Comment by alinajaf | Hacker News Reader

Comment by alinajaf | Hacker News Reader

This article sounds nice, but I'm not exactly convinced. Here comes some anecdata... TL/DR I think economic considerations like education, healthcare and income have more to do with uptake of militant Islamism than movies.

You live in a village in Pakistan, working fields for more or less a feudal landlord. Work is hard, long and for relatively little pay. You can't read or write, so have little prospects for a career change apart from other forms of manual labour. You have to support your own family, along with any elderly or sick relatives. In most cases you probably blow some of your wage on drink/gambling.

Once in a while a group comes through your village. They offer free food (a bit like a soup kitchen), spiritual guidance, and in some cases community health services. If you sign up for membership they promise to put your sons through school and pay for healthcare of any ageing/poorly relatives. If you're in a lot of debt or in any other sort of trouble, they promise to handle these things for you if you commit to them. They call themselves the Pakistani Taliban.

This is the story we'd like to believe but it's not true. The 9/11 hijackers were educated as engineers, living well in Europe not in destitute poverty. The solution isn't more money and more education, the 9/11 hijackers had that in spades.

I don't think what you said makes what I said any less true i.e. there's probably a large mix of backgrounds in Islamist movements. I would however be willing to bet that the majority of the TTP are recruited in a way similar to what I described above.

Note that the feudal landlord is my cousin, and the guy/village is based on a real person, so I'm not just pulling this story out of thin air (i.e. anecdata).

For someone who appears to have some insight , I am surprised you are mixing up your "terrorists". There is a fundamental diference between a group like the Taliban whose primary focus appears to be "taking their country back" , and characters like Osama who have delusions about being holy warriors in some imaginary battle with the west.

Note: there's two semi-distinct groups, the Pakistani Taliban and the Afghanistan Taliban. A Pakistani farmer-serf is unlikely to agree with the Taliban on spiritual matters: most rural Pakistanis are Sufists, they worship local saints. The Taliban are hard-line Wahhabi fundamentalists, they consider Sufists to be idol-worshipers. A cultural revolution, like the ones in Afghanistan and Iran, is unlikely in Pakistan.

The Pakistan Taliban has a pretty good reputation in the Pashtun regions. ("Taliban" is a pashtun word) One of the more popular proposed reforms is Sharia law.

Sharia has an appeal that's difficult to understand in the West. Pakistan's official court system is deeply, deeply compromised. The police are hopelessly corrupt. Cases take many years to resolve, and victory goes to the person who paid out the most in bribes.

You can use the parallel legal "system", jirga tribal law. Jirga is less "legal system" and more "binding arbitration". It evolved to end blood feuds by negotiating settlements between tribes, and as such, can be blindingly unfair.

Compared to these two equally terrible alternatives, Sharia looks pretty good. In fact, Muhammed invented it back in ~600CE precisely to stamp out customary law. Compared to jirga, it's positively progressive, esp. in regards to women. (Which makes sense, it's about a thousand years newer than tribal law) (Many interpretations of Sharia allow women to own property, for instance; and Islamic judges typically don't settle blood feuds by trading women)

EDIT: Ha ha, remembered the wrong date.

Muhammad died in 632.

Thanks.

> Sharia has an appeal that's difficult to understand in the West. Pakistan's official court system is deeply, deeply compromised. The police are hopelessly corrupt. Cases take many years to resolve, and victory goes to the person who paid out the most in bribes.

This resonates with pretty much all personal and anecdotal experience I've had with the Pakistani police/judicial system.

> You can use the parallel legal "system", jirga tribal law. Jirga is less "legal system" and more "binding arbitration". It evolved to end blood feuds by negotiating settlements between tribes, and as such, can be blindingly unfair.

I have a mixed Sindhi/Pathan lineage. My grandfather was a tribal elder in this regard and from the stories my father told me, was responsible for arbitrating disputes under the Jirga system. By all accounts, it's as horrible and unfair as you point out in your comment.

> Compared to these two equally terrible alternatives, Sharia looks pretty good.

Agreed, but the real problem is the aforementioned corruption in the police/judicial system, which will still be there whether or not the local tribal elders operate under a Sharia system. I have no good ideas for solving it though, so this is mostly wishful thinking.

Here is a vice documentary about Karachi for those who are interested.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgIl1vmIchA

> For someone who appears to have some insight , I am surprised you are mixing up your "terrorists"

Can you let me know which specific part of my comment makes you think I'm "mixing up my terrorists"?

> There is a fundamental diference between a group like the Taliban whose primary focus appears to be "taking their country back" , and characters like Osama who have delusions about being holy warriors in some imaginary battle with the west.

Agree totally. Both the Afghan Taliban (who from what I understand of the current situation, are attempting to cut all association with Al-Qaeda) and the Pakistani Taliban share a relatively hardline interpretation of Islam, but that's about where the similarity stops.

The posted article is about curbing fundamentalist Islamic views in Pakistan through movies. My comment was basically saying that while fundamentalist Islamic groups like the TTP operate and recruit in the manner that they do in rural Pakistan, movies aren't going to make much of a dent.

EDIT: Clarification.

Although I would the add that the article was also somewhat hinting at the reformation of the members of these groups themselves.

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