A lot of people get killed in the war on Islamic terrorism. But maybe killing the terrorists isn't the only solution.
I want to talk about if maybe violent propaganda against Islamic terrorism, openly issued by the military, may also be very effective.
Some analysis would be made of common psychological weakpoints of terrorist beliefstructures, finding the weak spots in it, where it would liably hurt.
Such propaganda might include for instance defaming the prophet Muhammad, something that is not allowed within Islam. It might include porno of some holy figures.... well, strange I realize.. I don't know.
A psychologist may have a better handle on it, altough they usually only know how to make a person feel better, not worse.
The effects of such propaganda should be to break the terrorist down mentally, and to overwork the terrorist organization in dealing with the propaganda.
Another beneficial side-effect may be that the larger muslim population would be more cut loose from the terrorists. This is because I think the connection between them requires a high level of purity in the Islamic discourse, which would be shattered by violent propaganda.
On the other hand, there may, almost certainly at first, be a backlash to support the terrorists among the general muslim population. And of course, what all this does to diplomacy may be very unpredictable.
I don't really know for sure what the effects would be, and how big they would be. Would official propaganda undermine actual hateliterature against muslims, or would it encourage it? It's difficult to say. I wish I had some spare thirdworld country where I could test this policy, before writing this post.
Personally I would be willing to take a little collateral damage on my own religion, for the greater good. Of course, I would insist that there is some precision as to where the propaganda is aimed, just like with laserguided bombing, so I never get to actually see it, ideally.
In Nigeria large riots broke out with killing and raping, when a journalist wrote in the newspaper that perhaps the prophet would like one of the contestants of the Miss World contest (which were taking place in Nigeria) as his bride.
In the Netherlands member of parliament Hirsi Ali was targeted for assassination, and filmmaker Theo van Gogh was assassinated, after they made a short movie about Islamic repression of women, showing the Koran on women's breasts.
These examples show that terrorists are hypersensitive to what they conceive as defamotory to their beliefs. Of course the difference would be that unlike these authors, the military would not mean what they say, they would only mean to destroy the terrorists. (which would mean that any military caught being truly hateful towards muslims would be thrown out sooner?)
Many terrorists in captivity have been reported to be mentally ill. They may be already fragile, and I think it's very possible that they can be taken out this way, to the mental hospital, rather then to the morgue. Although I should add that trying to deliberately causing a mental breakdown to a person, is ethically as much questionable as murder, seeing that so many people who have a mental breakdown prefer suicide rather then living with mental illness.
regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu
This message has been edited by Syamsu, 03-12-2005 11:50 AM
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