For Islam, Symbol of Western Decadence?
December 17, 2014
Tori Johnson, the manager of the Lindt cafe who was killed by a Muslim in Sydney
SEE Pete F.’s comment in this entry about why a chocolate cafe at Christmastime would be a logical place for an angry Muslim to attack.
— Comments —
Bruce writes:
Pete F.’s comment was interesting but, if he’s correct, I wonder why a jihadist wouldn’t choose a more obvious symbol of Western decadence. Why not choose an adult video store or a Victoria Secret’s or, if it’s material decadence he’s disgusted by, something even more symbolic of such decadence, like one of the day spas that are so popular now?
Josh F. writes:
It is very destructive to view jihadists as being motivated by Western decadence and their concomitant “devout” struggle against such decadence. The reality is that the jihadist is motivated to kill rival decadents in a process I call “symbiotic regression.” One decadent annihilating another “decadent” is evidence of SELF-annihilation. In fact, both jihadist and Western liberationist desire the very, very decadent radical sexual autonomy. This mutual desire is also grounds for mutual annihilation when face to face.
Thomas F. Bertonneau writes:
Someone known to me once assisted the air force of a large Muslim state to acquire an early iteration of a cell phone system, using a satellite. The contract entailed bringing officers from that air force to North America to train them to use the technology. The officers, who were ostentatiously Muslim, always talking about their piety, lived in a house rented by the firm that supplied the network and furnished the training. The curriculum lasted three weeks. My acquaintance said that when these members of the flying cadre returned home, they left the house filled with empty vodka and Scotch bottles, and a library of pornography so large that it needed an industrial waste bin to cart it all away. The 9/11 attackers also spent much time and money in strip-joints and topless bars. I have read that Pakistan and Afghanistan register the largest numbers of Internet users searching for homosexual-pedophiliac material! The Muslim fixation on the sexual immorality of the West seems to me to be a form of projection. Islam is the only creed known to me that has explicit instructions how distribute women and children captured for sexual purposes in a raid on “infidels.” Of course the sexuality of the West is currently distorted, but despite its grossness it cannot match the profoundly malformed sexuality that pervades Islam.
According to the news stories, the Australian jihadist had a police record including forty sexual offenses. This surprises me not at all. Think of the Beslan attackers, the Nigerian kidnappers, and the Muslim-on-Muslim school attack in the last few days in Northern Pakistan.
I fear I am making my point rather obliquely. What really gets me is the indifference of the Western Left to the sexual barbarity and penchant for violence of the “religion of peace.” But perhaps it shouldn’t startle me at all. The Western “progressive” regime and Islam mirror one another weirdly in any number of ways.
Dr. Bertonneau writes:
Bruce wonders why the jihadists haven’t attacked a Victoria’s Secret shop or something similar. Don’t bet that it won’t happen. But we should also grasp that to the bigoted mentality of the holy warrior there is little or no difference between a cafe where men and women casually fraternize and a “naughty nightie” purveyor.
Dec. 18, 2014
Perfesser Plum writes:
I do not doubt that commenters have identified certain features of situations that give the ordinarily-calm, peaceable, and rational jihadi a signal to kill. However, interviews of warriors have revealed the more basic motivation.
“We kill because we like to kill. Simple as that. The more we turn unsuspecting children and adults into blood splatter and meat chunks, the more tingly we feel. We can give you all sorts of reasons—they were laughing, a woman showed an ankle, children were dressed in a provocative way, a group was watching a movie…. It’s all bullcrap. The fact that we are more likely to murder in some situations than others, says nothing about the common offensiveness to us of these situations. We have just agreed to say that it is these situations. Otherwise, we’d look pretty nuts. In case you haven’t learned anything from history, let us give you a tip. If you want to defeat us, you’ll have to act a lot crazier than we are. You’ll have to do stuff that will make us throw up. Capisce? But if you don’t even have the brains and guts to carry a large caliber pistol, and to use it when we show up, then you are done.”
Marissa writes:
I’d like to add to Dr. Bertonneau’s comment regarding his acquaintance’s experience with Muslim sexual depravity. My husband served in the U.S. Army Infantry in Afghanistan and Iraq – understand these are two different peoples, different cultures, different ethnicities, and even Iraq is quite divided in that sense too. In both places my husband witnessed excessive homosexuality amongst both the army men and the civilian population. The infantry are the “boots on the ground” – they see the enemy where they live and fight, not from some comfortable base. He was propositioned multiple times, as were some of the men in his unit. In Afghanistan, he mentioned that they couldn’t get enough antibiotics to treat the sexually transmitted diseases that occurred among the Afghan soldiers due to their…activities with each other. And I think most people are aware of how common it is to see two Middle Eastern men hold hands down the street, and yet how rare is it to see a man and woman do so?
