IMAN - In One Year's Time

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What Draws Youth To Political Violence?

Expanded and somewhat more revised version of my post on Loonwatch
*Side note I also clarified some thing like the definitions I was using and expanded on other things I wanted to highlight but could not due to space

The following article is an expanded version of a feature article titled “What draws youth to political violence? that Razainc. wrote for York University’s newspaper, Excalibur. Razainc. will expand upon it here at LoonWatch in more depth over the coming weeks.

Guest post by Razainc.
Terrorism involves spectacular and often unexpected killings in order to destabilize the social order and promote a greater cause, and as professor Scott Atran describes it, publicity is the oxygen of terrorism.(1)
But what drives youth who turn to political violence?
Is it religion? The Qur’an? Do they hate “Western” freedoms? Do they just want to die?
Noam Chomsky, when asked by Excalibur about the role Islam plays in political violence says,

“It [Islam] plays a role, but there are [other] reasons. Tribal cultures, the extreme Islamophobia in the West, and the many direct attacks on the Muslim world. It’s [political violence] by no means unique to Islam.”

The evidence from experts like Scott Atran (a French and American anthropologist), Robert Pape (an American political scientist), Graham E. Fuller (Former CIA Station chief), and Marc Sageman (former CIA Operations Officer) backs him up.
How terror cells form has a lot to do with how humans form bonds and groups. It’s important to discard the notion that because of the horrible things they did they are different from us. Terrorists are human. This may come as an uncomfortable realization but is an accurate and necessary one.

“A sense of moral outrage at apparent crimes against Muslims both globally and locally is a common theme among the terrorist. The outrage is interpreted in a specific way, namely that this moral violation is part of a larger war against Islam. The ideology appeals to certain people it resonates with their own personal experience of discrimination, making them feel they are also victims of this wider war. A few individuals are then mobilized through networks both face to face and now commonly online to become terrorists” Sageman wrote in Leaderless Jihad.

Sageman emphasizes the need to look at terrorists humanely. He points to the example of the sexual frustration theory, which suggests suicide bombers want to die to have sex in paradise, a common theory that’s floated around but has no evidence.
Religious commitment alone is not enough to determine whether you will join a violent group but rather the dynamics with friends or family, “given religious commitment then action-oriented group participation is the best predictor of who will actually make costly sacrifices for their beliefs” says Atran in an interview with Excalibur.

“What inspires the most lethal terrorists in the world today is not so much the Qur’an or religious teachings as a thrilling cause and call to action that promises glory and esteem in the eyes of friends. Jihad is an egalitarian, equal-opportunity employer: fraternal, fast-breaking, glorious and cool … Western volunteers for ISIS are mostly youth in transitional stages in their lives. For the most part, they have no traditional religious education and are ‘born again’ to religion. They are self-seekers who have found their way to jihad in myriad ways,” says Atran.

Professor Atran in an interview about ISIS told me that the “first wave of foreign fighters was tightly linked to a humanitarian concern.” But now, Atran continued

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Imams Jamil Al-Amin, Ayyub Abdul-Alim and Ayyub Abdul-Alim

Imam Jamil Al Amin, Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah, and Ayyub Abdul-Alim are just some examples as to why #Ferguson , #EricGarner , #TamirRice  #MikeBrown police brutality & the two-tier US justice system is our issue a Muslim issue and we can't ignore it