The Unique and Complex Nature of the Danger of Islam
This is a list of factors that all together make the threat of Muslims unique and complex.
These factors require that our response to that threat be appropriately matched to it. In my estimation, our appropriate response is perhaps best formulated in my essay, An Iron Veil.
The overarching problem pervading the list as a subtext is our inability to distinguish, with reliability sufficient for our safety needs, the difference between the harmless Muslims and the dangerous Muslims.
This overarching problem becomes enormous and crucial because of the following list of factors characterizing Muslims, and the Islam they support:
1) Taqiyya
Deceit, including taqiyya and other forms, cultivated among Muslims and informed by their Islamic culture and founding texts.
2) Fanaticism
The high degree of fanaticism among Muslims -- more effective and obsessive than the fanaticism of any other group in the history of the world -- informed by their Islamic culture and founding texts, and manifested in a wide variety of sociopathologies, including a readiness to be blown to bits in order to mass-murder Unbelievers; a readiness even to blow up one's own infant child in order to mass-murder Unbelievers; a readiness to demonstrate en masse in favor of killing for the crime of blasphemy; a readiness to riot and lynch those who are deemed to have attacked Islam or Mohammed; honor killings; the death penalty for activities such as adultery, homosexuality and witchcraft; a cruel and unusual justice system in sharia; the popularity of sharia among innumerable Muslims around the world; a tendency to repress free speech and free expression; a tendency to be stuck with dictatorial regimes; a paranoid suspicion, intolerance and hatred of outsiders; as well as the myriad rules of sharia law dictating what is forbidden and what is permitted reflecting a cult-like mentality of obsessive-compulsive meticulousness (if not often downright insanity) governing all facets of life.
3) The Supremacist-Expansionist Imperative
The blueprint for supremacist expansionism using violence grounded in the Koran and in the texts and traditions of the Sunna (and their equivalent in Shia Islam).
4) Literalist Belief in Religious Texts
A literalism more fanatical, obsessive and intellectually stultifying than that of any other religion in world history, powerfully and with sociological massiveness reinforcing not only #2 and #3 above, but all the points on this list.
5) Trans-national Networking
The international dispersion and networking of Islamic terrorism with regional, trans-national, and global goals.
6) Sociocultural Grapevines
The unique and diverse ways that Muslim societies facilitate complex and far-reaching associations and grapevines of communication and mobility, in ways that are unfamiliar to the West and difficult to comprehend let alone track, and which in turn facilitate ways that dangerous Muslims can network trans-nationally and intra-nationally within any given society in order to go about the painstaking, long-term business of getting all their ducks in a row for horrific attacks on us.
7) Passive Enablement of the Active Jihadists
The sociocultural tendency for a wider pool of mainstream and seemingly harmless Muslims to enable terrorist plotters -- ranging in a spectrum from passively countenancing them; to not informing authorities of suspicious behaviors; to actually letting their cousin Abdul use the back room of a restaurant for late-night “discussions” with his other Muslim friends; or letting their nephew Rasheed recieve many large packages in the mail over a long period of time using their PO box; or transporting on one's person a USB flashdrive with up to 7,000 files on weapons technology and weapons-making; and so forth, on to more and more active degrees of complicity.
8) Ultra-violence and WMDs
The readiness to deploy ultra-violence against those whom their fanaticism regards as enemies, further ratcheted up by the horrific potential of various flavors of WMDs we must assume are being actively sought by the plotters in order to find a way to use them against us -- in turn made all the deadlier by the willingness to mass-murder suicidally.
9) Cleverness and Creativity
The high degree of cleverness of the plotters in their adaptibility and creativity.
10) Camouflage as Moderates
The specific resort by the plotters to blend in with Westernized Muslims and try to avoid seeming “too Islamic” -- as an al Qaeda memo to its agents specifically advises. We must assume the high likelihood that the plotters are going to try to set up cells composed of Muslims who precisely seem impeccably “moderate” in order to avoid detection and in order to infiltrate that much more deeply into the fabric of our societies -- thus making the most dangerous Muslims precisely the ones that seem the most harmless.
