Totalitarian Islam Pros And Cons

Terrorists deny the authenticity of states, the rights of people , the unique importance of individual human beings and ultimately morality. Terrorists for one reason or another, loathe our freedom and our way of life. (Zupan, 2004)

One prominent Taliban leader has said that they consider the Afghan government puppets of the Americans. He said they (the Taliban) will continue to be hostile and will not consider negotiating a peace deal until the US is out of the picture (Kill). The US cites the progress they are making in the fact that over 1000 Taliban foot soldiers have defected and “re-integrated”, joining the government’s fight against the Taliban. However, many of these re-integrated soldiers still do not respect the US soldiers, citing their violence and offense to the Afghan culture. One re-integrated soldier named Abdul Aziz was caught on a microphone saying to a local “...the Taliban are still my brothers. Look, we [Aziz and his group of soldiers] don’t like the Americans. We’ve had bad experiences with them. They’re infidels. They’re the enemies of our religion, our nation, and our honor. If God makes the Taliban successful, then we will be Taliban again.” (Kill). Much more recently, it was reported in February 2015 that, only months after the US terminated major military operations in Afghanistan, the Taliban are ready to significantly challenge the new government (Peter). This demonstrates how the Taliban have persisted and resisted through the violence of the Kill/Capture program, and their anger at the Americans looks poised to be spewed onto

Millions of people globally supported the ‘war on terror’ at one time, largely because the discourse around it was successful in divisively framing the identities involved and attributing a ‘truthful’ nature to that framing. Governments, with the Bush administration seemingly as the lead, created ‘the other’ to be ‘the terrorist’, and those ‘terrorists’ were probably Muslim or Arab. The fear was then created by the comparison of this ‘other’ to the self; or ‘them vs. us’.

The type of Jihad in the Paris murders is simply an armed one. Islam at its core is both authoritarian and fundementalist, in that there is no deviation.

A main misconception of terrorism especially in today’s society is that, society views terrorism as faith- based acts of violence, when it may not be the case. Terrorism is an illegitimate mean to achieve a cause; it is a willful defense of an ideology or a political group. These acts by sub state actors who violently target non-combatants to communicate a political a message. Terrorist are neither crazy nor

In knowing this, skeptics note that if these theories are legitimate, the government would organize such chaos for their own interest. Population control would benefit them greatly (Brennan). An example of this in other countries would be the law they have in China where they are only allowed to have one child. More people are being born than are dying and resource depletion has become a growing concern with the worldwide population tipping seven billion. Experts gather that what was once gathered to be a boundless amount of nonrenewable resources is expected to be exploited within the next century. With New York City hosting nearly eight million people, why would not the United States government target this breeding ground for millions more

Elshtain, professor of ethics at the University of Chicago, argues for a set of positions that may startle some intellectuals: Good and evil exist; they can be defined within reasonably stable standards and norms; and individuals or states acting in pursuit of the good have, again under defined conditions, not just the right to struggle against evil, but the responsibility to do so. Within this framework, Elshtain (without apparent effort) identifies terrorists and terrorism

In the beginning of Inside Terrorism, by Bruce Hoffman, he hopes to express how the term “terrorism” has evolved over the past two centuries and what it means today. He does not reveal a promised definitional certainty, but after a historical survey he conducted, he concludes that terrorism is “the deliberate creation and exploitation of fear through violence or the threat of violence in pursuit of political change” (43). Who gets to determine the definition of terrorism though? While this book gives us his definition, we can see a first-hand account of the clash of adversaries, much like the violent clash between the Israelis and the Palestinians, which Hoffman’s theories do little to clarify.

First, freedom fighters can describe a group of people who take part in a violent struggle to achieve a political goal, especially to overthrow their government for good or bad causes. For example, the United States colonists were considered freedom fighters when they fought for the independence of America from Great Britain. The academic resource discussed in this paper present great information about terrorism has an effect on freedom fighters. These academic sources include two academic journals, two academic web pages, and a scholarly book. This final paper goes in depth regarding the world's view about freedom fighters, and numerous sources provide information on how terrorism plays a key factor on how freedom fighters are portrayed.

Consequently, we have more than a hundred definitions for terrorism. (Laquer) A famous terrorist expert summarized it as “a problem in the problem definition.” (H. H. A. Cooper) The problem of defining terrorism is that it fluctuates between terrorism and variants of freedom fighting – essentially the definition depends on who is labelling who. A significant contribution to our understanding of terrorism, however, has been by David Rapoport and his “four waves” of international terrorism. He describes waves as “a cycle of activity in a given time period,” one that is “characterized by expansion and contraction phases,” and its chief feature is its international character, where the activities in the several afflicted countries are “driven by a common predominant energy that shapes the participating groups’ characteristics and mutual relationships.” Having traced through history the direction of modern terrorism dating as far back as 1880, Rapaport lists four distinct waves of terrorism: anarchism, anti-colonialism, communism/socialism, and religious fundamentalism; the names of which reflecting the energy that individually shape them. (Rapaport 47) Rapaport’s wave theory has been crucial to our understanding of the global spread of

Walter Laqueur’s book, “The New Terrorism: Fanaticism and the Arms of Mass Destruction”, is empowering readers with the entire spectrum of terrorism. The reasons behind terrorism are not easy to understand, but Laqueur goes into great detail to try and bring the reader to an understanding of what the terrorist is thinking in order to justify the means to the end.

As far as terrorism and these terrorists extensive plots against other countries, a more in depth look should go towards the social aspect of these individuals. This is a big part in the cause of terrorism. Some of the findings, through brief research, may suggest oppression is related with terrorism. Another term that could be used and may be more appropriate in this case would be the term totalism. A totalistic individual is one who sees themselves as being oppressed, and basically will justify his or her actions through their own self-pity. This perhaps may be a cynical definition, but the average person who is picked on by a tall muscular bully may not always resent tall muscular people. On the other hand, another individual as opposed to a totalistic individual will not forgive nor forget this type of person. They may also be extremely prone to making horrific attacks against these types of people.

The issue of modernism has become the main issues among Islamic society since the western modern principle influenced Islamic society. In addition, some of Islamic modern thinkers also received modern education. As the result, they felt unsatisfied towards the traditional thinkers among Muslim society. Some of them go extremely to the modern thinking by rejecting all the pure of Islamic world thinking. However, some of them adopt the modern thinking to Islamic traditional thinking to develop the new revival perception of Islam. The purpose of this book is to describe the modern thinkers of Islam perceptions towards some issues such as, intellectual, political, economic, social and educational bases.

Pro-democracy intellectuals also argue that a democratic system is necessary to comply with the Islamic principle that all men are created equally and thus a system that denies equality is anti-Islamic. This is a response to the Arab monarchs in Saudi Arabia, Oman, Jordan, Morocco, among others, who use religion to legitimize their power. (Espositol & Voll, 1996) A Sudanese intellectual, Abdelwahab El-Affendi, expressed this idea in a publication of Islam21c:

Goodfellas countries Sharia: the practice room and legal culture are that the Sharia does not matter, as European countries. This is the case of Tunisia, Algeria, Lebanon and Syria. Sometimes, there are few surprises, the judge may choose to rule according to Sharia but rather concerns the right of the family business law or commercial law (Anton, 2013).