Category Archives: Religion

FTAC – Language, Islam, and ‘Cultural Metonymic Stability’

21 Tuesday Jun 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Philology, Political Psychology, Politics, Religion

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Re. Language — https://www.amazon.com/Language-Cultural-Daniel-L-Everett/dp/0307473805 The author, Daniel Everett, challenges a substantial basis or claim in Chomsky’s theorizing about language.

My kernel for how languages work would be metonymy with paired, primary, and secondary sound/other signal associations. N. may want to catch this because it’s one of the elements involved in conflict within Islam that make winnowing the issue down to the “God Mob” (such may not be restricted to Islam but may be archaic elsewhere) so difficult. If one asks, for example, what the term “homosexual” means in terms of its resonance — what else does it call to mind? — we have several approaches to analyzing that. The science community might want to know and then refer to the incidence in behavior in nature x species and fit that data and theorizing about it with similar data compiled for Homo Sapiens sapiens.

The bohemian-creative communities, long on hedonism, unconsciously selfish or deep down exploitive and willful, give it a glance, give it a go, paint, write, dance, sing (“Take a Walk on the Wild Side”) about it, include it, dismiss it as trivial, so many other things considered, and move right on to their next scene. Dig? 🙂

And the religious refer to holy scripture and the logic of edict that must follow, which mentality went hard on the witches of Salem, not too many hundreds of years ago, and has visited similar villainy to . . . gays in an Orlando nightclub.

Bored, confused, dead-ended, invisible, still energetic and searching for answers — and then comes imam or speaker Farrokh Sekaleshfar who explains that the Muslim response to homosexuality is death, and it would be merciful to get it over with.

Now we have an issue: how stable is that message in Islamic jurisprudence and scholarship?

That’s really asking a question about metonymy within Arabic and within Islamic thought.

Then: how authoritative and how deep goes the distribution of that thought through the Ummah?

The Dhimmi and infidel on the defensive before such a cultural and political program may approach the same thought with external ideas, and chief among alternatives authoritative secular governance founded on reason undergirded by science and research and wedded to compassion, humility, inclusion, and tolerance.

Counterterrorism is a complex field, but in the language part, many recognize aspects of the talk (e.g., invoking the term “crusader west”) that key into signature by way of talk x behavioral change x foreign travel / association with Muslim Brotherhood figures x media obsessions x planning x arming.

In the west, wild poets alter the meaning of elements in language on an experimental basis, at least, and the public picks up and sustains what it finds “cool” — and, for the most part, the culture, the whole shebang, recapitulates itself into the modern English world.

In the Ummah, one still meets Farrokh Sekaleshfar sincerely plying old and frankly monstrous thought with authority. He’s got his hands full today (as a person of interest to western authorities), but what he’s drawn from in language has “cultural metonymic stability” — i.e., he’s not the only one talking that talk and pushing it into everyone’s future.

Related on BackChannels

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/06/12/omar-mir-seddique-mateen-known-to-the-fbi/ – 6/12/2016.

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FTAC – Counterterrorism and Intercession

15 Wednesday Jun 2016

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Religion

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There would seem to me multiple components involved in intercession, starting with bag searches and metal detectors in proximity to potential targets. However, we have been asking law enforcement to produce a response to _anticipated_ crimes. To do that, we need to do some new things:

1. Acknowledge that a limited “opposition” — “Islamists”, not Islam — believes that it is at war with us, including most Muslims, and that it is — in this order — talking, walking, planning, operationalizing, and acting.

2. Broaden — by reducing strictures on — detention periods and surveillance of persons of interest, so that the talker and walker who pings the FBI radar, as has happened many times now, may enjoy some surreptitious follow-up as needed (say as when acquiring new weapons from the local gun shop).

3. In the region of freedom of speech, we need law recognizing “jihadi-talk” as involving conspiracy and incitement, and then we need permit to act against those who mix the poison that gets in through the ears and eyes and those who deliver that poison by publishing it. There have long been traditional limits to freedom of speech — conspiracy, incitement, libel, and slander. In the area of conspiracy and incitement, we have expected direct contact or cooperation between parties, but today we well know that mediated contact perhaps bolstered by related presentations in the mosque are sufficient to contribute to the motivation of an attack.

4. In the region of freedom of religion, we have to recognize that a religion that has in several aspects the motivation of subduing the world by force in fact represents an alien and invasive political program. As regards those aspects, challenge, confrontation, and reformation involve time, short or long, and the kind of time required is long as regards determining what options are forward and then very short, i.e., the time it takes a person to make a small decision in a good direction.

