zenpundit.com

[ by Charles Cameron — on a variety of other perspectives ]
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Once again, my point is that there’s a whole lot of going on going on, and it’s worth getting a wide-angle view.. which means multiple perspectives, including those not your own:

Good column by @sulliveiw. Before we knew much about #Orlando, every faction was off to the races: https://t.co/t2qCUgsquD

— Jonathan M. Katz (@KatzOnEarth) June 12, 2016

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Politicking:

The night-and-day contrast between Trump and Clinton's reactions to the #Orlando shooting. https://t.co/oqVTRVfozc

— AJ+ (@ajplus) June 12, 2016

Joshua Green, Trump seems to regard Omar Mateen as “Afghan” in the same way Judge Curiel was “Mexican”: foreign/un-American, even though both born in US
Charlene Deveraturda, The Atlantic’s ISIS Expert Graeme Wood Slams Trump For “Hurt[ing] The Fight Against ISIS” With Anti-Muslim Rhetoric

Both Al-Jazeera‘s and Joshua Green‘s tweets offer us examples of DoubleQuotes thinking.

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Guns:

Vast majority of guns in 16 recent mass shootings, incl 2 suspected in Orlando, bought legally w/fed bkgrnd check. https://t.co/hG0HfhYt40

— Anne Barnard (@ABarnardNYT) June 13, 2016

Program on extremism, ‘Orlando Shooter Legally Bought Guns Despite Previous Flags by FBI’
Rob Crilly, Orlando shows arc again. Hate-filled young man with access to guns picks his victims and then selects poisonous ideology to add “meaning”
Bill Maher, #Orlando Conservatives:”Don’t say it has anything to do with guns!” Liberals:”Don’t say it has anything to do with Islam!”
Maajid Nawaz, Saying this has nothing to do with Islam (libs) is as ignorant as saying this has nothing to do with guns (cons).Both need reform
Piers Morgan, Obama’s about to make the same speech he’s made about guns 20 times in his presidency. Just more pointless rhetoric, sadly.
Steven Crowder, Orlando timeline: Anti-Gay Muslim commits mass terrorism. American gun-owners condemn it. Liberals try to take their guns

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Islamic responses:

Shadi Hamid, Muslim organizations in the United States unequivocally condemned the Orlando assault
Usama Hasan, Does #Islam condemn #gays to death?

Saying this has 'nothing to do with Islam' is as blinded as saying this *is* Islam. Clearly, this has *something* to do with Islam #Orlando

— maajid nawaz (@MaajidNawaz) June 12, 2016

and in ISIS perspective:

Cole Bunzel, ISIS’s A’maq news agency claims Florida attack was “carried out by a soldier of the Islamic State”
Will McCants, ISIS uses term “fighter” for Orlando attacker rather than “soldier” (Paris/Brussels) or “supporter” (San Bernardino) for whatever it’s worth

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And finally, barely mentioned in the welter of opinions about Orlando — the other shoe:

JM Berger, We may have narrowly escaped having two very similar massacres on the same day, apparently unconnected
JM Berger, The fact that one was prevented and one was not is largely a trick of fate. We need robust reporting on LA incident as well

[ by Charles Cameron — on the variety of possible motives ]
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On twitter alone, there’s far too much going on as we scramble to understand the Orlando massacre for anyone to make a useful summary, although I must say that Rukmini Callimachi‘s twitter feed since yesterday has been superb. My own first assortment of relevant tweets focuses on the question of motive, but even with that narrowed focus it’s too extensive to present visually tweet by tweet, so I’m mostly going to post relevant texts with links. First, though, I’ll let Jeffrey Goldberg set the overview:

This needs to be reiterated: Orlando massacre can be about Islamism, access to guns, homophobia and mental illness, all at the same time.

— Jeffrey Goldberg (@JeffreyGoldberg) June 12, 2016

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Mental Illness:

Yaroslav Trofimov, Orlando killer’s ex-wife says he was a wife-beater with a short fuse who liked to work out and wasn’t religious.
CBSN, It is definitely mental illness…no one ever expected that he would do this.

