Terrorism – Page 5 – Maverick Philosopher

What is to be Done? The Dark Side of Diversity

What is to be done about the threat of radical Islam? After explaining the problem, Pat Buchanan gives his answer:

How do we deal with this irreconcilable conflict between a secular West and a resurgent Islam?

First, as it is our presence in their world that enrages so many, we should end our interventions, shut down the empire and let Muslim rulers deal with Muslim radicals.

Second, we need a moratorium on immigration from the Islamic world. Inevitably, some of the young we bring in, like the Tsarnaevs, will yield to radicalization and seek to strike a blow for Islam against us.

What benefit do we derive as a people to justify the risks we take by opening up America to mass migration from a world aflame with hatred and hostility over race, ethnicity, culture, history and faith?

Why are we bringing all of the world's quarrelsome minorities, and all the world's quarrels with them, into our home?

What we saw in Boston was the dark side of diversity.

Buchanan is right. We will never be able to teach the backward denizens of these God-forsaken regions how to live. And certainly not by invasion and bombing. Besides, what moral authority do we have at this point? We are a country in dangerous fiscal, political, and moral decline. The owl of Minerva is about to spread her wings. We will have our hands full keeping ourselves afloat for a few more years. Until we wise up and shape up, a moratorium on immigration from Muslim lands is only common sense.

Common sense, however, is precisely what liberals lack. So I fear things will have to get much worse before they get better.

Backlash and ‘Frontlash’

Some lefty scribblers, effete and epicene, have their knickers in a knot worrying about the nativist and xenophobic 'backlash' post-Paris and post-San Bernardino. Even worse, however, is Attorney General Loretta Lynch's disgracing of herself along these lines:

Lynch addressed the Muslim Advocate’s tenth-anniversary dinner and declared that she is concerned about an “incredibly disturbing rise of anti-Muslim rhetoric . . . that fear is my greatest fear.” Her greatest fear is — not terrorism — but a nonexistent Islamophobic backlash? ISIS has demonstrated that it can bring down passenger jets, strike the heart of a great Western capitol with urban assault teams, and inspire horrible carnage in California. We also know that ISIS has pledged to keep attacking the U.S. and possesses chemical weapons. Yet it’s politically incorrect speech that strikes fear into the heart of our attorney general.

To put it in the form of an understatement: Lefties are not very good at threat assessment. I should think that the 'frontlash' is far worse than any backlash that is likely to occur.

Time for a Moratorium on Immigration from Muslim Lands?

And now San Bernardino. It is surely 'interesting' that in supposedly conservative media venues such as Fox News there has been no discussion, in the wake of this latest instance of Islamic terrorism, of the obvious question whether immigration from Muslim lands should be put on hold. Instead, time is wasted refuting silly liberal calls for more gun control. 'Interesting' but not surprising. Political correctness is so pervasive that even conservatives are infected with it. It is very hard for most of us, including conservatives, to believe that it is Islam itself and not the zealots of some hijacked version thereof that is the problem. But slowly, and very painfully, people are waking up. But I am not sanguine that only a few more such bloody events will jolt us into alertness. It will take many more.

So is it not eminently reasonable to call for a moratorium on immigration from Muslim lands? Here are some relevant points. I would say that they add up to a strong cumulative case argument for a moratorium.

1. There is no right to immigrate. See here for some arguments contra the supposed right by Steven A. Camarota. Here is my refutation of an argument pro. My astute commenters add further considerations. Since there is no right to immigrate, immigrants are allowed in only if they meet certain criteria. Surely we are under no obligation to allow in those who would destroy our way of life.

2. We philosophers will debate until doomsday about rights and duties and everything else. But in the meantime, shouldn't we in our capacity as citizens exercise prudence and advocate that our government exercise prudence? So even if in the end there is a right to immigrate, the prudent course would be to suspend this supposed right for the time being until we get a better fix on what is going on. Let's see if ISIS is contained or spreads. Let's observe events in Europe and in Britain. Let's see if Muslim leaders condemn terrorism. Let's measure the extent of Muslim assimilation.

3. "Overwhelming percentages of Muslims in many countries want Islamic law (sharia) to be the official law of the land, according to a worldwide survey by the Pew Research Center." Here. Now immigrants bring their culture and their values with them. Most Muslims will bring a commitment to sharia with them. But sharia is incompatible with our American values and the U. S. Constitution. Right here we have a very powerful reason to disallow immigration from Muslim lands.

