Robert:

We know the ringleaders and philosophers of the various movements are seldom from impoverished backgrounds (although I think Zarqawi was).

However, I suspect the "rank-and-file" are a little more mixed, with the more affluent types recruiting among the less affluent, anti-social and disaffected types who often being cultivated as canon fodder.

Think of the kid with Down's syndrome who was recruited as a suicide bomber during the Iraqi elections, who may not have been from a poor family, but was certainly disadvantaged and disaffected, or of the intellectually disabled and unpopular Palestinian teenager who was rigged up with bombs and surrendered to Israeli forces before he detonated them.

Posted by: waterdragon52 at April 5, 2005 8:41 AM

The kid with Downs Syndrome was not recruited, he was used as an unwilling unknowing bomb and shows once again the moral bankruptcy of the Jihadist.

I hope that there is a special kind of hell for the people who did this to him.

They will use poor, criminals, in other words whoever is weak and easily lead, which is what Islam turns many of its people into.

I am quite impressed with the police chief, can someone transfer him to the UK so we can get rid of the dhimmi PC leading Plod's we have!!

Posted by: Daffersd at April 5, 2005 10:19 AM

Daffersd:

Perhaps it was more like "Shanghaied". The flavour I got from the story was that his parents happily handed him over to the jihaddis' custodianship because they promised to take good care of him, and they were willing to believe that their motives in taking on this responsibility were pure and charitable.

But my point was that a fair proportion of jihaddis come from the ranks of the disadvantaged and are "recruited" on the basis of some kind of reward, whether it's 72 virgins for the martyrs and compensation to their family, or whatever, on top of wreaking vengence on the infidels who dare encamp on holy Muslim soil, whatever their purpose.

Posted by: waterdragon52 at April 5, 2005 12:54 PM

Creating parallel societies is the pattern used over the centuries to infiltrate and finally overtake and overwhelm a host culture. There may be hope now that the German authorities have noticed, but unless political correctness and multiculturalism can be set aside, this too will have little effect on the relentless Islamification process that has begun in Europe.

Posted by: epg at April 5, 2005 1:18 PM

epg:

It doesn't look good, but as Hitler found out (and with all due respect to Bat Ye'or), it ain't over until it's over. Muslims are still very much the minority in Europe and a fair percentage of them are "refusniks" from various Middle Eastern theocratic hell holes like Iran.

Posted by: waterdragon52 at April 5, 2005 3:45 PM

Waterdragon52

Actually chaps I see quite a bit of hope as a lot of immigrants are fairly secular.

We just have to make sure that they can leave Islam easily and really punish anyone who hounds and does anything against apostles.

Regards

Daffers

Posted by: Daffersd at April 5, 2005 4:58 PM

I don't know how many have noticed, but there are more and more stories of this nature coming out of Europe and the Netherlands. I think the days of PC are coming to a much-needed end, and we have islam and its jihadi's to thank for it. Europe may just be the one to take the lead. Jihadi's have worn out their welcome, and thanks to their hero osama, millions of non-muslims are looking into EXACTLY what islam is all about.... and most are horrified by what they are learning, and want this cult expunged from their societies.

Western World leaders are NOT stupid... in today's PC climate, there's just no way that they can come out and publicly state that islam is a cult that has no place in the Western world. It will take another major attack from islam however, before anyone can "grow a pair" and name the enemy of Western Civilization.

Posted by: Just_Linda at April 5, 2005 5:35 PM

Helas just_Linda,

In the Netherlands PC is still going strong; just today there was a discussion in Parlement about the rightwing-racist dangers, posed by so called Lonsdaleyoungsters. The only violence they (so far) ever used was molesting buildings and getting into a fight in which they were severely outnumbered. Thus, they got the beating they deserved. And, one of the leading guys in this fight turned out to be someone criminally insane and on some kind of leave from his (TBS) clinic, so much for a strong extremists movement (the number of rightwing extremists are estimated at ca. 20, mostly adolescents). And yes, our Parlement takes the time to debate on 20 unruly youngsters.

Never heard of a debate in Parlement following the soaring crimerates and the hunting of white victims (really true) in Haarlem, the gangrapes and so on, and so on, and so on.

