> The Western-based Islamic terrorists are not the militant vanguard of
> the Muslim community; they are a lost generation, unmoored from
> traditional societies and cultures, frustrated by a Western society
> that does not meet their expectations. And their vision of a global
> ummah is both a mirror of and a form of revenge against the
> globalization that has made them what they are.
>
> ---
>
> Olivier Roy, a professor at the School for Advanced Studies in the
> Social Sciences, is the author of "Globalized Islam."
That is exactly what I was attempting to say in my rant the other day.
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20050711/015067.html
<...> 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... <...>
Olivier Roy flips out! I'm in good company.
Leigh www.leighm.net