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Jihad Watch

Exposing the role that Islamic jihad theology and ideology play in the modern global conflicts

UK’s Telegraph: Boredom, not Islam, motivates Islamic State’s Western converts

Sep 5, 2014 7:51 am By Robert Spencer

IslamicStateHere’s the scenario: a welfare state brings in a massive influx of immigrants who hold to a belief system that tells them they have a responsibility to wage war against and subjugate those who don’t believe in that belief system, and that the non-believers have the responsibility to pay them tribute. Many of these immigrants thus happily go on welfare in that welfare state, and spend their time working on ways to wage war against unbelievers both abroad and at home. When the situation approaches crisis point, the welfare state’s learned analysts, anxious to cover for the immigrant’s belief system, which they do not accept but nevertheless believe must be protected at all costs, decide that that couldn’t be what is motivating them to fight. It must be because, in that welfare state that provides for all their needs, they have nothing to do, and the devil finds work for idle hands.

Indeed so, and the work that the devil has found for Tim Stanley of the Telegraph is the task of writing a serious piece about a risible idea, as part of his publication’s attempt, and British society’s attempt, to perpetuate the willful ignorance that blankets British society, and to pretend that the source of their problem is anything — anything! — other than what it really is.

“Isil’s Western converts are not motivated by Islam. They are motivated by boredom,” by Tim Stanley, the Telegraph, September 4, 2014 (thanks to Joeb):

The devil makes work for idle hands – and it’s striking how much support Jihad finds among idle Westerners. According to one poll, more people in France support Isil than people in Gaza do and, according to the Daily Beast, identification with fundamentalism is fuelled by middle-class ennui. In a fascinating portrait of Aqsa Mahmood, a public school girl who is believed to have volunteered to become a Jihad bride, journalist Jamie Dettmer makes the following observation:

Mahmood is one of at least 50 British women and girls who are thought by security experts to have joined ISIS in Syria, although some argue the number maybe higher. Her parents, through their lawyer, insist that as a middle-class woman and at one time a successful student she is not a “stereotypical” case. But many male and female Western ISIS and al Qaeda recruits come from middle-income backgrounds and are often fairly well educated—the 9/11 hijackers were.

Middle-class, well educated, tech-savvy. We are often led to believe that fundamentalism is the product of social marginalisation caused by globalisation. Economic change probably does explain some of it, but it doesn’t begin to explain why grade-A students raised in mock-Tudor mansions join the Jihad.

Study after study has shown that neither poverty nor social marginalization causes terrorism. CNS News noted in September 2013 that “according to a Rand Corporation report on counterterrorism, prepared for the Office of the Secretary of Defense in 2009, ‘Terrorists are not particularly impoverished, uneducated, or afflicted by mental disease. Demographically, their most important characteristic is normalcy (within their environment). Terrorist leaders actually tend to come from relatively privileged backgrounds.’ One of the authors of the RAND report, Darcy Noricks, also found that according to a number of academic studies, ‘Terrorists turn out to be more rather than less educated than the general population.’”

Aqsa Mahmood is just another example of this, and she leaves Tim Stanley scratching his head: why would “grade-A students raised in mock-Tudor mansions join the Jihad”? It couldn’t be because they have a belief system that tells them that their god wants them to wage war against those who don’t hold the belief system. No, it couldn’t be that. And it isn’t poverty. So what is it? Stanley goes hunting.

A more psychologically compelling answer might be alienation: Jihad as the symptom of an existential crisis. A number of smart American conservatives have been exploring the theme, starting with the very smart Michael Brendan Dougherty:

As long as Western liberalism has existed, it has been found charmless or contemptible by some men. Western liberalism asks men to be governed by laws made by mere men and their politicking. It demands of most men that they be mere citizens. It urges thrift, prudence, and industry. This is not for everyone.

