British guilt over jihadis is for dummies

In order to persuade young Muslims that their allegiance belongs here, this country will have to question its own casual self-loathing

In the midst of the deeply unfunny news coverage of the two young British jihadi volunteers who were arrested on terror charges when they arrived back from Syria, there was one moment of comic absurdity. It seems that before setting off on their mission, Mohammed Ahmed and Yusuf Sarwar found it necessary to place orders with Amazon for those invaluable scholarly treatises, Islam for Dummies, The Koran for Dummies and Arabic for Dummies. Hilarity aside, there is something important to be noted here.

First, these 22-year-olds were obviously not the products of some extreme mosque which had drilled them in Islamist fundamentalism. In fact, they were so untutored in the religion to which they were nominally affiliated that they had to equip themselves with a crash course in its basic principles. Nor had they come from families which were inclined to endorse their terrorist fantasies. Indeed, their own parents were so horrified when they learned of the men’s activities that they turned them in to the police. So we need to ask, as a matter of urgency, where it came from, this bizarre determination to be inducted into a campaign of seditious murder that (we can assume from their decision to plead guilty to the terror charges) they fully intended to bring home with them. What causes young men to risk their own lives, and those of who knows how many others, for a cause about which they know so little that they have to mug it up before they catch the plane?


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/10962850/British-guilt-over-jihadis-is-for-dummies.html

There's no easy answer to that.

But the indoctrination message of fellow Muslims being persecuted is a powerful one.

Coupled with the exhuberence and nativity of youth and the need for instant gratification, fighting seems to them the only solution.

Fuzzy Zack wrote:There's no easy answer to that.

But the indoctrination message of fellow Muslims being persecuted is a powerful one.

Coupled with the exhuberence and nativity of youth and the need for instant gratification, fighting seems to them the only solution.

There is no easy answer, the media certainly do not help in stereotyping Muslims in a poor light.
As seen here though they were very naive on Islam and yet went to fight and there is a history where people are drawn to conflicts to fight even a fight not even of that nation, the Spanish Civil war for one.
Unity again is the key, with all communities, I think one of the basic problems in this country though is how they played upon a British and not an English identity for people with England. This is not he same in Wales or Scotland, where the identity is both.

Fuzzy Zack wrote:There's no easy answer to that.

But the indoctrination message of fellow Muslims being persecuted is a powerful one.

Coupled with the exhuberence and nativity of youth and the need for instant gratification, fighting seems to them the only solution.

i always thought Muslims were only supposed to fight the enemies of Islam

isn't that what you've been preaching for years fuzzmuck??

that Islam is a religion of peace except when its attacked and then it only takes defensive measures??

you say the indoctrination message of fellow Muslims being persecuted is a powerful one.

obviously you're talking about the qur'anic suras that command Muslims to fight in defense of their brethren

but in this case the "fellow Muslims" being persecuted are being persecuted by other "fellow Muslims"

for a religion that you claim is so perfect it sure leads to a lot of confusion amongst Muslims