But as I was writing about the structure of the Islamic State last week, I encountered more and more parallels to the global Marxist movement. This got me thinking even more intently about the similar ways that the two — despite their differences — have applied, encouraged and supported the use of violence. In light of these parallels, the lessons derived from the decades-long struggle against communism throughout the world may provide important guidance for the continuing fight against jihadism.
Our YouTube feeds respond to our Internet habits — all that Google Chrome or other mammoth machinery may capture (about us), crunch with algorithms, and throw back to us with the logic that if we clicked on it, we must have been interested in it — but let me not get distracted with computer-human interactions, social engineering, and programmers.
Regarding the above clips: Farrokh Sekaleshfar had his name made the moment Omar Mateen operationalized at least an opinion similar to his own; Nouman Ali Khan, whose online presence I found connected with the Islamic Center of Irving (Texas) appears a countervailing speaker to Sekaleshfar; and then, in the way of YouTube’s relational “other video” options, comes a voice of reason about madness — Omar Mateen’s ex-wife.
What do they look like together, these three videos?
GREAT DAYS OF SERVICE IN IRVING, TEXAS, IS AN INTERFAITH ASSOCIATION OF FAITH COMMUNITIES AND COMMUNITY PARTNERS UNITED IN SERVING GOD AND COMMUNITY THROUGH RENEWING NEIGHBORHOODS AND AIDING HOMEOWNERS IN THE RESTORATION OF THEIR PROPERTIES.
Great Days of Service is a non-profit association of diverse Irving faith communities, businesses, and civic groups who are united in serving God and community by renewing neighborhoods and aiding homeowners in the restoration of their properties.
The GDS website supports pages displaying Church Partners (there are many — 14 churches listed and one mosque – the Islamic Center of Irving) and Community Partners, a melange of relevant government and the kinds of good-hearted private businesses that anchor the tapestry of small town America.
BackChannels has heard that in the past year– and for the next — one or two churches have dropped out of the ranks of the multi-faith “Great Days of Service” in the wake of a “dust up” with the mosque.
Those who keep tabs on voter rolls say the number of Muslim voters has jumped from about 150 two years ago to over 800 in the May 7 election. Of the city’s 92,000 registered voters, about 3,800 — slightly more than 4 percent — identify as Muslims.
But they made up nearly 18 percent of the ballots cast in an election where the turnout was low.
Possibly, this given the direction of those not-so-sacred numbers (indicating growth), it may not hurt the representatives of Irving’s Muslim community to share back into the Christian community the making and posting of participation-and-accomplishment videos having to do with those “Great Days of Service” –(added per the addendum at the top) nor would it hurt the churches to produce and post their own videos on the matter . . . or have a hand in the interfaith making of the next video.
Sigh.
In the medieval mode, religious succession — initially, the ascent or uptake of Christianity displacing (for most) Judaism (source of history and inspiration) and much else — accounts for bloodshed through many ages, but cue the angels (“Aaaaaaah”) and The Enlightenment arrives, the church divides and divides again — and fends off Islam’s incursions in what has become Europe– until within its many domains Northern Ireland quiets down and that seems the end of that part of the bloody story.
But wait: about here enters those “Red Brown Green” malignant narcissists — “Comrades, Nationalist, Islamists” but Kleptocrats (and subscription builders) most of all — and we’re once again on this potentially bloody — and still medieval — merry-go-round.
In the way of the web and YouTube, this video automatically followed the two cited and displayed above:
Apparently, the fishers of souls continue to count their success in subscriptions and may adjust their talk to compete.
Addendum and Mild Retraction – July 10, 2016
There have been other “Great Days of Service — Irving” videos recent within the past two years. However, the top search results appearing on YouTube come up absent of productions posted by the Christian churches.
Yet, for jihadists, the “past is not a tool of mere inspiration or for marking enemies,” Kazimi said, arguing that “history books are recipe books” giving instructions on how to “reclaim that greatness of Islam.” Since its origins in 2006 Iraq, the Islamic State in particular saw itself emulating Islam’s founding followers from seventh-century Arabia under the prophet Muhammad, a community that ultimately conquered empires. The 2014 caliphate declaration of ISIS, a group perhaps even stronger than the initial followers of Islam’s prophet, reflected how Muhammad’s “calling compelled him to strike out boldly, against incredible odds.”
According to court documents and court proceedings, in March 2016, a now-deceased member of ISIL brokered an introduction between Jalloh, 26, of Sterling, Virginia, and an individual in the United States who actually was an FBI confidential human source (CHS). The ISIL member was actively plotting an attack in the United States and believed the attack would be carried out with the assistance of Jalloh and the CHS.
The “single state” solution fails not for enmity but for comprehension of what is represented by the Hebrews living in the land of the Hebrews.