Mental illness or mental instability may arguably be present in many or all cases of rampage shooting, suicide bombing, etc — it’s a judgment call, and one most properly made by psychiatric or psychological professionals who have observed and interacted with the subjects personally. Sadly, however, continued use of this explanation as the explanation for acts of this kind avoids recognition of other factors in what is inevitably a multifactorial situation — and also contributes to the popular misperception that “mental illness” is a shameful failure of character rather than a complex of medical conditions.

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Susceptibility to violence:

Lilith, Was Orlando shooter’s domestic violence history a missed warning sign?

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Islamism:

JM Berger, Orlando gunman tied to radical imam released from prison last year, say law enforcement sources
Program On Extremism, Omar Mateen pledged allegiance to ISIS, official says

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Homophobia:

Drag Queen: #Orlando gunman Omar Mateen was my friend. https://t.co/KYketl2wa0 pic.twitter.com/9I3CQS9nHk

— Noah Shachtman (@NoahShachtman) June 13, 2016

Mona Holland, His father says he wasn’t religious, but was furious abt 2 gay men kissing a week or so ago in public
Murtaza Hussain, “Ty Smith & Chris Callen recalled the eventual killer being escorted drunk from the Pulse bar on multiple occasions”
Matt Pearce, “Do you think he was gay?” The shooter’s ex-wife was silent for three seconds. “I don’t know.”
Frances Traynor, speaking from experience, the most virulently homophobic are the most deeply closeted

It seems to me we may have two different forms of enantiodromia to consider here — enantiodromia being the Jungian term for sudden psychological reversal, a pattern I’ve explored elsewhere. The two versions here, which in practice might well be one, but which we can distinguish for analytic purposes, would be (a) psychological, ie the sudden revulsion at forms of sexuality one previously found acceptable and (b) religious, as in a sudden, emotional conversion experience or repentance by which someone non-religious is precipitated into a religious enthusiast.

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Anti-semitism:

Molly Crabapple, According to the Trump fans in my Twitter replies, somehow the homophobic Orlando murderer is the fault of Jews

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And finally, Rebellion against Empire:

This former CIA officer's secret life taught her one lesson: Listen to your enemy.https://t.co/DfcDVuoEcA

— Anthony De Rosa (@AntDeRosa) June 13, 2016

Excerpt:

An al Qaeda fighter made a point once in a debriefing. He said, all these movies that America makes, like Independence Day and Hunger Games and Star Wars, they’re all about a small scrappy band of rebels who will do anything in their power with the limited resources available to them to expel an outside, technologically advanced invader. And what you don’t realize, he said, is that to us, the rest of the world, you are The Empire, and we are Luke and Han. You are the aliens and we are Will Smith.

For someone who claimed to hate America, the Orlando shooter really loved 'Star Wars': https://t.co/VchrjAo8gE pic.twitter.com/X1kDdZMMu1

— Marlow Stern (@MarlowNYC) June 13, 2016

[ by Charles Cameron — fict that aligns with expectation is more popular than fact that doesn’t, d’oh! ]
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Just so we’re clear about this, left, right, atheist, believer, whatever, let’s quash this rumor:

You may believe Pat Robertson said it, you may wish he had — but he didn’t, and I’m pretty sure Snopes knows better than the British tabloid The Mirror.

Sources:

Mirror, Orlando shootings are ‘God’s punishment’ for same-sex marriage, claims .. Pat Robertson

Snopes, Standing Pat

[ by Charles Cameron — the series continues from six ]
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What a pleasure to discover Matt Damon does graph theory in his spare time!

— or that the female face. similarly, is viewed by some as the basis for graphical analysis:

— and that even war-gaming boards, such as this one from PAXsims’ ISIS Crisis game, can feature the node and edge / circle and line format, along with cards, dice, hexagons…

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Sources:

Matt Damon, Good Will Hunting

PBS Digital, The vague Horror of Face-Swap

Geek & Sundry, Can Gaming Inporove Strategic Military Planning?