4. You will tell me that not all Muslims subscribe to sharia, and you will be right. But how separate the sheep from the goats? Do you trust government officials to do the vetting? Are you not aware that people lie and that the Muslim doctrine of taqiyya justifies lying?

5. You will insist that not all Muslims are terrorists, and again you will be right. But almost all the terrorism in the world at the present time comes from Muslims acting upon Muslim beliefs.

Pay attention to the italicized phrase.

There are two important related distinctions we need to make.

There is first of all a distinction between committing murder because one's ideology, whether religious or non-religious, enjoins or justifies murder, and committing murder for non-ideological reasons or from non-ideological motives. For example, in the Charlie Hebdo attack, the murders were committed to avenge the blasphemy against Muhammad, the man Muslims call 'The Prophet' and consider Allah's messenger. And that is according to the terrorists themselves. Clearly, the terrorist acts were rooted in Muslim religious ideology in the same way that Communist and Nazi atrocities were rooted in Communist and Nazi political ideology, respectively. Compare that to a mafioso killing an innocent person who happens to have witnessed a crime the mafioso has committed. The latter's a mere criminal whose motives are crass and non-ideological: he just wanted to score some swag and wasn't about to be inconvenienced by a witness to his crime. "Dead men tell no tales."

The other distinction is between sociological and doctrinal uses of terms such as 'Mormon,' 'Catholic,' Buddhist,' and 'Muslim.' I know a man who is a Mormon in the sense that he was born and raised in a practicing Mormon family, was himself a practicing Mormon in his early youth, hails from a Mormon state, but then 'got philosophy,' went atheist, and now rejects all of the metaphysics of Mormonism. Is he now a Mormon or not? I say he is a Mormon sociologically but not doctrinally. He is a Mormon by upbringing but not by current belief and practice. This is a distinction that absolutely must be made, though I won't hold it against you if you think my terminology less than felicitous. Perhaps you can do better. Couch the distinction in any terms you like, but couch it.

Examples abound. An aquaintance of mine rejoices under the surname 'Anastasio.' He is Roman Catholic by upbringing, but currently a committed Buddhist by belief and practice. Or consider the notorious gangster, 'Whitey' Bulger who is fortunately not an acquaintance of mine. Biographies of this criminal refer to him as Irish-Catholic, which is not wrong. But surely none of his unspeakably evil deeds sprang from Catholic moral teaching. Nor did they spring from Bulger's 'hijacking' of Catholicism. You could call him, with some justification, a Catholic criminal. But a Catholic who firebombs an abortion clinic to protest the evil of abortion is a Catholic criminal in an entirely different sense. The difference is between the sociological and the doctrinal.

6. Perhaps you will say to me that the percentage of Muslims who are terrorists is tiny. True. But all it takes is a handful, properly positioned, with the right devices, to bring the country to a screeching halt. And those who radicalize and inspire the terrorists need not be terrorists themselves. They could be imams in mosques operating in quiet and in secret.

7. You will tell me that a moratorium would keep out many good, decent Muslims who are willing to assimilate, who will not try to impose sharia, who will not work to undermine our system of government, and who do not condone terrorism. And you will be right. But again, there is no right to immigrate. So no wrong is done to good Muslims by preventing them from immigrating.

8. Think of it in terms of cost and benefit. Is there any net benefit from Muslim immigration? No. The cost outweighs the benefit. This is consistent with the frank admission that there are many fine Muslims who would add value to our society.

9. Perhaps you will call me a racist. I will return the compliment by calling you stupid for thinking that Islam is a race. Islam is a religious political ideology.

It is Saturday night and I'm 'Islamed out.' I could say more but I've had enough for now. So I hand off to Patrick J. Buchanan, Time for a Moratorium on Immigration?

The Problem: Islam or a Construction of Islam?

Diana West:

Meanwhile, Islamic society is whitewashed by pretending the dangers it poses to Western societies are non-Islamic (the Left with talk of "extremism"), or so outside the Islamic norm as to render Islam itself beyond debate, beyond concern (the Right with talk of "Islamism").

Take a recent essay on Paris by Andrew C. McCarthy.

“Allahu Akbar!” cried the jihadists as they killed innocent after French innocent. The commentators told us it means “God is great.” But it doesn’t. It means “Allah is greater!” It is a comparative, a cry of combative aggression: “Our God is mightier than yours.” It is central to a construction of Islam,mainstream in the Middle East, that sees itself at war with the West. It is what animates our enemies. ['Construction' here means 'construal,' 'interpretation.']

We are supposed to believe that "a construction of Islam, mainstream in the Middle East," is what animates our enemies — not Islam.

Is that so?

