Charlie Hebdo
Influences on SHOM’s Lexicon
January 17, 2015
“Islamophobia — An irrational fear of being decapitated.”
Andrew Klaven
At the beginning of 2015, a satirist-based newspaper was attacked in Paris. Twelve journalists were murdered and eleven wounded by Al Qaeda-trained/inspired/directed/supported Jihadists/terrorists. Joint operations by affiliate killers caused other deaths and horror within the city. In addition to the harm caused France, the event raised again the matter of the American administration’s failure to tie the religious elements of the murderers’ motivations to and thus through their name identifier. The killers were said to be “extremists.” My use of “generic extremism” is intended to parody the US admin’s approach.
Dangerously Tricky Lexicons
So that this part of the West’s readers will know about which I write, in this essay and until some agreement is reached regarding homogeneity of global enemy word identifiers, “Generic Extremism” is American code for ISIS/Al Qaeda/Boko Haram/Islamism, any jihad-violence-advocating Salifists, and such. And they, moreover in accordance with the originating article from this series, represent anti-reformation Islamic forces as opposed, say, to calling them by their more currently popular “radical Islamic,” to infer “not real Islam,” terminologies.
Lexicon manipulation through political power, in this example occurring through ostensible omission of the religious reference used by the perpetrators, can be, and I believe in this instance is, serious business. It stifles and, particularly in this circumstance where a world leadership’s omissions are not just passively influential, but actively preclude linkage of religious motivation by otherwise supposed-to-be-unbiased law/military enforcement activities, materially interferes with our capacities to have unfettered — equal presentation of both Islamic-apologist and -non-apologist — debate.
That debate is important because the whole world, not only its Islamic managed component, seeks non-camouflaged truth about Islam’s intellectual, behavioral, ontological, and particularly political composition. It doesn’t pursue it, though, because everyone is mesmerized by its grand spiritual/social/philosophical contributions to humanity, but because we are trying to keep from being killed by their impositions. That desire, to survive, demands assiduous focus on all prospective causes of this repeating harm. Switching in the twenty-first century to legaleze-engineered Behavioral jargon like “extremism,” also and axiomatically posits a much more, at least seemingly, stable opposite — universal acceptability. And, that notion, given the facts of the history pertaining to this discussion, can be arguably inaccurate, and despite whose feelings get hurt or current political narratives undermined. Lastly, spinning with a distractive from the top can practicably exculpate, and without reasonable process of evaluation/investigation, a conspirator, if not the crime’s mastermind.
Good vs. Bad Identity Necessitates Robust Consideration
From its moderate roots spawned by a beauty attending the merger of individual spiritual introspection with selflessly effectuated good works administered within its collective, through the rearing of its expanding generations with dedication and love, Islamic civilization then changes under the cover of its socially implemented veil. There-behind, contentiousness and intergenerationally protected biases dictate institutionalized rules of prejudice and even aggression-ordained implementation of a well-contrived and -administered slavery. It is of conquered minds both born within its governed morass and the newly surrendered, when they are assimilated through threat of holocaust during rigorous envelopment. That darkened force presents underneath the more advertised lighted facade, an elixir of eternal certitude, as an individual, systemic and methodologically dualistic organizational management. It, then, winds its way like a hardened steel threaded fabric shrouding not just expression of Western notioned — observable, discernible, sequitur — progress, but any opportunity for its realization. The inner spiritual peace compounded, and psychically confounded, by population control-through-organizational-rigidity-backed-by-force mix is apotheosized, which when so elevated extinguishes not just criticism, but everything that fails to conform.
Add to that deitized dichotomy double the trouble. The first is comprised of follower fixations to emulate founder perfection — itself argued by most non organization members to be, in the minimum, a grand charade — and there is, again in the minimum, much to argue about regarding Islam’s essence. It consists of a reality that has been well documented from its beginnings and continuing all the way up to Charlie Hebdo, to last week’s Boko Haram’s massacre of two thousand Nigerian Christian villager innocents. The second involves the guarantee of death for apostasy: those trying to leave the referenced essence, whatever it turns out to be in the end, don’t without paying a high, if not the last, price.
