The ISIS threat to Europe

[Keyblade]

1 minute ago, BigJim said:

Off topic, but I have at least learned that minuscule is the correct spelling, not miniscule (though the latter is apparently more widely used).

I've also learned this  

[Chindie]

There are over a billion Muslims in the world. If they were all frothing at the mouth to bomb themselves into Allah's arms and take as many infidel whores with them as they could we'd know about it.

So... the combined numbers of all the Islamist groups around will be a tiny fraction of that billion. ISIS, which is able to capture and hold (admittedly largely ungoverned) swathes of land, is estimated as having at most 250,000. Al Qaeda, less than 45k globally. Etc. These figures are large but compared to the amount of Muslims it's nothing. If you expand that to include anyone of a fundamentalist attitude who hasn't taken up arms then the number gets large... But the problem there is Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are fundamentalist but I don't think the entire population of either is ready to blow themselves up at the drop of a hat. Some of them will, for sure. But clearly not many statistically because of they were there'd be exponentially more attacks than there are just by sheer weight of numbers.

My point is this though. There aren't hard and fast numbers with Islamist sympathisers. But it's hard to argue against the issue being a minority of Muslims.

The perception of it being more is a combination of factors. ISIS has been a 'success' of marketing itself and has done the al Qaeda strategy of being a 'brand name' for Islamic word removed -ery on a grander scale, meaning we've seen more attacks. But in the stats the attacks are still barely of relevance (which I'll come to). But yes are seeing more, for now.

The media altered post 9/11 as they realised this shit sells viewership, so they doubled down on every chance they were given, and they push every incident into the narrative - watching the Beeb last Friday they were desperate for that to have a ISIS flag somewhere and were near disappointed when it wasn't. Fundamentally the attack hits the same notes, a nutter slaughters innocents, but they couldn't ultimately market it as 'another Muslim attack!' so they tired of it as did the audience (although interestingly as these go on, eventually the impact will die. High school shootings in the US are waining in coverage because they're the norm now and only the really grim ones get much coverage). You also have 24hr news always looking for the latest story, and the preponderance of eye witness on the scene video.

Also, consider what your exposure to Islam is. Every time Islam is in the news it's bad. Usually its the latest car bomb in Baghdad. More often recently it's the latest slaughter in continental Europe. Soon, sadly, it will be another incident on British soil. But there's the subconscious effect of that. You're hearing the same topic, generally, every day more or less, with some new horrible thing from somewhere in the world. And it doesn't take an enormous amount of people to do that - if ISIS had one adherent a day blow himself up somewhere we'd all be long dead before they ran out of men. That's 1 group. It's not a surprise you start to feel Islam has a bigger problem than reality actually shows (note, I wholeheartedly agree it does have a big problem, but not down to the numbers of mentalists). This is also why I think Islam has skin in the game of ridding itself of these fools, and not just washing it's hands of them as 'not Muslims' - they're poisonous to PR. And they know it too, they want animosity to Islam.

And finally, there's the issue of terrorism itself. It's designed to do this. Terrorism aims to project influence beyond the immediate. It's point isn't solely to kill (in many cases historically the killing is incidental to the point, almost). The point is to use the violence to impact society more widely, with fear mostly, to change things. Each act is magnified, made worse than the stats really show it is, and sits heavy on the mind, making each feel more impactful and ultimately making the problem feel bigger than it truly is. I don't wish to diminish the problem, because it certainly is one, but when you're talking about perceptions of the problem, with the inference being in essence there's thousands/millions more of these words removed than we say there are, is worth raising. I always recall reading a book at uni that had a whole section on this phenomenon and rattled off ludicrous facts about it - Americans were more likely to die drowning in a public toilet than in international terrorism incidents in every year bar 2001, you were more likely to be killed by your trousers, etc etc... But the scourge of public toilets and trousers doesn't seem to have perception of a rising threat...

[Keyblade]

6 minutes ago, Chindie said:

There are over a billion Muslims in the world. If they were all frothing at the mouth to bomb themselves into Allah's arms and take as many infidel whores with them as they could we'd know about it.

