Sunday, November 07, 2004

Origins of Islamic Rage

Zulubaby reminded me of this article by Jamie Glazov recently.

Throughout the Islamic Middle East, men and women are taught to be vehemently opposed to pleasure, especially of the sexual variety. Men are raised not only forbidden to touch women, but to even look at them. Sex before marriage is not just a sin - but a criminal offence. It is punishable by a severe beating at best, and an execution at worst.

The sexual privileges that are allowed in Islamic cultures are permitted to men. Women's sexuality and social independence represent major threats to male supremacy and are tightly controlled. Thus, as the Moroccan feminist Fitna Sabbah reveals in her book Woman in the Muslim Unconscious, there is a disturbing conflict in the Middle East between sexual libido and repression. A deep-seated fear of, and hostility to, individuality prevails, and its main expression exists in misogyny.
Now this brings to mind the theories of Alice Miller.

Here is her essay on Adolph Hitler which I think is most relevant.
Is it still possible in today's Germany to escape the realization that without the mistreatment of children, without a form of child-rearing based on violence to inculcate blind obedience, there would not have been a Hitler and his followers? And thus not millions of murdered victims either? Probably every thinking person in the post-war period has wondered at some time or other how it could have happened that a human being devised a gigantic machinery of death and found millions of helpers to set it in motion.

Yet the monster Adolf Hitler, murderer of millions, master of destruction and organized insanity, did not come into the world as a monster. He was not sent to earth by the devil, as some people think, nor was he sent by heaven to "bring order" to Germany, to give the country the autobahn and rescue it from its economic crisis, as many others still believe. Neither was he born with "destructive drives", because there are no such things. Our biological mission is to preserve life, not to destroy It. Human destructiveness Is never inborn, and inherited traits are neither good nor evil. How they develop depends on one’s character, which is formed In the course of one's life, and the nature of which depends, in turn, on the experiences one has, above all, in childhood and adolescence, and on the decisions one makes as an adult.

Like every other child, Hitler was born innocent, only to be raised, as were many children at the time, in a destructive fashion by his parents and later to make himself into a monster. He was the survivor of a machinery of annihilation that in turn-of-the-century Germany was called "child-rearing" and that I call "the concealed concentration camp of childhood," which is never allowed to be recognized for what it is.
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I'd like to add this link and another quote from a second article Zulubaby suggested. It is from Phylis Chesler who is an Emerita Professor of Psychology and Women's Studies, author, whose books include the recently published THE NEW ANTI-SEMITISM. THE CURRENT CRISIS AND WHAT WE MUST DO ABOUT IT
Despite enormous and continuing denial on the part of left and liberal ideologues and the media, we are facing an exceedingly pathological strain of Islamofascist terrorism. So a crucial question must be asked: from a psychological and anthropological point of view, what kind of culture produces human bombs, glorifies mass murderers, and supports humiliation-based revenge?

According to Minnesota based psychoanalyst and Arabist, Dr. Nancy Kobrin, it is a culture in which shame and honor play decisive roles and in which the debasement of women is paramount. In an utterly fascinating and as-yet unpublished book, which I will be introducing, the Sheik's New Clothes: the Psychoanalytic Roots of Islamic Suicide Terrorism, Kobrin, and her Israeli co-author, counter-terrorism expert Yoram Schweitzer, describe barbarous family and clan dynamics in which children, both boys and girls, are routinely orally and anally raped by male relatives; infant males are sometimes sadistically over-stimulated by being masturbated; boys between the ages of 7-12 are publicly and traumatically circumcised; many girls are clitoridectomized; and women are seen as the source of all shame and dishonor and treated accordingly: very, very badly.
A visit to Phylis' www site shows a number of short blurbs on her new book.
"This is an angry book, and a forceful book, and it is useful precisely because it is angry and forceful. Are you on the political left? You should study Phyllis Chesler’s arguments. The future of the left depends on it."
                  –Paul Berman, author, Terror and Liberalism

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Comment for Doug: remember van Gogh? remember the Madrid? or do you simply live under a rock?

Ymarsakar said...

Looks like doug might need to eat some french race riots and British suicide bombing.

Anonymous said...

These analysis pick up on some of the problems, but I don't think they go deep enough.

It makes me wonder, why didn't we see the same rage and violence from similar puritanical Christians? Like the Amish that immediately forgave and comforted the family of the man who shot up an Amish Schoolhouse full of women?

