Challenging the Islamic Mind-Trap

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• First published on this blog in February 2016 

In terms of its reputation among non-believers, the past 15 years must rank as some of Islam’s worst. Every since the planes of 9/11 carved into New York glass, the international media has barely missed a beat in making known the faults of Islamic theology, tradition and social policy. The UK Daily Mail, once the grumpy advocate of small government and Victorian morals, is now better defined as The Daily Islamophobe. The Telegraph, Sun, WSJ, NYT and Star have likewise reshuffled their priorities to place a greater and more critical eye on the Islamic World. The result of this is that every Muslim wrong-doing the world over is reported as international news. Every honour killing, beheading, murder-by-explosion, corrective rape or stoning (though all common enough before 9/11) is now given headline treatment. One can only wonder what this has done to the average Muslim mindset.

It is fair to say that most Muslims sincerely believe Islam is the best religion for mankind to universally adopt; that Islam is a better recipe for peace, progress and happiness than its rivals. Indeed, one cannot be an authentic believer unless one believes this. And yet nobody paying any attention to the contemporary situation can possibly come to this conclusion – or indeed sustain this conclusion – without unimaginable contortions of logic and tricks of the mind. The most visible of these tricks has been to blame the ills of Islam on other forces, whether economic, racial or political. ‘True, Saudi Arabia is a barbaric, undeveloped desert, but it would have been very different were it not for the Zionists’. ‘True, illiteracy and incest are Pakistani specialities, but this would not be the case were it not for the wicked Indians’. And so on.

This self-deception, though ludicrously fake, has held out remarkably well. Apostasy rates from Islam are no higher than in the 1990s. Minority faiths (LDS, Scientology etc…) excepted, Islam remains the fastest growing religion in the world. The impression given is that Islam is the perfectly designed mind-trap; that it has inbuilt defences against criticism and failure that cannot be overcome by reason or reality. But this is unduly pessimistic, I believe. Though strong on the outside, Islamic psychology is substantially weaker in its design that its current reputation might suggest. Inflexibility is being mistaken for strength, disorder for complexity.

The psychology of Islamic belief is best understood as a simple loop of deterrence, aversion and reward. When someone criticises Islam (its truth value, historicity or moral nature), a functioning Muslim will at first rationally process and understand the criticism, perhaps even to the point of agreeing with it. After this, in a state of profound unease, the Muslim will think of the Qur’anic verses drummed into his consciousness since infancy. He will think especially of those passages admonishing the ‘unbelievers’ – those who are bound for hellfire and who stray habitually from the ‘right path’. This then creates a feeling of terror and a desperation to obey Allah (who can perceive thoughts, reasoning, and even inclinations). To get rid of this discomfort, the believer admonishes the critic with harsh and even violent words. How dare he question the perfection of the Qur’an! He must have no soul! The aggression towards the critic is for the eyes of Allah and not the critic himself. The greater the aggression, the more relief will be felt by the believer. He is angry at you because you derailed his circular thoughts. You convinced him of something forbidden, something he tries with every fibre of his being not to think about. The force of aggression you unleash in him is proportionate to how convincing he (almost) found your argument; to how close you pushed him to the edge of reason.

Circular thinking is central to Islamic belief

This process also governs how Muslims integrate (or fail to integrate) the contemporary realities of the world. When viewing the chaos of Quranic rule in Syria, the loop described above prevents the processing of the stimuli into moral judgement and understanding. The believer is not ignorant. He knows everything we know. He just has a disorder of thought which allows him to dispose of un-Islamic stimuli as fast as he imbibes it.

How could one disrupt the loop? This is question best answered by those who have been raised in Islam only to discard it at a later stage. Since I am not from a Muslim background, I will have to go from the accounts of others.