Language as a cultural technology evolves within a people in somewhat isolated social space sufficient to invent their way of getting along among themselves and with the surrounding earth. For each ethnolinguistic cultural cohort on the planet, there is a land, a someplace, from whence it came.
So the Hebrews are back in the Land of the Hebrews: Israel. There are also Baloch, Pashtun (“B’ni Israel”, self-defined), and Kurds who have a relationship with the land that made them, and they too have some political issues involving their autonomy and survival as a people.
The Jordanian Arabs and the migrant workers caught between armies in 1948 have been deeply manipulated by powerful forces within and outside of Arab culture. The Russian KGB’s invention of Arafat, an Egyptian, and the PLO either is or should be history well known to scholars who have devoted themselves to studying and solving the “middle east conflict” (never the others ongoing — and “hot” — at the moment). The contemporary and feudal Russian story, that which has had Mikhail Bogdanov entertaining PFLP in Moscow (Nov. 2014) while the state refuses to acknowledge either Hamas or Hezbollah as terrorist organizations, should be taken into account.
It’s not the Israelis or Palestinian People (again: somewhat isolated in time and space — long enough to create new language 🙂 ) who sustain the middle east conflict: all along, it has been those who misinform, mis-educate, and maliciously “program” socially captive innocents in service to their own feudal-medieval aggrandizement (and financial enrichment).
This blog now has plenty of data for backing up its opinion about what has created and what sustains the “Middle East Conflict (MEC)”. From the vicious narcissism that would hold refugees in camps (Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Egypt) and separated from general state populations (a genuinely apartheid policy) to the Soviet distribution of anti-Semitic propaganda and, yes, the invention of Arafat, the MEC has come to represent medievalism at its greed-laden best.
Look into UNRWA spending and tunnel smuggling, and then take another look at who got the loot.
I’ve never doubted Jasser’s sincerity but I have questioned the power of modern sensibility to “re-map” scripture. We’re beyond the age of miracles but not of religious sentiment, and to approach the updating of the legacy in scripture and related literature of Islam involves first overriding Muhammad’s warnings about tampering. On the part of modern and sophisticated people, I’ve seen two channels organizing effort to either interpret the Qur’an as a multilayered exercise in thought — and who is to say it’s not? — or, as Jasser and others have done, question the instructions and have the great conversation, and may both tracks lead away from the barbarism on display in Baghdadi’s emulation (so he believes) with ISIS in Syria-Iraq.
Related
ISIS – BackChannels supports the idea that ISIS was incubated by Damascus with the support of Moscow and Tehran, and that the method used we “de-selection” for combat and bombing early in the process that has become the “Syrian Tragedy”.
Qanta Ahmed – National Review — BackChannels considers conservative American and Muslim physician and writer Qanta Ahmed a force of nature sufficient for mention as a figure representing a modern pluralist stance in Islam without reform and opposite the Muslim Brotherhood as regards leveraging concession from the rest of the world.
I have not subjected the list to scrutiny beyond the declared penchant of each for moderation and good.
Those who obsess on fundamental core tenets and advisements and hadith and sunnah may be expected to continue to condemn an unreformed Islam by way of its reflection from the past — the Religion of Peace web site conveys the tough critic’s perspective. Whether the religion, which hundreds of millions of Muslims have assumed perfect from the start, has strength to weather genuine moderation and updating remains to be seen.
Political Psychology
“Cults of personality”, “dictatorship”, “fascism”, “feudal political absolutism”, “idolatry”, “malignant narcissism” — such terms revolve around the construction of feudal space and the will and rule of a single overwhelming and ruthless personality that through the carrot and stick of patronage and intimidation creates and manipulates a universe around itself. On BackChannels, the great struggle with the past has been presented this way:
Feudal Absolute Power vs Modern Democratic Distribution
For Islam and for Muslims to integrate with the cultural complexities of modern, pluralist, and secular democracies, which may then develop stronger capitalist economies with social welfare attachments, may require some reconsideration of Muhammad’s conflation with God, whether generated originally or by clerics or others promoting their own power in supposed emulation.
BackChannels has consistently promoted the perception — and believes it valid and reliable — that the Ummah is broad and that modern Muslims have engaged in a great conversation as regards the character of Islam and their options within its framework and with the world beyond it. Nonetheless, how does one engage a partisan publication whose authors and subjects know firsthand the nature of Muslim-borne diminishment or marginalization, subjugation and greater persecution, and, in the end, nothing more or less than theft and murder in the name of Allah? One cannot argue with that experience, and the same repeats itself in history, lending veracity to Baghdadi’s efforts to emulate Muhammad’s existence and his politics. At the same time, who among Muslims living in the west would care to live today as Baghdadi maneuvers today on the proceeds of crime and general pillage? Pray God, everyone, we do not place the medieval world forward of the one in which you have accessed this blog.
BackChannels 