The way Michael describes it, it’s probably not for me either. But then it takes a traditionalist conservative to see the flaws in liberalism to understand why some men (note to Michael, they’re not all men – Jihad is a surprisingly equal opportunities employer) might reject a way of life that is so grindingly materialist and empty. Yes, I’m afraid it is. A system that rejects transcendental values, that seeks to solve all conflict through a mix of negotiation and therapy, and which always tries to satisfy the lowest common denominator is not a system that poets would die for – and, so, it can be a struggle to live in if you have a low tolerance for mundanity. Charles Cooke (a libertarian) notes with sadness: “One reason that liberty can be difficult to preserve is that it so often lacks the romance, the heroism, and the sense of involvement that so many appear to crave.” Matt K Lewis adds: “Going back to ancient times, young men have craved honor and glory. But when there’s no communal higher calling, and no Wild West frontier for those afflicted with wanderlust to conquer, they’re left empty. Playing video games isn’t enough.” So where do you turn when liberal democracy no longer intrigues? I’ll let Michael answer that one:

Revolutionary movements also offer visions of justice that are larger and deeper than some dirty court system. And the struggle in establishing them holds out prizes that are extremely rare for men of the West: glory, martyrdom, and heroism. Revolution beats a life of traffic tickets, creditors, bosses, and — if you’re especially lucky — angst about real-estate.

It’s true: life as a modern Western consumerist is spiritually vacuous, “grindingly materialist and empty.” People do go searching for something to give meaning to it all. Some of these searchers become Islamic jihad terrorists. Others join the evangelical Christians, or the Krishna movement, or the Democratic Party, or the gardening club, or the local theater group, or any number of other things. The people who become evangelical Christians or Hare Krishnas or political activists or gardeners or amateur thespians don’t generally also become traitors who take up arms against the military forces or citizens of their native land. An alarming number of converts to Islam, however, do just that. So the likelihood that what led to the conversion to Islam in the first place was a spiritual restlessness that others feel, and responded to in different ways, does nothing to ameliorate the fact that converts to Islam all too often imbibe a highly literalist understanding of its teachings, and those teachings, at literalist face value, are filled with hatred and violence.

To this collage of conservative thought, I’d add two observations. First, alienation from Western materialism being expressed through revolution is far from new. It demands comparison with the urban guerilla movements of the 1970s – all of which were predominantly drawn from middle-class kids who saw their parents’ success as a form of collaboration with capitalism and fascism. Is there any real difference between, on the one hand, Mahmood allegedly abandoning professional achievement and the life of a liberated Western woman for Jihad, and, on the other hand, Ulrike Meinhof of the Red Army Faction abandoning her children and sparkling literary career for a life of assassinations and bombings in the 1970s German terrorist underground? None, except the contrasting ideological manifestations of their malaise. And, aside from bourgeois angst, Seventies Marxism and contemporary Jihad are linked by a) an obsession with America/Israel as a nexus of capital and military power that is responsible for everything wrong with the world and b) an unrealistic sense of their ability to do anything about it. They are, in reality, grubby little criminals poking at the system with a blunt dagger. But they believe they are heralds of a New Order. They all suffer from the arrogance of youth.

Tim Stanley, by contrast, suffers from the arrogance of an educated man’s refusal to admit the obvious. He is looking at this thing the wrong way around. His article’s headline promised to exonerate Islam of responsibility for its violent adherents. Now he says that Aqsa Mahmood and Ulrike Meinhof are the same except for “the contrasting ideological manifestations of their malaise.” Very well. So they’re the same. But would Tim Stanley have written, back when Ulrike Meinhof was an active Marxist terrorist, that the problem wasn’t Marxism, it was boredom? Would he have been so anxious to try to prove to his readers that Marxism was really just fine, benign and non-violent and chummy, but when seized upon by bored Western materialists, could become something lethal? Or would he have acknowledged what he cannot admit in the present case: that the belief system Meinhof seized upon justified hatred and violence in ways that for whatever reason resonated with her, and that therefore the belief system itself had to be confronted and reformed, its adherents challenged to remove or reinterpret the aspects of it that appealed to hateful, violent people and encouraged their worst impulses?

Second, revolutions rooted in alienation from consumerism have a habit of becoming the thing they profess to hate. The Red Army Faction was so anti-materialist that it set fire to department stores. Yet its leaders resembled tropes of Hollywood cinema (Ulrike was Bonnie to Andreas Baader’s Clyde) and their descent into grubby theft and extortion rendered them as criminal as the capitalist elite they bombed and kidnapped. Likewise, Isil’s image-consciousness is very unIslamic and very Hollywood. Take the hipster Jihadi (another middle-class boy gone wrong). The photo of Islam Yaken that went viral doesn’t suggest a man who has submitted to the will of Allah but a boy who likes posing with kick-ass swords – with an effeminate little satchel which probably cost most people’s annual salary to buy. It’s quite obvious, isn’t it, that he thinks he’s cool? He’s the Islamist James Dean – the rebel with a cause.