As you’ll be aware, testimonies by ex-Muslims are notable among apostatatic statements by their emphasis on the aspect of ‘fear’; fear of Allah, of hellfire, of divine retribution awaiting them should they fail to live a morally perfect life. To understand why this is so characteristic of Islam, one must first appreciate the system by which human beings are said to be judged in Islamic theology.

According to Islamic tradition, a Muslim has two angels beside him at all times – one to the left, another to the right. One of these keeps a record of the good deeds and thoughts the believer performs and has during his earthly tenure, and the other keeps record of the bad. At the day of judgement, the two records are ‘weighed’ to see which is more reflective of the human in question, greatly influencing (but not deciding) whether he is to go to hell or paradise.

In a comparative sense, this is one of the more endearing and just-seeming of Islamic concepts. But a side effect of it is that the believer becomes subject to the divine equivalent of thought policing. As I say, the Kiraman Katibin do not only record your deeds, but your inner reflections. They make note of your intentions, temptations, lusts and transgressions, preserving all of them down to the finest detail. A bad deed is never forgotten or forgiven. There is no equivalent of Catholic confession in which one may wipe the slate clean. You sin and you are stained. Black marks last forever.

Try to imagine the effect this concept would have on your psychology were you to believe in it. You would be unable to enjoy a single private emotion without the fear of upsetting an omniscient authority. And since even temptations are recorded, you would be compelled to avoid any environment or stimuli which might lead you astray. This explains why Muslims are so seemingly afraid of female flesh. A girl in a mini-skirt prompts ‘impure’ thoughts in the believer, which in turn upsets Allah. The recorded acts of aggression against such women (Cologne, Rotherham etc…) are attempts to impress Allah, to make up with him for brief deficiencies of thought control. The believer might have been weak-minded for a moment, but he can still be a soldier of Islam by punishing the kafir in question.

You would also avoid un-Islamic knowledge as a matter of course. This explains why Muslims read little other than Islamic texts, and why they remain ignorant of scientific concepts like evolution and cosmology. The Muslims themselves might be intelligent and academically gifted, but their fear of wrong-thinking deters them from building on these gifts. One might posit this anxiety as the reason for the un-development of the Muslim world as a whole.

Islam, as a mindset, is a permanent state of anxiety, never-ending panic attack, perpetual psychosis. This must be understood by anyone who wishes to break through Islamic psychology to where the captive human is being held. One must treat a Muslim in the same way one would treat a victim of OCD or any comparable neurotic illness. Muslim fanaticism is based in fear. Muslim confidence is fake. Muslims do not like their God. They are afraid of him.

Convincing (or trying to convince) a Muslim that their religion is axiomatically false must necessarily be a perilous operation. If you do not succeed, he will kill you for trying. But it is not impossible. The best approach is not to impose conclusions on the believer, but rather to ask questions. The most developed, rich and powerful parts of the world are those in which Muslim believers are few. Are these enemies of God blessed by something else? Why are so many Muslims killed by other believers? Why are non-Muslim women happier and more secure from domestic violence and rape than Muslim women? Why are so many claims in the Quran provably false? Why do Muslims seem naturally drawn to non-Muslim societies over Muslim ones? Why do Muslim countries fail at science and technological development? Why are non-Muslims so petrified of Muslims in particular (and not, say, Hindus and Sikhs)? Why do Muslim armies fail to win battles against non-Islamic armies? Why are non-Muslims more plentiful than Muslims? And so on.

The more questions one leaves with a Muslim, the more effort he will have to put into diverting them from his rational mind. True, some believers are superhumanly stubborn, but these are far from typical. Many have never been presented with un-Islamic arguments before. A missile shower of reasonable doubts can severely degrade the conviction of a semi-committed believer.

While Islamic psychology cannot be broken in a society which prohibits un-Islamic concepts from being entertained, it can at least be attempted in the Western world, where no form of speech is (officially at least) off-limits. Muslims shouldn’t be written off as hopeless. It costs nothing to try and liberate their minds. You may be surprised by your success.

