Dear Vince,
vincecate wrote:
> John wrote:Doku Umarov was a terrorist first, and adopted
> Wahhabism. The same is true of the Umarov's followers.
> Do you think Islamic terrorist are born or made? Is it nature or
> nurture that creates Islamic suicide bombers?
> Having one guy and his followers join from another branch of Islam
> in no way refutes my claim that Wahhabism usually creates
> jihadists and terrorist, instead of having terrorist join fully
> formed.
I don't have the vaguest idea what a "fully formed" terrorist is.
Someone is a terrorist if he's committed a terrorist act. At what
point in the planning of a terrorist act someone becomes "fully
formed" is beyond me.
Since Wahhabism is widely practiced in Saudi Arabia, I guess you must
believe that almost all Saudis are "fully formed" terrorists. Believe
what you want, Vince.
Is generational behavior nature or nuture? Probably some of both.
vincecate wrote:
> John wrote:People don't blow up innocent civilians in airports or innocent
> civilians in Shia mosques because of something that some 18th century
> theologian said, [...]
> The Saudis are funding lots of places to teach Wahhabism today. So
> your explanation for the disproportionate representation of
> Wahhabism amoung jihadists and terrorists is that Islamic guys are
> becoming jihadists and terrorist and then after just using
> Wahhabism as justification. So if it is not due to the teachings
> of Wahhabism, why do you think these Islamic guys are becoming
> jihadists and terrorists? And if they feel the need for Wahhabism
> to justify their actions, maybe they would not do terrorism if
> Wahhabism did not exist, so it could still count as a cause even
> if it just provides the intellectual cover. It could be like
> Keynesism providing the intellectual cover enabling the printing
> money, even though the real reason is the government just likes to
> spend money.
In quoting me, you extracted a sentence fragment, and thereby changed its
meaning - or made it meaningless.
The complete sentence was:
John wrote:
> People don't blow up innocent civilians in airports or innocent
> civilians in Shia mosques because of something that some 18th
> century theologian said, any more than Gbagbo's Roman Catholic
> police massacred a peaceful demonstration by women because of
> something that some 18th century Pope said.
Similarly, the Japanese didn't bomb Pearl Harbor because some 18th
century Shinto or Buddhist theologian said to.
Terrorism did not begin with Wahhabism, or even with Islam. Every
religion has terrorists, and many terrorists use religion to justify
their actions.
Christians have been slaughtering Jews for centuries, justifying the
slaughter with Bible readings. It's quite possible that Gbagbo is
justifying his slaughter of Muslims based on Bible readers, although
that hasn't been reported.
If you want to commit terrorism, atrocities, mutilation and genocide,
then you need to justify your actions to the public. This usually
means portraying them as inferior in some way. If the people you're
mutilating have different physical characteristics, then you can call
them "dirty," as in the use of "dirty Japs" in World War II.
If you can't use physical characteristics to justify your terrorism
and mutilation, then religion becomes the tool of choice. Christians
used the word "infidel" to justify things like the Crusades and the
St. Bartholomew's Massacre of 1572.
It's interesting to note that as the various "revolutions" occur
around the Arab world today, al-Qaeda and Wahhabism are completely
irrelevant, almost as if they didn't exist. It seems quite possible
that, except for the 9/11 attack, jihadism will turn out to be just a
footnote to the coming world war.
John