Tim Stanley doesn’t explain why he thinks being image-conscious is un-Islamic. It is probably because he comes from a Christian background and thinks that Islam is a Religion of Peace essentially like Christianity, and that in Islam, as in Christianity, humility is a virtue and self-infatuation a vice. He is doubtless unaware that the Qur’an tells Muslims that they are the “best of people” (3:110), while unbelievers are “the most vile of created beings” (98:6), and that this dichotomy inculcates a pride and arrogance which has no problem with self-aggrandizement. The 20th-century Pakistani Islamic scholar and politician Maulana Maududi once wrote about entering a cafe in a non-Muslim country and determining that a stranger sitting in it was Muslim simply because of his bearing and the attitude he projected. Look at the exaggerated turban of Suleiman the Magnificent and tell me that image-consciousness and a sense of cool is un-Islamic.

This existential explanation of why some Westerners turn to Jihad helps us to draw a thick line of separation between legitimate Islam and Islamism – between an ancient faith practised by millions and something motored by the unhappiness of individuals. One MI5 report stated that:

Far from being religious zealots, a large number of those involved in terrorism do not practise their faith regularly. Many lack religious literacy and could actually be regarded as religious novices. Very few have been brought up in strongly religious households, and there is a higher than average proportion of converts.

This assertion is wholly counter-factual. In every case — every case — Islamic jihadists turn out to be devout, observant Muslims. This MI5 assessment comes from ignorance of Islam leading to a misinterpretation of the data at hand: for instance, analysts concluded that the 9/11 hijackers were not devout because they frequented strip clubs just before the attacks. The analysts were ignorant of the fact that in Islam, one is admitted to Paradise if one’s good deeds outweigh one’s bad deeds (cf. Qur’an 21:47, etc.), and consequently the hijackers knew that they were about to do a great deed for Allah — their jihad hijacking — and so essentially had a free pass to indulge themselves before that. What’s more, the strippers were Infidels: Tim Stanley, being in a Britain beset by a pandemic of Muslim rape gangs, should know how Islamic supremacists tend to regard Infidel girls.

In other words, radical Islam may well be the way that these individuals choose to express their angst but it is by no means the catalyst to their alienation – and nor do they necessarily understand the thought system they have embraced as an alternative to liberalism. The MI5 report concluded that terror suspects are: “are a diverse collection of individuals, fitting no single demographic profile, nor do they all follow a typical pathway to violent extremism.”

If they are invisible, what can be done about the gestating Jihadi? I started with conservatives defining the problem, so here’s one providing a solution. Dan Hannan:

Let’s stop teaching the children of immigrants to despise the British state. Let’s stop deriding and traducing our values. Let’s stop presenting our history as a hateful chronicle of racism and exploitation. Let’s be proud of our achievements – not least the defence of liberty in two world wars in which, respectively, 400,000 and nearly a million Muslims served in British uniforms. The best way to defeat a bad idea is with a better one. Few ideas are as wretched as the theocracy favoured by IS; few as attractive as Anglosphere freedom.

Yes, let’s stop “teaching the children of immigrants to despise the British state.” But that is being done not just by British Leftists. It is being done in mosques. Is Dan Hannan recommending that British authorities monitor mosques for seditious preaching? Somehow I doubt it.

I’m not convinced. Aside from the terrible idea of turning history classes into propaganda about how wonderful the Whigs were, I also don’t believe that alienation is generally reduced by attempts at indoctrination. And while theocracy is a wretched idea, it’s pretty self-evident that the undoubted appeal of Anglosphere freedom is limited. That would be – to return to Michael Brendan Dougherty’s observations – because it offers material rewards but little in the way of spiritual sustenance. Mahmood was perfectly aware of the benefits of Anglosphere liberty (Magna Carta, kangaroos and apple pie?) because she had the privilege of growing up in the midst of its wealth and freedom. Yet, still, her family say that she has rejected it. Perhaps because it was not enough. And that’s the challenge that the West faces when fighting for the souls of narcissistic revolutionaries. What we have to offer as an alternative is, for many of them, not enough.

