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InvisibleDiploidM
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Chilling Look Inside The Mind Of A Suicide Bomber
    #6606620 - 02/24/07 07:47 PM (17 years, 1 month ago)

Are you ready? Tomorrow you will be in Paradise . . .

AT DAWN, when the three men heard the morning call to prayer from a mosque in the village below their hideout in the hills, they knelt and uttered the traditional invocation to Allah that Muslim warriors make before setting off for combat. They put on clean clothes, tucked the Koran into their pockets, and began the long hike over the hills and along dry riverbeds to the outskirts of Jerusalem.

In the Palestinian neighbourhoods of East Jerusalem, they walked in silence so that their accents, the guttural vernacular of Gaza, would not arouse suspicion. It was June 1993, and they were members of the Palestinian fundamentalist group Hamas. Along the way, they stopped to pray at every mosque. At dusk, they boarded a bus that was heading toward West Jerusalem, filled with Israeli passengers. When the driver thwarted their attempt to hijack the vehicle, they tried to detonate the homemade bombs they were carrying.

The bombs failed to go off, so they pulled out guns and began firing wildly. The shots injured five passengers, including a woman who later died. The young men fled the bus, hijacked a car at a red light, and forced the driver to take them toward Bethlehem. Israeli security forces stopped them at a military checkpoint, and in a gun battle two of the young men and their hostage were killed. The third hijacker, whom I will call S, was struck by a bullet in the head; he lay comatose for two months in Israeli hospitals. Finally, he was pronounced brain-dead, and the Israelis sent him back to his family in the Gaza Strip to die.

But S recovered, and when we met, five years later, he told me his version of the events. By then, he was married and the father of three sons. Each of them had been named for shaheed batal — “martyr heroes”.

In Gaza, S is celebrated as a young man who “gave his life to Allah” and whom Allah “brought back to life”.

He was polite as he welcomed me into his home. The house was surrounded by a high cement wall that had been fortified with steel. We sat down in a large, simply furnished room whose walls were inscribed with verses from the Koran. On one wall was a poster showing green birds flying in a purple sky, a symbol of the Palestinian suicide bombers.

S had just turned 27. He is slight, and he walked with a limp, the only trace of his near-death. He invited his wife to join us, and he answered my questions without hesitation.

I asked him when, and why, he had decided to volunteer for martyrdom. “In the spring of 1993, I began to pester our military leaders to let me do an operation,” he said. “It was around the time of the Oslo accords, and it was quiet, too quiet. I wanted to do an operation that would incite others to do the same. Finally, I was given the green light to leave Gaza for an operation inside Israel.”

“How did you feel when you heard that you’d been selected for martyrdom?” I asked.

“It’s as if a very high, impenetrable wall separated you from Paradise or Hell,” he said. “Allah has promised one or the other to his creatures. So, by pressing the detonator, you can immediately open the door to Paradise — it is the shortest path to Heaven.”

S was one of 11 children in a middle-class family that, in 1948, had been forced to flee from Majdal to a refugee camp in Gaza, during the Arab-Israeli war that started with the creation of the State of Israel. He joined Hamas in his early teens and became a street activist.

In 1989, he served two terms in Israeli prisons for intifada activity, including attacks on Israeli soldiers. One of his brothers is serving a life sentence in Israel.

I asked S to describe his preparations for the suicide mission. “We were in a constant state of worship,” he said. “We told each other that if the Israelis only knew how joyful we were they would whip us to death! Those were the happiest days of my life.”

“What is the attraction of martyrdom?” I asked.

“The power of the spirit pulls us upward, while the power of material things pulls us downward,” he said. “Someone bent on martyrdom becomes immune to the material pull. Our planner asked, ‘What if the operation fails?’ We told him, ‘In any case, we get to meet the Prophet and his companions, inshallah.’