It is always the non-islam reaction that is considered grave and never the Islam-action. If you believe the MSM, Theo van Gogh is to blame for getting himself murdered and for the following unrest. He should have known that this unrest was a direct result of him being so extremely insensitive as to get himself butchered.

There are more and more stories of non-muslim people driven from (by force and ongoing harressment) their homes and cities, the autorities turn a blind eye. People who did nothing wrong apart from being homosexual or calling the police when to saw a crime etc.etc. These people are not heared, let alone helped or defended. Not, they are the spoilers of the political correct dream and thus have to be ignored or blamed. Van Gogh was more then just the director of Submission, he had also his own weblog in which he voiced his opions about the Islam and the Fifth Army inside the Netherlands. For his views (and, I have to be fair, his sometimes rude remarks, directed to everybody not just the Islam, he even defended an Imans' right to condemn homosexuals, a real freethinkerhe was) he was sacked by almost every MSM in the Netherlands (the only ones that did not sack him were those that never employed him) and was out of the subsidies for his moviemaking (in our country there are grants from the gouvernement for making films) because being rude and not pc (they gave other reasons, but those are just windowdressing).

Yes, the people have waken up to the treath of Islam, at least te ones carrying the burdens of the vast immigration. Helas, our gouvernement and elite do nothing but ignore every sign, if they were aiming at a civil war they could not do a better job.

I'm a liberal (in the Dutch meaning, so maybe it translates as a libertarian) and belong to the so called elite, thus it is not out of frustration about my own position that I try to wake people up to the dangers of Islam, it is out of concern for what is happening to our Western civilazation (I feel more then just the society is under siege and at risk)and the people paying the price for the willfull blindness to their problems of the still PC elites.

Posted by: Ernst at April 5, 2005 6:56 PM

Hi Ernst.I see I have a kindred soul on this forum. I too am a liberal, meaning social libertarian, but as you I don't carry it to the exremis of suicide as so many "liberals" or "libertarians" do.

Still trying to find a box to fit in, as I don't fit in either left, right or middle.

Despite all the evidence that jihadist Muslims are not poor.{/blockquote>
This is a consequence of our Anglo Saxon Christian heritage.

The underlying belief (which has carried over into other Spheres) is that criminal activity is a consequence of poverty and social injustice (it is actually a very Catholic idea as well as Anglican and Calvinistic). Alas Islamic violence is perceived as an aberration, a criminal activity, when in fact it's motivations are as we all know otherwise (actually it's origins are patriarchial, with which it shares common ground with other conservative religions).

Robin hood is a folk hero and legend for a reason.

Until the 20th Century, and then late into it, there were debtors prisons, poor houses, poor farms, and orphanges galore. (My first girl friend in 1950 lived in an orphange, abandoned by parents who couldn't feed her).

Jamestown had two "colonies", Jamestown was populated by what were considered criminals, recruited out of debtors prisons, the overseers (the gentry of the Virginia Colony) lived in Burning Bush, and the survivors of the massacre fled to Burning Bush (which the Indians did not attack).

Early American penal reform was based on redemption and religiously motivated. It didn't work of course, but most crimes were in fact economically motivated (like train robberies, bank robberies), petty theft (a loaf of bread or vegetables was common and got one a long term in prison) and even today with the War on Drugs the motivation for drug pushing is economic, but no longer to feed oneself and the family, but to
get enough money to demonstrate that one is "the man", to be "respected" and surround himself with prestige items.

This notion of poverty being the source of crime and terrorism, accounts for the ideology that if they bring "democracy" to the mid east, they can counter terrorism, because according to American consumer ideology, democracy means wealth for all (trickle down economics, tax breaks for the wealthy), raise everyone up and there is no reason for social discontent.

The neo con proponents of this ideology or way of thinking, are blinded to the forces within our own society, which is strange since they use those forces (called Culture war, or blue state v red state) to gain and keep power.

Or maybe they aren't blinded, they know exactly what they are doing,our problem is that we don't have a clue, and can only project on the basis of rhetoric, and how that rhetoric play into our own fearws and needs.

Posted by: Giaour at April 5, 2005 11:34 PM

scholarship from the Muslim viewpoint is in relative infancy.

Muslim scholarship? LMAO

Like Islamic science an oxymoron.

Posted by: Giaour at April 5, 2005 11:37 PM