Further, muslims have always been violent. Whereas Christianity took over the Roman empire from within, peacefully, Islam created it's Ottoman empire by the sword.

I think deep-seated sexual frustration plays a large role, especially in today's more radical elements, but it seems more of a symptom than a cause.

Either way, interesting, important subject. Given enough time and thought, we'll figure it out.

Snark said...

As long as you hold to the romantic notion that people are born either "good" or "neutral" you will continue to build failed models for society. Human nature is tragically flawed and our hatreds, wars, murders and prejudices flow from us just as naturally as catty remarks from a clatche of 8th grade girls, or a fistfight between their male friends.We bear the (good) image of our Creator and are not devils, but that nature is bent and prone to evil over good. Until we get over snidely dismissing that as arcane puritanism, we will continue to watch our own culture implode.

M. Simon said...

How can humans with the alpha-male problem be just good or neutral?

The desire for power and control is at the root of our political problems.

Say "power and control", kind of a catchy name for a blog don't you think?

You might want to look at:

Tribalism

Anonymous said...

Gabriel, i think the answer to why
Amish are not like this is that that particular fact demonstrates the theory is wrong, and has fastened on an unimportant feature of the culture as if it were a cause, but the chain of logic seems weak to me. Every religion i know of warns sex is closely related to sin, and from there to evil. I digress, but you should also point out that the repression of women frequently pinned on Islam is actually a feature of Arab culture. Islamic countires have elected women to their highest offices at least twice (Pakistan and Indonesia), while the US never has. Case closed.

The main reason for Islamic rage seems to be because we are there. Michael Scheuer's book 'Dying to Win: The logic of suicide terrorism' makes this point well, showing that suicide bombers come mostly from countries that are occupied - 10 times as often as from those that are not. By comparison, they occur only twice as commonly from countries that practice wahibism as from countries that don't. Dr Nancy Korbin might disagree, but psychoanalysis is a pseudoscience.

A secondary explanation seems to be the need for power, and the need to keep out the world it entails. In short, Tribalism as this blog calls it. Such cultures are big on Power and Control (where have i heard that expression before). I wonder, m.simon, if you aren't really angry at Islam because you see the same faults in yourself. ('My Guru says the object of every adept ought to be Power and Control. It is mine'. My Preacher says that statement paraphrases Lucifer. My heart says it does as well.)

Tribalism, though, does explain a fair bit of their behaviour, and unfortunately tribalism is on the increase in the World, in the West as much as anywhere. It comes in actual tribalism of ethnic groups and also in the separation of different cultures. My experience has been that even within ethnic groups everybody over 25 and under 25 represent almost totally different cultures these days, and it can be seen in the way that gangs are common like never before. In many ways the invasion isn't just here, it's already half over.

M. Simon said...

passerby,

Power and control are the issues of all time for humans.

I do have my issues. Mine with the Arab/Islamics is that they prefer the traditional method of choosing the alpha male (tooth and claw) and I prefer voting.

In any case I worked for many years in the electrical Power and Control industry. I have brought up from a cold start a 1,000 MWth nuclear reactor. I have designed aircraft generator control systems (50KW). Servo control systems. Auto tuning servo control systems. etc.

So yeah. I'm into power and control.

I also note that the more energy slaves we haved the fewer human slaves required.

Anonymous said...

Firstly a correction. It was Robert Pape who wrote 'dying to win:...', not Michael Scheuer.

I disagree that power and control are the issues for humanity for all time. That place belongs to freedom, the difference being that freedom sides with the individual and intends they should NOT be under external control, where the concept of power extends itself from the individual to others. I'm sure you'll agree now it's been pointed out.

Voting is better than some systems but in the end its just the same external control. It might be better than control by a single man (or woman) but Randy Weaver can tell you exactly how failure prone it is.

I maintain the repressed sexuality theory proposed is garbage. It reflects the mindset of its proponents more than its subjects.

I thought your piece on tribalism was good, but limited to applying it to Islamic fundamentalism, when there seems to be much more dangerous growths (religious and not, mostly not) within our own countries. I'm interested to know what your opinion is of the growth of tribalism in the west.

M. Simon said...

passerby,

As long as we are human we will have the alpha male problem.

If you look at human history - freedom is not much in evidence. No matter how desireable for the individual it is unusual. It takes effort.