On those “options forward”, there are today many channels, some congruent with leaving scripture alone but interpreting it more deeply — or tortuously depending on one’s perspective; some unabashedly reformist and determined to eliminate “Political Islam” — and then rejection of the the faith through the abandonment of religion altogether, conversions to other faiths or traditions, and any number of adjustments as seem fit to those who flatly reject extremist programs.

FTAC – On ‘Different Talks — Same Walk’

13 Monday Jun 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Political Psychology, Politics, Religion, Syndicate Red Brown Green

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https://conflict-backchannels.com/syndicate-red-brown-green/

When it comes to autocracy and insanity, more or less, think “Different Talks — Same Walk.”

The combines of bipolar and malignantly narcissistic psychology cross cultural, ideological, and religious divides to produce the kind of person that becomes a dictator or the kind of person that becomes a terrorist.

Scaled in terms familiar in social psychology, some percentage of population drifts toward and into the available extremes at the margins of their chosen channels.

While the “Kool-Aid” varies, there are a lot of language- and information-related processes ferrying the right kind of personality into their kind of combat or political action.

With Islam — as opposed to, say, post-Soviet neo-feudal Russian nationalism — I / we, perhaps, have been on a journey from knowing very little to knowing enough to at least get the big picture about right, and with that we’re getting to see how the “jihadists” differ from Muslims who really have no wish to force on others or otherwise vigorously purvey “Political Islam”.

Greater than Islam may be our general transition and transformation from the medieval worldviews represented by “Red Brown Green” to the modern one of greater cooperation, integration, integrity, and inclusion plus, not a small thing, the want of being helpful to others.

Although one cannot overlook the medieval character of medieval religions and related behaviors; however, one may choose to set aside aspects of the content of one screed or another to more closely focus on the political and social psychology at work  — to be found on this blog: “social grammar”, “malignant narcissism”, “medieval vs modern”, etc.

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Posted to YouTube 4/6/2016

Related: Quinn, Liam.  “‘Let’s get rid of them’: British-born Islamic preacher who has called for gays to be ‘executed’ was giving lectures in Orlando weeks before nightclub massacre.”  Daily Mail, June 13, 2016.

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Omar Mir Seddique Mateen – Known to the FBI

12 Sunday Jun 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Religion

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Carlos Bledsoe

The suspect arrested in the fatal shooting of one soldier and the critical injury of another at a Little Rock, Ark., Army recruiting booth today was under investigation by the FBI’s Joint Terrorist Task Force since his return from Yemen, ABC News has learned.

The investigation was in its preliminary stages, authorities said, and was based on the suspect’s travel to Yemen and his arrest there for using a Somali passport.

Esposito, Richard, Pierre Thomas and Jack Date.  “Recruit Shooting Suspect Under FBI Investigation.”  ABC News, June 1, 2009.

Alton Nolen

“This do we find the clear precedent that explains the particular penchant of Islamic terrorists to behead their victims, it is merely another precedent bestowed by their Prophet,” reads the caption, which adds a citation from the Quran, “I will instill terror into the hearts of the Unbelievers; smite ye about their necks.”

With this heinous act, Nolen may have been seeking to convince himself, if nobody else, that he was not just an ex-con who was once again out of work.

Daly, Michael.  “The Muslim Convert Behind America’s First Workplace Beheading.”  The Daily Beast, September 27, 2014.

Here is a little bit of the word on “Prison Islam”:

Oliver testified that allowing the Muslim prisoners to pray in a group led the prisoners to setting up an inmate-led Muslim gang. The gang “shunned” other prisoners, forbidding them from joining the group prayer as well as controlling access to food and laying stake to the “meditation room” being used by leaving their prayer rugs and other religious items to the point of intimidating other faith groups from using the room.

Oliver testified that a group of Catholic prisoners gave up trying to use the room. “They said it was the Muslim room,” Oliver stated.

The Clarion Project.  “Prison Officials: Muslim Group Prayer Led to Gangs.”  July 2, 2013.

It may be noted that conversions to Islam in prison bring criminals into the Ummah, and of that lot, some well may well represent the kind of person who would step on to the manufacturing floor and behead an unsuspecting (what’s to suspect?) coworker just doing her job.

Bipolar Disorder and Narcissistic Personality Disorder have been noted on BackChannels in the context of the construction of concepts perhaps useful to the field of Political Psychology, which concept list includes, of course, the “malignant narcissism” so often associated with dictators, who, if they were not so large, might just as well have turned out machete-wielding monsters at work.