“We were floating, swimming, in the feeling that we were about to enter eternity. We had no doubts. We made an oath on the Koran, in the presence of Allah — a pledge not to waver. This jihad pledge is called bayt al-ridwan, after the garden in Paradise that is reserved for the prophets and the martyrs. I know that there are other ways to do jihad. But this one is sweet — the sweetest. All martyrdom operations, if done for Allah ’s sake, hurt less than a gnat’s bite!”

S showed me a video that documented the final planning for the operation. In the grainy footage, I saw him and two other young men engaging in a ritualistic dialogue of questions and answers about the glory of martyrdom. S, who was holding a gun, identified himself as a member of al-Qassam, the military wing of Hamas, which is one of two Palestinian Islamist organisations that sponsor suicide bombings. (Islamic Jihad is the other group.) “Tomorrow, we will be martyrs,” he declared, looking straight at the camera. “Only the believers know what this means. I love martyrdom.”

The young men and the planner then knelt and placed their right hands on the Koran. The planner said: “Are you ready? Tomorrow, you will be in Paradise.”

SINCE 1982, I have been an international relief worker. In 1996 I was posted to the Gaza Strip during one of the most vicious cycles of suicide bombings. To understand why certain young men voluntarily blow themselves up in the name of Islam, I began, without official sponsorship, to research their backgrounds and the beliefs that had led them to such extreme tactics.

I was warned that my interest in trying to understand the suicide missions was dangerous. But eventually, when the people who were observing me had assured themslves of my credentials — an important one was that I am Muslim and from Pakistan — I was allowed to meet members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad who would help me. “We are agreeing to talk to you so that you can explain the Islamic context of these operations,” one man told me. “Even many in the Islamic world do not understand.”

From 1996 to 1999, I interviewed nearly 250 people involved in the most militant camps of the Palestinian cause: volunteers who, like S, had been unable to complete their suicide missions, the families of dead bombers, and the men who trained them.

None of the suicide bombers — they ranged in age from 18 to 38 — conformed to the typical profile of the suicidal personality. None of them was uneducated, desperately poor, simple-minded, or depressed. Many were middle-class and held paying jobs. Two were the sons of millionaires. They all seemed entirely normal members of their families. They were polite and serious, and in their communities were considered to be model youths. Most were bearded. All were deeply religious.

I was told that to be accepted for a suicide mission the volunteers had to be convinced of the religious legitimacy of the acts they were contemplating, as sanctioned by the divinely revealed religion of Islam. Many of these young men had memorised large sections of the Koran and were well versed in the finer points of Islamic law and practice. But their knowledge of Christianity was rooted in the medieval crusades, and they regarded Judaism and Zionism as synonymous.

Most of the men I interviewed requested strict anonymity. The majority spoke in Arabic and they all talked matter-of-factly about the bombings, showing an unshakeable conviction in the rightness of their cause and their methods. When I asked them if they had any qualms about killing innocent civilians, they would immediately respond, “The Israelis kill our children and our women. This is war, and innocent people get hurt.”

They were not inclined to argue but they were happy to discuss, far into the night, the issues and the purpose of their activities. One condition of the interviews was that, in our discussions, I not refer to their deeds as “suicide”, which is forbidden in Islam. Their preferred term is “sacred explosions”. One member of al-Qassam said: “We do not have tanks or rockets, but we have something superior — our exploding Islamic bombs.”

My contacts told me that, as a military objective, spreading fear among the Israelis was as important as killing them. Anwar Aziz, an Islamic Jihad member who blew himself up in an ambulance in Gaza, in December 1993, had often told friends: “Battles for Islam are won not through the gun but by striking fear into the enemy’s heart.”

Military commanders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad remarked that the human bomb was one of the surest ways of hitting a target. A senior Hamas leader said: “The main thing is to guarantee that a large number of the enemy will be affected. With an explosive belt or bag, the bomber has control over vision, location, and timing.”

As today’s weapons of mass destruction go, the human bomb is cheap. A Palestinian security official pointed out that, apart from a willing young man, all that is needed are such items as nails, gunpowder, a battery, a light switch and a short cable, mercury (readily obtainable from thermometers), acetone, and the cost of tailoring a belt wide enough to hold six or eight pockets of explosives. The most expensive item is transportation to a distant Israeli town. The total cost of a typical operation is about US $150 (£85). The sponsoring organisation usually gives between $3,000-$5,000 (£1,700- £2,830) to the bomber’s family.

