Massacre in Paris - a dozen newspeople shot

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“Take a page from how we dealt with Germany and to a limited extent, Japan* after WWII. Find ways to separate out and isolate the actual extremist ideologues from the majority of people who just want to live and get on with their personal lives like the vast majority of humanity.”

The problem with this is it is a simplification. They didn’t just separate out the extremists from the people who just wanted to live and get on with their lives, because it was much more complicated than that. My dad was their in Germany as part of the occupation (after being one of those WWII veterans who fought his way across Europe), and it wasn’t just take away the Nazis and everyone else will be fine. They spent years not only cleaning out images of the Nazis and so forth, they literally had to retrain large swaths of the population, especially kids. In Japan it was a bit different, but the work MacArthur and his minions did there was likewise a fundamental reshaping of the entire country, it wasn’t just that there were a few bad apples, there were a few bad apples that had spoiled a very wide barrel, and they had to reconstruct the apples in there (I just love horrible similes:).

One of the fundamental problems is assuming that in the Muslim communities that all we have to do is isolate the radicals and everything will be fine, because like German and Japanese society, the radicals have already done serious damage, and there are also cultural things that need to be changed if we were to be successful. For example, taking France as an example, while probably a large percentage of the Muslim population hates what the radicals did, partly being repelled by the killing, and partly out of fear I suspect of being targeted for retaliation, there also probably are an equally large percentage who can empathize at why the radicals did what they did, seeing this as somehow their faith being destroyed or ruined. It was the same way that the occupying powers in Japan broke the idea of the emperor being divine and the idea of Japan being guided by some some of divine wind through the emperor and it was their duty to obey, it took a lot of change in the culture , and more importantly, they convinced the people there that the people who held those beliefs destroyed Japan (and likewise, in the de-nazification of Germany, a lot of the work was in convincing the German people that the Nazis destroyed Germany, not the allies, by what they did). In a sense, what they did back then was to isolate the extremists by getting people to understand they were socially unacceptable, that they were the true enemies of their country and so forth. I am sorry, but while most Muslims in those communities just want to live their lives, they also have to understand that their faith, their beliefs, are one in many, and that like any other faith community, they have the right to be upset over what they see as defamation of their faith, that they personally can find it offensive to have Mohammad’s image published, but that they also have to understand others don’t share those beliefs, and that they cannot demand others believe as they do, or to insist that somehow others have to respect their beliefs in other things. What i am trying to say is that I firmly believe that it isn’t up to the countries involved to isolate and take out the radical threat, that in the end the answer is convincing the Muslim community that the radical clerics and the radicals in general are threats to them, threats to the faith, and that they isolate them. In post WWII Germany and Japan, this is exactly what happened (though I understand that the scope and scale was much more immense), the real change came from within, it came when the population itself renounced what had happened, when they found what the Nazis or the imperial regime had done was reprehensible, the underlying ideas. It means that through their own clerics and teachers and whatnot, that the reality of what the radicals is teaching should be totally reprenhensible and get people’s attitudes to the point that they don’t look at the radicals as anything but they are, violent, twisted thugs who represent neither Islam or their community, in a sense the Muslims in those communities have to be the ones to isolate out the radicals and make them impotent, whether by social ostracizing, or by working with the authorities to isolate out and take out the radicals among them.

It is interesting the quote about the Nisei and how frustrated the Japanese were with the lack of cooperation, there is a parallel there. The problem is that in reality the Nisei were loyal to the US and this showed it; but if you ask authorities in France and other places they will tell you how frustrated they are with gaining cooperation from the Muslim communities where the radicals exist…you cannot ask a government to clear out the radicals, isolate them, without the cooperation of the people, to quote your post, just want to get on with their lives and live. For the record, I abhor the idea of blaming Muslims for the work of these cretins, but I also don’t absolve them for the responsibility they have to help be part of the problem. Issuing statements denouncing violence is a good thing, saying that the radicals are not truly practicing Islam is all great and good, but in the end, it is going to be the muslim community that is going to need to neutralize the radicals, to show that not only do they say they aren’t muslim, but prove it by de facto exiling them to obscurity.

