Dominanskriminalitet: Dominance-Criminality

Snaphanen Header

I read a lot of articles about issues that I don't report on because I have not figured out how to fit them into a framework that clarifies their meaning. For instance, how are we to understand reports from Europe about urban areas in which Muslim immigrants predominate where the delinquent 'youth' throw stones at fire trucks and ambulances? Why attack those who have come to help? The stoning of police cars is 'rational' by comparison. Criminals and the police are enemies. But firemen and medical workers? What's the point?

Well, Steen Raaschou, editor of Snaphanen, offers a suggestion in a recent article. He notes that "the attacks on fire service . . . have no traditional justification" ("angrebene på brandvæsen . . . har nogen traditionel begrundelse"), but he suggests that we classify these with other nontraditional violence. He gives the example of street muggings in which old people or children are robbed and beaten though little of value is stolen. He suggests that "These robberies have the character of harrassment" ("Disse røverier har karakter af chikane"). To these, he adds "vandalism and arson against public institutions" ("hærværk og brandstiftelse i forhold til offentlige institutioner"). Raaschou argues that this "criminality is mainly designed to establish or demonstrate superiority" ("Kriminalitet hvis hovedsigte er at etablere eller demonstrere en overmagt"). To label such crimes, he proposes a new concept: "dominance-criminality" ("dominanskriminalitet").

Raaschou perhaps implies, though he does not explicitly state, that the Muslim culture to which these 'youth' belong is unaccustomed to dealing with non-Muslims in positions of authority. Such 'youth' would therefore apparently believe -- if Raaschou is correct -- that non-Muslims should be either pushed out or subordinated to them even if these 'youth' themselves are not especially pious.

Whether Raaschou further classifies "dominance-criminality" under jihad is unclear, but he does call this sort of criminality "guerrilla warfare" ("guerillakrig"), which suggests that he is thinking along such lines. Before I'd go that far, I'd need to see more evidence, though I suspect that the Danish state is looking into the possibility.

Disclaimer: I know nothing of Steen Raaschou's larger views, nor am I otherwise familiar with Snaphanen, a site written in Danish, so I cannot vouch for it.

Accolade: A Girl Band in Saudi Arabia?

Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

(Image from Wikipedia)

I often write about religious issues on this blog, and since one of the central issues in religion these days is Islamist terrorism, many blog entries have dealt with this big issue, but countervailing forces are also moving in the Muslim world.

The two posts prior to this one, for instance, have investigated 'Muslims' returning to their Christian 'roots' in Kosovo. An earlier post reported on a Christian television program in Arabic that is spawning debates among Muslims about early Muslim texts. Also in that same post -- which concerned the broader topic of change in the Arab world -- was a portrait of Muslims working in Dubai who are less interested in religion than in making money.

I suspect -- and not being an expert, I can only suspect -- that the history of Islam's spread cannot be readily extrapolated from its early religious texts. Islamists may like to ground their version of Islam in terrible certainties about rigid puritanical conformity, jihad against unbelievers, and humiliation of the conquered, but we see from the historical reality of Islam's spread that the full story is more complex, Islamization occurring rather slowly over centuries in a gradual process even resisted by Islamic political authorities themselves, who were fearful of losing their tax base if the higher-taxed Dhimmi population were to convert to Islam.

And in our modern times, powerful forces are gathering in even the Muslim world that can turn people against Islamism, particularly those who have to live with it firsthand, especially the young. While young Muslims living in Europe turn to Islamist radicalism, young people in the Muslim heartland, Saudi Arabia, are turning to rock music. A recent article in the International Herald Tribune by Robert F. Worth, "A Saudi girl group that dares to rock" (November 24, 2008), tells of a girl band in Jeddah (or Jidda) -- calling itself The Accolade -- whose three members are pushing at the boundaries of the acceptable for Muslims, especially for female Muslims:

Dina and Dareen wear their hair teased into thick manes and have pierced eyebrows. During an interview with the band at a Starbucks here, they wore black abayas -- the flowing gown that is standard attire for women -- but the gowns were open, showing their jeans and T-shirts, and their hair and faces were uncovered. Women are more apt to go uncovered in Jidda than in most other parts of the country, though it is still an uncommon sight.

