How an Islamic extremist found a new path

[moonshaz]

I don't know how many of you saw this on Rachel's show last week, but it was fascinating.Sohail Ahmed, a self-described reformed Islamic extremist and gay Muslim, spoke with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on radical Islam

Comments

[eldvno]

I don't know if it will prevent prejudice, because people who are prejudiced don't care about facts, but I think it will help misinformation. With the priests sexually abusing children, we did not call it "sadistic Christianity" we called it was it was, a problem with the Catholic Church. A layperson would know that it's not Christians who hate homosexuality, it is hard-line Evangelical types which do, it's not an Episcopal problem. In fact, you would be hard pressed to find an Episcopal responsible for religious violence (terrorizing health clinics), but Evangelicals? You will find them in spades.

To be honest, in the short term, I think it would do more harm than good. Because it isn't just about naming the problem, it is about understanding the problem's influence. If Wahhabists just kept to themselves and spent their money on covering their yachts in gold leaf, it would be much less of a issue. But that is not happening. Wahhabists, Salafists, along with organizations which represent those and similar ideologies (Boko Haram, Al-Shaabab, etc) have been linked to donations made to NGOs, cultural centers, and mosques in Europe (particularly the Balkans), Asia, and NA. They are not giving the money out of the goodness of their hearts, they are doing it to promote a very extreme ideology within Islam.

Kosovo is a good example of this. In towns where Wahhabi money was funneled, there was a huge cultural shift, and not only have many people from those towns been imprisoned for terror-related charges, but other people left to join IS. In cities where Wahhabi money wasn't found? This didn't happen. In the end, much of the country are still Muslims, but the "cultural, and when it's convenient" Muslims are not the ones being arrested.

I don't think the average person will go around asking the Muslims they know which Islamic ideology they subscribe to, but I would hope that it would help people understand this isn't just happening to ANY Muslim.

[mimblexwimble]

I am too tired to be eloquent but I wanted to get my thoughts down before I nod off for the night.

I don't know that using terms like Salafism would help defeat terrorists, even in the long run.

I think the problem is that to prevent misinformation the people using such terms have to be correctly informed. For example, even in your two comments you seem to suggest that there are dangerous Muslims who subscribe to extremist ideologies, and then there are non-dangerous Muslims who are just culturally Muslim, don't pray, don't fast, etc. Which is a surprise to me, as a non-Salafi Muslim, who certainly prays and fasts and practices in other ways. So, like you say, how would a layperson judge if I'm the "safe" kind of Muslim who won't turn into a terrorist while they aren't looking?

All these labels really do is paint a black and white picture and attempt to define terrorists and extremists by boxing them up into stereotypes and labels that people don't really understand, instead of by trying to understand what makes certain people susceptible to radicalization and fighting terrorism head on. I don't entirely disagree that there is a particular extremist ideology at the center of the worst terrorism. But I don't know that naming the problem, as you suggest, would have any specific effect on how we fight terrorism.

[eldvno]

I was being hyperbolic when I described the two groups, I did not mean that literally. I apologize that you thought I meant non-practicing = good, practicing = bad, but I did not.

And for your last sentence, that is already what is being implemented! More states are realizing that radicalization is not happening at random, but can be traced to funding coming from oversees. And as such, they are tracing the money. While states in the Balkans are on high alert, more are taking notice and are realizing that large sums of money (egregiously large) being moved to very specific communities is typically linked to Gulf States, and also linked to radicalism in said communities.

I could go on and on about this because it was (and still is) a major research focus for me, but suffice to say, I'd rather people call a spade a spade rather than "one of the cards".