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Myths about Islamic terrorism
by Fjordman
It can become quite tiresome to refute the same falsehoods repeatedly. On behalf of the Obama Administration, in September 2014 the US Secretary of State John Kerry made a plea to wipe out poverty and improve health and education as the most powerful antidote to the “toxic” beliefs of Islamic extremists.
The Marxist-inspired argument that Islamic terrorism is caused by poverty is plain wrong and has been disproven many times. Several studies indicate that Islamic terrorist have above-average education and at least average income. Some come from very wealthy families. Osama bin Laden grew up in Saudi Arabia as a son of a billionaire. Saudi Arabia was never under European colonial rule. Instead, it is the cradle of one of the world’s most brutal imperialist traditions, the Arab cultural imperialism we call Islam.
One may also hear quite a few people in Europe, especially on the political Left, arguing that when Hamas hits Israel with murderous Jihadist attacks, this merely amounts to resistance against “occupation.” To argue like this starts down a very slippery slope. Terrorism is never acceptable, either in the Western world or in the Middle East. One cannot morally denounce Anders Behring Breivik until one has morally denounced Hamas and similar Islamic groups, too. Ultimately, Hamas is fueled by the same Islamic religious beliefs as ISIS, the Islamic State.
Moreover, the suggestion that Islamic terrorism is a reaction to occupation is false. Even tiny Norway, a small country in the far northern reaches of Europe, has already been hit by several Islamic attacks.
In 1993, William Nygaard was shot three times outside his home in Oslo and miraculously survived. This case has never been solved. However, most people assume that the attack was triggered by the fact that he was the Norwegian publisher of Salman Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses, which many Muslims found insulting.
The assassination attempt on Nygaard was not caused by his occupation of anything. It was caused by the fact that he published a book that Muslims did not like. Criticizing or mocking Islam potentially carries the death penalty, according to traditional Islamic law. This goes for non-Muslims as well as for Muslims. Since Islam today has a nearly global reach, the Jihadist threat against freedom of speech has become nearly global in scope.
On September 29 2004, Brahim Bouteraa, a rejected Muslim asylum seeker from Algeria, entered the cockpit of an airplane in northern Norway and attempted to crash it. The plane was flying from the town of Narvik to the town of Bodø. The lives of all those on board were narrowly saved solely due to the resolute intervention from a couple of male passengers. The plane was literally seconds away from crashing into the ground when the pilot finally managed to regain control over it. Brahim Bouteraa was judged sane by psychiatrists and sentenced to 17 years in prison. He was described as a very devout Muslim who wanted to become an imam and open a mosque in the town of Narvik. Bouteraa had been member of a militant Islamic group in his native Algeria. He cited some texts in Arabic, possibly Koranic verses, immediately before the attempted hijacking.
Why did Brahim Bouteraa try to carry out a mass-murdering Jihadist attack to kill many Norwegians? Was it to protest the Norwegian occupation of Norway?
On December 11 2010, Taimour Abdulwahab al-Abdaly, an Iraqi-born Swedish citizen, tried to carry out a mass-murdering Jihadist attack in Stockholm. Due to his own incompetence, this Arab Muslim terrorist only succeeded in killing himself with his suicide bombing, the first of its kind in Scandinavia. However, he could have killed many people that day, as he clearly intended to do.
Why did Taimour Abdulwahab al-Abdaly try to carry out a mass-murdering Jihadist attack to kill many Swedes? Was it to protest the Swedish occupation of Sweden?
In January 2013 the Pakistani-American Islamic terrorist David Headley was sentenced by a US federal court to 35 years in prison for his role in the Mumbai terror attacks in 2008, which killed 164 people. He pleaded guilty and co-operated with US authorities to avoid the death penalty and extradition to India. Headley also pleaded guilty to taking part in a plot, along with co-conspirator Canadian-Pakistani businessman Tahawwur Rana, to attack Jyllands-Posten’s headquarters in Copenhagen and Aarhus in Denmark, behead the paper’s employees and throw their heads into the street.
The terror plot was in response to the newspaper’s publication of cartoons of Islam’s founder Mohammed in 2005. One of the Danish cartoonists, Kurt Westergaard, has received numerous death threats and murder attempts by Muslims. In Sweden, the artist Lars Vilks now lives under constant police protection due to Islamic death threats over his drawings of Mohammed. Both the Swedish Security Service (Säpo) and the Danish Security and Intelligence Service (PET) have probably helped prevent several Islamic terror attacks.
Why did Islamic terrorists want to behead people in Denmark? Was it to protest the Danish occupation of Denmark?