And the inspiration for their music is hardly Islamic:

The band gets together to practice every weekend at the sisters' house, where their younger brother sometimes fills in on drums. In early November, Dina, who studies art at King Abdulaziz University, began writing a song based on one of her favorite paintings, "The Accolade," by the English pre-Raphaelite painter Edmund Blair Leighton. The painting depicts a long-haired noblewoman knighting a young warrior with a sword.

"I liked the painting because it shows a woman who is satisfied with a man," Dina said.

She had thought of writing a song based on the "Last Supper" by Leonardo da Vinci but decided that doing so would be taking controversy too far. (In Saudi Arabia, churches are not allowed, and Muslims who convert to Christianity can be executed.)

The reporter, Robert Worth, doesn't shy away from adding that parenthetical remark about Saudi repression -- and I'm glad for the honesty -- for he wants to remind readers that pushing too hard against the boundaries in Saudi Arabia can have harsh consequences even if "more than 60 percent of Saudi Arabia's population is under 25, . . . [with] many younger people . . . pressing for greater freedoms."

The reality is complex:

[T]his country's harsh code of public morals has slowly thawed, especially in Jidda, by far the kingdom's most cosmopolitan city. A decade ago the cane-wielding religious police terrorized women who were not dressed according to their standards. Young men with long hair were sometimes bundled off to police stations to have their heads shaved, or worse.

Today, there is a growing rock scene with dozens of bands, some of them even selling tickets to their performances. Hip-hop is also popular. The religious police -- strictly speaking, the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice -- have largely retreated from the streets of Jidda, and they are somewhat less aggressive even in the kingdom's desert heartland.

The reporter attributes these changes to reform in the wake of 9/11:

The change has been especially noticeable since the terrorist attacks on the United States of Sept. 11, 2001, when the Saudis confronted the effects of extremism both outside and inside the kingdom.

I'm not so sure that the Saudis have genuinely confronted extremism, which is well-entrenched in Sauid institutions, including the education system. Saudi textbooks for middle and high schools reportedly still admonish students to "hate" non-Muslims. Rather, I think that the push for change is coming from below, from a younger generation that -- like the younger generation in Iran -- wants more personal freedom.

I hope that they get it, too, and perhaps they will . . . even if incrementally.

Gypsy Scholar: "the same mindset as bin-Ladin"

Osama Bin Laden (1957-?)

"the same mindset as Gypsy Scholar?"

Same Year of the Rooster!

(Image from Wikipedia)

In a response to my blog entry yesterday on John Milton, the moderate Muslim Irfan Yusuf has informed me that I "have the same mindset as bin-Ladin."

That wasn't a very moderate thing for Mr. Yusuf to say, but one can't always maintain one's moderation. Here's the entire comment:

horace, do you know what proportion of European Muslims use Arabic as their first language? Or what proportion of Muslims live in Arab League states? And have you ever set foot in a mosque? Or are you afraid that you might get bitten by a scorpion?

Bin-Ladin makes some absurd and silly generalisations about Europeans, Westerners, Jews, Hindus and other groups. You are doing the same thing to 1.2 billion Muslims.

Will you permit me to exercise my freedom of speech and suggest that you have the same mindset as bin-Ladin?

So many questions! Who knew that Milton, 400 years after his birth, could inspire such an impassioned response?

Yet . . . when I re-read my words on Milton to discover what I supposedly did to 1.2 billion Muslims, I found myself baffled -- and, naturally, a bit insulted -- so I replied to Mr. Yusuf (taking care to respectfully capitalize his name):

Irfan Yusuf, you seem to have forgotten that I go by "Jeffery."

