Geopolitical Darwin Awards

[James A. Donald]

On 19 Sep 2004 at 12:15, Tyler Durden wrote:
> My running, personal theory is that Muslim fundamentalism (and in
> general, most fundamentalisms) get going when the locals gain a
> persistent sense that they're gettin' screwed over,

But the Saudi Arabian elite, of among which Bin Laden was born with a 
silver spoon in his mouth, are not getting screwed over.

Similarly, the Javanese are not get screwed over.  In an entirely 
literal sense, they are doing the screwing, in that boys and girls 
among racial and religious minorities subject to their power tend to 
get raped, and the rapists and murderers go unpunished.

Secondly, these guys are no more fundamentalists than the World 
Council of Churches, or liberation theologians, whose views strongly 
resemble those of the terrorists, are fundamentalists.  They tend to 
talk about Islam overthrowing Capitalism, a proposition that would 
have seemed wholly bizarre to Mohammed, who talked about Islam 
overthrowing Christendom.

A christian fundamentalist believes he bases his religion on Christ 
and the twelve Apostles.  The terrorists do not believe they base 
their religion upon Mohammed and the four rightly guided Caliphs.  
Rather they base their religion on much later authority.   Bin Laden 
even claims the Turkish Calphate represented proper religious 
authority, a view that is extremely whacky among Muslims.   The views 
of many of the terrorists have a resemblance to those of caliph al-
Hakim, holds that living theological authority is supreme, and 
casually rewrite the positions of dead theological authority - a 
position whose Christian equivalent is analogous to "High Church", 
which is generally regarded as the opposite of fundamentalist.