Loose citations (lazy ones) for “Prison Islam”:

http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/04/05/muslim-terrorists-running-whole-prison-blocks-sharia-law/ – 4/5/2016. | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/how-belgian-prisons-became-a-breeding-ground-for-islamic-extremism/2016/03/27/ac437fd8-f39b-11e5-a2a3-d4e9697917d1_story.html – 3/27/2016. | http://www.meforum.org/blog/2015/08/islam-prison. – 8/30/2015.

Nidal M. Hasan

A Senate investigation of the Fort Hood shootings faults the Army and FBI with missing warning signs and not exchanging information that could have prevented the massacre.

Wan, William and Felicia Sonmez.  “Senate probe faults Army, FBI for missing warning signs before Fort Hood Attack.”  The Washington Post, February 3, 2011.

Causes for that fumble: aversion to “bureaucratic confrontation”; “political correctness”; and, possibly, military civility, politeness, and avoidance of opening the proverbial can of worms.  Basically, before the fact, no one knew how to field what was coming out of Nidal Hasan’s heart through his mouth.

Also at the time, great official political correctness, an adamant refusal to invoked the term “violent islamist extremism” produced the absurdity of labeling the “Alahu Akbar” laced mass murder as violence in the workplace.

Talk, behavioral change, and, inevitably, “arming up” become part of the terrorist’s narrative on the way to mayhem — but how are officials to select who to “gumshoe” or, were the laws to allow greater flexibility in examinations without charges, who to detain?

Tamerlan Tsarnaev

The FSB first contacted the FBI about Tsarnaev in March 2011. At the time, he was a resident of Boston who seemed too interested in making contact with or joining a militant group in the Caucasus. The U.S. intelligence official said the FBI made three separate requests to Russian authorities for more information about Tsarnaev without an adequate response. The FBI concluded that the Russians considered Tsarnaev a threat to themselves, not the United States.

Finn, Peter.  “Decades of distrust restrain cooperation between FBI and Russia’s FSB.”  The Washington Post, May 8, 2013.

Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez

He was not on any U.S. terror list and the FBI was not aware of his having any terrorist leanings. Abdulazeez had been stopped by local police in April when he was booked for a DUI..

Pugeus, Jeff.  “What we know about the gunman in Chattanooga attack.”  CBS News, July 16, 2015.

The Abdulazeez “lone wolf” attack appears not to have produced significant “signal” out ahead of itself.  The gunman sent up no caution flags before his attack.

Mohamed Barry

A machete-wielding man who stormed an Ohio restaurant and slashed diners at their tables had previously been investigated by the FBI over his radical Islamist views.
Mohamed Barry, 30, from the Republic of Guinea, West Africa, was shot dead by police during the rampage at Nazareth Restaurant and Deli, a Mediterranean restaurant owned by an Israeli man in Columbus, on Thursday.

Graham, Regina F., Hannah Parry, and Khaleda Rahman.  “FBI investigated Barry four years ago for expressing radical Islamic views.”  Daily Mail, February 15, 2016.

One cannot (yet) cry “Lone wolf!” before the crime, which is today everyone’s problem.

Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik

Officials said that not only had he never been a criminal suspect, but that he was also never mentioned by anyone interviewed by the F.B.I.

Schmidt, Michael S. and Richard Perez-Pena.  “F.B.I. Treating San Bernardino Attack as Terrorism Case.”  The New York Times, December 4, 2015.

Malik belonged to an educated, politically influential family from Karor Lal Esan in the Layyah district of Pakistan. Malik Ahmad Ali Aulakh, a cousin of Malik’s father, was once a provincial minister. Residents said the Aulakh family is known to have connections to militant Islam.

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Investigators have learned that Farook had made contact — in some cases by phone and in others via social media — with people who came up tangentially in previous federal terrorism investigations. But he had not drawn any scrutiny.

Sahi, Aoun, David S. Cloud, and Brian Bennett.  “Tashfeen Malik was ‘modern girl’ who began posting extremist messages on Facebook.”  Los Angeles Times, December 6, 2015.

We all have people in our lives, some equipped with dangerous ideas and personalities to match, and in light of “Social Grammar”, which always applies on this blog, some to many personalities give way before cult, family, in-group, and tribal messages and related pressures either intimidating other thought or promoting deeply malign speech and action paths — and just as many prove more independent and strongly resist the intellectual poisoning associated with one or more social environments or relationships.