You are free to comment here so long as you don't abuse the privilege with ad hominem attacks -- though you are really pushing that line with your insulting comparison of me to mass murderer and Islamist terrorist Osama Bin Laden. I suggest that you restrain yourself in future comments.

Now if I recall correctly, you previously objected to my having made a distinction between moderate and radical Muslims. Now, you accuse me of not distinguishing. I plead not guilty anyway, for if you look closely, you'll see in my post [on Milton] that I used the term "Islamism," by which I mean the use of Islam for political purposes, the ultimate aim being a shariah state.

I don't consider the majority of Muslims to be particularly interested in Islamism.

In a subsequent response to another interlocutor, Otto Silver, whom Mr. Yusuf had also engaged in conversation, I added the following remarks about Mr. Yusuf:

Otto, I appreciate your cordial response to Irfan Yusuf and your temperate remarks. I try to keep my blog free of insults.

Irfan is a 'moderate' Muslim (though he doesn't like my saying so), a lawyer, a journalist, and quite intelligent, but is also, it seems, too easily riled.

He is, in short, better than his recent comments.

I give Mr. Yusuf, anyway, the benefit of the doubt since he obviously doesn't like Osama Bin Laden.

He does not, however, extend me the same courtesy, for in a comment to Sonagi concerning my "'Dhimmification' of Europe?" blog post, Mr. Yusuf remarked: "I hope that the academic who writes this blog doesn't pollute young Korean minds with such sectarian bigotry."

To those words, I can only repeat my initial, lapidary response: "Islamism is a problem in Europe, and it cannot be ignored."

I anticipate more lapidation from Mr. Yusuf, but perhaps he'll call for a moratorium.

'Dhimmification' of Europe?

Vebjørn Selbekk

Apologizing to Mohammed Hamdan

(Image from VG Nett)

I've nearly finished reading Bruce Bawer's book, While Europe Slept, and I encourage people to read it. It's not a scholarly text, so you won't find citations to help you track down Bawer's sources, but what he writes accords with what I've read elsewhere.

I'll soon go on to read Claire Berlinski's Menace in Europe, Bruce Thornton's Decline and Fall, and Walter Laqueur's The Last Days of Europe, all three being about the 'challenges' facing Europe in its decline.

But before leaving Bawer entirely (though I'll return to him as I prepare my Yonsei course), I'd like to draw attention to his recent article for City Journal: "An Anatomy of Surrender" (Spring 2008, Volume 18, Number 2). This article recaps many of the points that Bawer makes in While Europe Slept.

In this article, Bawer emphasizes that the Islamists are attempting to force Europeans to accept the strictures of sharia by restricting the right to free speech, an assault that began with the Rushdie Affair:

What has not been widely recognized is that the Ayatollah Khomeini's 1989 fatwa against Satanic Verses author Salman Rushdie introduced a new kind of jihad. Instead of assaulting Western ships or buildings, Khomeini took aim at a fundamental Western freedom: freedom of speech. In recent years, other Islamists have joined this crusade, seeking to undermine Western societies' basic liberties and extend sharia within those societies. (Bawer, "An Anatomy of Surrender," paragraph 2)

Bawer relates an example from a more recent crisis in Norway that followed in the wake of the controversy that had resulted from the publication of several Muhammad cartoons in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten:

With the press, the entertainment industry, and prominent liberal thinkers all refusing to defend basic Western liberties, it's not surprising that our political leaders have been pusillanimous, too. After a tiny Oslo newspaper, Magazinet, reprinted the Danish cartoons in early 2006, jihadists burned Norwegian flags and set fire to Norway's embassy in Syria. Instead of standing up to the vandals, Norwegian leaders turned on Magazinet's editor, Vebjørn Selbekk, partially blaming him for the embassy burning and pressing him to apologize. He finally gave way at a government-sponsored press conference, groveling before an assemblage of imams whose leader publicly forgave him and placed him under his protection. On that terrible day, Selbekk later acknowledged, "Norway went a long way toward allowing freedom of speech to become the Islamists' hostage." As if that capitulation weren't disgrace enough, an official Norwegian delegation then traveled to Qatar and implored Qaradawi -- a defender of suicide bombers and the murder of Jewish children -- to accept Selbekk's apology. "To meet Yusuf al-Qaradawi under the present circumstances," Norwegian-Iraqi writer Walid al-Kubaisi protested, was "tantamount to granting extreme Islamists . . . a right of joint consultation regarding how Norway should be governed." (Bawer, "An Anatomy of Surrender", paragraph 25)

