Our old friend Raymond Ibrahim discusses what causes young Americans and Europeans to betray their heritage, embrace Islam, and wage jihad war against their fellow countrymen.
According to a recent ABC report, "As many as three dozen criminals who converted to Islam in American prisons have moved to Yemen where they could pose a 'significant threat' to attack the U.S., according to a report on al-Qaeda from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. ... Also of concern to U.S. officials, the Senate staff found, is a group of 'nearly 10 non-Yemeni Americans who traveled to Yemen, converted to Islam, became fundamentalists, and married Yemeni women so they could remain in the country.' ... An American official described them as 'blond-haired, blue-eyed types' who fit the profile of Americans who al-Qaeda has sought to recruit for terror missions."
These, of course, are not the first Americans -- "blond-haired, blue-eyed types" or otherwise -- to convert to Islam and join the jihad: John Walker Lindh wound up fighting fellow Americans alongside Taliban forces in Afghanistan; Adam Gadahn became a major character in al-Qaeda's propaganda machine; Gregory Patterson, Levar Washington, and Kevin James plotted terror strikes against the U.S.; Christopher Paul and Jose Padilla conspired to use weapons of mass destruction.
Then there are the countless European converts, such as the British "shoe-bomber," Richard Reid, who attempted to achieve "martyrdom" by detonating explosives in his shoes while aboard a passenger aircraft; the late Germaine Lindsay, who did achieve "martyrdom" by killing himself and 56 of his fellow citizens and injuring over 700, in the London bombings of 2005; and Abu Abdullah, the native Briton-turned-fiery-Islamist-preacher who makes no secret of his vitriolic hatred of the West (all, of course, while enjoying that unique Western liberty, freedom of speech).
What causes such men, born and raised in the West, often from Christian backgrounds, to abandon their heritage, embrace Islam, and become radicalized to the point that they conspire to kill their fellow countrymen?
As for Islam's intrinsic appeal, it has long been argued that, unlike Christianity, which can be "heavy" on theology, Islam is relatively simple and straightforward. Thus while Christianity may revolve around the metaphysical -- the Trinity, Christology, even the notion of grace -- Islam, in black-and-white terms, commands its adherents to do this and not do that. In fact, the Arabic word "Sharia," that comprehensive body of laws Muslims are to obey, is etymologically related to the word for "pathway" -- as in, "the pathway to paradise."
Yet there is another, more subtle, factor that may entice men to Islam: traditional male roles are highlighted in the religion. This may appeal to non-Muslim men who want to assert their "masculinity" in what they perceive to be gender-free Western societies. Harvey Mansfield's book, Manliness, defines that term as "a quality both bad and good, mostly male, often intolerant, irrational, and ambitious. Our gender-neutral society does not like it but cannot get rid of it."
Indeed, with an ethical code that coalesced in the seventh century -- when the Muslim prophet and "perfect example" walked the earth, enforced his will, and conquered his "infidel" neighbors -- Islamic culture can hardly be deemed "gender-neutral." Even philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who despised Christianity as "effeminate" and preached the need for man to be transformed into an amoral "hyper-man," professed admiration for Islam, describing it as "noble and manly" (The Antichrist).
Of course, traditional masculine roles are not the sole domain of Islam; most civilizations have lived in accordance to such norms; so-called "gender-neutral societies" are, from a historical perspective, aberrant. James Bowman, author of Honor: A History, points out that, when it comes to the West's disregard for notions of honor and masculinity, "we are, in global terms, the odd ones out"; he further asserts that, up until the Victorian era, in the West, "honor was rather closer to the Arab and Muslim idea of it today."
It is in this context, then, that disaffected young men -- who, like Nietzsche, despise what they perceive to be a "gender-neutral" society -- may find a religion which emphasizes "masculinity" appealing.
John Walker Lindh especially seems to fit this paradigm. Precipitating his conversion to Islam was his teenage discovery that his father was homosexual -- an event that appears to have traumatized and alienated Lindh. Islam's masculine ideals and unequivocal condemnation of homosexuality may have lured young Lindh, who, soon after his father left his mother and moved in with another man, converted to Islam at age 16. Shortly thereafter, he went a-jihading.
This is all further exasperated by Muslims mocking Western masculinity -- such as Osama bin Laden, who has ridiculed Western acceptance of homosexuality and characterized the American soldier as "a paper tiger" who is "too cowardly and too fearful to meet the young people of Islam face-to-face" (The Al Qaeda Reader).