Now, maybe some Islamics and the American leadership of the twenty-first century are right when they say Islam is one of the world’s great religions that, because of these recent hijackings by the likes of mid twentieth century writers, Sayed Qutb, Sayyid Mawdudi, Hizb ut-Tahrir founder and first evangelist Taqi Nabhani — and “a few” displaced and overrated killers — the otherwise peaceful religion has, unfairly, been branded with an extra bad name and by uninformed, phobically motivated over-reactives. Or on the other hand, maybe, too, though, non apologists who’ve reflected Islam’s history from its origin to be prima facie violently and hegemonically hostile are more correct, and that the full fourteen hundred year Jihad-/fatah-and Shariah-based (no matter who’s doing the interpretations) organization of concern here is something we have to know the truth about, or as close as we can come to it.
In terms of our affairs — soon to be not only international ones, but domestic as well — or “What’s all that to us over here (America and maybe the rest of the Anglosphere)?” It’s VERY serious business. This matter is about life and death on the big scale. The outcome of the ensuing debate about this, in the minimum, controversial entity can have existential consequences for vast constituencies. And anyone who’s in charge and is saying “No. This is not an existential matter for us,” is not just opining falsely, but is assuring much profound and lasting hurt for this population — preventing preparedness. Hence as well, anything less than fully rigorous honesty — no matter the emotional pain experienced nor political-control / social-power lost — in its administration will, and have no doubt, be deemed Machiavellianly conspiratorial: to mean from hindsight, should there be one, seen not as necessarily protective of a particular innocent religious adherents’ civil rights, or even as a great strategic plan for helping the cult to right itself from within, but more likely as treasonous. As intended here, “treason” refers to the handing over — that is surrendering without its permission a polity’s will with which it defends itself — the means for securing life and its representative citizenry’s freedom.
Through minimization, even obfuscation of prospective existential risks, that debate administrator — say, the supposed leader of a once free world where criticism of even the unlikable used to be defended — aids one side of the controversy over another, effecting the outcome, as opposed to facilitating a more natural conclusion that might have been drawn had the debate not been so encumbered: fixed. And according to its stated constitutions, policies and procedures, to mean the Sunnah, that being comforted in this Nineteen-eighty-four-styled lexiconic cloaking device strives with all its resources to obliterate those things belovedly Western: referring in this contest not just to independence of mind, and, the intellectual pillars which sustain it, but the real life ongoingness of the people and civilizations who would host it. “How can you have free speech if one of its chief defenders, the FBI’s brain, has been locked up? And the sorcerer with key to the shackles is somebody speaking another language: Indonesian?”
To all generic extremists coming here during this otherwise for us, internally lexi-restorative period; three comments, preceded by an introduction.
I am an American, gifted by the grace of both our people and their mostly respectful rules for interaction with each other, to be a free man. Therefore I speak this way, to mean as I’ve written in all opportunities for expression, with considerable appreciation for having been part of the American experience. And although we have our ups and downs, that gratitude does not change during the troughs — when things are not going my political or other way.
First and despite what idea-marketeers often hype, lexicons don’t, by themselves, make America. The full character of its people, many of whom may not be word conscious anyway, does. So, just because a current leadership here functions word imperfectly for a while — flakes, fluff and frivolity appear to rule the day — don’t misjudge, at peril to your cause, overall American willingness and capacity to do the necessary and stabilizingly right thing when it comes to defense of their families, neighbors, property and selves.
Second, this site is not satiristically-, but IS instead, sardonically-based. Of course, as you are almost certain to be aware — sardonicists are notably much more directly counter-(any)-extremist intuitive. Unlike some of our already referenced leadership of the years 2014-2015, we don’t like you; we harbor no intention of trying to get along with you at all, as do nice satirists, some of whom, for effect, you just killed.
Third, and before this storm, then, which is breaking upon us all, let me simplify the coming by reciprocating your pre event warning/threat to the Hebdo folks. When you “come here” — which has been your declaration of intent — you should be trained on other than empty beer cans, pop bottles, range silhouette targets, a few bystander grocery shoppers, other innocent civilians, and a bunch of poor unarmed cartoonists who’ve been trying, unfortunately for them, to make intellectual pacifism’s approach to civilization management work. It doesn’t with “extremists,” generic or otherwise.
We sardonics know that about this competition; thus, only want to make this matter with you, conclusively right. So send your champions: Soviet-defeating Mujahidin. We’ll bring ours: Iraqi, Afghanistan, and a couple of old Vietnam War veterans. Then, without your harming any more innocents, we can honorably settle differences between us, here in the twenty-first century.
© 2015
Jesse W. Collins II