So... the combined numbers of all the Islamist groups around will be a tiny fraction of that billion. ISIS, which is able to capture and hold (admittedly largely ungoverned) swathes of land, is estimated as having at most 250,000. Al Qaeda, less than 45k globally. Etc. These figures are large but compared to the amount of Muslims it's nothing. If you expand that to include anyone of a fundamentalist attitude who hasn't taken up arms then the number gets large... But the problem there is Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are fundamentalist but I don't think the entire population of either is ready to blow themselves up at the drop of a hat. Some of them will, for sure. But clearly not many statistically because of they were there'd be exponentially more attacks than there are just by sheer weight of numbers.

My point is this though. There aren't hard and fast numbers with Islamist sympathisers. But it's hard to argue against the issue being a minority of Muslims.

The perception of it being more is a combination of factors. ISIS has been a 'success' of marketing itself and has done the al Qaeda strategy of being a 'brand name' for Islamic word removed -ery on a grander scale, meaning we've seen more attacks. But in the stats the attacks are still barely of relevance (which I'll come to). But yes are seeing more, for now.

The media altered post 9/11 as they realised this shit sells viewership, so they doubled down on every chance they were given, and they push every incident into the narrative - watching the Beeb last Friday they were desperate for that to have a ISIS flag somewhere and were near disappointed when it wasn't. Fundamentally the attack hits the same notes, a nutter slaughters innocents, but they couldn't ultimately market it as 'another Muslim attack!' so they tired of it as did the audience (although interestingly as these go on, eventually the impact will die. High school shootings in the US are waining in coverage because they're the norm now and only the really grim ones get much coverage). You also have 24hr news always looking for the latest story, and the preponderance of eye witness on the scene video.

Also, consider what your exposure to Islam is. Every time Islam is in the news it's bad. Usually its the latest car bomb in Baghdad. More often recently it's the latest slaughter in continental Europe. Soon, sadly, it will be another incident on British soil. But there's the subconscious effect of that. You're hearing the same topic, generally, every day more or less, with some new horrible thing from somewhere in the world. And it doesn't take an enormous amount of people to do that - if ISIS had one adherent a day blow himself up somewhere we'd all be long dead before they ran out of men. That's 1 group. It's not a surprise you start to feel Islam has a bigger problem than reality actually shows (note, I wholeheartedly agree it does have a big problem, but not down to the numbers of mentalists). This is also why I think Islam has skin in the game of ridding itself of these fools, and not just washing it's hands of them as 'not Muslims' - they're poisonous to PR. And they know it too, they want animosity to Islam.

And finally, there's the issue of terrorism itself. It's designed to do this. Terrorism aims to project influence beyond the immediate. It's point isn't solely to kill (in many cases historically the killing is incidental to the point, almost). The point is to use the violence to impact society more widely, with fear mostly, to change things. Each act is magnified, made worse than the stats really show it is, and sits heavy on the mind, making each feel more impactful and ultimately making the problem feel bigger than it truly is. I don't wish to diminish the problem, because it certainly is one, but when you're talking about perceptions of the problem, with the inference being in essence there's thousands/millions more of these words removed than we say there are, is worth raising. I always recall reading a book at uni that had a whole section on this phenomenon and rattled off ludicrous facts about it - Americans were more likely to die drowning in a public toilet than in international terrorism incidents in every year bar 2001, you were more likely to be killed by your trousers, etc etc... But the scourge of public toilets and trousers doesn't seem to have perception of a rising threat...

Superb post. I really agree with the magnifying of the problem, I'm guilty of it too. There was a random grenade attack here in Malaysia last month that was later believed to be by ISIS who have declared war on the country (oddly enough). All of a sudden I'm really antsy, who knows what could happen at any time now? Just today news broke out that there was a shooting outside of a mall that is a stone's throw away from where I live. First thing that comes to mind is "***** time to pack up my bags, I'm out this bitch". Turns out it was some gang dispute where some dude got executed in his car in the middle of traffic in broad daylight (still scary mind). If we hang on every attack that happens we definitely subconsciously magnify the situation, and I guess it's hard to keep a clear head and be objective when they bring the fight to your doorstep. I kind of sympathize with people in Europe in the U.S. in some ways now.