As the west does not do guilt or suspicion by mere association — something an outsized paranoid like Stalin would do — the FBI’s call on the matter fits with world’s broadest bandwidth in freedom of religion and of speech.

Still, in 20/20 hindsight, one might add up the dimensions involved: some extremist associates in the family, foreign association with radical centers like Islamabad’s Lal Masjid, and then . . . Islamist expression on Facebook or elsewhere.

When and how should a government step in?

What methods of detention might work?

What laws involving conspiracy or sedition might be needed to get to this kind of person before they arrive at what will become the scene of their crime?

Omar Mir Seddique Mateen

The father of Omar Mateen, identified by police as the man behind the carnage at an Orlando nightclub early Sunday morning, is an Afghan man who holds strong political views, including support for the Afghan Taliban. In a video he posted on Saturday, he appears to be portraying himself as the president of Afghanistan.

Bearak, Max.  “Orlando suspect’s father hosted a TV show and now pretends to be Afghanistan’s president.”  The Washington Post, June 12, 2016.

In the article cited, it’s the killer’s daddy that sounds a wee bit off the hook.

Be that as it may, the son, Omar, had not been completely off law enforcement’s radar.

“The FBI first became aware of Mateen in 2013 when he made inflammatory comments to co-workers alleging possible terrorist ties,” Hopper said.
The investigation was closed, Hopper said, after investigators “were unable to verify the substance of his comments.”

Perez, Evan, Shimon Prokupecz, and Catherine E. Shoichet.  “Omar Mateen pledged allegiance to ISIS, official says.”  CNN, June 12, 2016.

The story is continuing to break as I type, and it’s expected that more details will come out in the course of the investigation.

As regards “persons of interest”, and a few noted here were certainly either that or potentially that, the same issues — who to watch, what to watch for, and when and how to intervene before the fact — will be topics for debate in law involving sedition and detention for some time to come.

Addendum – 6/14/2016

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/06/14/fbi-director-orlando-shooting-probe-also-looks-backward-into-agency-files-on-shooter/

Addendum – 7/6/2016

Mohamed Bailor Jalloh

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.

U. S. Department of Justice.  “Former Army National Guard Member Arrested for Attempting to Provide Material Support to ISISL.”  July 5, 2016.

Additional Reference

The Last English Prince.  “Omar Mir Seddique Mateen: Understanding the Meaning of this Name.”  June 12, 2016.

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_Back to the Ethic_ Author Diane Weber Bederman to Appear on Janet Mefford Today — Today!

02 Thursday Jun 2016

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Political Psychology, Religion

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6-2-16 – On the next JANET MEFFERD TODAY: The Bible is the blueprint for the values of Western Civilization. And yet, our culture has neglected the very framework that holds our liberties intact. How do we rescue it? Diana Weber-Bederman joins me to discuss that and her book, “Back to the Ethic.” Plus: The Left’s new attacks on Christian colleges — and how some Christian colleges are undermining their own mission. That and more on Thursday’s JANET MEFFERD TODAY.

Announcement link: http://janetmefferd.com/podcasts/

Local Affiliate Radio Stations and Showtimes for Janet Mefferd Today: http://janetmefferd.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/JMT-Stations.pdf

Previously on BackChannels: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/02/11/rediscovery-renewal-of-devotion-bedermans-back-to-the-ethic-reclaiming-western-values/

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FTAC – Ejection of the Archaic Past

22 Sunday May 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, A Little Wisdom, Epistemology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Philology, Philosophy, Politics, Religion, Syndicate Red Brown Green

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The clip dates from 2013. I take note of the time because we’re in changing times where we may not be able to observe change — by what we’re able to see, we’re too limited — but if it’s taking place, there should be fewer of these clips available this year than there may have been in 2013.

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Archaic-Past | Restive Middle | Modern Muslim Reform Movements

That “archaic past” can no longer do any real thing for anyone except enrich its handful of malignant and piratical leaders. It’s going to go away, visible if by way of combat with the al-Qaeda Typicals, invisible if by way of unspoken individual and popular rejection. Out with the old. The new has many channels forward, including a conservative aspect, which I find convoluted but . . . what works might work.

Regarding Corbyn and the Far Out Left — http://www.the-american-interest.com/…/the-derangement…/

This is the 25th Anniversary Year of the Dissolving of the Soviet, and The Phantom of the Soviet wanders around in such persons as Corbyn, who should be also part of the “archaic past”.

Relevant on my blog: https://conflict-backchannels.com/syndicate-red-brown-green/

Those “al-Qaeda Typicals”, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the organizations and persons that support them are today readily visible to the public.  Perhaps still tender and less visible are organizations like the Muslim Reform Movement and publications like New Age Islam.

