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I feel like you are not understanding my explanation of structural, political economic factors. I've said over and over again it is not just class, and not just poverty, but how these tools are utilized in the Middle East. I've cited scholars that explain, while in the United States class is entirely based on economic well being, this does not stand true in the Middle East. So, in one last ditch effort to explain my argument about structuralism and class-conflict in the Middle East I will cite who in my opinion was a God of Middle-Eastern studies, Nazih Ayubi, he claims:But there isn't a single driving force or factor. Radical Islamists come from all segments of society and from many different nations -- without any commonality that has yet been identified in this thread. The reason a particular individual adopts those beliefs may be very personal to him/her. Why are some attracted to those beliefs, when others in virtually identical societal circumstances are not?
Shit, you've got some nutbag, relatively affluent western women who go there believing they'll fill some hole in their lives. Their motives may be completely different from those of a jihadi young man from western Libya. But you can still treat the disease itself even if you don't exactly understand how a particular person contracted it.
It makes perfect sense in the context of combating either. The "causes" or "driving force" of racism may vary wildly between individuals, and yet, we can still combat it directly by pointing out how/why it is wrong, and convincing people that no matter how they got to that point, it is unacceptable.
Guess we just needed to get a bit more touchy-feely with the Nazis, then. Because that was an "opposing philosophy" too, right?
Anyway, you seem to be assuming that a single congruent reference point actually exists in the first place. I don't see the evidence of that. And if so, what is that 'congruent reference point"? Jking claims it is economic class. What do you claim it is?
Because I think I'm the one being open-minded in terms of not trying to cram the same motive down the throats of all those individuals. I accept that motives vary widely between individuals, and that it actually would be closed-minded to assign a preferred "congruent reference point" to all those individuals.
To focus on jking's economic point, the reality is that not only will the poor always be with us, but economic differences will always be with us as well. Moreover, we lack the practical ability to eliminate those differences anyway, even in our own nation. Therefore, even if jking was right about poverty and economic class in general being the driving force behind Islamism (which doesn't explain all those wealthy and middle-class Islamists, but whatever...) it's a conclusion that leads nowhere because we cannot stop that alleged "cause".
And again, the majority of people living in those same economic conditions are not becoming radical Islamists. Which means there is something else driving those people other than economic conditions.
“The class nature of such a society manifests a dispersed, fluid class map with classes excessively dependent on the state and with many intermediate strata in existence.” Therefore, and this is crucial to Syria, class structures are inherent in political economy analysis. Furthermore, Ayubi contends that there are two important types of regime control. “In situations where the preservation and enhancement of the privileges of the group that captured the state would require preserving the status quo (without necessarily rejecting economic growth or artificial modernization), the ruling caste would strive to co-opt other groups in a ‘consociational’ manner if possible. This situation is true of the oil-exporting countries of Arabia and the Gulf (Ayubi 1996, 25).”