I met an imam affiliated with Hamas, a youthful, bearded graduate of the prestigious al Azhar University in Cairo. He explained that the first drop of blood shed by a martyr during jihad washes away his sins instantaneously. On the Day of Judgment, he will face no reckoning. On the Day of Resurrection, he can intercede for 70 of his nearest and dearest to enter Heaven; and he will have at his disposal 72 houris, the beautiful virgins of Paradise. The imam took pains to explain that the promised bliss is not sensual.

There is no shortage of willing recruits for martyrdom. Hamas and Islamic Jihad generally reject those who are under 18, who are the sole wage-earners in their families, or who are married and have family responsibilities. If two brothers ask to join, one is turned away.

The planners keep a close eye on the volunteer’s self-discipline, noting whether he can be discreet among friends and observing his piety in the mosque. During the week before the operation, two “assistants” are delegated to stay with the potential martyr at all times. They report any signs of doubt, and if the young man seems to waver, a senior trainer will arrive to bolster his resolve.

A planner for Islamic Jihad said that his organisation carefully scrutinises the motives of a potential bomber: “We ask this young man, and we ask ourselves, why he wishes so badly to become a human bomb. What are his real motives? Our questions are aimed at clarifying first and foremost for the boy himself his real reasons and the strength of his commitment. Even if he is a long-time member of our group and has always wanted to become a martyr, he needs to be very clear that in such an operation there is no drawing back. Preparation bolsters his conviction, which supports his certitude. It removes fear.”

A member of Hamas explained the preparation: “We focus his attention on Paradise, on being in the presence of Allah, on meeting the Prophet Muhammad, on interceding for his loved ones so that they, too, can be saved from the agonies of Hell, on the houris, and on fighting the Israeli occupation and removing it from the Islamic trust that is Palestine.”

I asked one planner about the problem of fear. “The boy has left that stage far behind,” he said. “The fear is not for his own safety or his impending death. It does not come from lack of confidence in his ability to press the trigger. It is awe, produced by the situation. He has never done this before and, inshallah, he will never do it again. It comes from his fervent desire for success, which will propel him into the presence of Allah. It is anxiety over the possibility of something going wrong and denying him his heart’s wish. The outcome, remember, lies in Allah’s hands.”

Al-khaliyya al-istishhadiyya, which is often mistranslated as “suicide cell” — its proper translation is “martyrdom cell” — is the basic building block of operations. Generally, each cell consists of a leader and two or three young men. When a candidate is placed in a cell, usually after months, if not years, of religious studies, he is assigned the lofty title of al-shaheed al -hayy, “the living martyr”. He is also referred to as “he who is waiting for martyrdom”.

Each cell is tightly compartmentalised and secret. Cell members do not discuss their affiliation with their friends or family, and even if two of them know each other in normal life, they are not aware of the other’s membership in the same cell. (Only the leader is known to both.) Each cell, which is dissolved after the operation has been completed, is given a name from the Koran or from Islamic history.

The young men undergo intensified spiritual exercises, including prayers and recitations of the Koran. Usually, the trainer encourages the candidate to read six particular chapters of the Koran: Baqara, Al Imran, Anfal, Tawba, Rahman, and Asr, which feature such themes as jihad, the birth of the nation of Islam, war, Allah’s favours and the importance of faith.

Religious lectures last from two to four hours each day. The living martyr goes on lengthy fasts. He spends much of the night praying. He pays off all his debts, and asks for forgiveness for actual or perceived offences.

In the days before the operation, the candidate prepares a will on paper, audiocassette or video, sometimes all three. The video testaments, which are shot against a background of the sponsoring organisation’s banner and slogans, show the living martyr reciting the Koran, posing with guns and bombs, exhorting his comrades to follow his example, and extolling the virtues of jihad.