If this were ten, five, three years ago, I might ask what Koran, sunnas, and hadiths that this "construction of Islam" is based upon? I might break out the poll data that demonstrates strong Muslim affinity for sharia the world over. I might point to a 2013 study of 9,000 Muslims in six European countries which found that 65 percent say that religious rules are more important that the laws of the country in which they live.

But is there a point? Fourteen years after 9/11, Islam is spectrum-wide defended in the public square even as it destroys the public square, while the threat to the public square is usually identitied as coming from Europe's so-called "far right."

But never fear. Memorial light displays are ready anywhere, anytime.

‘Politicization,’ National Debt, and the Paris Attacks

The Republicans have been accused of 'politicizing' the debt crisis. But how can you politicize what is inherently political? The debt in question is the debt of the federal government. Since a government is a political entity, questions concerning federal debts are political questions. As inherently political, such questions cannot be politicized.

If to reify is illicitly to treat as a thing that which is not a thing, then to politicize is illicitly to treat as political what is not political. Since governmental debt questions are 'already' political, they cannot be politicized.

Some commentators are now claiming that the Paris attacks are being 'politicized.' But again, how can something that is inherently political be 'politicized'? An attack by a terrorist entity upon a Western democracy is clearly a political event.

Someone might respond to me as follows. "I see your point, but when people say that an event is being politicized, what they mean is that it is being exploited for partisan advantage. Thus those opposed to Muslim immigration will 'use' the Paris attacks to support their case against such immigration."

I agree that this is what most people mean by 'politicization.' But then what is wrong with it? Nothing as far as I can see.

We must learn the lessons from these terrible events. One lesson of Paris, or rather a confirmation of a lesson that already should have been learned, is that radical Islam (militant Islam, Islamism, pick your term) is a grave threat to civilization. French civilization, and European civilization generally, borders on the decadent; but it is still to be preferred to the fanaticism, tribalism, and backwardness of the Islamic world. That is what we call an understatement.

So I say we need more 'politicization' in the second sense of the term. We need more 'exploitation' of such horrific crimes.

And there is a bridge from Paris to Mizzou.

In a characteristically piss-poor OpEd piece in the NYT entitled Exploiting Paris, Frank Bruni whines, "Using Paris to delegitimize them is puerile." He is referring to the 'safe space' girly-girls and crybullies.

This shows how willfully stupid he and his colleagues are. (Not all of them, of course: Douthat and Brooks are worth reading.) They fail to grasp the connection between the assault on free speech by the Islamists and that by the crybullies and pampered fascists of our elite universities. And they will never own up to the obvious fact that the Left serves to enable radical Islam.

Both are incredibly destructive forces that attack the foundations of genuine civilization. Observe also that the Left is not only destructive, but insanely self-destructive: they think they will use the Islamists for their ends; but they will be the first of the infidels to be slaughtered.

France Needs Stricter Gun Control . . .

. . . so that events like yesterday's massacre in Paris never happen again.

Yes, I am being sarcastic, and doubly so. First, stricter gun laws would have had no effect on yesterday's events. Second, the silly phrase "so that it never happens again," beloved of politicians, insults our intelligence and erodes their credibility even further.

Am I being 'insensitive'? Damn straight I am. And you should be too. 'Sensitivity' is for squishy bien-pensant liberals whose specialty is gushing and emoting rather than thinking. It is something for the 'safe space' girly-girls, whether female, male, or neuter, to demand of the sane.

Liberals love laws, but not the enforcement of laws. Legislating is easy, enforcement is hard. Enforcement leads to incarceration and then to the 'mass incarceration' of certain populations. And we can't have 'mass incarceration' can we?

How about a little common sense? I'd have to check, but I'll guess that France has laws against the smuggling of Kalashnikovs and other 'assault weapons.' Well, how about enforcing those laws?

How about a review of French immigration policy? Radical Islam is the paramount threat to civilization at the present time. Of course, not every Muslim is a terrorist. But the more Muslims you let in, the more terrorists you will have to contend with. And it wouldn't take many to bring a city or a nation to a screeching halt. (See How to Destroy a City in Five Minutes)

Am I blaming the victims? Damn straight I'm blaming the victims. And you should too. While the lion's share of the responsibility obvious lies with the jihadis, politically correct Frenchmen who refuse to face the reality of the Islamist threat must bear some responsibility. Blaming the victim is perfectly legitimate within certain limits. I have made this case in an earlier post

On Blaming the Victim

and in the following post I demonstrate legitimate victim-blaming:

Why are People so Easily Swindled?