Tribalism is the natural state of humankind. It is what you would expect from genetics. The closer the genetic connection, the more trust given to the individual.

A place or a world where Jewish/Christian values predominate is a better world in my opinion. "All men are created equal" is an anti-tribalist statement. However, it is not natural. The Islamics are correct. Their system is more in accord with humans as they exist in a state of nature.

As to the sexual theories etc. You need to look into my work on PTSD. Start with:

Heroin

PTSD and the Endocannabinoid System

Men with PTSD are more prone to violence than men without. Sexual assault on children is a good way of creating a person with long term PTSD problems (providing the genetics are correct).

If violence against children is endemic, you then have a resevoir of angry males for jihad. i.e. some one has to pay for the torment of the individual. Since we are genetically biased against looking at the evil of our parents it then must be ascribed to some outside source.

When we start getting the connection between biology and politics (monkey politics) we will get better political systems.

When Kissenger said "Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac" he wasn't kidding. That is only one example of the relation between biology and politics.

Sociobiology is more or less accepted. What I am looking at is a subset of that. Politicobiology. Thus, power and control.

My recent piece on drug prohibition It Was Never About The Drugs is another example of NORMAl human behavior. Dividing the ins from the outs.

Or try How To Put An End To Drug Users. Which discusses (in a round about way) how the impulse for genocide is wired into the human system. It discusses how that wiring is activated.

So near to the gods. So close to the devils. Between heaven and hell.

Why? Because, Power and Control gives a reproductive advantage.

Politicobiology explains why there will always be an opposition party.

Anonymous said...

Why is it that I keep on hearing that Christians are sexually repressed? Is it because many of us think that sex is inappropriate outside of marriage? All the women in my Mom's group have a good old time with our hubbies quite regularly and don't understand why people think that a trusting, stable, relationship based on commitment would be repressing? I tried the whole sleep with whoever you want whenever you want thing when I was young and it just doesn't measure up to the sex in a loving christian marriage!

So stop equating christianity with sexual repression!

Anonymous said...

I think that more people need to read "The Arab Mind"by Raphael Patai (Author), Norvell B. De Atkine (Foreword) before making comments on why Muslims do what they do.

The first mistake by many is Labeling Muslims in the Middle East as just Muslim, when it is more accurate to call them Arab Muslims. There is a huge difference. Arabs descend from Bedouins and so they have certain traits that coincide with these nomads even today. i will not list just read the book.

Many people don’t understand Arab Muslims and i am not saying i do but i do understand enough to know that they don’t have what we in the west would call guilt or a conscience. Those are inward personal feelings that tell you that something is right or wrong. Arabs are different in that guilt is not in their thinking. They have something called 'Face'. We have it too but much less of a deterrent or motivator. Face is closely link to 'Honor'. The combinations of the two are traits of the Bedouins and modern day Arabs. So while westerners are motivated by inward forces such as guilt, Arabs are outward. They have to save face so not to lose honor.

Passerby is narrow mindedly right in that Arab Muslims hate us because we are in so called Muslim countries. Therefore Arabs fight us because they have lost their face and honor by us being there.

But that's just part of the story. You have to then add the Koran to the picture. Muslims are to be a superior religion to all other. Do to the fact that the west is so much more advanced then Arab countries that too brings on dishonor or 'dirties the face'. The only way to regain their face is to make all others submit to Allah or Islam. You can see these traits by just listening to the majority of terrorist and even peaceful Arab Muslims, If they are telling you the truth, but that a whole another discussion.

So even if we weren’t in any Arab countries we would still be hated because we dishonor Islam by being more advanced and them relying on us for things.

The United States is located in Hundreds of countries around the world and only Arab Muslims are fighting violently against it. Why? Is it just "because we are there"? Like Passerby says. If that was so then the entire world would be fighting each other because some other country has a base in their own country. But it isn’t like that its only the Arab countries that have people doing terrorist activity because we are there.

Saudi Arabia had the most representation on 9/11. Is it because the royal family allows us to have a base in the country? On in the since that it dishonors them.

Passerby and most others are right that power is one big factor in the Arab problem. But that can be explained by "tribalism" as well. It is a huge trait of all Bedouins.

So Passerby "Tribalism" does explain most of all the problems with Arabs to date. You just need to read a little more about a particular tribe called Bedouin.