These factors require that our response to that threat be appropriately matched to it. In my estimation, our appropriate response is perhaps best formulated in my essay, An Iron Veil.
The overarching problem pervading the list as a subtext is our inability to distinguish, with reliability sufficient for our safety needs, the difference between the harmless Muslims and the dangerous Muslims.
This overarching problem becomes enormous and crucial because of the following list of factors characterizing Muslims, and the Islam they support:
1) Taqiyya
Deceit, including taqiyya and other forms, cultivated among Muslims and informed by their Islamic culture and founding texts.
2) Fanaticism
The high degree of fanaticism among Muslims -- more effective and obsessive than the fanaticism of any other group in the history of the world -- informed by their Islamic culture and founding texts, and manifested in a wide variety of sociopathologies, including a readiness to be blown to bits in order to mass-murder Unbelievers; a readiness even to blow up one's own infant child in order to mass-murder Unbelievers; a readiness to demonstrate en masse in favor of killing for the crime of blasphemy; a readiness to riot and lynch those who are deemed to have attacked Islam or Mohammed; honor killings; the death penalty for activities such as adultery, homosexuality and witchcraft; a cruel and unusual justice system in sharia; the popularity of sharia among innumerable Muslims around the world; a tendency to repress free speech and free expression; a tendency to be stuck with dictatorial regimes; a paranoid suspicion, intolerance and hatred of outsiders; as well as the myriad rules of sharia law dictating what is forbidden and what is permitted reflecting a cult-like mentality of obsessive-compulsive meticulousness (if not often downright insanity) governing all facets of life.
3) The Supremacist-Expansionist Imperative
The blueprint for supremacist expansionism using violence grounded in the Koran and in the texts and traditions of the Sunna (and their equivalent in Shia Islam).
4) Literalist Belief in Religious Texts
A literalism more fanatical, obsessive and intellectually stultifying than that of any other religion in world history, powerfully and with sociological massiveness reinforcing not only #2 and #3 above, but all the points on this list.
5) Trans-national Networking
The international dispersion and networking of Islamic terrorism with regional, trans-national, and global goals.
6) Sociocultural Grapevines
The unique and diverse ways that Muslim societies facilitate complex and far-reaching associations and grapevines of communication and mobility, in ways that are unfamiliar to the West and difficult to comprehend let alone track, and which in turn facilitate ways that dangerous Muslims can network trans-nationally and intra-nationally within any given society in order to go about the painstaking, long-term business of getting all their ducks in a row for horrific attacks on us.
7) Passive Enablement of the Active Jihadists
The sociocultural tendency for a wider pool of mainstream and seemingly harmless Muslims to enable terrorist plotters -- ranging in a spectrum from passively countenancing them; to not informing authorities of suspicious behaviors; to actually letting their cousin Abdul use the back room of a restaurant for late-night “discussions” with his other Muslim friends; or letting their nephew Rasheed recieve many large packages in the mail over a long period of time using their PO box; or transporting on one's person a USB flashdrive with up to 7,000 files on weapons technology and weapons-making; and so forth, on to more and more active degrees of complicity.
8) Ultra-violence and WMDs
The readiness to deploy ultra-violence against those whom their fanaticism regards as enemies, further ratcheted up by the horrific potential of various flavors of WMDs we must assume are being actively sought by the plotters in order to find a way to use them against us -- in turn made all the deadlier by the willingness to mass-murder suicidally.
9) Cleverness and Creativity
The high degree of cleverness of the plotters in their adaptibility and creativity.
10) Camouflage as Moderates
The specific resort by the plotters to blend in with Westernized Muslims and try to avoid seeming “too Islamic” -- as an al Qaeda memo to its agents specifically advises. We must assume the high likelihood that the plotters are going to try to set up cells composed of Muslims who precisely seem impeccably “moderate” in order to avoid detection and in order to infiltrate that much more deeply into the fabric of our societies -- thus making the most dangerous Muslims precisely the ones that seem the most harmless.
posted by Hesperado at 2:13 PM
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