American Sniper

It's a movie I haven't seen. I have no strong desire see it. I understand the principle; why do I need to rub my nose in the details? I know what a sniper is and I know what he does. It is an awful world in which snipers are needed, but they are, and they do a job that few of us could do. Could you put a high-powered round through the head of a child who was about to be sent on a suicide mission? I am not referring primarily to the mechanics of getting off a good clean shot that hits its target from a great distance after you have been lying in the weeds for hours in a war zone. I am talking about bearing the psychological burden.

There are two extremes to avoid: the bellicose jingoism of the my-country-right-or-wrong types and the knee-jerk, hate-America mentality of moral equivalentists and blame-America-firsters. If the brunt of my scorn in these pages is aimed at the latter, it is because they are in the ascendancy and need it more.Think of it as akin to a quasi-Kierkegaardian 'corrective' to quasi-Hegelian excesses.

Discussion of a Putative Counterexample to My Terrorism Definition

From a reader (the same one as yesterday):

I think the two distinctions you make are the right ones to make. I doubt that the four necessary conditions in your definition of 'terrorism' are jointly sufficient, but I'm not too concerned about that. [And I didn't claim that they are jointly sufficient, only that they are individually necessary.] I was hoping for a good practical definition and this is as good as I've seen (and better than the ones I offered). If the State Department were to adopt this definition, they would have a good, functional definition that got nearly every case right. It's too bad that you and I both know the State Department as currently staffed and run would never do anything so sane!

BV: Here is the State Department definition:

Title 22, Chapter 38 of the United States Code (regarding the Department of State) contains a definition of terrorism in its requirement that annual country reports on terrorism be submitted by the Secretary of State to Congress every year. It reads:

"[T]he term 'terrorism' means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents".^[53]

That is fairly close to what I said, though I wasn't aware of this definition until just now. I didn't mention premeditation, but that pretty much goes without saying. There are plenty of spur-of-the-moment crimes of passion, but how many spur-of-the-moment terrorist acts of passion are there? But three of my points are covered.

Here's my attempt at a counterexample. Suppose we are in Nazi Germany and suppose further that the Nazi state was not a legitimate one. Thus, in Germany during Nazi rule, there was no legitimate state. I am part of a German underground agency working to overthrow Hitler's regime because I and my agency recognize the Nazis as illegitimate and murderous. My agency is clearly not a state, so I think it meets condition three. My agency and I have a political goal: the overthrowing of the Nazi regime and the establishment of a legitimate government. So, condition one is met.

The other two conditions might be a little harder to meet. Suppose I know that Hitler is to give a speech at a rally, flanked by many high ranking Nazis. My agency has found a way to get myself and a few others into the crowd, but we know the Nazis thoroughly check a crowd for guns. Luckily, agent X is an ace explosive maker, and can make explosives out of things that not even the Nazis would suspect. Agent X equips us all with highly explosive cigarette lighters. We want to kill as many of the Nazi brass as we can and this may be the best shot we have. Given the circumstances, we do not have the option of discriminating between the "combatant" Nazis and the civilians who may have just come out of curiosity. We decide it is better to risk killing a civilians who are too close than not take the opportunity. Thus, we seem to meet condition two.

The question is whether this counts as an act of sabotage against the Nazis. It certainly involves the killing or maiming of other human beings. And, you might think that sabotage involves acts against legitimate entities, and the Nazis are not legitimate. It seems to me to be more than mere sabotage. But I think someone could reasonably disagree with me about that. If I'm right, then it appears that I'm a terrorist unless we come up with more conditions.

BV: Let us suppose that you count as a terrorist by my definition. Would that be a problem? My definition says nothing about whether terrorism is good or bad, morally permissible or impermissible. It merely states what it is. The original question was whether it is true that most terrorists, at the present time, are Muslims. To answer that question we need a definition of 'terrorist.' On the basis of my definition I would say that, yes, most terrorists today are Muslims. My concern was merely to define the phenomenon. I leave open whether some terrorist acts are morally permissible.

Of course, I consider Muslim terrorism unspeakably evil, from the beheading of Christians, including Christian children, to the attack on Charlie Hebdo, even though I consider the Hebdo crew to be moral scum who misuse, egregiously, the right to free speech, thereby confusing liberty with license. This is why it is is so wrong and indeed moronic for people to stand up for free speech by saying Je suis Charlie. Do they really mean to identify with those people? The way to stand up for free speech is by courageously but responsibly exercising one's right to free speech by speaking the truth, not by behaving in the manner of the adolescent punk who makes an idol of his own vacuous subjectivity and thinks he is entitled to inflict on the world every manifestation of his punkish vacuity.