Whatever position one may hold regarding these issues, one thing is clear: If traditional masculine virtues are upheld in Islamic culture, so too do traditional masculine vices abound -- for it is often a very fine line that separates hyper-virtue from hyper-vice. Honor, courage, and patriarchic ethics can -- and, in Islamic culture, regularly do -- morph into destructive pride (e.g., "honor killings"), disdain for life (e.g., suicide bombings), and brutal misogyny....
Islam is a hypermasculine cult that attracts immature, inadequate and insecure men who need to assert themselves by bullying women: http://crombouke.blogspot.com/2010/01/islam-and-hypermasculinity.html
The lure of Islam is obviously different for different people...
1) A welcoming counter-culture for the disaffected
2) Hugh's oft-mentioned "total and all-encompassing belief system" for the feeble-minded
3) Raymond's "male-domination" angle for misogynists and those unable to fathom a relationship of equals
4) A vehicle for consummating love and marriage for lonely hearts or the smitten
5) A rare exception is one who converts at least initially for genuine theological reasons. Daveed Garstein-Ross and Stephen Schwartz are good examples. Both had to be quite naive to begin with...the former came around and realized his mistake, embracing Christianity and becoming a counter-terror expert, the latter continues to embrace his own a syncretic version of sufism, one that allows him to completely disassociate himself from Wahhabism while at the same time, never fully examining (at least in public) the profound moral failures of the prophet Muhammad.
BBC has a potentially interesting TV series, starting tomorrow:
"Generation Jihad"
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00qt1pm
(Initially, this series is restricted viewing to UK area; hopefully, it will get on Youtube soon.)
What causes such men, born and raised in the West, often from Christian backgrounds, to abandon their heritage, embrace Islam, and become radicalized to the point that they conspire to kill their fellow countrymen?
Supremacy is the common denominator for all these Western young men to join Islam and turn to Jihad. It is for gain of control, of overpowering others, to seek glory for their otherwise unremarkable and often dysfunctional lives. So they join the movement of Islamism in Europe or America, and are drawn to Islam's public displays of their 'superiority' - such as women-identity-efacing niqab veils, or minarets competing for European skylines, or voluble mass 'prayer' assaults in public venues. It is all part of the same pattern, to show their Islamic sectarian 'supremacy' over the West, a kind of hostile, primitive, superiority complex riding the crest of a 7th century barbaric creed - a neo-revival Islam.
Their Christian background in which they were raised, which demands sacrifice and hard work, service to others, is abandoned with the desperate hopes and sick dreams of becoming the masters off all. But in fact, what they succeed in their conversions to primitive Islam is they are slaves of masters, who themselves are slaves of higher masters, slavery all on up; all of whom are the "slaves of Allah" power structure; all in the name of an Arabian pagan moon-god Al-Ylah, worshipped by Mohammad's uncle's family, which their prophet raised to the One. It is all sick, a renewal of slavery in Europe, a tyranny we had fought wars to banish, from the American Civil War to banish slavery of American Blacks, to World War II to banish slavery under Nazism, including the long Cold War to banish slavery of Communism. There is no 'manliness' in conversion to Islam, no compassion, no tolerance, no freedom - no redemption of any kind. It is slavery again, as it had ever been for 1400 years.
Time to fire back, and kill the Islamism tyranny that enslaves men's, and women's, souls. Islam is the nefarious past, has long gone out of fashion in a free, gender equal, civilized society, and it must be put down. It will be a long war.
I would argue that the manly virtues, as they are understood in the West, are in fact not upheld in Islamic culture. Honesty, integrity, honor, and courage seem to be in very short supply in the Islamic world.
Among boys in the West,the dream is to be the next Elvis,
Prince,Jay-z,Michael Jordan,Slash,or any of the great sports
or entertainment figures,present and past.For Muslim boys
it's Bin Laden,suicide bomber and the like.
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=F3F5C99B-338A-4BC1-A4B2-585EFE643619
John Quincy Adams Knew Jihad
By Andrew G. Bostom
FrontPageMagazine.com | Wednesday, September 29, 2004
- Adams on Jesus Christ and Christianity, Relative to Muhammad and Islam
"And he [Jesus] declared, that the enjoyment of felicity in the world hereafter, would be reward of the practice of benevolence here.
