sun·na also Sun·nah (sʊn'ə)
n. Islam.
-The way of life prescribed as normative in Islam, based on the teachings and practices of Muhammad and on exegesis of the Koran. Also called hadith.
-Muhammad's way of life viewed as a model for Muslims.
If it takes "only a few weeks" for determined recruiters to turn indifferent or lapsed or "moderate" Muslims into the "immoderate" kind, then what should Infidels do? What can we do? We can do nothing. We can only stop all Muslim immigration, and make life as difficult as possible for those Muslims who persist in remaining as Muslims. There is no other possiblity. How can we turn our own societies into vast armed camps, where we are busily trying to monitor huge and disturbing populations, whose essential belief-system cannot be changed, whose effect on too many is apparent, and which at any point can be, it appears, re-imposed even on the unlikeliest, least fanatical of Muslims.
Recognize reality. Start there.
Foehammer's above post, hammers the nail on the head. Without Islam and the Qur'an, this type of brainwashing/indoctrination (belief that killing unbelievers will gain Allah's favor) would not be threatening our civilization.
Is it the insanity of Politically Correctness, or simply ignorance that's preventing our leaders from identifying this threat? As is true with any problem, only by eliminating the root cause, can the "problem" be eliminated.
Imams and other Muslims who spew the violent ravings of the lunatic Mohammad need to be exposed and prosecuted with already existing laws; hate crime legislation, sedition, incitement to riot, assault, etc.
People who mis-represent Islam as peaceful, should be prosecuted for fraud. 1.3 billion members of this primitive "Death Cult" must realise that the civilized world will no longer tolerate their unlawful calls for killing and domination. Let the indoctrinated zealots raise their butts to Allah five times a day but as soon as one of Mohammad's Zombies calls for violence, it's arrest and incarceration.
We could even convert Mosques to prisons to hold the inevitable influx of new inmates.
Xero G: "Without Islam and the Qur'an, this type of brainwashing/indoctrination (belief that killing unbelievers will gain Allah's favor) would not be threatening our civilization."
True. But Islam and the Koran have been around for 1400 years and for hundreds of years now Islam hasn't constituted an actual threat to our more advanced civilization.
Rather, as Hugh implies, the simple reason we are mainly facing this threat now is because we have permitted large scale Muslim immigration into the west.
Its doubtful that we're going to get rid of Islam and the Koran anytime soon, so the obvious thing we need to do to remove the threat is to recognize that the threat stems from Islam, that we cannot change Islam, and hence that Islam's carriers (i.e. Muslims) must be quarantined in dar-al-Islam.
But as Lawrence Auster has pointed out, the reason the west seems unable to move in this direction is because it is a central tenet of liberalism to deny generalization, or what more commonly goes by the term "stereotyping".:
http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/005963.html
"Thus liberalism tells us we can’t say that Islam demands sharia or jihad or that Islam is a threat to non-Muslims, because that would tar every individual Muslim, which we must not do; as a result, we’re left not being able to make any general statement about Islam, and our minds—and the world—turn to mush.
If we were to discuss liberalism as a religion, as Ann Coulter does, this would be one of the top commandments of the liberal religion:
Thou shalt not make general statements.
Or, more precisely:
I am NOT the LORD thy God. Thou shalt not make general statements.
If liberalism is a religion, then nominalism—the denial of the reality of general categories and concepts—is its Holy Place, even its Holy of Holies. Liberalism began in the 17th century by removing substantive religious and moral beliefs from the public square, and replacing them by neutral procedures, all for the purpose of avoiding social conflict. Well, nominalism would seem to serve the same function in the liberal order as the removal of religion does: the rejection of general truths or concepts, because they create conflict or are “not fair.”
When Alan Colmes interviewed me he gave me the impression that his main passion, his main mission in life is to attack and invalidate any generalization about a group, so long as the generalization did not literally apply to every single last member of the group. It’s as though he doesn’t have anything to say about the world; instead, he lives for the purpose of preventing anything from being said about the world, because that would be unfair to somebody, somewhere."
