The extremists can always point directly to the texts and reiterate that they are the infallible, revealed word of God. Furthermore, the texts indicate that the entire world is ultimately destined to become a Caliphate under Islamic law and the actions of terrorists, while abhorrent to us, will inspire a portion of the world’s Muslims — who would otherwise have not been tempted — to become extremists.
Would this description resemble any leader you might happen to be thinking about?
Has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements)
Is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
Believes that he or she is “special” and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions)
Requires excessive admiration
Has a very strong sense of entitlement, e.g., unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations
Is exploitative of others, e.g., takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends
Lacks empathy, e.g., is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others
Is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her
Regularly shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes
Yet these underlying differences have rarely turned into public disputes. As a report by the Moscow Carnegie Center put it, Russia and Turkey “have largely managed to compartmentalize their relations.” That’s down to pragmatism and realpolitik. But the similarities between the two countries’ leaders are hard to miss. Here are some reasons why Putin and Erdogan could look to each other, and find a kindred spirit.
Affinity between dictators constitutes a revanch feudalist theme in contemporary foreign affairs. Central to each: the rejection of classical liberal values and the embrace of unsavory methods in their political life plus the pursuit of grandiose ambitions perhaps associated with a giantism suited to immortality.
Russia, Syria, Iran, Hungary, and Turkey may not be doing gangbusters as states — from from it — but as gangsters set up in palaces or commanding immense portfolios on top of much unsung suffering, they’re at the top of their game.
UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura said on Jan. 15 that the continued violence in Syria is a “disgrace” and that the Syria conflict is “the largest humanitarian crisis since the Second World War.” Syrians have replaced Afghans as the world’s largest refugee population, with 7.6 million displaced and 3.3 million refugees, in addition to a death toll estimated at 200,000, and the return of typhoid, measles and polio to the country.
On Jan. 14, de Mistura got a boost from US Secretary of State John Kerry, who praised UN and Russian efforts to broker a settlement in Syria.
This blog has supported the notion that yesterday’s communist elite are today’s state capitalists backed and defended by security fascists motivated by money and a new fascist nationalism. That’s a complicated way of suggesting that “Old Red has met New Brown” — and the old Soviets are today’s New Nationalists.
Along that line, and while scanning, collecting, posting, and commenting on news from journalism’s “second row seat to history”, one cannot help but note that certain relationships seem defined by common interest in “political absolutism”: Putin – Assad – Khamenei | Putin – Orban – Erdogan – (Khamenei). The dry outer skin of the onion wants another story: secular vs religious power; Sunni vs Shiite teleology; Iran vs Iraq. However, lo and behold, as the Internet helps political wonks tear back the layers of the onion, Iran is in Iraq in a large evident way (and given the malignant psychology involved in men who would be as if gods — or just one — themselves, the Russo-Syrian-Iranian alliance may be what was in back of Daesh, for if one is to be as God, one would naturally manage the entire battle, not just one side of it.
As Putin was in the business of spending about $51 billion on the winter olympics in Sochi (the figure is disputed but still well into the tens of billions), he appears to have been thoroughly out of the business of tempering Assad’s response to a moderate, modern, and democratically updating revolutionary “Arab Spring” challenge or, Mr. Nice Guy, offering Russian aid to ameliorate the damage, displacement, and injury brought to millions of innocents. After all, it really wasn’t his concern, was it, whatever happened to Syrians.
The suggestion that Assad chose to bomb the daylights out of noncombatant zones while holding off on the al-Qaeda-types who came into theater of war may be borne out in the casualty, IDP, and refugee figures created in the monstrosity that is today the deeply polarized and globally signal “Syrian Civil War”, for while NATO and the western world press for classical liberal values in governance, it appears Putin, Assad, and Khamenei together press for immense systems of abuse, coercion, enslavement, and exploitation on the mighty piers of fear and patronage.
Call Syria an “axle of power” 🙂 — if the three dictators get away with driving over the state’s constituents to an inherently fascist conclusion, they might well drive the same anywhere else — and the end of that kind of power: the power to make others suffer capriciously, with impunity, without heart, without justice, without limits.
