Comments on: Challenging the future with a profound lack of history

By: Thersites

Thersites — Mon, 26 May 2008 20:28:52 +0000

Well, “a low mental age” isn’t a very precise description, nor are people with a “low mental age” necessarily easily persuaded. As I said, one problem, I think, comes from the way people read the quran. If someone believes it is absolutely and literally the exact word of god or reads it like a motor maintenance manual or the Highway Code they’re likely to come up with even more alarming interpretations than the standard ones.

By: George Carty

George Carty — Mon, 26 May 2008 13:22:43 +0000

Islam is king and everyone should worship it

Shirk??

By: George Carty

George Carty — Mon, 26 May 2008 13:21:35 +0000

Keep in mind that many of them, according to that article, lacked further education, so their exposure to foreign influences would have been limited,

That’s strange, because I thought that for many Islamist terrorists (particularly 9/11’s Egyptian contingent), the problem that made them easy marks was “loads of letters after my name, but no job” (because of the parlous state of most Middle Eastern economies outside the oil sector).

By: Indigo Jo

Indigo Jo — Mon, 26 May 2008 10:07:23 +0000

He was not only autistic, but he had a low mental age. That explains why he was an easy mark for the “jihadists” who were too cowardly to do the job themselves or wanted someone to carry out a “trial run”, but also it explains the strange things the papers reported him saying - for example, that “Islam is king and everyone should worship it”.

By: Thersites

Thersites — Mon, 26 May 2008 04:24:16 +0000

“the fact that they did not have a great deal of religious education…probably partly explains their amoral and destructive activities as we recently witnessed in Exeter.”

Well, let’s wait and see about Exeter. The most important fact about the man alleged to have tried to bomb Exeter is that he is said to be autistic. Autistic people are sometimes completely literal-minded, believing in “truth absolute” and unable to recognise or understand metaphors and likely to take the more repellent bits of a religious text absolutely literally, rather than (mis)interpreting it. Indeed, it’s notable that quite a few other would-be suicide-bombers have had technical educations and backgrounds- town-planners, neurologists, engineers, mechanics- where the literal-minded application of given absolute predetermined truths is what matters rather than the discovery or questioning of possible hypotheses.

By: Indigo Jo

Indigo Jo — Sat, 24 May 2008 18:35:24 +0000

I’m not sure how much outside inspiration the al-Qa’ida people needed; their origins lie with the 1991 Gulf War, when their offer to expel the Iraqis from Kuwait was turned down by the Saudis and other Gulf rulers who wanted the job done quickly and probably did not trust them either. That was when the present problem of highly-destructive takfeerism emerged. Keep in mind that many of them, according to that article, lacked further education, so their exposure to foreign influences would have been limited, although the fact that they did not have a great deal of religious education either probably partly explains their amoral and destructive activities as we recently witnessed in Exeter.

By: George Carty

George Carty — Sat, 24 May 2008 16:40:08 +0000

What would you make of the suggestion that nihilistic Muslim terrorism has its origins within the Western world itself (and not even in the field of foreign policy)? You may be interested in Meet the Al-Qaeda Archetype.

By: Ali Abdullah

Ali Abdullah — Wed, 21 May 2008 11:40:39 +0000

There is a very detailed article here on QF and Usama Hasan: http://salafimanhaj.com/pdf/SalafiManhaj_UsamaHasan.pdf

By: Ali Abdullah

Ali Abdullah — Tue, 20 May 2008 00:40:45 +0000

There's a small piece about the rise and fall of the Muslim Parliament here: http://www.islamicthought.org/mp-intro.html

By: Indigo Jo

Indigo Jo — Sat, 17 May 2008 13:08:30 +0000

As-Salaamu ‘alaikum,

There has been an ongoing critique of Usama Hasan at Traditional Islamism. That post took me hours to write and concentrated on one speech. I did not listen to all the speeches and do not feel the need to respond to all of them.