D, LDN

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There Are No Noble Savages

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If the reader is a user of facebook or any comparable website, he or she may be familiar with the following viral post:

“An anthropologist proposed a game to the kids in an African tribe. He put a basket of fruit near a tree and told the kids that who ever got there first won the sweet fruits. When he told them to run, they all took each others hands and ran together, then sat together enjoying their treats. When he asked them why they had run like that as one could have had all the treats for himself, they said: “Ubunto. How can one of us be happy if all the other ones are sad?”. ‘Ubunto’ in Xhosa culture means ‘I am because we are'”

Though the authenticity of the Ubunto story is uncertain, the word appears to be real and to have roughly the same meaning attributed to it. If this is the case, the concept is surely pleasant, even admirable. But is it really so original or sophisticated?

If the adoring Westerners cooing over this story could stop crying with happiness for one moment, they might recall the similar Western phrase ‘all for one, one for all’ – or indeed many hundreds of other equivalents around the world.

Human solidarity, yet another way of describing ‘Ubunto’, is an innate quality invested in the human condition by the legacy of biological evolution. It is not something one needs to give a name to. It just exists – ineradicably, albeit in differing endowments from person to person.

As many cynics have noted, the only reason Western audiences are so enamoured of the Ubunto story in particular is because it appears to align with a very old and sentimental fallacy; that of the ‘Noble savage’.

The Noble Savage has been part of Western art – particularly literature – for centuries. Put simply, the idea is that undeveloped cultures (especially African, Amerindian, Asian and Middle Eastern cultures), though on the surface less sophisticated and morally developed than those of Europe, nevertheless retain valuable ancient wisdom the West may profit by relearning.

You can see the cultural effects of this notion everywhere you look; from fridge magnets emblazoned with Confucian and Native American spiritual maxims, to the kind of the meme mentioned above. The West cannot seem to get enough of ancient non-European ‘wisdom’. It is substantially more popular even than Western philosophy, including the immortal works of Nietzsche, Kant and the ancient Greeks – (when was the last time you saw a Plato fridge magnet?).

Of course, being the cultural bigot that I am, I do not believe that Crazy Horse is the equal of Nietzsche. In fact, to be perfectly honest, I don’t think they even belong in the same category. Nietzsche was the greatest philosopher of the last 500 years. Crazy Horse, though undoubtedly noble in the military sense, made only commonsensical remarks about his own life and about a political struggle he ended up losing (to Europeans).

Historic Third World philosophers, like historic Third World mathematicians, physicists and inventors, are extremely thin on the ground. The vast majority of celebrated non-European thinkers are products of the past 100 years, a century marked by non-European adaptation to European domination and cultural hegemony.

This is not a coincidence. When European civilisation – now de-racialised as  ‘The West’ – made the first breakthrough from localism to worldliness, the broader world was still filled with savage darkness. And long after the enlightenment began, Asians (including those dwelling in the now impressive Japanese and Korean cultures), Africans and Amerindians continued to exist in a twilight condition of subsistence agriculture and mind-numbing ritual.

In India, now home to internet entrepreneurs and industrialist billionaires, widowed women hurled themselves onto burning funeral pyres to satisfy perverse notions of marital duty. In Japan, now the epicentre of global technological innovation, Samurai (normal people in strange clothes) cut their stomachs open to amend for ‘dishonourable’ failures in martial etiquette. There is evidence of cannibalism in Southern Africa as late as the Victorian era. And so on…

The European explosion – the multinational enlightenment – was the beginning of true civilisation. Though periods of greatness in North Africa, the Middle East, Mexico and China had been observed centuries before this point, it is only after this seismic event that civilisation in its contemporarily recognisable form began.

So why do Westerners, those to whom the most credit belongs,  now look back at pre-civilisation with such a powerful nostalgia? Why do Brits and Americans, looking at memes on Apple Mackintosh computers, interpret the word ‘umbunto’ as a proof of Third World superiority? And why are non-Europeans, Asians especially, increasingly more cognizant of Western superiority than Westerners?