What I find most disturbing about this episode concerning the restriction of Vebjørn Selbekk's free speech is that Mohammed Hamdan, the leader of those 'Danish' imams, "publicly forgave him and placed him under his protection"!

Lest anyone not understand the implications, that sort of 'protection' implies that Selbekk is already a dhimmi and that an Islamist such as Hamdan believes that Islam already rules in Norway.

Such 'protection' is contingent upon the dhimmi's continued good behavior, which entails continually acknowledging the supremacy of Islam.

Tawfik Hamid on the Jihadist Mind

Tawfik Hamid

(Image: Point of Inquiry)

I recently read a fascinating article in the Jerusalem Post. Written by Tawfik Hamid, a moderate Muslim who passed through an Islamist phase as a young man, the lengthy article describes how a young, highly intelligent Muslim was easily turned toward fanaticism . . . but also how he escaped from that iron cage of unreason.

The article, "The development of a jihadist's mind," appeared in the Jerusalem Post's January 18th edition, but this is a reprint of an earlier printing (with footnotes) in volume 5 (pdf) of the Hudson Institute's series on Current Trends in in Islamist Ideology.

The Post's issue is spread out over several pages, which involves a lot of clicking back and forth if one wishes to check a point, and the Hudson's pdf version includes the 5 other articles in the publication, which makes the file rather long (at 90 pages), but a the entire text alone on a single page, albeit without the footnotes, can be easily read on another webpage hosted at the Hudson site.

I will post a few excerpts (citing the pdf version) to indicate what the article has to offer.

Hamid encountered Islamist teachings in the 1980s, during the jihad against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. He was a young medical student in Egypt and was powerfully influenced in his developing radicalism through a talk given by Aiman al-Zawahiri, a physician who is now better known as the intellectual spokesman for Al Qaeda:

At one afternoon prayer session, an imam I had never met before gave a sermon. He was one of the fiercest speakers I had ever heard. His passion for jihad was astonishing. He advocated complete Islamic dominance, urging us to pursue jihad against non-Muslims and subdue them to sharia -- the duty of every true Muslim. His rhetoric inspired us to engage in war against the infidels, the enemies of Allah. He particularly condemned the West for the freedom of its women. He hated the fact that Western women were permitted to wear what they pleased, to work and to have the same opportunities as men. He dreamt of forcing the West to conform to a Taliban-style system in which women were obliged to wear the Islamic hijab, were legally beaten by men to discipline them, and were stoned to death for extramarital sex. After the Imam's speech my friend, Tariq Abdul-Muhsin, asked me if I knew this speaker. When I said I did not, Tariq told me that he was Dr. Aiman Al-Zawahiri and, because I was a new member of Jamaah, offered to introduce us.

Al-Zawahiri was exceptionally bright, one of the top postgraduate students in the medical school. We called him by his title and first name -- Dr. Aiman. He came from a well-known, highly-educated and wealthy family. As was customary for Jamaah members, he wore a beard and dressed occasionally in the Pakistani style of the Taliban. He disapproved of Egypt's secular government; he wanted Egypt to follow sharia law and Coptic Christians to be made dhimmis -- second-class citizens submissive to Islam. To disparage secular Arab governments, he cited the following verse: "For they who do not judge in accordance with what God has bestowed from on high are, indeed, Infidels" (Quran 5:44).

