As the death toll rises in clashes between Egypt’s army and pro-Morsi protesters, Muslim Brotherhood-linked Gaza terrorists are infiltrating the Sinai to attack Egyptian army outposts.
Egyptian airport officials said the new measures followed reports that a large number of Syrians in Egypt were backing the Muslim Brotherhood and took part in violence after the ousting of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi.
The roots of this hatred and devouring of its own children lies in the deadly schism of Islam. The rupture that takes the toll every day in the broad expanse of Islamic countries from Bahrain to Saudi. I will refer to the history; the roots of all these killings lie in the ‘pardons of Fateh-e- Mecca’ and death of Prophet. It all started the day Prophet of Islam died. Alas, little did Imam knew that he is cursed and haunted by the historical schism of ‘devouring its own.’ A curse set as the destiny of children of Islam! Devouring suicide bombing killing of its own kin is a continuation of a bitter war of blood and venom between Banu Hashim and Banu Umayyads; that curse has continually taken its toll on children of Islam for 1470 years.
I’m following but haven’t sent a Facebook friend request to the writer, for my exuberant friend-making behavior has been flagged — only once, not blocked — and it has made me more conservative as well as more appreciative of having the ability to read another writer’s work without right away invoking greater Facebook buddiehood.
My hypothesis and theory is that a) there is such a thing as the development of “social grammar” accompanying language uptake, b) that it is part of the learning of a language and subsequent navigation of a related language culture, and c) it has gravitational sway on formulations associated with perception and expression.
Basically: “Social Grammar” may be comprised of a set of rules a) governing relationships between symbols, beliefs about them, and related emotions, and b) serving to navigate cultural and social context in both perception (what is important to see) and expression (e.g., what is good to say; what is not; when; how; etc.).
What’s interesting in this proposed “detection” behavior is its placement in the uptake phase of natural language development, i.e., the idea that an infant picks up (“takes statistics”) on verbal inflection in such a way as to have pre-formed attitude and belief formula in advance of the acquisition of more sophisticated meaning. If even from the womb (from the instant the ears become active) we hear, for example, “Xanglies” pronounced bitterly, harshly, we may as we compile more information about “Xangley” have a bad feeling about Xangliness, whatever and whoever Xangley turns out to be.
This proposed base level behaviorism and building-block linguistic programming may have profound influence as the individual language-bound spirit becomes expressive, independent (seemingly), and mature. The rule carried forward from the formulation “Xanglies bad” (“X” <–> negative valence) may have control of later perception, and, because it was set into the basic behavioral programming of a developing consciousness prior to its own expressive capability and later reasoning ability, it may be nearly impossible to reach and repair at later stages. If true, it follows that a malevolent basic instruction formulated in infancy may serve as call to conflict and violence in later years.
In fact, we may flatter ourselves if we think that it’s more the oral and written literary traditions of cultures passed on to older minds that form our cause for the most absurd kinds of conflicts.
In this dismal view in which conflict devolves in part to social rules deduced by infants to facilitate their own survival-driven social communicating (i.e., social grammar), the fix may be in before the child shapes his first sentence.
But most importantly, the deaths are going to galvanize the Muslim Brotherhood and their supporters. Rather than help calm the situation, the incident will almost certainly result in many thousands of Egyptians challenging the military’s authority.
But the military said it was forced to fire when an “armed terrorist group” tried to raid the headquarters. An Interior Ministry statement said two security force members — a lieutenant and a recruit — were shot and killed.
While Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood seeks to restrict the conversation, perhaps to the point where the only voices it hears are the echoes of its own, and the military with its provisional governments seeks to expand the same, so that but a few and manageable voices may come from many, the fight on the street will start to draw in greater energies.
For one thing, we media focus on it.
I could be writing about Egyptian basic services, tourism, history, and food, but benign and charming as those may be, they’re not quite as stimulating: with conflict, we don’t want to see its development, but we do want to watch.
The other question is how to let something go.
A slight is a slight, and one can shrug that off; a light injury may increase the insight but also provide for bragging rights — ask the 1960s kids around here about that; but a death in combat, Republican Guard vs. Pro-Morsi Protesters, may not be seen that way.
*****
“Before they had used any kind of teargas they resorted to live fire.”