[BigJim]

15 minutes ago, Chindie said:

There are over a billion Muslims in the world. If they were all frothing at the mouth to bomb themselves into Allah's arms and take as many infidel whores with them as they could we'd know about it.

So... the combined numbers of all the Islamist groups around will be a tiny fraction of that billion. ISIS, which is able to capture and hold (admittedly largely ungoverned) swathes of land, is estimated as having at most 250,000. Al Qaeda, less than 45k globally. Etc. These figures are large but compared to the amount of Muslims it's nothing. If you expand that to include anyone of a fundamentalist attitude who hasn't taken up arms then the number gets large... But the problem there is Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are fundamentalist but I don't think the entire population of either is ready to blow themselves up at the drop of a hat. Some of them will, for sure. But clearly not many statistically because of they were there'd be exponentially more attacks than there are just by sheer weight of numbers.

My point is this though. There aren't hard and fast numbers with Islamist sympathisers. But it's hard to argue against the issue being a minority of Muslims.

The perception of it being more is a combination of factors. ISIS has been a 'success' of marketing itself and has done the al Qaeda strategy of being a 'brand name' for Islamic word removed -ery on a grander scale, meaning we've seen more attacks. But in the stats the attacks are still barely of relevance (which I'll come to). But yes are seeing more, for now.

The media altered post 9/11 as they realised this shit sells viewership, so they doubled down on every chance they were given, and they push every incident into the narrative - watching the Beeb last Friday they were desperate for that to have a ISIS flag somewhere and were near disappointed when it wasn't. Fundamentally the attack hits the same notes, a nutter slaughters innocents, but they couldn't ultimately market it as 'another Muslim attack!' so they tired of it as did the audience (although interestingly as these go on, eventually the impact will die. High school shootings in the US are waining in coverage because they're the norm now and only the really grim ones get much coverage). You also have 24hr news always looking for the latest story, and the preponderance of eye witness on the scene video.

Also, consider what your exposure to Islam is. Every time Islam is in the news it's bad. Usually its the latest car bomb in Baghdad. More often recently it's the latest slaughter in continental Europe. Soon, sadly, it will be another incident on British soil. But there's the subconscious effect of that. You're hearing the same topic, generally, every day more or less, with some new horrible thing from somewhere in the world. And it doesn't take an enormous amount of people to do that - if ISIS had one adherent a day blow himself up somewhere we'd all be long dead before they ran out of men. That's 1 group. It's not a surprise you start to feel Islam has a bigger problem than reality actually shows (note, I wholeheartedly agree it does have a big problem, but not down to the numbers of mentalists). This is also why I think Islam has skin in the game of ridding itself of these fools, and not just washing it's hands of them as 'not Muslims' - they're poisonous to PR. And they know it too, they want animosity to Islam.

And finally, there's the issue of terrorism itself. It's designed to do this. Terrorism aims to project influence beyond the immediate. It's point isn't solely to kill (in many cases historically the killing is incidental to the point, almost). The point is to use the violence to impact society more widely, with fear mostly, to change things. Each act is magnified, made worse than the stats really show it is, and sits heavy on the mind, making each feel more impactful and ultimately making the problem feel bigger than it truly is. I don't wish to diminish the problem, because it certainly is one, but when you're talking about perceptions of the problem, with the inference being in essence there's thousands/millions more of these words removed than we say there are, is worth raising. I always recall reading a book at uni that had a whole section on this phenomenon and rattled off ludicrous facts about it - Americans were more likely to die drowning in a public toilet than in international terrorism incidents in every year bar 2001, you were more likely to be killed by your trousers, etc etc... But the scourge of public toilets and trousers doesn't seem to have perception of a rising threat...