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‘3) While I feel sorry for the Parisians killed and their loved ones, I am appalled at the worlds indifference to other terrorist attacks. Boko Haram, an islamist terrorist group, killed 2000 people last week in attack, in the town of Baga. It barely made the news. They have killed over 5000 since 2010, and it seems that it doesnt matter. The poor girls they kidnapped have yet to be found.’

It is tragic, and it in many ways raises questions about the Islamic community worldwide and their dedication to eliminating horrors like this. Nigeria has a large Islamic population, yet where is the action on their part to do something about these animals? I realize that Nigeria has a government that is probably one step below the level of efficiency of a one legged man at a butt kicking contest, but where the hell are they? Where are the angry parents and clerics, working collectively to get these rat turds out of the picture? And who is paying for Boko Haram, who is giving them their weapons, who is giving them the trucks they use to transport the kidnapped girls? Where are the resources of the Saudis and Kuwaitis, that could be used to track down and exterminate the Boko Haram radicals? Where is the Arab league, composed primarily of Muslim countries, working to help alleviate this situation? Why is it up to the rest of the world to correct a situation in a Muslim majority country caused by Muslim extremists, how come the rest of the Muslim world is basically doing nothing in this situation, other than to mouth words about how horrible it is. If Nigeria’s government lacks the will or the resources to get rid of this garbage, then where is the help from the rest of the Islamic world? If Boko Haram is apostate, doesn’t reflect Islam, why don’t the rest of the Muslim world care about how this portrays their faith?

I mentioned in a thing about changing the culture within Muslim communities, one of the biggest ones is getting rid of the attitude that all the problems in the world are caused by everyone else (mostly the non Muslim, western world), and figuring out that the solution to their problems have to come from within, too. It doesn’t mean the rest of the world is blameless, and there are far too many examples, both today and in the past, where the ‘rest of the world’ has failed to act, the Holocaust, Rwanda, you name it, but it also is self defeating on the one hand to blame the rest of the world for not trying to solve a problem with Boko Haram, while basically doing nothing to try and solve it yourselves. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are well off enough that they could probably raise an army of mercenaries to take out Boko Haram in a couple of months, or fund schools and programs in the Islamic world to try and isolate the radicals, it is quite telling that they or most of the rest of the Islamic world with the resources fail to do little, other than make statements that Islam is about peace and the radicals are not Muslim.

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"It is tragic, and it in many ways raises questions about the Islamic community worldwide and their dedication to eliminating horrors like this. Nigeria has a large Islamic population, yet where is the action on their part to do something about these animals?

Yup. I’ve come to the same conclusion as many on this thread: if the war against extreme Muslims is to be successful, it must be rooted within the non-extreme Muslim community.

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I think we all agree on that!

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So… how do we convince the Muslims? It won’t be easy… did you read what Turkish president said today? “As Muslims, we’ve never taken part in terrorist massacres… French citizens carry out such a massacre, and Muslims pay the price.” And that’s a key U.S. ally with hopes of entering the EU. Yikes.

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Erdogan is a megalomaniacal nutcase. Look up the new presidential palace. Makes the Romanian dictator look small. One of the big things now in Turkey is the intimidation and/or arrest of people who use the word “thief” or appear to reference “thievery” because Erdogan has been called a thief.

A basic, maybe the basic problem is people come from and/or live in cultures which are essentially passive: stuff happens and the expectation is nothing good will come of it, etc. This carries over into Europe with the essential passivity of much of the Muslim population. They see jihadi books on sale and say or do nothing. They know mosques and schools are teaching intolerance and often violence but they say or do nothing. I see that as cultural, meaning the culture they are from, more than religious or as a symbol of disaffection.

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Well, clearly not THAT passive, or we wouldn’t have this thread!