Three days ago, BBC reporter Jeremy Bowen seems to have caught a few pellets of “bird shot” as a crowd got rowdy toward the end of a day of demonstrating.
Where were those Republican Guard tear gas canisters, rubber bullets, and water canons and such so familiar to other policing forces and spoilers and rioters worldwide?
The answer is that through all the Mubarak years involving the suppression of the Muslim Brotherhood, the state appears not to have prepared for violent dissent on its streets by the constituents it claimed to represent.
“If a given state lacks the means, the doctrines, and the training for homeland defence and internal security missions, that government is more likely to use lethal means that are disproportionate,” said Steven Adragna of US defence consultancy Arcanum.
Actually, we didn’t clear up anything: how was it possible that so common a policing concern as “riot control” should not have been of concern in this middle east state?
The attenuation of violence or control of a “violence spectrum” may become of interest when a state balances its want of defense against the well being of its internal challengets, i.e., when it doesn’t want to kill those expressing their opposition but rather prefers to stall them in their tracks and channel the same for arrest on the spot or dispersal altogether.
Crowd and riot control would seem arts, specialties, perhaps, within the “art of war”, which in the Islamic Small Wars becomes also the art of managing, for the most part, popular protests and myriad bands of deadly fighters.
This next comes from the earlier anti-Morsi rally days (remember those?):
Near daily, the demonstrations have turned into clashes with police, resulting in the killing of around 70 protesters. Each death has increased public anger against the security forces.
Some protests have turned into stone-throwing attacks on security agency buildings, and many protesters accuse Morsi of giving a green light to police to use excessive force. Their outrage has been further stoked by reports of torture and abduction of some activists by security agents.
Of course, those 70 deaths were attributed to Morsi-backed police!
The devil’s probably grinning.
For sure, I am.
If “deadly force” — a catch-all term for a suite of military technology and lethal methods — is what one has at hand, “dead” are what will be found “down range”.
With riot controlling technologies widely distributed elsewhere around the world, the absence of the same on the roiled Egyptian street may point to a distinct lack of concern for others.
Where was the love when precinct quartermasters were drawing up budgets and wish lists to protect their troops and their public and control the level of violence that might take place — and now has — on the streets around them?
When a phalanx of Ohio National Guardsmen marched shoulder to shoulder up Blanket Hill 40 years ago to break up an antiwar rally at Kent State University, they carried basic battlefield gear and a military mindset.
Their World War II-era M1 rifles were tipped with bayonets and loaded with .30-caliber bullets that could fly nearly two miles.
Compassion leads to “Kevlar vests and plastic shield . . . bean bags and canisters of stinging pepper gas.”
In those attempting an assault on an Egyptian Republican Guard property and those repelling the same with “live fire”, this concern for others — whatever mix of affection, compassion, empathy, and imagination might comprise and express that virtue — would seem to have been missing, and “barbarism”, which is always a conclusion, obscures the story of the evolution or stalling within the language culture and behavior leading up to it.
In consideration of the previous post, the binary choices for Egypt should seem clear.
If the economic benefits and humanism of modernity suit, the medieval complex in self-concept and tyrannical rule will cease; if not, Islam, as “Islamists” would have it, goes so against the grain of humanity that Egypt will suffer as every region has that has hosted, tolerated, or succumbed to this deeply programmed form in political narcissism: from Afghanistan to Somalia, Islamism as Al Shabaab or Boko Haram and others install it serves primarily themselves . . . until it just does not and they are booted by all of the forces they are most accustomed to blaming, this always excluding their own contribution to their own fate (” . . . and do not exceed the limits, surely Allah does not love those who exceed the limits . . . .’).
However I may continue with this blogging, I’m inclined to become increasing informal with it in the interest of becoming more timely and, in some respects, more flexible with these hot summer days.
To state that Islam can never change is to assert that the Koran and Hadith, which constitute the religion’s core, must always be understood in the same way. But to articulate this position is to reveal its error, for nothing human abides forever.
Islam is the religion of Allah3 and it needs no human defenses or justifications. No matter how we portray Islam, it will always remain a threat to the secular establishment. We should not be unnecessarily on the defensive and be ‘apologetic’ to justify to the West things that will be acceptable to them. This is especially relevant with the Islamic penal system which radically differs from all other Western and man-made legal systems- hence it attracts much hatred and jealousy.
