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Shelves of books all about Islam, and a rifle -- but don't get the crazy idea that this has anything to do with Islam
Hot on the heels of yesterday's Relax Bulletin, the revelation that there are only 91 million admitted jihadists, comes the latest from former CIA agent Marc Sageman, who says that the jihadists only number a few thousand bored youths, looking for thrills. No ideological component, no religious component. So relax, will you?
"The Fading Jihadists," by David Ignatius in the Washington Post (thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist):
Politicians who talk about the terrorism threat -- and it's already clear that this will be a polarizing issue in the 2008 campaign -- should be required to read a new book by a former CIA officer named Marc Sageman. It stands what you think you know about terrorism on its head and helps you see the topic in a different light.[...]
The heart of Sageman's message is that we have been scaring ourselves into exaggerating the terrorism threat -- and then by our unwise actions in Iraq making the problem worse. He attacks head-on the central thesis of the Bush administration, echoed increasingly by Republican presidential candidate John McCain, that, as McCain's Web site puts it, the United States is facing "a dangerous, relentless enemy in the War against Islamic Extremists" spawned by al-Qaeda.
The numbers say otherwise, Sageman insists. The first wave of al-Qaeda leaders, who joined Osama bin Laden in the 1980s, is down to a few dozen people on the run in the tribal areas of northwest Pakistan. The second wave of terrorists, who trained in al-Qaeda's camps in Afghanistan during the 1990s, has also been devastated, with about 100 hiding out on the Pakistani frontier. These people are genuinely dangerous, says Sageman, and they must be captured or killed. But they do not pose an existential threat to America, much less a "clash of civilizations."
From Ignatius's account at least, Sageman appears to ignore entirely the other active and violent jihad groups around the world, operating in Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Kashmir, Chechnya, Nigeria, etc. etc.
He also seems to ignore the abundant evidence of the Muslim Brotherhood's -- in their own words -- "grand Jihad” aimed at “eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and Allah’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.” This statement comes from a 1992 Brotherhood memorandum, in which many prominent American Muslim groups, including the Islamic Society of North America and the Muslim Students Association, are named as "friends."
If Sageman mentions any of this, Ignatius doesn't pick up on it.
It's the third wave of terrorism that is growing, but what is it? By Sageman's account, it's a leaderless hodgepodge of thousands of what he calls "terrorist wannabes." Unlike the first two waves, whose members were well educated and intensely religious, the new jihadists are a weird species of the Internet culture. Outraged by video images of Americans killing Muslims in Iraq, they gather in password-protected chat rooms and dare each other to take action. Like young people across time and religious boundaries, they are bored and looking for thrills."It's more about hero worship than about religion," Sageman said in a presentation of his research last week at the New America Foundation, a liberal think tank here. Many of this third wave don't speak Arabic or read the Koran. Very few (13 percent of Sageman's sample) have attended radical madrassas. Nearly all join the movement because they know or are related to someone who's already in it. Those detained on terrorism charges are getting younger: In Sageman's 2003 sample, the average age was 26; among those arrested after 2006, it was down to about 20. They are disaffected, homicidal kids -- closer to urban gang members than to motivated Muslim fanatics.
I have no doubt whatsoever that many people join jihadist groups because they're bored, or because all their friends are doing it, or because they're looking for thrills, or some such. But "disaffected, homicidal kids" may not be an entirely accurate formulation on the very day that the LA Times publishes a story about a jihadist cell in Morocco consisting of politicians, businessmen, bureaucrats, pharmacists, a police commander, and a TV journalist.
I don't know how Sageman knows that these bored youths don't read the Qur'an, but the fact remains that virtually every statement from Osama bin Laden, or al-Zawahri, or even Adam Gadahn, or from the British jihadists, or from Abu Bakar Bashir, or from virtually every other leader of this movement anywhere in the world, quotes copiously from the Qur'an, couches its appeal in terms of the religious obligations of Muslims, and presents the jihad movement as the embodiment of pure and true Islam. This is readily documentable -- here is one example, and here is another, and here is a third, and there are plenty more where those came from.