" His whole law was resolvable into the precept of love; peace on earth – good will toward man, was the early object of his mission; and the authoritative demonstration of the immortality of man, was that, which constituted the more than earthly tribute of glory to God in the highest…
"The first conquest of the religion of Jesus, was over the unsocial passions of his disciples. It elevated the standard of the human character in the scale of existence…On the Christian system of morals, man is an immortal spirit, confined for a short space of time, in an earthly tabernacle. Kindness to his fellow mortals embraces the whole compass of his duties upon earth, and the whole promise of happiness to his spirit hereafter.
"THE ESSENCE OF THIS DOCTRINE IS, TO EXALT THE SPIRITUAL OVER THE BRUTAL PART OF HIS NATURE." (Adam's capital letters)….[pp. 267-268]
“In the seventh century of the Christian era, a wandering Arab of the lineage of Hagar [i.e., Muhammad], the Egyptian, combining the powers of transcendent genius, with the preternatural energy of a fanatic, and the fraudulent spirit of an impostor, proclaimed himself as a messenger from Heaven,
"and spread desolation and delusion over an extensive portion of the earth.
"Adopting from the sublime conception of the Mosaic law, the doctrine of one omnipotent God;
"he connected indissolubly with it, the audacious falsehood, that he was himself his prophet and apostle.
"Adopting from the new Revelation of Jesus, the faith and hope of immortal life, and of future retribution,
"he humbled it to the dust by adapting all the rewards and sanctions of his religion to the gratification of the sexual passion.
"He poisoned the sources of human felicity at the fountain, by degrading the condition of the female sex, and the allowance of polygamy;
" and he declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind.
"THE ESSENCE OF HIS DOCTRINE WAS VIOLENCE AND LUST: TO EXALT THE BRUTAL OVER THE SPIRITUAL PART OF HUMAN NATURE (Adam's capital letters)….
"Between these two religions, thus contrasted in their characters, a war of twelve hundred years has already raged.
"The war is yet flagrant…
"While the merciless and dissolute dogmas of the false prophet shall furnish motives to human action, there can never be peace upon earth, and good will towards men.” [p. 269]
John Quincy Adams' discussions of Islam and of the conduct of Mohammedan states past and present, may be found, according to Bostom, in the following:
“Unsigned essays dealing with the Russo-Turkish War, and on Greece, written while JQA was in retirement, before his election to Congress in 1830”
[Chapters X-XIV, comprising pp. 267-402, in 'The American Annual Register for 1827-28-29', New York, 1830.]
Question: what charitable person will find those 'unsigned essays' and make them available online in their entirety? Or will, even better, republish them in suitably annotated-and-illustrated pamphlet form?
I have a problem with that analysis.
The culture of Islam defines for men how they should behave, just as Western culture does the same for men born here.
Western culture is not so much an anomaly, as it is one step up on the evolutionary scale for humanity.
Masculinity is not only about chest thumping and knuckle dragging, it is about contributing to the elevation of humanity out of the caves and into the halls of higher learning.
It is the honorable men and (women) who have enabled humanity to use cell phones, internet, built rockets and telescopes, furthered the medical sciences, etc.
All of those accomplishments were made possible by honorable human beings who stepped away for a moment from the baser human instincts. Those instincts never go away, they are simply under control.
That is what defines "civilization".
That is the difference between Islamic dominated culture and Western culture.
The film 'October Sky' - based on the excellent memoir, 'Rocket Boys' - proves your point exactly, Ice Star.
It shows Western man - as adolescent boy - having a lot of dangerous fun in company, setting himself a task that demands enormous physical and intellectual effort and, at the end, winning honour thereby; but all of it to a good end, a social end, and without diminishing or destroying other people.
The heroes of the film, growing up in a bleak Tennessee mining town, are in part inspired and guided by their young female science teacher who, we discover in the course of the film, is dying of leukaemia. (This sounds the stuff of three-hanky weepies, but it is flat historical fact - the book is autobiographical, and the teacher was indeed terminally ill, she did not long outlive the events fictionalised in the film).
At the very end of the film the boys, having achieved an award in the State science fair, celebrate by letting off one last magnificent rocket, watched by practically the whole town. With the name of their dying lady teacher painted on its side, the rocket roars up off the ground and soars away into the sky.
All the boys whose story is fictionalised in the film, went on to lead productive, focused and positive lives.
They were truly *men*, as we in the Western world account it.
I don't think the average Muslim can even begin to comprehend the world-view, the view of men and women and of what is worth doing and what is not, that is coded into something like 'October Sky'.