Indeed. The West has lost its spiritual moorings, and for all too many seekers the toughness and adamantine certainties of Islam will be attractive. But Stanley only worsens the problem when he adds willful ignorance and dissembling about the nature of the problem into the mix. Islamic jihadists who might read his piece will regard it, and him, with amused contempt. So would any individual with the courage to be honest about this problem at a time when honesty comes at such a premium. Here’s an alternative solution: let’s not only teach our children the genuine good and value of our own culture. Let’s also teach them that ideas have consequences, and that not all belief systems are equally benign or equally capable of inspiring either magnanimity or hatefulness and arrogance. Does Tim Stanley have the courage to do that? Do the British in general? I doubt it.

(And as if he is aware of what nonsense he is purveying, Stanley has closed comments on his article.)

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Filed Under: United Kingdom, Useful idiots, willful ignorance Tagged With: featured


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Comments

  1. Almach says

    Sep 5, 2014 at 7:58 am

    they’ll keep acting/being apologetic about islam until nearly all of them get beheaded in the streets of the UK/Europe

    • JerryJ26 says

      Sep 5, 2014 at 8:36 am

      yeah, all this “Multiculturalism” will end when the Multiculturalists start diminishing in numbers.

      • Myxlplik says

        Sep 5, 2014 at 10:59 am

        I think the author of this piece should form a large debate team of like minded liberals and head over to ISIL to kick the theological shit out of the Caliph.

        Then to show what good multiculturalists they are, they can kindly cut their own heads off, in a show of solidarity with Islam. Nothing would show Caliph they mean real business when it comes to multicultural integration than self decapitation in the name of Mulitcultualism.

  2. Frank Scarn says

    Sep 5, 2014 at 8:16 am

    The following notice was found at the bottom of Stanley’s Telegraph article “Comments are closed.”

    Now why would the Telegraph do that since comments are a very, very good way of assessing reader opinion? Probably for the obvious reason – not all of its readers are brain-dead liberals willing to swallow whatever B/S the Telegraph is serving up that day, and the Telegraph is bound and determined that the truth about Islam be kept hidden at all costs.

    Pssssst, Dear Telegraph, what Islam is all about is leaking out, and you’re not stopping it. Churchill knew all about it more than 100 years ago. In fact, Paul Weston was brought up on charges – in 2014 !!!!~ – because he publicly stated Churchill’s factual account of Islam.

    “How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its
    votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in
    a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic
    apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries, improvident
    habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of
    commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the
    followers of the Prophet rule or live.

    A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and
    refinement, the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that
    in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his
    absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine,
    must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of
    Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.

    Individual Muslims may show splendid qualities, but the
    influence of the religion paralyses the social development of
    those who follow it.

    No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from
    being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing
    faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa,
    raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that
    Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the
    science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilization
    of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient
    Rome.”

    Sir Winston Churchill, The River War, (1899)

    • Alexia says

      Sep 5, 2014 at 10:36 am

      Bravo, Fran Scarn! What a breath of fresh air.

    • Michael Copeland says

      Sep 5, 2014 at 10:47 am

      For print-your-own wallet cards with Churchill’s image and quote on it:
      http://libertygb.org.uk/v1/index.php/home/root/news-libertygb/6066-churchill-on-islam-wallet-cards

      • Wetwork56 says

        Sep 5, 2014 at 11:08 am

        Thank you Michael. Good Link.

    • Wetwork56 says

      Sep 5, 2014 at 11:06 am

      Frank Scarn-Again thank you for the history lesson. Quite prophetic on Churchills part. Sir Chirchill was one of the 20th centuries great men. We as western civilizations do not have the 115 yrs. since this was penned to defeat islam, to the contrary-what with Iran and Pakistan, not to mention the non-nuclear countries falling seemingly monthly to islams fight against us.

  3. tpellow says

    Sep 5, 2014 at 8:37 am

    Yes, what a ludicrous, but dangerous political line to try to spin to excuse certain young Muslims:-

    ‘I’m bored: I’ll go and murder some kafirs in the name of Islam, and then I’ll feel better about myself.’

    ‘I don’t like my job: I’ll go and murder some kafirs in the name of Islam, and then I’ll feel better about myself.’

  4. Beagle says

    Sep 5, 2014 at 9:17 am

    The morning two minutes clueless. As you say, RS, every assumption he makes about Islam is based on his upbringing in a post-Christian faux multicultural UK.

    Oddly enough, JWers are actual multiculturalists. Self-deluded, willfully blind, and unobservant media types, who assume the entire world is one bland monoculture based on modern western notions, deny the very existence of separate cultures.