Since these questions are interconnected, a single answer may suffice for all of them. The West, unlike the rest of the planet, is infected with a virus of civilizational exhaustion; a crisis of civilizational confidence. We Westerners have grown so used to the blessings of modernity that we have come to take them for granted. It takes real mental exertion for us to imagine (honestly and accurately) a world without the internet, refrigerators and Starbucks restaurants. And with a thick fog of relativism further obscuring our vision we are inevitably tempted by the idea that such a condition is more ‘wholesome’, ‘substantial’ or culturally complex than that in which we now live.

Westerners have become bored of affluence and modernity

But it isn’t more wholesome, of course, nor more substantial, complex, romantic… It is inferior by almost every measure. And if anyone needs evidence of this contention, one can experience pre-civilisation for a very paltry sum these days. One can fly over to Ghana, Chad, North Korea or Afghanistan and live cheaply for whole years at a time. The reason we don’t want to dwell in such places, would not even dream of doing so, is because anti-Western sentiment is based on lies, illusions and errors of logic.

The West (including the Western-inspired cultures of Japan and Korea) is the only true civilisation on Earth. The further you go away from it, the further you go away from all that is valuable, good and worth living for.

The Noble Savage myth is the first step down a very slippery slope. It is best not to take it, even if that means not sharing a heart-warming post on social media.

D, LDN.

The Assassination of Jo Cox, MP

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The murder of Jo Cox MP, 41, has prompted a seething fury across Britain that will take a long time, perhaps many years, to fully dissipate. The mother of two young children, Ms Cox was carrying out her democratic business at a local surgery in her constituency of Birstall, Yorkshire, when a man by the name of Thomas ‘Tommy’ Mair shot her twice with a home-made gun, later kicking her as she lay dying and remarking (according to eyewitnesses) either ‘Britain First’ or ‘Put Britain first’.

In the Guardian newspaper today there are reports that Mr Mair maintained links with the Neo-Nazi National Alliance party in the United States, an organisation from which he purchased a substantial amount of material online. This material, according to the SPLC, included the squalid and nasty volume ‘The Turner Diaries’ by Dr William Pierce, a Jurassic anti-Semite and favoured author of the Oklahoma City bomber, Timothy McVeigh. And when he appeared in court for a preliminary hearing on Saturday, Mr Mair seemed to confirm his radicalism by stating his name as ‘Death to traitors, freedom for Britain”. All things considered, it appears clear enough what motivated the killer to carry out his deed; fascism, unpolished and uncomplicated; a grudge against democracy.

Thomas ‘Tommy’ Mair

Since the murder was confirmed by local police, media outlets across Europe have been quick to seize upon the murder for explicitly political gain. It would be easy and conventional to beat them up for this, but it would also be dishonest. I made political capital out of Orlando on the day that it happened, as did many of the people currently complaining. We can at least be consistent. Like Orlando, this is an act of political violence with direct political implications. It must therefore be discussed in a political context.

What are those implications? Who deserves blame? Well, according to the continental media, the murder may have been connected to Ms Cox’s outspoken support for the ‘remain’ side of the upcoming EU referendum. This is based on the – not unreasonable – assumption that Mr Mair, given his rumoured nationalism, was/is firmly in the ‘leave’ camp. That, however, is where the evidence dries up. This is just an assumption. It may be an accurate one, but at the moment we simply don’t know enough to say one way or the other.

Others, most notably Jonathan Freedland in the Guardian, have blamed a climate of anti-politics stretching back to the ‘expenses’ scandal of 2009. In case you’re unfamiliar with that scandal, it was centred on revelations that numerous MPs had claimed public money for highly dubious reasons, such as the construction of a moat around a personal residence, or for expensive holidays or alcoholic drinks. Since that crisis, public opinion of politicians in Britain has been gutterishly low. In Freedland’s opinion, this climate has swollen out of all logical proportions.

