Warning: the endangered ilk has returned to its habitat. Just snapped a pic in my back yard:
Also worthy of note–a wicked conspiracy gets unmasked near the end of our current commentary. One about which we should all be informed, involving jihadis, purity of essence, and Steve Earle.
Original post still below…
From the mouths of jihadis
In a long article in The Independent today, Johann Hari looks into the very heart of Islamism and a new counter-movement among British former jihadis. It's the stuff of the very finest first-person journalism.
It's also about the closest any of us are likely to get to really understanding what drives these extremists. If we simply dismiss what these people say and claim to understand them regardless of what they say, we'll get into an endless self-perpetuating loop of extreme responses on both sides. Clearly and unsurprisingly, the world is not so simple as it seems on the surface. It will be interesting to see what intriguing methodology will have to be employed for our own extremists to maintain a "kill 'em all" mentality as we learn more over time.
Here's some of what the former jihadis say, from the article (but please take the time to read the whole thing–it's remarkable):
Yet they felt equally shut out of British or democratic identity. From the right, there was the brutal nativist cry of "Go back where you came from!" But from the left, there was its mirror-image: a gooey multicultural sense that immigrants didn't want liberal democratic values and should be exempted from them. Again and again, they described how at school they were treated as "the funny foreign child", and told to "explain their customs" to the class. It patronised them into alienation….
To my surprise, the ex-jihadis said their rage about Western foreign policy – which was real, and burning – emerged only after their identity crises, and as a result of it. They identified with the story of oppressed Muslims abroad because it seemed to mirror the oppressive disorientation they felt in their own minds. Usman Raja, a bluff, buff boxer who begged to become a suicide bomber in the mid-1990s, tells me: "Your inner life is chaotic and you feel under threat the whole time. And then you're told by Islamists that life for Muslims everywhere is chaotic and under threat. It becomes bigger than you. It's about the world – and that's an amazing relief. The answer isn't inside your confused self. It's out there in the world."
But once they had made that leap to identify with the Umma – the global Muslim community – they got angrier the more abusive our foreign policy came. Every one of them said the Bush administration's response to 9/11 – from Guantanamo to Iraq – made jihadism seem more like an accurate description of the world. Hadiya Masieh, a tiny female former HT organiser, tells me: "You'd see Bush on the television building torture camps and bombing Muslims and you think – anything is justified to stop this. What are we meant to do, just stand still and let him cut our throats?"
But the converse was – they stressed – also true. When they saw ordinary Westerners trying to uphold human rights, their jihadism began to stutter. Almost all of them said that they doubted their Islamism when they saw a million non-Muslims march in London to oppose the Iraq War: "How could we demonise people who obviously opposed aggression against Muslims?" asks Hadiya.
ADDITIONAL:
Well, either for the first time in my life I actually agree with one of the most odious politicos alive–Grover Norquist (ye gods!)–or the Yes Men are at it again. From Talking Points Memo:
Bob Barr, David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union and Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, have teamed up to urge the Gitmo detainees be taken to the U.S. "The scaremongering about these issues should stop," Barr, Keene and Norquist wrote.
"Civilian federal courts are the proper forum for terrorism cases," they wrote. "Civilian prisons are the safe, cost effective and appropriate venue to hold persons in federal courts." "Likewise the federal prison system has proven itself fully capable of safely holding literally hundreds of convicted terrorists with no threat or danger to the surrounding community," they wrote. "
We are confident that the government can preserve national security without resorting to sweeping and radical departures from an American constitutional tradition that has served us effectively for over two centuries."
