Islamogenic Terrorism

The Paris terrorist attack of November 13  is finished.  Police action in both St Denis and Molenbeek have disrupted the ISIS network which was immediately responsible. According to French security officials another 11,000 ISIS sympathisers could still be in France. The EU’s Schengen Treaty may not survive. The EU may not survive. Europe, of course, will survive despite what the enemies of Western Culture hope.

The World Climate meeting which is currently gathered in Paris includes many people who will speak to the question of “anthropogenic climate change”.  When it comes to the physical environment in which we live there is no question at all about whether ideas have consequences. Of course they do. There is also no doubt in the minds of climate activists that the general good, the welfare of humanity into the future, demands that the correct ideas about how to view the natural world and how to manage our interactions with it.  We can’t assume the “bounty of nature” will be inexhaustible. Conservation, sustainability, and showing respect for the natural world are high values.  To live appropriately is to live “gently on the land” and to “leave it as you found it”. To live in harmony with nature is to accept the obvious fact that each ecosystem is unique and the celebration of true diversity means to keep apart those species which do not belong together.  All intelligent and educated people in the West endorse these ideas. Whether they truly believe that “climate change” is primarily due to human influences or mostly natural processes the ideals of living gently with the environment, of not polluting, of “sustainability” and of not wasting natural resources are seen as good in their own right.

How different it is when the same people come to terms with the preservation of human societies.  They split into two groups. One group sees the primary importance the protection of the physical ecosystem within which we all live. The other is concerned about the preservation of Western Civilisation which is to many observers the best culture humanity has ever produced.

In fact there are not really two groups. Those who see Western Culture as humanity’s best arrangement so far are not averse to protecting the physical environment. On the other hand, those who place the protection of Gaia at the focal point of their concerns are filled with criticisms of Western Societies and are correspondingly muted about the others.

Which brings us back to the question of what is the cause of the terrorist attacks we see not just in Paris, not just in Nairobi, not just in Madrid, not just in London, and not just in Mali, but Ankara, Syria, Iraq, Cairo, and scores of other places.

If we are able to discuss “anthropogenic climate change” then why is it we never hear a sustained discussion of “islamogenic terrorism”?  Is it just an odd coincidence that so many of the world’s present terrorist organisations claim to be acting in accordance with Islamic teaching, tirelessly quoting the Koran and the Hadith, and otherwise informing us that Mohammad was the world’s most perfect human being?

A week after the Paris terrorist attacks of Friday 13, 2015, we saw a crowd of 30 Moslems protesting against the terrorist violence done in the name of Islam. One crowd. Once. Elsewhere we were told of numerous demonstrations by concerned people who wanted to opposed the “islamophobic racism” (somewhere in the middle of the last 10 years the concept of “race” has been conflated with the idea of “culture” but that inquiry must wait).  In a football match in Turkey two days after the Paris attacks the announcer called for a minute of silence out of respect for those who died. Many in the crowd were no doubt respectful. There were others, however, who shouted “Allahu Akbar” and other jijadi slogans.

Hillary Clinton has energetically insisted that “Islam” has nothing to do with “ISIS”. Mrs Clinton, we are to suppose, understands Islam in a better and more nuanced fashion than does Abubakr Al Baghdadi who is the leader of ISIS.  After all, Al Baghdadi justifies everything he decrees and all of the actions of his ISIS fighters with verses from the Koran, the Hadith or other Islamic sources.

Mrs Clinton is apparently putting herself forward as a more insightful expert on the nature of ISIS than

There are crypto-marxist attempts to locate the “root causes” of Islamic terrorism not in Islam  but in the conditions of material deprivation or racial discrimination. Since the people who live in Moldebeek are marginalised from the mainstream of society it is that marginalisation and not the worldview of Islam which sends them off to maim, behead, stone, and immolate others in Syria and then to bring back those actions to Paris, London, Madrid, and other Western cities.

If this “material deprivation” psychology were correct we would expect to see the desperately poor of Latin America travelling hundreds or thousands of miles to join drug cartels.

Why don’t the native populations of North America and Australia form themselves into terror groups and wage jihad on the dominant culture?

The Marxist analysis, in its emphasis on mere materialism, is at the very least culturally dismissive and much more likely to be rooted in outright racism.

The closest parallels linking terrorism to culture we can find are in the Eta separatists of Spain, the IRA of the UK, and the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka. These groups, of course, grounded their actions not in the soaring prose of Das Kapital but in the ideals of cultural identity and cultural preservation.