Still, Secretary of State John Kerry declared on Wednesday that the United States welcomed both initiatives. He made no call for Mr. Assad’s resignation, a notable omission from Mr. Kerry, who has typically insisted on it in public remarks. Instead, he spoke of Mr. Assad as a leader who needed to change his policies.
“It is time for President Assad, the Assad regime, to put their people first and to think about the consequences of their actions, which are attracting more and more terrorists to Syria, basically because of their efforts to remove Assad,” Mr. Kerry said.
Name the tyrants — communist, nationalist, Islamist (red-brown-green) — who have with grace backed away from or stepped down from power.
The Kremlin may be the main winner in the Lebanon war. Israel has been attacked with Soviet Kalashnikovs and Katyushas, Russian Fajr-1 and Fajr-3 rockets, Russian AT-5 Spandrel antitank missiles and Kornet antitank rockets. Russia’s outmoded weapons are now all the rage with terrorists everywhere in the world, and the bad guys know exactly where to get them. The weapons cases abandoned by Hezbollah were marked: “Customer: Ministry of Defense of Syria. Supplier: KBP, Tula, Russia.”
With . . . malignant narcissists, sociopaths, autocrats, political criminals, racketeers, and assorted other of our own human trash — not that I don’t want to help them, but given what criminal and political mafia do, that’s what they are — empathy is lacking. That’s $51 billion for the winter Olympics at Sochi — and not a dime for general Syrian relief.
Anywhere you travel across the Islamic Small Wars, from Afghanistan to Yemen, you will find this principle operating among the malicious, sadistic, and tyrannical running amok where they cannot be police or, similarly, can elude the officers of responsible governance.
The same may be discerned off of Putin’s hub in what he calls Russia’s “Near Abroad” — and among those he or his Administration courts, including back in November the PFLP.
Red. Brown. Green. Alliance.
Take aim at the criminality, cynicism, and inhumanity fostered beneath the revanch communist, nationalist, Islamist banners.
The stimulus was the presentation of an ancient note about empathy:
بنی آدم اعضای یک پیکرند
که در آفرينش ز یک گوهرند
چو عضوى به درد آورد روزگار
دگر عضوها را نماند قرار
تو کز محنت دیگران بی غمی
نشاید که نامت نهند آدمی
Translation:
Human beings are members of a whole,
In creation of one essence and soul.
If one member is afflicted with pain,
Other members uneasy will remain.
If you have no sympathy for human pain,
The name of human you cannot retain.
A Jew might note that with the introduction of Adam and Eve in the Torah, or as the curtain opens on humanity, imparted to Eve through the “fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” appear to be human consciousness, self-consciousness, and conscience.
Peace in Islam means submission to Allah. The ultimate meaning of Islamic peace is all of us living in Dar-al-Islam—the house of submission. This is not a “radical” interpretation. Modern-day Islamic scholar, Ibrahim Sulaiman, says submission and peace can be very different concepts, even if a form of peace is often brought about through forcing others into submission. “Jihad is not inhumane, despite its necessary violence and bloodshed, its ultimate desire is peace which is protected and enhanced by the rule of law.” Armed responses are only permitted when all peaceful possibilities have failed. And once armed resistance begins it doesn’t stop “until the war lays down its burden” as Allah has mentioned in the Qur’an 47.
These ideas are foreign to us in the West. But that does not make them any less true or binding on those who believe. To shrug them off as radical is to disrespect Islam.
Subscriber loyalty x nominal affiliation creates enormous headaches.
Qanta Ahmed and numerous other vocal Muslims stand squared against “political Islam,” “Islamists”, “Islamofascism”, and so on even though the very same continue building their “Muslim Botherhood” enterprise worldwide and sending into the world a violence that compares well to lightning strikes and volcanos as a completely mindless, spiritless, vacuous force and accident of nature.
