After my last entry referencing the alleged link between the Nazi party and Islamic extremists I started thinking about extremists. One thing was pretty clear to me, that extremists and people that hate our country come in all shapes and sizes, religions and manifestos. I thought for a moment about what a proper analogy for the condition of extremism would be.
I came to the conclusion that you could most closely relate it to Alcoholic behavior. Now, a lot of people will state that Alcoholism is a disease and extremism is a choice. This is an argument that I cannot prove nor disprove on either side. I will say this, hatred for any sustained amount of time can become poisonous to a person and place them in a state where nothing can quell the rage inside them, this would lead me to believe that the condition of extremism, a position that is fueled in great portions by hate can be closely correlated with Alcoholic behaviors. However the important link is not in whether you identify either as a disease, but rather the practice of both and how looking at it in this way may affect your perception of how you approach the subject when a certain group is referenced as “extremists” such as the Muslim population faces now.
In both cases there is common undesirable behavior, with alcoholics its drinking to the point of becoming dangerous, either to themselves or others, with extremists it comes in the form of anger and hatred over real or imagined slights which manifests itself in the form of behaviors that are dangerous to others and often fatal to both the extremist and their victims. Make no mistake though this does not place me the camp of poor extremist, let’s get him help. Nothing gives you the right to harm innocent people because you are angry or your ideals say it is ok. The important thing to notice here is catalyst, in alcoholics it’s the alcohol, in most if not all extremists it’s a cause or religion. This statement does not place me as anti-religion; however it does show a very revealing truth about classifying a group of people as “extremists”. Let’s try a little exercise to show how this works.
Would you say someone is an alcoholic if they only drank beer? The common conception is that most alcoholics drink hard liquor, that very few are heavy beer drinkers. However this concept is untrue in that MANY alcoholics will drink beer, sometimes in the realm of a case a night.
So let’s apply this to extremists. Would you say someone is an extremist if they were a self identified Christian? No you likely wouldn’t. How about an environmentalist? Still no? What if they were a self identified Muslim? Most people in these times would identify Muslim with extremist.
Now let’s look at the numbers… (Islamic attacks are highlighted in red, Environmental Groups are Green, Everyone else is in black)
• 2000 October 13, Firebombing of Temple Beth El (Syracuse)
• 2000: 2000 New York terror attack Three young men of Arab descent hurled crude Molotov cocktails at a synagogue in The Bronx, New York to "strike a blow in the Middle East conflict between Israel and Palestine".
• 2001 May 21 The Center for Urban Horticulture at the University of Washington burned. Replacement building cost $7,000,000. Earth Liberation Front members pleads guilty.
• 2001 September 11: September 11, 2001 attacks carried out by Al-Qaeda. The attacks killed nearly 3,000 civilians and were carried out by Islamic fundamentalists using hijacked commercial airplanes to damage the twin towers of the World Trade Center, ultimately destroying both 110-story skyscrapers. The Pentagon near Washington, D.C. was also severely damaged. Building 7 of the World Trade Center was also destroyed but was not hit with a plane. A fourth plane crashed prematurely in Pennsylvania.
• 2001 September 18: November - 2001 anthrax attacks. Letters tainted with anthrax kill five across the United States, with politicians and media officials as the apparent targets. On July 31, 2008 Bruce E. Ivins a top biodefense researcher committed suicide. On August 6, 2008 the FBI concluded that Ivins was solely responsible for the attacks and suggested that Ivins wanted to bolster support for a vaccine he helped create and that he targeted two lawmakers because they were Catholics who held pro choice views.
• May 2002 Mailbox Pipe Bomber: Lucas John Helder rigged pipe bombs in private mailboxes to explode when the boxes were opened. He injured 6 people in Nebraska, Colorado, Texas, Illinois, and Iowa. His motivation was to garner media attention so that he could spread a message denouncing government control over daily lives and the illegality of marijuana as well as promoting astral projection.
• 2002 July 4: 2002 Los Angeles Airport shooting Hesham Mohamed Hadayet, a 41-year-old Egyptian national, kills two Israelis and wounds four others at the El Al ticket counter at Los Angeles International Airport. The FBI concluded this was terrorism, although they found no evidence linking Hadayet to any terrorist group.
• October 2002 Beltway Sniper Attacks: During three weeks in October 2002 John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo killed 10 people and critically injured three others in Washington D.C, Baltimore, and Virginia. The pair were also suspected of earlier shootings in Maryland, Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana and Washington state. No motivation was given at the trial but evidence presented showed an affinity to the cause of the Islamic jihad.