Norway, Sweden and Denmark have all been targeted by potentially mass-murdering Islamic Jihadist attacks. Even Finland now has a growing Jihadist problem. It is presumably only a matter of time before the first such Islamic attack succeeds. We are currently witnessing an escalating international wave of Jihad, wiping out non-Muslims in much of the Middle East and gradually spreading to other parts of the world.
Meanwhile, quite a few Europeans voice sympathy for certain Jihadist terrorists such as Hamas. It is very disturbing to see some Europeans and Westerners fascinated by the very same ideological forces who are trying to subdue or kill them. It is an ominous sign that does not bode well for the future.
A new darkness is descending upon Europe. Some Europeans seem enthralled by this darkness.
Linking Islamic terrorism to American foreign policy or to Israeli policies is also misleading. Muslims have been conducting Jihad continuously for 1400 years. Arabs were raiding and aggressively invading several continents, including Europe, as far back as in the seventh century. Violent Jihad existed over a thousand years before the USA was founded or Israel existed as a state. Presenting Jihad as merely a defense mechanism against the West, the USA or Israel is not only wrong. It is ridiculous, and amounts to falsifying history.
What does cause Jihad violence, then? Islam does, including the Koran itself and the personal example of the religion’s founder Mohammed. It is above all the concept of Jihad that makes Islam uniquely dangerous and aggressive among all of the world’s major religions.
For a complete archive of Fjordman’s writings, see the multi-index listing in the Fjordman Files.
It is indeed extraordinary that gullible Westerners have been not merely accepting, but actively propagating the various fictions that Islamists have been putting out there to defend or rationalise Islamic terrorism.
From 1967 on it was Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip that was the cause of it all. That Jordan and Egypt’s occupation of the same lands for the preceding two decades didn’t generate the same,’or indeed any hostile, response passed unnoticed and inexplicably still does.
Then this century it was the US and UK military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan which was the cause of it all. Again astonishingly subscribed to by a very significant proportion of Westerners.
One may wonder what excuses will be invoked in the event that the West throws its hands up and completely removes itself from any role in Iraq and Afghanistan. It will revert to Israel and its occupation of the West Bank. And should Israel be foolish enough to ever withdraw from the West Bank, my money is on the new excuse being Western financial support for Jordan.
Israel’s very existence is their ultimate justification. They only want what is theirs – as they say, again and again.
The question is though, and one that very few ask, is that what exactly is theirs?
Their ‘Muslim lands’ weren’t always Muslim lands. I want Constantinople (some call it Islanbul) back. I want the Levant back.
It’s as if our own demands have been superceded by Muslim demands. Why is that?
Indeed. While we’re about it, may we please have Egypt and the rest of North Africa back for the Christians and Jews, Iran for the Zoroastrians, Afghanistan for the Buddhists, India (including Pakistan) for the Hindus…
The Left is comprised of a twisted set of beliefs and morals.
It’s why they (the Left) can build a political cordon sanitaire around the Vlaams Belang in Belgium and around the Sweden Democrats in Sweden, while in the same breath demand Israel to sit down and negotiate with the genocidal murderers of Hamas (and Fatah as well).
Re. the notion that poverty causes terrorism:
Why are there no jihadists in Torry?
Well, actually muslims want to behead you because of the Danish occupation of Denmark.
You see, after Islam every person born is a Muslim unless he/she get corrupted and the whole world belongs to Allah.
So, in this sense, the Danish people are occupier of Denmark. But hey, they are about to make place peacefully and give over their wealth to their superios Muslims so any kind of trouble seems unlikely.
Today Europe is trapped between Scylla Charybdis. Open Jihadists take the Role of Scylla. Stealth Jihadists take the Role of Charybdis.
“What does cause Jihad violence, then? Islam does, including the Koran itself and the personal example of the religion’s founder Mohammed. It is above all the concept of Jihad that makes Islam uniquely dangerous and aggressive among all of the world’s major religions.”
Without hesitation I am proud to admit to admiring Fjordman’s moral and physical courage, and of course to admiring your skill with the pen (keyboard), but with the greatest of respect, I don’t believe he is correct in this analysis.
It’s a chicken and egg situation. What came first: Islam or the Muslim?
Islam is an expression of the Arab soul – Arabs were Muslims before the birth of Mohammed; Mohammed and his Koran were/are the conduit through which the Arabic world view, its weltanschauung if you like, articulates itself.
Again with respect, it seems to me that Fjordman’s unwillingness to adopt this conclusion is a function of his ‘goodness’.
My argument is pure racism and Fjordman is unable to go down this line because his goodness (Christianity?) gets in the way – his argument is that Muslims can be saved if we can cleanse them of Islam. My argument is that Islam is their life energy expressed in cultural terms.
