Quote Originally Posted by J Singh View Post
As an aside, the whole concept of violence as a method for implementing political change as being 'radical', 'extremist', etc. smacks of epistemological bias.
LOLOL - this is SO true! I would, actually, go further and suggest that it is a case of epistemology being driven by both ideology and sub-conscious cultural programming.

Let's, for the moment and for the sake of argument, take a bit of a step backwards and look at how the concept of "religion" is being (mis)used. I suspect that there are a number of such (mis)uses, namely:
  1. Assuming that a "religion" is coherent and whole
  2. Aussuming that all members of a "religion" or a "sect" share the same beliefs
  3. Disregarding a) how and b) that "new" interpretations of "religions" appear both organically and, also, in response to the lived environment
  4. Mistaking the name for the thing (map - territory error)


I'm just going to comment on the final point, the map - territory error that seems to be happening a lot. One of the problems that I see appearing is that many commentators assume that since the content / name of a group is different, there will be no underlying pattern of human interaction that can be perceived. This, IMHO, is what Bob is looking at in part with his stress on governance: an underlying pattern. My concern with Bob's focus, however, is that it stresses that singular (and secular) pattern too much and, in doing so, creates a secondary bias against pulling out other patterns.

For example, one (blindingly obvious ) pattern is that people who are recruited into "religious" groups engaged in combat (terrorism being just a tactic within a broader context of combat), generally know very little about their own, professed religion. So, what can we tell from this pattern?

Well, one thing we can draw out of it is that the kids so recruited often tend to leave once they gain more actual knowledge of their religion (unless it is also tied in with a long-term conflict involving other forms of identity, e.g. Northern Ireland). A second thing we find is that these movements tend to centralize control over ideology / "religious" knowledge, something that usually backfires over a longer period of time. A third thing, coming from the second, is that centralized ideology / religious knowledge becomes increasingly narrow (think "politically correct" on steroids) and, also, vicious in application (think "kill them all, God will know his own").

But the pattern I'm talking about here, the "spiral into insanity" as it were, actually is not really counterable by focusing on governance issues. To make matters even worse, the use of "religion", and especially in a state of multiple, competing "religious" groups following the same pattern, will tend to undermine the entire culture areas basic assumptions about legitimacy and sovereignty; at least that was the argument I made in my last WOTR piece .

Cheers,

Marc