The wills emphasise the voluntary basis of the mission. “This is my free decision, and I urge all of you to follow me,” one young bomber, Muhammad Abu Hashem, said in a recorded testament before blowing himself up, in 1995, in retaliation for the assassination of Fathi Shiqaqi.

The young man repeatedly watches the video of himself, as well as the videos of his predecessors. “These videos encourage him to confront death, not fear it,” one trainer told me. “He becomes intimately familiar with what he is about to do. Then he can greet death like an old friend.”

Just before the bomber sets out on his final journey, he performs a ritual ablution, puts on clean clothes, and tries to attend at least one communal prayer at a mosque. He says the traditional Islamic prayer that is customary before battle, and he asks Allah to forgive his sins and to bless his mission. He puts a Koran in his left breast pocket, above the heart, and he straps the explosives around his waist or picks up a briefcase or a bag containing the bomb. The planner bids him farewell with the words “May Allah be with you, may Allah give you success so that you achieve Paradise.”

The would-be martyr responds, “Inshallah, we will meet in Paradise.”

Hours later, as he presses the detonator, he says, “Allahu akbar” — “Allah is great. All praise to Him.”

The operation doesn’t end with the explosion and the many deaths. Hamas and Islamic Jihad distribute copies of the martyr’s audiocassette or video to the media and to local organisations as a record of their success and encouragement to other young men. His act becomes the subject of sermons in mosques, and provides material for leaflets, posters, videos, demonstrations, and extensive coverage in the media. Graffiti on walls in the martyr’s neighbourhood praise his heroism. Aspiring martyrs perform mock re-enactments of the operation, using models of exploding cars and buses. The sponsoring organisation distributes cassettes of chants and songs honouring the good soldier.

The bomber’s family and the sponsoring organisation celebrate his martyrdom with festivities, as if it were a wedding. Hundreds of guests congregate at the house to offer congratulations. The hosts serve the juices and sweets that the young man specified in his will. Often, the mother will ululate in joy over the honour that Allah has bestowed upon her family.

But there is grief, too. I asked the mother of Ribhi Kahlout, a young man in the Gaza Strip, who had blown himself up in November 1995, what she would have done if she had known what her son was planning to do. “I would have taken a cleaver, cut open my heart, and stuffed him deep inside,” she said. “Then I would have sewn it up tight to keep him safe.”

* Nasra Hassan works in Vienna. She has compiled a database of more than 200 profiles of Muslim suicide bombers and has just completed a book on the subject. A version of this article originally appeared in The New Yorker

timesonline.co.uk


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Republican Values:

1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you.
2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child.
3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer.

4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.

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OfflineBlueCoyote
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Re: Chilling Look Inside The Mind Of A Suicide Bomber [Re: Diploid]
    #6613022 - 02/26/07 03:14 PM (17 years, 1 month ago)

These guys are no martyrs. Martyrs were killed by others.
These guys are murderers of innocent, and if they believe in a GOD, then they will go to hell, for sure.
Allah will not justify murder, especially not those of innocent.
That is why one goes directly to paradise, if you were murdered (not if you murder) for your believe in their own religions.
But these guys pervert even their own religion with their brainwashed deeds that will lead them to hell, directly.

That must have been said.


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Though lovers be lost love shall not  And death shall have no dominion
......................................................
"Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men."Martin Luther King, Jr.
'Acceptance is the absolute key - at that moment you gain freedom and you gain power and you gain courage'

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InvisibleDiploidM
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Re: Chilling Look Inside The Mind Of A Suicide Bomber [Re: BlueCoyote]
    #6613153 - 02/26/07 03:48 PM (17 years, 1 month ago)

But these guys pervert even their own religion

You do realize that they say the exact same thing about you, they believe it as fervently as you do, and since all mystical beliefs are in things not in evidence, their position is supported by the same evidence and rationale you use to support yours.

That's the problem with mysticism and religion and the reason the world is on a slippery slope toward eventual nuclear jihad: each side is absolutely certain that their infallible, invisible friend in the sky agrees with them no matter what they make up.

