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Terrorism: A history of violence | Middle East Eye

Politicians of all parties and many countries have sought to persuade their societies that terrorism is a unique and special form of crime. They place terrorists in a category of psychopathic evil, marked out by their capacity for inhuman violence. They place terrorists beyond the pale of civilised society and, therefore, beyond the reach of negotiation and settlement. They say that terrorism is the most dangerous and gravest problem of our time. Most of this political narrative is self-seeking nonsense. It allows politicians to strike resolute poses. It allows them to seek and obtain special powers and to expend huge sums on combatting terrorist threats, to the great benefit of defence and security interests, both public and private. Few concepts are more widely discussed than terrorism, and few as poorly understood Few concepts are more widely discussed than terrorism, and few as poorly understood. The idea is constantly reinvented, reshaped and distorted to fit transient political agendas.

‘I Think Islam Hates Us’ - The New York Times

A fearful tone permeates Mr. Flynn’s book, which warns, “We’re in a world war against a messianic mass movement of evil people, most of them inspired by a totalitarian ideology: Radical Islam.” For Mr. Flynn and fellow radicals, the fight isn’t against a small number of religious fanatics who seek to attack the West and its Arab allies, but an entire religion. Mr. Obama and former President George W. Bush generally agreed that terrorists had perverted the teachings of Islam, not that Islam was the problem. For them and most national security experts, containing terrorism meant focusing on individuals and groups that were intent on doing harm to America — namely Al Qaeda and groups like ISIS — while not turning all Muslims into the enemy. Not so Mr. Trump, who said last year, “I think Islam hates us,” and Mr. Flynn, who has decried Islamism as a “vicious cancer.” Both Mr. Flynn and Sebastian Gorka, the national security editor at the alt-right website Breitbart News, who may be considered for a position in the Trump administration as a counterterrorism adviser and wrote a book titled ”Defeating Jihad,” characterize “radical Islam” to be as grave a threat as Hitler in World War II and the Soviet Union in the Cold War.

Shadi Hamid's 'Islamic Exceptionalism' and the Meaningless Politics of Liberal Democracies - The Atlantic

Ben Affleck has become an unlikely spokesman for a view on Islam held by many on the American left. In 2014, the actor made a now-famous stand against Bill Maher and Sam Harris in defense of Muslims, arguing that it’s wrong to make generalizations about the religion based on ideological extremists and terrorists. “How about the more than 1 billion people who aren’t fanatical, who don’t punch women, who just want to go to school, have some sandwiches, and pray five times a day?” he said.  In his new book Islamic Exceptionalism, Shadi Hamid—an Atlantic contributor, a scholar at Brookings, and a self-identified liberal—calls Affleck’s declaration a “well-intentioned … red herring.” Islam really is different from other religions, he says, and many Muslims view politics, theocracy, and violence differently than do Christians, Jews, or non-religious people in Europe and the United States. RELATED STORY Is Islam ‘Exceptional’? Perhaps his most provocative claim is this: History will not necessarily favor the secular, liberal democracies of the West. Hamid does not believe all countries will inevitably follow a path from revolution to rational Enlightenment and non-theocratic government, nor should they. There are some basic arguments for this: Islam is growing, and in some majority-Muslim nations, huge numbers of citizens believe Islamic law should be upheld by the state. But Hamid also thinks there’s something lacking in Western democracies, that there’s a sense of overarching meaninglessness in political and cultural life in these countries that can help explain why a young Muslim who grew up in the U.K. might feel drawn to martyrdom, for example. This is not a dismissal of democracy, nor does it comprehensively explain the phenomenon of jihadism. Rather, it’s a note of skepticism about the promise of secular democracy—and the wisdom of pushing that model on other cultures and regions.  Most Islamists—people who, in his words, “believe Islam or Islamic law should play a central role in political life”—are not terrorists. But the meaning they find in religion, Hamid said, helps explain their vision of governance, and it’s one that can seem incomprehensible to people who live in liberal democracies. I spoke with Hamid recently about Islamism, ISIS, and the “patronizing” assumptions Americans sometimes make about Islam. Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.