Egads, I've Been Quoted!

Ideas find expansion in the presence of solid intellectual companions. James Oppenheim is a close personal friend who has informally tracked what he has coined the ‘Islamic Small Wars’. For Jim, the Islamic Small Wars (ISWs) are “all civil wars within Islamic-majority states that have some interface with the west, largely determined by location, albeit universally characterised by a nearly global xenophobia. Ultimately, they are about the development of power, largely through intimidation and fear, and not so much concerned with constituent needs, the earth, or insight into the character of humanity within nature and engaged with God.”

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2012%5C01%5C13%5Cstory_13-1-2012_pg3_4

There's that smooth Ciceronian doing its work.

Maybe.

Maybe not.

There are always two voices in our heads: the internal, which in part filters and internalizes the speech of others and then speaks for us in the language and with the behaviors we have acquired both by the accidents of fate as well as election; the externals--the voices we encounter in the course of a day, and what a host of malarcky that has become with the common indulgence in the World Wide Web, its extraordinary profusion of reportage, and its options as regards (yes, another coin) social chatyping.

With Tammy Swoffords ever clever weaving and the historic powers yet in Pakistan reading, we'll see if the noun "Islamic Small Wars" takes.  Of course, I've been dropping it into chat as if it has been for some time the most popular of the anti-Jihad, "long war" concepts having to do with  . . . well, the Islamic Small Wars.

Reference

Swofford, Tammy.  "What Happens in Somalia . . . ."  Daily Times, January 13, 2011.

# # #

Comments

[Tammy Swofford]

Jim,

I was directed to this site, after the article went into print.

http://www.sistersomalia.org/

Thank you for the continued friendship, contribution to the intellectual battlespace.

R/Tammy