Religion and mysticism are a plague on the Earth. :sad:


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Republican Values:

1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you.
2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child.
3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer.

4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.

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OfflineBlueCoyote
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Re: Chilling Look Inside The Mind Of A Suicide Bomber [Re: Diploid]
    #6613172 - 02/26/07 03:54 PM (17 years, 1 month ago)

Killing innocents is simply the shit and I think even an Arab (who is not brainwashed) knows that.
There is not much believe, mystery or religion necessary from my side for this insight :wink:
And, this I think is written in the Koran also.
Not religion or mysticism are the plague itself. Brainwashing and utilizing them for political reasons is what is the real plague behind.


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Though lovers be lost love shall not  And death shall have no dominion
......................................................
"Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men."Martin Luther King, Jr.
'Acceptance is the absolute key - at that moment you gain freedom and you gain power and you gain courage'

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OfflineFospher
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Re: Chilling Look Inside The Mind Of A Suicide Bomber [Re: Diploid]
    #6615601 - 02/27/07 04:18 AM (17 years, 1 month ago)

Quote:

Diploid said:
That's the problem with mysticism and religion and the reason the world is on a slippery slope toward eventual nuclear jihad: each side is absolutely certain that their infallible, invisible friend in the sky agrees with them no matter what they make up.

Religion and mysticism are a plague on the Earth. :sad:




Wouldn't it be great then if we all had someone real to look up to, someone that was proven to have lived? Everyone would march towards the bright future with all religions left behind.

It's kind of strange then, that the two empires, one following Nietzsche's Antichrist, and another Marxist' Das Kapital have killed more than any other war or conflict in the history of civilization. Both did a really great job at blowing up churches, temples and mosques. You can even see the living proof of one the prophets mummified at the Mausoleum. Your utopia?


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010001100100001001000101!

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OfflineSeussA
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Re: Chilling Look Inside The Mind Of A Suicide Bomber [Re: Fospher]
    #6615966 - 02/27/07 08:31 AM (17 years, 1 month ago)

> Both did a really great job at blowing up churches, temples and mosques.

Thus, once again, religion is shown to be at the center of conflict...


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Just another spore in the wind.

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InvisibleDiploidM
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Re: Chilling Look Inside The Mind Of A Suicide Bomber [Re: Fospher] * 1
    #6615996 - 02/27/07 08:50 AM (17 years, 1 month ago)

Your utopia?

Wow, way to put words in my mouth.

A world free of absolutists irrational beliefs COULD be utopian, but there are more things wrong with humans than just belief in invisible friends. This is why secular conflicts can happen too.

However, secular conflicts are few and far between compared to religious conflicts.

Cases in point:

-Torture at the hands of the Inquisition

-Witch burnings at the hands of the Catholics

-Endless killing in Northern Ireland

-Genocide in Rwanda

-War in Bosnia-Herzegovina

-Civil war in Sudan

-Extreme, radical fundamentalist Muslim terrorists in Afghanistan and Iraq

-Fragile peace in Bosnia holding only due to the presence of UN peacekeepers

-Ivory Coast murders of Muslims at the hands of the government

-Fragile peace in Cyprus holding only due to the presence of UN peacekeepers

-Ongoing conflict in India among Animists, Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs

-Sporadic conflicts between Christians and Muslims in Ambon Province in India

-Hindus and Muslims at each other's throats in Kashmir

-South Africa where hundreds of people accused of being witches are still murdered each year.

-Kosovo, Kurdistan, Macedonia, West Bank, Israel, Nigeria, Northern Ireland, Philippines, Chechnya, Vojvdina Province in Serbia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Tibet, Uganda, Iraq, Afghanistan...

I could go on all night, but my fingers are getting tired. All these conflicts are, at least in part, religious in nature.


