Numbers Racket-much hyped book is being used to prove the West brought Islam's repeated attacks

Jewish World Review ^ | 11-2-05 | Jonathan Kay

[SJackson]

A much hyped book is being used to prove, including statistically, that the West brought Islam's repeated attacks on ourselves

This dissection is a must-read for any serious student of history and politics!

From the end of World War II until 1980, the world did not witness a single successful act of suicide terrorism. Since then, the global rate of such attacks has risen from an average of three a year in the 1980's to about one a month in the 1990's to almost one a week from 2001 to 2003. In Iraq, suicide car bombings are now so common that they often fail to make the front pages of Western newspapers. Though self-preservation is the most basic instinct known to man, Islamic holy warriors have somehow managed to turn suicide terrorism into something horribly banal. How did this happen?

Since 9/11, that question has produced two broad answers: "it's them" and "it's us." The "it's them" camp focuses on the jihadists' cult of martyrdom, their unquenchable hatred of the West and its freedoms, their extreme interpretation of Islam, and even the violent tendencies that seem to inhere in the Muslim faith itself. The "it's us" camp responds with a pro-forma denunciation of the terrorists' methods but follows by emphasizing all the ways that Western nations have antagonized the Muslim world and invited such an "extreme strategy" in response. Robert A. Pape, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, has written the most intellectually ambitious effort yet to advance this latter thesis. (Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism, 2005, Random House)

Pape has compiled a database of every suicide attack committed between 1980 and 2003 and has broken it down into categories.

[SJackson]

If you'd like to be on this middle east/political ping list, please FR mail me.

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[DoctorMichael]

........the ways that Western nations have antagonized the Muslim world and invited such an "extreme strategy" in response.........

Yea, right. < /rolling eyes >

This supposed 'era' also coincides to some of the most amazing technological advances in the history of Western Civilization while the Muslim world, despite massive transfers of Petrodollars remains mired in a 7th Century mindset of Tribalism, superstition, genocide, poverty, ignorance and disease, and they won't accept that a large contributing factor is their Religion.

Maybe their jealous.

[Publius6961]

Ummm.
Uh huh.
OK

[Publius6961]

If all muslim countries were forced to deal only among themselves by everyone else (no imports, exports, aid of any sort), they would all be dead and gone within 3 generations.

Of course, I would not want to be any of their non-muslim neighbors...

[EBH]

Perhaps the author needs the history lesson! Sheesh...another rewrite of islamic history to make them out to be victims. How long must we be tolerant of such propaganda? The suicide bomber is nothing more than the reinvention of an ancient practice long thought dead. In addition the act of suicide is forbidden by the Koran, but under the interpretation of 'holy war' and dieing for one's faith is an act of martyrdom.

The history of suicide attacks stretches back at least to the 11th century, when the Assassins, the disciples of the Persian master Alamut, conducted suicide raids on neighboring fortresses. www.apologeticsindex.org/s37.html

[NHResident]

The University of Chicago seems to be running rapidly to the left to catch up with the intellectual decline of east coast Universities like Columbia, CUNY, Princeton, Dartmouth, etc. From the brilliant and readable economic insights of von Mises university publication has descended to the juvenile statistical manipulation of data and analysis of Freakonomics and this absurdity by Papes. It is sad to see the decline from a classical liberal tradition to an adolescent shout fest over the bathroom privileges of transexuals, lesbians, and generic degenerates and the anti-American rants of pro-Islamofacist apologists.