Evergreen on BackChannels in regard to this argument that is about Islam, the Qur’an, volumes of Hadith, and 1,400 years of associated literary output inseparable from the character of the enterprise has been “Shimmer“. While that post addressed the ambiguities that confront the conflict observer, it has become plain around the world, whether with Pakistan’s experience involving ISI and Taliban — who, so sources tell me, continue to roam freely in Quetta — and slow moving organizational politics, or, most recently, Turkish President Erdogan’s veiled or passive cooperation with ISIS (or he would have had his army participate in their slugging during the siege of Kobani and the fighting going on there now) that would seem linked both to his self-concept as a Sunni Muslim and his predilection for Putinesque autocracy and self-aggrandizement, White Palace and all.
Although I feel the central psychology in “malignant narcissism” well noted here, the basis for Islamist drive found in Islamic text cannot fail to address and question the attractions of the same: no one rewrote the Qur’an to disseminate “prison Islam” or seduce souls to “Islamic Jihad”.
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“Whosoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whosoever that saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world.”
Ascribed to Hillel the Elder (circa 35-BCE to 10-CE) and Jerusalem Talmud Sanhedrin 4:1 (22a).
“On that account We ordained for the Children of Isra`il that if any one slew a person – unless it be for murder or for spreading mischief in the land – it would be as if he slew the whole humanity: and if any one saved a life, it would be as if he saved the whole humanity.”
In the concept that is “malignant narcissism”, the variable “locus of control” (although Rotter’s approach would seem to miss the dictators, the “verticals of power”) may number foremost among many features: who is being made central to the experience of the listener? Who is the controlling agent in “We decreed upon the Children of Israel . . . .”?
Humanist and modern Islam may look aghast at Boco Haram, ISIS, al-Qaeda, Taliban, Muslim Brotherhood, and so on but the same may have to approach either the deep misguidance and misreading of scripture or fly from both or go with the program as put on display by ISIS: the poetry would seem to leave little room for masking either its presumptions or its targets, dividing, conveniently, admirers from its intellectual competitors or, worse, its sources.
(On political locus of control, I suspect the more tender the deep or repressed personality — the narcissistically injured or mortified person — either the more manipulative and sadistic the personality encountered or, amazingly, reparative The dynamic psychology and social psychology at this nexus would be a good area for study — online, at least, the field, as of this afternoon’s quick look, looks wide open).
Paris police said the turnout was “without precedent” but too large to count. One organiser said he had indications it could be between 1.3 and 1.5 million people. Some commentators said the last street presence in the capital on this scale was at the Liberation of Paris from Nazi Germany in 1944.
Boko Haram is getting more extreme itself. This week, the group used a 10-year-old girl as a suicide bomber. “I doubt much if she actually knew what was strapped to her body,” one observer told AFP. The group has been using young women and children more and more.
Hundreds of bodies – too many to count – remain strewn in the bush in Nigeria from an Islamic extremist attack that Amnesty International described as the “deadliest massacre” in the history of Boko Haram.
Fighting continued on Friday around Baga, a town on the border with Chad where insurgents seized a key military base on 3 January and attacked again on Wednesday.
Local officials this week said the attack forced at least 20,000 people from Baga and other settlements in and around Lake Chad to flee, many of them across the border.
Nearly 600 others had been stranded on an island on the lake without food, water or shelter.
Addressing a large gathering outside the kosher supermarket that was targeted, Prime Minister Manuel Valls said: “Today, we are all Charlie, we are all police officers, we are all Jews of France.”
One may with immediate difficulty argue that the Islamist’s perception of Islam is aberrant and untenable given what at least seems like an increase in the tempo and virulence of Islamist attacks on soft targets and Islamist efforts to establish absolute rule by divine fiat in the form of caliphate or Islamic republic globally. Not only lone wolves have launched attacks on state, business, media (and specifically Jewish) targets, but terrorist teams and assembled militia have as well.