The IRA, Eta, and other such “nativist” groups for all their unpleasantness rooted their identity in a geographic region of the world. The IRA, for example, laid no claims to Scotland let alone Iceland or Madagascar.

Islam, in contrast, seeks to dominate the entirety of the human race. The ideology of Islam is world conquest.

Immediately there are those who will object and say this is also true of Christianity.

The  difference, and it is important, between the Christian quest for universal acceptance and that of Islam lies in the nature of the two beliefs themselves.  After all, even Mrs Clinton believes that the eventual acceptance of *some* ideas is inevitable.  She expresses this confidence when she speaks of “the right side of history” with reference to the unavoidability of her concept of acceptance for those of various sexual orientations. So confident was she in this inevitability that she and the Obama administration withheld foreign aid from African countries which did not remove their “homophobic” laws.

Islamists, Marxists, and progressives more generally seem to believe that since the world they envisage is inevitable then it cannot be morally wrong to use force and the threat of force to bring it about more quickly.

If the Ends are Just, the Means are Justifiable.

So much for the “Rule of Law” and the accompanying idea of “Due Process”.

The current strain of Political Correctness is an odd fusion of the relentlessly reductionist materialism of Frederick Engels’ “Scientific Socialism” lead by intellectuals and technocrats and the “Utopian Socialism” of Charles Fourier which was lead by a “morally pure elite”. 

Fourier, we should also note, was the man who coined the word “feminism” in 1837. One could even call him, along with J.J. Bachofen,  one of “The Founding Fathers of Feminism”.

In both cases there was an “elite” group which either because of the endless hours of intense ideological study or some other more ethereal reason, was able to “know” what path the human race should and eventually would follow.  Joseph Schumpeter regarded the idea of “scientific socialism” as little more than the attempt to establish a secular priesthood of those who for whatever reason wanted to rule society under the aegis of the legitimising mantle of science.  Christopher Lasch went further and saw the elites not as seeking to bring about a better world for everyone because such a dream would eventually hold the members of the elite group up to the standard of actually achieving the promised “better world”.

Instead, the new breed of “cultural marxists” (and I note in passing that this term is now considered to be politically incorrect by Wikipedia which brands it as a “conspiracy theory”  (here) so an alternative interpretation of the concept is also available (here) and more pointed analysis is here for those who wish to make the comparison. In any case one of the central works in this canon is The Dialectic of Enlightenment by Horkheimer and Adorno.

Those who read this book will discover a writing style which is forever following the “critical project” of first starting to build an coherent worldview and then tearing it down again because of some or other internal flaw. The only allowable society is one which is perfect (at least in the estimation of the authors of the book) and by the end of it the reader is left bewildered and unsure where to turn for leadership. In some ways it is a guided tour on how to “divide” – in preparation for cultural conquest – any society’s concept of order and justice.

What Lasch understood in The Revolt of the Elites was the agenda of the new, post-modern, “cultural marxist” elites differed substantially from the agenda of the old “materialist marxist” elites.  The new agenda is not to build heaven on earth at all. It is simply to keep the rest of the population sufficiently divided, demoralised, and confused that they would not be able to remove the existing elites from their dominance or even, in most cases, know who they were at all. The Cultural Marxist project is solely to protect the hegemony of the Cultural Marxist elite. 

Demoralisation was initially one of the key stages of general communist subversion during the period of the USSR.  A key source in the revelation of this material was Yuri Bezmenov – the Edward Snowden of his day – except that his revelations exposed the plans of the the KGB, not the CIA.

How else can we explain the recent decision of Mount Holyoke College (a women’s college) to ban the play “The Vagina Monologues” because it discriminates against women who don’t have vaginas? Or a mother who discovers she hates the race of her own son?

Another two  facts for the “Stuff Nobody Could Make Up” file.

All of reality is a social construction. Reality is entirely  due to “ideas” and this belief extends so far as to impinge on basic biology.

On the other hand, it is entirely untrue that the ideas of Islam can have anything at all to do with Terrorism.

Ideas are totally responsible for the way the world works. Except when they are not.

And how do we know the difference?

Our Ruling Elites will tell us.

When those who arrive in the materially prosperous West from corrupt and violent societies in the Islamic world come into direct contact not just with opulence but also with a society run by elites (media, academic, legal, political, and financial) who are apparently unwilling to acknowledge the biological reality of “sex”  — which apparently arose through evolutionary processes about 565 million years ago — and instead insist that all meaning concepts in life are “socially constructed”.

