markg wrote:
Bamba wrote:
Lonewolves wrote:
Every time we bomb them they bomb us back.
That sentence has made me think: when these types of attacks happens, is there ever actually a concrete motive or demand? Thinking of something like the IRA's bombing attacks these were 'in service of' an actual agenda and they made clear what they actually wanted. With ISIS et al, have they ever come out and said, "This is what the west would need to do to satisfy us and get us to fuck off?" Not that I'm saying we should/would even if they had, I'm just wondering aloud if they even think they're advancing a cause at this point or if it's really just terror for terror's sake.
Apologies if the above comes across as mystifyingly naive or somehow offensive.
This article is a couple of years old now and I don't honestly know how accurate it is:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/ar ... ts/384980/But I don't think they have an agenda that could ever be resolved by sitting around a table.
That article's a really good--albeit terrifying--read. Assuming it's all true it paints a bleak picture because the kind of violent expansionist nonsense ISIS gets up to isn't just something they want to do; they're actually forced into it by their reading of the Koran. Anyone who doesn't actively support that agenda, including their current supreme leader, would have to be killed by everyone else. There's literally no argument you could come up with that would stop them.
A couple of interesting take-aways from it:
- One reason for the recent escalation is that ISIS managed to tick off all the criteria for the establishment of a kaliphate in Syria. The very establishment of a kaliphate apparently activates a whole load of Sharia laws that until then lay dormant.
- Another rule that activates along with the establishment of a kaliphate is that all Muslim's must do everything in their power to travel to that kaliphate so they can live there. The general agenda of violence and murder is focussed on other Muslim's who don't adhere to the various rules they believe in rather than non-Muslims. However, currently western countries are stopping known activists from travelling to Syria so there's a theory that a lot of the attacks in Europe are being carried out by people frustrated by their inability to obey this directive. While ISIS are obviously happy with the result of these attacks they're not actually organising or mandating them directly because they'd prefer everyone came to Syria. If that's true, it's a really shitty side-effect of us quite rightly trying to stop locals bolstering ISIS's troops in person.
I had just assumed that people were travelling en masse to join ISIS because they'd reached some kind of critical mass; I didn't realise this kaliphate idea was even a thing, never mind the massive impact it apparently has.