"Imagine no religion" - Was religious faith the primary motivator of 9/11?

[JackRiddler]

The above graphic was posted by GreyL in GD without commentary, other than the headline: "Imagine no religion."

Perhaps the moderators were concerned that this would dangerously lower the relative proportion of threads about John Edward's house, because within the hour it was bumped to the Religion/Theology folder, here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=214x109646

While I might wish the discussion had been left in GD, I do think that any bump should have been here, to the 9/11 forum. The quote from John Lennon is dear to me, but combined with the graphic it subtly transports a doubtful premise about the events of Sept. 11: that religion provided the worldview and motivation underlying the actions of the perpetrators.

Obviously, if you have concluded that 9/11 was a false-flag attack orchestrated from within the US intel complex as a means of transforming global politics and justifying perpetual war, then that premise is laughable.

However, even if you believe the claim that the 9/11 attacks were carried out entirely by a conspiracy of 19 men with knives, who evaded all advance detection by agents of the US, hijacked four planes, and flew three of them into targets, the premise that they would not have done this if not for their religious beliefs is still questionable.

The lead hijackers of the official story were not trained in madrassas, but at leading Western and secular universities. They may have met and organized through religion (one wonders given some reports of their partying behavior while in the States), but their primary concerns were clearly political. The statements attributed to them and to their alleged masterminds devote little space to condemning American consumption of pornography and pork, but do attack the US for its covert interventions in the Middle East, troops in Saudi Arabia (prior to 9/11), unconditional military support for Israel, and the rape of Iraq from 1991 to the present day.

So even granting the Official Conspiracy Theory, I contest that "Islam" or "fundamentalism" caused 9/11, and that the Towers would be standing had the 19 men been less pious or fanatic.

You really want to Imagine? The following may not be as snappy, but I submit it's far less untrue:

"IMAGINE no imperial military to persistently fuck up the Middle East until a cell of self-appointed 'propagandists of the deed' trained at secular Western institutions decide to get payback on behalf of their oppressed fellow Arabs and co-religionists, in the form of an irrational massacre of a bunch of early-morning risers in New York who for the most part had no clue what their taxes been financing (though they should have!)..."

or

"IMAGINE the infinite money-swallowing sinkholes known as the Pentagon, federal law enforcement and 'intelligence' community actually showed due interest in performing their ostensible function of defending the people of the United States..."

or

"IMAGINE no Machiavellian taxpayer-funded unelected permanent secret-state institutions that covertly finance, train and arm marauders, fanatics and drug dealers who later come back to bite innocent civilians on these shores..."

Now let's add at least one caption that violates the Official Mythology, but imho better fits the evidence:

"IMAGINE the elites who run the empire didn't view the people as a raw material to be brainwashed by whipping up fear against an overblown enemy following a false-flag attack arranged from within the extra-constitutional permanent spook apparatus..."

OR

"IMAGINE WAR WAS NOT A RACKET"

Any further suggestions?

[DoYouEverWonder]

1. I disagree

9-11 was/is all about religion.

Only true believers need apply to take part in a once in a lifetime operation. BushCo is a very ecumenical group you know?

[dailykoff]

2. Oh the irony .

That's all I think I can politely say.

[Anarcho-Socialist]

3. Religion is a part of it

For me the roots of this are many. In immediate times they are in the militant groups the US and Britain supported in Afghanistan 1979-1987 to trap the Soviet armed forces into a quagmires. Other influences have included the close US-Saudi alliance, and the US support for Israel.

The more radical elements of the Islamic resistance in Afghanistan fought a war against the godless Soviets, and then turned their attentions to the heathen West and the perceived imperialism of the United States in the Middle East. It didn't matter that US support was vital for the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan, these people served their idea of religion and their geo-political groupings before any temporary friendship of convenience.

Another strong bugbear for many Arab Muslims is the existence of Israel. Fundamentalist Muslims in particular are offended by the notion of a Jewish state holding out against 350 million Muslims, when Islam is the one true faith the fundamentalists wonder 'how can this be?' To explain this cultural/religious affront, Israel is demonised and perceived injustices against the Palestinians are frequently highlighted and any means necessary to undermine Israel (including targeting civilians) are considered justified (in the name of Palestinian liberation), and traditional anti-Semitic dialogue is kept in the public consciousness and supported by fundamentalist groups. From this atmosphere, the United States is identified as a major reason why Israel manages to survive, and so the US and Israel are then considered one and the same since they consider American money to be what keeps Israel going.