This focus on Islam is strange behavior for a movement that is not essentially religious, and forces us, if we accept Sageman's analysis, to believe that the vast majority of young men join jihadist groups while ignoring, being indifferent to, or outright rejecting the dominant ideology and goals of those groups. I wonder if he has any documentation of any jihadist who has ever stated such things. I rather doubt he does.
Sageman's harshest judgment is that the United States is making the terrorism problem worse by its actions in Iraq. "Since 2003, the war in Iraq has without question fueled the process of radicalization worldwide, including the U.S. The data are crystal clear," he writes. We have taken a fire that would otherwise burn itself out and poured gasoline on it.
Would it have burned itself out in Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, etc. -- all those places I named above and others? Would it have ended the Brotherhood's subversive action inside the United States?
The third wave of terrorism is inherently self-limiting, Sageman continues. As soon as the amorphous groups gather and train, they make themselves vulnerable to arrest. "As the threat from al-Qaeda is self-limiting, so is its appeal, and global Islamist terrorism will probably disappear for internal reasons -- if the United States has the sense to allow it to continue on its course and fade away."Sageman's policy advice is to "take the glory and thrill out of terrorism." Jettison the rhetoric about Muslim extremism -- these leaderless jihadists are barely Muslims. Stop holding news conferences to announce the latest triumphs in the "global war on terror," which only glamorize the struggle. And reduce the U.S. military footprint in Iraq, which fuels the Muslim world's sense of moral outrage....
Ultimately, more comforting hogwash, diverting us from the reality of the situation.
Posted by Robert at February 28, 2008 10:21 AM
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Another Ivy League (Harvard)graduate who has done no serious study of the Qur'an and ahadith. Sloth prevails. Our government and the policy think-tanks are littered with these sorts of people. And how does this super-educated Ivy League grad explain the fourteen hundred years of jihad conquest, littered with the corpses of, conservatively estimated, 230 million murdered non-Muslims?
Notice he works for a think tank that is Soros' funded? 'Nuff said.
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at February 28, 2008 10:38 AM
Has Marc Sageman or David Ignatius even read the Qur'an? Know your enemy. Don't think that the jihad can be stopped with wishful thinking.
Posted by: tanstaafl at February 28, 2008 10:38 AM
Unfortunately, the CIA seems to be full to the hilt with guys like Sageman. And moles like Hesham Islam. And stooges like David England. Add to that kooks like Michael Scheuer and all those mental giants who wouldn't know a Koran from a Harry Potter book...
Posted by: sheik yer'mami at February 28, 2008 10:39 AM
Unfortunately Michael Medved is also still clueless. Its depressing, to see so much ignorance 7 years after 9/11...
http://sheikyermami.com/2008/02/28/medved-clueless/
at February 28, 2008 10:44 AM
The NYPD paper on radical 'progression' is a much more intelligent assessment than what Sageman asserts.
Posted by: undaunted at February 28, 2008 10:51 AM
It's funny the guy's last name is - "Sageman!" LOL, he certainly is not a "sage" man!
Delusional Dumbo, in fact.
Posted by: darcy at February 28, 2008 11:11 AM
This liberal think-tank must be running on empty.
'Spawned by al-Queda?' Isn't the reality of it kind of the other way around?
I can barely wait to go to my other discussion groups, with all their liberal contributors scolding me for taking Jihad seriously, and using this report as basis for 'see, we told you so!'
Groan...
Posted by: Goob at February 28, 2008 11:13 AM
Two points
1."Sageman's harshest judgment is that the United States..."
Not surprising given his audience (liberal think-tank).
I am begining to think the CIA is a liberal think-tank
2."And reduce the U.S. military footprint in Iraq, which fuels the Muslim world's sense of moral outrage"
Didnt we invade Iraq AFTER 9/11? What was their 'beef' then?
at February 28, 2008 11:26 AM
Goob, I'm finding that same kind of resistance at some atheist websites. They continue to focus on Christianity as the boogeyman. Many of them who respond keep repeating the mantra about all religions being the same. There is nothing more pitiful than an ingorant atheist. The ones who seem to be the most reasonable are ex-Christians.
