Why do psychically and economically marginal Westerners convert to Islam?
There is no one reason. There are many reasons.
Islam is wrongly perceived as a vehicle for "social justice." The fact that a rich Muslim can stand side by side with a poor one at a mosque is misinterpreted. The fact that Muslims are required to offer zakat to fellow Muslims is also misinterpreted as meaning that there is some kind of "sharing of the wealth."
But one has only to look at the history of Islam, and look at Muslim societies today, to see the extremes of wealth and power. In many Muslim countries the only way to get that wealth is for the rulers and their collaborators to help themselves to the national riches, whether those riches come from oil or smuggling (Syria) or Jizyah from Infidel lands (Egypt, the "Palestinians"). There are no Infidel lands that offer the same kind of gap between rich and poor, the ruler and the ruled, as do Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, and other Muslim countries. These great extremes are less obvious in Dar al-Islam in those countries, such as Turkey and Tunisia, that have tried to constrain Islam as a social and political force.
But the presentation of Islam as a kind of pseudo-socialism, a "left-wing" doctrine, is common. Yet in fact it encourages the habit of submission, submission to Allah, submission to the Ruler, whoever he is, provided he can be seen as an observant Muslim. That is what attracts some, based on their own misinformation, to Islam.
A second, and related reason for some to convert to Islam is that Islam is depicted as the belief-system that most accords with, and furthers the interests of, les damnes de la terre, especially non-whites. It is amazing how carefully campaigns are targeted at certain groups -- say, black prisoners in America and England -- without any countervailing effort by the authorities, or even by Christian groups, or even by black Christian groups, who could and should be funded for such undertakings. They could present the evidence about the history of Arab slavers seizing and castrating black African boys, or about the duration of the Arab slave trade, which began long before, and ended long after (where it did end) than the European slave trade, and the continued, indeed permanent, defense of slavery in the texts of Islam, which can never be overcome, and the continued enslavement of blacks by Arabs, in the Sudan, in Mauritania, and elsewhere, far from any Western reporters. There is so much information about this, but so little attempt to sensibly disseminate it.
Still a third reason for Islam's appeal is that it is so simple to become a Muslim. You don't have to learn a thing. You can become a Muslim without knowing a thing about Islam. So eager are Muslims for what are seen as recruits to the army of Islam that it doesn't matter if those converting or "reverting" know a thing about it, for it is not the saving of their souls that matters. All that matters for most Muslims is to swell further the ranks of Islam. That is why, early on, Islam required only a recital of the Shehada -- a single sentence, a single declaration -- and then one became a Muslim, and found out later what it was all about. But by that point one had no way to gracefully, or safely, within lands dominated by Muslims, get out of that faith.
A fourth reason is that not only is Islam a faith simple to join (whereas if you wish to become, say, a Christian or a Jew, you have to study, you have to actually learn something about Christian doctrine or Jewish faith) but it is a simple-minded faith, that appeals to the simple-minded. It is not a faith bent on questioning itself. It is the perfect faith for someone who cannot think, and does not like to think, and prefers to have handed to him a Simple and Total Regulation of Life, and a Complete Explanation of the Universe. For all those who need certainty, who cannot stand individual responsibility or moral choice, who prefer to be slaves of Allah -- well, Islam is just the ticket, it's just the thing for you.
But Islam is not a vehicle for "social justice." It is not the belief-system of non-racists, but the carrier of racism and imperialism: Arab racism, and Arab imperialism. Ask Francis Bok and the Lost Boys, or the black African Muslims in Darfur (400,000 killed, 2.5 million forced to flee their homes) or the 1.8 million black African non-Muslims in the southern Sudan. Or the Ibo and other Christians who vainly resisted the "Jihad" in the Biafra War of 1967-69. Islam inculcates the notion of a permanent division of the world between Believers and Infidels, and the duty of Muslims to pursue, through Jihad, the conquest, not necessarily by miitary means (Da'wa and demographic conquest will do), the Lands of the Infidels, where all obstacles to the spread of Islam are to be torn down, so that the goal that all Muslims share may be realized. No "diversity" but rather a world where "Islam dominates and is not to be dominated" -- everywhere.
