Nice attack killer: Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel identified as terrorist behind Bastille Day massacre

[Igel]

21. That's reductionist.

That works only in jihad. So if they win, they win personally and as a people; if they lose, they win personally. Really, losing is not the goal; winning personally and as a people would be better.

The formal "win" is to force the bad people who defy the nature order of the universe according to Allah into a proper state of Submission. Think of jihadis as Submissionist terrorists. In the religion of Submission, lessers must submit to their superiors. Women to men; children to parents; Jews and Christians to the Submitted; and the Submitted Ones to Allah. Notice that Submission is a religion of peace--if everybody submits as ordained, then there is no war. We find liberty in Submission.

'Aslama is "to submit."
'Islam is "submission"
Muslim is a "submitted (one).

Remember, the root meaning of "pacification"--as in the pacification program in Vietnam--is "peace," Latin pax.

The RW accepts this interpretation.

I'd add that being superior and not acknowledged or treated as superior is humiliating. The affected cultures are big into avenging humiliation and regaining face.

The LW interpretation is that they just want to be treated as equals and religion isn't a serious value. The true point in this is that if you're treated as less than whose who you believe to be inferior it's deeply humiliating. For many, dignity isn't what you have but what you're given or take from others. The way to redeeming humiliation and granting such people dignity is to treat people equally. For many of the Submitted, esp. those not in their own World of Submission, that's sufficient. Not necessarily a great thing, but adequate--getting your due is not cause for gratitude, but does keep the resentment to a minimum. It's a risky game, though, since you need to know what they think of as respect, and in a multicultural society I don't get to define what I need to do to others for them to have respect. I need to outsource my thinking and motivation to others and properly be told what to do, in other words, I'm at the mercy of what others say is the minimum. (Yes, that's intolerable. Yes, that's a guiding principle of a lot of 21st century rhetoric.) For others, "equality" is still not adequate, but at least it sucks the oxygen out of much of their humiliation-based public rhetoric.

Ultimately what you need to do is to get people to stop thinking of things in terms of personal humiliation and see beyond their own skin. If everything that affects a person is taken as personal--you don't get that job, it's personal; the hot water heater breaks, it's personal; you drop out of school and can't get a good job, it's personal; you don't see yourself represented as you think you should be, you don't see your group represented in the numbers that please you, it's personal. The external dignity or humiliation route a great way of conducting a society where everybody's suspicious of each other because it gives everybody a scorecard for who to battle and how to battle to preserve your own rights and status, but it's not good for a democracy in which domination isn't the goal but the goal is the common good and cooperation. The only way to get a lot of suspicious, antagonistic people to work together is to have them submit to a higher authority that keeps them all in check, that is, takes their scorecards away or makes them meaningless. That can be government, it can be religion. It can be a Cause. But still, Submission is the name of the game, whether we use an Arabic word or a Latinate word.

But in such a society, it's common to say, "a pox on both their houses." You don't get people saying the equivalent of "a pax on both their houses."