Well done for that massive post, many very valid points. And I would just like to emphasize the last one: while the threat of homicidal public toilets and articles of clothing may be statistically greater at present, I would wager it won't be for much longer.

[Chindie]

It works.

I studied this stuff and have an ongoing interest in it. I understand the numbers etc.

But today on my lunch I wandered through Birmingham city centre and, because I'm mad clearly, went into the Bullring. That's about a bit over a mile perhaps including the walk back. I noticed more coppers than I've seen in town any time except when the Queen opened the tram extension earlier this year. I also noticed far more obvious security in the Bullring. And on the way home yesterday I had an unmarked cop car blitz past me with more sirens behind.

I'm a rational guy. I still immediately thought some Qur'an inspired violence has been discovered for a split second.

I heard terrorism called performance violence recently. Seems fitting as the days and incidents go by.

Edited July 27, 2016 by Chindie

[BigJim]

12 minutes ago, Chindie said:

It works.

I studied this stuff and have an ongoing interest in it. I understand the numbers etc.

But today on my lunch I wandered through Birmingham city centre and, because I'm mad clearly, went into the Bullring. That's about a at over a miles perhaps including the walk back. I noticed more coppers than I've seen in town any time except when the Queen opened the tram extension earlier this year. I also noticed far more obvious security in the Bullring. And on the way home yesterday I had an unmarked cop car blitz past me with more sirens behind.

I'm a rational guy. I still immediately thought some Qur'an inspired violence has been discovered for a split second.

I heard terrorism called performance violence recently. Seems fitting as the days and incidents go by.

Thing is, terrorism has historically been linked to local or regional political aims. Scare people into conceding what you want.

The islamist stuff has added a whole new and more terrifying dimension to the acts.

[blandy]

 

1 hour ago, Keyblade said:

450 out of 1 million Swedish Muslims is roughly 0.05% of the Swedish Muslim population, so you're right it's a slightly different percentage. Still a minuscule minority

Context for all these figures is important - if anyone is saying that this tiny percentage of muslims worldwide, or in wherever is anything other than a minuscule figure, they're of course wrong. It's clear from the figure that we don't need to be scared of all muslims, or angry about them, or "anti" them. That would be stupid.

If the context is that 1 in 100,000 muslims (0.001%) is radicalised to the point of plotting or having carried out these terror acts, and there are (say) a million muslims in (say) the UK - then that's 10 people prepared and planning to cut the throats, shoot, bomb or whatever in random acts of terror. finding these 10 people, (or 450 people in Sweden or wherever) preparing to do mass murders - it is clearly beyond the "normal" for the police or society, and in that sense the tiny tiny fraction is still a major problem - "we have 15 or 50 active terror plotters on the loose" is not a good thing at all. The escape of (say) a dozen murderers from high security jail would be massive news.

So context matters.

[blandy]

22 minutes ago, BigJim said:

the scourge of public toilets and trousers doesn't seem to have perception of a rising threat...

No, that's right. And your post is good. The trousers thing is kind of factored in to most people's (or half the population) understanding of the world. "Yeah, there's a tiny chance of a trouser based death calamity, but what the heck, I'll chance it to keep m'bits cosy" is my take on that. Start adding in people with bombs and trucks and guns and knives and the tendency to worry a bit more, to be a bit more wary is human, if not overly logical.

It's like airport security - they don't say "heck there's hardly any terrorists in the world, come on through everyone", they say "even though 99.99999% are good, we still need to check everyone...."

[Chindie]

The Islamist flavour terror is still trying to scare people into conceding to their aims.

The scope of the aims doesn't really matter.

I'm not sure why Islamist terror is more terrifying than any other. The aim of the bomb blowing me apart is least of my worries, whether the guy that planted it is called Ali or Paddy. Whether he planted it in a bin or strapped to his chest doesn't really matter to me. Whether they want to warn the police or butcher me isn't going to concern me. I'm going to be dead or severely injured either way. Both will utilise my injuries in the same way, as tools to get what they want from governments.

