Christian couple tortured and burned to death in Pakistan

Sure ain't ... you linked to Ennahda. If Steve Jobs wrote an article, is Steve the author or Apple? Which page has more relevant information "about the author"?

Is this your new set of rules, or are you going to flip back to address-the-content-not-the-author again? I don't care which on you choose, but make up your mind so you can stop arguing against your own edicts.

If you could quote where a "gullible leftist" made him out to be a saint, I'd appreciate it. This argument looks like a staw-man in sheep's clothing.

more attacks on "leftists" ... but wait:

It's not content. You use "content" correctly in the second sentence above. Is the interpretation of content within the proper context a privilege you keep for yourself, or is everybody allowed to do that now? Because earlier, you were both upset when people did that, and insisted on posting quotes out of context.

This is called a "false dichotomy." Two logical fallacies in one post, good job ATW!

I'd also like to point out that I saw how you stopped quoting Wikipedia mid-sentence, because the second half of the sentence was less kind to the narrative you were trying to push. That's a new trick for you, Captain Context.

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What's Tunisia's motivation?

 

I linked to a Wikipedia article about Ennahda which logically also talked about its founder and chairman and quoted that part. What is it that you fail to understand about that?

I'll leave your other time-wasting nonsense unanswered. Everyone can judge that for themselves.

Why don't you tell us?

 

Kind of hard to ignore the fact that the author seems to condone the use of child suicide bombers. MINORS!

I'm assuming ATW's quote is legit...unless you tell me differently.

 

Why did you stop your quote mid-sentence? What's wrong with providing a full picture? Why didn't you go straight to the page that's specifically about the founder, if you in fact wanted to tell us about the founder?

Suit yourself. Quitting is quitting.

Can't be bothered to submit two sentences of analysis along with an article you found? What are we supposed to get from that article? What conclusions are we supposed to draw? Is your barrier laziness or incapability?

 

Stop wasting my time and answer Daedalus' question. I am not interested in playing gotcha games with an imbecile. Just got rid of another one.

 

Pakistan as a whole has a number of problems. That country has managed to maneuver itself into a really bad position and continues still to go further down that path.

 

We were talking about Pakistan as a whole, and not this specific incident. I think radical extremist version of Islam seems to be a side effect of the things I mentioned. So they are more at the root of the problem. I hate bad side effects of the problem like cruelty and murder in the name of Islam. But the best way to eliminate those side effects would be to correct the problems I listed in my post.

I understand that might not be as fun for you, but it seems more at the heart of the problem and solution-oriented to me.

 

Who do British or French born and raised Muslims with good education and a middle class background choose to resot to the violence of radicalism, if the real root cause is poverty.

 

"Fun"? What kind of a dumb comment is that? Do you think I get joy from reading about the various manifestations of Islamist intolerance? What a ridiculous thought. Maybe leftists think like that when they find things they think can help them to score political points. I do not.

"Side effect"?

Answer justtxyank's question. It's exactly the right question.

Is Dion Waiters poor?

 

That's not the only cause, but it is part of the root cause. When there is education, lack of dictatorship, minimal poverty then radical Islam doesn't take hold. Yes there will be a few that still buy into it. But there won't be multiple large movements of it that attract significant followings.

I think the reason why middle class Muslims with good educations in places like France or Great Britain still go the radical route is in part because of the poverty, lack of education, and dictatorship elsewhere.

If there weren't huge movements active in places like Pakistan there wouldn't be much news and media about radical Islam. The Muslims with middle class backgrounds and good educations wouldn't have that to even focus on.

However with all the injustice, poverty and other issues I brought up available for the radical movements to point at, surely some other Muslims might see that as reason enough to go off the deep end and commit to the fundamentalist brand of Islam. Add to that prejudice of people pre-supposing that because a person is of middle eastern heritage and Muslim, then there is a good chance they are terrorists or terrorist sympathizers and it makes sense that some suckers would see the injustices spouted off by the radicals as reasonable.

None of that excuses murder, terrorism, or the radical intolerance from these people and groups. However getting rid of the causes will greatly reduce the power and attraction that radical groups have.

What doesn't work is bombing them, killing them while also taking out a few innocents, and turning them into martyrs and fueling the revenge cycle.