Religion is part of the Casus Belli of retaliation but a sense of foreign subjugation in the Middle East remains a substantial part of radical Islamic anger towards the West. The Arabic peoples have a history of being swayed by the American and Soviet influences of the Cold War, the British and French colonial influences of the interwar period and then by the Ottoman Turkish imperial domination of the previous centuries.

[Name removed]

4. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[sabbat hunter]

5. wow

"For the most part the Jews end up in the middle and try to make a profit from both sides of the conflict"


what a stereotypical antisemetic statement. wow

[DoYouEverWonder]

7. After 9-11

The US claimed that al Qaeda terrorists were financing their operations with conflict diamonds. Tel Aviv is one of the main diamond centers of the world, where many of these diamonds find there way into the jewelry market.



'Conflict diamonds' evade UN sanctions

Improvements in Sierra Leone, but continuing violations in Angola and Liberia

By Michael Fleshman

Diamonds and other natural resources are continuing to finance armed conflicts in Angola and the Mano River Union states of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea despite improved enforcement and monitoring of UN arms and diamond sanctions.

<snip>

One answer is that they disappear into the legitimate trade. Investigators report that a large volume of Angolan stones are taken clandestinely to third countries where they are mixed with legally mined diamonds and sent on to Antwerp or Tel Aviv for finishing.

http://www.un.org/ecosocdev/geninfo/afrec/vol15no4/154diam.htm



Al-Qaeda 'traded blood diamonds'

New details are emerging of links between al-Qaeda and the illicit trade in so-called "blood diamonds" bought from rebel groups in Africa.

The vast sums of money and weapons exchanged in return for the gems have helped fuel some of the bloodiest civil wars in Africa.

At the time of the 1998 bombings of the United States embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, al-Qaeda allegedly transferred cash into high-value commodities, including diamonds.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/2775763.stm

[Bolo Boffin]

9. As if the concept of conflict diamonds was what people were questioning you about!!

Incredible.

INCREDIBLE.

Jack, I want you to understand something. You posted a really great OP, very thought-provoking. I was going to respond to this when I have time to sit down and write something worth that OP. Meanwhile, DYEW here has posted a whopping bit of anti-Semitic flamebait to completely derail your thread.

I wanted you to recognize exactly where the derail attempt came from.

[DoYouEverWonder]

11. Oh I keep forgetting

Everything is the Muslim's' fault.

[Bolo Boffin]

12. You will cease and desist from putting prejudical statements like that into my mouth. n/t

[greyl]

18. Talk about prophetic! ;)

Dyew tombstoned.

[Kingshakabobo]

8. Not even shy about it. Wow is right.

:grr:

[salvorhardin]

6. Is there a special school or something?

You know, where you go to learn the Protocols of the Elders of Zion by heart?

[dailykoff]

10. Beware, this thread is flamebait. (n/t)

[wildbilln864]

13. Indeed it is!

Meanwhile, it's my contention that 911 had little to do with religion other that religion being framed as the motivation. The real motivation I think was lust for power and greed.

[JackRiddler]

14. um...

I don't think you read OP.

And to dailykoff, the intent certainly not flamebait, but if you think so, well please don't stick around for it.

[leftstreet]

15. What exactly is the square footage of religious faith?

And do you have an aerial view?

:eyes:

[rman]

16. Imagine the masses would not be so easily manipulated

By means of manufactured threats - and institutionalized religion.

[greyl]

17. You're forgetting manifest destiny.

manifest destiny: - a policy of imperialism rationalized as inevitable (as if granted by God)
- also, A popular slogan of the 1840s. It was used by people who believed that the United States was destined — by God, some said — to expand across North America to the Pacific Ocean. The idea of manifest destiny was used to justify the acquisition of Oregon and large parts of the Southwest, including California. (See Mexican War.)

JackRiddler: "Obviously, if you have concluded that 9/11 was a false-flag attack orchestrated from within the US intel complex as a means of transforming global politics and justifying perpetual war, then that premise is laughable."

Do you suppose those behind your version of the Inside Job are atheists? For that matter, are they even progressive in their religious beliefs?
There are deluded salvationist fundamentalists on all sides of the centuries long sectarian conflicts in the world, and they've always used political and military power to try to secure their ignorant pie in the sky ends.
Tell me, do the people who still support the war have any religious beliefs in common?
Do those who cried "turn the whole place into glass" after the 9/11 attacks have any religious beliefs in common?
Who is the more pious believer: George W. Bush, or Osama B. laden?