To flee a politically and economically incoherent society in search of a better life is normal. To recoil against a society which cannot tell the difference between reality and delusion is almost certain to force the newcomers back into their own cultural roots.  Sharia law may be harsh but it is to a large degree predictable and stable.

What causes the retreat of these young newcomers into the deep recesses of Wahhabi extremism – ISIS is after all Wahhabi Islam in uniform – is not the material deprivations they encounter in the West. It is the utter moral and cultural incoherence of the world they have entered. Those of us who were born and raised in the West can retreat into our own cultural roots. Those who are newly arrived from radically different cultural traditions have no such redoubt. They must look for cultural certainty and stability elsewhere.

The grand deracination project of contemporary educational curricula has done incalculable damage but has not yet rooted out the culture fully.

Anyone who seriously studies Islam knows its essence is world domination through conquest. Anyone who tries to find a moral and intellectual alternative to this worldview in the modern politically correct West will be deeply disappointed.  The contemporary West is consumed with concern for “microaggressions” which put strangers at risk for offenses not actually committed but merely imagined in the minds of people who belong to certain groups understood to be in one way or another the “victims” of Western Culture. And when The Atlantic magazine notices this phenomenon it is not a mere fantasy of conspiracy theorists.

With cultural commentators in the West so cowed by the fear of fabricated accusations coming from any and all quarters it is no wonder the silence is everywhere. Silence and withdrawal from the public sphere are classic symptoms of those subjected to (yes, victims of) psychological abuse.

Is the terrorism of ISIS (or Daesch as it known in the Islamic world) Islamic? Obviously. It draws inspiration and legitimacy from the most primordial roots of the Islamic worldview, the Koran and the Hadith, as well as the constant retellings of the glories of Islamic culture and the sins of the Christian Crusaders of the West.

Islamic terrorism is indeed Islamic but it is amplified by the absolute failure of the West to respond with anything other than military attacks on the one hand and exhibitions of craven capitulation on the other.

We need to accept that the roots of Islamic Terrorism draw considerable nourishment from the decay and rot of the West as brought on by Cultural Marxism. Causes have causes.

At no point whatever do the voices of the West offer to those who are newly arrived the intellectual, moral,  and religious factors responsible for Western Uniqueness.  To understand how these points can be made one can read many books. Two of interest: Ricardo Duchesne’s “The Uniqueness of Western Civilisation” and Roger Scruton’s “The West and the Rest.”

When Western Elites stop hating Western Culture those elsewhere in the world may stop hating it as well.

The Niqab and The Visual Cortex

Most of what we’re reading these days about the niqab deals with the  arguments over facial coverings and whether these coverings are matters of “personal choice” or symbols of “cultural identity”. If the classification is “personal choice” then the Libertarian position is advocated. If the belief the niqab is a symbol of loyalty to a particular set of cultural values then the debate’s focus shifts over to the more involved attempt to decide if the values symbolised by the niqab are “congenial with” or “alien to” those of Western Liberal Democracy.

It is not necessary to into the details of why it is that the niqab is not required by Islam at all. Trying to parse the nuances of niqabs versus hijabs is likewise too  esoteric for this post. This comment only addresses the matter of a cultural (but, note, to explicitly religious) tradition which requires women to cover their faces while in public.

We all know these discussions. We have seen them unfolded with emphases on the emotional appeals (fear on the one side,  acceptance on the other),  ethical appeals (bigotry is bad, cultural loyalty is good) and longer term appeals to social and political abilities of Western society to absorb and integrate – into the broader values of Western Democracy – large numbers of people whose cultural history is neither Western nor democratic.

This comment is different. It deals with a speculation on the social implications of covering one’s face.

Facial recognition is something people do very well. We’re extremely good at it. Facial recognition software is still fairly primitive and consumes many machine cycles. Humans do it with something all primates and many other creatures have: The Fusiform Gyrus. (A brief aside. The fusiform gyrus is arguably not really part of the visual cortex but if the title had “fusiform gyrus” in it then the link to vision would not have been as obvious.)

We can ask a new question here: If “facial recognition” were not vitally important to human survival then why would Mother Nature (in the guise of Natural Selection) have spent all that time and effort creating such a highly evolved capacity?

Now I’ll speculate.

Facial recognition allows us quickly and accurately to determine if other people, from a distance, are family, village mates, familiar strangers (i.e. “safe strangers”), unfamiliar strangers (i.e. “who are those people?”), provocateurs, or enemies.

Facial recognition also allows us to evaluate the mood-state of others. Preoccupied (lost in thought), Confused (just plain lost), happy, unhappy, calm,  afraid, deranged, demented, scary, ill, well, and so on.