The main resistance to Christian fundamentalism comes from secular type Christians. Where is the resistance to Islamic fundamentalism within Islam?
Posted by: Pelayo at February 28, 2008 11:40 AM
“This liberal think-tank must be running on empty.” Goob.
I would not worry. There is plenty more and not only liberal.
A few quotes from “ A Christian Response To “ A Common Word Between Us and You”, signed by a few hundred prominent Christian leaders from around the world.
“… tensions, conflicts, and even wars in which Christians and Muslims stand against each other are not primarily religious in character”
” It is rather a deep insight and courage with which they have identified the common ground between the Muslim and Christian religious communities. What is common between us lies not in something marginal nor in something merely important to each. It lies, rather, in something absolutely central to both: love of God and love of neighbor.”
“Since Muslims seek to love their Christian neighbors, they are not against them, the document encouragingly states. Instead, Muslims are with them. As Christians we resonate deeply with this sentiment.”
“We are persuaded that our next step should be for our leaders at every level to meet together and begin the earnest work of determining how God would have us fulfill the requirement that we love God and one another.”
at February 28, 2008 11:42 AM
The Ministry of Truth is up and running.
So is the Ministry of Love.
Watch out for Room 101. You don't want to end up there.
Posted by: pr126
at February 28, 2008 11:45 AM
Yes... Adolf was a bored youth, looking for thrills in 1920's Munich beer halls.
Adolf Hitler that is.
Posted by: 2pacshakur at February 28, 2008 11:50 AM
I liked these definitions so much I stole them.
cult - a small, unpopular religion
Islam - a large, popular cult
Posted by: Pelayo at February 28, 2008 12:03 PM
"Jettison the rhetoric about Muslim extremism -- these leaderless jihadists are barely Muslims."
So David Ignatius paraphrases one of Marc Sageman's key claims. Once again, we have some expert telling us, without offering a shred of evidence, who are Muslims and who are not Muslims.
Sageman needs no evidence, since he operates prejudicially by an axiomatic definition of "Muslim" in his head: for him, a "Muslim" (i.e., a "real Muslim") is, ipso dicto, not a threat to us. Therefore, according to the ipsedixitist axiom of this morosoph, the threat from anyone who happens to be a Muslim cannot have anything substantive to do with Islam.
Unfortunately, Sageman's axiom is not a rare minority opinion: it is the dominant and mainstream view out there, one crucial component of the interlocking mosaic of axioms that constitute the PC MC paradigm.
at February 28, 2008 12:38 PM
"Marc Sageman, who says that the jihadists only number a few thousand bored youths, looking for thrills. No ideological component, no religious component. So relax, will you?"
One would almost think that these jihadists are the James Deans of the Muslim world -- just a bunch of rebels without a cause, pursuing one thrill after another to break the boredom.
Except that killing oneself hardly fits into the category of a thrill. Except maybe, the thrill of waking up in a celestial brothel, and being pounced on by 72 sex-crazed perpetual virgins. But then, that thrilling prospect would require some sort of religious faith.
One wonders if Mr. Sageman's university experience didn't have something to do with the obliteration of his common sense. He might have been better off as an uneducated, dumb hillbilly with his common sense intact.
at February 28, 2008 1:00 PM
The banking powers don't want us to own a fight with Islam because Islam can be used as a tool to perpetuate worldwide Socialism through a climate of fear -- fear of Terror.
Oops. Did I just type that?
Posted by: Foehammer at February 28, 2008 1:10 PM
Foehammer,
Welcome to the SBCTA: The Strange Bedfellows of Conspiracy Theory Association.
I find it dismaying that people in the anti-Islam movement have to reach for some flavor of sinister CT to explain the West's ongoing inability to deal rationally with the problem of Islam. Sorry, but for such a grave and massive accusation you make, I need direct evidence -- not a vast and vague web of inferences, suspicions and lacunae-riddled dot-connections.