Don't believe me? Religion even recognized ITSELF as the source for much of the world's suffering when a group of world religious leaders from Buddhist, Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox Christian, Jewish, Muslim and many other faiths met in Geneva in 1999 to issue a document, The Geneva Spiritual Appeal, asking political and religious leaders and organizations to ensure that religions are not used to justify violence in the future.

Delegates believed that the then-current 56 conflicts around the world all had religious elements.

56!


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Republican Values:

1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you.
2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child.
3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer.

4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.

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OfflineRedstorm
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Re: Chilling Look Inside The Mind Of A Suicide Bomber [Re: Diploid]
    #6616107 - 02/27/07 09:59 AM (17 years, 1 month ago)

I don't disagree with you that religion is hindering mankind, but many of those situations you state have a spurious relationship between religion and violence. Many of them, including the cases in Africa, have more to do with fighting over resources (ivory, land, and diamonds), nationalism, and ethnic differences than religion. While some of them certainly share the core cause being religion, don't accept immediately that just because two groups of people have different religion, that's why they're fighting.

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OfflineBasilides
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Re: Chilling Look Inside The Mind Of A Suicide Bomber [Re: Redstorm]
    #6617607 - 02/27/07 06:01 PM (17 years, 1 month ago)

Well said.

Wars are motivated for many reasons - but when there is an element of groups fighting and dying, they tend to inject their religions into the equation to give their causes and their fallen a purpose.


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"Have you found the beginning, then, that you are looking for the end? You see, the end will be where the beginning is. Congratulations to the one who stands at the beginning: that one will know the end and will not taste death."

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Offlinetrippindad82
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Re: Chilling Look Inside The Mind Of A Suicide Bomber [Re: Basilides]
    #6618155 - 02/27/07 08:27 PM (17 years, 1 month ago)

Quote:

Basilides said:
Well said.

Wars are motivated for many reasons - but when there is an element of groups fighting and dying, they tend to inject their religions into the equation to give their causes and their fallen a purpose.




:thumbup: Although a very said thing indeed.


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Trying to explain a journey to someone who has never experienced it is like trying to explain what a zebra looks like to  blind person who has never seen a horse.

^^^The above matter may be a complete fantasy that I concocted out of possible boredom.^^^


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OfflineFospher
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Re: Chilling Look Inside The Mind Of A Suicide Bomber [Re: Diploid]
    #6618256 - 02/27/07 08:52 PM (17 years, 1 month ago)

Quote:

Diploid said:
Your utopia?

Wow, way to put words in my mouth.




Certainly, if the proverbial plague of religion is removed from the organism, would it not in a harmonious state of being?

Quote:


A world free of absolutists irrational beliefs COULD be utopian, but there are more things wrong with humans than just belief in invisible friends.




Make it a world free of absolutist beliefs, period, then I might agree with you. Is Marxism a religion? Kapital does follow quite a logical structure of the steps to ultimate Communism. Can one not have a philosophy in the place of a religion, in fact, is it even possible to do otherwise?

I'm not surprised at the number of religious conflicts confirmed by the Geneva Spiritual Appeal, either. As a survival tactic, human beings have always tried to force their way of life onto their neighbour. Hey man, if the guy next door has the same axioms of life as you, it'd definitely make everything a lot easier. If the Albanians shared the Orthodox faith of the Serbs, would the Kosovo conflict even emerge?

And no need to point out witch burnings or religious sectarian violence, because as I have said before, Stalin's paw and Hitler's dystopia have killed more human beings than all those conflicts combined.





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OfflineFospher
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Re: Chilling Look Inside The Mind Of A Suicide Bomber [Re: Seuss]
    #6618276 - 02/27/07 08:57 PM (17 years, 1 month ago)

Quote:

Seuss said:
> Both did a really great job at blowing up churches, temples and mosques.

Thus, once again, religion is shown to be at the center of conflict...




The Jesus Christ icons just got replaced by portraits of V.I. Lenin, and instead of prayer, there were fear driven nationalistic rallies. Humans need myths to drive us forward, by taking away the common unconscious world of dreams and symbols of religion, you're putting rationalism as the final arbiter of an objective reality, which, needless to say, it is not.


