Calgarypuck Forums - The Unofficial Calgary Flames Fan Community - View Single Post - A Different View of the Israel

octothorp · 08-11-2006, 01:08 PM

Just a bit of context on the point already made by Lanny and Daradon. I think the current approach to extremist Islamic struggle really begins with the military decline of the Ottoman Empire around 1600. Prior to that, there had always been elite muslim battlefield armies that could hold their own against western Christian powers and frequently defeat them (of course, the Ottoman Empire was not strictly Muslim and was extremely tolerant of Jewish and Christian minorities, but it was the main representation of muslim interests.) By some accounts, the Ottomans began to be outpaced on the battlefield by the Europeans because of a fundamentalist conservatism that was limiting the inventiveness that had earlier characterized the empire.

But one Islamic organization within the Muslim world that had significant success throughout the 1600s and beyond were the Barbary Pirates. They operated out of various ports along Morocco, and set up a network of supply communities on islands through the mediterranean. The settlements were frequently moved from one island to another, and for two centuries, they were able to sack european ports and destroy western merchant shipping, eventually collecting tributes from just about every western nation including the fledgling US. Their enemies (the Knights of Rhodes and Malta, who had destroyed the Ottoman's formal navy) were better armed, more numerous, and better organized, but were largely unsuccessful in destroying them. The Barbary Pirates relied partially on greed for their recruits, but also partially on muslim identity, branding their struggle as an ideological one. Young men came from all over the muslim world to join the pirates for one of those two motives. Their organization was extremely loose; at any time there would be a number of pirate leaders, but if one was captured or killed, his entire organization shifted to another leader. Nobody knew too much, so capturing and torturing for information was pretty pointless.

It's similar to the structure of current extremist Islam. You can put a terrorist leader on the run, but the organization functions pretty well without him. Very decentralized, easy to reorganize. Flexible enough to withstand assaults, and also able to launch suprisingly effective counter-attacks once withdrawing. Captures and interrogations might lead to a small short term victory. Their strength is in the fact that they are not information-based... counter-information, really. They have a simple ideology and objective, a constantly evolving list of possible methods, and no single central command. The modern change is that broadcast methods mean that the nodes have no little to communicate with one another through risky private forums, and the leader can issue what few commands he needs through broadcast media, as well as using the same media as his primary informant.

08-11-2006, 01:08 PM	#11
octothorp Franchise Player Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: not lurking Exp:	Just a bit of context on the point already made by Lanny and Daradon. I think the current approach to extremist Islamic struggle really begins with the military decline of the Ottoman Empire around 1600. Prior to that, there had always been elite muslim battlefield armies that could hold their own against western Christian powers and frequently defeat them (of course, the Ottoman Empire was not strictly Muslim and was extremely tolerant of Jewish and Christian minorities, but it was the main representation of muslim interests.) By some accounts, the Ottomans began to be outpaced on the battlefield by the Europeans because of a fundamentalist conservatism that was limiting the inventiveness that had earlier characterized the empire. But one Islamic organization within the Muslim world that had significant success throughout the 1600s and beyond were the Barbary Pirates. They operated out of various ports along Morocco, and set up a network of supply communities on islands through the mediterranean. The settlements were frequently moved from one island to another, and for two centuries, they were able to sack european ports and destroy western merchant shipping, eventually collecting tributes from just about every western nation including the fledgling US. Their enemies (the Knights of Rhodes and Malta, who had destroyed the Ottoman's formal navy) were better armed, more numerous, and better organized, but were largely unsuccessful in destroying them. The Barbary Pirates relied partially on greed for their recruits, but also partially on muslim identity, branding their struggle as an ideological one. Young men came from all over the muslim world to join the pirates for one of those two motives. Their organization was extremely loose; at any time there would be a number of pirate leaders, but if one was captured or killed, his entire organization shifted to another leader. Nobody knew too much, so capturing and torturing for information was pretty pointless. It's similar to the structure of current extremist Islam. You can put a terrorist leader on the run, but the organization functions pretty well without him. Very decentralized, easy to reorganize. Flexible enough to withstand assaults, and also able to launch suprisingly effective counter-attacks once withdrawing. Captures and interrogations might lead to a small short term victory. Their strength is in the fact that they are not information-based... counter-information, really. They have a simple ideology and objective, a constantly evolving list of possible methods, and no single central command. The modern change is that broadcast methods mean that the nodes have no little to communicate with one another through risky private forums, and the leader can issue what few commands he needs through broadcast media, as well as using the same media as his primary informant.