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….