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Subject: The silence is deafening

recurve 15.08.14 - 03:05am
But I am afraid we also have to face the fact that, in the Middle East, the growing strength of IS, which so attracts these recruits, is partly the direct consequence of the ill-fated and illegal war launched by George Bush and the millionaire former Prime Minister Tony Blair. There is little doubt that Saddam Hussein was a despot, but his overthrow has plunged Iraq into long-term political and social chaos. * +

recurve 15.08.14 - 03:06am
Tragically, this is the venomous world to which so many young British Muslims are now drawn, thanks to pro-jihadi messages from some mosques, mullahs and madrassas (religious schools) which fuel and exploit their disillusion with British society. * +

recurve 15.08.14 - 03:07am
Alienated from the liberal West, partly because of their own hardline ideology, partly because of poverty and social isolation, they do not feel they have a practical stake in modern Britain. So they fall prey to the language and imagery of the radicals, which presents jihad as both the ultimate expression of true religious devotion, and a great Boy's Own adventure. * +

recurve 15.08.14 - 03:07am
The conflict is portrayed to these deluded young men as an exciting, heroic adventure in the desert, where they can wield rifles, carry out executions and send 'selfies' back home while doing God's work.

For boys who do not wish to stack the shelves of supermarkets, or work in Primark, or study hard for higher education in accountancy or medicine, as their parents might wish, they are presented with an intoxicating romantic vision of life and death in the arid landscape of Mesopotamia.
* +

recurve 15.08.14 - 03:08am
A second, potent part of the jihadi appeal is the promise of sex. Here is one of the ugly hypocrisies of fundamentalism.

On the one hand is a deeply puritan, repressive 'theology' that subjugates women and seeks to stamp out normal physical contact between the genders. On the other is a misogynistic vision of paradise, reminiscent of a sleazy Las Vegas nightclub, full of nubile, insatiable women eager to please their men.
* +

recurve 15.08.14 - 03:26am
In one of the more grotesque versions of Islamic fundamentalism, the spiritual reward for each 'martyr' will be the company of 72 voluptuous virgins. This vision has an undoubted appeal to a sex-starved young Muslim from urban Britain. * +

recurve 15.08.14 - 03:26am
But the reference to 72 virgins in paradise has absolutely no basis in the Koran, or in authentic Islamic theology. It comes instead from a dubious hadith or prophetic tradition that was produced three centuries after Mohammed's death. * +

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