 

Got damn dude

 

Is this happening in a statistically significant manner?

How many of these stories are there?

 

Poverty and Low Education Don't Cause Terrorism

"Members of Hezbollah's militant wing who were killed in action in the 1980s and early 1990s were at least as likely to come from economically advantaged families and have a relatively high level of education as they were to come from impoverished families without educational opportunities."

In the minds of many, poverty and violence often go together. After the events of September 11, several prominent observers, ranging from George W. Bush to George McGovern, drew a connection. The head of the World Bank even proclaimed that terrorism will not end until poverty is eliminated. Perhaps surprisingly, then, a review by NBER Research Associate Alan Krueger and co-author Jitka Maleckova provides little reason for optimism that a reduction in poverty or an increase in educational attainment, by themselves, would meaningfully reduce international terrorism.

"Any connection between poverty, education, and terrorism is indirect, complicated, and probably quite weak," the authors note in Education, Poverty, Political Violence, and Terrorism: Is There a Causal Connection? (NBER Working Paper No. 9074). "Instead of viewing terrorism as a direct response to low market opportunities or ignorance, we suggest it is more accurately viewed as a response to political conditions and long-standing feelings (either perceived or real) of indignity and frustration that have little to do with economics."

The authors are concerned that drawing a connection between poverty and terrorism - if it is not justified - is potentially quite dangerous because the international community may lose interest in providing support to developing nations when the imminent threat of terrorism recedes. That support, they note, waned in the aftermath of the Cold War. Connecting foreign aid with terrorism also risks the possibility of humiliating many in less developed countries, who are implicitly told they only receive foreign aid to prevent them from committing acts of terror. Further, premising aid on the threat of terrorism could create perverse incentives for some groups to engage in terrorism to increase their prospect of receiving aid. "Alleviating poverty is reason enough to pressure economically advanced countries to provide more aid than they are currently giving," Krueger and Maleckova write.

Defining terrorism is difficult;there are more than 100 diplomatic or scholarly definitions, the authors note. One problem is that there are valid disputes as to which party is a legitimate government. Since 1983, the U.S. State Department has defined terrorism as "premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by sub-national groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience." In their study, Krueger and Maleckova cast a broad net.

To reach their conclusions, they look first at hate crimes, which are closely related to terrorism. These include the lynchings of African Americans and the violence against Turks in Germany. About 10 percent of the 3,100 counties in the United States are currently home to a hate group, such as the Klu Klux Klan, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. A study by Phillip Jefferson and Frederic Pryor found that the likelihood that a hate group was located in a county was unrelated to the unemployment rate in the county, and positively related to the education level in the county. Similarly, Krueger and Jrn-Steffan Pischke found that in Germany neither average education nor the average wage in the country's 543 counties was related to the amount of violence against foreigners.

Turning to terrorism, the authors' analysis of the results of a public opinion poll conducted in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in December 2001 indicates that support for violent attacks against Israeli targets does not decrease among those with higher education and higher living standards. A majority of the Palestinian population said that the attacks against Israeli civilians helped achieve Palestinian rights in a way that negotiations could not have. A 92 percent majority also did not consider the suicide bomb attack that killed 21 Israeli youths at the Dolphinarium night club in Tel Aviv last summer to be terrorism.

From analyzing earlier opinion polls and economic trends in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Krueger and Maleckova conclude, "There is little evidence here to suggest that a deteriorating economy or falling expectation for the economy precipitated the latest intifada." They observe, "Protest, violence, and even terrorism can follow either a rising or declining economic tide."

The core of the study entails a comparison of the characteristics of members of Hezbollah (or Party of God), which the U.S. State Department has designated a terrorist organization, with those of the general population of Lebanon. Their analysis indicates that members of Hezbollah's militant wing who were killed in action in the 1980s and early 1990s were at least as likely to come from economically advantaged families and have a relatively high level of education as they were to come from impoverished families without educational opportunities.

Likewise, looking at the Israeli Jewish underground, which conducted numerous violent attacks against Palestinians in the late 1970s and early 1980s, killing 23 Palestinians and maiming many others, the study finds that these Israeli extremists were "overwhelmingly well educated and in high paying occupations."