If someone brings up all the violent drug cartel members in Mexico and Central and South America who 'terrorize' people, assassinate judges, bribe politicians and law enforcement agents, and so on, the answer is that they don't satisfy my first condition inasmuch as they are members of organized crime, not terrorists: they are not in pursuit of a political objective. It is not as if they aim to set up something like a narco-caliphate. They do not, like Muslim terrorists, seek to assume the burdens of governance in an attempt to bring about what they would consider to be a well-regulated social and political order in which human beings will flourish by their definition of flourishing. They attack existing states, but only because those states impede their criminal activities. See Mexican Drug Cartels are not Terrorists.

As for sabotage, I was suggesting that sabotage is not terrorism because terrorist acts are directed against persons primarily, while acts of sabotage are not directed against persons except indirectly. If Ed Abbey urinates into the gas tank of a Caterpillar tractor and manages to disable it, that will affect people but only indirectly. (But what about tree-spiking?) So I would not call you and your cohorts saboteurs.

You are not a terrorist by my definition because you are not indiscriminate in your attack on people: you are not trying to kill noncombatants. What you are doing comes under collateral damage.

The question of Double Effect comes up here as well. See my Israel, Hamas and the Doctrine of Double Effect.

Are Most Terrorists Muslims? And What is a Terrorist?

This recently over the transom:

I was reading your recent post on religious profiling in which you said, "Not all Muslims are terrorists, but most terrorists are Muslims." I totally agree, but it's something I've been thinking about lately. I saw someone else make the same claim just last week on another blog, and a liberal vehemently objected, claiming that the reason "most terrorists are Muslims" is that we don't use the word 'terrorist' for all the Catholic murderers in the South American cities with the highest murder rates in the world.

The idea behind this objection, it seems, is that if we were consistent, we'd call Christian murderers (such as baptized Catholics in South America who work for drug cartels and perhaps occasionally visit a Catholic church) terrorists too, and once we did that, we would no longer end up with the result that most terrorists are Muslims. Furthermore, once we did that, we wouldn't think Islam had a problem with violence any more than Christianity does, so we shouldn't pick on Islam.

I think this line of thought has multiple mistakes, but it does bring to the surface an interesting question. How do we define 'terrorist'?

One obvious thing that distinguishes Islamic extremists, such as the perpetrators of the Charlie Hebdo attack, is that they are motivated to murder in the name of their religion, whereas the South American drug cartel members do not murder in the name of Catholicism.

My reader is exactly right. Muslim terrorists murder in the name of their religion. And please note that this is so even if it could be shown that there is nothing in Islam when properly interpreted to justify terrorism. Even if you think, incorrectly, that Muslim terrorists have 'hijacked' true Islam, they are still Muslim terrorists and must be counted when we tally up the number of Muslim terrorists in the world. Can someone give me an example of a Jesuit terrorist who in recent years has slaughtered human beings to the tune of ad majorem dei gloriam? Or the name of a Buddhist terrorist who has murdered while shouting a Buddhist precept?

There are two important related distinctions we need to make.

As for the South American drug cartel members, they may be sociologically Catholic but they are not doctrinally Catholic. That's my second distinction. And they operate not from Catholic doctrine rightly interpreted or interrpreted in a twisted way, but from crass motives. That's my first distinction.

Anyone whose head is clear enought to grasp these distinctions has a head clear enough to appreciate that most terrorists at the present time are Muslims, and that the existence of sociologically Catholic mafiosi and drug cartel members is irrelevant.

My reader continues:

So, you might think that the definition of 'terrorist' has something to do with religious motivation. But, this sort of definition does not catch terrorists who are motivated by power or greed.

You could go with a definition that sticks more closely to the word 'terrorist', defining it as someone who uses extremely violent acts to create fear and terror to accomplish political goals, but this sort of definition is pretty broad, and it isn't as obvious that "most terrorists are Muslims" when we define it that way, is it? I'd be curious to hear your thoughts about this.

Although it is true that Muslim terrorists are religiously motivated, it would be a mistake to define 'terrorism' in such a way that it could have only religious motivations. Terrorism could have purely political motivations: purely secular separatists might resort to terrorism to achieve their goal. It is worth adding that Islam is not a pure religion, but a blend of religion and political ideology; hence the roots of Muslim terrorism are religious-cum-political. Islam is as much a political ideology as it is a religion. So even if one defines a terrorist as one who uses violence indiscriminately, against comabatants and non-combatants alike, to achieve political goals, it would still be obvious that most terrorists at the present time are Muslims. Theocracy is both a political and a religious concept, and its instantiation, world-wide, is what Islamists want.