Anti-political sentiment is rife in the UK

“For weeks, months and years,” he wrote, “‘politician’ has been a word more spat out than said. MPs have been depicted as a form of pond life, routinely placed on the lowest rung of the ladder of esteem, trusted less than estate agents and journalists, the butt of every panel show gag, casually assumed to be venal, mendacious, vain, stupid or malevolent… These complaints are repeated so often, we barely notice them. They’re like moans about the weather, presumed to warrant no disagreement….We don’t yet know what was in the mind of the man who killed Jo Cox. But even if we cannot locate a specific cause in the nation’s political debate and claim this murder as its direct effect, we can say this: that if you inject enough poison into the political bloodstream, eventually somebody will get sick.”

Finally, Britain First, the facebook-based activist group/political party has been specifically blamed by many, especially in light of the comment allegedly made by the killer cited above. Ms Cox was known for her impassioned activism on behalf of the children of Syrian refugees. Britain First is a very straightforward anti-Islam collective. It isn’t outlandish to propose that Mair agreed with the latter’s agenda. A photograph allegedly depicting Mair holding a Britain First banner is also circulating on social media, although its authenticity has yet to be confirmed at the time of writing.

I personally think the truth is a mixture of the first two (although it wouldn’t surprise me if the last was also a factor). The EU debate has taken on a decidedly histrionic character, with words like ‘fascist’ and ‘traitor’ thrown about with little serious regard for their meaning. The anti-political sentiment of which Freedland speaks is very real. People up and down this country feel that they have been duped, lied to, taken for fools. The EU referendum is where it all comes out; an opportunity, as some may see it, for vengeance against the political class.

David Cameron announced a pause in campaigning on the EU referendum in the wake of Jo Cox’s death

But we haven’t been lied to nearly as often as we think. The problems our country faces are the result of policies enacted openly, with advance warning and after copious explanation. Mass immigration was never a policy cooked up in a dark, smoke-filled room. It has been debated and discussed for decades. Even if it was difficult to take advantage of, there has always been a semblance of choice available to the general public. That popular discontent has yet to be converted into a change in policy is the fault of the people as well as the establishment.

So why is dissent on the issue of immigration always ineffective? Why is always left to fester underground, setting the scene for hatred and violence?The answer, I believe, lies in how anti-immigration dissent is expressed and who expresses it. 

Anti-immigration advocates, in the popular imagination and sometimes in reality, are uncouth, scruffy, loud and aggressive. They wear camouflage jackets and baseball caps, have tattoos and speak with a heavy, unattractive regional stamp. Even if you agree with them, you might be hesitant to say so for fear of being grouped in with them. All the pretty, successful and clever people are left-wing. The right is for misfits and dullards, for the underclass. This snobbish sentiment has forced many middle class voters into a reflexive, insincere leftism; one not based in reason, but in status-anxiety and snobbishness.

Anti-immigration demonstrators

Jo Cox, whether one agreed with her opinions or not, was a beautiful and civilised human being. Young, bright, warm and tolerant, she was everything you would look for in a friend and hope for in a colleague. The urge to side with her against the nasty, bellicose and ill-mannered ‘leave’ campaign must now be overwhelming. 

I have always tried to treat the subjects I discuss on this blog with restraint and moderation. I try not to hurl insults or baseless accusations. If I advance a theory about something, I make sure to back it up with explanation and examples. Most importantly, I try to put forward my arguments using measured and clean language. Without wanting to sound immodest, that should be the standard approach to all political discourse. It is on the left. It should be on the right as well.