I think they're both embarrassments to humanity, for very similar reasons.
____________________________________________

'Thought I'd test your suggestions:







I think the original still has the best effect.
Btw, John Lennon was murdered in New York City by Mark David Chapman, a born again Christian.
But, you knew that already.

[JackRiddler]

19. Cute

Please don't pretend you don't realize the inevitable first read prompted by your graphic. Subtleties can be interpreted, but face-value is obvious: religious fanatics did 9/11 (unspoken premise), so if we "imagine no religion" the towers would still be standing. The yahoo may read this as a slam at the "fucking Islamics." The liberal will understand it as a critique of fundamentalism; either way it presupposes and reinforces the official story.

As to your adaptations using my proposed slogans: of course I was being cute by presenting such long alternatives. But the results are also cute. I may employ them all in a slide show. Thanks for your contribution and good sense of design, given the parameters.

The orchestrators of an inside job may or may not be personally religious, or use religion as a system for organizing their actions. That doesn't mean "religion" qualfies as the primary motivator for them, or for the patsies of the official story.

In the official story, it's political revenge: "propagandists of the deed" appoint themselves to redress the perceived crimes of the US against Arab and Muslim peoples. In assessing suicide bombers (whether real ones or the likely constructed patsies of the 9/11 narrative), people give far too much credence to the idea that they're doing it for salvation, or 72 virgins, or because a book brainwashed them. These factors may act as justifications and guides to action, but the initial decision (I submit) stems from a far more primal desire for retaliation - and the understanding that there are no more effective military means available than to turn one's self into a smart bomb. Even if suicide has a romantic appeal, the religious commandment or promise of paradise or power of Marxist ideology (in the case of the Tamil Tigers) is secondary to the psychological appeal of Freud's drive for thanatos. And that's possibly secondary to the simple appeal of a strike against the perceived tyranny.

Even more true of manifest destiny! This is one of the most clear-cut examples of adopting a belief system that justifies one's desire for power, wealth and glory. In a 9/11 inside job scenario, the covert planners are motivated by their understanding of Machiavellian considerations: it's necessary to have this war and that set of resources devoted toward this geopolitical objective; and an enabling event is required to get that started. They are motivated by their interests as class, as institutions, as individual plunderers. A religion or ideology in which they view themselves as the master race or as superior beings who have the right to eat others is useful. Aristotle's philosophical justification of slavery would qualify as well as Christianist manifest destiny, or the supposedly "Straussian" underpinnings of the neocon worldview that too many people think are the decisive factor.

Yes, my personal bias is to see a world in which perceived material interests are a more frequent motivator than, even of religious fanatics.

In any case, "religion" just doesn't cut it as a useful category here. It's a question of "world-view."

Values: how do we define them? It's a chicken-and-egg question. Do they precede interest and therefore come from belief (in effect, your idea of religion)? Or are they adapted to our perceived interest? To me, it's obviously a loop, world-views engender values, but people adapt their world-views into justifications for their pursuit of given values. And some values are ultimately primal, beyond world-views (food, for example).

[Bolo Boffin]

20. To say that religious motiviations are the irreducible minimum would be wrong.

But religion is a necessary factor in those attacks, meaning, without the religion, they would not have happened. Without the political calculations, they would not have happened either. And in much of the world, is such a distinction made between primarily religious and primarily political motives? The idea is hard to hold onto even in America, where the separation of church and state is mandated in the Constitution.

The three religions of the Book all began as quasi-political entities. Whether you accept the Exodus or not, what we would recognize as Judaism came about as a political movement within Babylon by leaders like Ezra and Nehemiah. Christianity traded on its roots in Judaism until the differences could no longer be denied - they expressly crafted their message to eschew any political goals, until political goals were "thrust upon them" in the waning days of the Roman Empire. And God very wisely made sure to put Mohammed's footprint on top of Jerusalem's most sacred hill. Still there are exceptions - in my reading of the book of Revelation, the emperors and the religion that propped them up as objects of worship are represented as the two beasts called by the dragon, and this can be extended (via my American mind) to see all such weddings of church and state as the true evil in the world. Religion is most corrupted and vile when tied to a political aim, and politics often enslaves itself to obsolete nonsense when it uses religion to achieve its aims. The result is not good religion or good politics, and the 9/11 attacks are an excellent example of that.

