SERIOUS-MINDED PUNDITS and politicians grapple with explaining away the attraction of jihad to western Muslim men as nothing-to-do-with-Islam and everything-that-isn’t-to-do-with-Islam. It’s usually psychologised or sociologised into non-existence as a reaction (always a reaction, note) to western aggression or a feeling of marginalisation or both. In some cases it’s out and out insanity, though no one has yet explained why the religion of peace proves so attractive to the criminally violent. Not even that intellectual Titan, Russell Brand, could work that one out.
Boris Johnson has now rather queered this orthodox pitch by claiming that British jihadis are no better than porn-watching onanists who can’t get girlfriends. As Gannett’s Local London reports:
If you look at all the psychological profiling about bombers, they typically will look at porn. They are literally w*****s. Severe onanists.
They are tortured. They will be very badly adjusted in their relations with women, and that is a symptom of their feeling of being failure and that the world is against them. They are not making it with girls and so they turn to other forms of spiritual comfort – which of course is no comfort.
They are just young men in desperate need of self-esteem…
So they fill the spiritual gap with terrorism. I sometimes felt the same way myself when I was younger but I never sought fulfilment in joining the Baader-Meinhof gang.
Maybe it’s Johnson’s more forthright language and approach that disturbs people but it’s rather odd that the very apologists who have been promoting this line are now discounting it. From the Daily Express:
General Secretary for the Muslim Women’s Network Mussurut Zia slammed the Conservative politician’s comments as “irresponsible” and “the definition of terrorism”.
Ms Zia said the “sweeping comment” made by Mr Johnson labelled “all young Muslim men as losers”.
“If you look at the definition of terrorism it is to incite fear into the hearts of people – this is what he is doing,” she added.
‘I’ve not heard of the Muslim Women’s Network before. I wonder what they discuss at their meetings. How to stop their young men watching porn and seeking solace in jihad, perhaps.’
ISN’T IT AMAZING how many Islamic associations and groups there are? I’ve not heard of the Muslim Women’s Network before. I wonder what they discuss at their meetings. How to stop their young men watching porn and seeking solace in jihad, perhaps. Or, more likely, how to convince gullible liberal kaffir women into thinking wearing the hijab is a matter of female empowerment.
Ms Zia’s words are a textbook example of the psychopathy of denial. Calling a terrorist an onanist is an act of terrorism? Right. It’s only a short step then to saying you’re a terrorist if you call a terrorist a terrorist. I think in some parts of the world that is now standard practice.
Aggrieved as Ms Zia may be at the accusation that Muslim youth are porn hounds I bet she’d be more aggrieved at the suggestion her religion itself has anything to do with this. Better to throw accusations of racism and islamophobia around than confront the problem head on. In the words of Seamus Heaney, it’s always a case of whatever you say, say nothing.
Shiv Malik contests the assertion that jihadists are useless with women by drawing attention to the fact that many British Islamic terrorists have families. He mentions Mohammed Sadique Khan, one of the London bombers, who had a wife and child. Khan, he said, turned to “radical” Islam to cope with the identity crisis and trauma caused by the rift with his family over his marriage. Which precisely accords with part of the Johnson thesis, so a bit of a logic fail there.
And like Ms Zia, Mohammed Khaliel doesn’t even bother to discuss the central issue, preferring to lob smeary accusations instead: “These are the type of comments you’d expect from the EDL, the BNP and possibly Ukip.” The way these people talk you’d think the EDL and BNP were massive political organisations with millions of supporters rather than the fractured and ineffective groups they really are.
Mr Khaliel, by the way, is “director of the community cohesion organisation Islamix”, yet another pressure group. He produced a little report on the BBC in the wake of the Lee Rigby murder. It follows the standard handwashing procedure — ie the real victims are Muslims because of islamophobia, women have been spat at, had their hijabs ripped off, people have been sworn at, nasty tweets tweeted, etc.
And we know it’s true because it was all monitored by Tell Mama. Ah yes, yet another special interest group.
JOHNSON’S INTERVENTION HAS been entertaining, of course, and has added a prurient spin to the lame psychologising of jihadism. It’s stirred up the usual apologists. But, as Sky News reports, he’s thrown down the gauntlet more publicly than any other politician to the leaders of the Muslim community:
We won’t succeed if western politicians just go around bashing and blaming Islam; that is hopeless…This problem can only be addressed if Muslim authorities and clerics find a powerful and compelling way of setting up an alternative narrative for young people that makes this seem irrelevant.
If the sensitive and understanding language of the political class has proved useless so far, perhaps the blunter approach may work better, because Johnson has defined the core of the whole problem: “how it can be that this one religion seems to be leading people astray in so many cases.” Nothing about a deformation of religion, nothing about it being a mutation, or anything like that. Just straight to the point.
Only Muslims themselves can confront and deal with this. Given the immense amount of prevarification and denial from their side and their apologists in the establishment, though, we could be waiting a long time.