(Note, the entire quote above, following the link, is Auster. Sometimes when I quote stuff, people seem to think it's my words. Is the proper way to quote to put quote marks around each separate paragraph, rather than merely at the beginning and end?)
Henry - I hear you. (BTW, I sure as hell hope you have put your money where your mouth is and signed up for a copy of Ali Sina's book, because as I said once before, the man is doing what you keep calling for in your many posts along the same lines).
But there are 2 things going on here, reflected in the dual nature of this site - jihadwatch and dhimmiwatch.
On the one hand we can go about this problem by trying to change Islam (or by calling on the so-called moderates to force a change in Islam) - that would be the jihadwatch side of things.
On the other side, we have the dhimmi side of things, whereby westerners (for many complicated psychological reasons) passively permit the Islamic takeover of the west.
They are 2 sides of the same coin - jihad (the head) and dhimmitude (the tail - pun intended!)
You are 100% focused on the head - Islam.
But don't neglect the tail here.
The fact is that without weakening the relative weight of the tail, Islam (the head) couldn't possibly land face up in this crucial coin toss. (OK- stretching the metaphor here but hang with me).
In short, there's 2 ways to go about this (and both are extremely important to the overall outcome of the coin toss) - weaken the weight of the head or strengthen the weight of the tail.
Which has a greater chance of success?
Actually, as much as I hold out hope for weakening the head (Islam) in the long run, I hold out more hope in the short run (and time is of the essence here) for shoring up the tail, the defenses (i.e. countering dhimmitude) because I think the latter folks, being westerners, are more susceptible to objectivity and rational arguments and hence for prospects for change.
In other words, we could make short shrift against this entire threat which, recall, has persisted for some 1400 years, merely by changing some common ways of thinking (yes - liberalism) - among the human beings who are actually REACHABLE via rational arguments, which would strengthen the tails side of this problem sufficiently that we wouldn't need to seriously worry about the outcome of this coin toss at all - wouldn't need to even contemplate the unacceptable and horrendous possibility that the coin could actually land "heads up".
Caroline,
For speech, current printing practice is to open quotation marks at the beginning of what is said and repeat that opening with each new paragraph but not to close them till the spoken text ends.
See the passage here, for example, beginning with
and ending with
However, if you want to cite a block of text, as opposed to show speech, why not indent it, as is now common practice?
That's easily done with HTML tags.
<blockquote>
Cited text goes here
</blockquote>
I escaped the greater-than and less-than signs there. If you simply type them in, Robert's board software will recognize them for what they are and cause the tags to be invisible but the text between them to be indented.
Henry,
It was Pierre de Bousquet de Florian, the head of France's counterrorism unit who said it, not Hugh.
Hugh was merely commenting on that and suggesting what we might do about the problem it presents us with.
I assume Pierre de Bousquet de Florian had good reason for saying what he said. He must see a lot of information in his position.
To think i just watched a documentry on terrorism and the experts have reached the conclusion that religion has nothing to do with it.
I guess the fact that all the suicide bombers are muslim is just a coincidence.
Yojimbo: "For speech, current printing practice is to open quotation marks at the beginning of what is said and repeat that opening with each new paragraph but not to close them till the spoken text ends."
I didn't know that. So thank you and I will surely put it into practice here.
As to the indenting (which I much admire in your very polished posts), I'll give it a try here (quoting Henry):
Henry, I couldn't agree more. And as far as I can tell about liberals, that's always how it goes. They tend to live in isolated bastions of like-minded holier-than-thou liberalism, with lots of money, preaching from on high to the "intolerant" masses and as soon as the failed policies they advocate wind up on their own doorsteps, they hightail it out of there (with their money) to greener pastures, leaving the mere plebians (whom they scoff at) to actually deal with the fallout of their failed policies. Point being, that maybe we need to mobilize against them first, because even if they aren't reachable through rationality, we at least still have some political control over their policies (the ability to rationally reach their dhimmi supporters), while in comparison, we have relatively little control over the Muslims with their completely irrational and rigid 7th century ideology. In other words - focus on the dhimmis (the tail) even more than on the Muslims (the head).