Posted by: cantor at February 28, 2008 1:25 PM
"Conservative" American talk show host, Michael Medved, writes:
"This increasingly popular absolutist position [namely, that islam itself is not moderate] – whatever its historical, theological or anthropological basis – represents a threat to our short-term security and our long-term success in the very real battle against Islamism. If we accept, let alone embrace, the proposition that Islam itself is our enemy, then all of the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims become enemies of the United States, and doom us to unending and un-winnable conflict."
courtesy of sheik yer'mami
http://sheikyermami.com/2008/02/28/medved-clueless/
I've heard this argument many times before: If islam itself is the enemy, then by force of their sheer numbers, we are doomed to an unending & un-winnable conflict. Hmmm. I wonder if MM bothered to look up the percentage of the world's population in the early 1950's that was communist. I know he hasn't, because if he had, he would have discovered that communists represented a considerably greater percentage of the world's population back then than muslims do today. I don't recall Truman or Eisenhower or Kennedy saying that we can't oppose communism b/c there are so many of them in the world. They simply opposed it b/c it was wrong & posed a threat to western liberal democracies.
Posted by: sheik yer booty at February 28, 2008 1:52 PM
"... global Islamist terrorism will probably disappear for internal reasons -- if the United States has the sense to allow it to continue on its course and fade away."
from the article
Continue on its course?
Even if these were just "a few thousand bored kids looking for thrills", two things should be considered:
1. The things they are doing require funding. They're getting it from somewhere.
2. Since when do we allow killers to just "continue on their course"?
And where is that course supposed to lead?
The killing of all who disagree with what was spewed from the mouth of an extortionist fourteen centuries ago? They are teaching their six year old CHILDREN to hate.
Mr Sageman: all that is needed for evil to prosper is for good people to do nothing. What do you propose to do when you see children being taught to hate and kill?
http://www.memri.org/bin/latestnews.cgi?ID=SD185208
A bunny on a children's show is exhorting youngsters to avenge insults to a HUMAN who lived fourteen centuries ago and to seek and crave martyrdom.
"Assud, it appears that our show is coming to an end. What do you have to say to this criminal, the cartoonist who affronted the Prophet by drawing him?"
Assud: "I say to him what you already said: You criminal, you lowlife, you scum of the earth - right, Saraa? Allah willing, the day will come when you will regret what you did."
Posted by: PMK at February 28, 2008 2:05 PM
"... global Islamist terrorism will probably disappear for internal reasons -- if the United States has the sense to allow it to continue on its course and fade away."
Would Mr. Sageman have suggested the US should have the "good sense" to allow Serbian nationalism to continue on its course? It certainly posed no danger to the US.
In retrospect we probably should have kept hands off, but that's neither here nor there.
Jihadists are no threat to America? There's a few acres in lower Manhattan that would belie this notion.
So the "death to America" kids are just blowing off steam?
Posted by: PMK at February 28, 2008 2:13 PM
Islamic terrorism has been around for fourteen hundred years; it is suicidal folly to think that Islam is changing for OUR (or anyone's) particular benefit. From a global perspective, there is certainly no evidence that the murderous jihads for which Islam is rightly notorious are on the wane (none at all). To the best of my knowledge the body count from Islam's jihads continues to escalate. Sooner or later they will reach America (again), and we had all better be prepared for that.
Hopefully, this is US intelligence disseminating "misinformation" about what is really going on with the US government. But we cannot count on that.
Lest anyone buy the absurd propaganda that Islam and terrorism are mutually exclusive the Kuran even has a passage wherein al-lah tells Muhammad "I have been made victorious through terror." Islam's brutality, like its deception practices, we can thus see is built into the foundation of the 'religion' itself, and isn't going away anytime soon (in spite of Mr. Sageman's wishful thinking to the contrary).
