
Yonatan Zunger about the Paris Attacks - martind81
https://plus.google.com/+YonatanZunger/posts/RN2yx54bxPa
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gayprogrammer
> Charlie Hebdo's targets ...

Who was it that killed who again?

>Charlie Hebdo's targets weren't simply religious extremists preaching from
Saudi mosques; they were a portrayal of the French Muslim population as
violent extremists, the dangerous other.

It sounds like the author is saying that the satire cartoon invented "racism"
against Muslims. But the cartoon "targets" proved the magazine absolutely,
positively, bona-fided-ly correct. They proved Charlie Hebdo right.

>You sow the wind, you reap the whirlwind. What did you expect was going to
happen?

So the author actually blames religious attacks on the act of people talking
about it happening. In some circular way, the cartoon magazine created
religious violence?

I cannot fathom how the author would explain religiously motivated violence in
places where a satire cartoon isn't there to talk about it.

------
bsaul
I really wonder if this guy has ever been living outside the US ( either in a
muslim country, or in a few european countries) to make so many wrong
assertions about the root cause of the whole affair. Actually i'm even
surprised he's working in any field related to logic, because his whole
evaluation of french attacks having anything to do with what french do or did
falls on the ground as soon as you notice that they've been occuring in every
single part of the world ( every country in every continent with any religion)
for the last 20 years.

It is simply an ideology looking to conquer the world, which adjusts its
speech to accomodate with its target. Nothing more unusual than that.

~~~
mc32
He seems to be partial to the term blood-thirsty...

This interview with a former recruiter and who now disavows the whole movement
is quite interesting and illuminating:
[http://www.npr.org/2013/10/25/195238189/how-does-an-
islamist...](http://www.npr.org/2013/10/25/195238189/how-does-an-islamist-
extremist-change-his-mind)

His time spent in an Egyptian jail in the company of other Islamists changed
his mind about the ideology and its aims.

Goes into detail here too:
[http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&i...](http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=377442344&m=377495115&live=1)

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joesmo
The author is implying that Daesh or something like it would/could exist
without religion and specifically without Islam. I doubt that. Also, just
because there is Muslim on Muslim violence doesn't mean that Islam isn't the
cause of it. Wars between different factions of the same religion are the
rule, not the exception. So ignoring religion as a cause of these problems
while touting climate change is both silly and goes against the stated goals
of the essay to not tout slogans as solutions. Otherwise, it's a pretty good
take on the situation.

~~~
ch
It's more like he is implying that something like Da'esh will exist no matter
if Islam exists or not. Their brand of violence is not rooted in ideological
beliefs but rather psycopathic killing for killings sake. That Islam allows a
way for them to recruit does not mean they are Islamic only opportunistic. The
other issues of famine, fear and a power vaccume are more likely the reason
they can last for so long. Groups like this in the United States tend to burn
out very quickly or reduce their violence to attacks on rivals and divirsify
their actions to more capitalistic actions.

~~~
acqq
> That Islam allows a way for them to recruit does not mean they are Islamic
> only opportunistic.

Simply wrong. Read
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wahhabism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wahhabism)
The ideology existed longer than the specific group called ISIS. They just
dialed it to 10 what was always more and more cooking for the last few
decades. That they are a bit more extreme than how Al-Quaeda is perceived in
the West now doesn't mean that the exact Islamic ideology wasn't fully formed
before, including the treatment of those with who they fight.

The reason why they call themselves "people of hadith" is because they really
believe to just repeat what their prophet was doing, and that that is the
major goal of a true believer. It's in
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadith](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadith)
that they can read about every beheading and stoning performed by Mohammad.
They just literally ask themselves "What Would Mohammad Do" in the sense that
they "reject the use of Hellenistic philosophical discourse "(kalam)" in favor
of strict textualism in interpreting the Quran."

Pretending that all this doesn't exist (on rejecting to learn) won't help
anybody understand what's going on.

~~~
ch
Interesting.

I would still contend that one cannot take some form of ideology, "dial it up
to 10" and then claim it is still that same ideology. What you instead have
here is a set of liars that hide behind a name.

That said, it does seem that Wahhabism and Sunni Islam are perhaps a more
favorable place for such extremism to culture and grow. So I concede this is
as much a part of Islam as the next part (however non-mainstream or mainstream
it may be).

Clearly the shift here is what allows such extremism to succeed, the funding,
the teaching, the dispersion of such ideas, how are they not called out for
what they are: callous and inhumane and insane?

Who is responsible for turning a blind eye for so long? Is it just tolerated
because it happens 'Over There' (in this case I suppose 'Over There' would
mean 'Not Here in Saudi Arabia' where the political base of this brach of
Islam claims home). Or is this more like someones thugs getting out of control
-- i.e. this is a sponsored movement and attempts to restrain it are actively
interfered with!

I have more questions than answers! What a complex part of the world!

------
ckozlowski
Just an aside, but Mr. Zunger is a large reason why I continue to spend any
time following anything on Google+. He writes on all kinds of topics regularly
(most are non-political), and is worth following.

------
Camillo
The notion that mass immigration from Syria to Europe is a necessary
consequence of the war is trivially falsified by looking at the timeline. The
Syrian civil war started in early 2011. Daesh entered the war in early 2012 as
al-Nusra Front, and operated as ISIL since 2013. The Caliphate was proclaimed
in summer 2014.

But mass migration into Europe did not start until summer 2015. Obviously it
did not take the Syrians four years to realize that there was a war in their
country.

------
em3rgent0rdr
Author belittles commentators who make simplifications, but then claims root
of conflict is water:

"When we talk about the ultimate causes of the situation, this is the fact we
tend to ignore: at the root of it, there isn't enough water, and there isn't
enough food, and droughts have been hitting the area harder and harder for a
decade."

------
phamilton
A serious question which I'd love to hear opinions on:

Why are immigrants to the US from Mexico viewed so differently from immigrants
in Europe? Or are they treated the same?

~~~
gayprogrammer
Immigrants from Mexico don't follow a religion that instructs them to kill.

~~~
tomjakubowski
Read the Old Testament lately?

~~~
rdancer
If you're not a Hittite, Amorite, Canaanite, Perizzite, Hivite, or Jebusite,
you should be safe.

That's not a snark, by the way. Contrary to popular myth, the Bible doesn't
prescribe warfare on any extant nation, group of people, or region.