Economists have found a link between low incomes and property crimes. But in most cases terrorism is less like property crime and more like a violent form of political engagement, the authors suggest. "More educated people from privileged backgrounds are more likely to participate in politics, probably in part because political involvement requires some minimum level of interest, expertise, commitment to issues and effort, all of which are more likely if people are educated and wealthy enough to concern themselves with more than mere economic subsistence," they write. And terrorist organizations may prefer to use highly educated individuals as operatives because they are better suited to carry out acts of international terrorism than are impoverished illiterates since the terrorists must fit into a foreign environment to be successful.

http://www.nber.org/digest/sep02/w9074.html

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And if you want a more familiar source:

http://www.economist.com/node/17730424

Exploding misconceptions

Alleviating poverty may not reduce terrorism but could make it less effective

“EXTREMELY poor societies…provide optimal breeding grounds for disease, terrorism and conflict.” So said Barack Obama, arguing in favour of more development aid to poor countries. Mr Obama is not alone in regarding economic development as a weapon against terrorism. Hillary Clinton, America's secretary of state, has called development “an integral part of America's national security policy”. The idea that poverty could be associated with terrorism is not implausible. If acts of terror are committed by people with little to lose, then it is reasonable to expect them to be carried out disproportionately by poor, ill-educated people with dismal economic prospects.

Some terrorists certainly fit this profile. Yet the ranks of high-profile terrorism suspects also boast plenty of middle-class, well-educated people. The would-be Times Square bomber, Faisal Shehzad, boasts an MBA and is the son of a senior Pakistani air-force officer. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who stands accused of lighting a makeshift bomb on a transatlantic flight in the so-called “underwear plot”, had a degree from University College, London, and is the son of a rich Nigerian banker. The suspected suicide-bomber in this week's attacks in Stockholm had a degree from a British university. Are well-heeled terrorists representative or are they exceptions to the rule?

Social scientists have collected a large amount of data on the socioeconomic background of terrorists. According to a 2008 survey of such studies by Alan Krueger of Princeton University, they have found little evidence that the typical terrorist is unusually poor or badly schooled. Claude Berrebi of the RAND Corporation compared the characteristics of suicide-bombers recruited by Hamas and Islamic Jihad from the West Bank and Gaza with those of the general adult male Palestinian population. Nearly 60% of suicide-bombers had more than a high-school education, compared with less than 15% of the general population. They were less than half as likely to come from an impoverished family as an average adult man from the general population. Mr Krueger carried out a similar exercise in Lebanon by collecting biographical information for Hizbullah militants. They too proved to be better educated and less likely to be from poor families than the general population of the Shia-dominated southern areas of Lebanon from which most came.

There is also no evidence that sympathy for terrorism is greater among deprived people. In a series of surveys carried out as part of the Pew Global Attitudes Project in 2004, adults in Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan and Turkey were asked whether they believed that suicide-bombing aimed at American or other Western targets in Iraq was justified. Their answers could be broken down by the respondents' level of education. Although the proportions varied greatly between countries (with support lowest in Turkey), more schooling usually correlated with more agreement.

Some argue that poverty could be at the root of terror even if terrorists are not themselves poor. Anger about poverty in the countries they are from could cause richer citizens of poor countries to join terrorist organisations. This idea can be tested by looking across countries to see if there is a link between a country's GDP per head and its propensity to produce terrorists. Mr Krueger did precisely this by looking at data on 956 terrorist events between 1997 and 2003. He found that the poorest countries, those with low literacy, or those whose economies were relatively stagnant did not produce more terrorists. When the analysis was restricted to suicide-attacks, there was a statistically significant pattern—but in the opposite direction. Citizens of the poorest countries were the least likely to commit a suicide-attack. The nationalities of all foreign insurgents captured in Iraq between April and October 2005 also produced no evidence that poorer countries produced more insurgents. If anything, there was weak evidence the other way.