Post 9/11 there was a push for Islamist terror to be defined as some kind of 'new terrorism'. But it isn't new. It's the same thing as it's always been. All that changed was the motive and the international scene - we became globalised, and everything, including the terror, did too. Because it needed to. The methodology is the same. The scale, like the scope, is neither here nor there. Crashing an airliner into the WTC is just an extrapolation of bombing somewhere. Suicide bombing had been around for years (and statistically is the most 'successful' form of terrorism, groups that use it achieve more of their aims than those that don't). Etc etc.

There's little special about Islamist terror. It's just flavour of the month.

[blandy]

Just now, Chindie said:

I'm not sure why Islamist terror is more terrifying than any other.

It's definitely scarier than trousers, Chindie.

[Chindie]

1 minute ago, blandy said:

It's definitely scarier than trousers, Chindie.

Trousers aren't out to push the legwear agenda in fairness, so I'm not sure it's terrorism...

[blandy]

1 minute ago, Chindie said:

There's little special about Islamist terror. It's just flavour of the month.

There is something that's different. There's the religious element. If people are fighting for a cause such as independence from another country, or for rights, or for equality, or for self rule or for....then that's one thing. If they are simply based on turning people into suicide bombers against everything other than twisted religion, it's a bit different. People are killing themselves and others for an imaginary sky fairy, not Basque separation or whatever. The "Cause" isn't as clear and the "followers" are attracted by promises of virgins or immortality, not self rule.

[blandy]

3 minutes ago, Chindie said:

Trousers aren't out to push the legwear agenda in fairness, so I'm not sure it's terrorism...

We've made giant strides in combatting their evil agenda.

[foreveryoung]

10 minutes ago, blandy said:

There is something that's different. There's the religious element. If people are fighting for a cause such as independence from another country, or for rights, or for equality, or for self rule or for....then that's one thing. If they are simply based on turning people into suicide bombers against everything other than twisted religion, it's a bit different. People are killing themselves and others for an imaginary sky fairy, not Basque separation or whatever. The "Cause" isn't as clear and the "followers" are attracted by promises of virgins or immortality, not self rule.

As the saying goes. They love death, we love life. An there chaps lies the disease which will never have a cure.

Education maybe you say? But how many of these dudes have you got to educate, an how many would take the education.

[Chindie]

2 minutes ago, blandy said:

There is something that's different. There's the religious element. If people are fighting for a cause such as independence from another country, or for rights, or for equality, or for self rule or for....then that's one thing. If they are simply based on turning people into suicide bombers against everything other than twisted religion, it's a bit different. People are killing themselves and others for an imaginary sky fairy, not Basque separation or whatever. The "Cause" isn't as clear and the "followers" are attracted by promises of virgins or immortality, not self rule.

What actual effect does that have though? They're committing acts of violence for an aim which has a political element. The motive is less tangible but motive isn't that important in its details. ISIS aim to establish a global caliphate and fulfill a doomsday prophecy because Allah says so in their opinion. The IRA wanted a united free Ireland, because they believe that to be right. The scale is different and the source is different, but whether it's religiously inspired or nationalist ultimately doesn't change much.

It's not even indoctrination, there's been numerous quite stringent left wing/communist terror groups who were rabid on their beliefs. Their book had Marx on the cover, not Muhammad of course, but it's the same thing ultimately.

There was/is an agenda to treat Islamist terror as special and requiring special different action from other types of political violence... But fundamentally it doesn't. It isn't special. There are inspirations, causes, and effects. You deal with the latter as and when, and tackle the former 2 in an ongoing effort to kill the motive.

[BigJim]

9 minutes ago, Chindie said:

What actual effect does that have though? They're committing acts of violence for an aim which has a political element. The motive is less tangible but motive isn't that important in its details. ISIS aim to establish a global caliphate and fulfill a doomsday prophecy because Allah says so in their opinion. The IRA wanted a united free Ireland, because they believe that to be right. The scale is different and the source is different, but whether it's religiously inspired or nationalist ultimately doesn't change much.