This brings us to the important question as to what a terrorist is. One cannot count Xs unless one knows what counts as an X. To evaluate the truth of the quantified statement, 'Most terrorists are Muslims,' we need to have at least a working definition of 'terrorist.' It is not easy to say what exactly a terrorist is in general terms — which are the only terms in which one could give a viable definition — easy at it is to identify terrorism in specific cases. I suggested the following in an earlier post from November 2009. It is not without its difficulties which are for me to know and you to discover.

I suggest that the following are all essential marks of a terrorist. I claim they are all individually necessary conditions for a combatant's being a terrorist; whether they are jointly sufficient I leave undecided. 'Terrorist' is used by different people in different ways. That is not my concern. My concern is how we ought to use the term if we intend to think clearly about the phenomenon of terrorism and keep it distinct from other phenomena in the vicinity.

1. A terrorist aims at a political objective. This distinguishes terrorists from criminals. No good purpose is served by lumping John Gotti and 'Whitey' Bulger among terrorists. Criminals may 'terrorize' as when a loanshark microwaves a delinquent's cat, but criminals who terrorize are not terrorists. This is because their aim is personal, not political. It is not impersonal ideals that motivate them but base personal desires. And although terrorists commit crimes, they are best not classified as criminals for the same reason. Treating the 1993 and 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center as criminal matters showed a lack of understanding of the nature of terrorism.

2. A terrorist does not discriminate between combatants and noncombatants. This distinguishes terrorists from the warriors of a legitimate state. All are fair game, which is not to say that in a particular situation a terrorist might not have a reason not to target some combatants or some noncombatants. This distinguishes a terrorist organization such as Hezbollah from the Israeli Defense Forces. As a matter of policy, the IDF does not target noncombatants, whereas as a matter of policy Hezbollah and other terrorist outfuts such as Hamas target anyone on the enemy side. The deliberate targeting of civilians also distinguishes terrorists from guerilla fighters.

3. A terrorist is not an agent of a legitimate state but of a nonstate or substate entity. A terrorist is neither a criminal (see #1 above) nor a warrior (see #2) ; a terrorist act is neither a criminal act nor an act of war; a terrorist organization is neither a criminal gang nor a state. Strictly speaking, only states make war.

Of course, a state (e.g. Iran) can arm and support and make use of a terrorist outfit (e.g. Hezbollah) in pursuit of a political objective (e.g., the destruction of Israel). But that does not elide the distinction between states and terrorist organizations. It is also clear that states sometimes 'terrorize'; but this is not a good reason to think of states as terrorist organizations, or some or all of their combatants as terrorists or of any of their acts as terrorist acts. The Allied firebombing of Dresden in February of 1945 was a deliberate targeting of combatants and noncombatants alike in clear violation of 'just war' doctrine. But whatever one's moral judgment of the Dresden attack or the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, none of these acts count as terrorist for the simple reason that they were the acts of states, not terrorist organizations. Some will bristle at this, but if one wants to think clearly about terrorism one must not confuse it with other things.

But what about the 'Islamic State' or ISIS or ISIL or whatever you want to call it? The short answer: it is not a legitimate state. What makes a state legitimate? With this question we are deep in, and the going gets tough. At this point I invoke blogospheric privilege and my maxim, "Brevity is the soul of blog."

4. A terrorist is not a saboteur. Sabotage is one thing, terrorism another. Analytical clariy demands a distinction. Infecting computer networks with malware or attacking the power grid are acts of sabotage, but they are not strictly speaking acts of terrorism. An act is not terrorist unless it involves the killing or maiming of human beings or the threat thereof.

I am indebted to the discussion in Louise Richardson, What Terrorists Want, Random House, 2006, Ch. 1

‘Religious Profiling’

I heard Nicholas Kristof use the phrase the other night. But is there such a thing as religious profiling?

I have argued that there is no such thing as racial profiling. The gist of my argument is that while race can be an element in a profile, it cannot itself be a profile. A profile cannot consist of just one characteristic. I can profile you, but it makes no sense racially to profile you. Similarly, apparel can be an element in a profile; it cannot be a profile. I can profile you, but it makes no sense sartorially to profile you.

The same holds for so-called religious profiling. There is no such thing. Religious affiliation can be an element in a profile but it cannot itself be a profile. A profile cannot consist of just one characteristic. I can profile you, but it makes no sense religiously to profile you, or to profile you in respect of your religion.

