Post by Ismail AtalayPost by David DeutschPost by hibbsaPartly because of the ongoing discussions, I took a few moments to
browse the various Jihad-Watch type sites, and also took a look at
opinions being voiced on JPost (to be fair to JPost, among other often
opposing views)
The consistent charge across all these individuals and venues, seems to
be that there is what amounts to an Islamic conspiracy to take over the
West. This is partly occuring 'from within'...essentially by inserting
large Muslim populations into the west. And also 'from without'..using
various manipulations and approaches.
So...without worrying about whether or not it is true.....my question
would be....is it possible for it to be true?
No.
I could not have agreed more. Definitely No. There is no (there can not
be) Islamic conspiracy for capturing "West" or imposing "Sharia".
First of all there has been an overwhelming western influence on all
Islamic communities during the last 2 centuries (in terms of economical,
socio-political and cultural sense). This trend is getting slower now and
things are getting balanced
Secondly sensible muslims have rediscovered their true religion because
of the developments in the world. You can not manipulate or repress people
as easily as before in this age of booming transportation, telecommunication
and technology. And a great majority of muslim community is seeing that
Islam embodies almost all so called "Western" values such as human rights,
equality, democracy, accountability, rationality etc (actually in some
respects, Western standards are below true Islamic standards such as
essential "right of the subject" rule)
Thirdly Islam is a non-institutional religion and the community is quite
non-monolithic. I can say that when you go to details there would be 1.5
billion different interpretations of Islam.
Post by David DeutschPost by hibbsaWhat I mean is, is this
not a conspiracy, and have not conspiracies been dismissed as bad
philosophy or whatever? I mean within the context of this philosophy.
Yes.
BTW I've never seen any conspiracy-theoretic articles in JPost. Perhaps
because I don't read unpromising articles.
Actually there is conspiracy. But this is not an "Islamic" conspiracy.
Lets ask this question to ourselves. If there was no oil and natural gas
in the middle-east, how much would you hear about Islam or read about
"jihad", "Islamic terror", "fanatics" or "turmoil in middle-east" in the
newspapers. For example how much western audience know about
non-judeochristion religions such as Taoism, Shintoism etc. For example it
is known that Shintoist religion (national religion of Japan) has
ultra-nationalist and warlike tones but why noone is talking about "Shinto
conspiracies" or "Shinto holy war" or "Shintoist terror"?
Concerning Islamophobia and anti-Islam fanaticism I personally see there
independent aspects of it.
First, we should all admit that there is a huge stealing and looting
campaign going on in the middle-east for the last 70-80 years. This is
mostly about Saudi, Iraqi and Iranian oil. This stealing and looting
campaign is sustained by global oil companies (they get %40 percent of oil
as extraction cost) such as Texaco, Exxon, BP (BP had organized the 1953
military coup in Iran against the oil nationalization movement by the
regime), Aramco etc. And behind this companies there are western governments
(US makes the top of the list unfortunately) who make sure that that
appropriate political environment for this campaign maintained.
The prerequisite for this scheme is that the middle-east region should
remain under repressive, authoritarian, foreign-dependent and non-democratic
regimes. Otherwise stealing and looting would be exposed and the people of
these countries will start to question the lucrative contracts. Also the
middle-eastern people should remain as ignorant, repressed and always on the
brink of another disturbance, conflict or terrorist act (like Palestine
issue, Iran-Israel confrontation, Iraqi invasion etc etc) so that these
regimes continue.
So there is a big game going on to make sure that the oil is safely and
cheaply extracted from the region. OK now, in order to create disturbance or
conflict or terror, you need to find or if there is none, "invent" an enemy.
So what would be best and most credible candidate for the enemy? Can it be
the general religion of the middle-east? Of course !
After this point all you need to do is to support authoritarian "Islamic"
regimes, make sure that the people of region always feels that they are
treated with injustice and double-standards or maybe even secretly support
extremists so that they would create this "Islamic" threat. All this would
justify western presence there and make sure that the precious oil&gas can
reach to outside world and these companies can make billions of dollars of
profit.
Islamophobia is another instrument to convince western audience that west
should be scared of Islam and of middleeast (so that the evil scheme above
is not questioned and scrutinized). Anyone (politician, journalist etc) who
is telling you that "west should be present in middle-east to preserve our
interests and to make sure that Islamic terror/threat/fanaticism is
contained" is a liar/manipulator that is serving to the stealing and looting
campaign
Ismail
From my perspective raising the question of conspiracy would serve a
valuable purpose one way or other, because what it does do is "cut to
the chase" of where Rami, or the sites he is a contribtor to, are
going with their criticisms. After all, there has to be some sort of
aggregate threat building up, or what does it matter? It can't be
about just trying to be helpful to Muslims and show them the light,
for the simple reason that isn't the way the crticisms are set up.
They are set up to warn non-Muslims.
Deutsch could be expected to respond in a way that maintained
consistency with what he has already said about conspiracies. The
effect of his input would therefore quite possibly have the impact of
drawing the "Islam" thread/s to a close, for psychological reasons.
The other way it might have gone is by developing into an interesting
discussion about what we mean by 'conspiracy' when in context of
something that cannnot happen. I mean...you Ismail...suggest there
cannot be a conspiracy? What do you mean there cannot be? What about,
if among the sub-groups of Muslims who are more highly organized, more
mobilized, more hostile to Western values, they are looking at
demographic and other trends, and simply saying "things are going our
way, we don't have to do anything but wait because time is on our
side".
If the motivation behind that is hostile, is about conspiring to
change the West, dominate the West, undermine the West....but it so
happens the strategic judgement is that nothing has to be done because
things are moving in such a way that power is transfering into that
camp, what is it about that that isn't no different to a conspiracy
save that it so happens the best strategy is not to conspire at the
moment?
Also, groups, nations, tribes, religions, whatever, have historically
aimed to invade, take over, dominate, other groups. What is different
about these historical events that means they aren't conspiracies in
the popperian sense? is it that they took place by nation states?
That's not really sensible because nation states are just an invention
of modern times..they are just human defined objects. They have no
mystical specialness.
Or is it that a conspiracy that happens in broad daylight, isn't
actually denied, isn't a conspiracy? But again, that doesn't really
add up, because sometimes a group may have enough power to conspire in
broad daylight. Sometimes the best, or only strategy migh involve
changing the background assumptions and environment of a society such
that it is possible to conspire against, say, the traditional people
of that society, in broad daylight, through a process of robbing that
people of literally the conceptual framework that would be necessary
to recognize they are in peril.