By their fruits you shall know them…
On a completely different level, this morning I went for a long walk along the river and on the way home, at lunchtime, I called at my favourite pub for a couple of jars – actually I had three! Anyway, whilst there, propping up the bar, I earwigged a conversation about the nature of Islam and the conflict in the Middle East. The contents were nothing remarkable, certainly not to the readership of G of V, but what was remarkable was that the locals in a traditional English pub were discussing the most important issue. It gave me confidence for the future.
There’s a plausible scholarly argument that Mohammed didn’t exist at all but was invented to give divine sanction to the rapacity and savagery of Arab caravan raiders after decades of lightning conquest. In this view, Mohammed was dubbed “the perfect man” because he was a fictional distillation of what Arab men admired.
Islam went about trying to Arabize everything it conquered — to force the ethos of primitive desert dwellers upon the whole earth. Occasionally I stop to consider how odd it is that Egypt and Mesopotamia, for example, came to be regarded as part of “the Arab world” despite their much more ancient cultural achievements. Some of the peoples conquered by Islam may try to reclaim a more particular ethnic or cultural identity, but their thinking and habits have been deeply imprinted with the constricted harshness of Arabism.
UKIP Scotland MEP on Twitter: “If I could keep all the immigrants and Muslims in Scotland and deport SNP leadership I would do it without hesitation”
What does it mean when calls to cleanse the Scottish Christian soul from Scotland to be supplanted not only by other immigrants but especially the bleak muslim soul.
Make no mistake this is no glib political remark but the self-loathing sentiments that exist deep in right of centre British politics.
I do not understand how the “arabs” got from being happy with Coca-colas after WWII (while still peeing in the sand) to this point. It is a mystery to me how this savage religion has resonated with so many in the middle-east. From my readings, they used to be very easy going (I’m going back to the 40’s) and they were not like they are now — what happened? I’m asking because I don’t know.
They had all that oil wealth in the 70’s but I don’t know what happened after that.
But if necessary, I think they should be bombed back to the stone age, since they are so unwilling to live in the modern worls, which they apparently hate but are unwilling to ignore.
What happened to the Arabs pre 1970’s was the western powers gave them a bloody nose and they realised that if they did not toe the line over the previous 2-300 years the western military powers could have wiped them off the face of the earth. That is the only thing that stopped the jihad and slave raids, now they see that they start it all again due to a lack of will of the UN to confront the jihad and that almost anyone can get hold of weapons that can do lots of damage. Human rights and the left wing have not helped in the slightest.
Human rights is particularly bad as they translate the western form of human rights into muslim human rights where it is only muslims who have those rights in accordance with the sharia law.
We can not bomb them back to the stone age as they are already living in it.
Possibly the immense wealth that came with the oil has something to do with it. It might have helped if the rulers had used the wealth generated to improve the lives of the whole arab population but they didn’t.
Now today we have the Islamic state, that apparently, according to world leaders, has nothing to do with Islam.
“…due to a lack of will of the UN…”
You have got to be kidding me.
*The* most feckless organization in history lacks “will”?
Deport the U.N. from our land, de-fund them and plop them in Brussels where they belong.
Not that easy-going, Mariadee. Jews were being harassed and expelled from the mid-’40s, before the foundation of Israel (which took many of them in).
“From my readings, they used to be very easy going (I’m going back to the 40’s)”
Don’t mistake easy-going with sociopolitically & geopolitically weak and in temporary disarray. The Muslim world fell into unprecedented weakness & disarray beginning in the 18th century (and had already begun to rot from the inside long before that) as — no coincidence — the West had begun its spectacular ascendancy to geopolitical supremacy. A constellation of factors in the 20th century (the collective trauma of their Caliphate being dismantled in 1924; the serendipitous discovery of oil in Arabia and Persia; the “Nakba” of Israel in 1948; the 1979 Iranian revolution) coincided with the perennial dreams of a pan-Islamic jihad against “Rome” (= the West), which Muslims never stopped dreaming and praying for, but only put on hold due to extraneous circumstances (cf. supra). Etc. Islamic History 101.
Moral of the story: When explaining Mohammedan behavior, NEVER give them the benefit of the doubt, but always assume the explanation reflects poorly (yea, disastrously) on them.
The absurdities seem to grow daily. We really need to oust out leaders. Here’s my music video to highlight this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydBD-6izYfE
Europe is on yet another death march. 1914 and the Rights of Kings. 1939 and the Rights of Dictators. 2014 and ‘multi-culturalism’. Europeans seem to have a death wish to see their civilization destroyed. The only push-back againsnt Islamization seems to be coming from Australia. All who are not on board with national suicide are branded bigots, racists, etc. and can even be prosecuted and imprisoned. Chaos is coming again to Europe. The outcome of that chaos is uncertain, but chaos is coming because Europeans want it.