Explosions at the Boston Marathon 15 April 2013

[mafya]

Trauma is low on the list, even in core jihadi areas it's not a significant factor, where is it raised it's more an excuse than a causation.

 

Social alienation is too broad a term to render anything meaningful from specific to jihadism.

 

Moral and idealogical vacuum is spot on. People, obviously mainly muslim but also non muslims with a big old moral gap in their lives are the majority constituent of those recruited and groomed to the jihadist mindset. Criminals who know they are doing wrong and feel guilty about it. Wasters and layabouts looking for a purpose in life. With jihadism the idle are given a purpose in life and the criminal has his sins washed clean, only he doesn't have to stop being a criminal, he just has to carry on doing what he's doing and maybe get even more viscous with gods blessing and the promise of eternal life. To us it's just evil but to them suddenly their life has meaning, they are fighting the good fight against the infidels and the things they were doing that they felt were wrong are now acts of holiness. It's a morality carwash combined with a boys own romantic adventure - stand up for gods law on earth while your mates work 9-5 at the building site. Suddenly you are someone, bigger than the next guy, better than the next guy and with the promise of everlasting happiness. It's a damn seductive rhetoric.

 

As to where we go with that, I've consistently argued that the grooming that goes on both in the real world and the web should be targetted in the same manner as the grooming of children for sexual exploitation. These people are identified and groomed and I've seen the transformations myself. If you want a first hand view of one of the milder sites then register at ummah.com and take a peek at the stuff on there.

 

My Bold=

The Boston bomber brothers were not layabouts or wasters though were they?

According to the media they were just like other American teens but somewhere along the line that changed and made them do what they did.

[s2 blade]

We have two generations of Chechens who were brutalized, and there are two generations of Chechen men who have known nothing but war. Under Kadryov, there is huge unemployment and massive social unrest. Chechnya will almost surely continue to be a source of terrorism.

[Rampent]

Interesting point but do you see a difference between a kindergarten in America where young children are fed rhetoric every morning and ordered to wear their hand over their heart while a flag flies behind them, and a young child in a "foreign" country ordered to sing rhetoric while holding his/her hand over their chest while their flag flies in the background.

 

Radicalization takes many forms..it just depends on those who radicalize, but most of all their intent.

 

Good point Mr SKinhead.

[s2 blade]

My Bold=

The Boston bomber brothers were not layabouts or wasters though were they?

According to the media they were just like other American teens but somewhere along the line that changed and made them do what they did.

 

Religion has a funny way of poisoning and manipulating (young men in particularly)

 

---------- Post added 23-04-2013 at 00:38 ----------

 

Interesting point but do you see a difference between a kindergarten in America where young children are fed rhetoric every morning and ordered to wear their hand over their heart while a flag flies behind them, and a young child in a "foreign" country ordered to sing rhetoric while holding his/her hand over their chest while their flag flies in the background.

 

Radicalization takes many forms..it just depends on those who radicalize, but most of all their intent.

 

Here's a little piece on " intent "

 

In both Palestine and Chechnya the secular and religious components have coexisted in the movement for independence, the Islamic element steadily strengthened at the expense of the secular objectives.

By 1999 secular agenda and symbols all but disappeared among the key leaders of the Chechen resistance. Dzhokhar Dudaev--a major general in the Soviet Air Force, a former member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and by all appearances an atheist, whose face was shaven save for a neat tiny moustache and who had invoked Islam solely to boost his own legitimacy in the fight against the Russians--would hardly have recognized the movement that he started. From a primarily secular movement of national liberation, Chechnya's war for independence increasingly looked like part of the worldwide jihad, as the top Chechen commanders grew long beards and started quoting the Koran.

The spread of Wahhabism. Since 1996 the resistance leaders and their troops have been switching their traditional allegiance from the Sufi branch of Islam to a radical interpretation of Wahhabism that celebrates death, suicide, and mass murder as weapons against the infidels. Converts included the top warlords Shamil Basaev, who led the takeover of the hospital in Budyonnovsk in 1995 and claimed responsibility for masterminding the October 2002 Nord-Ost hostage-

taking in a Moscow theater, and Salman Raduev, Dzhokhar Dudaev's son-in-law and the leader of the Kyzlyar raid in 1996. (Captured by Russian troops in March 2000 and sentenced to life in prison for terrorism, Raduev died in prison in December 2002.)