BackChannels’ question: has the modern world with its “math, science, and technology” mania passed the age of miracles?

The religion of the future will be cosmic religion. It will transcend personal God and avoid dogma and theology. - Albert Einstein

Is new scripture possible?

Are new exegeses based on old scripture possible and useful?

Over the years on this blog, and with such off-hand gems as “anthropolitical psychology”, one may look into the future with clinical observation and certainty, which may or may not be spiritually satisfying.

What does it mean to observe and say our global inventory of languages stands at fewer than 7,000 living languages, we are losing several every year, and each represents through sound and other signal a distinct way of living with others in proximity and with the land on which The People have been cultured?

Is that all there is?

Could be.

It could be magnificent as well if we continue to find God, Nature, and The Universe awesome beyond our comprehension.

Related: http://thomasberry.org/

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FTAC -Longitude – The Hebrews, Judaism, and Law

16 Monday May 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Political Psychology, Politics, Religion

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While Judaism, Jewishness, and Zionism combine in the interest of Hebrew ethnolinguistic cultural and spiritual survival, the religion probably should not be confused with the practical motivation for related ethnic survival. For anti-Semites only, it’s all the same — Jews, Jewish faith, Israel, Zionism — but attacking Zionism in the age of tolerance becomes the more sustainable ploy.

In contemporary animus and conflicts targeting Jewish life, there are four themes:

1. Absolute Power — political power consolidated in one ruler;
2. Capricious Law — because the ruler is the law;
3. Idolatry – the ruler lays claim to divine right or historic inevitability for his legitimacy in power, and progressively conflates his image with God or the State, and expects followers to respond appropriately — or else!
4. Sadism — with confusion as to what is God and what is human, the permit to exercise a singular will to make others suffer with impunity comes into play.

However any may care to think about any number of political and religious figures in history, I feel the above describe the character of tyrants, small or large, or men or women on the way to becoming tyrants.

The Jewish program embedded in Christianity and Islam — attractive in Rome and useful in consolidating the Arab world — unfailingly promotes (from the git-go in Genesis) human consciousness, self-consciousness or self-awareness, and, most important of all, the possession of a human conscience. Moses later becomes the lawgiver who would oppose Pharaoh in the exercise of his contention that he himself was as if a god.

Game over.

The defense and transfer of concept over thousands of years has been apparently painful. The Jews, we Jews, are a mixed lot, including the atheist portion, but common to all has been mutual good regard, from Adam to Netanyahu, and the development of a conversation through time about divinity, ethics, and morality. We know discipline and order too, but Torah-derived or induced argument (regarding Isaac, should Abraham have talked back to God?) has led to a compendium of law sufficient for living, working, and trading in peace worldwide.

As an ethnolinguistic cohort, the Hebrews could grow only so much in numbers as Hebrews, but the uptake in Christianity and Islam fills in the story.

The “Abrahamic Faiths” should get off the bloody medieval and tribal merry-go-rounds and revisit their “operating instructions” line by line and in the context set by time — BCE, CE, feudal, medieval, mercantile, possibly “post-modern” — and eject the absurdity of global competition based on being born with a few labels in place.

As time is spacious and timeless, what other work than that of fostering ethnolinguistic cultural survival and co-evolution by producing a global political atmosphere in which mutual good regard matters.

Reference Off to the Side

Oppenheim, Lassa.  “International Law: A Treatise.”  London, New York: Longmans, Green, and Co, 1905.

While “The West” draws its shape also from Greek and Roman civilizations, the “Judeo-Christian” contributions in thought and in woefully bloody history serve to have produced so far deeply desired and survivable codes of conduct and of law.  Whether we’ll be able to enlarge the familiar term to “Judeo-Christian-Muslim” contributions remains to be seen, for as implied by way of the awesome conversation, what Baghdadi has put on demonstration smacks of absolute power, capricious law, idolatry, and sadism, all of which greater portions of Islam seem to be rejecting as I type.

American Islamic Forum for Democracy.  “Declaration of the Muslim Reform Movement / Signed by AIFD (December 4, 2015).

Berman, Ilan.  “Morocco’s Islamic Exports: The Counterterrorism Strategy Behind the Mohammed VI Institute for the Training of Imams.”  Foreign Affairs, May 12, 2016.

Varagur, Krithika.  “World’s Largest Islamic Organization Tells ISIS to Get Lost.”  The World Post / Huffington Post, December 3, 2015.

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