    How many times have you read in the media about the honor-shame dynamic so prevalent in Islamic culture? Between never and zero I’ll wager. Honor cultures view humility and self-criticism as weakness. This helps explain many misconceptions in the miserable Telegraph article.

    I guess he thinks every Arab oil sheikh with a gold-plated Ferrari or microscope-polished Bugatti is a bad Muslim because the post-Christianity extant in the UK still values charity and poverty. As Christian charity is usually directed to the poor UK media is going to be doubly blindsided to find out Muslim zakat goes primarily to jihad. David Cameron’s global sharia finance initiative will certainly blow up in their faces, literally.

  5. Chabuco says

    Sep 5, 2014 at 9:27 am

    And now this brownshirt, with his Goebbelsian obfuscation and whitewashing needs to explain to everyone:

    Why does “boredom” only affect Muslims? Why is that there isn’t any”bored” Jews, Sikhs, Rastafarian, Shintoists, Buddhists, Christians, Atheists… etc fighting for the “non-Muslim and bored” Islamic State?

    • Charli Main says

      Sep 5, 2014 at 2:55 pm

      Because they haven´t been brainwashed, in Mosques and madrassas, from age 3 upwards in Muzziculturalism.

  6. John C. Barile says

    Sep 5, 2014 at 10:13 am

    Robert Spencer is not only a champion of timely but suppressed truths, but a man gifted with great intellect and intuition.

  7. GP says

    Sep 5, 2014 at 10:42 am

    I’m bored and searching for deeper meaning and purpose in my life that has become “grindingly materialist and empty.” So please try to understand that I had to join the IS and commit murderous jihad filling my days with murder, rape, mutilation, and pillaging. Further know that this is your fault entirely and you did this to me.

    While I am away engaged in holy jihad, I want to thank as always all of my many apologists: leftists, liberals, socialists, academia, and of course the media for trying to understand my motives and realizing that. Thank you for your support and understanding.

  8. Myxlplik says

    Sep 5, 2014 at 10:48 am

    “In other words, radical Islam may well be the way that these individuals choose to express their angst but it is by no means the catalyst to their alienation – and nor do they necessarily understand the thought system they have embraced as an alternative to liberalism.”

    So, the Telegraph argues “radical” Muslims are not motivated by Islam in one breath, then in the next, argues that they do not understand the thought system which motivates them…. when they turn “radical”.

    I’m going way, way out on a limb here, but perhaps they turn “radical” as they come to fully understand, the though system of normative Islam.

    “The MI5 report concluded that terror suspects are: “are a diverse collection of individuals, fitting no single demographic profile, nor do they all follow a typical pathway to violent extremism.”

    Well, for this little gem I’d like to refer the author of this piece to the concept of the Umah.

    These Muslims aren’t motivated by anything other than Islam, “radical” is normative Islam relative to the words and deeds of their “Prophet”.

    • GP says

      Sep 5, 2014 at 12:41 pm

      What do “moderate muslims”, al Qeada, boko haram, Hamas, Hezbollah, ISIS, and ISIS all have in common? The answer is IS LAM!

      Nice to these groups have recruiting centers throughout the UK, America, and the West. These are called mosques. In the meantime our leaders are trying to understand them and have become apologists for them. Rest assured that like minded muslims are employed at every airline and hold positions at every level of industry and government. The fifth column has permeated all civilized nations and are now in position.

  9. joeb says

    Sep 5, 2014 at 11:43 am

    Janet Daley’s assertion in The Telegraph not two weeks ago was that ISIS’ motivations are “meaningless”. The piece was crass and idiotic.

    But this one is even worse.

  10. Dave J says

    Sep 5, 2014 at 2:08 pm

    ISIS is hiring in countries with a majority population of unemployed teenagers. It also offers trucks, guns, shares in booty, kidnapped women, “holy” purpose and eventual rewards in paradise. Its not a hard sell.

  11. gravenimage says

    Sep 5, 2014 at 4:11 pm

    UK’s Telegraph: Boredom, not Islam, motivates Islamic State’s Western converts
    ………………………………

    Yeah—I saw a reference to this ludicrous piece yesterday. Gee—is “boredom” what motivates ISIS’s non-Western Jihadists? What about Boko Haram? The Taliban? Why is it that they are all “acting out” in just the same way?