The murder of Jo Cox may is no small event. It may well go on to change the course of history, keeping Britain in the European Union and thereby saving the EU from implosion. If so, the failure of the British commentariat, not just the British establishment, to make the case against unlimited immigration will be to blame. We had a good case to argue, but we failed to make it in a sufficiently civilised and intelligent way. Had we done so, the likes of Tommy Mair would scarcely have been able to appreciate our arguments, while the likes of Jo Cox may have found reason to agree with us. We repelled the good and the clever, whilst attracting the dull and the reprehensible. If Britain votes to remain, if only in order to stand with Jo Cox and against Tommy Mair, I fully understand why.  

The case against mass immigration from the Muslim world is a liberal argument, not a conservative one. The Syrian refugees Ms Cox championed have views so conservative they make Nigel Farage look like a bearded hippie. We must resist the influx of Muslims in order to preserve our freedoms, our democracy and our modern way of life. If we put our case like that all the time, we might be surprised by how many allies we actually have.

D, LDN

Right-Wing And Left-Wing Humour

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The other day I came across an interesting (if thoroughly flawed) article in the the Huffington Post titled ‘Why Conservatives aren’t funny”. It sought to set out the familiar case that right-wing political concepts do not lend themselves to humour, or at any rate, that right-wing people themselves are not imbued with the gift of comedy to the extent that Left-wing people are.  

“Why aren’t conservatives funny?…” Ellis Wiener asked “We’re compelled to ask this because, what with The Daily Show and The Colbert Report and Real Time With Bill Maher spending most of their time making fun of “conservatives,” it seems like there’s a disproportionate amount of “liberal” humor on TV…”

A similar question was posed in The Atlantic (a largely neoconservative magazine). In an article entitled “Why There’s No Conservative Jon Stewart”, columnist Oliver Morrison wrote that “Liberal satirists are… having no trouble making light of liberal institutions and societies… Jon Stewart has had success poking fun at Obama’s policies…(and)…Alison Dagnes, a professor of political science at Shippensburg University, has found that the liberal Clinton was the butt of more jokes on late-night shows of the 1990s than either George W. Bush or Obama would later be…So if liberals are such vulnerable targets for humor, why do relatively few conservative comedians seem to be taking aim at them?”

While both articles go on to offer their own explanations for this disparity, neither fully convince me. I don’t believe, for example, that reactionary ideas are inherently more straight-faced (as one piece claims). For support of that disagreement look no further than Jeremy Clarkson or the fictional police officer Gene Hunt from the magnificent sci-fi drama series ‘Life on Mars’. Conservatives, that is to say traditionalists, that is to say the inflexible advocates of common sense, are notoriously amusing. Pointing out absurdity or naivety in others (which is a common occupation of necessity for right-wingers) makes the basis of some of the most conventional comic relationships; see Laurel and Hardy, the Honeymooners or The Day Today. Stephen Colbert’s eponymous alter-ago drew laughs for this very reason. People laugh at right-wing caricatures because more often than not they agree with them. They agree with them, but only feel comfortable doing so indirectly. That was the secret of Colbert’s success; the self-denial of a whole generation.

To make ‘liberal’ jokes work on the other hand requires extraneous charisma on the part of the joke-teller. Jon Stewart, whether one agrees with his positions and views or not, is a naturally charming and agreeable fellow. His political positions were often highly warped, but people of my generation and the one before it perceive in him a warm-hearted, intelligent and humane nature. He was – and still is – iconic of America’s reasonable coastal minority – those who view middle America with a coffee cupful of scorn and suspicion, aligning themselves more with the postmodern elites of Europe. People laugh at Stewart’s intelligence, the way he makes complicated things seem simple, counter-intuitive things seem intuitive. They do not laugh in recognition that what he is saying is true – that is, not in the way they laugh at Colbert, Clarkson or Hunt’s feigned personas.

By way of conclusion, liberal comics predominate because the majority of thinking people do not like to acknowledge certain basic realities. They would rather Fox News was making it all up, that terrorists aren’t really hiding behind lampposts or amassing in immigrant processing centres. Sartre had a term for this – mauvaise foi…

Bad Faith.

D, LDN