Open Source » Blog Archive » Israel at WarClick to Listen to the Show (24 MB MP3) Thinking back, [...]

The same goes for Muslims and Christians and nation states that have the audacity to think they have the right to invade another nation….

As for purifying the unmah, the 14 words refer to being affect if “misfortune or humiliation are suffered.’ Reads to me as though it is a response to something that someone does to them, not just a passive possibility that they are suffering and someone else is not. So, they are talking about responding. Though, in other places the Koran states that to be living in Islam you must offer peace to your enemies.Again, I think that perspective of historians, translators and believers affect how one interpret’s Mohammed’s words. And geopolitical context will determine which words people will use to justify their actions.

I, too, think that ‘jihad’ is much more internally/spiritually logical than we care to understand. What I also think, is that if we understand how they locked into this logic, we may be able to see ways to get them to let go of it and move to another interpretation of Islam.

In other words, people are going to do whatever they want to do and they’ll find ways to justify it. And the motivational mechanism are more earthly than even they want to admit. When people feel threatened, disempowered, or impoverished, they seek solace and power. Both can come from the concept of a god that offers them something ‘greater’ than this world and imbues them with the righteous justification for wielding power over others. To reverse this is a long piece of work. You must contain and then rehabituate people. But fueling their sense of powerlessness and increasing their experience of poverty isn’t ever going to achieve that. The leaders of each side have to understand that.

This is why I think that the analysis that allowing Hezbollah to ‘normalize’ by having a place in Lebanese government and watching their members move up out of poverty would slowly over time remove their motivations to acrifice themselves in the name of Allah. The pull of religion is vastly reduced when people have functional lives. When they’re poor and uneducated, they are so desperate they can’t see how false their motivations are and how easily they are being manipulated by those with power and resources that don’t want to give any of it up, and would use these sad people to see what more they can get. And the psyche has been built up over generations.

I read somewhere that the Hezbollah funders back in Iran were not happy with Hezbollah’s willingness to negotiate with the elected government in Palestine. There are factions within Hezbollah. And the recent kidnappings may have been committed by non-Palestinian Hezbollah in order to restart hostilities to make the Palestinians and Israelis angry with Hezbollah, maintaining the social divide. The same may be true for happened on the Lebanese border. This latest round of hostilities has served to gel the Hezbollah factions. And has destroyed the Lebaniese infrastructure that could offer Lebanese Hezbollahs a normal life. Again, there may be an internalized spiritual logic regarding jihad, but you see less and less of it as people move up out of poverty. Except for a few powerful people seeking power and using the impoverished to suit their needs.