Mainstream Muslims Finally Take on Extremists

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A distinction should be made between the two possible meanings conveyed by the word 'extreme'. There's merely being very, very conservative in your personal interpretation of religion - so deep Salafism etc. - or being willing to use violent aims to bring about your goals. Is the latter a direct consequence of the former? Or is it more complicated than that.

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Well quite. I think the trouble is we miss the forest for the trees. We see these unquestionably weird and foreign practices in the Middle East (which are carried out by most of the major indigenous religious including the old Jewish and Christian communities) and instinctively associate them with the violent jihadis. which is really a bad way of looking at things - not that I'm defending these patriarchal conservative groups, but they typically aren't the source of jihadism. Indeed why would they? Typically they are loyal to their own ancestral form of heterodox tribal Islam, not some speculative 'worldwide caliphate'. Indeed jihadi terrorists seem to come from the same sorts of sources as other non Islamic radicals: rootless, bored young men of varying incomes. They aren't especially devout normally - levels of religious piety seem to have very little correlation with 'going jihadi' or not. That's why I don't think the root cause of terrorism is as much theological as it is psychological. Obviously atm Islam is a greater catalyst to inspire terrorist acts due to a mixture of being well-funded and being a self-perpetuating phenomenon, but there is very little difference in motive between young jihadists and young, say, Shiv Sana members, or young hardcore nationalists or even gang members. People of a certain type gravitate towards ideologies to fulfill deeper longings.

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Yes, well the fact is that conservative Islam comes in several groupings. (Warning: HOT TAKES METAPHOR APPROACHES) The old Sufi Islam is conservative in the same way that Social Credit style social conservativism is - a long-lasting and ancestral driven thing; while the Salafi driven stuff (like Wahhabism) is equivalent to Reagan conservativism - it is more 'radical' than what is traditionally described as conservativism.

I think ota also important to distinguish between zealous and pious. These jihadis are undoubtedly zealous. They are consumed with a passion to die for their cause. But is it a deep-rooted 'true' belief?  Hearing stories about the sort of people who join ISIS (and the tales of defectors) makes me highly doubt it. They aren't noted for being religious before they go. Often their attendance at mosques is shaky and they break all sort of Koran inspired diktats. They take a small drink from the Pierian Spring, as Pope wouldn say, forgetting that a little learning is a dangerous thing. This initial catalyst of well-funded propaganda compounded with groupthink compounded with personal issues and resentments is a powerful mix.

As for why is it's Islam and not some other Cray ideology? It's merely what is in vogue right now. A few decades ago the fashion would have been Arab nationalism, and really (although it is now dressed up in religious clothes) the toxic signs of nationalism - feelings of resentment towards foreign powers etc still seem to be there. You are right though that certain countries are inflaming things through their malignant influence - it's worth noting that many previously secular separatist and nationalistic movements are becoming more Islamist in character. I don't really know what it means though. Will popular islamism essentially be a fad like arab nationalism? Who knows.

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Partially it's logistical. It is very impractical to declare war on an entire religion and for the west to frame it as a matter of us vs Islam (like many republicans are intent on doing so) seems wholly misguided.

I mean let's take the Nazi analogy further. There were many conservatives who disliked the Nazis but never effectively targeted them, and thus allowed Hitler's regime to prosper. Some of them were chabcers who thought they could use the rising Nazi movement to their own ends (which in the Islamic analogy would be certain elements of the Saudi Arabian government). But others were genuinely choosing what they saw as the worst of two evils, with the other evil being communism in the Nazi example. To fight jihadi ideology, you need to form a broad coalition which includes non-violent Islamic conservative movements, even if they are distasteful. You don't want to leave out the mass movement islamists, because it will just prompt further polarisation between radical jihadis and the west.

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I think you've been putting words in my mouth tbh. I ultimately support liberal secular democracy in MENA and all regions. I dislike religions, especially those unreconstructed or that would, say, kill people like me merely for existing. Unfortunately, I feel like you're being naive. Do you really think by the west coming in and saying "well actually islamism is bad" it will stop jihadism? The west's (and here I think Russia can be included) integrity in the region is shot enough as it is - we made those damn borders, we have propped up numerous nasties in the name of 'stability' and geopolitics, we are believed - fairly or unfairly - to have more interest in Israelis than Arabs. If you start throwing out mass appeal largely democratic movements just because we dislike them (for example: the west pretty much accepting the Egyptian military overthrowing the elected Morsi without question) then you hand the whole of political Islam over to the violent. In power, islamism can be tamed by political reality - look at Morocco for a good example - and one hopes that they will eventually become the equivalent of Europe's Christian Democrats once the current fashion for reactionary thought in Islam dies down.

I think the very strange view that people have is that Islam is uniquely able to inspire terror. If only!

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BTW if your argument is that we should prevent our Gulf allies from spreading extremis t thought and then playing innocent when violence occurs, well I have no problem with that.

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Your political campaign analogy is apt, but your chosen 'campaign' method is equivalent to a Democrat running an a "guns, god and coal are stupid" platform in West Virginia. You need to ally with the pious to fight the zealous. Otherwise you're just writing ISIS propaganda for them.

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No its a view I hold of most people. Such is the curse of humanity, I guess.

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To borrow a phrase from another religion, change must come from within. An external force telling Muslims they are wrong, and allowing elections to be negated if 'they vote wrong' and prop up nasty autocrats because they make a big show of secularism is just silly.

I notice d you kind of ignored my examples from Morocco and Egypt because you insist on making the war against jihadism harder than it already is. Instead you're just tilting at windmills, like imaginef cultural relativism on our parts.

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Well it doubles down on the mixed messages we're sending to MENA in regards to democracy if we sell Arabs out at the drop of a geostrategic hat. Surely that might be a better target to understand the reasons behind jihadism rather than engaging in a quixotic information war against the world's second largest religion? In regards to Morocco, it shows that Islamist parties can operate under a democratic framework. Tunisia as well.

Perhaps I'm blind, but I don't really see much coddling of hate spee? I mean the best example in the UK was probably Abu Hamza, to my knowledge. Obviously at some level to preserve peace you do need to make deals with the devils - that isn't unique to Islam, as a brief glance at the N Ireland Assembly will tell; but I think the UK's anti hate laws are pretty well bolstered.