When I met him, Zawahiri welcomed me affectionately. He spoke quietly, gazing intently at me through his thick glasses. With a serious expression he placed his hand on my shoulder and said, "Young Muslims like you are the hope for the future return of Khilafa [Caliphate or Islamic global dominance]." I felt a great sense of gratitude and honor. I wanted to please him by contributing to his "noble" cause. Throughout my membership in Jamaah, I would meet with Zawahiri on six more occasions. He did not have much time to spare however, for he was deeply involved in several Islamist organizations.

One of Zawahiri's significant achievements was to personalize jihad -- that is, to have transformed it from a responsibility of the Umma, the Islamic collective, to a duty of Muslim individuals. His goal is to spread the empire of Islam through the actions of individual radical Muslims, each of whom is incited to wage a personal jihad. This allows young Muslims to carry out suicide bombings without the endorsement of the collective body. Zawahiri and his fellow jihadis base their philosophy on the verse that states, "Then fight in Allah's cause -- you are held responsible only for yourself -- and rouse the believers (to fight)" (Quran 4:84). (Tawfik Hamid, "The development of a jihadist's mind," Current Trends in in Islamist Ideology, Volume 5 (pdf), pages 16-17)

Several significant conclusions can be drawn about Zawahiri from Hamid's description. First, he hates the West primarily because of the freedom that it gives women rather than keeping them covered in hijab and beaten into submission. Second, he wants Islam to dominate the West and the entire non-Muslim world and force everyone to submit to Muslim law. Third, he encourages a worldwide jihad carried out by each individual Muslim as a means toward achieving Islam's domination over the world. Whatever additional motives Zawahiri and other Islamists might have, we should never forget that the Al Qaeda and many other such Islamist groups share the imperialist aim of radical Islamic rule over all non-Muslims.

Hamid also describes the process by which he personally came to share Islamist obsession with hatred and violence:

I passed through three psychological stages to reach this level of comfort with death: hatred of non-Muslims or dissenting Muslims, suppression of my conscience, and acceptance of violence in the service of Allah. (Hamid, "The development of a jihadist's mind" (pdf), page 18)

What saved Hamid from a jihadi fate was the resurrection of his conscience through his irrepressible habit of critical thinking:

As I considered attending a terrorist training camp, however, my conscience reasserted itself. The habit of critical thinking that my parents had instilled in me when I was growing up began to undermine the violent indoctrination to which I had been subjected. If I had taken the next step toward jihad, I might well have become a terrorist killer. Instead, I experienced an intense inner struggle that felt like an earthquake shaking my principles. I realized that harming innocent people is immoral and that a religious ideology pledging war on non-believers must be bankrupt. (Hamid, "The development of a jihadist's mind" (pdf), page 19)

The habit of critical thinking that Hamid could not entirely suppress resurfaced and led him to listen to his conscience rather than to his Islamist mentors, but Hamid did not learn critical thinking from his education, and certainly not from the Islamists (who emphasize rote memorization and demand unquestioning obedience). Rather, he had learned critical thinking from his parents, and he returned to their values, which he had earlier described in his article:

I was born in Cairo to a secular Muslim family. My father was an orthopedic surgeon and an agnostic at heart; my mother was a French teacher and a liberal. Both considered Islam to be, primarily, an integral part of our culture. With the exception of my father, we would fast on Ramadan. Even though my father was not religious, he understood our need to fit into the community and never forced his secular views on us. He espoused diverse philosophical ideas but encouraged us to follow our own convictions. Most importantly, he taught my brother and me to think critically rather than to learn by rote. (Hamid, "The development of a jihadist's mind" (pdf), page 11)

I suspect that Hamid's childhood was radically unlike the childhood of most Muslims, which suggests that his habit of critical thinking would probably not be widely shared, but it also suggests that the West has as its most powerful 'weapon' against Islamism the power of critical thought.

And critical reasoning can be seductive.