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The Forum > General Discussion > Heroism – often found in unlikely places.

Heroism – often found in unlikely places.

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Individual; "The asylum seeking single men are their soldiers waiting for the numbers to be right here." You draw a rather long bow with this; there is absolutely no evidence to support your claim.
I am an atheist who see's very great danger in organised religions. Fromm the billions who profess to follow some religion or another, and I do not distinguish between Christian, Jew or Muslim etc. there is but a very small minority who have both the desire and the capability to commit the heinous crimes they perpetrate in the name of their god. No one faith has a monopoly on fanaticism all are capable of producing the monsters we see. In 1978 religion produced Jim Jones and the Jamestown massacre. I must say there is more to this than purely fanatical adherence to a religion, although it is a major contributing factor to their actions. The reasoning that drives these monsters to undertake these outrages against society is complex and not easily understood. Never underestimate the power of religion.
Posted by Paul1405, Sunday, 26 May 2013 7:47:48 AM
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csteele, I think you're just reading too much into it. He was depressed and that in itself is enough to create all sorts of mental phantasms. Beyond that, he had just been rejected and accused of kidnap by a woman he was attracted to and was running from that. He felt anonymous, unwanted, rejected and wasn't thinking straight.

From my reading of it, I think he was a basically decent man who felt he had screwed up his life. Beyond that, it's all speculative, but that's never stopped me before...

The public nature of his death was a statement to the world at large, I think, that he existed and was worthy of attention. The initial shots were attention-grabbers, so that he would be seen when he took his final action. What he didn't want was to die as anonymously as he had lived, I think.

All in all a human tragedy that would probably have been easily averted at any number of points along the way, but not heroic by any means.
Posted by Antiseptic, Sunday, 26 May 2013 11:18:44 AM
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Joe, our society is excellent at creating people with few connections. As we are a social animal, such people are always in a distressed state and if they are offered a place in a group, are prone to becoming zealots. Religions understand this and their scriptures are full of stories of such zealots, as are the ranks of their followers. Zealots are extremists, they are always seeking ways to show their commitment to the group they belong to. In this case they also found a way to attack the State they felt had failed them, while not attacking ordinary members of that State. They weren't indiscriminate monsters, they had a specific purpose.

Basically they were a couple of members of the British underclass who made some stupid choices out of a desire for recognition by a group that had accepted them. They may have been manipulated into it by some unscrupulous puppeteer, but it seems more likely they took this upon themselves to demonstrate their commitment to the group. They may have heard eulogies for Muslims killed in wars and would have known that there is considerable anti-Muslim agitation in Britain, where attacks on Muslims far exceed attacks by them.

I really don't think you can blame this on Islam. It's a product of a social structure that entrenches dysfunction, reduces social connection and generates resentment.It also possibly reflects mental health issues in the accused.

These guys were primed to go off long before they converted to Islam.
Posted by Antiseptic, Sunday, 26 May 2013 11:19:54 AM
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Hi Antiseptic,

" ... there is considerable anti-Muslim agitation in Britain, where attacks on Muslims far exceed attacks by them."

Really ? Do you have figures for that assertion ?

But this claim is a bit precious:

"I really don't think you can blame this on Islam. It's a product of a social structure that entrenches dysfunction, reduces social connection and generates resentment. It also possibly reflects mental health issues in the accused."

To the extent that a garbled set of instructions can provoke a brutal murder, I think that most certainly we can 'blame Islam'. And how long are we going to use this rationale of social deprivation, etc.: "I'm so misunderstood and alienated, so humiliated." ?

And says who the murderers have mental issues ? This is the point about ideologies, and their power - having been embedded in one myself, I'm sort of guiltily aware of how far one would be prepared to go, and yes, it does resemble insanity sometimes. Ideology can kill.

Ultimately, this may be the point - that ideologies derived from the Enlightenment, from the thousands of years of development of political ideas, from the Greeks, the Indians, Magna Carta, the Treaty of Westphalia, etc. - ideologies based on notions of equality and the rule of law for all

- will have to stack up against ideologies derived from desert stories and garbled versions of imported ideas - ideologies based on unquestioned male authority, the unchangeability of the written word, anti-Western science (and therefore anti-science), regardless of any new knowledge accruing (which is thereby devalued by being non-'Book').

I suspect that this is going to be a very long, IDEOLOGICAL struggle involving billions of people, not just a struggle against a relative few bombers and butchers. Perhaps it will go through some horrible phases, an all-out war between Shi'a and Sunni, forexample. I read recently that there had been 1800 al-Qaida-related bombings since 2001. So how may more ? And what sorts of other vile crimes will be committed in the name of Islam ?

Sometimes I'm glad I'm getting old ;)

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Sunday, 26 May 2013 12:12:46 PM
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Hi Antiseptic,

Did you mean this sort of thing ?

from: http://au.news.yahoo.com/latest/a/-/latest/17328200/three-fresh-arrests-over-london-soldier-murder/

"Faith Matters, a state-funded organisation which works to reduce extremism, said it has recorded a huge increase in anti-Muslim incidents reported to its helpline since the attack.

' "It's a hugely worrying development," director Fiyaz Mughal told AFP, saying the organisation had been informed of 162 incidents in the past 48 hours, compared to a daily average of four to six.

"They were mainly verbal attacks on women wearing the Islamic headscarf in the street, he said, but there were also online attacks and some violence.

"A woman in her 50s had been punched unconscious on the outskirts of Oldham, near Rigby's home city of Manchester in northwest England, while two mosques had been attacked in the south of the country."

I agree that there is no excuse or reason for abusing anybody wearing the hijab, or any other violent acts, certainly not beating a woman unconscious, these are gutless actions, but hardly a 'huge increase' in incidences. I'm surprised that that far-Right demo in Newcastle attracted only a couple of thousand nutjobs.

And only two mosques attacked ? That's a pretty restrained response, in my view, I would have expected far more outrage at the possibilities of mosques as breeding-grounds for more atrocities.

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Sunday, 26 May 2013 12:27:33 PM
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Joe, my point is that there's no point blaming Islam when these men are representative of a problem that is far more widespread. Islam didn't cause them to do this, a deep disaffection with their society did. Islam just gave them a perceived justification. We would never have heard of these men if they'd done this to some poor bugger in a back lane, which is a far more common scenario for such violent acting out.

I'm trying to find the paper on British religious violence stats I saw a couple of days ago. Basically the upshot was that Muslims, especially women, are subject to abuse and minor violence (getting pushed, being spat on, having things thrown at them) at an enormous rate. There are groups of thugs who specifically target Muslims and sometimes Sikhs. Drunken assaults on Muslims are very common. On the other hand, violence by Muslims because of their religion is quite rare, although there are growing numbers of groups of young men who perpetrate similar types of violence as the non-Islamic thugs, both on the public and more commonly on other Muslims who belong to a different sect. The Islamic community is not well integrated socially with the wider one.

I agree that it isn't going well, but in only seeing the perceived failings of the Islamic community you are missing the wood for the trees. Let's not forget that Indians, Carribean blacks and others have been subject to similar behaviour from the great British public in the form of strident women and violent young men and some reacted violently in turn. Was that the fault of Hinduism or Rastafarianism or a simple human response?
Posted by Antiseptic, Sunday, 26 May 2013 1:01:52 PM
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