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A link to click, if you want to see the naughty bits.

The NYT couldn’t put in a container ship all the religious sensibilities they’ve offended, but they’ve evidently found the end of a gun reason enough to find a prim tilt for their mouth.

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This ideology keeps sinking lower
http://nypost.com/2015/01/14/isis-child-executioner-kills-russian-spies-in-new-video/

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Musicprnt, you may not realize the extent of the stratification among the religious communities in Nigeria. I was unaware of it until I had a conversation with a Nigerian immigrant friend. The animosity between ordinary Christians and ordinary Muslims in Nigeria is significant, unfortunately. Such animosity keeps people from reaching across the divide.

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That animosity is not only religious, but also based on tribal affiliation and colonial historical factors in ways similar to Iraq*.

There was an inconsistent way the British colonial rulers ruled the Muslim dominated north and Southern Christian and Animist dominated regions of Nigeria and the fact like in drawing up borders in Iraq, they didn’t account for the great cultural and religious differences between those two regions when they consolidated both regions into one colony for administrative purposes.

If anything, it facilitated their colonial rule by enabling them to put one group against the other much like they did in other colonies they’ve ruled like what was British India whether it was using religious divisions (E.g.: Hindu vs Muslim) or existing indigenous social divisions(caste).

  • The current borders were drawn by British colonial authorities without regard to it bringing different religious sub-sects(Sunni, Shia, etc) and to varying extents ethnic groups which had centuries of hostility against each other.
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@lake-
I am aware of that, one of the reasons Christianity is also very fundamentalist/orthodox in Nigeria is in reaction to the Muslim extremists. But the point is, even if the Christians don’t act, where are the Muslims doing something about Boko Harum? Where is the government? Where are people if they know someone are part of Boko Harum, making it clear they aren’t tolerated.

More importantly, why is it the duty of the rest of the world to take care of this? I keep hearing about the UN, I keep hearing about how ‘the west’ ie Europe and the US don’t care, where the hell are the Saudis and Kuwaitis, who have the financial means and other means to go after Boko Harum and eliminate them. It highlights the fact that Islamic extremism is constantly being blamed on the west,. it is being blamed on actions of the west in the middle east and so forth,and that when you question why the muslim’s themselves offer at best words, and often aimed at the violence, rather than the beliefs, you get ‘it isn’t their fault’. The reality is that the biggest targets of Islamic terrorism, whether it is Boko Harum or elsewhere, are fellow muslims who they think are apostate or whatnot, should be driving them to action, for they could be next. There are several op eds on this in the NY Times, one by a Muslim that says it is time for Muslims to recognize the origins of the extremism and that what they preach, especially about blasphemy, is not the core of the faith, and Thomas Friedman made the point that the big argument shouldn’t have been about Obama being in Paris for the rally, but rather, where were the rallies in the millions across the Muslim world protesting the radicals, saying we won’t allow this any more? A terrorist incident happpens in Paris, where people are killed by extremists, and people gather in the millions to say “we won’t be frightened”…and in the Muslim world, silence where the people should be protesting the actions of, by their own words “people who are not Muslim”.

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@musicprnt‌

First, you are making the assumption that there is a monolithic Muslim community in that statement.

A bit of a contradiction considering you and many others have acknowledged there are many different communities which are often at odds against each other not only for religious differences in ways similar to what prevailed in Europe and to some extent, even here in the US between Protestant and Catholic Christians…including discrimination and even outright violence*.

In fact, one of the reasons for the ongoing violence in Iraq has been the mutual enmity between the Sunni and Shiite sects which has been going on for centuries and rooted in tribal and ethnic factors as well.

Secondly, whether you realize it or not, you are effectively blaming all Muslims and assuming they are on monolithic group when you’re discounting their efforts to denounce the violence and the hijacking of their religion by extremists in ways similar to how say…the KKK* and other White supremacist or Christian-based terrorist groups did so in past and much more recent history. Would you say all Christians should be active in trying to neutralize them?