Of course the West is sexually depraved; I would never deny that. But there is something very rotten in these places that no one wants to admit because to do so might link sodomy with all the evils that accompany it – true oppression of women, abuse of children, corruption, etc.
Dec. 19, 2014
Pete F. writes:
Re: “It is very destructive to view jihadists as being motivated by Western decadence and their concomitant ‘devout’ struggle against such decadence.”
With due respects, Josh, I do not agree with your comment at all. It is a matter of historical record (available to anyone who wishes to do the research) – that the foundational ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood (which is itself foundational to the ideology of most Islamic terrorist groups) is based upon the critique of modernity made by Sayyid Qutb and other Islamic theorists. I did not mean to suggest that Qutb’s views were the sole reason for the actions of jihadists like those who recently attacked in Sydney, Australia; my intent was to show that his views may have informed their actions at some level. Qutb certainly informed Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, who have made frequent references to him, albeit sometimes obliquely, in their media communiques. It is impossible to correctly-understand the mindset of the jihadist movement without understanding the philosophy of men like Sayyid Qutb.
Re: “My acquaintance said that when these members of the flying cadre returned home, they left the house filled with empty vodka and Scotch bottles, and a library of pornography so large that it needed an industrial waste bin to cart it all away.”
Dr. Bertonneau, your experiences echo my own. As a college student many years ago, I had occasion to know slightly a student from a wealthy family in the Arab Middle East. This particular young man’s father, who was a member of the royal family of one of the sheikdoms, had sent him to the United States to get an education in engineering, but his son spent most of his time drinking, get speeding tickets in his sports car, and collecting center-folds from girlie magazines. The entire wall of his dorm room was covered with them.
Re: “The infantry are the “boots on the ground” – they see the enemy where they live and fight, not from some comfortable base. He was propositioned multiple times, as were some of the men in his unit. In Afghanistan, he mentioned that they couldn’t get enough antibiotics to treat the sexually transmitted diseases that occurred among the Afghan soldiers due to their…activities with each other. And I think most people are aware of how common it is to see two Middle Eastern men hold hands down the street, and yet how rare is it to see a man and woman do so?”
Those unfamiliar with Islamic culture are often surprised to discover that homosexuality is quite common in the places like the Middle East and Afghanistan. The surprise stems from the fact that the governments in the Islamic nations of Saudi Arabia and Iran, to name two examples, inflict very harsh and visible punishments upon homosexuals; how could the practice be so common in societies where it is so strictly punished? Doesn’t Islam prohibit homosexuality?
The prophet of Islam, Mohammed, is considered by devout orthodox Muslims to be the “perfect” man and the Koran the unalterable word of Allah. Sharia law, which is based upon the Koran and the Hadiths, condemns homosexuals to severe punishment, up to and including death (often by stoning). However, Mohammed himself is known to have engaged in pederasty. At first glance, this would seem to make the most-important individual in Islamic history a violator of some of its strictest laws.
Mohammed is not held guilty of high crimes against Islam, however, because of the manner in which Muslims consider children – in this case, young boys. Being prepubescent, they are not yet men – but something androgynous or more akin to a girl – and thus can be taken sexually. In addition to being a pederast, Mohammed was a despoiler of young girls and a rapist; his wife Aisha was nine at the time of her marriage to him. Mohammed also held slaves, sexual and otherwise, taken in the course of his conquests. Particularly prized were young infidel women, especially Europeans.
Muslim societies are notoriously repressive. It is very difficult, given the strict behavioral limits placed upon young men and women within the Islamic world, for young males to spend time alone with a young woman. This is particularly true of young men whose economic and other prospects are poor. Despite the inventiveness of young people everywhere in seeking companionship with the opposite sex, not all of these young males are successful; some resort to homosexuality and others to temporary marriages allowed under sharia.
The aggression and sexual frustration of Muslim men, as it were, are one reason why homosexuality, prostitution and sexual slavery are still so common in parts of the Islamic world. It is also why many young Muslim men with the means to do so go to Europe or elsewhere in the non-Muslim world to procure female companionship. Far from being a sin or a crime, the taking of infidel women by a Muslims is permitted – nay, encouraged – by the Koran. Being by definition unpure, a female infidel is fair game for a Muslim man. Did not Mohammed himself consider the taking of infidel women to be a form of jihad?
In many European cities – Oslo, Norway for example – rape of Norwegian-born women by gangs of Muslim male “immigrants” is endemic. In one recent year, Norwegian police disclosed that fully one-hundred percent of the cleared (solved) assault-type rape cases in Oslo were committed by Muslim males. In the United Kingdom, there is an on-going scandal concerning a police cover-up of the activities of “grooming gangs” of Muslim youth roaming the streets and terrorizing young women. Not only are these gangs forcing young women into prostitution and then pimping them, the authorities were caught red-handed covering up these activities!
In short, there is apparently no limit to the sexual depravity and naked aggression of the soldiers of Allah.