Sageman apparently doesn't understand the political nature inherent in Islam. We need to clue the guy in before he starts getting millions of us killed (if enough government bigwigs listen to him, that is what will end up happening). So here is what Sageman needs to know:
In the words of the ex-Palestinian Muslim mujahideen-jihadist Walid Shoebat, "Islam is government." Totalitarian government. The mosque is the Muslim's REAL government, the authority to which the Muslim must answer. If the mosque tells him to comply with God's order to kill the Americans, that is what he will do if he wants to stay alive (and then die to go to his Islamic 'paradise' later when he gets himself killed as a 'martyr').
There is never any reliable way to tell when Islam will begin a fresh jihad anew or what stratagems of warfare it has up its sleeve. Jihad is eternal war against the "unbelievers" and that is why attacks usually seem to come out of left field when they are least expected (Muslims have a much longer attention span than westerners, which they exploit to their strategic jihadist advantage). We can never assume we are safe with a force like Islam at large ready to massacre "unbelievers" at the drop of a hat. This will never change, I am sorry to inform Mr. Sageman.
Posted by: pythagoras at February 28, 2008 2:19 PM
They must be figuring on drowning us in taqiyyah. ABC News allowed itself to be a vehicle for CAIR's lies. In a response to this article, one author says that Islam allows men to marry and have sex with a one-day-old baby.
Can anyone speak to this?
http://islam-watch.org/AyeshaAhmed/CAIR-Pulls-Wool-over-Infidel-Eyes.htm
Posted by: PMK at February 28, 2008 2:34 PM
"former CIA officer"- May that be for all the reasons we would agree on.
Posted by: flowerknife_us at February 28, 2008 3:48 PM
I still haven't forgiven the jihadists for the Oklahoma City bombing.
Posted by: Robert at February 28, 2008 4:18 PM
Will someone please swat that fly in the center of his forehead?
Posted by: awake at February 28, 2008 4:30 PM
"Since 2003, the war in Iraq has without question fueled the process of radicalization worldwide, including the U.S. The data are crystal clear," he writes. We have taken a fire that would otherwise burn itself out and poured gasoline on it."
So be it,if a mistake was made, the damage is already done.
Nothing to do now but make sure the fires do NOT go out of control, you do not let a fire burn itself out in a city. It must be brought under control.
Unless one is willing, and able to rebuild after it burns itself out in our fuel rich world.
at February 28, 2008 4:48 PM
An article by Jamestown Foundation senior fellow & terrorism analyst Stephen Ulph linked the article cited and excerpted below from The Economist.online titled "Internet jihad - A worldwide web of terror"
IMO it it a must-read, especially for all the libtards out there who underestimate the major role geeky little jihadists are playing.
Internet jihad
A world wide web of terror
Jul 12th 2007
From The Economist print edition
Al-Qaeda's most famous web propagandist is jailed, but the internet remains its best friend
BY HIS own admission, he never fired a single bullet or “stood for a second in a trench” in the great jihad against America. Yet the man who called himself “Irhabi007”—a play on the Arabic word for terrorist and the code-name for James Bond—was far more important than any foot soldier or suicide-bomber in Iraq. He led the charge of jihad on the internet.
In doing so, Irhabi007 was a central figure in enabling al-Qaeda to reconstitute itself after the fall of the Taliban and its eviction from Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda (“the base”) and its followers moved to cyberspace, the ultimate ungoverned territory, where jihadists have set up virtual schools for ideological and military training and active propaganda arms...
http://www.economist.com/world/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9472498
Posted by: Sojourner at February 29, 2008 12:56 AM
Target-rich environment.. :-)
Posted by: Allah Schmallah at February 29, 2008 1:39 AM
I want to be like, hip and cool and popular with my friends and it's not cool to be like, AFRAID of Muslims because it's like, you know, racist or whatever. That's why I'm like, voting for Barack Obama because he's like, you know, really really dreamy and he's not a fearmonger like you know, the old white guy.
Posted by: Xero G at February 29, 2008 2:00 AM
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