What might explain why so many relatively well-off people from relatively well-off countries end up as terrorists? It may be that a certain level of education makes it more likely that people will become politicised. But the kind of people that terrorist organisations demand also matters. Unlike ordinary street crime, which does tend to attract the down-and-out, terrorism is a complex activity. So terrorist organisations prefer to recruit skilled, educated people to carry out their missions. Using a database of Palestinian suicide-bombers between the years 2000 and 2005, Mr Berrebi and Harvard University's Efraim Benmelech find that more educated suicide-bombers are assigned to attack more important targets. Such terrorists also kill more people and are less likely to fail or be caught during their attacks.

The sword is mightier with the pen

The finding that more educated terrorists are deadlier may mean, however, that economic conditions can influence terrorism's effectiveness. Using data on all Palestinian suicide-attackers between 2000 and 2006, Esteban Klor of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and Messrs Benmelech and Berrebi show in a new paper that the skill level of the average terrorist rises when economic conditions are poor. They reckon that high unemployment enables terror organisations in Palestine to recruit more educated, mature terrorists. So better economic conditions could blunt the effectiveness of terror attacks by reducing the average quality of the talent that terrorist organisations are able to recruit.

There are many reasons to promote economic development in poor countries but the elimination of terror is not a good one. The research on terrorists' national origins suggested that countries which give their citizens fewer civil and political rights tend to produce more terrorists. Politics, not economics, is likely to be a more fruitful weapon in the fight against terror.


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Basically, all the scientific evidence points at FranchiseBlade (and others) being dead wrong with his argument that he keeps repeating that "it's all socio-economic, religious motivation is nothing but at most a side-effect".

Of course, there was also Nidal Hasan who murdered people in the United States, who was a trained doctor, not poor at all. And there are tens of thousands of ISIS terrorists from Britain, France, Germany who are not poor, certainly do not have to starve in these countries, and many of whom have all kinds of degrees, at least high school degrees.

 

Here is some more information against the misconception that FranchiseBlade tries to spread:

http://nationalinterest.org/blog/bruce-hoffman/todays-highly-educated-terrorists-4080

Today's Highly Educated Terrorists

This was in fact the conclusion also reached by Peter Bergen and Swati Pandey in their 2006 study of madrassas (Islamic schools) and lack of education as a putative terrorist incubator. Using a database of some 79 jihadis who were responsible for the five most serious terrorist incidents between 1993 and 2005, they found that the most popular subjects amongst those jihadi terrorists who attended university was engineering followed by medicine.

Bergen and Pandey further observed that 54 percent of the perpetrators either attended university or had obtained a university degree. The terrorists they studied “thus appear, on average, to be as well educated as many Americans—given that 52 percent of Americans have attended university.

Finally, they observed that two-thirds of the 25 terrorists involved in the planning and hijacking of the four aircraft on September 11th 2001 had attended university and that two of the 79 had earned PhD degrees while two others were enrolled in doctoral programs.

The popularity of medicine as a terrorist vocation most recently surfaced in connection with the botched attempt to bomb a nightclub in central London and the dramatic, but largely ineffectual, attack on Glasgow’s International Airport in June 2007. Six of the eight persons arrested were either doctors or medical students; the seventh person was employed as a technician in a hospital laboratory; and the eighth member of the conspiracy was neither a medical doctor nor in health care, but instead had earned a doctorate in design and technology.

Medical doctors becoming terrorists is hardly new, either. George Habash, the founder and leader of a prominent 1960s-era Palestinian terrorist group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), was a medical doctor. As was the PFLP’s head of special operations, Wadi Haddad.

Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda’s chief strategist and bin Laden’s deputy, is a trained surgeon. Orlando Bosch, who was active in the militant Miami, Florida-based anti-Castro movement and was charged with the inflight bombing of a Cubana Airlines flight in 1976 that killed 73 persons, practiced as a pediatrician.

The more salient point may be that, contrary to the common place belief that poverty and lack of education breeds terrorism, to a large extent, those historically attracted to terrorism have in fact tended to be reasonably well, if not, highly educated; financially comfortable and, in some cases, quite well off; and, often gainfully employed.

(...)

 

This is simply untrue. If you look at the Muslim attitude survey by Pew, scores of Muslims from all kinds of countries demanded that "apostates" be killed and that adulterers should be stoned. If you don't consider that a radical attitude, then I can't help you.