New York – Cataclysmic destruction of the Twin Towers Washington – Attempt to demolish the Pentagon London – Coordinated attack on the public transport system; the beheading of an off duty soldier in broad daylight in full public view Madrid – Bombing of crowded commuter trains at rush hour Nairobi – Seizure of Westgate shopping mall and murder of scores of innocents Burgas, Bulgaria – Bombing of a tourist bus Mumbai – Murderous attack on the Taj Mahal Hotel, Chabad House and other sites Boston – Bombing of the city’s annual marathon Bali – Bombing of crowded tourist locations Buenos Aires – Deadly attacks on Jewish institutions and the Israeli Embassy Ottawa – Assault on the Canadian Parliament Sydney – Recent seizure of a downtown café and murder of two customers In-Amenas, Algeria – Seizure of a gas facility and murder of dozens of civilians Chibock, Nigeria – Abduction of almost 300 schoolgirls, reportedly to serve as sex slaves This bloodcurdling list is in no way complete, and numerous other incidents could be added. It certainly does not include all the attempted attacks that were foiled by security services in various countries, preventing the commission of even more gruesome atrocities by adherents of Islam.
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The reality is that there is a problem with Islam. To say that is not to deny Islam’s immense diversity, impugn the millions of Muslims who abhor the horrors being wreaked in their name, or dispute the enduring value of religious faith in a secular age.
But it is undeniable that Islam’s distinctive features make it especially vulnerable to being used to incite religiously motivated violence.
Al-Baghdadi is emulating the Prophet Muhammad – the ultimate Islamic role model.[“Al-Baghdadi also claims to share the Prophet’s lineage when he calls himself Al-Qurayshi, a member of the Quraysh tribe, to which the Prophet belonged.”] The Prophet, while displaying cruelty in battle – cruelty mirrored by the IS – put off battles with his enemies and integrated compromises and tactical agreements in his policy, in order to gather strength prior to renewing action to obtain his ultimate goals.
The French have not yet grasped the reality that radical Islamic terror rooted in the Middle East, but nurtured by misguided politics on their own soil, may begin by targeting free speech, authority as personified by the fallen policemen and women, and Jews but, as with all totalitarian ideologies, it eventually targets everyone who do not bend to their will.
On BackChannels — if this post works — it has a context an adventure in political psychology and the interplay between personality — “malignant narcissism” — and controlled information space (language, linguistics, propaganda, gaslighting, political theater, manipulation, etc.) and political power that drives despotism, fascism, sadism.
Our global Internet with English as lingua franca has become the largest “mirror, mirror on the wall” in political history, and it reflects through and back to a political elite, from pundits worldwide to leaders worldwide. Its reach is limited, of course, by language barriers and Internet filtering. That leaves the despotic putting on a show for still captive constituents, but they know the barriers remain nonetheless permeable. Bilingual national speakers, extended diaspora — including Palestinian diaspora — encounter these pages and videos as much and as well as anyone else.
There is always a “next new world”, and we’re heading for it even while some turn back and revel in a long ago darkness; for others, the dawn spreads out before them and everyone.
“In an unseen control room, to the producers’ signal, as I responded with words like ‘coexistence’, ‘integration’ or ‘pluralism’, a technician pulled the trigger and rolled the stock ‘Israel as a terrorist state’ footage; detonating my truthful and universal message. I had been reduced to an instrument of rank media opportunism.”
I’ve been appearing a lot on Iran’s Press TV Show the Debate. Anyone who watches the show can see it’s not really a true debate, but a propaganda show put on by the Velat-y-Faqih regime in Iran.
“Disingenuous speech” is just a fancy way of saying “dishonest talk” or, let’s get right down to it: “lying” — and as far as BackChannels is concerned, lies are told either to hide something (often the liar’s own thieving from his marks) or to get something (through deceit).
Test the thought on the oligarchs of post-KGB Soviet Russia now FSB-controlled neo-feudal Russia; or Ayatollah Khamenei and his brother (by the grace of the Setad conglomerate); on Victor Orban’s developing “regime” in Hungary; on the guy with the “White Palace” in Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
There’s more to the politics played, I will grant you, but the destruction of integrity before a malignant narcissism and controlling (and frequently sadistic) will would seem a common denominator.
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