    You might almost think there was some overarching ideology motivating them…

    More:

    The devil makes work for idle hands – and it’s striking how much support Jihad finds among idle Westerners…
    ………………………………

    Doesn’t Tim Stanley realize what a *Christian* idea this is? Probably not…

    And why is it that all these “idle Westerners” just happen to *be Muslims*? Really, I’m sure it’s just some odd coincidence…arc/off

    More:

    …according to the Daily Beast, identification with fundamentalism is fuelled by middle-class ennui.
    ………………………………

    Now it’s not even lower-class disaffection, lack of opportunity, or poverty—it’s “middle-class ennui.

    Oddly, most members of the middle-class in the West facing such a situation go back to school, find a new job, move to another town, strive to be more fulfilled in their work, their family and love lives, or their spiritual lives.

    Even the terribly destructive outlets some find—like using drugs or having an affair—seem positively harmless compared to going off to behead journalists, take religious minorities as sex slaves, and commit genocide as these “bored” Muslims are doing.

    More:

    As long as Western liberalism has existed, it has been found charmless or contemptible by some men. Western liberalism asks men to be governed by laws made by mere men and their politicking. It demands of most men that they be mere citizens. It urges thrift, prudence, and industry. This is not for everyone.
    ………………………………

    Actually, one could argue that thrift, prudence, and industry are more conservative virtues—but never mind. Stanley is saying that *building things* is boring—while destroying things is really, really cool! No civilized society has ever lasted long where a large part of the population has embraced such nihilism.

    More:

    “One reason that liberty can be difficult to preserve is that it so often lacks the romance, the heroism, and the sense of involvement that so many appear to crave.”
    ………………………………

    Wow—liberty is *sooooooooo* dull. Romance, heroism, and involvement hence only stem from….what, exactly? The only “logical” conclusion is that they come from *destroying* liberty and establishing tyranny.

    Let *that* sink in…

    Stanley, of course, is also completely *full of sh*t*.

    Some of the greatest romantic heroes have fought to *attain liberty*. Just let him tell you how boring poet Lord George Byron was, off to liberate the Greeks from centuries of Muslim oppression…

    But then, just look at how much Stanley *himself* despises liberty:

    Mahmood was perfectly aware of the benefits of Anglosphere liberty (Magna Carta, kangaroos and apple pie?)…
    ………………………………

    “Magna Carta, kangaroos and apple pie”—*this* is what he reduces liberty in Anglophone nations to. Even the Magna Carta, in such random company—one of which, the kangaroo, is not even an artifact of human agency at all—is reduced to some meaningless old document.

    It’s a wonder Stanley isn’t running off to join ISIS himself…

    More:

    Revolutionary movements also offer visions of justice that are larger and deeper than some dirty court system…
    ………………………………

    Despite its shortcomings, the West has, overall, the most just judicial system *in history*—where Britain and other anglophone nations have led the way. And yet, this tool has just dismissed it as “some dirty court system”, and by omission heavily implies that the summary amputations, stonings, and beheadings of the Islamic State may be both more exciting and—God help us—represent a ‘larger and deeper justice’.

    More:

    And the struggle in establishing them holds out prizes that are extremely rare for men of the West: glory, martyrdom, and heroism…
    ………………………………

    Notice that Stanley never once entertains the idea that *defending* liberty against tyranny might be pretty exciting as well…as well, of course, as vastly morally superior. It’s not just the fight that matters—what one is fighting *for* is key.

    More:

    Second, revolutions rooted in alienation from consumerism have a habit of becoming the thing they profess to hate. The Red Army Faction was so anti-materialist that it set fire to department stores. Yet its leaders resembled tropes of Hollywood cinema (Ulrike was Bonnie to Andreas Baader’s Clyde) and their descent into grubby theft and extortion rendered them as criminal as the capitalist elite they bombed and kidnapped…
    ………………………………

    Good God—as though the only problem with the vicious Baader-Meinhoff gang was that they became “materialistic”. What Stanley is positing here is not “Western liberalism”, but far leftist barbarism.

    More:

    Likewise, Isil’s image-consciousness is very unIslamic and very Hollywood…
    ………………………………

    Stanley understands *nothing* about Islam. It doesn’t hold the Christian ideals of humility—nothing could be more Islam than thuggishly brandishing weaponry.

    But note: he doesn’t seem to have any problems with ISIS’s bloody savagery and bloodshed at all—just that they are too flash and ‘materialistic’. What a vapid tool…

  12. c matt says

    Sep 5, 2014 at 5:12 pm

    And the struggle in establishing them holds out prizes that are extremely rare for men of the West: glory, martyrdom, and heroism.