Walking around with our faces exposed to the community allows us to be fully engaged and involved in the Public Sphere. We are “in public”.  We are participating fully in the “visual presentation of self”.

People who walk around shrouded and with facial coverings are withdrawn from full participation in the Public Sphere.  Those who do so for “personal reasons” may make the others in the Public Sphere inquire about the individual. Friend? Enemy? Stranger? Mentally ill?

Perhaps in “niqab requiring” public spheres donning such garb allows people to be “appropriately invisible” – in the sense of “knowing their place”. In those cultures where the Public Sphere does not have an acceptable category for people who should “know their place by being individually invisible” then such attire not only attracts attention but invites one or two questions.

“Why are you hiding?”

“Should men also have to dress like this?”

The niqab is only worn in Islamic societies and Islamic societies are based on Sharia law.  Sharia law endorses many things. Including Jihad. Neither of these is truly compatible with “Western Values”.

Equating the niqab (and, in fairness, also the hijab) with the endorsement of sharia and jihad elides the meaning of the classification from “personal choice” to “cultural symbol”. Classifications are often not fully objective. The way we classify things determines how we react emotionally and socially to them.

Here is another “face covering” option. Is it to be considered a “personal choice” or “symbolic statement”? Would it arouse concern if someone wanted to be so attired and swear a citizenship oath? Would anyone be perturbed if members of the civil service dressed this way?

This option is fairly light-hearted. Other options — and they are easy to imagine — are much more “symbolically incendiary”. One fairly tame one allows us to ask if wearing a certain article of clothing while taking an oath is the equivalent to the Western meaning of “crossing ones fingers”. Western societies have two meanings for “crossed fingers”. One is “good luck”. The other is “the words I am speaking are invalid”.

It should not be overlooked that Islam has the concept of “taqiyya” which permits “dissumulation” (lying) for three reasons. Two of them relate to self-defense. The third to the prosecution of jihad.

This raises an interesting and officially “never asked” question: How can a person swear a holy oath in the name of a religion which permits lying?

Would asking for clarification be a politically incorrect microaggression?

Humans are social. Humans cannot live long or well outside a social context. It is only logical to conclude the most important sense we have – vision – should be optimally adapted to improve our chances to survive.

When we see things we cannot properly classify we seek more information. When the failure to classify increases the probability that a threat is present then the response is predictable as well.

When someone is compelled by cultural convention to “faceless” in the Public Sphere then that person is, arguably, compelled by cultural convention to be ineligible for full participation in the culture — second class. The forms of “public” nonverbal communication are reduced to: the observation of the walking gait, the various permitted fashion accessories, any bundles or burdens which they may have, and the direction of travel.

The Ideology of Multiculturalism demands that the host population make as many allowable accommodations to newcomers as possible. Multiculturalism, by its very nature, must keep “assimilation” and “integration” to an absolute minimum.

Meanwhile, the ideology of democracy usually means that “all people are equal”. To say “all people are equal” is another way of saying  that no people are inherently “second class”.

It is consequently essential to determine if the donning of the niqab is “personal” or “cultural”. This means we need to know what “culture” is before we can ask if all “cultures” are equally congenial with the constraints of coexisting in a “Multicultural Society”. There are some cultures which regard the “loss of face” to be so devastating as to justify suicide.

But by failing to articulate what, exactly, a “culture” is in the first place the ideology risks becoming incoherent and thereby self-destructive. One such incoherence is the inclusion in the Public Sphere of symbols which are, or can be interpreted as being, at variance with the fundamental values of Western Society itself.

Denmark, for example, has just recently decided that “foreigners” will not longer be eligible for Danish Citizenship. The term “integration has failed” sums up the Danish experience with Multiculturalism.

The multiple monologues on the status of the niqab in particular and Islam in general  in Western society have yet to begin to converge on the standards of an honest dialogue. This is clearly part of a much greater dialogue: one which deals with the uniqueness of Western Culture and whether it is worth protecting.

This dialogue is long overdue.

Addendum. Last week I walked past a woman I know. She was on the phone and she looked very sad. I waved and kept walking. Yesterday I saw her again. Again she was on the phone. This time she was smiling and looked very happy. I waved. She waved back. She said “I’ll call you back in a few minutes.” I told her she seemed very sad to me last week and very happy now. I expressed my pleasure at this change. Her reply? “Thank you, thank you, thank you!!”  It is not necessary to continue with the substance of the conversation. It is enough to note it could not have happened at all if she had been wearing a niqab.