(Yojimbo - judging from the preview it worked. Awesome and thanks. Only now, if I put it consistently to use, people will read halfway through my posts and think its you. My apologies in advance for anything I might say in the future which might be inadvertently attributed to you:-))
Henry: "What does President Bush and Chainy and Clinton care? They don't have to live next to them! They are protected by big high fences! We are doomed if we relie on their care!"
You're quite right. They don't care (neither the guilty wealthy liberals nor the big business, wealthy conservatives) - because both have the material resources to escape the consequences of their policies, leaving the rest of us ordinary, run-of-the-mill plebes to deal with the fallout.
But again I ask - given the overall tenor of your posts - is there not at least as much chance of changing the tail side of the equation as there is of changing the head side? This isn't to suggest that I don't appreciate your many posts to the effect that we need to focus on discrediting the Koran. It's merely to draw your attention to the fact that there's more than one way to skin a cat.
Here’s the link to Ali Sina’s book. But to understand the importance of purchasing a copy you might need to spend some time (well at least a week or so!) exploring his site and the debates section especially. He’s put up a valiant attempt to discredit Islam at its source, (as you so insistently call for), that’s for sure:
http://www.faithfreedom.org/book.htm#question-1
(PS - Yojimbo - I should clarify that it isn't just the "polish" in your posts I admire - its the substance as well - the total package (complete with impeccable civility). You definitely "do the site proud". That's a peculiarly American expression, I think :-))
"Islam is the Enemy"
--foehammer
Until this is recognized by all of us whom the Moslems want to subjugate or force to belong to their ideology, we are fighting windmills: Terror, Islamists (Islamic fundamentalists), militants, etc., anything but to shout out that the emperor is not wearing any clothes--that it is Islam, naked and horrendous, that is our enemy.
Thanks foehammer.
what comes after 'Islam is the enemy'?
@henry,
"In the long-run, it is the only part of the murder religion that can be completely killed. Kill the Koran or live like this forever!"
Indeed. Too many people believe the Koran is a kind of "holy" book, while it's only contents consist of a mixture of a torture manual, a military tutorial of how to ambush and terrorise people, except for the innocent*. It also contains some legislation about how women get only half of everything just because they are women (because they have a pact with the devil).
Korans should be sold everywhere on the street in order that normal people would understand what crap literature is motivating those lunatic murderers.
*innocent=believer in Allah (in muslim context).
Let's hope the French will finally get up the courage to do something about the islamic invasion they have allowed!
They can take to the streets by the millions when they're unhappy about employment laws, but when it comes to the muslim rioting and the more than obvious immenent threat to France and the French culture, they sit and do nothing.
I agree that this is due to the PC-diseased crowd. If you dare to speak out against islam then you will be labelled a "racist" and could face charges. Don't even hint at it. Don't even breathe the words "islam" and "criminal activity" in the same sentence. islam is the religion of peace. That has got to be the biggest LIE of the century.
The worst possible thing (according to the PC crowd) that can happen to any of us in our modern multicultural societies is to be labelled a racist.
Just what "race" does islam belong to?
The only solution is to stamp out islam by whatever means necessary.
I meant "imminent". It's been a hard day so far.
No need to wait and watch what will happen by the assimilation scenario in France. Just look what has happened to other countries that have assimilated large muslim populations. They are everywhere. Nigeria is in the middle of it now. And the Balkens region. And Cyprus. The future of France is clear, all you have to do is look.
And this
Is it possible that the head of France's conterterrorism agency is trying to do something about France turning muslim or just trying to stop the violence so the French will think the transition will be peaceful?
It won't be.