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OfflineSeussA
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Re: Chilling Look Inside The Mind Of A Suicide Bomber [Re: Fospher]
    #6619452 - 02/28/07 03:44 AM (17 years, 1 month ago)

> you're putting rationalism as the final arbiter of an objective reality,

I'll take rationalism over "make believe" anyday... perhaps I am misreading your position... As a scientist, I don't need myths about fairies and pixie dust to help me find something to research and I am certainly going to base my beliefs off of rational observation rather than some outdated myth that explained how the Earth is the center of the universe.


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InvisibleLuddite
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Re: Chilling Look Inside The Mind Of A Suicide Bomber [Re: Diploid]
    #6620733 - 02/28/07 02:43 PM (17 years, 1 month ago)

This looks like a good book.



Stephen Adams: Former Muslim explains why jihadists hate us

Stephen Adams, The Examiner

Feb 27, 2007 3:00 AM (16 hrs ago)
Current rank: # 826 of 16,100 articles

WASHINGTON - “Why We Want to Kill You: The Jihadist mindset and how to defeat it,” by Walid Shoebat, Top Executive Media, 2007

If only someone could come up with a vaccine to counteract the outrageous lies, myths and delusions plaguing the Islamic world, it would be a major step toward world peace. Former Palestinian terrorist Walid Shoebat has done perhaps the next best thing with his new book, “Why We Want to Kill You.”

Shoebat writes that years ago as a young member of Yasser Arafat’s Fatah, he carried out missions including the bombing of an Israeli bank with an explosive device in a loaf of bread.

He also describes ambushing an Israeli soldier and beating his head until the club broke. After becoming a Christian in 1993, he looked back with shame at this violence, racism and deceit. “I must confess that lying was our nature,” he writes.

That story is more the subject of his first book, “Why I left Jihad,” whereas “Why We Want to Kill You” exposes this pattern of mass deception. Most of these deceptions concern Israel and the Jews — that the Jews have spread poisons among Palestinians, damaged and desecrated the Temple Mount, used infant blood in matzoh, even created artificial earthquakes.

Shoebat recalls an incident when he and his fellow students nearly killed an Israeli truck driver who accidentally struck a Palestinian girl. Leading the riot was a man blind from birth, who claimed it was no accident.

“Recalling the scene 20 years later,” writes Shoebat, “I wonder why an entire school followed a blind man who obviously could not have seen what really happened.”

Some of these falsehoods concern America: It was really American planes and American pilots, for example, who defeated the Arabs in the 1973 Six Day War, not Israelis. Conversely, Shoebat notes, a survey shows “65 percent of Indonesia’s Muslims today do not believe that the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States were carried out by Arabs.”

The list goes on: Accusing others of what you yourself are guilty of (“reversalism”); making treaties designed to be broken (hudna); sanctioning lying to non-Muslim “infidels” (taqqiya). Even the Quran speaks with its fingers crossed and is interpreted according to a convoluted system of what did the Prophet say and when did he say it (“law of abrogation”).

Shoebat has a useful concluding chapter of recommendations — though some (“remove all fanatical leaders” and “stop importing Saudi oil”) could use a little refinement. More helpful: “Declare the extreme Islamic view as a political movement and not simply a religion” and “Establish TV programs with opposing views, present the truth, and air it throughout the Muslim world.”

For the truth is that radical Islam is a form of brainwashing. As Shoebat says, “Terrorist groups use cult-like conditioning techniques to convert normal individuals into remorseless killers.”

And if there’s one thing most effective against lies, myths and delusions, it’s the truth — in massive doses.

Stephen Adams is associate editor of Citizen magazine and author of “The Middle East Conflict,” from Alpha, 2003.

http://www.examiner.com/a-589248~Stocks_Have_Worst_Day_Since_9_11_Attacks.html

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InvisibleSilversoul
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Registered: 01/01/05
Posts: 23,576
Loc: The Barricades
Re: Chilling Look Inside The Mind Of A Suicide Bomber [Re: Diploid]
    #6621612 - 02/28/07 06:47 PM (17 years, 1 month ago)

The real plague on the earth is the idea that others must believe as you do. This goes for religious people and atheists alike.