[JackRiddler]

21. Nothing objectionable in what you say...

But returning to the specific matter of 9/11 and the graphic that prompted this thread:

The 9/11 Commissioners ended up copping to their reluctance to talk about the political motives of the perpetrators:
http://representativepress.blogspot.com/2006/09/reviews-of-without-precedent-inside.html

Granting (as I do not) the official story, Islam/Islamism has been vastly overrated as the cause of the attacks - generally by those who wish to posit the conflict as one of the secular, democratic West (or the freedom-loving USA) against the benighted, extremist fundamentalists. I think this graphic promotes that propaganda, rather than being an example of rigorous enlightened skepticism against religious foo-fah.

Again I submit that even by the official story, the alleged perpetrators were engaged in the "propaganda of the deed," appointing themselves on behalf of their peoples as the tool of retaliation against a perceived set of imperialist crimes: Saudi Arabia, Israel/Palestine, Iraq. The religious aspect serves as an organizational device (they meet in a prayer group) but it is not automatically what "corrupted" the political aim. In fact, I would believe (but of course cannot say) that 40 years ago, these guys would have been Arab nationalists. The attack on Arab secular nationalism in the decades since has been a boon to the Islamist alternative, which gives political oppositions the cover of religion (but also warps them into this insanity that we do see in the ME).

Most suicide bombings, still, remain the province of nominally secular groups. (We only hear about the Islamist ones in the West, but the Tamil Tigers have used the tactic more often than the Palestinians).

[greyl]

22. """religion" just doesn't cut it as a useful category here. It's a question of "world-view.""

Let me explain something to you...

Mind if I first ask if you're religious?

[JackRiddler]

23. The term has little meaning to me

But I do share John Lennon's dream, if that indicates anything.

[greyl]

24. How do you distinguish between a "world view" and "salvationist religion"? nt

[JackRiddler]

Not all worldviews are "sr's", all "sr's" are worldviews nt

[greyl]

28. That's true, but doesn't address the question.

I asked how you distinguish them.

[JackRiddler]

29. It's easier at the extremes...

Many salvationist religions describe themselves as such and are easy to spot; others are less obvious or debatable. I think there is no way to define the term that works universally or a priori, independently of a case-by-case determination. But there are a great many examples of the "easy extremes": Scientology, Salvation-through-Sales, TV Preacher Pentecostalism, "Rebuild the Temple" Jews, Shi'a Messianism, Marxist Proletarian inevitabilism, neocon Democratic Crusadism, consumerism (salvation through having lots of things to display to others), nutritionism (salvation through weight loss) and march-of-progress technological Scientism. These vary in their fanaticism, empirical basis and degree to which they place demands on the acolyte, but they all share the basic structure of believe this way, follow these rules to achieve a higher morality that makes you superior to others and/or be saved from a hellish fate (be it the seventh circle or dissaproval from your neighbors). Clearly, the structure of salvationist religion is common and it must satisfy something primal to the human beast.

One might call religion a systematic worldview drawn from initial premises grounded entirely in a received faith (as opposed to empirical observations tested by logic and experiment). You need "received" because faith in its purest form is impossible to avoid (the old argument that you at least need faith in the reality of your physical perceptions to even take a step forward). Except the "received" part doesn't cover personal revelation like "seeing God." (Then again, personal revelation only becomes religion only once you start trying to sell it as a system to others expected to accept it, even if they haven't had it themselves.)

In the end I join the philosophers in saying I don't know shit for sure, but I can guess some things better than others. From your questions I get the feeling that you must believe this is all easier to define, so now it's your turn: What is religion and what is its opposite, or its replacement once we have imagined no religion? What is salvationist religion and what's a world view?

[greyl]

31. The meme/myth that there is One Right Way To Live is a worldview peculiar to a culture born of

salvationist religion. It isn't found anywhere else, and it provides the deepest emotional support and rationale for methods of imperialism.
Our culture, of which there are now factions competing to the death, began in the Mid East 10,000 years ago with the idea that there is One Right Way To Live - One God-approved worldview. The fact that politics and military might are used to further that myth doesn't mean that we should turn a blind eye to it and blame everything on politics and raw capitalism.
If one reacts to those statements by thinking "Humans are to blame", we come to another peculiar dogma of salvationist religion: Humanity is a divinely flawed species born into a world full of evil and seeking rewards in the afterlife is ones highest, most noble occupation. Here's a book that tells you the One Right Way To Live, as received from God himself.
It's no trick of the mind to see deep religious convictions at the heart of the most devastating conflicts between human cultures, especially today. That much of the conflict is now accompanied by political party names, brand names, and multi-billion dollar corporate logos doesn't mean there nothing festering under those labels stuck onto the surface.

