Discussion for article #232010
I commented on this two weeks ago both in a NYT article comment and as an informed comment to Juan Cole’s Informed Comment.
But you still haven’t heard or read this on a major US news outlet
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All change in nature seems to happen under a state of compression. Here we have a situation where the most backward, gawd-awful medieval movement is confronted by perhaps the most modern movement in existence. The one necessitates the other. Isis is taking sex slaves, and beheading people. It stands to reason that people don’t want to be a victim to that, and don’t want that to prevail.
I’ve spent a lot of time studying Islam. And as time goes by, I’m starting to believe that much of it is in danger of moving into the zone of Soviet Communism: where people just didn’t like the idea and so they just turned their backs and walked away.
I got this impression from studying Islam (in an academic sense), trying to understand it: its a religion, its a political movement, its an ideology, its a legal system etc… But the more you look under the hood the less there is there to like. Much of it is quite ugly, of which Isis is a manifestation of. Even the theology starts to fall apart if you exam it with a critical eye. In essence Islam is a comprehensive system, a bundle system of politics, law, philosophy religion, an so much more, telling you how to eat, sleep, pray, bath, etc… But when you look closely at it, in each of those components, or altogether, you will find an absurdity there. People don’t want to live a medieval existence. They probably didn’t even want to do that in medieval times, but they couldn’t liberate themselves from the system: apostasy meant death, so there was coercive control to force people into the ideological system - and they adapted in a form of Stockholm Syndrome en-mass. But as long as there is a small, slight breath of freedom to choose otherwise, there is the great chance that people will. And so here we see people doing so.
Compression, and the necessity it impels, appears to have caused metamorphosis, and quite a good one at that. Could it be from the Middle East? Once again the craddle of civilization becomes the crucible for mankind? A lot of great big movements got there start in this region.
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Josh - More news like this, please!
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Absolutely agree! (If we can agree on what “like this” means!)
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This is the kind of article I was hoping the Slice would feature. Way to go.
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i think i just read what I’ve been searching for. i need to read more on this subject. on first impression, this is what we would have had centuries ago, if people weren’t being ruled by greedy and inhuman people.
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Cool, eye-opening article. Great stuff! This possibility that a fundamentally new, less rigid political system could organically develop–that we could move beyond the model of the fixed nation-state-- is intriguing to say the least. And that it might be happening in the Middle East of all places is astonishing. My idealistic side wants to believe it’s possible, but my cynical side worries that it sounds too good to be true.
I most certainly want to hear more about this.
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For the media good news is boring. This is a good story. I cannot imagine living in such terror
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ummm…something tells me there are thousands of dead ISIS fighters and millions of grateful Kurds who do not share your ignorance of what the United States has been doing in Kobane Mr.Harris.
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If you need draconian laws and the threat of death to stay in your religion then that religion is by definition inferior. Islam in these swinish societies is a perversion. Islam in places where people are free to join whatever religion they wish is a great world religion. When they realize this this savagery will end.
This story is wonderful. It should not spread through MSM, it should spread like seeds in the wind of the 1s and 0s.
The human race cannot survive unless it discards the memes of God and Country. Religions and Nationalism tell us we are different. They invent difference: race, borders, sexism and fear.
Imagine.
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I rolled my eyes at first but I’m glad I didn’t give up because the rest of the story peaked my interest. It makes a good companion to this article by The War Nerd on the brilliance of YPG’s propaganda (with a little help from the US) and the source of IS’s pathology.
The TATORT (second link in the article) lead seems amazed that they’re pulling this off in war zone but I wonder if the threat of annihilation is the ingredient that makes it work.
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For the folks in New York there’s a panel discussion on February 6th.
This is another good article that explains how they’re organized.
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Tough women. Tough people. We hear they’ve had to be throughout history to have survived so long.
The accompanying photo looks posed. Otherwise she’s a ripe target for a sniper.
“Even”? The theology is the first thing to fall apart with any critical examination. For that matter, the entire concept of theology falls apart without a suspension of critical thinking on the part of the participants.
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just when i had pretty much given up on tpm… please publish more of this and less tpmz.
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i’m definitely going on feb 6th, thank you!
In early 2001, one of the things George W. and most of his crew could not get through their heads was that terrorist organizations could be capable of major action and quasi independence. In fact, to some extent, the Bush people were still fighting the Cold War but adding countries like Iraq (as though they were subsidiaries) for reasons they could neither explain nor justify, though we assume at this point the issue was oil, the extension of American power and perhaps privatization. Now this article shows we may need to better understand other types of groups even if we aren’t fully up to speed on all the things happening in places like the Middle East. And perhaps we need to stop thinking that powerful, autocratic central governments in such regions can actually be all that useful to anyone (that’s a wide open issue where the usual answers have not been effective).
This article suggests there are groups that are not terrorist groups, not exactly a state, maybe a little more than a militia at times, but they are capable of acting on their own and perhaps protecting themselves. But, in a way, we have been learning for 12 years that Iraq has many groups, factions and ways of dealing with the world and that these groups were saddled with a national government that 30 years ago was thoroughly under Saddam Hussein’s control with suppression and paranoia, but less so some 20 years ago in various sectors such as the Kurdish north.
I freely admit how little I’ve known about Syria, where we seem to be seeing a range of self contained groups as well. But we’ve been learning in recent years that a wide range of small, independent movements, many very violent and authoritarian, are operating in North Africa. But there are exceptions, such as in Tunisia, hopefully (could that be related to its smaller size?). So, maybe in Northern Syria.
I’m no expert, such as Juan Cole, but it seems one of the failures of national governments in the Middle East is the notion that Democracy is about who wins, and the disastrous notion that the winner gets to take all. No, the winner gets to lead and the rights of others have to be observed. Maybe smaller groups are needed to learn a Middle Eastern kind of democracy.
Democrats are learning their own lessons, but it’s been a major fallacy on the part of both Democrats and Republicans for decades that we can find one person to negotiate with who can impose the terms of a poorly understood agreement upon an entire nation. That model may be breaking down in some areas of the world. But here’s a catch and it needs to be watched. We still need to get broad acceptance of such things as dealing with global warming. Ironically, droughts, possibly caused by global warming in areas like Syria , may make it easier to get agreements on global warming.
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