So, in other words, they will always find a reason because they have an "us vs. them" mentality, a group loyalty with other Muslims although Muslims always claim "there is no such thing as 'one Islam'" when it comes to finding excuses for why they don't need to be concerned with bad things other Muslims do, and an inflamed sense of victimhood. As long as they can find one perceived injustice against a Muslim anywhere else in the world, it's ok to fight "infidels" anywhere else, huh? And FranchiseBlade thinks that's A-OK!

No, it won't, because these people will always find a reason. You are a total apologist who makes up stuff to act all holy. You could pump all the money in the world into the regions in the world where you think only poverty causes terrorism and intolerance either there or elsewhere in the world, according to your weird theory - all that would happen would be these people using the money to advance their cause of intolerance and terror. Case in point: The EU has been subsidizing Palestina with hundreds of millions of Euros and much more, so that they can build a functioning infrastructure and economy, the theory being that that would reduce terror. None of that happened. All that happened was them building more terror tunnels and funneling the money into buying more weapons.

Hate is spread because of ideologies and long-running prejudice. The ideology of political Islam demonizes Jews. Imams around the world demonize America. That is where the hate comes from.

There are plenty of poor people in the world who do not bomb innocent people and who do not condone bombing innocent people. That is because these poor people are not followers of an ideology that calls itself religion of peace, but whose preachers, not all, but way too many of them, teach hate instead.

 

THanks for the post. I'm going to go read Krueger's paper. That seems a bit mind blowing. Interesting topic.

 

This is where you are making stuff up. Who said I didn't consider stoning adulterers and killing people simply because they are apostates a radical attitude?

This is where your posting turns lame. You try and attach something that is BS onto a poster by making connections that aren't there and don't exist. You twist, stretch make illogical connections and then present it as if it makes sense.

Note that FranchiseBlade never said it was A-OK. ATW only tries to make it look like I did. Yet when I posted that was the kind of thing people like ATW did in another thread you accused me of putting words in your mouth.

What you've done, is started this part of your post with "In other words", then made up your own argument(not what I was actually saying at all) to rail against and attached it to my post in an effort to demonize me and what I was actually saying.

This part is actual substantial debate. I appreciate it. If all of your posts and every part of your posts were like this, it would be a pleasure to debate and discuss with you.

yes the EU gives money as do plenty of other groups. However the money they give doesn't eliminate poverty. Those areas are rife with poverty and starvation.

What I mentioned in my very first post was lack of resources. People such as the Palestinians and Pakistanis need resources to sustain themselves. They need education on the whole to be self sustaining. Unless they have that terrorism will have a much easier time of taking root there.

The fact that you pointed out some terrorists with education and middle class backgrounds is irrelevant since I've agreed that they exist and will always exist.

What I'm saying is that large portions of the population won't support it if there is a a better more hopeful life for the people. If they have a way out of popularity where they are self sustaining and have resources under their control so that they can control their well being, as well as education there will be far less support for backwards ideas, ideologies, and terrorism.

Imams that demonize Jews are a definite problem. It is horrible wrong, and absolutely does increase the likelihood that people who listen to it will be willing to act as terrorists and kill. It dehumanizes people and once folks believe that a group is less than human it will always be more likely they will kill them and behave irrationally violent towards them. I agree with that concept.

Integration between the groups will do more to eliminate those beliefs than anything else will. It's just going to be hard to find a way to do that. Combine that with education and ability to have a self sustainable economy and support for terrorism will come close to withering and disappearing. It won't go away completely but it will be greatly reduced.

 

Will you also address the studies that debunk your claim that it's not (religious) ideology, but poverty that causes terrorism?

 

I did already. Finding that some of the people who carry out certain acts have an education is different than the terrorist networks as a whole, which is also different than radical supporters of the group that enable it which is what I was talking about to begin with.

I also didn't deny that a religious ideology might be part of it. Something that is seen as a higher cause to serve or way out of a bad situation would work. It doesn't really matter what that particular ideology or cause is as long as it seems active. One that can on the face of it be part of a traditional heritage and community the people are used to can certainly be a tool to fire people up. But fix the conditions that I mentioned and it will be much more difficult for that tool to work so well.

 

The studies contradict that assumption.