Western converts to Islams=mentally deficient and anti establishment individuals, most likely hating school, hating rules, hating laws, hating military,hating their own life even hating parental control....a lot of hating....they will fit right in with the Islamic crowd....Islam , a religion of hate....
Hugh,
As you know, another major reason people convert to Islam has to do with it's marriage rules. The non-Muslim potential spouse is generally either required to convert to Islam (in the case of non-Muslim male marrying Muslim female; or a Muslim male marrying a polytheist woman) or there is pressure to convert (in the case of the Christian, Jewish, or Zoroastrian woman who wishes to marry a Muslim man)--pressure that can continue on into the marriage. Young people in love (whose judgement is thus impaired), who don't know much about Islam, are susceptible to this trap.
"Why do psychically and economically marginal Westerners convert to Islam?"
Probably for the same reason the same people have joined other cults. They are easily persuaded and the cult provides a sense of both belonging and of certainty. By certainty I mean that everyday life is regulated, there is no need for internal thought or guidance.
I have some first hand knowledge of Westerners converting to Islam. First the converts tend to be deeply inured in radical left wing politics, and so it is a natural extention of pre-existing loyalties and ways of thinking.Secondly and closly related to my first point is converts tend to be angry and some how see Islam as vehicle for expressing what particular complex of anger and grievences the convert may be nursing.
Third compared to much, de-fanged, self-loathing Western Christianity and Judaism, Islam at least initaiily looks strong and vigorous.It attracts young men looking for guidance particularly of a male kind. Islam is good at finding and exploting vulnerable teens and young adults, who are drifting and looking to belong too something. Frankly this aspect of Islamic conversion should be an indictment of Western family and communal breakdown. Fourth Islamic converts tend to be thuggish and so Islam snactifies the natural triats of the convert as holy. (Hey you like carrying guns and stomping people Islam is probile for you.)This is of course related to my first and second point. The Ultimate example of this was H. Rap Brown converting and becoming Jamal Al Amin or as Daniel Pipes put it; " The Muslim OJ." Islam has the bad boy appeal, it is the ultimate $%#@ to your parents, whitey and all the rest of the people around you. In a perverse way becoming a Muslim is rebellious.Fifthly, it doesn't require much beyond, saying the Shaddaha and not eating pork. It is much simpiler than joining just about any other religion. Most others require lots of study to join. Many converts particulary of the African American kind tend to read at a elementary school level or are functionally illiterate. I don't know these are just my observations, many gathered from personal or near personal experience.
May I predict that conversions will increase in both Europe and America. The convert pool will be from the Hard-Left. Many more Leftist will follow Carlos the Jackal or H. Rap Brown into Islam. The Anarchist, the Marxist all prime Islamic convert material. Crazy liberal women seem to really love the violent obscurantist Muslim men. Islam is an idealogy not a religion like Judaism and Christianity. Those who have in the past have gravitated to Marxist movements would find lots in common with Islam. David Horowitz is right and tehn some about a Red and Green alliance.
abdulashirk,
Note also those da'wa campaigns in the U.S. and U.K. prisons.
To the extent that Christ is seen as the Caucasian God, and to the extent that Christianity is seen as the white man's religion, to that same extent, there is a vulnerability for some Westerners to opt out, to opt for a religion that doesn't have a Caucasian God, and isn't deemed a white man's religion.
Increased fixation on ethnic studies, increased fixation on racial grievances, increased racial political pandering, leads to an anti-Caucasian atmosphere, which translates over to an anti-Western attitude, which translates over to an anti-Christian attitude, which opens the door for islam.
So all of those black studies programs at Harvard, at the University of California, Berkley, all of those Chicano studies programs at UC Davis, all of those programs that fixate on race, that are predicated upon the horrors of the West, and the white man, all of these lead to the door being opened to islam.
Our colleges are creating the atmosphere that is receptive to the anti-Western, anti-Christian, anti-white agenda of islam.
I live and work in an Islamic country with many Western converts to Islam. Being an educator, I too have looked at this problem and considered it.
Most of the converts are indeed people with checkered pasts. Many are ex-military, so I think the extensive rules, regulations, and codes appeal to them. Islam covers EVERYTHING down to the way one goes to the toilet. This is not unlike the SOPs of the US Army.