    Extremely rare only because effeminate socialists have made it so.

  13. Soloview says

    Sep 5, 2014 at 5:48 pm

    There is of course more than a grain of truth in the ‘ennui theory’ of Islamic radicalization. Boys will be boys, and Muslim boys are culturally best equipped to resist the feminist nanny state that dominates the West, and creates a sense of guilt and inferiority in men. Yeah, this looks like the ultimate backlash to the crazy feminist disease that would debase manhood and assign it inferior social status in our society. Destroy the male culture rooted in hierarchy, discipline, superior ability, sense of fairness and a notion of a greater good to which they belong and boys will act up. They will try to recreate their original biological purpose: hunt, fight for dominance, procreate randomly, and follow the alphas. There ain’t no greater thrill in life for the humans who fly a ding than going through hell following a leader, and surrounded by bosom buddies. This is how you re-create the male barbarian. The illiterate boys will become urban mass killers going in gangs and getting stoned out of their skulls. The educated ones who feel the fire – well, those who don’t find their “male culture” to express their dominance, will become serial killers and mass shooters. Those who still have some access to the ancient village customs will be drawn to Islam like bears to honey, because they just won’t be pecked to death by the foul-mouthed bitches and domineering matrons of BBC sitcoms and there just doesn’t seem to be much else for self-respecting males in the West left to excel in if they are not elite football or cricket players. Women seem to do everything else better than men these days and the culturally engineered male chickens**t evidently needs more of them in position of authority over manhood. And that’s where the big “radicalization” secret sits as I see it.

    If someone like Winston Churchill was sitting in 10 Downing Street, Britain would not see the likes of Anjem Choudary on its TV screens. There would be no jihadi problem in Britain. ‘We sleep safely at night’, Winston said, ‘because rough men stand ready to visit violence on those who would harm us’. Destroy the civilized form of manhood and you will have the mess you have !

    • gravenimage says

      Sep 6, 2014 at 1:23 am

      “Soloview” sounds like he’s just about ready to “revert”…

    • Semeru says

      Sep 6, 2014 at 3:22 am

      Soloview said
      If someone like Winston Churchill was sitting in 10 Downing Street, Britain would not see the likes of Anjem Choudary on its TV screens.

      This is very debatable. What Churchill wrote in his book was one thing, his actions where totally different. He had no problem of throwing Ghandi into jail, while at the same time allowing Mohammed Jinnah consolidate power and form Pakistan.

  14. profitsbeard says

    Sep 6, 2014 at 4:24 am

    When your religious dogmas sanctify Terror, slavery, deceit, torture, murder, theft, and the whole gory spectrum of sub-human savagery, you will breed hordes of homicidal halfwits.

    The Koran is the source of this sickness.

    If their raw energies were steered by sanity instead of somnambulism, these same people would now be terraforming Mars and aiming at the stars… instead of turning pieces of our own green planet into Hell.

    The Koran is the womb of such sanctified savagery.

    Until its tenets are no longer literal-ized, it will spawn endless spews of humanoid monsters.

  15. Lia Wissing says

    Sep 6, 2014 at 7:54 am

    Dear JWers,

    Clearly I need a well-annotated, well-edited coy of the Qur’an to understand all the posts on this website. Which should I buy and where can I obtain it? I am in Pretoria in South Africa.

    Lia.

  16. DiMu says

    Sep 6, 2014 at 11:26 am

    We can’t wait for the demise of the vacuous Nanny State before we deal with these barbarians. Perhaps their challenge to us has concentrated our minds on those values we have which we will fight to the death for – like democracy. Their hostility towards us is a call to arms!

  17. Rob says

    Sep 6, 2014 at 4:14 pm

    Thanks Robert
    A ‘Magnum Opus’.
    (among many)

  18. Implying says

    Sep 21, 2014 at 5:52 pm

    “Many of these immigrants thus happily go on welfare in that welfare state, and spend their time working on ways to wage war against unbelievers both abroad and at home.”

    Implying most muslims have even read all of the qur’an? Most are ignorant about their holy book, just as the christians are. What you are suggesting is a conspiracy within “many of these immigrants” and it is just that, a conspiracy, and undeserving of a being under the banner of a criticism of islam. You should be ashamed of having perverted the very real and important criticism against islam. You are the very reason why the mainstream media do not take this criticism seriously.

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