On the run up to the millenium celebrations, (or, Dec 31, 1999) I was fully expecting the United States to be attacked by pissed off and desperate people whose lifestyles we had been destroying. I didn't think they would do it for religious reasons, but because they had little other choice. It was when the Buddhist statues were blown up that I began to see things a bit differently, and stopped having a so-called "terrorist sympathizer" attitude. To be clear, I never thought that terrorism was justified, only that the West was ignorantly pursuing very dangerous foreign policy. I'm sure you're familiar with the Unheeded Warnings.
_______________________________________

Maybe if the pic in the OP included an obvious reference to the Onondaga Nation of New York, you wouldn't have been so hasty to go with your first interpretation and make that total bullshit accusation about me in the R/T forum. I think your post indicated more about a self-appointed mission of your own, than of mine. Not all pieces of art are meant to be contemplated for less than one second.

So, no, I don't think all of this is easy to define.

[JackRiddler]

33. This is a thoughtful post...

so I'll let it stand. Though I don't get the reference to the Onondaga.

[greyl]

34. Regarding the Onondaga:

That was meant to suggest yet another angle from which the pic in the OP could be viewed. (admittedly difficult to see from our typical post 9/11 perspective)
One large factor in the destruction of Native American culture was the wrongheaded missionary Puritan goal of "saving the souls of the savages".

Usually, the vision of the Indian has a kind of inverse relationship to the confidence of the mainstream society in its own values and culture. When Europeans were first staking their claim to the continent, Indians were seen as savage followers of the Devil, and their removal justified the colonial errand into the wilderness. Cotton Mather celebrated how God's "Divine Providence hath irradiated an Indian Wilderness," and one aspect of this Providence was the epidemics that vacated the land for white settlement.

Until the early years of the 20th century, confidence in American expansion left little place for the Indians, who were seen as a vanishing people. In 1896, travel writer Julian Ralph chillingly described Indians as "a dead but unburied race." Either Indians would adapt to white ways and survive physically, or they would maintain their stubborn heathen customs and die out. Museums of the period presented Indians as living fossils of a bygone world. This was the age in which America's great museums collected tens of thousands of Native skeletons, in order to preserve some material remains of people believed to be on the verge of extinction. When a lone Yahi Indian was discovered wandering in the northern Sierras in 1911, he was billed as "the last of his tribe," dubbed "Ishi" ("man" in Yahi), and sent to live in a San Francisco anthropology museum, where he died of tuberculosis five years later.
www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2004/09/26/on_native_grounds/

"Missionary Kate McBeth and a group of Nez Perce women (ca. 1889-91). When the CONVERSION OF INDIANS TO CHRISTIANITY became part of FEDERAL POLICY in the early 19th century, missionaries were encouraged to live among various tribes and set up schools and churches {an example of how Imperialism was effected, upon, and in, "American Indian societies"}.
www.christianism.com/additions/32.html

[JackRiddler]

35. Um, sorry...

I still don't get the connection of the Indians to the PIC, unless you're suggesting somehow that without religion New York would have never been built on top of the Manhattan meadows. I do see the connection of the Indians to the QUOTE, of course, and that is what you seem to be arguing here. To repeat (and I hope not to start yet another cycle of identical comments), it's the association of the pic with that particular quote that I objected to, since it presupposes the official story (and, to me, misappropriates the noble cause of religious skepticism on behalf of the official story).

[JackRiddler]

25. .

[spooked911]

26. Short answer: NO

[Twist_U_Up]

27. Simple : Nope

nice try though :P :hi: :rofl:

[JackRiddler]

30. That's my one-word answer too...

predicated on 9/11 being an inside job. The point is, it's untrue even of official conspiracy theory. And blaming it on "religion" amounts to blaming it on "Islamofascism."

[greyl]

32. If you want to approach it in the most shallow manner possible, yes. nt

[JackRiddler]

36. kick