There are 1.6 billion or so Muslims. They are not all terrorists. That is perfectly obvious, so obvious in fact that it doesn't need to be said. After all, no one maintains that all Muslims are terrorists. But it is equally obvious, or at least should be, that the vast majority of the terrorists in the world at the present time are Muslims. To put it as tersely as possible: Not all Muslims are terrorists, but most terrorists are Muslims.

It is this fact that justifies using religion as one element in a terrorist profile. For given the fact that most terrorists are Muslims, the probability that a Muslim trying to get through airport security is a terrorist is higher than the the probability that a Buddhist trying to get through airport security is a terrorist.

Or consider the sweet little old Mormon matron from Salt Lake City headed to Omaha to visit her grandkiddies. Compare her to the twenty-something Egyptian male from Cairo bound for New York City. Who is more likely to be a terrorist? Clearly, the probability is going to be very low in both cases, but in which case will it be lower? You know the answer. Liberals know it too, but they don't want to admit it. The answer doesn't fit their 'narrative.' According to the narrative, we are all the same despite our wonderful diversity. We are all equally inclined to commit terrorist acts. Well, I wish it were true. But it is not true. Liberals know it is not true just as well as we conservatives do. But they can't admit that it is true because it would upset their 'narrative.' And that narrative is what they live for and — may well die for. A terrorist 'event' may well be coming to a theater near them, especially if they live in New York City.

It is the same with Muslims as with blacks. Blacks, proportionally, are much more criminally prone than whites. That is a well-known fact. And as I have said more than once, a fact about race is not a racist fact. There are facts about race but no racist facts. There are truths about race, but no racist truths. The truth that blacks as a group are more criminally prone than whites as a group is what justifies criminal profiling with race being one element in the profile.

Again, there is no such thing as racial profiling; what there is is criminal profiling with race being one element in the profile.

There are two mistakes that Kristof makes. He uses the unmeaning phrase 'religious profiling.' Worse, he think there is something wrong with terrorist and criminal profiling, when it is clear that there isn't.

But Kristof's heart is in the right place. He doesn't want innocent Muslims to suffer reprisals because of the actions of a few. Well, I don't either. I have Turkish Muslim friends. I met Zuhdi Jasser a while back. (The sentence I just wrote is logically independent of the one immediately preceding it.) Perhaps you have seen him on The O'Reilly Factor. An outstanding man, a most admirable Muslim man. May peace be upon him and no harm come to him. I mean that sincerely.

Tsa-baggage

Is Paris a ‘No Go’ Zone?

Apparently it is for Obama.

Dereliction of duty and abdication of authority characterize the man.

Commentary from Commentary by Jonathan S. Tobin:

But, of course, there’s more here than mere tone deafness to public opinion. The president’s flat line response to the Charley Hebdo massacre and then the terrorist attack on the kosher market in Paris (which he failed to characterize as an act of anti-Semitism in his public statement after it happened) illustrated his lack of comfort on this terrain. This is a president that has spent his time in office trying desperately to reach out to the Arab and Muslim worlds to change their perception of the United States. That he has failed in this respect is no longer in question but his disinterest in taking part in a symbolic response to extremist Islam stands in direct contrast to his eagerness for détente with an Iran that is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. The cold shoulder he gave the Paris march resonates not so much because of the odd and very conspicuous absence of an American representative of any stature, but because it fits with the perception of his attitudes.

Report from London

London Karl is a young Irishman living in London. I had heard that Birmingham is a 'no go' zone, so I asked London Ed about it. Ed told me that it is 80% 'no go' but that nobody would want to go there anyway: it is rainy and like Detroit. When I mentioned this to London Karl, he wrote back:

Funny you mention Birmingham. I went there for the first time on Saturday. It has a reputation for having a large Asian, Black, and Muslim population, and this was certainly very noticeable on the streets. I also saw the usual table on the main thoroughfare with Muslims handing out free Korans and Islamic literature, with a few Whites availing. One could say this was insensitive, given what was going on in Paris, or one could say that it was non-violent Muslims trying to ensure their faith was not being confounded with that of the terrorists.

Actually, the real ghettos in England are further north. An acquaintance of mine lectured in the University at Bradford, and told me it was a nightmare, as large numbers of the undergrad intake couldn't even speak, let alone write, English! He was instructed by the admins to pass them anyway, as if he didn't, there would be the inevitable 'racist' outcry. Unfortunately the press are so soft and PC in the UK that anyone who even raises legitimate fears is immediately slapped with the 'racist' tag, as indeed is the case in Ireland.