Incidentally, I have a brief exchange with Rex Brynen in the comments section at PAXsims

Previous posts in this series:

On the felicities of graph-based game-board design: preliminaries

On the felicities of graph-based game-board design: two dazzlers

On the felicities of graph-based game-board design: three

On the felicities of graph-based game-board design: four

On the felicities of graph-based game-board design: five

On the felicities of graph-based game-board design: six

[ by Charles Cameron — four recent tweets, some lines of inquiry, & no certain conclusion, no date certain ]
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The four recent tweets that set me off..

#ISIS spokesman said that even if group loses #Mosul #Raqqah #Sirte, it will not be defeated until it loses its faith-based fighting spirit

— SITE Intel Group (@siteintelgroup) May 21, 2016

#IS: "Do you think that you will be victorious if you killed ['Umar] al-Shîshânî or Abû Bakr [al-Baghdâdî] or Abû Zayd [?] or Abû 'Amr [?]"

— Mr. Orange (@Mr0rangetracker) May 21, 2016

#Adnani audiotape another sign of #ISIL leaders in deep hiding, afraid to appear in public, or already dead. Days are numbered. #ISIS #Daesh

— Brett McGurk (@brett_mcgurk) May 21, 2016

ISIS knows Al Qaeda is planning to challenge ISIS in its stronghold — Syria https://t.co/Wq9ArSDbX2

— Mike Walker (@New_Narrative) May 21, 2016

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There are a multitude of voices now raising the question After ISIS< What Next? They can be heard from as far back as October 2014, onwards:

Al Arabiya English, What comes after ISIS’ defeat?

Foreign Policy, What Comes After the Islamic State Is Defeated?

Lexington Institute, What Do We Do The Day After ISIS Is Defeated?

The National Interest, We Defeat ISIS. Then What?

The Telegraph, What happens once Isil is defeated?

Wilson Center, Iraq: Now and After ISIS

The [Huffington] World Post, The Middle East after ISIS

and most recently:

The Atlantic, The Hell After ISIS

If IS continues losing territory, as suggested in the tweets above, this question can only gain in force.

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I have been following Islamic eschatology since 1998 or thereabouts, when I met David Cook, and I thought that what was at that time an eerily unappreciated question had at last made its way into informed consciousness after..

2002, David Cook, Studies in Muslim Apocalyptic

2005, David Cook, Contemporary Muslim Apocalyptic Literature

2011, J-P Filiu, Apocalypse in Islam

2014, Martin Dempsey, speech: IS has “an apocalyptic, end-of-days strategic vision”

2015, Jessica Stern & JM Berger, ISIS: The State of Terror

2015, Graeme Wood, What ISIS Really Wants

2015, Will McCants, The ISIS Apocalypse

But no, the question I’m interested in has not been raised:

Is there a more potent form of apocalyptic movement than the two we have most recently seen?

a Mahdist movement, one focused on the army with black flags from Khorasan — AQ

a Caliphal movement, one focused on the establishment of the rightly-guided kingdom — IS

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Four hints:

It seems to me that you can have a Caliphal (kingdom based), or a Mahdist (leader based) movement, and that the Caliphal approach, should IS be a clear failure as a global quasi-state, will be exhausted for quite some time — and that since AQ, to the extent that it is or was an apocalyptic movement, was one that looked to a future Mahdi, the only route “up” from either one would be the declaration of an actual Mahdi-claimant with armed insurrection to follow.

The worst messianic movement, in terms of fatalities, would still be China’s 19th Century Taiping Rebellion, 20-30 million dead. Strangely enough, Gordon of Khartoum was involved.

The most recent and widely notable Mahdist rebellion was the Sudanese one that killed Gordon, led initially by Muhammad Ahmad al-Mahdi.

The next highly plausible date for the appearance of a Mahdi would be at the start of the next Islamic century, 1500 AH / 2076 BCE, since ahadith suggest a Mujaddid or Reformer will be sent every 100 years, and there have been assertions that the Ummah will not endure longer than 1,500 years (see here eg)

My guess is that we’ll have a cooling-off period in terms of Islamic apocalyptic if IS is seen to fail — but as they say, mortal mind cannot know the time of the end, and Allah knows best.