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InvisibleMushmanTheManic
Stranger

Registered: 04/21/05
Posts: 4,587
Re: Chilling Look Inside The Mind Of A Suicide Bomber [Re: Silversoul]
    #6625203 - 03/01/07 05:19 PM (17 years, 1 month ago)

The real problem is that there are billions of sophisticated apes living on a gigantic rock that is floating around in a damn near infinite amount of nothingness.

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OfflineBasilides
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Registered: 02/10/06
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Re: Chilling Look Inside The Mind Of A Suicide Bomber [Re: MushmanTheManic]
    #6625363 - 03/01/07 05:56 PM (17 years, 1 month ago)

Quote:

MushmanTheManic said:
The real problem is that there are billions of sophisticated apes living on a gigantic rock that is floating around in a damn near infinite amount of nothingness.




I think Einstein withdrew his theory of a static universe :smirk:


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"Have you found the beginning, then, that you are looking for the end? You see, the end will be where the beginning is. Congratulations to the one who stands at the beginning: that one will know the end and will not taste death."

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OfflineFospher
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Registered: 02/09/05
Posts: 2,033
Loc: The Netherlands
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Re: Chilling Look Inside The Mind Of A Suicide Bomber [Re: Seuss]
    #6625755 - 03/01/07 07:36 PM (17 years, 1 month ago)

Quote:

Seuss said:
I'll take rationalism over "make believe" anyday... perhaps I am misreading your position... As a scientist, I don't need myths about fairies and pixie dust to help me find something to research...




Speaking of fairy tales, have you seen Pan's Labyrinth? It's a movie that recently came out about a girl living in the midst of the Spain Nazi Franko/Communist conflict in the 1940s. I'm not going to go into the synopsis of the movie, but see it if you get the chance, it'll show you how much power fairies and pixie dust reside over your rationalist thinking. :lol:

Quote:


...and I am certainly going to base my beliefs off of rational observation rather than some outdated myth that explained how the Earth is the center of the universe.




It's kind of funny how the so called 'skeptics' (you) and religious fundamentalists take the same viewpoint on the Bible and accuse each other of doing the same thing: You both cant read between the lines. Read Genesis - it confirms the ideas of both evolution (fish appearing, then mammals, and finally - man) and the Big Bang. In fact, when the Big Band theory was publicized, the Vatican agreed with it as well.

C'mon! Believing in a God is pro-evolution. I can understand the Grand Canyon getting formed by random precipitation. or maybe some earthworm living pathetically due to carbon formation and water on this planet, but tigers? Dinosaurs? Homosapiens? A little bit more complex than a fucking water-eroded hole in the ground. The real fairy tale here is believing that all these creatures, including ourselves just evolved with nothing but blind chance.


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010001100100001001000101!

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OfflineViveka
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Registered: 10/21/02
Posts: 4,061
Last seen: 7 years, 5 months
Re: Chilling Look Inside The Mind Of A Suicide Bomber [Re: Fospher]
    #6626050 - 03/01/07 09:20 PM (17 years, 1 month ago)

What does God mean? Is there any word more fraught with meaning? Tigers, dinosaurs, homo-sapiens, the idea that you cannot fathom how the biological world came up with these forms speaks only of your incredibly limited perspective. I don't mean you personally, I mean your capacity as a human to grasp the scope of billions of years of life is miniscule. Why is it "blind chance" versus "God"?

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InvisibleMushmanTheManic
Stranger

Registered: 04/21/05
Posts: 4,587
Re: Chilling Look Inside The Mind Of A Suicide Bomber [Re: Basilides]
    #6626137 - 03/01/07 09:40 PM (17 years, 1 month ago)

Quote:

I think Einstein withdrew his theory of a static universe




Sorry, but I do not understand what this has to do with what I said or why a smirk had to be involved.

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