Most also lived on the edge of life in the US. They were marginal but through Islam, they feel powerful. They are powerful because Islam states that others are inferior to Muslims (Jews, Christians, pagans, and women). This is negative and destructive self-esteem because it is founded on diminishing others rather than raising the self. Islam will never become widespread in the Far East or West because of this but it will always be a vehicle for an underclass to attack the establishment. Mohammed himself was just such a marginal individual from a marginal, impoverished, backwater corner of the Mediterranean World. Islam has always been about the revenge of those on the periphery.
I pray to the Judeo-Christian God, all of the Hindu Gods, and the ancestors of the Far East that mainstream society eventual wakes up to these facts and shine a powerful light on Islam so that the rats go scurrying away. Only then can the world live in peace.
Shree Bagneesh, L.Ron. Hubbard, Hare Krishna, Mormonism and Jehovah's Witnesses - people convert to these religions all the time as well ..
.. its not just Islam that psychologically and economically marginal westerners turn to - any religion that systematically targets these people is in a win-win situation ...
History teaches us that nature abhors a unipolar world. No one world-dominant superpower or empire goes for very long before challengers arise to its dominance and challenge its monopoly on power.
And right now, in much of the world, the only effective, dynamic, ideological challenge to the Western global capitalist model dominated by America, is radical Islam.
I've heard thoughtful Leftists lament that the collapse of socialism after the Cold War left a political vacuum that Islam is now rushing to fill. That is, for peoples in the Third World or for rebellious disaffected youth in the West itself or anyone else who fears or resents world dominance by America, Islamism offers a viable alternative that previously Marxism used to offer.
Here in America, evangelical Christianity has also offered an ideological challenge of its own to the excesses of American capitalism--the porn on every hotel room TV and the government earning revenue from gambling and the crap coming out of Hollywood these days. But rebellious Western youth are looking to rebel against their parents especially, and since their parents are already Judeo-Christian that won't appeal to them as much.
Notice how Wicca has become popular among radical feminists in the West. And notice how tolerant young Western Leftists are of it--it's the one religion they openly admire. It offers a mysticism that is female-centered and different from any of the three allegedly male-dominated monotheistic religions. Young Western women, in particular, are just as suspicious of Judeo-Christianity as they are of Islam (if not more so), because they believe it's stepping on their rights to have abortions and lesbian relationships.
Becuase Islam is sooooo against racism:
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/postglobal/bashir_goth/2007/03/over_sexualizing_is_dangerous_as_global_warming.html
Support the #1 enemy of Islam, the little Satan herself. Visit http://www.masada1234.blogspot.com and stand with Israel!
Steven L.
I think the connections you make are very important. When feminism becomes totalitarian and declares masculinity (and fatherhood) obsolete - as has happened in our culture, then all sorts of insanity prevails: God as a reflection of the healthy masculine principle (which contains the healthy feminine) becomes castrated and useless social obscurities such as Wicca emerge and come off as valid.
Of course, men are essential and at the same time, committed fathers are made, not born. Same with mothers (also derided by Totalitarian Feminism). I think the marginalization of men and the subsequent degradation of fatherhood has left a wide open gap for the unfathered to gravitate to the hyper and pseudo masculine (and, therefore, degenerate) Islam. The new feminized family is a social failure .. and the vacuum it has created has feminized children desperately seeking fathers w/authority .. God help them when they turn to Islam .. where masculine authority is at least as fully distorted as in the totaled feminine domain.
Feminist Totalitarianism has been largely brought to us by the Left .. and to paraphrase Hugh "You can become a Muslim without knowing a thing about Islam." You can become a Leftist feminist without knowing a thing about moral goodness, family or a worthwhile God.
"Western converts to Islams=mentally deficient and anti establishment individuals, most likely hating school, hating rules, hating laws, hating military,hating their own life even hating parental control....a lot of hating....they will fit right in with the Islamic crowd....Islam , a religion of hate...."
The white converts I have known have been studious, obedient Liberals who learned about Islam while on a religious quest in college.
They like rules, like school, really just love (certain) laws.