"Under the influence of . . . Arab mujahadeen," observed a Middle East policy analyst, "Basaev . . . appeared to have metamorphosed gradually from a Chechen nationalist to a Chechen Muslim."[2] His stated objective became a Chechen theocracy like that established by the leader of the Chechen resistance to the Russian empire (and Basaev's namesake), the ruthless and cunning Shamil [3] (1797-1871), the red-bearded imam who went everywhere with an axe-wielding executioner. (For a historically accurate sketch of Shamil, see one of Leo Tolstoy's finest novellas, Hadji Murat.)

On the videotaped statement of the hostage-takers, aired on the second day of the Moscow stand-off by the Qatar-based Al Jazeera satellite television network, the hostage-takers spoke against the backdrop of a green banner of Islam with white Koranic verses. The women wore Arab-style hijab (a head-to-toe black dress with only eyes uncovered), which Chechen women had not been seen wearing before.

The laws of Sharia. Even before President Maskhadov declared Chechnya an Islamic republic in November 1997, Chechnya introduced Islamic courts, which began sentencing those who violated the Koran-based Sharia law. In the first of the executions broadcast on Chechnya's state-run television, a man's throat was slit by a group of hooded men in April 1997. Subsequent executions by firing squad took place in Grozny's central Friendship of Peoples Square in the presence of thousands of spectators.

In response to statements by President Yeltsin and the Duma, horrified by what they labeled "barbaric," "medieval," and "impermissible" acts in what was nominally still part of Russia, the Chechen presidential spokesman said: "The disapproval by Russia and the West of our actions-shooting by a firing squad and public executions-means that we're heading in the right direction. There is no doubt that only the laws of Allah and norms of Sharia will be in force in Chechnya." [4] The Chechen vice president, Vakha Arsanov, added: "Hearing [the Russian protests] makes me laugh. I spit on Russia. . . . Russia means nothing to us; we are an independent state." [5]

 

 

Seems to me the intent of Chechen leaders is for it to be on the whole a vile place to live .

 

Interesting that Russian leader Yeltzin at the time called their actions "barbaric"! I wonder what he would make of the Boston bombings and what followed ?

[andygardener]

I agree with that. However, that just raises more questions for me about the personality type that the 'seductive rhetoric' (perfect phrase) will have an effect upon. I see that as an investigative journey into complex pathology with a tangled historical core that is personal to each victim of radicalisation but may contain some common factors that it would benefit society to understand. I don't think the understanding should stop once you trace back and decide that the person in question was a waster or layabout. How does the vacuum develop? What is its causal network? Why does it not lead everyone down the radicalisation road? What other critical factors are there? How can it be avoided? I imagine social alienation plays some part in this process.

 

That's why I think it's complex and that is only based upon a moral and idealogical vacuum which represents only one factor in the radicalisation picture.

 

Regarding trauma I seem to be hearing a lot at the moment about drone attacks playing a part in creating new generations of terrorists. (Particularly on Any Questions from New York last week). Surely they must influence ex-pat radicals as much as those sifting through the debris for cold remains.

 

Trauma is not a real factor. The death worshipping nutters already in the cult are cool with trauma, it's meat and tatties to them. A person gets killed to us, to them they get martyred, so even if a potential recruit gets interested because of an event it's not what will bring them into the fold as to those on the inside the event isn't important and to get inside continued annoyance about event x will cause issues. Ignore trauma, it's a red herring.

 

As to the rest, there are of course a myriad of reasons a person could find themselves at risk of being groomed.

