[MD] Muslim Mechanisms

[skutvik at online.no]

Hi Khaled

[Bodvar]
> > but I just wonder how this proud and independent 
> >  people who have defeated all invaders from Alexander onwards let the
> >  Taleban have their way. 

[Khaled]
> sorry for the late reply, i was gone for a couple of days. I read your
> question last night and the only comparison that I can think of is the
> Mafia in Sicily. I guess it would be a lot easier for the Sicilians to
> repel an invading army than to get rid of their local Mafia.

A very good comparison if not totally relevant. The mafia cannot kill 
or maim aimlessly, only those who are able, but not willing to pay 
their "protection" fees, while the Taleban acid treatment of girls, 
burning down of schools and - it seems - destroying the country's 
infrastructure in general is meekly accepted.  

> the Taleban are First of all Afghani, they know the lay of the land, the
> language and the culture. they don't drop bombs form drones on weddings,
> and they are well financed and well paid. Look at the US civil war, it was
> a very costly affair, all over ideology. it was probably easier to get rid
> of the British than to fight the civil war. The taliban are like that.
> They start with the poor outlying villages. Get it and make a few heads
> roll. They do find some sympathizer, remember this a patriarchal society
> after all, especially in rural village. they take the sympathizer under
> their wing, pay them well and every time a resistance pops up, they make a
> head roll. Now they have control.

OK, convincing, yet I feel something important is left out. I don't hold 
you responsible ;-) but you shy away from Islam's role. I heard some 
related story from Somalia where the - whatever the islamists are 
called there - impose a very strict Sharia regime on the Somalis who 
originally belong to some more lax direction (Sufis perhaps) and 
forbid most of their traditions such as decorating graves, but all the 
same easily have their ways. Here too my theory is because they (the 
islamists) are the most pious muslims and cannot be resisted without 
it looking like an anti-islam act and THAT is the one thing not allowed 
in the muslim world. Admittedly they bring law and order but to a 
terrible price.      

> the ugliness will feed on itself, just like foot binding in china of
> female circumcision is east Africa ( across religious and national
> lines), such things become acceptable. I am always amazed at a mother who
> would force her daughter to go through such a thing. Did she herself
> forget the trauma she went thought?

Yes, not all muslims are "radical female circumcisers" and not all are 
terrorists, but what is it with Islam that all circumcisers and terrorists 
are muslims ... or "Semitics"? The act of self-sacrifice I don't regard 
as particularly Muslim, rather a social pattern, the Japanese 
Kamikaze during WW2, some German kamikaze-like acts in the last 
phase, the Tamils in Sri Lanka and surely many other such, but they 
are/were directed at some military forces or installations. It's the sheer 
abandon of loading trucks full of explosives and detonating it in a 
hometown marketplace ...etc. which is the enigma. Also the lack of 
outrage over such acts.   

> But as someone said to me once, you want peace in that part of the world (
> we were talking about the Balkans then), you have to kill all the
> grandmothers. It took me a while to realize that he was talking about the
> fact that in order to have a fresh start, you have to stop the grudges and
> bad habits from being passed along

Yes the Balkans, that goes for them all, Muslim or Christians (the 
Orthodox kind) alike. The serbs celebrates the Kosovo Polje defeat in 
1389 more jubilantly than their national day. 

I have learned a lot from you Khaled.

Bodvar