I think one thing people are underestimating is that it only takes small bands of dedicated elitists to change the course of history and certainly the history of ideas and religion. Think of Christians in the first three centuries, Protestants in the 16th, French revolutionaries, Nazis, Bolsheviks etc.

Karl is quite right and wise beyond his years: it only takes a few to bring about huge changes some of which eventuate in disaster. This is why decent people ought not sit back and do nothing. You must do your bit. Speak out. Vote. Blog.

It doesn't take much to shut down a great city such as Paris or Boston. A pressure-cooker bomb, an armed assault of an editorial office by a few Muslim fanatics. What are you PC-ers waiting for? A nuclear event in Manhattan? Do you think that might make a dent in your precious 'lifestyle.'

You say it is "unimaginable"? Then I suggest your powers of imagination are weak. People said the same about 9/11 before 9/11 became 9/11.

Pope Francis’ Attempt to Put a Christian Face on Islam

Pope Francis is a foolish man, and folly brings danger in its train. That is my harsh judgment. For documentation, I refer you to an excellent article by William Kilpatrick, Looking at Islam Through Catholic Eyes. Kilpatrick is too politic to draw the harsh conclusion; he prefers to say that the good pope has "clouded the issue." Excerpts (bolding added):

Pope Francis’ recent apostolic exhortation seems to be in line with Massignon’s attempt to put a Christian face on Islam. The part that stands out is the following: “Faced with disconcerting episodes of violent fundamentalism, our respect for true followers of Islam should lead us to avoid hateful generalizations, for authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence” [my emphasis]. Here, the Pope goes beyond the Vatican II documents and beyond the conciliatory statements of his recent predecessors. Some will call it a step forward, but there are reasons to think it is a step in the wrong direction.

The Koran is replete with admonitions to commit violence and terror. What can Pope Francis possibly mean by saying that a “proper reading” of the Koran shows that it is “opposed to every form of violence”? There are many violent passages in the Old Testament as well, but Christians believe that these have to be understood in light of the New Testament. However, there is no New Testament in Islam. Islam’s other “sacred” documents such as the Sira (the life of Muhammad), the Hadith (collections of the words and deeds of Muhammad), and the various law manuals confirm the violent teachings of the Koran. These books give us a fuller picture of Islam than does the Koran, but in no way do they soften or reinterpret the violent passages. If anything, they cast doubt on the peaceful passages. The Islamic doctrine of abrogation, which is based on sura 2:106 of the Koran, holds that if two passages in the Koran contradict each other, the later verse cancels or abrogates the earlier verse. Since most of the peaceful Koranic verses come from the early Meccan period, many Muslim authorities hold that they are superseded by the latter violent verses.

Some Sufi and Ahmadiyya sects have come up with more spiritualized interpretations of the Koran but, as noted before of the Sufis, they are far out of the Islamic mainstream and are often persecuted as heretics. Recently, an Ahmadi doctor was arrested in Pakistan for reading from the Koran because, as reported in the Ahmadiyya Times, “According to the laws of Pakistan it is a criminal act for an Ahmadi to read the Holy Qur’an or act in a manner that may be perceived as the Ahmadi is ‘posing as a Muslim.’”

[ . . . ]

Yet, at the risk of redundancy, it bears repeating that the spiritual tradition of Rumi, al-Hallaj, and the Sufi masters lies at the margins of the Islamic faith. For example, the use of music, poetry, and dance in rituals practiced by Rumi’s followers are considered un-Islamic by many, if not most, Islamic authorities. But, thanks in large part to the work of Massignon, this mystical tradition is looked upon by many influential Catholics as the authentic Islam. Thus, one man’s skewed and partial reading of Islam has come to color the “official” Church view of Islam.

As Pope Francis asserts, it is possible to read the Koran as being “opposed to every form of violence.” We know it is possible because that it is the way that some have read it. However, to say that this reading is the “proper” or “authentic” one is debatable, even misleading. At a time when clarity about Islam may be a matter of life or death for many Christians, the Pope’s statement may, unfortunately, only further cloud the issue.

Bill Maher on Charlie Hebdo

As much of a jackass as Bill Maher can be, I appreciate the cojones and good judgment he displays when he speaks the truth about Islam and terrorism.

More Islamist Thuggery

"A senior Islamic cleric in Ireland has issued a warning against reproducing Charlie Hebdo's front page depiction of the Prophet Muhammad, after the massacre of journalists and police at the magazine's offices." (HT: Karl White)