Youth Radicalization or Extremism research

[George L. Singleton]

Thanks for the continued dialogue.

Violence flows in history in and among all religions, a historic fact.

But today the focus is on our reactions via the war on terrorism on having been attacked by Islamic terrorists, all well educated, college graduates.

Do you really want to go and live in UK today where hundreds march in the streets of London periodically, men, women, and children, holding up placards saying radical things against your life and well being as non-Muslims?

Great housing, schools, free public health care, and yet the radicalization of and among Muslims is there and growing, not diminishing.

Unless you first understand the Ummah you are off the point entirely, my view, of course.

[William F. Owen]

But today the focus is on our reactions via the war on terrorism on having been attacked by Islamic terrorists, all well educated, college graduates.

...and all see themselves as victims, and hard done by in life as Muslims.

Do you really want to go and live in UK today where hundreds march in the streets of London periodically, men, women, and children, holding up placards saying radical things against your life and well being as non-Muslims?

Well I don't live in London. I buy my bread from the Druze, and walk past a beggar holding the Koran, and sit next to Arabs in a cafe, and feel perfectly safe!

[Ken White]

LINK.

[Bob's World]

LINK.

As I have said before, If the the underlying conditions of poor governance persist, insurgency will always resprout from the well trimmed roots of the earlier conflict. Not sure if that is the case here.

The wildcard is youth and testosterone. Just as young native american warriors would break every treaty their elders agreed to; just as american prisons today are full of young men fueled by testosterone over common sense; just as frustrated young Saudi middle class men leave their homes to travel to Iraq or Afghanistan; young men will seek opportunities to challenge themselves. Though Ireland has had a booming economy, I hope this is more a flash of idle youth over a reignition of unresolved conflict rooted in poor governance. My attention has been elsewhere.

[George L. Singleton]

just as frustrated young Saudi middle class men leave their homes to travel to Iraq or Afghanistan; young men will seek opportunities to challenge themselves. Though Ireland has had a booming economy, I hope this is more a flash of idle youth over a reignition of unresolved conflict rooted in poor governance. My attention has been elsewhere.

Bob, when you get into young Saudis you are into what I am hammering on, radical Islam. It is their misguided religious interpretations at the terrorist extreme end, not youthful exuberance, which drives them to suicide missions and such.

We will be doing a 30th wedding anniversary later this year in Ireland in fact. Ireland is today in the midst of a huge depression, not a simple recession, worse than Iceland has just encountered. This of course broadly speaking is both Ireland and Northern Ireland, as they had melded their economies together better in the past 10 years or so.

I find little comparability between some unemployed Irish radicals who are and were excommunicated by and from the Roman Chruch, their alleged basis of attacks being resumed, and the war on terrorism where organized terrorist Muslims are attacking both fellow Muslims and the rest of the world's religions, too.

The era of large numbers of Christians killing Christians in religious wars ended with the Baptists fightint the Mormans in Utah in the mid 1850s, as best I can recall my history, but feel free to numerically correct me. In Utah I think between 40 and 50,000 were killed in that last religous range war.

[jmm99]

Well, the "Real IRA" did the first one; and now the "Continuity IRA" admits to the second one. From the Dublin Irish Times:

Last Updated: Tuesday, March 10, 2009, 18:07
Man (37) and youth held over policeman's murder
IRISH TIMES REPORTERS

Police investigating the killing of a PSNI officer in Co Armagh last night have arrested a 37-year-old man and a 17-year-old boy.
....
The dissident republican group, the Continuity IRA, has claimed responsibility for the murder of Constable Carroll who was from the Banbridge area.

The murder occurred just 48 hours after the Real IRA murdered two unarmed British soldiers in Antrim town on Saturday night.

Comments by Marty McGuinness are here:

Last Updated: Tuesday, March 10, 2009, 13:56
Dissidents behind attacks are traitors, says McGuinness

Sinn Féin’s Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness has described the dissident republicans behind the two recent attacks in the North as traitors to the island of Ireland.

At a joint press briefing with First Minister Peter Robinson and Chief Constable Sir Hugh Orde today, Mr McGuinness said the perpetrators of these murders had “betrayed the desires and political aspirations of all the people who live on this island and they don’t deserve to be supported by anyone”.

He appealed to the nationalist community to assist the police services north and south to defeat these people. “There is a duty on me to lead from the front,” he said.
....
Local Sinn Féin Assembly member John O’Dowd, was challenged on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme over whether his party regarded last night’s killing as “murder”.

Mr O’Dowd responded: “It is murder, and not because you want me to say it, but because it is. We have called on the people to come forward and give information to the police service, and not because you want us to say it, but because it is the right thing to do.

“This society has moved on. We want to move on along with society.

“I think that in the darkness of what we have seen in the last 48 hours, the light that has been shone from the united stand that has been made by the leaders of Irish Republicanism and the leaders of Unionism is a beacon of hope for us all.”

Mr O’Dowd said that the dissident republican groups had “no support” in the community. When parties representing their position stood in the 2007 Assembly elections in the Upper Bann, they were “annihilated”, receiving 300 votes against Sinn Fein’s 11,000 and the SDLP’s 4,000, he said.

I expect that if Ulster became part of the Republic, these same "Real" and "Continuity" folks would be out killing Gardai.

PS: to put this into context, with adult AQ fare, KSM's "Islamic Response" (only 6 pages) is worth reading - and re-reading as I just did. It covers most of the themes discussed in this thread.