• 2006 March 5: Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar injured 6 when he drove an SUV into a group of pedestrians at UNC-Chapel Hill to "avenge the deaths or murders of Muslims around the world".
• 2006 July 28: Seattle Jewish Federation shooting, Pakistani-American shoots six women at Jewish Center killing one.
• 2007 October 26: A pair of improvised explosive devices were thrown at the Mexican Consulate in New York City. The fake grenades were filled with black powder and detonated by fuses causing very minor damage. Police were investigating the connection between this and a similar attack against the British Consulate in New York in 2005.
• 2008 February: In the first reported incident of animal-rights extremists physically assaulting the family members of animal researchers, six masked activists attempted to force their way into the home of a University of California, Santa Cruz, researcher and injured the researcher's husband.
• 2008 March 3: Four multimillion-dollar show homes place in Woodinville, Washington are torched. The Earth Liberation Front is suspected in the fires.
• 2008 May 4 Multiple nail laden pipe bombs exploded at a Federal Courthouse in San Diego at 1:40 AM causing "considerable damage" to the entrance and lobby and sending shrapnel two blocks away. The F.B.I. is investigating links between this attack and an April 25 explosion at the FedEx building also in San Diego.
• 2008 July 27 Jim D. Adkisson opened fire in the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee killing two and injuring seven before being tackled to the ground by congregation members. A note found in his SUV indicated this was intended as a suicide attack and said the church was apparently targeted because of its support of liberal social policies.
• 2008 August 2, August 3 University of California-Santa Cruz molecular biologist David Feldheim's home was firebombed. A car belonging to another researcher from that University was destroyed by a firebomb in what is presumed to be related. FBI is investigating incidents as domestic terrorism related to animal rights groups.
• 2009 April 8: According to a report in the Wall Street Journal intruders have left malware in power grids, water and sewage systems that could be activated at a later date. While the attacks which have occurred over a period of time seem to have originated in China and Russia it is unknown if they are state sponsored.
• 2009 May 31: Assassination of George Tiller. Dr. George Tiller, a doctor who provided late term abortions was shot to death in a Wichita, Kansas church. Tiller was shot previously in 1993 and his abortion clinic had been bombed in 1985. Alleged assassin Scott Roeder, who believes in justifiable homicide of abortion providers, has been arrested for the killing.
• 2009 May 25: Crude bomb explodes in a Starbucks in Manhattan's Upper East Side. On July 14 Kyle Shaw age 17 is arrested and pleaded not guilty. He is being held pending $300,000 bond or $100,000 cash bail. Police allege his motive was to emulate "Project Mayhem" a series of assaults on corporate America portrayed in the movie Fight Club.
• 2009 June 1: Arkansas recruiting office shooting One military recruiter was killed and another critically injured by gunshot at a Little Rock, Arkansas Army/Navy Career Center. The suspect Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad said he was upset over U.S. killing of Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan.
• 2009 June 10: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum shooting. 88 year old James Wenneker von Brunn walked into the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. and shot a guard who later died. von Brunn was critically wounded when security guards immediately returned fire . On January 6, 2010 von Brunn died of natural causes at a hospital near where he was imprisoned. von Brunn was a self-described white supremacist and neo-Nazi.
• 2009 July 4: A denial of service attack of unusual length and sophistication affected United States and South Korean government websites as well as websites for the Washington Post and NASDAQ. Websites for several U.S. government agencies were shut down for up to 3 days. A sophisticated organization or nation was suspected according to the National Intelligence Service.
• 2010 February 18: Joseph Stack flew a small plane into an IRS building in Austin, Texas, believed to be in retaliation to the U.S. Government.
• 2010 September 1: Jamie Lee wearing explosives and carrying a gun took hostages at the headquarters of the Discovery Channel in Silver Spring, Maryland before being killed by police. He was protesting the channels "anti environmental" message and programming encouraging birth of humans who he called filthy.
So from this we see in 10 years, that 8 out of 24 of the attacks were based in Islamic extremism. Of those 8 at least 2 were never actually linked to Islamic extremism but it was the closest (easiest?) explanation that law enforcement could make. This also means 2/3 of all terrorist attacks in 10 years were by American groups, with about 1/3 of those attacks being from environmental groups. I don’t know about any of you but I don’t see anyone protesting the existence of environmental groups.
You can choose to view this however you like, but it should remind you of one thing. That like alcoholism, there is no “one size” fits all for extremism. No matter which we talk about the poison is as unique as the person that chooses to use it, whether it is Beer or Whiskey, Islam or Animal rights.
Think about it next time you shy away from a Muslim you see in public, but stop at the entrance to a store to give money to an environmental group collecting donations.
No comments:
Post a Comment