> What caused the bombings? The bombers. Did Tony Blair do it? No. He
> had a cast-iron alibi, being in Gleneagles, signing the G8 agreement
> at the time.
>
> Sociology can explain social trends, but the London bombings are too
> unique an event to yield to a sociological explanation. In
> statistical terms, Britain's Muslims are not bombers. Any
> sociological investigation would have to explain their overwhelmingly
> peaceable and law-abiding nature.
>
<...>
I was working on this for another thread:
Disclaimer: I know nothing in great detail about British society other than some folks I've met, and what I've read and seen in my life. However, these comments could easily have be written to a U.S. frame of reference regarding youth and disaffiliation.
On Friday, July 15, 2005 10:04 PM [PDT], mike larkin <mike_larkin2001 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> "LEEDS, England - Shahzad Tanweer, the 22-year-old son
> of a Pakistani-born affluent businessman, turned to
> Islam, the religion of his birth, a few years ago. The
> transformation was gradual, but then his relentless
> reading of the Quran and daily prayers became almost
> an obsession, his friends told The Associated Press.
> He became withdrawn and increasingly angry over the
> war in
> Iraq, according to those who knew him best.
>
> The U.S.-led war was what likely drove him to blow
> himself up on a subway train last week, said his
> friends.
>
> "He was a Muslim and he had to fight for Islam. This
> is called jihad," or holy war, said Asif Iqbal, 20,
> who said he was Tanweer's childhood friend...."
>
It's too easy to blame the whole situation on the failed war in Iraq or even AQ's unmet demands, but IMHO some of the anger festered and grew before these young people were born.
I was speaking with one of my "anti-fascist skinhead" friends yesterday and pointed out the reasons why his "Doc Martins" work boots were considered "kick ass"... because that's what they were used for by British "Paki Stompers" back in the 60s, before there was a large population of Jamaicans to harass.
He didn't get the irony...
45+- years was a long flight for that particular "chicken" before it "came home to roost", and Pakistanis, being marginalized in British society, probably didn't get much help to build the family and community structures needed to survive (and rationalize) life in somewhat hostile British industrial society.
Watching your family and friends being treated like dirt... or even hearing about it through communal oral history... seeing it's effects on the parents, and grandparents...general estrangement from the adopted society... diffuse, obfuscated anger.
A slightly similar anomie-ous(?) situation exists among the young in Japan, which went from bombed out remains of a culture to industrialization with hardly a breathing break to look at where Japanese society was REALLY going, but they aren't bombing subways, they are joining cults that sarin the subways, and they're committing suicide in record numbers.
The young and alienated there are organizing group suicides via chatrooms, in a society where the typical suicide was almost always lone middle age males... group suicide was previously unknown among ANY age group , and all anyone wants to talk about is how the chatrooms are a problem because they are being used to organize suicides, but no one wants to discuss how acculturation(or the lack of) to industrialization within their own society is taking a grim toll.
Generations of British Pakistanis have grown up instinctively KNOWING how their culture has been "shoehorned" into western society... acculturated.
Cultural Columbine.
Throw a charismatic movement into that mix(jihad) Eventually, something goes boom.
Sydney Morning Herald Suicide chatrooms symptom of Japanese epidemic By Deborah Cameron, Herald Correspondent in Tokyo October 14, 2004
<...> Thirty-four people died in group suicides last year, with 16 more this year. Two of the young women who died this week were among four involved in a pact that failed last week after police intervened. Charcoal-burning stoves, discussed in a lot of the chatroom messages, have featured in many of the group suicides. Suicide is a national epidemic in Japan. Nine deaths at once seems shocking enough, but the reality is much worse: 94 people kill themselves every day. It is the highest rate in the developed world and one of the leading causes of death. Last year's total of 34,427 deaths, a record, was more than four times the number killed in road accidents. <...> http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/10/13/1097607302866.html?from=storylhs&oneclick=true
Gooooooooogle ad: Acculturation Coaching Expat Coaching and Acculturation for professionals and their families - helping successful people stay successful through cultural change. www.puddlejumping.com/acculturation_coaching.htm
Leigh http://www.leighm.net
<...> Returning once again to rural studies, two works published in 1978 convincingly document the trickle-down effects of urban industrialization and modernization on village life.
The books by Robert Smith on Kurusu village and Ronald Dore on Shinohata, expand Edward Norbeck's 1957 study on Takeshima in which he wrestles with the "westernization"/"tradition" dichotomy.
By 1976 however, Norbeck has changed the terminology (and Smith and Dore continue the discussion) to "modernization". Again, it is important to note that it is not merely an influx of western technology that grounds Japan's modern culture but it is, in Bellah's view, the culture which gives scope to this modernization (1965:195).
Virtually any ethnography of Japan written after 1970 devotes at least a chapter of discussion to the progression of modernization. Ezra Vogel's Japan's New Middle Class... <...> http://asnic.utexas.edu/asnic/countries/japan/japancultndsociety.html
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