"The Essential Terrorist"

[regeneratia]

A blast from the past, published in 2005.

How is the so-called terrorist of today different than the one that was described in this article?

Always remember that things are very seldom as they seem. They are less seldom as we are told.

http://baltimorechronicle.com/2005/112805Ali_Khan.html

Quote

The Essentialist Terrorist

by Dr. Liaquat Ali Khan

Whereas the conventional terrorist uses violence as a means to an end, the essentialist terrorist uses violence as an end in itself.

The essentialist terrorist is a violent monster that the Highly Influential Terrorist Literature (“HITLit”) has successfully invented and made real and believable. It is the new terrorist. It is dark and evil, part real and part phantom, part human and part animal, part man and part woman, part bearded and part veiled, part strategic and part crazy. A noted trait of this grotesque but cowardly creature is that it kills innocents. But this monster’s most defining characteristic is that it is driven to violence by its nature, compelled by an ingrained mental/psychological/cultural/religious formation. Its violence has little to do with any outward political or geopolitical grievances. It hates Israel and America and the West. It loathes democracy and liberties and freedoms. It subjugates women. It is warped and jealous and vengeful. Addicted to violence, this monster resides in sleeping cells, prays to Allah, lurks in tunnels and airports, wears a belt of explosives, and craves traveling in buses, trains, and airplanes. One day it explodes, killing innocents. Amazingly though, even after dying a thousand deaths, it does not die. It constantly reproduces itself into many more similar-looking monsters. It must be obliterated.

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Snip

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The HITLit’s new terrorism is not simply a rhetorical device to engage in propaganda war against Muslim militants or Islam. It also has serious consequences in the realm of law. The distinction proposes and defends that law treat Muslim terrorists different from how law treats conventional terrorists. Since the conventional terrorist is a moral being, his rehabilitation through law is possible; therefore, he is entitled to rights and legal protections. The essentialist terrorist has no claim to demand traditional legal rights and protections, because he is fundamentally immoral and irredeemable.

End of quote

NTREPID, are you there?

[Ashotep]

I guess people like Samuel Adams could be considered a conventional terrorist because they had a goal to free us from England's rule using deadly force and when that goal was reached they stopped. They didn't continue to try to kill the British after that goal was reached, nor did they want to kill all, even the ones that were here unless they were in uniform or helping the British. After that we eventually formed a pretty close bond.

Sounds like an essentialist terrorist is that way through brain washing and probably will never be satisfied until all of their enemies are dead or enslaved. There will probably always be an enemy for these types, if not other religions the lesser of those among them. Probably most can't be changed if its that ingrained in them.

[SHaYap]

Now is a good a time as any to pull this out of the archives :

What if Islam had never existed? To some, it's a comforting thought: No clash of civilizations, no holy wars, no terrorists. Would Christianity have taken over the world? Would the Middle East be a peaceful beacon of democracy? Would 9/11 have happened? In fact, remove Islam from the path of history, and the world ends up exactly where it is today.

• By Graham E. Fuller
  
• October 8, 2009
  

Imagine, if you will, a world without Islam — admittedly an almost inconceivable state of affairs given its charged centrality in our daily news headlines. Islam seems to lie behind a broad range of international disorders: suicide attacks, car bombings, military occupations, resistance struggles, riots, fatwas, jihads, guerrilla warfare, threatening videos, and 9/11 itself. Why are these things taking place? "Islam" seems to offer an instant and uncomplicated analytical touchstone, enabling us to make sense of today’s convulsive world. Indeed, for some neoconservatives, "Islamofascism" is now our sworn foe in a looming "World War III."

But indulge me for a moment. What if there were no such thing as Islam? What if there had never been a Prophet Mohammed, no saga of the spread of Islam across vast parts of the Middle East, Asia, and Africa?

• foreign policy link
  

~

[Ashotep]

Of course there would be some other cult/religion to that their place but maybe it wouldn't be so extreme in some of its teachings.

[SHaYap]

That depends entirely on which end of the 'extreme' that suffers and conducive to the perpetuation doesn't it ?

~ I understand all being as passionate about things loved and anger at things hated , but by any measure and means Historical and current , 'some' getting too much of the 'many' is precisely the conundrum we suffer today at present ~

~

[regeneratia]

Testing Out Repression in Israel

by Consortiumnews.com •

February 27, 2016

•

Jeff Halper, co-founder of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, sees the brutal practice of destroying Palestinian homes and similar tactics as part of an experiment in social repression that can have broader implications as income inequality spreads across the globe, as he told Dennis J Bernstein.

By Dennis J Bernstein

Quote

Israeli author and human rights activist Jeff Halper who has challenged the Israeli practice of destroying Palestinian homes (usually for simply building after being denied a permit) attempts to answer the question why the world continues to accept such repeated brutalities perpetrated by the Israelis against a million-plus locked-down, very poor Palestinians.

Halper detects a quid pro quo, a violent marriage of convenience in which “Israel offers its expertise in helping governments pursue their various wars against the people and, in return, they permit it to expand its settlements and control throughout the Palestinian territory.”

Halper’s latest book, War Against the People: Israel, the Palestinians and Global Pacification, focuses on a “global Palestine,” and “how Israel exports its Occupation – its weaponry, its models and tactics of control and its security and surveillance systems, all developed and perfected on the Palestinians – to countries around the world engaged in asymmetrical warfare, or domestic securitization, both forms of ‘war against the people.’”

end of quote

https://consortiumnews.com/2016/02/27/testing-out-repression-in-israel/