It is holding them to a double standard considering the US and Western societies in practice, haven’t held the same type or degree of expectation for expecting the entire White community or the entire Christian community to denounce terrorism and violence from those White supremacist or Christian-based terrorist groups, whether in the past or present.

It also ignores that some Muslims did risk their lives…and even died to fight against those terrorists. What about the Muslim police officer who was one of the first to die in the terrorist attacks against Charlie Hebdo staffers or the Muslim Kosher grocery employee who saved several customers while those terrorists attacked and put the store and everyone within under siege?

My concern is that I’m seeing some disturbing elements of the same sort of emotional hysteria developing currently held against Muslims in the US and Western countries that was present in the US just before and during WWII against Japanese-Americans whom it turned out, frustrated Imperial Japanese intelligence services with their non-cooperation as revealed in their own records.

Sad to see some of it on this very thread and hope it doesn’t lead us down some dark roads regarding the current “outsider” du jour…

  • Would be ironic considering the KKK and several other White supremacist groups have a deep abiding hatred for Catholics and others who don't confirm to their brand of Protestant Christianity.

For starters, because it’s a terrorist group which isn’t only threatening Nigeria, but also other nearby nations and in danger of spreading if not checked.

Just a few days ago, those terrorists launched a ferocious attack against a military base in Cameroon which the latter’s military successfully repelled. Not too long before, they successfully overran a smaller military encampment in that country before being repelled back.

Secondly, by making the statement you did about it not being the world’s responsibility, you’re also ignoring history…specifically of how the British colonial rulers factored into the current Muslim/Christian hostility in Nigeria from the way they combined North and South Nigeria which had very little in common culturally, tribally, religiously, etc.

Worse, they did so because like now, Southern Nigeria had much more natural resources and administering both regions as one made if much easier to govern economically and bureaucratically.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/africa/nigeria/140220/nigeria-religious-ethnic-conflict-roots

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So France is responding to this outrageous attack on free speech by cracking down on…

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/14/france-terror-crackdown_n_6469726.html

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Well, they HAVE to do something as it is important for France to show a message that the country is willing to flex its law enforcement muscle. But perhaps at the risk of throwing a few babies out with the bathwater. The efforts will probably be akin to the Echternach procession with advances and retreats depending on the public reactions.

Ultimately, they will have to assume that failing to enforce their own laws in terms of civil disobedience in the name of liberalism and tolerance has not worked. Testaments of those failed policies are visible in the pockets of radical Islamist cells that are hiding in the no-go zones. Cleaning the stables would be a good measure, and one that is better than monitoring the activities from a safe distance, and praying the terrorism will not strike under their shift.

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It’s true, that if you look at France as a room full of dynamite, it’d be prudent to have laws against lighting matches. Of course, that will only get you so far, as last week proved.

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True, but is it a case of dropping gasoline on ashes or trying to remove the cans away? The matches are coming from remote areas and it does not appear that they will stop being sent by the blood thirsty religious leaders. There is the point of not wanting to awaken a sleeping bear, but also one of fearing to aggravate a rabid dog.

Either way, the no-go zones in capitals such as Brussels and Paris are nothing but an insult to the remaining citizens and a slap in the face of the law enforcement.

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I got lost in your metaphors, xiggi!

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Well, I think Xiggi is saying that allowing your enemies to set up their own little enclaves in your country is a bad idea. But, I could be wrong. It’s certainly confusing.

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In so many words, my point is that the Western governments should NOT be afraid of challenging their own policies of ultra tolerance because of fearing reprisals from already violent groups. The no-go zones have been allowed as a compromise that was never warranted. We should not fear “upsetting” the radicals more as they really solely pretend to react to offenses.

Clearing out and recapturing the no-go zones should be the first priority of the local police as well all as ceasing to look the other way when confronted with hate speeches and flaunting violations such as unlawful dress codes.