There's the underclass converts and then there are the overclass converts. The underclass converts are in victim mode and want easy answers about where to direct their wrath, the overclass converts want power and see an easy and religiously justified plan to get them that.
And I think that hating the draconian schools and laws we have is actually a start to very different things than Islam. Love of freedom, for example, and respect for the founders whose writings we can go back to for grounds on limiting laws and rules and meddling government control.
I think the ability to totally control women has it's appeal to some men.
Allah is the same God of the Christian and Jew. The Arab before have belief in one God but they stray away into many gods and goddesses as they thought the One God was distant from them. Most people who convert to Islam when it is on attack by evil people like Hal Linsay and other hate mongers are the future true believer of Islam. So many hate Monger who try to get homosexual against Islam by falsely claiming Islam will kill then for being homosexual.
First than bissexual raper and murder was senture to death by than Pakistian not for being than bissexual but for the rape of over 100 little boys and girls and they murder by him. Koran state that homosexual in the community not be harm or discriminal by Muslim under less they engauge in rape or other criminal act like murder. The Koran doesnot approvia of homosexual but said they cannot help being that way as they where born that way. Than homosexual I know ask me about it ouce abut the Pakistian sentureing than bissexual to death, he believe some hate monger that said that he was senture to death for being bissexual untril I explain about the crime he did and found guietry of and senture for under Islamist Laws.
"Shree Bagneesh, L.Ron. Hubbard, Hare Krishna, Mormonism and Jehovah's Witnesses - people convert to these religions all the time as well .."
DRK,
I bet that if you look at the percentages of the groups you mentioned above as those converting to Islam,you would discover the numbers are much lower in comparison to other mainstream religions. Jehova's Witneses and LDS (Mormons)are much less likely than any other religions to convert to a non-Christian faith.....especially one like Islam.
DefenderofIslam:
Shut your pie-hole, you babbling, incoherent, devil worshipping a-hole.
Your lies and deception will not work on this group. Allah was the moon-god of the arabs. The moon represents darkness, just like the cresent that adorns your mosques. It's no wonder why Mohammed chose Allah out of the many pagan gods to worship. It was Satan that visited Mohammed in the cave, and he even believed it was an evil entity until his wife convinced him otherwise.
Satan represents darkness, and so does your lovely religion of Islam. Satan will throw in many truths to get in a lie every now and again, and this is evident in Islam. Just like your post, Muslims try to act pious so they can win over the infidel and eventually subjugate them with the chains of Islam.
Lets face it, Islam is the Anti-Christ and Mohammed is Islam.
they turn to Islam because our stupid politicians and the media are toooo scared to warn their country of the dangers of Islam.
Instead, Politicians and the media keep telling the unsuspecting population that it is a religion of peace, and the population are not taught of the 1400 years of terror from Islam..
Oh well all the left wing governments in the world are helping Islam to dominate the world, not realising that they will also be slaughtered if they do not submit...
I cannot understand for the life of me why the non muslim population doesnt read the last three quarters of the quran themselves and others of the Muslim holy books.. instead they take council from the enemy who are allowed to lie to the infidel and in times of war for the cause of Allah.. yep sure sounds like good common sense to me...
Remember we are not the innocent thus we can be slaughtered any time...
DefenderofIslam,
You Muslims are monotheists, but the description you have of G-d is not the correct one. The Koran is not His word, therefore does not describe Him. You are right to believe in one Creator who rules over all His works, but your book is missing the description of other attributes of His, such as His being father toward His creations and not just king of them. He ordered Abraham (peace be upon him) to sacrifice Isaac and not Ishmael. His place of worship where He has chosen to dwell His spirit is the Temple at Jerusalem, not the cube at Mecca as you believe; when He rebuilds it and returns it to it, speedily in our days, amen, you too will recognize Him as He truly is, and worship the real Allah, the Allah who is, as He described Himself.
The Westerners that do convert look very odd mentally like they have some mental problems or lowered IQs and will remain in that spirit twisting it further to hate. The devil and his demons will just lach on more onto these people who eventually become terrorists like 7/11 bombers and make them denouce Christianty in the West because like the Devil the Cross bares witness and defeat for Satan and his followers including the blind followers who are deceived pawns in this spiritual battle.