.... The experience of those who join the Islamist insurgencies rampaging across Yemen, Somalia, Libya, and Syria demonstrates that there are no easy answers to the issue of radicalisation.
Yet, strip away all the grievances and myriad individual triggers that might drive an individual to join an extremist group and you find underlying issues of identity and belonging. None of this is new. When Mohammad Sidique Khan led the 7/7 London terrorist attacks almost a decade ago, he said his actions were in retaliation for “the bombing, gassing, imprisonment and torture of my people”.
Isn’t it the case that Khan was killing his own people, the ordinary citizen-stranger commuting to work, when he detonated his bomb on the London underground? Instead he identified with the citizens of Iraq – a country he had not even travelled to and whose language he could not speak? [844 comments]
[TOP RATED COMMENT 195 votes] "What links a white Englishman from Buckinghamshire with a second generation British-Pakistani man born in Dewsbury and a missing family of 12 from Bradford?"
I know..I know....Islam.
[2ND 147] Islam teaches Muslims to always put another Muslim first. An errant, even evildoing, Muslim is still superior to any other person. Until this is addressed, the issue of identity will remain. This is why a Home Counties man from a humdrum town thinks he has more in common with Muslims in Kenya than people in his home town, despite never having been south of Portsmouth...
[3RD 142] I know many tolerent and lovely Muslims, many are my neighbours and the extremists are a minority, but one that cannot be ignored.
The inescapable problem for Muslims growing up in the UK is that British culture and society is not compatable with Islamic culture.
We need to find a way for Islam to exist comfortably in the mainstream but it has to be said the leg work needs to be done by Muslims themselves to adapt and not for British society to adapt to it.
The current situation where two societies exist uneasily alongside each other within one country is neither acceptable or desirable.
[4TH 140] Britain's not a paradise, but its ok as it is. Most muslims see happy enough to live here.
And for those who aren't - well, off you fuck. We really don't need to be persuading such people to stay.
[5TH 138 ] Islam explicitly states that a Muslim's brothers and sisters are fellow Muslims, not their countrymen. That the Ummah is the only thing that matters. This is why Islamists and British Muslims who become radicalised are willing to kill their countrymen. This is why if you convert to Islam you will be accepted by the same people.
Of course the idiocy of such prescriptive ideas of who one should care about is that soon you start divided the same brotherhood further - this one is a Shia, this one is not observant enough, this one dared to listen to music etc....
But then the concept off brotherhood beyond shared humanity is frickin stupid in itself.
[6TH 126] The west already has a shared value system based on tolerance, the rights of minorities and fairness. It's far from perfect, but it's better than pretty much anything we've had before.
That's why it can't be a two-way thing. Most people already embrace someone's right to follow whatever religion they see fit and that's as far as it should go. I'm really not trying to be nasty ,and hopefully I've worded this right, but if you have intolerant views, you are entitled to have them but they should be condemned.
As for those going out to Syria, I'm tired of looking for excuses: they were isolated, brainwashed etc. They have left to commit atrocities for a regime which can be compared to the most brutal fascist dictatorships in history. They are scum.
[7TH 106] We already have a shared value system. If you come here, you join it. If you don't like it, don't come here but go where you find a shared value system that is compatible with your values. So simple.
[8TH 105] People fall prey to radicalization because they lack the ability of critical thinking. Blind faith is an endemic problem in muslim society. Minds imprisoned in the cage of islam. All religion is simply a man made belief system and does not have solutions to the problems of a complex, modern world. It only offers escapism. [The Guardian] Read more