 

Many of those reasons are insoluble over a large society so the focus has to be on the groomers and shutting down their operations. And to do that we need to win the argument which fifteen years down the line we kind of are to a degree winning that intelligence that is valuable is not worth more than a virus like exposure of thousands of young people to the poisonous normalisation of this ideology. I'm out of that game these days, retired when "Bruce Kennedy" breathed her last but it's an ongoing issue, allow jihadi propagation to gather intelligence vs prevent the spread and I still think we have the balance wrong.

[mikem8634]

Trauma is not a real factor. The death worshipping nutters already in the cult are cool with trauma, it's meat and tatties to them. A person gets killed to us, to them they get martyred, so even if a potential recruit gets interested because of an event it's not what will bring them into the fold as to those on the inside the event isn't important and to get inside continued annoyance about event x will cause issues. Ignore trauma, it's a red herring.

 

As to the rest, there are of course a myriad of reasons a person could find themselves at risk of being groomed.

 

Many of those reasons are insoluble over a large society so the focus has to be on the groomers and shutting down their operations. And to do that we need to win the argument which fifteen years down the line we kind of are to a degree winning that intelligence that is valuable is not worth more than a virus like exposure of thousands of young people to the poisonous normalisation of this ideology. I'm out of that game these days, retired when "Bruce Kennedy" breathed her last but it's an ongoing issue, allow jihadi propagation to gather intelligence vs prevent the spread and I still think we have the balance wrong.

 

Very interesting stuff. This is what I was getting at regarding catalysts -

 

Perceived injustices are important drivers of individual decisions to become involved in militant activism. Catalyst events(i.e. violent acts that are perceived to be unjust) provide a strong sense of outrage and a powerful psychological desire for revenge and retribution (Silke2003). Importantly, one does not need to experience these unjust events first

hand in order to feel sufficiently motivated to become a terrorist. Indeed, the events do not even have to involve friends or family members. Many terrorists report that they first joined the organization after witnessing events on television or other media (e.g. O’Callaghan 1998). Although they did not

come from the area where the events occurred – or indeed even know the

people who lived there – at some level they identified with the victims. This

identification, combined with the perceived injustice of the event, can provide

a strong motivation to become involved in the jihad.

 

From the study I linked earlier (not sure why it has pasted so oddly).

 

It does, indeed, appear to be a fine balance regarding the grroming/intelligence factor, and one that is ripe for further action.

 

Out of interest, which 3 factors would you list?

[johncocker]

Off the top of my head -

 

social alienation

potential trauma

uncertain, fluid, unreliable support network

suggestibility

unmanaged anger

poor critical skills

possible sociopathy

possible over identification

isolation from government

moral and ideological vacuum

socio-economic background

immaturity

external locus of control

gender

educational background

ethnicity

social identity

discrimination

 

sounds like propaganda from a jobcentre

the elephant in the room is "hatred of the west"

[Rampent]

Some serious copy and pasties here dudes!!

[mikem8634]

sounds like propaganda from a jobcentre

the elephant in the room is "hatred of the west"

 

Definately a factor, but it has to come from somewhere. I imagine that sometimes it exists as part of the factors I listed like social alienation and isolation from government and that leads some into radicalisation. However, there are also probably instances when it isn't there in the beginning but is slowly created and reinforced by the radicalisation process to fill the moral and idealogical vacuum that Andy and I have been discussing.

 

Where do you think it comes from?

[skinz]

Religion has a funny way of poisoning and manipulating (young men in particularly)

 

Ironically religion doesn't kill...otherwise we'd have a 50/50 percent of killings by both sexes. Religion certainly is a tool to be used though if your subject fits within a certain criteria...that criteria can be singular or as Mike suggests..very complex and just as varied. It's the brain of the subject, and from my recollection the brain is the most complex of all organs..let alone elements outside which effect brain function and influence.

 

Something went terribly wrong with those two in relation to them not dancing to the tune we all adhere to. For the victims there probably isn't a lot of mileage in why..their suffering is present, it really isn't up for debate. In order for suffering for those in the future not to exist the question has to be asked..why? But the question has to hold no boundaries to understand, otherwise the answers will just be prejudice..taking us back to square one with no real answers.