It's not even indoctrination, there's been numerous quite stringent left wing/communist terror groups who were rabid on their beliefs. Their book had Marx on the cover, not Muhammad of course, but it's the same thing ultimately.

There was/is an agenda to treat Islamist terror as special and requiring special different action from other types of political violence... But fundamentally it doesn't. It isn't special. There are inspirations, causes, and effects. You deal with the latter as and when, and tackle the former 2 in an ongoing effort to kill the motive.

Of course it requires special and different action. The inspirations and causes are so wildly different from traditional political terrorism...the effects so more far reaching. You can negotiate with Basque separatists... you would't expect to have to combat the Tamil Tigers in Argentina. How you can say this is not different is beyond me.

[Chindie]

12 hours ago, BigJim said:

Of course it requires special and different action. The inspirations and causes are so wildly different from traditional political terrorism...the effects so more far reaching. You can negotiate with Basque separatists... you would't expect to have to combat the Tamil Tigers in Argentina. How you can say this is not different is beyond me.

Why of course? You say this and then don't explain it. All terrorism is political, BTW. It's what makes it terrorism.

There are other groups of non-religious affiliation that 'couldn't be negotiated with'. The Red Army Faction, Aum Shinrikyo for instance. Not all terrorist causes end at the negotiating table. Many don't. There's dozens of them.

And being international isn't new or special either. Various Palestinian groups attacked all over the place (and not always just Jews). A bunch of communist groups attacked all over the world in the 70s (notably the Japanese Red Army). Aum Shinrikyo drew followers from across the world (that has **** of Russian followers for instance cooking up sarin gas and intended to produce tons of it).

It's not new or special. It's just the flavour of the month.

[TrentVilla]

2 hours ago, blandy said:

There is something that's different. There's the religious element. If people are fighting for a cause such as independence from another country, or for rights, or for equality, or for self rule or for....then that's one thing. If they are simply based on turning people into suicide bombers against everything other than twisted religion, it's a bit different. People are killing themselves and others for an imaginary sky fairy, not Basque separation or whatever. The "Cause" isn't as clear and the "followers" are attracted by promises of virgins or immortality, not self rule.

There is something else very different about the ISIS brand of terrorism, the self starters.

[BigJim]

2 hours ago, Chindie said:

Why of course? You say this and then don't explain it. All terrorism is political, BTW. It's what makes it terrorism.

There are other groups of non-religious affiliation that 'couldn't be negotiated with'. The Red Army Faction, Aum Shinrikyo for instance. Not all terrorist causes end at the negotiating table. Many don't. There's dozens of them.

And being international isn't new or special either. Various Palestinian groups attacked all over the place (and not always just Jews). A bunch of communist groups attacked all over the world in the 70s (notably the Japanese Red Army). Aum Shinrikyo drew followers from across the world (that has fuckloads of Russian followers for instance cooking up sarin gas and intended to produce tons of it).

It's not new or special. It's just the flavour of the month.

Disagree.

If terrorism is politically inspired, it has a possible negotiable, political solution, even if it is never reached. Otherwise it is not political, by definition: politics is the art of the possible.

Islamist terrorism is inspired in religion not politics. It is the non negotiable variety.

I find your description of it as "flavour of the month" as simply breathtaking... I'm afraid I have to retire from the debate. 

 

[chrisp65]

1 hour ago, TrentVilla said:

There is something else very different about the ISIS brand of terrorism, the self starters.

Self starters buying in to anarchist terrorism were the big fashion just over 100 years ago.

Between them they managed to kill:

President of France 1894, Prime Minister of Spain 1897, Empress of Austria 1898, King of Italy 1900, U.S. President 1901. They also bombed religious processions, public buildings, random shops and businesses.

Some of the bombers were committed anarchists. Some wanted to be famous and jumped on the band wagon having read reports in newspapers.

OK it's a while ago. But just imagine the meltdown if that list was replicated today.