Al-Wala wal-Bara doctrine originated in the pre-Islamic Arab tribal system from which it was passed on to the umma (Islamic community). The constructs of love and loyalty were extended to the family and the hamula (clan) while suspicion and hatred was directed toward those outside the clan, the “other” who did not embrace Muhammad’s teachings. The Islamic umma has evolved into a super-tribe by way of religious linkage.
As suggested by the atrocity recorded in the second and most recent video on this post, a callous and vicious loyalty (to something) would seem to trump any compassionate or reasoned arguments — as noted by the 12-year-old in the first video on this post) — believe by and firmly contained within . . . Muslims.
I could refer to my coin, “Shimmer”, but what is shimmering in numbers, potency, and scope would seem to approach an evolutionary divide.
Which human, visually recorded or represented by a paragraph here, would you prefer for a friend?
Or a son?
Or daughter?
Choose one model or the other because across the states in which activity within the Islamic Small Wars play out must choose and have been doing so.
* * *
God’s work, according to some:
Thirty people have been killed in an attack on a northeastern Nigeria boarding school, after gunmen alleged to be affiliated with the extremist Boko Haram group stormed the campus, shooting some children and burning others alive.
The Afghan army and police, which took over security operations from NATO-led coalition forces this year, have lost 927 troops through June, according to an Associated Press count.
BEIRUT, LEBANON — Syria’s Islamist rebels say the downfall of Egypt’s popularly elected Muslim Brotherhood president has proven that Western nations pushing for democracy will never accept them, and reinforced the view of radicals that a violent power grab is their only resort.
A suicide bombing at a Pakistani religious centre killed 14 worshippers today, the third major attack to test the new government since the Taliban vowed revenge for a US drone strike that killed its deputy commander.
Some of these stories are indefinite as to “who done what” but all involve license or objectives associated with Islam.
The humanity of humanity knows this way of being soaked in disconnected cruelty and violence falls far from what is natural for humans and designed so with the inspiration or influence of God, nature, and the universe.
* * *
Posted to YouTube April 23, 2013: “Who are Boko Haram?”
I am not a member of the Muslim Brotherhood or anything. I am just a religious Egyptian woman. I just want to say one thing to the Christians. You are our neighbors. We will set you on fire!
Posted to YouTube July 3, 2013
Posted to YouTube July 7, 2013
At 1:45 in the above:
“I am not a member of the Muslim Brotherhood or anything. I am just a religious Egyptian woman. I just want to say one thing to the Christians. You are our neighbors. We will set you on fire.”
Also note in the second clip the separation in the allocations of responsibility and control and the implacable black-and-white patterns in through expressed. When some analysts and military pitch a case for an economic explanation for hostility, they may be missing a far more prevalent and powerful variable in basic social grammar, i.e., base rules controlling and shaping the generation of expression within a language culture.
****
Obviously, MEMRI videos are selected, translated, and presented to leave an impression. However, even so, the compilers seems to have no problem coming up with recordings of authentic recent and relevant hate speech.
Chairman Royce and Ranking Member Engel Release Joint Statement on Ongoing Events in Egypt
Washington, D.C. – Today, U.S. Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA), Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and U.S. Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY), the Committee’s Ranking Member, released the following statement in response to ongoing events in Egypt:
“The decision by the Egyptian military to take state authority out of the hands of the ruling Muslim Brotherhood government marks another sharp turning point in Egypt’s incomplete revolution. What the Brotherhood neglected to understand is that democracy means more than simply holding elections. Real democracy requires inclusiveness, compromise, respect for human and minority rights, and a commitment to the rule of law. Morsi and his inner circle did not embrace any of these principles and instead chose to consolidate power and rule by fiat. As a result the Egyptian people and their economy suffered greatly.
“It is now up to the Egyptian military to demonstrate that the new transitional government can and will govern in a transparent manner and work to return the country to democratic rule. We are encouraged that a broad cross-section of Egyptians will gather to rewrite the constitution. All parties in Egypt must show restraint, prevent violence, and prepare to be productive players in the future democratic Egypt. We encourage the military to exercise extreme caution moving forward and support sound democratic institutions through which the people and future governments can flourish.”
BackChannels 